This is my first BLOG post. What this site basically is, is just a log of my dreams and and what I am doing to make those dreams come to reality. It specifically relates to my Digital Home efforts. I decided a year and a half ago that VHS sucked big time, and it was time to look at alternatives. I live in South Africa where to say we have limited access to cool technology is an understatement of note!! I will not bore you with any gripes right now, but I will list them at a later time.
I am currently running MS XP Media Center at home, and I honestly don’t know how I lived without it! It has changed the lives of both me and my wife, (who works in the medical field and tolerates more than enjoys my constant quest to improve our lives!?!?).
Getting Media Center to work in South Africa was a challenge. I have American family, so I was able to get a remote and a PVR-250MCE card and got it to work. A mate of mine at work here is also equally passionate about this stuff, although does think I go overboard on some ideas. We together tried to get the TV guide for our SA channels into MCE for weeks, with no luck. He eventually found a site in SA that scrapes the entire DSTV (our statelite TV service) guide from their website, and enables us to download it in XML format. With some help from Reinhard on the GreenButton.com who wrote an EXCELLENT program called Smartguide we managed to get everything working, and it ROCKS!!!
My next plan is to put Media Center in my car. It makes no sense to me to have all your CD’s stored digitally in your house, when the place you listen to music most often (in your car) still requires you to use old CDs. I will keep this site up do date on my work in this area.
I’ll also write my humble opinions of the current 2005 Formula 1 season (if anyones interested!)