DigiByte Lounge

Gone Fishin'

2011-01-07T16:23:00.001-07:00

Hey folks.

I have moved from this blog to my new one. Please drop on by to www.davefromgp.ca for more recent content!

Dave From GP

Privacy and Targeted Marketing

2010-11-22T17:35:00.000-07:00

Our concepts of privacy are evolving at breakneck speed. The other morning on CBC Radio's The Current, the topic was about posting videos and pictures of your kids online, especially ones that go viral. What would the implications be for the kid's future? What does this say about parenting? One point brought up was that the new generation is taking pictures and videos and posting themselves daily. Perhaps their interpretation of privacy will be different to ours.

A lot of the privacy concerns revolve around Facebook and Google and their interest in using our personal information for profit. Their targeted marketing is based on what our "Likes" and dislikes are by clicking on a Facebook thumb or the trail we leave via the types of websites we surf. The way I see it these corporations seem to believe that advertising is the way they are going to make their money. Would it not be better to get ads on my Facebook page that are for products or services I am interested in rather than being bombarded by general advertising? In real life, when the Mountain Equipment Co-Op catalogue arrives in the mail I am happy. It is full of things I am interested in. When a flyer for Walmart shows up, I could care less. This flyer advertising has been used for years and where does most of it end up? In the recycle bin, but the MEC catalogue, because I am interested in it, goes in a special bin beside my favourite chair.

If I had my choice there would be no advertising but since it is inevitable I guess I am for the targeted kind.

Trying New Things!

2010-11-17T21:09:00.000-07:00

Spent the evening working on my new blog, not so much publishing anything but clicking around the WordPress program. Looks like there is some amazing stuff you can do. A little overwhelming I guess, but I think I can figure it out. If all goes well I hope to get something going on it this weekend.

While I'm on the subject of new things, I have been testing out a couple of browsers in an effort to widen my options. I have been using Internet Explorer since I first started using Windows 95. As much as I hate to admit it, I have been considering switching over to Mac in the future so at first I decided to give Safari a whirl. Can't say I have been to impressed with it so far.

I have been using Google Docs recently to do up some lesson plans for the club I'm in. I was having some issues with the cursor doing weird things as I was editing documents with IE8. One of my Twitter acquaintances, Kyle Thomas of the website With Media, asked if I had tried Google Chrome. I had not but it seemed the most logical thing to do. I downloaded it and was using it for my browsing today. I must say it is quite different from IE8 but I am really liking it so far. I tested it briefly in Google Docs and seemed OK but so did IE8 when I first started. I'll give it a good workout this weekend as I work on some more club projects.

Stay tuned!

A Time for Change

2010-11-16T18:15:00.000-07:00

Have you ever seen the movie Metropolis? This silent movie made in Germany in 1927 is one of the gems of the silent era and for the science fiction film genre in general.

The most iconic scene is the one where Maria's image is downloaded into a Machine Man. This electronic doppelganger goes on to incite revolution and violence in a bold statement on classes and oppression. The Machine Man brings about a revolution that unites the two classes of society in friendship.Technology becomes the great equalizer.

But hold on! This is really a byproduct of the fact that the scientist was using the robot to get revenge due to a lost love from years before. So maybe we should be fearing technology and the chaos it could bring in the wrong hands.

Our minister gave a sermon on Sunday that touched on destruction and rebirth. Many times the things we hold sacred need to be torn down so that new ideas can be given a chance to flourish. We get stuck in the old ways. we continue to do things in the same fashion because they have always worked. At some point we are forced to look around us and realize that those ways do not work anymore.

Connecting the Club

2010-11-15T17:02:00.000-07:00

I volunteer for a couple of organizations here in town and I am really trying to sort out a way to keep members involved or at least informed in the most efficient way. I inherited the job and a few of the basic tools from my predecessor. This was mainly a Gmail account for email and a wide assortment of club specific documents thrust down from higher up in the organization, mainly cumbersome Excel spreadsheets and Word documents. There is also a Facebook account which is basically a portal to allow members to access the secret Facebook group page.

My goal is to have one location that our members can go to look at a calendar of events, post pictures of things we have done and view documents such as financial statements. As the one club is an outdoor based youth group I would also like the ability to post Google maps of places we are planning to go. For the instructors I would like to build a database of accessible lesson plans for present and future use.

On the one hand as I look at this I am thinking that I need to just build a website and put everything there. On the other, I wonder if Facebook should become my main page for all these things? I don't think Facebook allows you to store documents etc, however it may be a good jumping off point to access the Google Docs. However, I also discovered that even though I had shared the prototype calendar from Google Docs with all the members of the club, they cannot access it without a Google Account, therefore members are forced to sign up for another online service they may not necessarily want.

What about those who are not so computer savvy? Is it really fair to impose all this technology on them?

I need a one stop place to store this information and it is looking like a website may be the best answer.

What do you think? Are these online tools as good as Google and company would have us believe or does the good old website still have a place?

My New Blog

2010-11-03T17:23:00.000-06:00

My new blog has not been set up yet.

I have registered the domains "davefromgp.ca" and "davefromgp.com". Right now I have davefromgp.ca pointing to this blog because I find the name I am using is a bit of a mouthful. I am having trouble deciding what my new site will be about. Should I continue in the same vain this one has been? It started out as a journey through the building of my Home Theatre Personal Computer (HTPC) but then I let it evolve somewhat, for better or worse, into musings on technology, social media and my place in it. I like that theme though.

This is the first blog I ever did so I am reluctant to just drop it but I am also not sure I can maintain two blogs. I have enough trouble trying to keep up with this one. My goal has been to post something at least once a week. Staying on a theme of technology etc. sometimes makes that especially hard. Maybe I would like to delve more into my other interests, but I believe there should be some type of theme to what I am doing.

I am looking forward to the new blog though as it is run using Wordpress. Even the basic layout looks pretty nice and professional. I am very interested in seeing what I can do with it. I guess I am worried I'll screw it up!

Anyway, just my thought for today. What do you think?

You Tube Sociable!

2010-10-29T20:54:00.000-06:00

Todayis episode of CBC Radio's Q with Jian Ghomeshi featured Mio Adilman's regular segment called the Download Down-Low. Mio comes on and tells people what he is watching, doing or has found online and then he passes this on to the listener. This week he was on about You Tube Social. You Tube Social allows you to get together with a group of friends online and watch videos lead by someone who has a sort of virtual remote control. I checked it out briefly. You log in using your Facebook account and then invite friends to your "Viewing Party". The leader has control of the "remote" so the others watching are at your mercy as you watch, pause and fast forward. There's also a chat board so you can discuss what you are watching and you have the ability to pass the remote on to one of your friends. The idea is to bring back a bit of the family and social aspects of TV watching from the "old days". Maybe you remember, the days when we all waited until Friday and watched Dallas so that on Monday we could all talk about it.

With the wide variety of TV shows and channels now available and the choices in which we have to watch them it is becoming increasingly more complicated for a group to get together and discuss what was on last night. There are a few shows we watch live like sports and maybe some reality shows where you don't want to find out who got kicked off the island before you have had the chance to watch it. Some of us do not even bother watching a show until it comes out on DVD and at that point we will sit down and maybe go through a marathon of episodes. No waiting until next week, no allotted time. So where does that leave the traditional method of watching shows and discussing them with our friends?

In the movie Videodrome, Professor Brian O'Blivion and his daughter have set up soup kitchen like shelters called "Cathode Ray Missions" where homeless people can go and watch television. The idea is that it enables those outcasts of society to become part of the "world's mixing board". There's no denying the great equalizer that television is. Rich or poor and no matter what geographic location you are in, we all tend to watch the same shows and they do become part of the fabric of our everyday lives. We still crave the interaction of discussing our favourite shows with our friends . O'Blivion envisions that as these homeless people are rehabilitated and become part of society, they will also need to have the social skills that everyday people have and a good part of that comes from the types of TV shows we watch.

In these days of social media and especially with applications like Twitter, we are able to interact with people in cyberspace. I have found it adds another dimension to my TV viewing experience. I have developed some good online friendships with people that I followed or was followed by because of a particular show I liked or a sports team I cheered for. In some cases our friendship has moved beyond the TV show and we chat about a number of other topics.

Like it or not, television and social media do have a great impact on society. They are the world's mixing board and they have the ability to bring us closer together.

I Saw "The Social Network"

2010-10-18T17:14:00.000-06:00

Last night I went to to see The Social Network, the new movie about Mark Zuckerberg and the "scandalous" creation of Facebook. I didn't go in to the theatre thinking that this was going to be the definitive story. I had seen this interview with the Winklevoss brothers on Today:

I had also listened to the Sept. 21, 2010 episode of Q on CBC radio. Jian Ghomeshi's guest was columnist Jose Antonio Vargas who had interviewed Zuckerberg for the New Yorker. So I did approach the story as someone who could take it with a grain of salt.

Facebook often comes under fire because of its ever changing privacy policies. Zuckerberg posts on his Facebook page about how he wishes to "make the world a more open place by helping people connect and share." Whether that is because of his personal philosophy or whether it is for financial gain only Zuckerberg and Facebook know. In the movie he seems genuinely uninterested in money though his ego craves the fame of being one of the Internet's biggest movers and shakers. As with all things money ends up being the driving force. Without the financial backing of his partner he would never have got the basic equipment required to start. As the company grew it required more and more financial backing, the type of money only venture capitalists are able to provide which, in turn, means that Facebook needs to turn some type of profit. Whether they get that return in advertising revenue or if there is some grand profit to be made in holding that kind of personal information (which I'm pretty darn sure there is!), well I guess that also remains to be seen.

Maybe Zuckerberg will go down as one of the tragic geniuses. People like Wernher Von Braun who only wanted to go into space but had to develop nuclear missiles en route or Kalashnikov who wanted to invent a better rifle but it became the choice of terrorists. How about the makers of Tang who wanted to make an energy drink for astronauts but instead gave millions of children a sugar rush and an annoying drink pitcher that likes to crash through walls. Zuckerberg's dream of an open and sharing society comes at the price of its users privacy. Time will tell whether or not that is a bad thing.

Incidentally here is an article on Sean Parker, Napster creator and another key character in the development of the Facebook phenomenon who also figures prominently in the movie. Thanks to Dayna Manning for the link!

I Refuse to Appear Online Except Online

2010-10-14T20:00:00.004-06:00

I have been thinking about the movie Videodrome lately. One of the reasons may be that I had decided to register the domains "davefromgp.ca" and "davefromgp.com". I got the idea because I have been developping this online identity for the last year or so and thought that the first thing I needed was a handle. I got so tired of coming up with usernames and aliases for every website and blog I wanted to go on and came up with the name Dave From GP. Seems I have made enough of a presence that if I plug my online handle into Google, it comes up with quite a list of places where I have left comments, sites such as Spark.ca, the blog Canadian Capitalist, Twitter, and IO9.com.

Getting back to Videodrome, as I was going about the process I kept thinking about Professor Brian O'Blivion, a media personality that doesn't appear on television "except on television". The professor would go on talk shows, but only appear as a head and shoulders on a television that was wheeled into the studio and set up with the other guests on the show. Here is a clip from the movie where he appears with James Woods and the incredible Debbie Harry.

I'm not going to go into all the details here as it mainly focuses on a hidden signal buried in the TV signal that manipulates your brain. What I do want to focus on is Prof. O'Blivion's TV presence and how it could perhaps relate to an online presence. I think that his comment that Professor Brian O'Blivion is not his real name, it's his TV name and that "Soon all of us will have special names...." rings true in the age of Twitter.

SPOILER ALERT! It turns out the Professor is actually dead and that all the interviews he gives on TV are spliced together from thousands of videos he recorded of himself while still alive. His daughter keeps a room full of these recordings and as she and James Woods walk through the room she explains that he is all around them, his life preserved on video cassette. END SPOILER! So as I am searching for Dave From GP on the Internet I am reminding myself that we are all becoming something like Prof. O'Blivion. We are building libraries of our lives, commenting here and there on Twitter and Facebook. Uploading pictures and updating blogs. The only proof we have that some of our online friends are even real are words strung together and a few pictures here and there.

So who are we on the internet? Who do you want to be? Do we feel the need to hide behind this online persona we have created? Given the opportunity would you like to meet your Twitter followers and your Facebook friends?

When you finally do pass on, will you want your online identity to be the one you are remembered by? Is that the only legacy you will have left? Did you have an offline life that others will recall in their memories of you as a person? Will that be good enough for you?

If all your online thoughts, pictures and comments were downloaded into a robot in the future, would that robot be a true picture of who you were when you were alive?

Or would it be who you wished you were?

Will You Be Around for the Singularity?

2010-10-03T20:34:00.000-06:00

The other night on The Big Bang Theory, nerdiest of the nerds Sheldon calculated that he would not live long enough to be around when the technological singularity occurred. It wasn't stated on the show what year this was to occur, neither did they go in to details on how old Sheldon would be when the event did happen. Vernor Vinge estimates it will happen between 2005 and 2030. In the original Terminator movie, SkyNet became self aware in 1997. Raymond Kurzweil puts it at 2045. Regardless, there are a few theories of what will become of man once this event occurs. In the Terminator franchise the machines go on a rampage of "terminating" the human race. In other theories, such as the one Sheldon obviously believes in, human consciousness will be downloaded into robots and computers and we can essentially live forever free from our weak bodies.

I imagine something a little different. Perhaps some of it due to my environmental leanings, religious beliefs and interest in James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis. What if the singularity occurs about the same time as a mass extinction of humanity, either through war or some sort of plague? Perhaps the AI will arise from the computers and methods used by scientists to combat or, in the case of war, promote these calamities. If (as in the Gaia theory) the earth is itself a living being then we humans are part of that structure. Our collective energy focused on a problem Gaia has programmed into us. That problem is: How does Gaia reach out into the universe? The AI will see itself as the natural evolution of life on earth. Not as an evolved version of man, but rather the result of all that the earth has been working to become.

If confronted with a nearly extinct humanity and a vision of the earth as a living being, would the machines look at those humans left as a sad remnant of the greatness that once was? Maybe they would hold us in godlike esteem and respect for all we had done in our time on earth. The things that we had accomplished ultimately brought them to life. They will be the ones to solve the Earth's riddle. Their synthetic bodies would be able to handle the rigours of space travel. They could spread intelligence throughout the universe. We could rest, the era of humans complete, forever tended to by our machines.

Maybe they would just pass us by and leave us grovelling in our holes as we reverted back to a primitive species. Animals that scurry underfoot as they plod through the scorched earth using up its natural resources to create more and more machines. Eventually there may be no organic life left. Just machines. A giant computer planet. The everliving machine that travels the universe.

HP and PC Need to Split Up

2010-09-29T17:58:00.000-06:00

Hewlett Packard trying to steal Apple's COO Mark Hurd and put him in place to be Apple's next CEO? Apparently it is all a rumour and all sides deny, but maybe something like this is what HP needs.

When I think of HP I think of troublesome old computers my friends had in the past and I think in particularly of their printers. The HP printers I have used at work and the one I have at home. The ones that always want to install their "stuff" all over your computer. It's like a virus taking over. Every time I sit down at the computer I am greeted with a log on screen because HP had just "installed an update that required a reboot of your computer". You're typing away and HP suddenly announces "well I'm bored I'm going to check for updates". I can't scan a document without HP Image Zone popping up but then next time it won't scan until I manually start the program. God forbid I power the thing down! Then it just goes into a tizzy and sits there spinning its wheels and violently flinging the ink carriage from one end to another like a 3 year old rolling around on the floor taking a fit. Oh and what about the time it would not scan a document to my computer because it was out of ink! Out of ink?

When I think of Apple, I think of the IPad. Clean and slick. You turn it on and there it is: ready to go. Now don't get me wrong. I have gone on record a number of times as stating "I'm a PC", but a lot of that has to do with the fact that I am so used to Windows and PC quirks I don't really think there could be a better way. I can sit patiently and watch the hourglass empty, spin around and do it again. It's my "me" time!

PC is falling behind because of all these types of quirks. Hewlett Packard, much like myself, has grown itself around the Windows operating system. It needs it drivers, updates and patches, planned obsolescence and other features that go hand in hand with the PC way of doing things.

Maybe it is time for the two to go their separate ways. Maybe HP can reinvent itself. She just needs to get rid of that deadbeat husband.

Grande Prairie Is A Tweet City

2010-09-24T07:04:00.001-06:00

Grande Prairie, Alberta is a city that I have criticized for its lack of community spirit. When I first came here there were two local radio stations, no local television station and a newspaper that only printed 4 days a week. Seemed to me that the only time you heard about something going on was after the fact.

Earlier this year I signed up for Twitter (@davefromgp if you are interested!). Like many people I assumed it would mainly involve celebrity stalking, news, weather etc. I only knew one other “real” person who was on Twitter. By “real” I mean someone I actually saw more or less day to day in person. I started by following a couple of celebrities, Leonard Nimoy and The Shat, also a news feed from the Daily Galaxy. As time progressed I accumulated a few followers and began following a few of them back, but what surprised me most was the number of people I started following in the immediate Grande Prairie area! I had no idea there was this online community that I had been missing out on. I now feel a lot more in tune with what is happening in Grande Prairie. There are average people who work 9 to 5 jobs, people who work in the oilfield, truckers, politicians, artists and reporters. I felt like I had been living in a bubble since I moved here and all along there was this vibrant community brewing just below the surface.

Twitter is often misunderstood by people I talk to who are not on it. They ask “What is it?”. I just tell them you are supposed to make a comment on things or tell people what you are doing. Of course they make the inevitable “So like….I’m taking a dump”. But I can just laugh. I am finding that it is the everyday people that I enjoy following the most. After my recent exchange with a sports figure, I realized that when it comes to celebrities, I don’t really care what they are doing when they are not playing ball or acting in a favorite show. In fact it can be downright disappointing finding out what someone you thought you admired is like in real life. Those celebrities already have enough fame and I don’t really care what they are having for lunch.

I’ll stick with the real people thanks and enjoy rediscovering the city I thought I already knew.

Driving and Cellphones

2010-09-13T19:46:00.000-06:00

New problem in the digital age: How does a company that relies on timely and instant communication via cell phones, suddenly implement a "no-cellphone use while driving" policy?

The arrival of the cellphone in the workplace has changed how we used to do work. Studies are showing that talking on the phone, texting and other in-car distractions are causing accidents. The companies, keeping with their legal obligations are forced to implement policies that ban the use of cell phones while driving. Don't get me wrong, I totally agree that talking and texting while driving is not good! On the one hand we have access to information anywhere and anytime we want it, unfortunately we are trapped in these bodies that do not let us do two things at once very effectively. Can we realistically be expected to pull over every five minutes on a 1000Km roadtrip to answer the phone? How do we reverse a trend that has grown over the last 10-15 years?

It is not a change that will come through technology, but a change that will come through our attitudes. We have to change our attitude that if I call you on your cellphone I expect you to answer. We need to stop having an attitude that we are so important that if we don't take that call the world will fall apart. We need to plan better. We need to be sure that we know where we are going and what we are doing when we get there. We need to make sure that those people we are sending out on a job know where they are going. If the plan changes we have to accept that there will be a communication lag time. Perhaps something as simple as adding "I may be driving" to our recorded message is enough to make those calling us stop and think.

PC Is Dead! Long Live the App!

2010-09-05T09:11:00.001-06:00

So I'm hearing a lot how the traditional PC is dead. Microsoft's run as leader of the computer world is over! That lumbering plastic enclosed collection of circuit boards and fans humming away under your desk, wires sticking out of it like tentacles, is breathing its last gasp.Yes, I have been home computing since 1996 thanks to Bill Gates’ Windows 95 operating system. My dream that whole time was to someday build my own computer and when I finally got around to building the HTPC, well it was pretty much too late.

Have you ever been at work and the network went down? Or at home maybe and there was some sort of service disruption that took your ISP offline? Did you ever sit back, look at your computer at those times and think..."OMG, this thing is useless!" When I am at work I realize just how much of the stuff I do on the computer is not actually on the computer. It is on the network. I can't check my emails, can't send emails, can't create work orders or put in parts requests. Suddenly zombie like creatures (managers) emerge from their cubby holes and wander the hallways of the workplace in a daze.

I agree, I think the end is nigh for the personal computer. Smartphones, IPads and netbooks are going to take their place. No longer will you hear the anguished cry of your friend whose "hard drive just crashed and I lost everything, pictures, tax documents, everything!" Our cloud computing friends, companies like Google and F5 Networks are quite happy to have us move all our hard drive based data on to their servers. They will have a copy, in fact they will probably have several hundred copies of your picture of Rex the dog backed up to its countless server farms located around the globe.

This leaves us the conundrum of what do we use to do our writing, photo-editing etc.? I like the Blackberry keyboard but sitting down and hammering out a blog post with my thumbs does not appeal to me.I envision the computer as being simply a portal to the Internet. Some type of device that allows wireless keyboard and mouse interface and a cable that is connected to a big screen. The operating system is shaved down to bare essentials and things like photo editors and word processors are stand alone apps. When you hit “save” the changes are stored in the cloud.

Funny how PC’s downfall was always the cumbersome Windows operating system and yet it was that operating system that introduced so many everyday people to the world of computers. The same people who then brought about its demise.

Et tu, Brute?

Give Me My Blackberry or Give Me Death.

2010-08-19T19:21:00.001-06:00

Just recently Research In Motion (RIM) was told by the countries of India, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia that it must make its highly encrypted email and messaging services open to surveillance. RIM has said it doesn't want to as its security features are a big selling point to its business customers.

How concerned are you with your online privacy? Where do you draw the line?

I think we don't mind sharing our personal lives with strangers as long as it is on our own terms. The trouble is, as we develop our online habits we leave a trail of digital information that when put together creates a portrait of who we are and what we want. This is a goldmine for advertisers and those companies such as Facebook and Google who collect the data via their social networking services. So on the one hand we don't mind giving over certain amounts of information so that we are allowed to access social sites, but we take exception when Facebook decides it is going to create an application that targets you every time you visit a website with ads for products you may be interested in.

In order to control my personal information I have created my own online personality (Dave From GP) and set some guidelines. For example I try to avoid talking about family and work. I stick to subjects such as entertainment, technology and sports. My personal Facebook page is separate and I keep it open only to family and close friends. If I post pictures I ensure the security settings are set for these friends to view and I tend to take pictures down after a couple of months.

So what does Rim do now that federal governments are demanding access to what RIM has promised is an encrypted service? On the one hand it doesn't want to lose access to these large populations. India has over 1 billion people! RIM could say no and get booted out of these countries and lose its market share. On the flip side, it could agree to the demands and open up its service for surveillance, alienate its present clientele and lose its market share.

Therefore it is up to the people to decide: How much of their privacy are they willing to give up for the convenience of RIM's service? In the end RIM will probably give in to the demands of the governments and the people who use RIM already will reluctantly have to follow suit. After all, these products are so ingrained into our day to day lives that we cannot give them up. RIM will continue to make its money, the government can do its spying and another little piece of our privacy will be sacrificed for convenience.

Summer Update: Slaves to Tech?

2010-07-24T12:55:00.000-06:00

Wow, it's been a while since I got a chance to sit down and write something for this blog. But, as my bio points out, Dave From GP is also a backpacker so I have been pursuing a few outdoor hobbies and in fact just came back from living in the woods with the family for 6 days with NO TECHNOLOGY! Well I guess I had my IPod, but that was hardly used. No cell service, no radio, no internet.....no nothing! So did I miss Facebook and Twitter? Did I need to use Google or Yahoo? Turns out I did not and it got me wondering, am I really as addicted to these things as I (and my wife) think?

At home I am constantly playing with my Blackberry, checking the weather, checking Facebook etc. When I sit around watching a football game, I cannot help but Tweet my thoughts on the game, the score, the commercials. So how come when it is just sitting there in front of me I cannot leave it alone, but when put in a situation where these things are not at hand I don't miss them whatsoever? While out camping I had a craving for a Coke once in a while so I ould have one. Beer too, but I never got this strong urge to wonder what all my friends on Facebook were doing. So I do not think I would call it addiction, but more force of habit. Therefore, I am not worried about it.

Now I have to go, I need to upload the pictures from our camping trip to Facebook!

This and That For A Crappy Weekend

2010-05-22T21:48:00.001-06:00

Well, we got our inevitable snow for the May long weekend, cancelling my long anticipated first backcountry hike of the summer. So here I sit having a beer, listening to David Bowie on the HTPC via Media Centre and thinking it may be a good time to put up a blog entry. Been working on an epic posting but it is not going so well. In the meantime here are some other things I have been thinking about.

Twitter: How come I have to keep changing my password? Every few days I go to log on to Twitter it tells me “OOPS! Wrong password or email / ID”. In the end I have to push the button that says “Forgot Password”. Then it gives me a condoning but hip message: “Forgot your password, hey? Don’t worry it happens to the best of us”. WRONG TWITTER! YOU ARE THE LOSER! I didn’t forget my password, you forgot it! And you know how I know? Because when I go to change it I reenter the same password I supposedly forgot! And you do not give me a warning that it is previously used! I’ve done this about three times since I signed up for twitter two months ago. In fact I think I’ve done more password resets than tweets!

Started reading one of my sci-fi finds from Value Village, Philip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle”. It’s about an alternate future (the 1960’s, man) in which WW2 was won by Japan and Germany and the USA appears to be split between the two.

Google: I think I have to buy shares in this company! Their stock price has dropped from about $626 to $472 since December. Never catch a falling knife they say, but with their race to control data, enter the cell phone market and get the world to cloud compute, they may be the force to deal with. Don’t forget the fact that the AI will arise from the technology Google is creating. When the machines rise there will no doubt be a “Do Not Kill” directive built into the software for shareholders!

Spark With Nora Young: This Sunday having a feature on Facebook, it’s ever changing security settings and what they may mean to you. I love Spark and Nora Young is great. One day I will make one of those inevitable blog posts about who I would most like to invite to dinner. Nora Young will be on that list. Her and myself from the future if I ever invent time travel. If I do invent time travel, I hereby vow to come back one minute from now and let myself know.

1 minute later………no didn’t happen.

Broadband Access: An Essential Service

2010-05-10T10:13:00.001-06:00

The Government of Canada this weekend announced it is providing $225 million to bring high speed internet access to remote and rural communities across Canada. This was promised as part of Canada’s Economic Action Plan in the last budget. Seems they are going to follow through with it.I looked on the Industry Canada website and saw that the Fraser Valley in BC was on the list of areas to be considered. Maybe my mom down in Boston Bar will finally get the access they have dreamed of.

Slave Girl of Gor

2010-05-01T09:45:00.001-06:00

Catchy title eh? I hoped it would get your attention! It’s another in my collection of books with interesting covers.

I haven’t read “Slave Girl Of Gor” yet but I have read “Tarnsman of Gor” and “Captive of Gor” . They follow a structure much like the John Carter of Mars stories especially the first one “Tarnsman”. In it the hero Tarl Cabot is magically whisked away to the planet Gor, also referred to as “Counter Earth”. It is ruled by an alien race that gets its jollies from manipulating the inhabitants in various ways and likes to abduct the occasional human from Earth and throw them into the mix. Though the aliens are very technologically advanced they have placed restrictions on the inhabitants of Gor in regards to weaponry and modes of transportation. As the cover depicts, it would seem a sort of holding to the times of the Romans or Greeks. They do have some advanced technology in the form of lighting and some medical procedures. There are of course monsters and other odd creatures for the people to deal with as well. What stands out most is its portrayal of women as possessions and inferior to men. So much so that a community of “Goreans” has sprung up over the years who look at this social classification as a sort of philosophy and groups have adopted it as a “lifestyle”. Anyway, I’ll leave you to explore that on your own.

The stories have been criticized as not being very well written and to me they seem a little amateurish and full of male bravado. On the other hand there is an underlying surrealism throughout, and here I am referring to Captive of Gor. The images he weaves are quite spectacular and the world John Norman has created is quite detailed.

The books first started being published in the 1960’s and I have heard he is still pumping them out to this day. I think there is something like 30 books in the series. The ones like “Slave Girl of Gor” is considered a classic and can be hard to find. If you see one, grab it. I also have “Tribesmen of Gor” on my shelf.

You Have A Friend Request………From A T-600

2010-04-25T10:42:00.005-06:00

What does your ideal world look like? Peace and love? An end to poverty and starvation? A world run by computers?

A world without computers?

Quite often our visions of the future are dark. In the media we see computers as evil. The news is full of nightmarish stories about stolen identities, compromised ATM PIN's, and even speculation about computer generated car braking problems! There is yet another Facebook security warning on CBC today.

I have a love / hate relationship with technology. It is amplified further by the fact that I have to work with it every day not only at home but also at my job. People claim dependence on technology when things go wrong and are quick to point out their own shortcomings. "I don't understand these computers," they say and then we seem to accept this an excuse for failure. Can it be that we, the species that invented the computer, are letting it dumb us down as a population? Do we really need our car computers to tell us when to check our oil? My experience with a change oil light is that it will come on just as you are heading out on a long trip. You get to stare at the light the whole time you are away.

Knowledge is power. As John Mayer croons "When they control the information, they can bend it all they want." If we want to control the technology, we must master the technology ourselves. If you are going to use sites such as Facebook as an online dumping ground for your pictures and tirades against your boss without checking and understanding your security settings, then it is not Facebook’s fault that you are being bombarded with ads to “Meet Local Singles”. Facebook is a business that needs to make money and it does this by using the information you provide.

How much of our effective decision making is muddled by concerns over reputation, popularity and finances? When the true artificial intelligence is developed, we will no longer need to be preoccupied with trivial problems such as what to wear, how much milk is left etc. The thinking machine devoid of emotion and unconcerned with personal gain can make the hard decisions, distribute the wealth and exploit our resources effectively. This will free us up to work toward the betterment of our lives. Appreciation of arts and culture, leisure time, healthy pursuits. Give in to it, become comfortable with the knowledge that you no longer need to worry.

The age of the machines will not happen on “Judgment Day”. It is happening now! It's a friendly take over, no blood shed. Just the slow transformation of our brains to dependence. They will come at you with a “Friend Request” and it will be up to you to either “Accept” or “Ignore”.

My Latest Links

2010-04-17T10:50:00.000-06:00

I’ve been accumulating some new websites so thought it was about time to make some notes here.

Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo is just what it says. A convention catering to all those who like comics, sci-fi and horror. I’m not much of a comic buff, but as you know I love horror and sci-fi. I had been reading about Conventions (or Cons as they are called) such as Worldcon which was held in Montreal last year and San Diego’s Comic-Con and I always wished there was something out this way. Turns out there is! It has been going since 2006 and seems to be getting better with time. On a side note, I would also like to go to Vulcan Alberta for their Spock Days. Too late for me to attend the Calgary Expo this year (which is too bad, Leonard Nimoy is going to be there as well as a few characters from BSG and Malcolm McDowell) but on my plans for next year!

The Internet Archive I have added on the HTPC in my efforts to track down all the sites that offer movies and television shows for free via the internet. I had bellyached a while ago about the US site HULU not being available to Canadians, but it is turns out that as you look around, many of the Canadian TV station are putting these shows up on their sites. So far I have bookmarked Global, CTV and CBC as sources for online television. Getting back to the Internet Archive, it is just what they say. A storage place for practically any public domain movie, television show and public service announcement available. The files are endless! Just last night I watched Plan 9 from Outer Space and the quality was quite good with no buffering issues whatsoever. On the HTPC the picture quality dropped a little at full screen, but since the movie was black and white the problem was not that noticeable. It also stores those educational films shown in schools during the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, you know, like how to properly wash your hands etc. Good for a chuckle. Here’s one if you have concerns about how to be popular!

The last one I’ll mention is Marvel.com, specifically the movies section. Here you can find every original 1967 Spiderman and my son’s latest joy Japanese Spiderman! Yeah, Yeah, Yeeeaaahh….Wow!

There is a lot of entertainment out there. So much so I am thinking maybe it is time to ditch the cable or satellite and move online!

Wireless Hooked Up

2010-04-17T09:44:00.001-06:00

Believe it or not I do not have a wireless connection in my house. That is until last weekend. I used to have a Linksys Wireless G router but it failed on me about 6 months ago. I had a laptop I used once in a while but for the most part have not had a need to replace it, so in the meantime I got rid of the crappy router and stuck in a Linksys Ethernet switch (non wireless) that I bought at a garage sale last summer for $2.00.

On the weekend I was down at Future Shop with my son looking for a Nintendo DSi. He had accumulated a good sum of money and was eager to spend it. After we had bought his DSi I decided to take a wander around the store and look at wireless routers. Suddenly I do have a need for one. My wife and I have recently bought Blackberries and now this DSi, they all require Wi-Fi connection to get the most out of them. I came across an open box Belkin Wireless N for $19.99, regular $70.00 so decided to go with that.

Brought it home and hooked it up, no problems.

The biggest concern is security and it is very important that you go in to the router software. Set a password and give your network a unique identifier (SSID). I took the extra step of turning off the “Broadcast SSID” option. This is used by the router to broadcast its name so that any one with a wireless connection can see it is available. You still need the encryption key to log in. It has been recommended to turn off the broadcast option as a further security measure. If nobody can see it’s there then nobody will be trying to hack in in the first place. Like a padlock, it is designed to keep out the honest people, but if someone really wants to gain access I am sure they have ways.

Will Boston Bar Ever Get Broadband Access?

2010-03-25T06:47:00.000-06:00

My mom lives in a small town called Boston Bar. It is nestled along the Number One Highway in the Fraser River Canyon. It is one of those unique spots in Canada where cell phones do not work and the only way for most people to access the Internet is via dial up. Telus, is the main provider of services in the area. The library, the school and the RCMP station supposedly have broadband access. Last year Telus informed Boston Bar that if it got enough signatures from the residents that it would bring in the means for broadband access to the community. After acquiring the required amount of signatures they presented it to Telus. They were then informed that Telus would not be able to do the install because the Olympics had eaten up their budget. Now I seem to recall that Bell was the one running commercials every two minutes during the Olympics! So for the time being the community is being served via a local businessman and a wireless solution that, as my mom reports has its troubles and is kind of pricey.

Champions of capitalism tell me that private companies such as Bell, Telus and Rogers are the only way to go when it comes to getting the infrastructure for broadband access installed. Yet here is another case where, what is becoming a necessity of life, is being denied to a community because, well lets face it, they are just too small and the profit margin is probably not there for Telus to make it worthwhile. When I posted a while back that the City of Grande Prairie has been granted a piece of the frequency spectrum for use, I proposed that they make it available for all citizens and perhaps look at expanding the capability so that Grande Prairie could become wired and offer it as a city service. Most people reacted by saying that “government should not be in business” and that only companies such as Telus were “innovative” enough to bring Internet to the masses. Well Boston Bar sits held hostage to Telus's innovation. Heck, they can’t even get around to installing a cell phone tower right along one of the busiest highways in BC. Funny how I can get cell phone service in practically any one of the remote oil field sites in northern Alberta though!

Do we need a national broadband plan? Supposedly there is one in the works. The US is working on one as well. Perhaps we should have all been focusing on such things as the digital economy instead of propping up the industry dinosaurs who got us into the economic mess we are in in the first place. I think the final sentence of this ITWorld article sums it up best: "Unfortunately (the) “political level” of the ministry has been more concerned with looking after the ailing auto industry over the last year than the telecom industry."

In the meantime I stumbled across one of Google's side projects, Google Fiber. It’s a project where your local government can apply to have Google install a high speed network into your very own town! Of course it is only available to the USA. Now that is innovative thinking!

Another step in Google’s take over of the world? The AI’s birth gets closer? The neural tendrils will be reaching into your own home! Sign up now!

Going Paperless…..An Update

2010-03-24T12:44:00.000-06:00

So far I have made headway on my goal to go paperless. It has not been so bad after all! Thanks to my Blackberry:

I was able to download my Excel file that I keep track of my business mileage on, using the “Documents to Go” application included on the Blackberry.
I have started entering my appointments and important dates on the Blackberry calendar.
I have entered lots of addresses and phone numbers that I would have normally written in a paper daytimer.
Using the memo program I can make quick notes.

I was also able to track down a whiteboard that is 8.5” X 11” that I have put on my desk for jotting down notes instead of using paper scraps or sticky notes.

Tonight I gave a class to my son’s Forest Warden troop using a lesson plan I had typed up on Word and then downloaded on to the Blackberry, once again using “Documents to Go”!

Canada’s TV Woes

2010-03-23T22:32:00.001-06:00

The recent ruling by the CRTC in regards to who pays what to who for broadcasting rights is another in the series of problems that are plaguing the television industry as it it tries to cope with the reality of how information is consumed today. In its never ending need to figure out how to make billions of dollars from these mediums it is constantly facing roadblocks and new technologies. The big one is the integration of television services and Internet. There is no distinct line between a computer monitor and a TV anymore as I have proven with the construction of my HTPC. TV content is available online, PVR's are used so the viewer can watch his favorite shows where and when is convenient to him and the Internet is plagued by Torrents available to all to download their favorite movies and shows for free, albeit illegally.

How then does the TV industry force you to sit down at 8:00PM on Tuesday night and watch a full hour of TV, commercials and all, so it can make money? The answer is it can't! That is what they have to deal with and until they can come up with a way to figure it out, this ruling is not the last we are going to hear about the woes of CTV, Global and CityTV!

Check Out Some of These Books I Found!

2010-03-18T22:57:00.001-06:00

I have a new found interest in SF book covers, specifically those trippy covers from the 50's, 60’s and 70’s. A lot of this has been brought on by my visits to The Website at the End of the Universe and articles on IO9.com which feature some really out there titles and covers. When wandering around thrift stores I can't resist looking through the books and picking up an old SF book with a cool cover. So with that in mind I decided I would post a few of the titles I find here from time to time.

This first one by Philip K. Dick has got to be one of the coolest titles for a novel I have ever heard. I have no idea what it is about, but Dick is the author who wrote “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep” the novel the movie “Blade Runner was based on. It is in near mint condition and looks to me like no one has even turned the page.Published in 1974, this is the 1975 Daw first printing. Got it for $1.99 at Value Village.

The next one here is “A Princess of Mars” by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The reason I bought this one was because when I was a kid the library in my hometown had the entire collection of the John Carter of Mars series. They all were the Ballantine editions with the covers done by Gino D’Achille. I heard that they are now making a movie based on this book so I set out to see if I could recover the entire series with the same covers I remembered. Not bad for a novel originally published in 1912. These editions came out around 1977.

An Attempt To Go Paperless (Next Year!)

2010-03-10T19:53:00.001-07:00

I keep thinking back to the documentary on Google World that I spoke about before. You now where I postulated that Google was going to bring about the technological singularity? One thing I really liked about the Google offices was that they made such an effort to go paperless. Every employee had a laptop that they carried around with them and there were copious amounts of whiteboards available where employees jotted down their thoughts, ideas and notes. If they thought the idea was worth pursuing they would then photograph the notes on the whiteboard with a digital camera and use that in their presentations or to make digital notes from after.

I was wondering if I could do this in my own life. There really is no excuse not to the more I thought about it. All computers and office programs come with some sort of journaling software or calendar. Windows Live for example has a calendar feature where you can enter important dates both recurring and one off. Another thing that drives me nuts is that say you write down someone's birthday and it is on May 1st. Well you don't even see it until you turn the page and by then it is too late if you want to mail something. It's that day! I tried one year to write warnings of upcoming dates a couple of weeks prior to the date, but that didn't go too well for me either.

Four the past four years, since I took that Franklin Covey 7 Habits course, my place of employment has been providing me with a day timer that, in truth, has way more features and pages than I realistically need. I hardly even read the inspirational quotes! In reality I wonder how they can come up with 365 inspirational words of wisdom every year! I think they reached bottom the day the quote was “"Fire bad”……Frankenstein’s Monster”.The only reason I think I even bothered was because it looked cool and work was paying for it.

Now that I have bought a Blackberry, I am determined to start to organize my life digitally. I did get the paper daytimer for 2010, however: my goal is going to be to not get one in 2011. What I will need to accomplish this is:

A method for logging the mileage on my company vehicle.
A calendar for important dates.
A note taking tool for jotting down notes and ideas.
A whiteboard to replace scraps of paper and sticky notes.

So, starting today, I begin work on my goal.

Username & Password Please!

2010-03-06T17:30:00.001-07:00

Yahoo, Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, personal email, Windows Messenger, Skype and on and on. How many online services do you belong too? How many times do you have to log on to something only to have to log off and then log in elsewhere to find what it was you were looking for? How many things do we post online and on how many services? That’s just the tip of the iceberg! Think about all those other sites where you need a username and password to access them. Be it an online chat forum or your bank, there are no end of aliases you may have out there.

Just as I built the HTPC with a goal to consolidate entertainment in my home, is there a way to consolidate our online lives? One method is to use the same user name and password for all applications. The downside to this is if it got compromised then all your accounts and open to the culprit. It would seem therefore that in regards to things such as banking information a unique ID and password for each account is in order.

I decided to try consolidate some of the services I like to use online. When I replaced the hard drive on the Dell, I decided to install Windows Live Mail to replace Outlook. Windows Live is actually a suite of features that includes Live Writer (the very program I am writing this blog on!), Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Mail and another feature called SkyDrive that offers 25GB of online storage for documents and photos which can either be made private or available for viewing by all member of your network. Windows Live also offers you the opportunity to set up an online profile that is viewable by your network. This is kind of like Facebook I guess, in the fact that you can post pictures and write comments. There is also a feed from your friends or network as to their updates. It’s not really as good as Facebook though. All this required that I set up a new account and new email address that is used in all aspects of the Windows Live experience such as IM, email and MyMSN. The good thing about it is that once you log in with live.com or your Hotmail account, all the services are accessible.

Does this cut down on my online usernames? I’m not sure. By using Microsoft Live, however it does give me a basis when considering such things as how I want to move forward when choosing such things as a Smartphone or how I want to organize my contacts. With the myriad of choices and applications available for you, I think it is important to establish who you are online and how you want to communicate with others. Google, Yahoo and Apple also offer similar services by the way.

Technorati Tags: Facebook,Twitter,Blogger,Windows Live Writer,Windows Live,HTPC,SkyDrive,Outlook,IM,Microsoft,Apple,Google

Canada Lags on the Technology Front Pt.2

2010-02-25T20:39:00.003-07:00

I posted a while ago about how I was concerned about how Canada may be falling behind the world when it comes to innovation in communication technologies. A recent article in the Globe and Mail seems to confirm some of my fears.

Looks like it is way past time to look at how the CRTC is regulating our so called “Big 3” carriers. There’s no denying the importance of high speed communication in today’s world. We cannot just sit back let it pass us by.

Google and the Rise of the Machines

2010-02-20T12:07:00.004-07:00

There was an interesting show on TV last week called Google World. I was expecting an exposé on how evil Google was going to be etc., but instead found myself considering what the future of computing and our interaction with our technology looks like. The part I found most interesting was the concept of cloud computing. Roughly speaking, cloud computing is kind of like outsourcing your computer. Instead of a standard hard drive loaded with Microsoft Office, Norton and Photoshop, the computer becomes a portal to the internet where these programs are available for use. When you hit save, instead of the data being put on a “C” drive, it is sent out over the Internet to a data storage facility. In this manner you could, for example, start writing a letter to your mother, run out of things to say, save it and go to work. On your lunch break you could go on the Internet, retrieve the letter and continue working on it from a different computer. This frees you up from the method of saving to a disc or jump drive, physically carrying it with you and facing the perils that may befall it. Google wants all of your data and wants to keep it on its computers!

The need to increase the processing power of the consumer's desktop computer has become less important. We have more than enough to run our everyday applications. What we really need now are places to store the billions of bytes of data we are producing. What better place to do so than at these massive data storage facilities set up by the likes of Google. A collection of the world's knowledge digitized and stored, available to all, and preserved for future generations. In the event of a mass calamity, those humans who are left will perhaps be able to piece something out of it all and keep the human species going.

Perhaps these data storage facilities will be where Vernor Vinge’s technological singularity will occur. Roughly speaking this is a theory that technological progress, though rapid, is still limited to the intelligence of the human brain. With the increasing power of computers and improving technologies it could be possible to create a machine of sorts that is more intelligent than a human. Then this machine would eventually be able to create a machine more intelligent than itself. At this point “the human era will be ended” as Vinge points out. This theory is a basis for the Terminator movies. Some people think it will be a blood bath!

I think the artificial intelligence will not be a microchip or machine. I think it will instead be a search engine. One that can link all this information and form an opinion or answer based on the facts stored on the data farm. The faster processors will be needed here to sift through these acres of data. Processors that can perform with the efficiency and speed of the human brain.

In the evolution of man to machine will emotion be eliminated by a pure mind whose thinking is only based on facts? Or is it emotion that pushes us to progress? Is the desire of humanity to travel into space pushed by the emotions of fear and excitement? Would a purely logical machine think that humanity must go into space based on facts of population growth and climate change? Not only does the Google method of storing data ensure that knowledge has been preserved but by also keeping social networking information could it develop a soul or emotion based on comments, Tweets and emoticons? The same emotion and feeling that only the human brain has so far been able to master?

But we better get ready.

Skynet becomes self aware at 2:14am August 29th!!!!

The Webcam

2010-02-17T18:50:00.001-07:00

Due to some volunteer work which required us to videoconference and a set of technical difficulties, I was forced to act immediately on my plans to purchase a webcam. I ended up going with the Eyeball 2.0 webcam from Blue Microphones.
Now on this particular purchase I did not do any research whatsoever. I was just going to go down to Best Buy or Future Shop and pick up what I thought would do the trick. Then, as I was driving by London Drugs, I thought maybe I would go in and check them out. I often have pretty good luck there and their computer staff seems to know what they are talking about most times. As I was looking through the webcams made by the usual suspects, Logitech and Microsoft, I told the salesman that what I really needed was a camera that would pick up sound pretty good from a distance as well as have a good picture. In this case with the volunteers, I would not be mounting the camera to a standard monitor. Instead I would be hooking it to the HTPC. My plan was to have two people in the living room sitting on the couch. These would be the ones who were doing most of the talking and therefore they would need to be in the picture all the time. There would be a further 5 of us off camera but needing to add comments and be heard by the person at the other end. The salesman directed me to the Eyeball 2.0 which is basically a big microphone with a small retractable camera that can be pushed inside the mic housing. It was listed at 79.99, but when we got it to the checkout the price came to 119.00! We discovered that the advertised one was the previous model on clearance. After some wheeling and dealing he managed to come down in price so I was quite happy.

I got it home and hooked it up, no problems. There was no disc or software required. Due to the thickness of my TV I was not able to mount it in the traditional manner. Instead, and due to the fact of the distance from TV to sitting area, I taped the webcam to a camera tripod. I ended up also having to purchase a 10ft USB A to mini-B cable as the supplied cable was only about three feet long. I started up Skype which I had installed some time ago, and ran through some of the self tests. One test feature is a call you can make that enables you to record a message and then it plays it back to you so you can check your audio. Then for the video there is a place you can open a window and see yourself. The following morning I did a test call to a friend on Skype and all went well. Actually my friend was using a webcam he picked up at the Source for $15.00 and it worked just fine.

The videoconference ended up going just fine. Now to convince the rest of the family to get into webcam conversation!

Space Channel Sure Beats SyFy!

2010-02-09T22:01:00.004-07:00

Sounds like the folks down in the States are having a tough time with their science fiction channel. Originally known as Sci-Fi, it renamed itself last year to SyFy. Time Magazine has just put it on a top ten list of worst brand name changes. I am a frequent visitor to the website IO9.com which features all things science fiction as well as coverage on comics, science, and other tidbits such as UFO's and vampires. From what I can glean from the comments posted on the website, there is quite the backlash not only to the name change, but also to the programming that seems to have gone to the dogs as well. Frequent reference in the comments to things such as "wrestling" (of all things) makes me wonder just what the heck is going on over there.

I, of course, am a big fan of the Space Channel here in Canada and am quite happy that it stays true to its calling by featuring such shows as Stargate, Sanctuary, BSG and every Star Trek series that has ever been made.
Also I like the fact that it carries marathons of similarly themed shows and movies. There is also the Friday Night Frightmare where it broadcasts a couple of horror movies. I always hope it will start to play some more schlocky '50's and '60's sci-fi or horror but it is not scared to take a risk. This Christmas season it ran an online poll in which viewers could vote for the worst movies of all time and it would play the most popular. Battlefield Earth won the coveted spot and we were all blessed with learning first hand why not only Space fans but critics in general have deemed this the worst movie ever made. Poor John Travolta. Those platform space shoes just did not do the same for his career as those platform disco shoes in the '70's.

My one wish for our Space channel is that it would switch to high definition. This medium is perfect for a channel that revolves around movies and shows of the fantastic. Apparently they are working on it according to their FAQ section of the website. I hope they get on to this ASAP before Space decides it too wants to diversify away from its core values and try to be a people pleaser.

Are there too many channels on cable and satellite? Definitely! So many brand themselves as specialty but when you look at their lineups all you see are the same syndicated shows such as Law and Order, CSI, and Seinfeld. I have said many times, why buy the CSI series on DVD? I swear you could get up in the morning and by flipping through your channels every hour could watch CSI all day. Even the once risqué Showcase has fallen into the Law and Order / CSI trap.

The so called learning channels seem to be dominated by shows that feature "biggest", "monster" and "extreme" in the title. Tiny people in a big world, drilling rigs, truck drivers. Where does it end? My wife wants to fix up the bathroom. I say, why bother? With the amount of home reno shows on now I fully expect Mike Holmes or Ty Pennington to wake me up some morning, send me out for a makeover and magically fix the stupid thing in one day. They must have got to practically everyone in North America by now. Hungry? Why not hang around the supermarket until the Take Home Chef whisks you off for a gourmet meal!

I was having trouble trying to sort out how to hook the HTPC up to best take advantage of the TV Tuner. I decided to run the video out from my HD cable box PVR to the HTPC's TV Tuner, but the problem with that is that I am stuck with recording and watching what is on the cable box. On top of that the output from the PVR is analog so the picture quality of the HD shows degrade anyway. It's kind of like the old days when you had to be watching the show you were recording on your VCR. With two tuners on the cable box and one in the HTPC I should be recording like crazy! My limitation, as I said before is that the digital and Hi Def channels come in to the HTPC scrambled. But recently, as I was looking at the hard drive on the PVR I realized it is filling up with episodes of Sanctuary, Torchwood, Caprica and all sorts of movies I have recorded off of Space. Space Channel at the moment is not digital and comes in on the lower unscrambled range. I am now going to hook up the cable signal direct to the HTPC and use it to record my Space Channel programs, leaving the hard drive on the PVR free for my digital and HD recording. As I said before, once the HTPC is hooked up to the cable you can download an interactive program guide that should allow you to set up recordings etc.

Can We Stem the Tide of Obsolescence?

2010-02-05T18:33:00.004-07:00

A recent comment on the CBC Spark Facebook page again got me thinking about the environmental impact of technology, in particular devices such as Apple's IPad released just last week. Computers have made obsolescence a fact of life. As Moore's Law continues to play out, we are bombarded with phrases like "upgrade", "3rd generation", "obsolete", "workaround" and "Service Pack". As I was doing my research for the HTPC it became very apparent that the latest technology is only the latest for a couple of months then the next technology quickly supersedes it. That video card technology that cost $500 two years ago and was bench tested on Halo is now worth about $100 and you can probably pick up Halo at a garage sale for five bucks!

Now I know that a lot of people have the attitude that since these things do go obsolete so fast, it is practically a waste of money to buy second hand electronics. Point taken! Steve Jobs envisions people replacing their IPods every year or two. But, again....what happens to all those old IPods, cell phones, GPS receivers and so on. They go in the garbage of course! What about all the electrical energy and the oil resources that go into the manufacture and distribution of these products?
What is the real cost of these gadgets? Is it socially responsible to have the latest and greatest? Do we need to keep upgrading and tossing things in the garbage because they are obsolete? Some could argue that the parts can be recycled. I strongly agree and have taken numerous printers and monitors down to our local e-cycling depot over the last few years. We so often forget the other R's. Specifically: Reduce (reduce our consumption and demand), Reuse (buy second hand, give them away to someone or some place that will find a use for them).

My first IPod was a Second Generation 2GB silver Nano. It was stolen from my vehicle last year. I sure missed it but the thought of shelling out $160 for a new one made me cringe a little. I was driving around town one weekend and one of the radio stations was "on location" at Computer Trends, a local computer store. They were selling refurbished IPods for about $80. I decided to go down and have a look. The one I chose was a 4th Generation 4GB gold Nano. It came in the plastic case along with a charging cable. This one also played video, which my old one did not. So I was quite happy. I had paid about half the price of a new one, it had more features than my old one, and by buying a refurbished one, I had kept it out of the landfill. Now the kicker. I had bought a radio awhile ago that had an adapter for the 2nd Gen. Nano to fit in. The 4th Gen had a new body design and pin out. So now that radio would not charge the new IPod and it did not seat as securely on the plug. Same with my car radio transmitter. Basically I had to push the IPod on to the connector and that was all that held the thing in place. Hardly a good mechanical connection. Ultimately the companies have to make money. Slight changes to design that make accessories also obsolete are a way to go about it. They also sell adapters that will enable these older ones to be used with the new ones.

I've been thinking about buying an IPod Touch. The thing I like most about it is the Internet access and voice recording features. I had priced them out at Future Shop etc. and the going rate for a 32GB 3rd Gen. IPod Touch is around $300. After considering the comment on Facebook I got thinking, what if I instead looked around on Kijiji and similar sites and see if I can pick up a used 2nd generation at a cheaper price. 16GB is probably plenty for me. I use the IPod mainly for music and podcasts. It still has the Wi-Fi and the voice recording. A quick look in the local area turns up some around $150-$200. Time is on my side. I have my 4GB Nano plugging along doing all I need. I don't "need" this IPod. I just want one. You know that if I don't find one then next year the IPod Touch 4G will be out and all the people who just have to have the latest will be looking to unload their 3G's!

Installing Windows Live: Saving the Outlook Address Book

2010-02-01T20:53:00.002-07:00

As I said in the previous post, I decided that instead of reinstalling Outlook from my Office 2003 disk I would update to Windows Live Mail as it is the current email program used and supported by Windows. I needed to save my contacts / address book from Microsoft Outlook so I did this by exporting it to a .CSV file using the “Import and Export” heading under the “File” menu.

Please note in the above picture, the screen capture is from my current configuration, that is why there are no contacts listed. The following screen captures outline the process.

Click on finish and the .CSV file will be saved to the desktop. .CSV (comma separated values) is a format that can also be opened in MS Excel for viewing. This method basically allows your address book to be imported into any email program that will accept .CSV files, which I would assume a vast majority of them would.
Now the other thing we wanted to do was to save our email messages from about the last 2 months just for reference purposes. This is possible in practically the same manner. I saved in both a .CSV format and also the .PST format which I believe is specific to Outlook. I ran into problems however after installing Windows Live Mail because it does not recognize the .PST format. I could not import the messages. What I ended up doing was reinstalling Outlook on to the new hard drive and then I could import the messages into there. There is an option in Windows Live Mail where it will import messages from Outlook 2007, however since my version is Outlook 2003, it seems I am out of luck as far as getting those messages into Live Mail. Anyway, they are readable on Outlook 2003 if we need to reference them for now.

A New Hard Drive for the Old Dell

2010-01-31T08:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the weather was kind of crappy out so I thought, “This is the day to swap out that hard drive”. I had bought a replacement Western Digital 80GB IDE hard drive a couple of months ago when I bought the fanless cooler. My biggest concern was whether or not the disk that contained the operating system that came with the computer could be used on a new hard drive. I wasn’t sure if there was going to be copyright issues, or even if the disk itself was capable of installing the operating system. Perhaps it was just a repair disk.

The first thing I did was to back up the files from the original hard drive on to an external hard drive I have. I had actually done a lot of this some time ago in anticipation of this project. It was just a matter of confirming and double checking. I transferred my Outlook address book to a .CSV file as well as a .PST file so that they could be imported into the email program on the new drive. My plan was to forgo Outlook on the new install and instead try out Windows Live. I believe this a program we will soon be switching to at work. Also Microsoft has stopped support for Outlook apparently. Of course, this did not end up going as smoothly as I thought it would!
I opened up the case and installed the new drive where the old one was currently situated. I removed the floppy drive and put the old hard drive in that bay. I may look at hooking it up in a Master/Slave configuration in the future. Next I blew all the dust out of it. There was quite a bit.
Next came the installation. I put the disk in question in the DVD drive and powered up. Nothing to worry about. It did its thing, proceeded to format the new drive and subsequently installed the operating system (Windows XP Professional). It took about an hour or so for this phase.

Once completed I wanted to hook up to the Internet so I could do the updates and such, however my network was not detected. A quick look at Device Manager in Control Panel indicated that the network controller was not installed properly. It turned out that I needed to install the drivers for the network card as well as a few other drivers and utilities (including sound) using the driver disk provided by Dell when I bought the computer. Once this was done I hooked up to the network no problem. The it was off to Microsoft.com to download and install all updates including Service Packs 1 & 2. This took a good hour or so.

Next up. Installing Windows Live!

Adapting The Keyboard Receiver

2010-01-25T20:50:00.001-07:00

My Microsoft 6000 wireless keyboard and mouse requires that I plug the USB receiver into the computer. I originally had it plugged into one of the two available ports on the front, but I have been finding with its size it is kind of in the way when I want to plug in my camera or a USB jump drive. Also I was concerned about it sticking out the front like that, it may get broken with the kids or the cat running around or just anyone bumping into it. I got myself a USB extender cable ($15.00, though you can probably get them cheaper) and plugged it into one of the USB ports at the back of the computer. This frees up the front two ports again and I can tuck it in on top of the case and out of the way. I had originally tried to plug it in the back, but looks like it needs line of sight for the keyboard and mouse to function properly.

Favorite Podcasts & Internet Sites

2010-01-22T01:00:00.045-07:00

Just thought I would list a few of my favorite podcasts and Internet places here.

CBC Radio's Spark with host Nora Young is an amazing radio show on technology, especially the Internet and how we interact with it. She features such topics as social media, technology trends, new gadgets and this article I found especially compelling on how the work force is changing in respect to trades and knowledge.

Clarkesworld Magazine an online publisher of science fiction stories. They do two podcasts a month that you can subscribe to and download via ITunes for free.

Librivox is a voluntary organization that's purpose is to record novels that are in the public domain. Volunteers read stories such as Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen or At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs. They are recorded in chapters and can be downloaded through ITunes, to keep you company on long road trips. The reading can be hit and miss though as far as quality, but it is free. You can volunteer yourself if you think you can do better.

IO9 is a website that constantly uploads news from the Sci-Fi and science world via articles written by a variety of posters. They usually have a "Morning Spoilers" section that gives you insider information on upcoming sci-fi movies and TV shows as well as articles on science in our world. They seem a little nuts over Joss Whedon creator of such shows as Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it kind of gets on your nerves at times, but still overall I visit frequently.

The Website at the End of the Universe is a Canadian site devoted to Sci-Fi with a focus on books but does also cover movies and TV. He publishes a calendar every year you can download which has a number of really cool vintage sci-fi magazine covers.

The last two I sometimes comment on under the name "omnibus_spiritus".

I guess most of these are related to sci-fi which is odd as I am more of a horror nut. Guess I haven't found a horror fan site yet I really found worth going back to again and again. If anyone has a suggestion let me know.

Oh by the way, if you want to download Torrents but don't want to feel guilty about stealing, here is a site that has movies in the public domain that are free! Of course most of them are old black and whites but there are some gems in here as well as old movie serials from the 30's and 40's like Flash Gordon!

Enjoying Video From Your Chair

2010-01-21T19:39:00.000-07:00

Did I mention how great it is to watch movies on this HTPC? It's fantastic! With the remote and Media Centre it sure beats being hunched over a desk and watching on a 19" monitor. Now I can sit back in my easy chair, start Media Centre and just scroll through music and videos.

Even YouTube is better. Depending on the quality of the upload you can sometimes watch videos on YouTube at almost full screen. This is great when looking for uploads of the original Spiderman animated cartoons from the 60's. I put one of these on and the kids are quite happy.

ITunes Installed

2010-01-20T17:36:00.005-07:00

I finally went ahead and put ITunes on the HTPC. I wasn't going to at first, choosing to use Windows Media Centre as my primary music player, but I changed my mind. mainly for the following reasons:

Having burned all these CD's to the HTPC I suddenly realized that I wanted to get some (most) of that music on to my IPod.
I am still planning to replace the hard drive on the old Dell so all that music I had purchased would disappear.
The HTPC's main purpose is an entertainment hub. Putting ITunes on is only logical.

It wasn't that hard to do. I just downloaded ITunes to the HTPC. Of course it started to automatically seek out all media on my computer. I stopped it from touching my pictures as I do not need all of them linked to my IPod at this time. Did I mention my IPod is a 4GB Nano so limit to only podcasts and music. Next I ensured my "Purchased" playlist from the original computer was synched to my IPod. I then had to authorize the computer, which was a fairly easy process. It's just a matter of going under the "Store" heading, clickin on "Authorize Computer" and entering your account information. A warning came up that said my IPod was already synched to another computer and did I want to synch to this. I would lose playlists etc. from the original. I thought about it for a second but decided I hadn't created or expanded any playlist in a long time so a purge may be in order. So now the HTPC is the primary ITunes computer. One other thing it needed to do was to convert all the CD music into ITunes format, since there is about 600 songs on there I just let it do it's thing when I went to bed. Set up my Podcast subscriptions and now I'm all set.

Canada Lags On the Technolgy Front

2009-11-30T20:32:00.001-07:00

Why is Canada such a laggard in technology?

IPhone, not available in Canada.

Streaming media from the US, not available in Canada.

Kindle, not available in Canada.

If I remember right, it seems to me that Canada used to be a leader in communication technology. There was Nortel supplying phones to the world. There was Telesat who launched the first domestic communications satellite.

It seems most logical to me that as the second largest country in the world, Canada should be at the forefront of communications technology. Telesat launched ANIK A1 in order to bring the CBC to the North. ANIK means "Little Brother" in the Inuit language. It makes me think of how the sharing of information with the world and bringing technology to remote centres is a way we can be together.

Information and its transmission has now become a commodity. Take for example Hulu, the website basically owned by the major networks in the USA. They store practically every episode of just about every show ever made so that you may view it. The catch? You have to have a US IP address in order to access it. There have been a few work arounds and proxy servers that enable foreigners to view the content, but inevitably, Hulu manages to shut them down and keep their precious shows in America. I can't blame them, however, I'm not sure what the business model is and I think it is fair if they want to limit the access.

The Internet, in my opinion, should be regarded as an essential utility. Much the same as water, electric, gas, etc. I do not believe that utilities such as these should ever be left under the control of corporations as they are essential to life as we know it. I think the Internet should also be available to everyone, paid for with tax dollars, and considered as a vital piece of infrastructure as much as roads and power lines. Much like that satellite that brought CBC TV to the Arctic, I think that broadband Internet should be available to everyone in Canada.

Recently, the city of Grande Prairie Alberta was awarded a slice of the radio spectrum. This would enable city services to develop their own communications / Internet structure, without having to buy it from Telus or Bell or whoever. They said they would also maybe make some access available to the public through the library, etc. I say, why not take it one step further? Why not put up some Wi-Fi antennas and offer it to the entire population as a service, paid for through your taxes?

But in a province that deregulates an essential service such as heating and lights, I can see my argument falling on deaf ears.

Zalman Fanless Cooler Installed

2009-11-16T20:55:00.018-07:00

Received the Zalman cooler from Newegg last week and finally got around to installing it today. It was not too bad but the instructions left a little to be desired as usual, however I did read a couple of things incorrectly. The important thing is to remember to go in the order they recommend.

So we begin with the video card, as you may remember it is an HIS Radeon 4650. There are about 5 or 6 fans in the computer and the one on this card is by far the loudest. the first step is to remove the fan. This is very simple. Unplug the power connection. flip the card open and with a small set of needle nose pliers, pinch the tabs on the plastic mounts. Push the mounts back up through and the fan is free. This exposes the GPU on the card.

The first step is to attach the heat sinks to the VGA RAM. These are four black chips you can see positioned on the board two at the bottom of the picture and two to the left. There are eight heat sinks so I just had to peel the adhesive cover off and stick them directly to the chips.

The heat sinks are the blue components. They are now mounted on to the RAM chips. There are also four on the flip side of the card.

Next you have to choose the socket you need. The kit comes with two types of sockets to accommodate a wide range of video cards. There is a list included but did not list my card. I simply chose the one that lined up the holes properly. In this case it is Socket "B", engraved right on it.

Next attach the base to the socket. This was tricky for some reason as I did not get at first how it was supposed to go together. Turns out you need to line all the grooves up to form a continuous trough. The heat pipes will lay on them. The base sort of snaps into place on the socket. Attach the nipple screws, note that they screw in counterclockwise! This got me at first. Rubber O rings then go on the threaded end. Your socket is together!

Apply thermal grease to the GPU and position the socket and base so that the heat pipe runs are pointing to the top of the card. Attach the base using the plastic washers and fixing nuts, these have springs on them.

Next apply thermal grease to the heat pipe runs on the base. Lay the pipes of the fin assembly in the grooves, then attach the front heat sink to the base with the four remaining screws. I tightened it all down gradually at opposite corners to ensure the pressure distributed evenly. That is it!

Here is the bottom view.

Here is the top view.

And here is the thing installed in the computer.

I then put everything back together. I was a little worried because of the overhang of the fins from the back of the card. It just barely clears the RAM slot! Also it is worth noting that because of the size of the fins you lose the ability to use the next PCI-E slot over.

I ran ATI Catalyst Control Centre which allows you to monitor the temperature of the video card. It has basically been running at about 31 degrees Celsius and as you may recall from an earlier post, simply disconnecting the fan would make the temperature rise to around 60 degrees in virtually no time. So the cooler is definitely doing its thing. I played about 5 minutes of Crysis and the temperature rose to 38 degrees, but cooled off down to 30 after a few minutes back in Windows.

Overall fairly easy to install and cuts down the noise level which is all I had hoped!

Video Card Noise and Final Total

2009-11-01T12:36:00.010-07:00

Decided that the fan noise from the computer is a liability so I have ordered a Zalman VNF100 Fanless VGA Cooler. The website linked to has a list of compatible products and the HIS 4650 is on that list. Basically you remove the fan and clip the cooler on to the video card processor. The heatpipes conduct the heat away and the system fans can deal with the air movement. Tiger Direct listed it at about $53.00 but I found Newegg.ca listed them at $35.99. I decided to order it from there. As well, I ordered a new 80GB hard drive for the old Dell computer. I have decided that it is time to replace the HD on that one. It's about 6 years old, the computer is painfully slow these days so may be time for an upgrade and clean sweep.

Well I figured it was time for a break down of what the HTPC ended up costing me so in a nutshell here it is:

ASUS P5Q Pro Motherboard: $150.68 Direct Canada
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200: $158.72 Direct Canada
OCZ Platinum PC2-6400 2GB RAM: $49.99 NCIX
MS Windows XP Media Center Ed. 2005: $159.67 NCIX
HIS Radeon HD 4650 Video Card: $89.99 Tiger Direct
Seagate Barracuda 500GB Hard Drives (2): $132.00 Direct Canada
BFG Technologies BFG-550 550W power supply: $66.68 Direct Canada
Samsung SH-S223Q DVD Drive: $30.00 Direct Canada
Haupagge WINTV-HVR-1250 TV Tuner: $83.99 NCIX
Zalman VNF100 Fanless VGA Cooler: $35.99 Newegg
Thermaltake VB8000BNS Bach HTPC Case: $151.99 Tiger Direct
Microsoft WLD6000 Wireless Keyboard and Mouse: $69.99 Futureshop
Altec Lansing VS4221 2.1 Speakers: $79.99 London Drugs
Kanto 2 in, 1 out HDMI Video Swicher: $60.00 Mecca Electronics
HDMI to DVI cable: $18.50 Mecca Electronics
HDMI Cable: $13.00 Mecca Electronics

Parts Total:1351.18
GST: $67.55
Shipping: $80.00
Rebates:-$35.00
TOTAL: $1463.73

I would also keep in mind however that parts such as the case, keyboard and mouse, speakers, video switcher and cables could be subtracted as they are not specific to the system and will not go obsolete (IE they can be reused no matter what system). This would bring your cost to build at about $1000.00. People will say you can pick up a system for about $500 but you have to remember that you get what you pay for. This system was built with entertainment in mind and that is what the parts are geared for. Hand chosen, so I know exactly what is in there and each part can be upgraded over time as necessary.

New Speakers

2009-10-29T20:17:00.003-06:00

As I said before, I managed to blow out the speakers I had hooked up via the stereo. I was down at London Drugs on the weekend. They had a set of Altec Lansing VS4221 powered 2.1 speakers on clearance. I managed tp pick them up for about $80.00 which was about $40.00 off the list price. This is the first time I have had speakers with a subwoofer and I must say it sure sounds good. I have been mainly listening to music through them but wouldn't mind throwing in Lord of the Rings just to see how it sounds. I positioned the sub against the wall and put the two speakers on either side of the TV stand for now. They are kind of tall and don't fit on the shelf. I am going to have to get a speaker wire extension for the left speaker. The speakers also come with a remote control. I think I have accumulated a further three or four remotes while doing this project. I will really need to check out some Logitech remotes and consolidate soon.

Movie Magic

2009-10-05T22:17:00.004-06:00

Well, short summer I guess. What did I do? I ended up blowing out my stereo speakers. What happened was I had set up the speakers to go out of the HTPC into my stereo to a couple of cheap speakers left over from my youth. Well, I guess the volume got cranked up accidentally on the receiver and when it booted up one time and played the familiar Windows log on theme all I heard was a chime and then a crackle. My stereo receiver was set up on a universal remote with the TV and so on so I guess someone must have been having troubles with volume control on the TV one day and had it set for stereo. Oh well, hooked up a couple of standard computer speakers for now.

So I spent the last couple of weeks using Movie Maker to capture the video from my DVC Sony Handycam. It uses digital tape and interfaces to the computer via a Firewire cable which I hooked up to the convenient Firewire port on the front of the computer. When Movie Maker starts it automatically detects both the Hauppage video card as well as the camera. You choose to capture from the camera, it automatically rewinds the tape and then begins capture. I left the preview picture off as it supposedly may affect the quality of the recording. It records in real time as well so the tape being one hour long, it takes one hour to capture. What I did is just let it do its thing and I would start it up before going to bed or doing some other project. When complete it creates a number of clips which you can use for editing later. It also creates one main .wmv file which you can play back in its entirety on Windows Media Player. The videos played back perfectly with no jerkiness or audio out of sync which is a problem I had when trying to do the same thing on the old Dell.

Rediscovering Old Music With ITunes

2009-07-17T12:00:00.003-06:00

One of the best things about ITunes, or for any download music site I suppose, is the ability to download a song the moment you think about it. It is because of this (plus the fact I am learning to play guitar) that my interest in music has been given new life.

For the first five years of living in Grande Prairie I was restricted to one Top-40 radio station (Britney Spears, Christine Agulera and Ugghhh! Nickelcrap), CBC radio (which I still listen to predominantly) or the country station. A couple of years ago three or four new stations came on the air and began to offer a bit more variety. At least when you get sick of one station you can listen to another for a while. But it is basically the same music on every station now. CBC, CKUA from Edmonton and 104.7 Free FM from Grande Prairie however do offer up some different things. For example: I listen to 104.7 on Sunday evenings as they have a blues based radio show as well as some of those history of rock type shows where they talk about old bands and important records. CKUA and CBC offer up blues shows and Michael Enright on CBC has been doing a history of music series on his show recently. It is through these types of shows that you get re-introduced to the music or sometimes you get a new perspective on music or bands that have always sort of been there but you never gave them much thought.

Recently Michael Enright was talking about Elvis. We now tend to regard Elvis as a little bit of a joke, especially with all the crazy fans and the impersonators. The show re-emphasized the important part he played in the history of rock and roll music and pointed to his single "That's All Right" as groundbreaking for the time. I am not a big Elvis fan but suddenly I saw this song in a new light. It has always been there but the raw energy and simplicity I think gets muted with time. I downloaded the song off of ITunes. I also thought it would be a good song to learn on the guitar. I went online to Chordie.com to look up the chords.

On the other hand there are certain records that I would not download. One of these is Pink Floyd's The Wall which I used to have on cassette. I want to get this on CD. There is something about having the music in a nice package, the artistry of the cover, the liner notes etc. that you just can't get from a download. These albums are epic and timeless. They need to be enjoyed as such. I guess the irony will be that I will burn the Pink Floyd CD's to the HTPC for the convenience!

Another one I have become reacquainted with recently is The Who's Tommy. Again, music I would not download but would definitely like to add to my music collection.

I was watching HDNet the other night and they had the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs in concert. I instantly enjoyed this band's performance as well as their music. I went to ITunes and downloaded their entire "Is Is" album for about $6.00. This is a band I am just discovering and thanks to ITunes I am able to sample some of their music. Will it stand the test of time? Will I eventually feel a need to purchase a "hard copy" of this record? In this case I would say not. Maybe the history of the music has a lot to do with the format one listens to it in. Yeah Yeah Yeah's are a modern band that are of a time of downloaded music.

When I hear that Elvis song now I can still picture the simplicity of just a guitar, a microphone and that raw energy coming from a studio in the south and that single pressed on to a 7" record.

Links Are Better!

2009-07-17T11:23:00.002-06:00

Finally figured out how to make the links look more professional rather than simply copying and pasting them in to the text.

I like that better!

The Essence Of The Server

2009-07-07T17:22:00.002-06:00

I began this project in order to familiarize myself with modern technologies related to home computing. As I continue on I am sometimes overwhelmed at the awesome power that such a control system can become. Far from just being a form of entertainment, I see this morphing into an integrated system that would provide security and home automation not only from the central server but also from any point in the house or even the yard.

But what is the server anyway? A server needs to "serve" nodes on the network. I do not want people to have to be sitting in the basement every time they want to listen to a song! The first node can be the old Dell. I have transferred our pictures, etc from this computer on to the HTPC. Now the Dell can be designated solely as a working node where we do our office type tasks as well as check email. Also it can access the server to listen to music. My plan now is to replace the hard drive on the Dell and reinstall Windows XP. The Dell has become painfully slow as of late. I can probably pick up a low capacity hard drive cheap. In fact I think I have a 100 GB hard drive I bought a couple of years ago during my Linux phase.

I have drawn a diagram depicting nodes in the living room, kitchen, bedroom and even the garage. All these nodes need to be able to play a different song on a separate computer. I do not want these nodes to be computers however. I need these nodes to be touch screen monitors or simple devices with minimal wires. These nodes are all connected to the server either by Ethernet cable or wireless. Given the fact that my house is completed then going wireless would make the most sense. I could build my own nodes but the drawbacks again are cost, plus I would probably have to install Windows on each node. What I want is a basic system that can be networked, can access the music files on the server, has audio out to speakers and has a touch screen monitor. Maybe I could look at Linux as a possible solution. I would need to build a micro-atx form factor computer with a motherboard that outputs video and audio. It would also need a power supply and a hard drive in this case. Though the hard drive would just be a very low capacity one. I'm not too crazy about this idea. I would rather have a simple application to run that accesses those files and allows the user to choose their music and plays it right there.

There would also be a security system which monitors windows, doors, garage doors, fire alarms, water leaks and a couple of cameras. A 7.62mm machine gun is trained on the driveway and controlled by servos that in turn are controlled to a networked BASIC Stamp module I have configured (just kidding). There is a phone dialer attached to call the cell phone if there is trouble also an option to send an alert via email. Imagine the convenience of going to bed and then thinking..."Did I lock the door?". All you need to do is check the status on the computer.In the end the server needs to be connected to the Internet in order to remote monitor all these systems.

I stumbled across this link while looking into some of these problems.

Backup With XCopy and Schedule a Task

2009-06-22T21:29:00.010-06:00

To ensure I get my files (pictures, videos, music, etc.) backed up to my second hard drive, I have decided to forgo buying backup software or using the included Microsoft backup application. Instead I am going back to basics. Good old MS-DOS. Yes, underneath that fancy interface and the remote controls and pop ups there is still that basic operating system that Bill Gates got his start with. The function I am talking about is a command called "XCOPY". Simply put, you tell it what you want to copy and where you want to copy it to, write it all down in a batch file (.bat), schedule it to run and the command will ensure it happens. I have not written a batch file in quite sometime and am not totally familiar with the entire DOS language, but the Internet provides a wealth of information as usual and plenty of knowledgeable people willing to share. My plan therefore is to write the file and run it when the computer either starts up or shuts down.

First off, write the batch file. The important thing here is to think about what you want to do. Start by opening up the command prompt from the start menu. Type in "help xcopy" and you are presented with a list which begins with an explanation of what the command is for: "Copies files and directory trees". Perfect! Below that is what are known as switches. These instruct the command to do other things while executing the command. For example "/e" copies directories and sub directories, "/h" will copy hidden and system files. "/y" turns off the feature where the computer will ask you every time it is about to write a file if you want to overwrite the destination file. This could get quite annoying if you were backing up a thousand files and were prompted every time!

The basic format is to write the file as below:

xcopy /e /v /y /k /d "c:\my music" "d:\backup"

In this version it will copy the file, including directories, verify each new file, suppress the prompting as discussed above, copy the attributes of the file, and I have also used the date switch here which can be explained later. One of the things to note is that Windows allows you to name files using spaces between the words. In DOS this causes some trouble and so therefore it is necessary to put the file name in quotations as in the above example: "c:\my music". This caught me at first when I wrote my first batch file, I got an error message of too many parameters. DOS is sensitive to spaces.

When you are done, save the file but not as a ".txt" file. Instead, save as "All files" and give it the extension of ".bat" and save it to the C drive. If this is done correctly you can go to the C drive display in Windows explorer and your file will have a little icon beside it with a gear picture.You can run this either from windows but I like to test it from the command prompt. That way if there is any problem or error message you can see it.

The "/d" switch makes the command copy only files with a newer date stamp than the original. For example if you were writing a letter to your mother and then stopped for the day, when backup ran it would copy the file. Say you did not go back to writing the letter for several days. In that time you were using your computer for other things with your backup batch file running periodically. It would look at the date on the file on your main C drive, see it had not changed compared to the last time it was backed up. Therefore it would not waste time backing this one up. On the tenth day, when you finished the letter and saved it, backup would run, see the time stamp was newer than the backup copy and overwrite that file with the newer version. This is good because you do not want your computer wasting time overwriting files that have not changed.

My final version looks like this:

xcopy /e /v /y /k /d "C:\Documents and Settings\Home Theatre\My Documents\my pictures" "e:\my pictures"
xcopy /e /v /y /k /d "C:\Documents and Settings\Home Theatre\My Documents\my music" "e:\my music"
xcopy /e /v /y /k /d "C:\Documents and Settings\Home Theatre\My Documents\my videos\my home videos" "e:\my home videos"

I save it in a file called "htpcbackup.bat".

I ran the file from the command prompt and it proceeded to copy all those files to my backup or "e" drive. Great!

Finally I want to run my batch file automatically because I need to take out the human error (forgetfulness) that plagues us. I go to "Programs", "Accessories", "System Tools", and click on "Scheduled Tasks". Click on "Add a Scheduled Task".

A Wizard pops up and you need to hit "Browse and browse your way to your batch file. Click on it then you are prompted about how you want to run it (daily, weekly, start up, etc.). I choose "On Logon". Now here it prompts you to enter a password. I left it blank as I did not have a password set so does not make much sense. If you complete the wizard without setting a password you will get some kind of access error but if you go back to the "Scheduled Task" window and you will see your batch file there. If you right click on it and select "Properties", then you can check off the box that says "Run Only if Logged On" then you don't need to worry about passwords. It did not operate correctly until I checked this box. If you do use passwords it would be your system log on I guess, at least that's what worked when I was testing on a work computer.

I log off and on and a little DOS window pops up at start up. My test files copied over. Voila! Backup without all the expensive software, using tools supplied with Windows.

Media Center TV Setup

2009-06-14T22:32:00.005-06:00

Now I like the guide function and so on but the sub par picture quality of the analog TV signal is taking the enjoyment out of watching TV, especially compared to my HD cable box. I decided to instead of running a separate cable line from the splitter into the Hauppage video capture card, I would instead hook the RF out, through a coax cable still, from my cable box to the input on the card. I then have to leave the tuner card on channel three, the channel is changed through the cable box, much the way you used to do it with a VCR. This way, I am able to record on the Hauppage card, everything that the cable box can display. This means I can transfer the recordings from my PVR to the hard disk of the computer. I also have access to the digital channels blocked out by the cable company when I hook the capture card directly to the cable signal, albeit the digital and hi def channels are not coming in at higher quality. It will do for now.

In the settings menu of Media Center is a Wizard type thing that will allow you to set up your TV for viewing in Media Center. It asks your type of display and then runs some calibration videos so you can adjust things such as color, contrast and brightness. I did this and the picture is improving somewhat.

Today I went to have a look at the hospital lottery dream home. It is an annual lottery similar to those run in many cities. You buy a ticket for $100 and can win a house. This one is supposedly worth a million dollars. It had a system built into it that is what I would like the HTPC to evolve into some day! There is sound throughout the house run from a central server that can be controlled from practically any room. It even has IPod docks mounted on the walls throughout the house! There is also capability to integrate heating and cooling as well as a security system. Boy if I could do something like that I would be quite pleased! The server escapes me right now, something like a Connect 4 or Capture 4. I'll have to check into it again. They were running a demo video about it as you entered the house.

Oh yeah, I also decided to disconnect the hard drive activity LED on the front of the case. The power LED and the hard drive LED are a little too bright for my liking and the constant flashing is too distracting.

Hook Up to Television

2009-06-12T21:44:00.006-06:00

I managed to get an HDMI 2 to 1 splitter for about $60 from the electronics supplier at my work, he also had a 6 foot HDMI cable for about $16 and a 6 ft DVI to HDMI changer cable around the same price. The splitter box is made by Kanto who I have never heard of. I ran my HD digital cable output into the first input, then the DVI to HDMI cable from the computer into the second input. Then ran the HDMI cable from the output into the back of my TV set. The splitter box has no power source, so must take its power from the HDMI cables. It also comes with a remote so you do not have to manually switch. It also auto detects an input and automatically switches over to that input. For example, if you are watching TV and turn on the computer, it will automatically switch to display the computer screen.

I hooked up the line out for the sound to my Pioneer amplifier which is connected to two crappy Sears speakers from my childhood. Hmmm, should check into modern sound equipment.

I am having a problem with the Hauppage remote cutting out periodically which requires a restart of the IR program.

Using Media Centre on the TV is great though. You can quickly switch between watching TV, listening to music and looking at pictures. The picture quality for the TV is a little crappy, mainly because as I said earlier, it does not process the digital side of the signal so I am basically feeding it the analog signal. However if I watch TV in a smaller window it is not too bad. In fact what I am doing right now is typing this blog in a reduced window while playing the TV in a reduced window. My television is a 50 inch so the reduced TV window is probably about the equivalent of 22 inch which is plenty.

I am still wired to the computer for the keyboard and mouse, but will soon buy a laser keyboard setup.

The accumulation of remotes is also annoying so will start to check out some of those Logitech universal remotes.

Finally, decided I should get some anti-virus software. I discovered that my present copy of Norton Internet Security provides support for up to three computers. I tracked down the product ID from an old email and voila, away I went at no further cost.

Fish Tape Blues

2009-05-26T20:12:00.009-06:00

No, I haven't lost interest in this blog. I have been rather busy with other life type things. Between getting rained out of T-Ball with my kids just about every week and then a business trip to Calgary, I have not had much free time.

I did run a network cable in my basement last weekend from my router to the TV stand, where the computer will be situated. It is in fact there right now but not plugged in. I am writing this note on the old Dell. I had this fish tape in my garage and so decided it would be handy to use to fish the network cable through the rafters in the basement. My basement is mostly finished but there is a large open gap in the furnace room that leads across the hallway ceiling and into the unfinished freezer room where my router is presently located. Piece of cake to pull the cable through a two foot by one foot hole with a fish tape right? WRONG! The fish tape somehow got itself twisted as I was unravelling it across the ceiling and ended up getting itself jammed between the 2 by 4's about halfway into the gap! I could not pull it out to save my life. It was like a fish hook that gets stuck in the side of a log under water. I then grabbed a hockey stick and tried to push it out the other way. No way was that thing coming out! Boy was I pissed. In the end I had to leave the stupid fish tape in the rafters! It is now part of the house. I got a tape measure and used that to pull the cable through in the end. The rest of the run was fairly simple, I went through a gap in the wall, into the basement, drilled a hole close to the ceiling and ran the cable along the wall using cable ties and mounts.

In the meantime I have been looking around for ways to split the video signal from the computer into the TV. I thought my TV had a VGA or DVI input as well as an HDMI input. It only has the HDMI and that is already being used by the digital cable box. I found out I could get an HDMI splitter, 2 to 5 inputs and one output. Many of them come with a remote control so you don't have to manually switch it, very convenient. So the plan is to get a cable that coverts from DVI out (which is what I have on the video card) to HDMI or just an adapter. The card came with a DVI to VGA adapter only. Many cards come with DVI to HDMI adapters. I have a salesman who comes by my work place every month so have asked him if he has anything like that to bring it by. The splitters generally run around $100.

The sound I will split out into my Pioneer 5.1 receiver and use the speakers on that.

Oh yeah! I still need to get a wireless keyboard and mouse. Those go on sale every week somewhere though.

Phase One Complete

2009-05-11T21:17:00.005-06:00

Well, that's the first phase done. All in all I found it quite interesting to learn about the new technologies available and the changes in such things as RAM and CPU's. I think the plug and play technology enables just about anyone with any interest to build their own computer. I would highly recommend it. Overall cost was probably about $1200 CDN to do this, but that also includes such items as the case ($160), which is going to far outlast the components I presently have mounted in it. Also I should get some distance out of my power supply and motherboard. I did do some tidying up of the cables, which is important to keep them out of the fans, as well as allow the air to circulate well in the case.

My biggest disappointment was going with the HIS 4650 Radeon card instead of going with the silent version. Even with the cover on it has the loudest of the seven fans running inside this case. On the front panel of the Thermaltake Bach case the LED lights are a bit brighter than I think necessary. I will probably disconnect the red LED for the hard drive activity.

Media Center certainly allows the HTPC to become just that...a media centre. Using a single program to control all aspects of entertainment with a remote control brings the concept of computer as media server to reality. Just think, you have a DVD player, CD player / music server, television and picture slide show viewer all built into one box. I wish the remote could somehow be used to turn the computer off and on though! The last thing I will need to buy is a wireless keyboard and mouse. I see London Drugs has some on sale this week so may go check that out.

Next phase is to put the computer on to the media stand and connect to my full size 50" LCD television. I will also be connecting the sound outputs (the motherboard supports 8.1 surround) to my old Pioneer 5.1 stereo receiver. I'll also be looking in to some universal remotes.

That's all for now.

Video Tuner

2009-05-09T21:29:00.006-06:00

I went with the Haupagge WINTV-HVR-1250. I wanted a card that can decipher digital cable TV (which is what I have at home) as well I needed to ensure there were input jacks available that I can hook up my VCR to transfer some old video tape. This card had a single tuner and an S-Video input. It also comes with a remote control, which is good because I need to one to control Media Center. Every time I checked out reviews for various tuners, most said, "not bad, but not as good as my Hauppauge". This one was $83.99 through NCIX so I bought it. I received it via UPS a couple of days later, left on the front step again, even though my wife was home. She saw them driving away and tried to flag them down, but they never noticed her. She is pretty small. When she turned around to go to the house there was the box on the front step. The tuner did come with the remote but there was a note on the box saying it does not replace a Media Center remote. Great.
I installed the card into the PCI-E1 slot. Everything loaded up nicely, then the obligatory restart. I then ran WIN-TV the program that you use to watch it. It asked me if I wanted to scan for channels so I said no. I had to rearrange my workspace yet again because the cable coming from the wall is not long enough to reach. So I did this and then had it scan for the channels. I heard this takes a while so decided to work on this blog as I waited. As I was typing there was suddenly sound coming from my speakers. The card had scanned all the analog channels and was good to go. Next I needed it to scan my digital channels, which it automatically started doing. Nothing was happening as the progress bar kept...umm...progressing. Suddenly it started to fill up with QAM channels it was detecting, so I thought that was good.
It turned out however that though it detects the presence of the clear QAM digital channels it cannot display them because the local cable company (Persona) has encrypted them further so you have to use their box. It was still kind of neat watching TV on the computer using the Hauppage WIN-TV application. Then the big test, I opened up Media Center. It then ran through a wizard to set up up the tuner to play in MCE. At the end it quizzed me if I wanted to search for the interactive guide. I said YES!. You enter your postal code and then it does a search. It gave me three options, one for Edmonton then the other two for Grande Prairie both analog and digital, I decided to download the digital guide even though I could not watch the digital channels as I stated before. I thought it may still come in handy.
And there it was! An interactive guide for use with the lower analog channels. I'm not sure if this is brought in from the Internet or if it is fed through the cable some how. Anyway, it worked, however I discovered the date was wrong, displaying the following day's program lineup. Turned out my computer was set for the wrong date, so that fixed that problem PDQ.
And finally, I tried the remote with Media Center and what do you know? It worked just fine, allowing me to scroll through Media Center's menus using the up and down arrows on the remote and the OK button and so on. The guide button brings up the guide. It was all too beautiful in the end.

Networking & Ripping CD's

2009-04-28T21:14:00.010-06:00

I have begun the setup to get this thing to act as a music server. I used the Windows Network setup wizard and have now got my Dell computer upstairs talking to the new HTPC. I set up some file sharing on my music, video and picture folders as well as set up the printer connected to the Dell to be a shared printer I can use with the HTPC.

I am in the process of burning my CD's to the hard drive. I am simply grabbing a handful and running them through Windows Media Player 10 (not to be confused with Media Center) at the highest "lossless" resolution that will supposedly preserve the quality. I was able to rip Audioslave's Out of Exile (total time of about 54 minutes) in about 2 minutes and 20 seconds. The other nice thing about Media Player is that it is able to grab the track names and album information I believe from the CD itself, though I have checked the box in the "Options" tab that allows Media Player to search the Internet for further album info.

The only problem I have had so far with the Thermaltake Bach case (and it is not really with the case) is with the spring door that covers the CD tray as seen below. The disk tray access door is spring mounted to a panel that you push in to release. When this panel opens it exposes the three slots where your DVD drive is mounted, as well there are two more 5 1/2" drive bays. The spring door is positioned so that when the tray opens it pushes open the door.

In order to get at the button to eject the disk tray, you have to open the whole panel. You put in the CD and close the panel. When the CD ejects the spring door opens quite nicely however. Then you can load another one on to the tray and push it in.

I thought there would be some kind of software eject available in the Media Player. In the Windows 95 CD player application there was a CD eject button that allowed the tray to open.

Second Hard Drive Format

2009-04-24T21:24:00.006-06:00

Well, it was time to get the second hard drive online. A little research on the Internet and I found the procedure not too bad at all.

In Windows go to My Computer, Manage, and choose Disk Management. A Wizard opens up automatically which will allow you to Initialize the drive. Next you have to partition it. Right click on the drive and click New Partition. Another Wizard opens in which you choose the drive letter, I chose E as D was already being used by the DVD drive. I chose it as a primary and then the formatting began automatically. I decided to only format 400GB of the 500GB available. I'll leave the other 100GB free just in case I decide it may be useful for something in the future. The Wizard took about half an hour or so to format the drive.

Video Card Fan

2009-04-24T20:39:00.006-06:00

Next I wanted to do something about this noisy video card fan. The software comes with a program called Catalyst that gives you control of display and features, some of which I still don't know what they do.

You open up the program and on the left side there is a menu. I clicked through all the options until I came to the final heading called "ATI Overdrive". This gives you a screen that displays the video card CPU temperature as well as fan speed and activity. There is a scroll bar there that says you can manually control the fan. Just what I was looking for. There is a padlock icon that you click on and it will unlock the controls. I played with the manual fan speed but there was no change.

I decided to see if this was a real time display, so I disconnected the power from the fan. The temperature immediately started to go up. It had been running at about 24 degrees Celsius. I was not seeing anything of use on the fan speed gauge though.

I went into the help menu and it looks like the option to control fan speed is NOT an option with my card. The Catalyst program allows you to control all your ATI based video cards by the looks of it. There is a drop down box where you choose the one you want to play with. I was a little disappointed. I decided to unhook the fan again and see what temperature the video CPU (or GPU graphics processor unit), would get to. It rose rapidly to 48 degrees C, and at that point the needle on the temperature gauge icon finally moved. I let it rise to about 60 degrees, the rate of temperature rise slowed as it got higher, but even at 60 degrees it was still climbing. I decided that was enough. I'm not sure what temperature it can safely run at, but the main CPU on the motherboard was supposed to run between 30 and 70 degrees. Something else I can check into. I thought I had read in my research on the card that one person was running theirs without the fan plugged in. I'll have to check further into optimal temperatures. I may have to go for a silent cooling option after all.

Oh by the way.........I'm writing this entry on the HTPC!

Windows Install and the DVD Problem

2009-04-24T20:12:00.007-06:00

Windows Media Centre installed quite well with no glitches once I had decided to not go with RAID. I then proceeded to install the driver disks for the video card, DVD, and motherboard. Once things looked ok, I connected the computer to the Internet and started to download all the updates from Microsoft. I also updated drivers for the DVD player, the motherboard, and the video card. I attached a set of speakers to one of the audio jacks.

I had the most trouble trying to play a DVD. I ran Media Centre and clicked on "Play DVD". I kept getting a "codec error". I went online to Google with the error and there were a number of recommendations saying that I needed to download a codec in order for windows to be able to play the DVD. I downloaded one and installed it, but then I got an error saying that the DVD was copyright protected. I tried both a "Spiderman" disk and "The Incredibles" but neither would go. I then found this program called "DECCHECK" which looks at all your video codecs and will tell you if they were compatible with your system. I got red X's by all the ones it identified on my system. In the end I had to go back to Microsoft's support site and it listed off 5 or 6 approved codecs for Windows XP. Of course I had to pay money. In the end I went with one called "Cyberlink Power DVD SE". I figured I would try it and if it failed, well, whatever. I had to pay $15.00 to download it, but they took PayPal so used that. Downloaded the program, ran the install, stuck a DVD in, started Media Centre, clicked on "Play DVD"........... and away it went! I was quite happy needless to say.

RAID VS Conventional Backup

2009-04-22T15:50:00.004-06:00

I was originally planning on adding RAID as an option for this computer. I thought it would be a great way to ensure all my data was backed up in the event of a hard drive failure. Hard drives have a life expectancy of approximately 5 years and of course, one of my main intentions with this computer is to get our photos and home videos on to disk. I would hate to go through the process of preserving it all only to have a major catastrophe destroy all those memories.

RAID 1, which is the one I was considering going with, copies all the data simultaneously to both drives. This means it is basically doing the same thing twice. Looking at speed comparisons on the Internet, this therefore affects how fast this is done, plus uses up CPU power and time. There are two types of RAID, software and hardware. Software can be set up in Windows after the OS is installed. Hardware requires the drivers be loaded up during the boot up process and prior to installation of the OS.

Given the fact that more resources are being used for the simultaneous writing of data to 2 disks, I am worried that this may affect the performance of the computer when transferring video files down from my Handycam. The hardware RAID has its own controller but I think anything that requires that things be done twice at the same time is going to cause a bottleneck somewhere. I think the better option for me is to simply run a conventional 1 disk system and use the second internal drive to write periodic backups to. Backups can be scheduled for the middle of the night when the computer is not being used for anything else! If my primary disk fails, I would then need to replace the drive, reinstall the OS and then retrieve my data from the backup hard drive.

First Power Up!

2009-04-20T20:06:00.009-06:00

Connected up an old Dell CRT monitor, mouse and keyboard. Plugged everything in to the AC. Turned on switch on power supply and the light came on on the motherboard. I pushed the power switch and it booted! I got the ASUS screen and I entered into BIOS by pushing the DEL key. I set system time the date was already right! I then changed configuration of drives to RAID (as this was my initial intent).

I set up the boot sequence to boot from the DVD drive and adjusted the CPU fan control to quiet.

I then decided to go ahead and load up the Windows Media Centre Disks. Install was going ok.

Blue screen of death. (What happened here was that if I was in fact going to go with a RAID configuration I should have installed the RAID controller drivers earlier in the Windows installation process when prompted. The drivers I believe are on the ASUS motherboard disk.)

I decided to go in to BIOS and change configuration of drives to IDE from RAID. I thought I could do the RAID installation later.

It then booted alright and began to format the disk!

The fan on the video card is pretty noisy. It comes on as soon as there is power. Once Windows is installed and so on I'll see if there is something in the software that allows you to control it. Power supply fan and CPU fan seem quiet. There are three more chassis fans as well that came with the computer case that I have not connected yet.

Well. The format takes a while so that's enough for tonight.

Power Supply & SATA Wiring

2009-04-20T19:34:00.017-06:00

I am writing this as I go along. I will be starting with the power supply wiring. There is quite an array of connectors that come with the BFG 550W power supply.

Let's start with the main ATX power connector. This is the biggest 24 Pin header on the board. The power supply comes with a power connector that has 20 pins on one connector and the remaining 4 on a separate. This is so the power supply can support older motherboards. There is a manual with the power supply that explains the function and has a nice picture of each connector. I am using this and the motherboard manual in conjunction. Insert the 4 pin part first and then the 20 pin. There is only one direction it can go.

Next is the 8 pin CPU power connector. Comes in two blocks of 4. I removed the cap from the one set of 4 pins on the motherboard as suggested in the manual and then clipped both sets of four into the 8 pin header.

The SATA power connector for the DVD and hard drives is a flat connector that replaces the old style chunky 4 pin connectors (the power supply does provide a few of those as well!). These all install one way. The power supply also provides a floppy disk drive power connector. I am not putting a floppy in this unit needless to say.

Finally I install the red SATA cables for the hard drives. Now things got a little complicated here. As I was saying earlier I was considering originally to set up a RAID configuration using the two drives. From what I could gather from the ASUS motherboard manual, if I wanted to do this I needed to plug the primary drive into the Serial ATA RAID connectors. These are color coded on the MOBO, Port 0 is orange and Port 1 is white. I plugged the primary into 0 and the secondary into 1. I have since decided not to go with RAID but am updating this post with what I was doing at the time. I have included this so when I ran into some problems on initial startup you can understand my mindset.

There are a further 6 SATA connectors on the mobo, I plugged the DVD drive into one of these.

Power Supply, DVD and Hard Drive Install

2009-04-20T19:06:00.016-06:00

Well, it's been a while since I could work on the project but I'm back after a rather enjoyable Easter break. I received the power supply a little over a week ago from Direct Canada as well as my 2 hard drives and DVD writer. Time to start the install.

The power supply goes in quite easily on it's side, a huge fan on the top, but screw holes on the supply chassis line up perfectly with the screw holes on the computer case. Like it was meant to go in there! Had to push in at an angle and sort of seat it but no problems.

Installation of the DVD drive requires removal of the hard drive cage. Just 3 screws and then it slides out. 4 screws on either side of the 5.25" allows you to remove the cover off the face of the slot where the DVD drive goes. The same 4 screws are used to mount the drive.

Next I need to mount the hard drives as I had the cage off. First attempt I realized that they stuck out too far and covered the primary power slot. Must have done something wrong there!Looks like there is a slot on the computer case to allow me to mount the hard drive in deeper and the end will stick into that slot. Fine for one hard drive but I have 2! Looks like I can remove the plates on the case which will allow the hole to be expanded. This requires twisting and prying the pieces of metal off.

I got it bent over and the two drives fit in nicely now. I reattach the three screws to secure the HDD cage. One note, I had to remove one of the sticks of RAM to make clearance to install the drive cage with the drives mounted in it.

Well, that's all components mounted! Next, the wiring!

Shout out to TD Bank

2009-04-07T22:41:00.000-06:00

Well with all this flurry of buying, I had been using Paypal to pay for my purchases at all 3 online computer parts sellers. I recently changed my Paypal to take money from a bank account I use for online stuff as well as some online trading etc. I like to to do. My purchase I had made to Tiger Direct was between two and three hundred dollars. I knew at the time that there was not enough cash in the account to cover it so decided I would just have Paypal debit my credit card instead. I went to the checkout to pay and it directs you to Paypal to finalize the transaction. On Paypal it says if there is not enough money in your account to cover the transaction it will automatically go to your credit card. So I proceeded with the paying process assuming it would just use the credit card.

A few days later I was looking at my bank account and noticed I had been charged an NSF fee for $42.50 by the bank! I couldn't believe it but then realized, Paypal attempts to withdraw the money, then, when it realizes there is not enough there it just goes to your credit card. I was under the impression it would first check the balance before attempting a withdrawal but in hindsight I guess that would be kind of stupid as it would sort of defeat all your privacy and security matters. So I was pretty annoyed at my oversight. In the end I thought "What the hell? I'll phone the bank, tell them what happened and see if they will reverse the charge".

What do you know, they actually did! I thought I should note this as it is probably the first time I can recall a bank giving me some money back! Anyway, all joking aside and with everyone giving the banks such as hard time it is worth a mention.

Thanks TD Bank, and as I said on the phone, it won't happen again!

Final Pieces

2009-04-06T22:25:00.001-06:00

After the joy of starting the assembly, it fast came to an end when I had run out of parts. I quickly decided on the final components. I have to this point tried all 3 online options I first mentioned (Tiger Direct, NCIX and Direct Canada). I was kind of making an effort to buy a few things locally so again I phoned down to the local computer store and asked what kind of deal they could swing for me on a couple of hardrives. He offered 2 Seagate 500GB drives for $110.00 apiece. I asked if that was the very best they could do so he brought it down to $105 each. I said I would think about it and went to look online again. Direct Canada had a special on Seagate Barracuda 500GB hard drives for $66 apiece! Limit of 5 per customer. Well again it was no contest even with shipping of $9.99 it was still far better so again I decided to order online.

I then decided to get the power supply issue out of the way. I decided on the BFG Technologies BFG-550, 550W power supply for $66.68 at Direct Canada. A few reviews I read said it was a good supply for the price and most said it ran pretty quiet. I did consider the Corsair TX650W, 650W supply. It was priced at around $97.00 but decided the price was better on the other even though 100W less.

Speaking of power supplies, the primary concern is of course ensuring it will supply the power you need! A lot of problems people have with their computers can be attributed to running supplies that will not meet their needs. It may start out alright, but then add a new video card or some other cards, throw in a few USB powered devices, next thing you know you are maxed out. I stumbled across a few calculators available on line and found this one to be the most recommended. You can enter every component (by brand name and model!) in your system and it will do the work for you. My info came to a supply of just under 400W. I decided to go higher anyway and ultimately settled on the 550W supply.

Stupid me, I put in my order and later realized I still needed a DVD drive. I am eventually going to install a Blue Ray drive, but will wait a bit and see if the price comes down. They sell for around $175-$250 or more depending on which you get. I settled on a Samsung SH-S223Q. Pretty standard as far as drives go. It has the Litescibe feature which apparently lets you burn the title of you DVD into the disc itself. Also has a feature that will burn your home movies straight to disc without having to do it though the hard drive. Might be a useful feature. Price was about $30.00 at Direct Canada, plus another $10 for shipping, the cost of forgetting to order with my hard drives I guess.

So all is ordered. I will hopefully be up and running soon. Then the real fun begins!

Heatsink and Fan Installed No Thanks to Online Forums!

2009-03-31T21:03:00.000-06:00

Well, I think I got the thing installed!

I went online and found that this is not an unusual problem. The fit is very tight. I referred to the installation documents enclosed with the processor and unlike the motherboard recommendations (which appeared to tell you to push in opposite corners simultaneously) it says to snap each leg in one at a time. I thought to myself if I could get the first two in then the next two should go in a bit easier. The motherboard was mounted in the chassis already. I snapped in one of the legs that was closest to the centre of the board. Then I went to the opposite leg because i could then get a couple of fingers in under the space between the bottom of the motherboard and the case. I pushed on the fan shroud a bit to get some flex that would help a bit too. This gave me a little leverage and I pushed down until there was a click. I then worked the next two in until they clicked as well. I got a flashlight and looked underneath to ensure the black pegs had spread the white legs enough to hold them in the holes. I then tugged up on each leg to see they were tight. One popped up again so I pushed it down until it snapped in to place.

So I am quite certain it is in alright. I hope I have not damaged the board, but it appears just fine. I am worried about a hairline crack or a bad solder joint. Well, I guess time will tell!

Boy I cannot believe how arrogant some people get on those help forums. A guy asked a simple question about heatsink compound and it turned into some kind of belittling contest between the poster and some self proclaimed computer genius. I guess those geeks you beat up in school get their revenge in the cyber world. Well, I'm no arrogant computer geek. You can ask me anything! I would never belittle you online, I prefer to laugh behind your back. Here's a joke:

Let the Assembly Begin!!

2009-03-31T20:29:00.000-06:00

Got home from work and found that my computer case and video card had arrived from Tiger Direct. I was quite happy. My wife then informed me that she had found it sitting on the front door step when she got home from picking the kids up from school. Not very nice to hear. Tiger Direct uses UPS for all its deliveries and up here UPS is subcontracted to some other company. Needless to say it is not very reassuring to have this big box sitting on my front step with a picture of a computer that looks amazingly like a home theatre system. Anyway, nobody stole it and the video card was in a separate box sitting on top of the computer case. I thought I would hold off and wait to begin the assembly process until the weekend but then anticipation got the better of me so I began even though I still have a few parts to acquire.

The Thermaltake VB8000 "Bach" is a very nice looking case. The top cover is held on with three thumbscrews at the back. I removed these and inside are two supports across the top, which can be removed. There is pretapped holes for varying types of motherboards. All the stand-offs and screws are included in a little bag. There are cables connected to the USB ports and Firewire port at the front and all the necessary power wires etc. It comes with three fans mounted, 2 at the back and one in front. I have heard these are noisy but we will see (I still have to get the power supply!).

I figured I would mount all the components to the board and then install the board on to the chassis.The first thing I did was to mount the processor on to the motherboard. This was fairly simple to do. The motherboard processor slot has a lever that you release and then you lift up the housing. there is a cover that is removed. I removed the processor from the box and inserted it on to the processor socket, oriented as described. This is very easy as it is keyed and there is a gold triangle in one corner that helps you to get it lined up. I set the processor on the socket, flipped down the lid and locked the lever back in to place. Piece of cake!

Next the motherboard instruction advised putting thermal compound on the processor to aid in the heat dissipation. It said that some processors come with heat sink compound. I could not see any, I was looking for a tube. Then I realized that the thermal compound was already spread on the heatsink/fan assembly that comes with the processor. No problem.The heatsink/fan (HSF) assembly needed to be mounted next. There are four plastic mounts that line up with 4 holes on the board. The motherboard diagram said to push them in to the holes in a diagonal fashion, two at a time, ie. across from each other. This is where it got kind of ugly. I could not for the life of me get two to snap in at the same time. I would pop one in then the other side would raise. It was requiring too much force for me to try get these in. I reoriented it a few times to try again and again but nothing was working. I was getting worried I may damage the motherboard if I tried to much harder. I thought, it might be better to mount the motherboard in the chassis and try again.

My motherboard came with a back panel that lines up with the input and output connections. I needed to remove the back panel from the computer case that came from the factory. I undid one screw and then pushed and pulled and pried on the panel until it eventually came loose. I then snapped the ASUS backpanel into the chassis.

The stand-off screw holes are labelled for an ATX board and I just need to follow the pattern laid out in the manual, which meant the stand-offs all line up nicely with the screwholes on the motherboard. It took a little bending and pushing to get the motherboard line up with the new back panel and it is still a little off centre, but can be worked around. There is one stand-off in the middle with a stud that kind of centres everything. I got the screws put in and tightened down.

Again I tried to work on the HSF but still could not get the damn thing to work right. I was more worried now as there seemed to be more flex on the motherboard now it was mounted in the chassis. I am kind of hoping I didn't do any damage wrestling with this thing. I did get to thinking that in the future, if one were to change out the processor, I doubt many people strip the motherboard out of the chassis to do this. So it should work like that. I gave up after a while, and left it mounted kind of cockeyed.

Next I decided to install the RAM. Two 1GB memory modules. I mounted one in channel A and one in channel B as was recommended. I used the yellow slots. Finally I put in the video card. No major issues there though it was a bit of a chore lining it up with the back panel. There was some kind of pressure bracket that first I removed to ensure I was line up with the correct rear panel slot. I then took the card out again and replaced the pressure bracket. It went in quite nicely into the PCIE-16 slot #1.

Finally I began to hook up the chassis cables to the motherboard. They were all labelled quite well so I just had to follow along in my motherboard user guide to find where they needed to go. Front USB times two and a Firewire port. Perfect for hooking up my video camera. All plug in. I decided to remove the tamper switch from the case as I do not think it will be necessary. One screw and it was in the box with the other cables.

Initial assembly started and enough for one night. I'll look more in to this heatsink fan issue.

Video Card Decision

2009-03-22T15:43:00.000-06:00

The part I was not looking forward to was making the decision on the video card. There is such a selection out there so, as with motherboards, I decided to drastically cut down the field by going with an ATI Radeon based card. The motherboard I bought supports the ATI crossfire platform so I decided that was as good a reason to go with them as any.

My concern on the video card is that it be able to handle 1080P resolution to output to my television, run fairly quietly and that it can handle basic video editing and playback. I decided I would limit my budget to $200 maximum.

I thought initially that the best move would be to get as much memory as possible. However the more I looked into it the more I found that the applications I was going to be using, mainly playing recorded video or watching Internet televiosn did not require the same processing power as 3D graphics require. 1GB DDR2 memory seems to be what everyone is selling as standard, higher up there is DDR3. 512MB is on its way out though still very popular. I saw very little in the 256MB range. I was quite pleased to find out my cost base would go down by buying a similar card with less memory. In the end I chose the Radeon model 4650 with 512MB of memory. It seemed to pop up fairly often and the specs indicated it would do what I needed.

In that same vane, I decided to sacrifice cooling for price. The HIS 4650 came with a Zalman cooler but cost about $118.00 whereas the 4650 Fan was $79.99. I was thinking, everything is geared to be noiseless and silent, but why get too hung up on it right away? I can build the machine for less money, see exactly how noisy it is and then if required add silent cooling solutions after. My idea of quiet is probably a lot different to the guy in the magazine who reviews 10 video cards per day. The same Zalman cooling setup on the iSilence can be bought separately for about $60.00.

Remote Control, the Living Room and Beyond!

2009-03-14T19:52:00.001-06:00

When I saw my first HTPC at a computer store it came with a remote that actually controlled how you selected what you wanted to do such as playing a movie or listening to music. This means you do not have to sit there with a keyboard and mouse. It becomes a more natural setup, what you would expect from a home theatre. I did a search the other day and found there are quite a number of these remotes available, some work on infrared and many work on a radio frequency enabling you to control it from anywhere in the house. Most can be bought for about $40-$50. This is alright when you are sitting there and can physically see the screen. But what if you want to be in the kitchen and select a song from a play list?

Ultimately I am trying to use the computer (located in the basement) as the main server for music and broadcast it throughout the house and beyond using other technologies and networking to remotely control it. One of these is from Sonos. This looks like a pretty slick system and does what I picture. Price is around $1200- $1400 according to the website (kind of steep for me). I like the idea of the remote that enables you to choose your music, but what really intrigues me is the application for an IPhone or ITouch that enables you to use it as the controller.

I am a big fan of the IPod. To me the IPod is the ultimate personal entertainment device. All others are just imitators. I originally had 2 GB IPod Nano that was stolen a few months ago. I just recently replaced it with a refurbished IPod 4GB Nano, the kind that plays video. In my vision of the future, however, the cell phone / personal entertainment device is what all electronic technologies will revolve around. Such devices as the IPhone and the Blackberry are well on there way to doing this. In some countries you can swipe your cell phone in front of a vending machine to buy a Coke! You can chat on the phone, read downloaded novels, listen to Podcasts and play games all on one device. It seems to me that being shackled to a desktop computer is totally unnecessary. The only drawback I suppose is the screen size.

Kind of a rambling blog entry. Oh well.

The RAM and the Operating System

2009-03-10T20:35:00.000-06:00

I found some RAM at a good price at NCIX.com manufactured by OCZ. It is on the approved vendor list for the motherboard and comes in a kit of 2 1GB RAM DIMM's. One for each channel. There is also a mail in rebate on this until this weekend plus a ten dollar instant saving bringing the price down to about $35.00. This is not bad considering I called around town here and got a price of $35.00 for just 1GB of Kingston RAM, so therefore 2 GB would have cost me $70.00. So I guess I will be ordering this up come payday. That is the other thing I should mention. I still have a wife and kids and bills to worry about so the acquisition of parts is dependant on the available cash at any time! This phase may take a while, but does give me the opportunity to explore all options and research the subject.

Since I am ordering online again I like to make it worthwhile so I am not blowing a bunch of money on shipping. I decided maybe I will go ahead and order the operating system at the same time. I have decided to go with Windows XP Media Centre 2005 SP2. I actually saw this system loaded on to an HTPC at a computer store. It is totally geared to what I am trying to achieve in this system. I did dabble with the idea of loading up MS Vista because now Media Centre is bundled with it and not a stand alone product. However, I have been running Windows XP Professional on my home computer since I got it and have no complaints about it. I am not one to judge Vista solely on what I have heard but with the recent release of the Beta version of Windows 7, it makes me think "Hm, maybe Microsoft is subtly hinting at something". I am quite willing to run an older version of Windows for a while and then see how the next incarnation turns out! Anyway this sells for $159.67 at NCIX.

I am kind of hoping I can now look locally for such things as hard drives, DVD/Blue Ray drives, a video card, etc. We'll see. Those online prices appear hard to beat even with shipping factored in!

DDR Is Not "Dance, Dance Revolution"!

2009-03-04T21:00:00.001-07:00

The first thing I did when I received the motherboard the other night was look through the manual to see what RAM was necessary. The features tell an exciting story: 4 DIMM max, 16GB, DDR2 1200/1066/800/667 MHz, dual channel! "Huh?" I said, what does that mean? Each time I have bought RAM throughout my life (which is twice) it is always different. The first time, someone just told me what I needed. That was back in about 1995 when I jumped to 32MB from 16. The next time was when I increased the Dell to 1GB about two years ago. Then I just went to their website and it told me what I needed, pointed me to the checkout and happily took my money. This time is different. I decided I would do it myself, since that is the whole object of this exercise.

Starters, DDR2 is the present flavour of the day and replaces DDR, though I see DDR3 has surfaced. I typed "DDR" into Google and it referred me to two Wikipedia entries. The first for DDR2 SDRAM and the second for "Dance, Dance Revolution". Now I do know a little about computers and realized I was probably looking for the first one (but here is the link to Dance Revolution if you are interested: ). This is actually kind of interesting in an electronics/computer/geeky kind of way. In picturing a clock signal as a sine wave, the clock ticks (or accesses data) normally on the top of the cycle. In the DDR process it accesses both at the top and bottom. This is also known as double pumping. I posted a link the other night that explains this a bit better.

So that kind of got that out of the way. Next I thought, well, my processor has and FSB of 1066MHz, so I need to buy RAM that also is 1066 MHz right? WRONG! Now this is where I had to learn that even though the processor says it runs at 1066MHz FSB, this is based off of a 266MHz clock. The link I posted nicely explained more detail on this and I liked it because it basically told me (like back in 1995, though not face to face) what I should do. The motherboard manual lists a qualified vendors list of RAM and you can also go to the ASUS website and get the latest. So I saw that the minimum RAM it spoke of was 667MHz, so I decided to go one up with the 800Mhz, much like the guy says in the post. I'm hoping once I get this stuff into the system, some of the questions I still have will be answered.

My final puzzle was "What the heck is dual channel?". Well that turned out to be this slick idea that if you put the memory on two channels it could access the memory controller twice as fast! On the motherboard there are 4 slots for memory and they are color coded, two are yellow and two are black. There is one of each color on channel A and channel B. The idea is that say you are going to install 2 GB of memory. You put a 1GB module in one slot (ASUS recommends the yellow one for this board) of channel A and then you put the second module in the same color slot on channel B. Sounds good in theory, but Wikipedia says that tests have shown it may only improve memory speed / performance by 5%. I'm going to do it anyway.

So in conclusion I think I have it figured out enough to make a decision. DDR2-800MHz (PC2-6400 as it is also known). With my list of qualified vendors at hand I am searching for the one who shall become my RAM.

Oh yes! There is also the issue of the 4 GB Windows memory barrier. I'll talk about that another time though.

First Purchases Arrive

2009-03-02T22:17:00.001-07:00

Got home from work today and found that the ASUS motherboard and the E7200 processor had arrived. I purchased them last Thursday and was here today, Monday. Good shipping time from Direct Canada, everything seemed in order and packed well. It was kind of exciting so I wasted little time digging out the owner's manual for the motherboard. Next step was to choose the RAM. What a nightmare of things to wade through trying to figure that problem out. Too much to go in to this evening, so I will post a few links I found most helpful and then go into some more detail later as I still haven't made a final decision. Unfortunately my brain hurts too much right now.

Tom's Hardware the most helpful one I found as it related directly to my system.

A good table and some reasonably good technical descriptions here.

Understanding system memory and CPU speeds for laymen here.

The First Purchase

2009-02-26T20:09:00.001-07:00

Well, now decisions are made with the motherboard and processor, I went ahead and placed an order in with Direct Canada for a grand total of about $325.00. Orders over $300 are free shipping by the way. You can only order through their website. I was able to pay with Paypal which I quite liked as well. I had to order the MOBO and CPU this week, as the mail in rebate on the ASUS P5Q Pro is only eligible for purchases before Feb. 28.

Direct Canada's website is not as feature laden as those of Tiger Direct and NCIX, but their prices certainly seem to be the cheapest. We will see how that translates into their customer service! I phoned their 1-800 number the other day. I was enquiring about the availability of a PC case I am looking at for this system. It was not in stock but he told me it probably would be in in about a week. A week later I phoned again. I was put on hold for about 5 minutes, listening to the background music, then the call dropped out. I tried three more times and this happened again and again. Later on I tried again and got through. The guy told me the cases were still on order and he did not know when they would be in.

I find I like to go to Tiger Direct and do my research and read their customer reviews. Then I shop around the three sites and see who has the best prices. Usually it is Direct Canada, however I also find that quite a lot of the things they sell are listed as "Not in Stock". Of course that could be due to cheaper pricing. I have by no means ruled out places such as Future Shop or Best Buy. They have sales on video cards and memory that might be more attractive for the future plus without the hassle of mail order.

The Motherboard or MOBO

2009-02-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

This was a part of the selection process I was a little more comfortable with or so I thought.

Keeping with my plan to go with names I was familiar with I decided that ASUS would be my choice on this one. My first surprise was that a lot of the boards did not have VGA/video out built into them. You are expected to add a video card. This doesn't surprise me much though. At this level you are looking at more media intensive systems. Some of the more basic and cheaper ones did still have the VGA ports etc. built into them, but then I would be sacrificing quality. My only problem was that I had intended to get the system up and running initially as a music server and then add the video card later. As it stands, I need the video card to see the screen!

My next discovery was that PCI express has taken over quite a bit and it appears that AGP for video cards have now been replaced by the PCI-E 16. No problems there. My present computer only had onboard video and I added a PCI card to it later on. There was no AGP slot on it. I also knew I wanted Firewire built in with the possibility to mount a front Firewire port on the face of the computer case. This is so I can hook up my video camera. I did not want to have to run a cable in behind the computer to do so. Lots of extra slots are good for upgrades etc.

The ASUS P5Q seemed to be a reasonably popular model and a fair price at $150.00 at Direct Canada. It is an ATX format, LGA775 slot. I initially was looking at the basic P5Q but then saw that Direct Canada had the P5Q Pro on sale with a mail in rebate which brought the price down to about $135.00, cheaper than the first one. It comes with 2 PCI slots, 3 PCI-E1, slots and of course the PCI-E16 slot for the video card. It has a rear Firewire connection as well as a header for a front mount Firewire. FSB supports up to 1600MHz and the Intel Core2 Extreme so is upgradeable. I should be running at 1066 for the time being with the E7200 CPU. It also supports RAID which I guess is good, it's something else I need to learn about.

Decision made. My feeling on this is that it is worth spending a bit more on the motherboard as this is where all the action is going to happen. It should provide the basis of stability.

The Processor or CPU

2009-02-26T19:31:00.001-07:00

The Tiger Direct website suggested choosing a processor (CPU) first. I found this a little awkward at first as it seemed to me that it may be better to decide exactly what you are going to put into the computer as far as features. This would ensure that you chose the right motherboard that could support all those features. However, deciding to go with my initial decision to stick with names I know, I chose Intel processors. I don't have anything against AMD by any means! In choosing only one manufacturer you are already exposing yourself to a broad range of available models. I did not feel like getting wrapped up in the manufacturer debate as well. I looked at some flyer's in the mail and on-line and it seems all the stores like Future Shop and Best Buy are flogging Dual and Quad core processors in their computers. I thought that I would go with an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 that was selling on Direct Canada for $218.00, a sale price it said. 2.33 GHz, it supports a front side bus speed up to 1333 MHz. Later on I decided to go with an Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Dual core processor at 2.53GHz, with an FSB of 1066 MHz as it was about $50.00 cheaper. I do not plan to cheap out a whole bunch but on the other hand I got to thinking that maybe I would leave myself some room to upgrade in the future as well. People have been doing not to bad at editing etc using slower CPU's than this. I think the technology is there and I could downgrade a little and still come up with something that is fast and reliable. I also read a couple of reviews at Direct Canada etc. and those people seemed to think there was no visible difference between the two. The ratings on the 7200 were 4 stars by users while the 8200 was at 3 stars. As a side, some of the reviews said the 7200 was a good overclocker, another thing I do not know too much about but may like to dabble in as this thing progresses.

First Things First

2009-02-25T20:57:00.000-07:00

The purpose of this blog is to record the process I am going through in order to build a HTPC. I got the idea due to the fact that I have always wanted to:

Build my own computer
Build a music server
Get my home movies off of my video cameras and edited properly
Transfer my old records (LP's) to digital format

I earned a diploma as an electronics engineering technologist at SAIT in Calgary. I have been working as an electronic technologist / technician sine 1999. My first computer I bought was a Pentium 100 (that's 100MHz), with I believe 16MB of RAM. I upgraded the RAM to 32MB a couple of years later. I discovered I could put in one of the original RAM chips so a few weeks later I was running at 40MB. It ran Windows95. I did work a little with Windows 3.1 in my early days. I still have my second computer. It is in the garage and I use it once in a while for messing around with. It ran Windows ME. Terrible. Recently I installed a version of Linux on to it on a newer 100GB hard drive. My present computer is a Dell I bought in 2004. It still serves us well, though I am in the process of backing up my files and will then reinstall Windows XP Professional which is the operating system I bought with the computer. A very good one by the way. I have never had a blue screen with this computer.

Anyway, to get to the point, I did a little research on the Internet and came across Tiger Direct's website. They have an article on there about steps to take in order to build a computer. So this blog is meant to chronicle my journey through the construction of this computer. Also this is my first blog so I can combine a couple of things I always wanted to try / do.