Dec 26 2008
It was fantastic. Emma, her brother Sam, Zachary and myself, eating plenty, drinking plenty, having so much fun. I did all the cooking too, it went down well, and no-one got sick :)
After living alone in a family house for over six months, it was wonderful to have it full of family.
But today is boxing day. Emma’s gone to work, Sam’s heading back home and Zachary and myself are planning what to do. I’m sad it’s over so quickly. I miss Emma.
Dec 12 2008
So in a previous posting I’d said I was planning on using a Mac Mini to do my media acquiring needs.
Having reviewed the costs (£700) and considering Apple haven’t announced any upgrades to their mini line, I’ve decided against that option.
Instead, after a lot of research by my good mate Owain, I’ve opted for a mini-itx solution. Specifically:
Onto this contraption I’ll install either Ubuntu or OS X though I am leaning towards Ubuntu at the moment. All the software mentioned previously will run on it happily, and I could potentially turn it into a MythTV box too.
Total cost for the above, including delivery, £230. Add on two 750Gb-1Tb external drives and the cost is still far below what the Mac Mini solution would have been.
Win.
Dec 06 2008
* Sleep – check
* Sugar injection via biscuits – check
* Caffeinated tea (just the one cup, don’t want to go crazy) – check
* Awesomeness – check
Dec 04 2008
This morning I am happy. Very happy.
Yesterday I received an SMS from O2 providing a password for the presale of tickets for the upcoming Britney Spears tour.
This morning I logged on and purchased two tickets for the show on Saturday 6th June.
I am a very happy bunny.
Dec 01 2008
This week I am cancelling my account with Sky Television.
I’ve been with sky for 7 years, and between years 2-5 I used a trusty Tivo box to provide the recording functionality. When I moved house two years ago, I thought Sky+ would be a better option – it records at the quality transmitted (no mpeg encoding/converting) and would also support Dolby Surround. Unfortunately the UI is awful, and the season pass (series link) support is only slightly less than unusable.
So this week it’s going to be cancelled. In its place, I’ll be installing a Mac Mini and a Iomega MiniMax 1TB hard drive which will be running the Vuze bittorrent client and most likely Hellanzb for usenet downloads. With some custom scripts for polling usenet (via Easynews or similar), I should have a steady stream of exactly the shows and films I want to watch, in hi-def, for an ongoing cost of less than £10/month. Win.
