Archive for October, 2008

Something else nice from Glasses Direct – a Discount!!!

October 22nd, 2008

Cheap prescription Mambo Carnival glasses

Following my post yesterday about the fantastic Glasses Direct I’ve been contacted by them with a note of thanks, and they’ve given me a discount code that you can use for the rest of this month to get 5% off of any order.

The code is: geekout and is valid for the rest of the month.

Just enter this when you go through the checkout and get 5% off.  So that means you could get my glasses, the Mambo Carnival for just  £33.25 this week.  Now that is value, and you’ll get an edible eyeball too!

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Posted in Uncategorized

The Digital Lifestyle

October 21st, 2008

Just thought you’d like to know that I’ve just posted my first blog entry to my blog on The Digital Lifestyle.

I’ve also just put up a review of TunerFree MCE.

I’m now going to move most of my Media Center related posts over to my blog on The Digital Lifestyle, but you’ll always be able to see the posts in my friend feed to the left.

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Posted in Media Center

The best way to buy glasses

October 21st, 2008

Sometimes a website gives you such great service that you just want to write something about them.  Glasses Direct has done that for me!new avtar big

In case you don’t know, which you probably don’t if you don’t wear them, glasses can be really expensive.  I wanted a new pair so I did the usual rounds on the high street, the only pair I found that I liked were upward of £200 – that’s a new PC!!  So I decided to get online and went strait for Glasses Direct.

They have loads of styles online to choose from and with much umm and arring with my fiancé we decided on a pair, then a pair of sunglasses.  You can see the new pair in this picture, which is incidentally my new profile picture / avatar everywhere (hence the new).

I placed the order by entering the details from my last prescription (which was from a hastily purchased and ill considered pair of Ray Bans).  I got an email to say that the order was placed.

A couple of days later I got an email to say that they’d been manufactured and sent.  The first pair made it through the letter box.  They were the sunglasses, and frankly they’re great.  Normally when I put on some new glasses my eyes have to adjust for a couple of days, these didn’t.  The new specs in this picture arrived a couple of days later.  Both arrived with an edible eyeball!!!!!

So, get your glasses here.  The website is great, the service is great, the delivery (which was from SMS) was great.  I’ll be buying some more soon just for the heck of it.  Oh yeah, and they blog too.  Total cost for both pairs £91 !!!

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Posted in Cool geek stuff

Developing in MCML

October 20th, 2008

image I’m about to start trying to write a little addin for Windows Media Center to let me make better use of the Y-CAM.  I’ve applications, like MCENetCam, but they just aren’t doing it for me.

What I want to have happen is:

  • Screen where I can view my Y-CAMs live feed (it’s RTSP).
  • Small pop-up that alerts me when the Y-CAM detects motion.

Learning to develop in MCML is a bit tricky, so I’ve scoured around and found this guide on Push a Button on developing with MCML, I actually read about this a while ago on thedigitallifestyle.com.  It looks good and assuming I can get something off the ground I’ll be donating to the author.  I’ve also armed myself with my copy of Visual Studio 2008 Pro (but Express is all that’s needed) and the Media Center SDK. 

I wonder what else I’ll need along the way, hopefully this will be small evolving series.

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Posted in Media Center, Y-CAM

The snag list

October 14th, 2008

Ok, it is time to admit it.  All is not well in the geeky home.  There are little niggles, everythings working but it’s not slick and it’s not well integrated enough.  It’s time to start finding some solutions.  Here are the snags, if you know a way I can overcome any of them, then let me know in a comment on this post, email me, or twitter me.

  • There’s an annoying .net framework error popping up on the Media Center every so often.
  • My Harmony remote isn’t quite set up well enough.  It doesn’t work well when the Media Center is already on.  The problem is that I’ve installed a standby saving power bar, which I want to keep, but it doesn’t play nice with the remote.
  • I need to find a way to ARM the Y-CAM when we leave the house and disarm it when we return.  Or I need to move it to an area with slightly less traffic, i.e. where we don’t walk all the time so that my mailbox doesn’t fillup!
  • I need to be able to view the Y-CAM stream on my Windows Mobile device, or at least be able to see the latest image.  That might mean configuring FTP, which means finding a secure FTP server on the net.
  • I want to workout the overall power consumption of the kit in the house.  I might be scared.
  • The TV Arial just doesn’t seem to be quite right, it’s a few degrees off!  Time for cable?
  • My Windows Home Server is using a bit too much power, 40kwh in standby – that needs to come down.

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Posted in Cool geek stuff, Home Server, Home automation, Media Center, Windows Mobile

Y-CAM

October 13th, 2008

For a while now I’ve been looking at some home monitoring systems and how I can best integrate them into my digital experience.  Previously I’ve used Yawcam with some pretty great results but currently I’m trying to reduce my carbon foot print and I want to make everything that has to run as low power consumption a possible.  For that reason I really wanted an IP Webcam that didn’t need a PC powered on all the time.image

Having done loads of looking about the only really good thing I could find was from Y-CAM.  It’s now been delivered and it’s installed.  I picked the Y-CAM Black and bought from ebuyer, since it was about £30 cheaper than everywhere else.

Having installed it, at first it really wasn’t a great experience, it didn’t like my router and it brought down the whole network…I’ve done a firmware update now and all seems to work well.  Very well.

This camera sees really well in the dark with its knight vision, and the management software is pretty good.  Actually it’s a breeze to setup.  It can do motion alerts to email, which again was simple to setup and allows me to select 4 regions of the picture to watch for motion.

Two I need to work through at the moment:

  • I need to setup FTP publishing to somewhere so that I can view the camera at work since I can’t see the active X control
  • I need to get an app for my WinMo phone that allows me to view mp4 encoded RTSP…unfortunately HTC Streaming media won’t cut it.

Finally I’ve also emailed the manufacturer to find out if they have an API, so that I can develop something to easily arm the motion detection.

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Posted in Cool geek stuff, Home automation, Media Center, Mobile, Windows Mobile

Something’s been buggin me for a while

October 6th, 2008

Proactive.image

Some people really don’t get it, so here I’m going to define what it means to be proactive.

This is from the single source of all truth that is Wikipedia:

to act before a situation becomes a source of confrontation or crisis" vs. after the fact.

Well actually as it says it’s from Stephen R. Covey’s 7 Habits of… .  The next one if from Dictionary.reference.com

serving to prepare for, intervene in, or control an expected occurrence or situation, esp. a negative or difficult one; anticipatory: proactive measures against crime.

The first of these is interesting because it states that you do something before confrontation or crisis, the latter talks about preparing to prevent something necessary.  Why is this a source of frustration…mainly because I’m being asked to be “proactive”, but to wait until people feel the pain first. 

That, to me, is being poised to be reactive, which is not a bad thing, but call it what it is!

Image from anothergreatescape.co.uk

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Posted in Blogging