Category: General Life

Because I wasn’t very well over the Christmas and New Year fortnight, Jules and I agreed to go out for a Christmas Lunch, have a few drinks and then home for Christmas Pudding and Brandy Butter.

So far, we’re up to Christmas Dinner. We had a couple of drinks at The Orangery (very nice), we’re at the Carvery (the only place we could guarantee turkey after Christmas) and we’re just trying to decide what to do next.

Ruby_Gem (http://twitter.com/ruby_gem) said you can’t go out for Christmas Dinner, but I guess this disproves that theory :)

Oh, and on this plate, the turkey is somewhere under the roast potatoes, peas, cabbage, apple sauce, cranberry sauce, gravy and of course Yorkshire Pudding :D

Nice!

I saw this in the window of an electrical shop down the road from our house. I’ll have to make a point of asking which license he prefers the next time I go past and he’s open!

So… at some point, surely someone would have noticed the fact that a -2% saving is, in fact, a 2% increase in price?

Why exactly should we be happy about this?

A short while ago, I bought a WiFi Radio from BT. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the simplicity of the design and the audio quality is pretty good… But.

It really doesn’t manage it’s network connection very well, buffering is a little excessive, it can’t cope with large numbers of SMB shares and I want it to be able to do more.

On top of that, I’ve got a PC connected to my TV, which originally was going to be a MythTV box, it worked OK, but I struggled a little, both with the back-end services (the channel guide in particular was a bit of a struggle) and the front-end (I couldn’t make the remote work – my fault entirely for buying without checking it was compatible, and it wasn’t quite unified, so all the TV stuff was in one menu choice, where all DVD and AVI stuff was in another menu, and music was in a third, when really, all the playback should have been under “Play”, all recording should have been under “Recording/Ripping” and the playback screens for each of the media systems was different – I guess as they were all using a different player).

Lastly, I have a pair of DAB radios. I’ve had a few problems with both of these, and I know that my DVB tuner should handle DAB as well.

So, what do I want to do? Merge them all of course!

I’d originally looked at both the Multi-Room systems from both Sony and Philips (the Gigajuke and WACS7500 respectively) but they both have flaws, which are *mostly* solved in MythTV.

I think I want to use EEE-PC (probably 701 or 901s – mostly as I have a “spare” 701, and also a 901 which is my personal laptop) as my remote systems, with the main system being plugged into the TV, as it is at the moment.

Here’s what I want from this system

Must Haves

1) Low profile device
2) WiFi
3) Central store of all Media
4) Remote Control (Bluetooth, IR or Wifi)
5) Easy interface
6) Quick powerup

Should Haves

1) Stream radio from DAB/Internet to all hosts
2) Auto-rip CD tracks

Could Haves

1) Last.FM
2) Bluetooth Proximity Detector for audio up/down and preferences
3) Party Mode (all devices play same stream) and Follow Me (one stream played across multiple devices as move around house)
4) Picture Frame Mode (Play music while pictures are shown – either from a web feed or from local store)

Does anyone have any ideas?

I went
Go-Karting with Jules and her parents last weekend. It was really good fun, and
although I came 15th (of 23 of Jules’ Mum’s colleagues and their families),
Jules’ Dad came 10th and Jules came 7th, it was an EXCELLENT
time.

Here are some
pictures that Jules’ mum took on her phone.

The dodgy caps we’re
wearing are (I think) to stop the helmets getting
sweaty.

See the full gallery on Posterous

This is our new impulse buy, a Britta Water Filter, that holds 3 litres of water, one of which is chilled. It was a measly £62, reduced from £125 bought today at Selfridges.

Isn’t it beautiful?

See the full gallery on Posterous