Replacing subscription TV with a HTPC
Posted by creining | Filed under Uncategorized
I got rid of my subscription to DirecTV on 12/22/2010. It has been a bit over three months without television. Granted I still own a television just no more programming (or monthly bill!). After that fateful day in late December, I found not having television was uncomfortable for only a few days, maybe a week. Cutting the cord to subscription television had been on my mind for awhile yet I was still apprehensive about doing it. I was in the habit of turning the television on when I got home from work or the gym and found myself a lot of times not even watching it. It was functioning as a pacifier. So when I couldn’t flip on the television on anymore, I found myself doing the things I had always done just more of them. I would listen to music and to Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) more, I would spend a bit longer at the gym doing yoga after the workout, I would cook from scratch another night a week and bake more, I would finish books quicker. This was all very good because those are the things I clearly love to do and now I got to do more of them! Over the weeks I felt more relaxed and at ease not having television noise blaring at me and filling space. I feel that having it on (when I’m around one) emits a lot of negative energy. If I were to ever have television programming again I would only turn it on for a specific program that I wanted to watch and then turn it off. However, I don’t think that will ever happen as I discovered and started using an awesome HTPC (Home Theater PC) solution called Plex. Here’s what happened.
Sometime in the third month being subscription television free I thought I should be utilizing that plasma hanging over the fireplace for other entertainment besides the one or maybe two DVDs I watch per week from Netflix. This thought coincided with a recent purchase of mine, a new MacBook Pro to replace my five year old Macbook. With this new MacBook Pro I knew I could easily drive that plasma. There were only two things I needed to decide – what exactly did I need my MacBook Pro to do and how would I do it? Well, I figured that I would need these functions at a minimum:
-Ability to play DVD/Blu-ray discs. I could get rid of my standalone DVD player then! I’m a minimalist…
-Hulu support in order to watch The Daily Show
-Netflix support for streaming movies and television shows
-Native Apple Remote support so I didn’t have to have a keyboard and mouse
And these things would be nice to have:
-iTunes integration for music
-iPhoto integration for photos
-Ability to stream music from Pandora
Now how would I do all this? I had no idea what HTPC software was out there let alone written to run on Mac. Researching this I quickly found out that HTPC users were primarily using three things – XBMC (the original), Plex (an XBMC fork) or Boxee (also an XBMC fork). XBMC I didn’t look at because it doesn’t support Hulu or Netflix natively. Boxee I didn’t look at because I got the impression most users didn’t like it compared to Plex, which seemed to provide all the things I needed, plus the nice to haves and ran on Mac.
Now that I had to decided to run Plex on my MacBook Pro I needed to order a couple things to connect it to my plasma and receiver. I went to MonoPrice and ordered a 3ft Toslink to Mini M/M 5.0mm OD Molded Cable and a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter for about $10 total. The cable is to provide digital audio to my receiver. The MacBook Pro analog headphone jack can output digital 5.1 audio using the S/PDIF protocol if you plug in a Toslink to Mini cable which is pretty neat. The adapter is to provide video to my plasma via HDMI by simply plugging one end into the Thunderbolt port (it doubles as the Mini DisplayPort) and the other to the HDMI cable that was already run to the plasma.
I had already installed Plex on my MacBook Pro and had been playing around with it but I was excited to try it on the plasma. Once I got my order from MonoPrice I got everything hooked up and made sure my MacBook was in clamshell mode. That means it can be closed on my shelf but stays powered on and usable. A really nice behavior is that by using the Apple Remote – from the couch of course – I can go from having the MacBook Pro sleeping on the shelf to waking it and launching Plex. I am really happy with the way Plex looks on the plasma, the interface is gorgeous and watching content via Hulu or Netflix or Youtube is the same quality as DirecTV was.
Plex is a great application. It can have quite a bit of tweaking – I enjoy doing that though – and I’ve run into various bugs but overall it has done everything I have wanted it to do. I could warrant writing a whole post on my Plex configuration and perhaps I will do that next. I can watch DVDs, use Hulu, Netflix, Youtube, Pandora, iPhoto, iTunes plus there are literally hundreds of other plugins that can be installed.
Right now this set up works for me. In the future though I could see making two improvements. One, purchasing a separate system to use as a HTPC like a Mac Mini. Two, the Apple Remote works okay but using programs like Remote Buddy or Sofa Control offer a lot more functionality and flexibility.
Non-toxic house plant
Posted by creining | Filed under Uncategorized
I finally found a plant I can have in my house that will safely coexist with my cat. After finding plant after plant that I liked I would check the list of plants poisonous to cats and would inevitably find it listed. These included the Snake Plant (Sansevieria Laurentii), Corn Plant (Dracaena Massangeana), Rubber Plant (Ficus Elastica), Weeping Fig (Ficus benjamina), and Madagascar Dragon Tree (Dracaena Marginata). I came across the Bamboo Palm (Chamaedorea) and it was actually listed on the non-toxic plant list. As soon as I got it home my cat was gnawing on the leaves so to rectify that I dusted the entire plant with cayenne pepper. Shortly thereafter I found my cat drinking heavily from his water bowl so here’s hoping he learned to stay away. And I have my green thumbs crossed that this palm won’t die. Similar to the Bamboo Palm is the Kentia Palm (Howea forsteriana) and Lady Palm (Rhapis) which are also non-toxic hardy indoor plants that are a good choice.
Combining iPod with a home entertainment system
Posted by creining | Filed under Uncategorized
I had bought an Onkyo iPod dock that allowed me to control my iPod through my Onkyo receiver and remote control but found it a frustrating experience. I didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t switch between playlists or artists (very basic functions like next, previous, stop, pause) but I couldn’t see the menu from across the room anyways. I was happy to see two great new products from the literally hundreds of new iPod accessories on the show floors at both CES and Macworld Expo recently. The Griffin TuneCenter and the DLO HomeDock which both let you see the menu on your television. In my opinion the TuneCenter is less expensive and more featureful. There’s even a wifi enabled option.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) cheat sheet
Posted by creining | Filed under Uncategorized
The voicemail on my employer provided cell phone was not working so I decided to call the provider, US Cellular. I went through their Interactive Voice Response system which took over 4 minutes, waited on hold a bit, then the phone started ringing (yay, I get to talk to someone!) but then I was disconnected. Argh. At this point I remembered the IVR Cheat Sheet by Paul English that lists numerous businesses, their public phone numbers and the process to bypass their IVRs. US Cellular’s IVR bypass consists of pressing 0 twice after choosing English. After I did that the phone rang and I was talking to a real live human! Thanks Paul English!
Santiago Calatrava Architecture
Posted by creining | Filed under Uncategorized
Santiago Calatrava is my favorite architect, his designs are unique and anthropomorphic. I was surprised to learn that he had done the new white concrete Quadracci Pavilion for the Milwaukee Museum of Art (I need to take the short trip there soon). My favorite tower of Calatrava’s is Turning Torso in Sweden. Recently a 2,000 foot tower in Chicago has been proposed which would make Chicago the homeplace of the country’s tallest building.
PocketMod: Free Disposable Pocket Organizer
Posted by creining | Filed under Uncategorized
PocketModis a great personal organizer for me. I dislike PDAs and using my iPod or cellphone for notes is too cumbersome. I can just carry my pocketmod in my wallet…now if only I always had a pen with me.
Mashup mania
Posted by creining | Filed under Uncategorized
I’ve been listening to a few different mashup albums over the past few months. Of course, there’s the infamous Grey Album by DJ Danger Mouse that combined Jay-Z’s The Black Album with The Beatles The White Album. But much more brilliant is the work of The Kleptones who’ve combined dusty Queen songs with classic and modern rap on A Night at the Hip-Hopera. Yoshimi Battles The Hip Hop Robots and From Detroit To J.A. are also available from The Kleptones and are really good spins as well. Not quite on par with The Kleptones, but just as genius, is a mashup by DJ Cappel that blends Sinatra with Notorious BIG on Blue Eyes Meets Bed-Stuy. Not a mashup but worth mentioning is a complete soundtrack to Super Mario World covered by one man.
WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price
Posted by creining | Filed under Uncategorized
I RSVP’ed to attend a screening in my area of WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price. It’s directed by Robert Greenwald of whose movies I’ve seen include the documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism which I really enjoyed.
Gmaps pedometer
Posted by creining | Filed under Uncategorized
I found the project Gmap pedometer, to be quite useful. It is one of the many recent web projects that are taking advantage of the Google Maps API, such as finding cheap gas, webcams, or Chicago crimes. The Gmap pedometer let me enter the route I go on when I jog and than calculated the distance, 2.0814791576196074 miles a leg or 4.1629583152392148 miles roundtrip.
Useful Firefox extensions and RSS feeds
Posted by creining | Filed under Uncategorized
I found the Firefox extension Bookmarks Synchronizer to be really useful for having my bookmarks available to me at both work and home. I installed the extension on my main home and work machines and it uploads/downloads via FTP (HTTP/S also available) the Firefox bookmark file, xbel.xml, from a publically available server. The 0.9.6 version of Bookmarks Synchronizer does not work with Firefox 1.0PR but I found the authors website had a version called bookmarksftp.xpi here compatible with 1.0PR. In other Firefox news, I really enjoy using the extension Sage, the RSS/Atom feed aggregator. Firefox 1.0PR introduced live bookmarks, which is an RSS reader but I still prefer Sage as it’s a bit more mature. A couple recent additions to my feeds include the one provided by mp3blogs.org which I find useful for discovering new music, Netflix finally offers RSS feeds so I can follow new releases, and watchcow.net offers a feed builder to track Amazon products or wishlists.