I bought an RCA antenna to pick up the local stations for the new TV. After some adjustment, I finally got five channels to come in. The three networks, plus the local PBS affiliate and of course Univision! KEYE here in the Austin area has their morning newscast in HD, and of course it looks great. I am looking forward to watching some Sunday NFL in HD, even though I am not a huge football fan. All-in-all, the antenna is great, not only because of the HD, but because we don’t currently have local channels via our Dish Network plan. Now we have access to those channels, plus they look awesome.
Yesterday we bought a brand new LCD tv at Best Buy. This is to replace our downstairs family room television, and we decided to just go “cheap” with this one, but then later get a really nice one for our upstairs “media room” when we have some furniture! The requirements for the downstairs LCD were connection to PC (to watch Japanese dorama over the network), 720p, and it had to fit in our entertainment center. At Best Buy, we looked at the entire range, and settled on the Insignia brand, which is Best Buy’s house brand. It looked pretty good, actually, and the price was great. Plus it was 1080p!! We also used a 12%-off coupon, so we were stoked. When we put it in our entertainment center, we found that it just barely fit, with maybe ½” clearance on each side (including the top!). Unfortunately, there is a set of RCA inputs in the side which are inaccessible at the moment, but a little drillwork to the side of the entertainment center will fix that.
I also picked up a set of component cables for the Wii, and now the Wii looks amazing! The menus are really sharp, and the games look fantastic in 16:9 widescreen. The only things left to buy are a set of component cables to hook the dvd player up to it, and perhaps an over-air HD antenna. Once I get those, we will have everything set and hooked up, including our archaic VHS machine.
I really want the Asus Eee PC. It’s tiny (a little bigger than a dvd movie case) and runs a custom version of Linux. The cool thing is, it can play DivX and Xvid videos, which means it is perfect as a J-dorama viewer! It’s relatively cheap too, at $399. The specs are pretty modest, but running Linux, it doesn’t have to be so beefy. And with all the storage on flash memory, the thing boots up in 15 seconds.
I will be following the Eee PC community closely to see how people’s upgrades go (memory, OS, etc). Loading Ubuntu on my old laptop has really turned me on to Linux and has shown me what a great alternative to Windows and OS X it really is. If I get one, I am not sure if I would change the OS to Ubuntu or keep the custom preinstalled version of Linux, Xandros. All the apps are there with the default installation, including Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Skype, and the movie player. I am not sure if you can add more apps with Xandros, which may lead me to installing Ubuntu, but I will let the Eee PC community work out the details!
You know, this thing would make a really nice e-book reader as well. It’s way more versatile than the similarly priced Sony Reader or forthcoming Amazon Kindle. I bet those two companies aren’t too happy about the Eee PC coming out!
In the end, I probably won’t get one (budget!), but it’s fun to do a little wishful thinking.
Last night as I was playing around with Ubuntu, my bro IM’d me a link to Amazon for Endless Ocean. Only $29!!! So I preordered it. Should be shipping around January 25th.
Last night I was up late tweaking Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”. The update from “Fiesty Fawn” last week went pretty good, except the wireless card wouldn’t activate on startup. If I booted the computer without the card plugged in, then plugged it in after Ubuntu was running, then it would work fine. Not too big a deal, but still a hassle. Part of my tweaking last night was to get that card to load on startup, and I just had to add one line to a certain text file. I did this with the earlier install, but it must have gotten over-ridden with the update. So now my laptop is fully functional. I then started doing the fun stuff, which was installing themes! I found a couple good ones that look kind of like Vista, and I think they look nice. Click on the pic above for a larger version.
This weekend I bought and downloaded a couple of MP3 albums from the AmazonMP3 store. It was an almost perfect experience. The only hiccup was that I had clicked on the “By MP3 album with 1-Click” button, but then canceled the Amazon MP3 Downloader installation because something came up and I had to leave my desk. (You need to install that application in order to buy full albums.) Sometime later, I went back to the AmazonMP3 store, but couldn’t find my download waiting for me in the regular cart, so I browsed the catalog again to find the album, then did the 1-Click purchase. The Downloader started, and I could see the progress going, but then noticed that it was downloading the album twice! I opened up the Download Folder, and found two copies of each song. However, it seems Amazon is smart and I was only charged one time. But still, that order that was in limbo is a little bit screwed up.
What is cool about the Amazon MP3 Downloader app is that it automatically adds the new songs to iTunes. Very convenient! I really like the Amazon MP3 Store and recommend it fully!
I was tagged by Manny to participate in “My Desktop Free View” meme and post a pic of my desktop. So, here it is! (Click on the pic for a large view) My iBook is pretty sparse. I try to keep the desktop really clean. It’s my email/writing/addressbook/calendar/IM/podcast powerhouse! Anyone else want to post their desktops?
