To Whom It May Concern...

Originally submitted at Radio Shack This remote can simplify your home theater and make it easy to control everything with one device. 7-in-1 Universal HD Remote Control Quick and powerful little remote By M II the K from Lebanon, PA on 1/31/2008   5 out of 5 Pros: Easy To Set Up, Durable, Nice Button Configuration, Nice Features Best Uses: Upgrade Describe Yourself: Tech Savvy Primary use of this product: Personal Haven't used it long enough to find any pros. Feel of the buttons leads me to believe the keys will stop working. (Oil builds up under the rubber.) Cleaning with a que-tip and alcohol works for that. I'm controlling a media PC using GBPVR software. Also, Sony Receiver, Apex DVD changer, and Sharp VCR. ( legalese ) Note: When you do a review on www.radioshack.com you can have it post to your blog. That's interesting.

I wiped and re-installed my system drive this past week. It's nice to have a fresh install. I've already had issues. Actually, it was a minor thing. LogMeIn. When I installed this software, and rebooted, I could see the Windows logo as it started, then my monitor stopped getting a feed. I could hear my startup music, so I knew it was just a driver issue. Reinstalling the drivers (after rebooting into VGA mode, YUCK!) seemed to fix it. But now I'm back up and running. And Patched! As you can see from this post from Coding Horror , (one of my new favorite blogs!) it's very easy to kill an unpatched system. What is my goal!?! Ubiquitous media! I want music, videos (recorded via DVR/PVR), and pictures that I can access from anywhere. That means, I want my PDA to plug into my system at home, and pull a random selection of music from my music server to take with me when I go. I don't want to have to think about selecting this one, or that one, but not that one, cause I...

Ok... what have I been up to lately? I've been working on DataMatch, adding an e-mail server to my linux box, and my very own PVR. Let's start with that. Joel Gott offered a while ago on his blog an article for a 'Poor Man's Tivo'. Well... I got to thinking, and looking... and found this: http://www.byopvr.com/Sections+index-req-viewarticle-artid-10-page-1.html This entails using your own computer at the desk, and networking/streaming the signal to a Hauppauge MediaMVP. I spent $45 on an Avermedia 150 Plus, which has coaxial input for cable and one for FM. Most important, it has an on-board MPEG2 encoder. This saves your PC horsepower. I can work while it records. (Not that there is much to record during the day when I work.) The only problem I've run into is the hard drive. I have 120Gb SATA, but failed to set it up as RAID. So, as it get's filled, it gets slow... very slow. (Plus, I run SQL server and Visual Studio on this box, and they hog RAM.) The mothe...