Friday, January 09, 2004

Wavelinker bluetooth dongle

The manager software that comes with this dongle is aweful [XTNDConnect], so I did a search and came up with this

The hardware is eaactly the same as the Belkin F8T001 USB dongle.

On the belkin.com site. Go to drivers , bluetooth and select F8T001 drivers

Tuesday, January 06, 2004

Watch what you say....

Interesting articles http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html and follow links from it (from slashdot..)

Quotes:

"If you could travel back in a time machine, one thing would be true no matter where you went: you'd have to watch what you said."

"Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot."

"A lot of the questions people get hot about are actually quite complicated. There is no prize for getting the answer quickly."

Paul Graham


Follow-up article on slashdot:

I don't know what this counts as, but here's my shot, it's something I've been considering for a while.

Nothing we do actually matters. At firs this may not sound shocking, especially to those of you who are, like me, unreligious. Think about it though - I could destroy the planet, erase every life here and every achievement that humanity has ever made, yet it would not cause anything that mattered to happen. Maybe other planets would be affected, maybe the solar system would fall apart, so, who cares? I may get many replies saying 'All life matters' or 'It matters if the solar system is destroyed' but I challenge any of you to back that up factually.

MoonBuggy

You are too simple to understand your place in the bigger picture


On children and swearing

Terrorism is less of a threat than bad drivers [RayBender]

Monday, January 05, 2004

Personal Media Centre Wishlist

Wouldn't it be nice to have on appliance? Just the one. No more TiVo / video / DVD player cluttered below the tv, just one slim silent case. There are a few projects out there that do this, for example
http://www.mythtv.org

I have a few more requirements for them, lets just integrate everything while we are at it. Why not.


Physical Architecture



  • Backend server(s) -capture TV and
    storage.
  • Small STB to replace all existing units (video/DVD/TiVo)

    • One per TV




Features



  • TV

    • TiVo like
    • Program guide with
      overlay
    • Video editing (crop/join)
    • Storage folders
    • Users
    • Multi channel (add on tuners)

  • Video

    • DVD Rip
    • Duke box functionality
    • Automatic film information
    • Camcorder integration

  • Music

    • Fully configurable mp3 (etc) server
    • Use as aux in to Hi-fi with TV off

  • Web

    • Context sensitive google searches

      • Music/film advertisement??

    • General browsing capability

      • Banking etc..

  • Email

    • Email / news reader
    • Mail Notification overlay

      • Rule based

  • Phone

    • Caller ID overlay

  • Images

    • jpg photo server
    • Digital camera integration

  • games

    • ???

  • Security


    • Integrated home security
    • Alarm status / visualization
    • Event history
    • Security camera view


      • Overlay on doorbell press?

  • General


    • Automatic rip - mp3/divx etc


      • just pop the cd/dvd into the drive, and it will appear
        in the menu




Out of Sight

Cool film, doesn't stand watching loads of times though - the best death in a film, bar none - the fat guy trips on the stairs - excellent.

Back to work tomorrow, wonder what the new year has in store? .....


[1998 George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez ]