NeutralAxis

Exterior work is finishing up at my renovated house and to keep an eye on progress with the exterior deck work, I set up a webcam, using WebcamXP software. (continue reading…)

Readers with iPhones can now see an optimized version of this site thanks to the addiition of the iWPhone plugin.  As the opportunity arrives, I may work on changing the color scheme to better match the standard colors.

After making a change to the URL for the blog, I discovered that links to all the photos broke. I figured the easiest way to fix them would be through editing the mysql database and managed to figure out how to change every affected link in every post in one step. (continue reading…)

Tried fiddling again with MythTV to get it working better and was again stymied by one of those linux things that will raise your blood pressure.  Screen resolution.  Why is choosing a screen resolution so darn difficult?

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I’d always heard that refrigerators were a major energy user within the home, and decided to check mine against the modern norm.  The results were not what I expected.

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I’m trying to learn web page layout using CSS which didn’t exist yet when I first taught myself to code HTML. Trying to manage the differences between Firefox and IE is an unexpected pain that I don’t quite have worked out yet.

FancyZoom is installed and working. After looking at several blogs that had thumbnail images that could be upsized without leaving the page, I decided I wanted to find how that was done. I came across FancyZoom and it couldn’t hardly be any easier to install. [Updated: Used this for 8 months and decided to change to the Lightbox2 plugin.  Its simpler to install and has an easier mechanism for viewing multiple images.] (continue reading…)

This looks interesting.  From the Subsonic website “Subsonic is a free, web-based media streamer, providing ubiquitous access to your music. Use it to share your music with friends, or to listen to your own music while at work. You can stream to multiple players simultaneously, for instance to one player in your kitchen and another in your living room. (continue reading…)

I’ve made my first stab at installing MythTV, via Mythbuntu.  I figured that ought to have everything included, eliminating the need to go look for all the dependencies it needs.  It did, but getting it installed was no simple matter.  Like many Linux programs, there seems to be little effort on the part of the developers to make things simple for a novice. (continue reading…)

I had some free time and decided I’d try installing MythTV on an old PC that’s been sitting idle for a few months.

POP, POP, sizzle.  As soon as I hit the power button, the magic smoke that powers all electronics was released.

So much for that idea.  Now to rummage for a spare power supply.

[Update: 4/4/09]  I picked up a cheapo Logisys 480W power supply for the repair.  The box says “silent”.  My ears say its louder than any power supply I’ve ever owned, and its going back.