4-30-2009
For some reason I've got an urge to hook up my NES today. Not sure how it will look on my 46" LCD, but I might be surprised. There is a perfect sized spot above the VCR, and I'm not going to run out of inputs any time soon.
An Xbox LAN party would hit the spot as well. Xbox Live is an incredible service, but trash talking in person is so much better, not the mention the constant threat of physical retaliation. I'm going to have to set one up before too long.
I was watching the making of documentary for Halo 3 recently, when it dawned on me that I haven't played Halo 3 on my new setup yet. COD4 is pretty awesome, and I expect Gears of War and Halo 3 will be mind blowing. However, I'm probably not going to take Blue Dragon out of the drive until I beat it, which might take awhile. I have made it all the way to disc 3, and I think I'm getting close to the end, but I really don't know. Nap time is drawing nigh, so hopefully I can get another hour or two of gameplay in later.
3-11-2009
At last, my home theater is complete. My little brother spent some time at my house and I was able to get him to get into the crawl space so that I could run my rear speaker wires. Under the house, he found animal feces and bones, but that does not have anything to do with how sweet my speaker setup is now.
Finally ran the auto equalizer setup today, and I'm pleased with the result. I had tweaked the settings myself, but the auto setup sounds just a bit better. Watched Jet Li's Fearless to celebrate, and in some scenes the sound was coming from behind me, even though there are no speakers there.
I've got some old computer towers gathering dust, so I may put together some sort of HTPC for my next upgrade, although I'll probably just put some music on it. For now, however, I'm really enjoying the 5.1 experience.
2-13-2009
Technology is great, but without electricity and internet, it doesn't do much. We had quite the ice storm, and as a result we were out of our house for 11 days due to lack of power. Now we've settled back in, the cable and internet is back up, and things are mostly back to normal.
Once again Circuit City's demise has benefited me. I had a few more rewards points to cash in, so I picked up the Matrix box set on Blu-ray. I'm a big Matrix fan anyway, but the Blu-ray was pretty awesome. The detail of the actors' faces is pretty amazing, you can see every line and wrinkle. The sound is also pretty awesome, although I've been lazy and haven't hooked up my remaining speakers to complete the 5.1 setup.
12-29-2008
Once again I have fallen off the blogging wagon, hopefully some new purchases will serve as my technology muse.
My local Circuit City was going out of business, so I decided now was as good as time as any to jump into the HDTV era. I waited until the prices had been reduced as low as they would go, then picked up a quite nice setup. Ended up with a 46" 1080p Samsung LCD, Onkyo receiver and five Polk speakers for my surround sound. They were out of subwoofers and Blu-ray players, so I picked those up from Hsu Research and Amazon respectively.
Haven't hooked up my center and rear channels yet, but everything else has been incredible so far. My tv picked up our local digital channels through my cable feed, and NFL football in HD is really awesome. I'm waiting eagerly to hook up the rest of my 5.1 setup and watch Dark Knight with the volume cranked up.
So far I haven't tweaked the picture or audio settings, but I imagine when I do I'll be even more blown away. Now if only I could get Discovery Channel, ESPN, and the Food Network in HD for free, I'd be set.
9-16-2008
It's been a few months since I've done much in the tech realm, since surfing the internet doesn't count. However, this changed last week when I purchased one of the coolest gadgets ever, the iPhone. I haven't done anything crazy like jailbreak it yet, but I have been enjoying all the cool things it can do out of the box.
This is the best cell phone I've ever had by a longshot, and I've been overwhelmed by how much information can be on the screen at once. On my old phone, I entered contacts as concisely as possible since it was such a chore. On the iPhone, I just synced my address book with first and last names, email addresses and some street addresses. In the future I'll probably go off the deep end and put in all my favorite restaurants and stores, and give most of my contacts individual ring tones.
I'll admit, I loved this phone before I got one, but it has really impressed me with the overall polish and quality. Next time I get a really cool application I'll post some more.
5-8-2008
Finally accomplished something of technical note. My daughter really likes watching videos on YouTube. (Itsty bitsy spider, etc.) However, if my wife or I are using the laptop for something else, it can be difficult to explain that we can't watch the itsy bitsy spider right now.
So, I had an old desktop that I had previously installed a Debian Etch server on that I installed the latest version of Ubuntu, Hardy Heron. Howtoforge.com had a great tutorial for setting up the perfect desktop with Hardy Heron, which I followed to install the necessary packages to enable playback of several types of media files.
Now my daughter can watch all the YouTube she wants without me having to worry about her poking the screen on my laptop. My next step is to remember to turn it on before I leave for work so that I can play around with it from my office computer. I've got all the ports forwarded and desktop sharing set up so I can access it remotely. All that preparation doesn't help though when the box is turned off.
4-29-2008
Obviously been a slow month or so for me technologically. However, all is not lost. Signed up for Twitter the other day. I've heard it's pretty cool, and I have to admit, it is. I find it similar to Facebook status updates, but a lot more mobile. I've also added my Twitter updates to the top of this blog. Maybe this will the jumpstart I need to be more techie in May.
3-28-2008
I was able to trade out my old cable modem for a new one, which was nice. When I activated my first one, it only involved a short call to Comcast, so I was expecting the same this time around. Unfortunately, this was not the case.
Called up Comcast about 9:30, spoke to a nice tech and he got the required info from me. He hit a snag, put me on hold for a few minutes then came back to tell me since I wasn't in his area, he didn't have access to add my cable modem and those people left at 9. Bummer. Good thing I didn't have to have the internet that night, or else I would have had to go sit outside next to my neighbor's house and "borrowed" some Wi-Fi.
All was not lost since I had just picked up Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword. Knocked out a few levels then went to bed. Called them back last night and got hooked up. Next, time for some more Call of Duty 4!
3-26-2008
Slow month technologically speaking for me. My cable modem has apparently gone haywire after the power went out at my house last week. It resets every couple of minutes, preventing me from using the net consistently. Xbox Live is a big no-no. Tonight I'm going to take it back to the place of purchase and see if I can get a swap out since I have a extended warranty. Hopefully this will be the case and I won't have to go through the hassle of shipping it off.
I tried to call Comcast last night at about 5:30, but they had already closed, so instead I go into a chat with an "analyst." He tried to send a signal to my modem, but that didn't do what it was supposed to do. Anybody have a clue as to what that "signal" actually is?
2-27-2008
Why must Apple continue to tempt me? Why must they update their laptops and make me want to spend money?
Then there is the other question. Do I go for the Macbook, or the Macbook Pro? I've currently got a 12" G4 Powerbook, which is more like the Pro. However, I really like the size of the Macbook, since it has a 13" screen, very handy for surfing on the couch. Decisions, decisions.
Check out my food blog > http://bill-adkins.blogspot.com