Frankensony HTPC

I am in the very early stages of developing a Home Theater PC. I am using a Sony DVP-S715 DVD (see review here) player as the basis for the case and hope to be able to use the genuine remote. I am thinking of the following bits and pieces.

• mythTV
• Use the original sony remote for the S715 player
• Small Form Factor Motherboard (VIA Eden ?)
• 512mb RAM
• 80 gig HDD for DVR (temp storage only)
  
• 2 gig Compact Flash RAM for OS
• 802.11g Wifi (most of the music/video content is on server)
• S VHS out
• Composite Video out
• All original buttons will work, some obscure DVD related ones will be reassigned.
• Where the display was I will make a flip down panel with card reader and USB
• MAME using Play station controllers for interface with USB adapters.
• Laptop Dual layer DVD burner
• 12 volt so it can be used in the car

Well thats about it for now, I dont have any money to do anything else for a while so it will gather dust for now....

Electric Dreams

Music I grew up with :)

Scary isnt it :-0

Bright Flames burn the fastest

Kitty Kat Kollar

Logo I designed for DIET PC

Animusic

A coll clip from one of the animusic DVD's I look forward to the day i can afford to buy them..

Save the "Net" Petition

If you have had a look at the videos here and you want to send a message to your local Federal member of Parliament in Australia then head on over to this site and locate your electorate, copy the text below and paste it in to the email to your Member of Parliament expressing your outrage at the thought that the internet is anything else then a common carrier...

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Petition for Internet Neutrality

Dear Insert Member of parliament Name here

Parliament must act now to preserve a free and open Internet.

Major players in the ISP and Telecommunications arena's both domestic and foreign are trying to control and limit the type, amount or quality of the internet traffic routed over their networks. This can not be allowed to happen, the internet is not the property of the "carriers" they only carry the data, they own this data flow as much as they own the voice on the end of a telephone.

They are "Common Carriers" and as such should not be allowed to control the type, amount or quality of the internet traffic they are routing.

The majority of the content on the internet is user created with sites like myspace.com, youtube.com and blogger.com being created not by a team of Managers and staff but by the people who use the internet, not for work but for entertainment.

The internet must stay neutral, the change is already happening even here in Australia, for example a pastime of many Australian males is the V8 supercars. The telemetry data from the cars is available on the internet but the caveat..

You have to be a Bigpond customer.

I don't just mean you have to sign up to the Bigpond/V8 site and pay a fee, you have to be a telstra bigpond Broadband customer to access the telemetry. I am not saying that premium services need be free, I am more then happy to pay for the V8's for instance but I shouldn't have to change the "common carrier" I subscribe to just to access content.

Please vote for enforceable network neutrality and keep tollbooths, gatekeepers, and discrimination off our Internet.

Insert your name here

Insert your address here

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thats it copy the text above change the name's and address and email it off... and please don't forget to send people to this site or if you don't want to do that email them with the petition instead

Net Nuetrality

"SAVE the INTERNET"
Do you want a net run by the telco's ?

Sign the petition

Suprise for Blossy

Last night was an all niter, I didn't go to bed until nearly 6am this is what I was doing for Blossy...

"Installed and found by the OS, the Hard drive that lost all it's data in a lightning storm, notice that the drive (R) is showing 99% free space, not good for a drive that was nearly full 24 hrs ago"

"Searching the hard drive byte by byte for file and directory structures"

"The Directory for all the recovered files"

"Copying the first batch of found files"

"Copying the second batch of files"

Incoming storm...

Here is an image from NASA showing the huge storm cell heading in to OK. that is where our friend Diva lives...

Electric car's

Lets draw a circle

I dont think I could do this with a compass !!!

Anti-Drug film

U.F.O. Hunting "SC-01"

I have been reading about UFO and how they may be visible outside the visible light spectrum , so I have taken a logitech 640 x 480 web cam and attached it to a 70 - 210 mm telephoto lens. The Infrared filter that was on the CCD is gone as well as the standard lensing this makes it pretty good in low light as long as there is an IR component to it.

I have made bellows out of a PVC water pipe patch 2 inch in diameter and sleeved the lens in to that, a honey jar lid holds the CCD in place. Draw strings activate the iris and the whole lot is secured to a cordless drill body with 3 inch hose clamps.

I have a 12v di-chromic light on top with visible light filter so in effect it is an infrared floodlight.. The original battery pack for the drill is 12 volt as well so it was easy to use the existing switch to turn the IR floodlight on and off, This will make it great for wildlife spotting as well as trying to see UFO's in the IR spectrum.

I have named this creation the SC-01 for Speed camera, my son thinks it looks like a radar gun and it is set up to quickly acquire the target while a more powerful telephoto lens can be swung on to the target. This takes a bit longer as they are on tripods.

The green thing on the top of it at the left (the back of the camera) is a housing I am building an IR spotlight from LED's it is interchangeable with the 12 di-chromic that is housed in a small corn kernel tin and both the 12v and the diode clip in to the bezel from a stuffed d cell mag-light.

A quick coat of matte black is in order tomorrow afternoon and then I will be happy with it. The blue thing on the lens is a hood the houses the visible light filter which is made from a lid of a fly spray can, with a hole about 3/4 inch round in the middle. It has a bit of exposed proceed 35 millimeter film (read looks completely black) to only allow IR and not visible light through.

I will post some pics in the next few days of IR and combined Visible/IR photos.