Tag Archives: TV

HTPC of Doom!

Posted by on June 15, 2012 1 comment

Ok, it wasn’t really of doom, but I liked the title.  This last week I have spent a lot of time building my new media PC to be hooked up to my TV.  I canceled cable, and my Tivo service and am now relying on online services and rentals.  I just got tired of missing things when they aired, the DVR not catching them for some reason and then not being able to see things.

So I built an HTPC (Home Theater PC) to pull in my DVD’s, and play videos straight off the web.  I was using my Xbox for this, but, while the Xbox has been coming out with more and more apps to cover everything, it’s still not perfect.  So I balanced it out with the HTPC.

Sorry for the low-rez, I was excited

Thankfully, I am friends with an HTPC expert, my friend Louis.  The one I built is based on the one he owns.  He helped spec out the parts and guided me through the setup.  See, I haven’t exactly built a desktop PC in around 8 years.  Apparently, a lot has changed since then!  All of the parts arrived on Monday afternoon.  This was bad.  See, I a the type that wants to open and play as soon as I get stuff.  So that evening I dove in to start building.

Huge Mistake.

I was up till 1am before I finally got everything installed and running.  WIndows was fully patched and ready to go.  Then, Tuesday, Louis had me check the mode the Hard drives was running in.  Turns out they were defaulted to IDE and needed to be in ACHI.  Yeah, when I made the switch (even after following instructions to ensure it wouldn’t happen) the OS was wiped out.  I had to do the software portion all over again.

Long story made short, I spent the last few evenings tweaking and configuring.  I am now running the following:

  • [amazon_link id=”B004EBUXHQ” target=”_blank” ]Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost)[/amazon_link]
  • [amazon_link id=”B002X578GE” target=”_blank” ]G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333[/amazon_link]
  • [amazon_link id=”B004Q81CKY” target=”_blank” ]OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-120G 2.5″ 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive[/amazon_link] (SSD) (Boot Drive)
  • 2 x [amazon_link id=”B0042SGDVG” target=”_blank” ]SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive[/amazon_link] (for 4TB Total)
  • [amazon_link id=”B0048D7AD0″ target=”_blank” ]SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card[/amazon_link]
  • [amazon_link id=”B005FE52X6″ target=”_blank” ]ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard[/amazon_link]
  • [amazon_link id=”B005HGPPG6″ target=”_blank” ]LIAN LI Black Aluminum PC-C60B ATX Media Center / HTPC Case[/amazon_link]

Needless to say, I may have gone a bit overboard on the hardware for something as simple as a Media Box.  However, playing Civ-V on the 47” tv is pretty damn cool.

Downside, I am exhausted.  Sleep soon!

Father Son 1/2 size TARDIS build

Posted by on August 1, 2011 1 comment

So, the wife and I have now made it through all of the new Doctors and I am slowly working my way through the classics, as well as catching up on Torchwood.

One of the thing that struck me was the Tardis.  I looked at it early on and thought…..I bet I could build one of those.  See, I love woodworking.  Especially odd ball stuff.  I designed and build a box for my cat to have his food and water in that we could see into, but the dog couldn’t get to it.  So I thought, “why not build a Tardis!”  Shortly afterwards my Son mention that we should do it as a team project.  Since he is prepping to join the military, I figured this was a good bond type of thing for us to do.

So, here we are.  For the last two months I have been browsing the forum Tardisbuilders.com, looking at everyone’s builds and gaining inspiration.  I know that I would have a few days off from work (just switched jobs) and it would be perfect timing for this build.  I eventually want to build a Full scale box but wanted to start small and get ideas.  This will help me build the larger one when it comes time.

So we started Wednesday and I made a point to try and take pictures along the way.

Since this is a 1/2 scale (ish) we started with a simple base frame:

We opted to have the walls be plywood (1/4 inch thick) and cut out the squares.

Sonic Screwdriver says Math is Hard!

Cutting out the squares:

Our Corner pieces are 4×1 inch paired with a 3×1 inch, 4 feet long:

With the walls attached (doors are just leaning)

And here we are after today.  Doors attached and everything mounted on the base:

So Thursday we got the backings on all the panels and added a roof to brace for when we add the tiers (and to hold everything in place.

Also, First Blood happened.  I almost always bleed somehow on every project.  Thankfully it’s only a small puncture.

You may also notice that the top is a tad shorter.  We cut off about 3 inches to solve the tall top problem.  our sinage will be about 3 inches tall so we should have maybe an inch of overage.

A big lesson learned here would be to save the door attachments until after the top is on.  We now will need to take the doors off and trim them up a bit as they stick when opening.  (Through warped wood or being 1/4 inch off.)  That’s one of the downsides to working small scale. even 1/4 of an inch can cause HUGE problems.  

Next stop, Lowes to pick up wood for the Signs and Roof!  I think we may look at doing a flat roof instead of the slanted as in 1/2 scale the difficulty curve is pretty high.

 

We painted on Saturday and that means some outside time.  I am so glad my shop is downstairs in the basement where it’s nice and cool.

So here’s where we are now: Took the doors off and started painting the main body, first coat.

While that was drying (and the wife helped with the second coat) the kid and I went down to build the roof.  here it is sitting on the top. (Not the actual lantern that will be used)

I bought some pre-cut plexi for the windows and left the frost plastic on them.

So that leaves us with the Signs, Window frames, and Lantern for the top.

I opted to not do the Phone box on the side door because of the material we are using being very thin and the overall size being very small.  On the plus side, the whole thing is extremely light!

4+ years of Fandom

Posted by on July 11, 2011 3 comments

For many years I have held a secret. Something that many of my friends would gasp about and possibly revoke my Geek card. It’s been no secret that I am a huge Sci-Fi fan. I own more props, costumes, wall art, toys, etc. than most people (except other geeks like me), but there is something that I had never done that causes most geeks to shiver down to their internal power core.

I had never watched Doctor Who.

Sure, I knew what a TARDIS was, and I was familiar with most of the mythos due to most of my friends being huge fans, but I had never actually seen a single episode. So while browsing through Netflix streaming the other day I noticed that all of the new series (2005-current) was available. I had heard from various friends that if I were to start somewhere, that the 2005 stuff was the way to go. I realize that some purists would say that I should encounter all incarnations of the Doctor, but we are talking baby steps here people!

This is not to say that I won’t go back and watch some early stuff. Since undertaking this task of cramming 6 years of TV into my head, I have already watched 1 story line of the 4th Doctor, and 1 from the 5th, but this is about the newer series that I am going full steam ahead with. That’s not even a joke. A week and a half ago we started with the Christopher Eccleston episodes and have been watching every night, and most of the weekends to catch up to the current Matt Smith seasons. Both Sarah and I have become incredibly addicted to the series.

You may think that this is a good thing, right? Lots of people enjoy The Doctor! Problem is that when I dive into a series like this, I dive into the deep end and keep swimming down. Because of this, I have been stuffing, not only the TV information, but (currently) 4+ years of Who Fandom into my noggin. Catching up on props, T-shirts, costumes, videos, etc.. It’s almost maddening, but I love it so much! I am even now drafting plans for the building of a full scale TARDIS. I have the tools and the space, and I love woodworking, so why not?

So what about the shows? Well, I agree with all of those who told me to start with the 2005 series. The pacing on them are much more up to date with current shows. I went back and watched a few of the older shows and it just seems so much slower and wooden. I will work my way through them slowly but I really love the new format. As far as Doctors go, I really feel bad for Christopher Eccleston. He was a great Doctor and should have been given more time. it was pretty clear that they used him to springboard off of and show that the regeneration of the Doctor is still ongoing. CE was also a great tie in to the older shows as he took that campy brit humor and ran with it (and holy cow, the hair!). We have just finished up with Season 4 and the end of the David Tennent run. I liked DT as a Doctor and he certainly added a lot of the genius ramble to the character, but I think that CE will remain as “My Doctor”.

Which brings us to where we are now. We watched the first episode of season 5, the Matt Smith Doctor. It is way too early to decide my feelings on him. He certainly has that campy but modern feeling down. Time will tell. In the meantime, look for progress posts on the various builds I am doing and well as follow along as I dive deeper into a fandom that spans almost 50 years!