The first of the new toys has arrived. The ATC 610-GX1 case came in yesterday, it’s pretty slick looking, can hardly wait to get some components into it. FedEx says the next box from NewEgg should be here yesterday. That’s got all the really fun stuff in it. Looks like I should be doing a lot of computer stuff this weekend then. My plan is to dissassemble Vincent (my main PC) first, putting in it’s new motherboard, CPU, and RAM in, and get it back up and running Gentoo (maybe WinXP too, though I think that’s going to take a reinstall.) After that, I’ll work on getting the HTPC, tentatively called Shadow, put together. I’m hoping to use distcc to speed up it’s installation a bit. It’ll also be running Gentoo. I’m turning into a regular Linux nut at this rate.
Other than that, not much has been going on recently. Andrea is off in Italy for a couple weeks with her parents. I asked her to bring back something to decorate the apartment with, so I’m looking forward to see what she comes up with. Also, looks like Evil Dave is back for the summer. Nick is probably lurking around too by now. Matt says he’ll be back at the end of next week.
This is my first posting to be done wirelessly from a PalmOS device. Yay! I’m out at the Moody Point wellhouse today. I’ve already done all the stuff I’m here to do, so Mark is letting me play with his Handspring Treo.Not so sure I like the keyboard on this thing. It’s making my hands hold the device oddly, and it’s beginning to hurt, so I think I’m going to stop now.
It finally happened. I broke down and purchased all the fun PC upgrades I’ve been wanting. After I get the parts, I’ll be able to upgrade my main PC, and have enough parts left over to built the HTPC. Here’s a quick rundown of the new toys:
The Antec PSU’s seem like they should be pretty cool. They have thermally controlled fans apparently, along with special fan power connectors so that your case fans can also benefit from the thermal control. Should work out nicely in the HTPC. I got one for the main PC too, since it’s PSU kindof sucks. It doesn’t have a bottom fan, so I tend to get a lot of heat buildup above the CPU.
I was tempted to replace all my case fans with the Vantec Tornado fans (note the 55dB vs the 20dB for the Stealths) in order to compete with Matt in the World’s Loudest PC arena. However, I decided that my hearing was worth more than that title.
So, probably in about a week I should have a bunch of fun new toys to play with. I plan on throwing Gentoo onto the HTPC, and initally testting it out with just running Xfree86 or something. I would like to use the MythTV interface to it, since it is very very slick.
Went to see The Matrix Reloaded last night. Somewhat mixed feelings about the movie. On one hand, the fight scenes and CG looked very nice. The CG may have been a little over the top in a few cases, making it somewhat hard to suspend disbelief, but it was visually impressive throughout. However, it didn’t really have the same feel as the first one, where The Matrix was a great, groundbreaking movie, Reloaded is just a good action film. Still doesn’t stop me from enjoying it and wanted to see it again, however.
Which I will be, this weekend by the sounds of it. A group of people I know through CS and IRC are getting together to go see it, and I’ve been invited to tag along. Should be fun.
In other news, I’m going to be borrowing a computer from work to start doing HTPC things with. I think it’s a K6-III 500Mhz or so, not 100% sure. I need to dig up some RAM from it before I can do much. I want to just get the Matrox card into it, get some software loaded up, and see how certain things handle on the TV. Just a proof-of-concept sort of deal. My eventual plan is to upgrade my main PC and use it’s leftover guts to build the final HTPC.
Oh, and I picked up Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow for GBA. It’s been pretty fun so far, something to play in my spare time at home. I think I need to get an Afterburner to install in it though. Still can’t see what I’m doing half the time.
Life is good. Things have been going pretty well recently. Work is moving along, though somewhat slowly. I’ve been testing out our SimLink-RS software under Gentoo Linux, instead of the NetBSD that we currently use. I’m hoping that V4L makes it worthwhile. Since we do a lot of stuff with cameras now, it’s a pain to add specific software to deal with each new camera thing that comes along. V4L should help us to use a wider range of video hardware with little to no additional code. That would be a very good thing. Also, we’re thinking of switching back to MySQL for our database, since we’ve had nothing but trouble from Postgres, but that means changing a lot of PHP code, since PHP doesn’t have a database abstraction layer like Perl’s DBI.
In non-work news, I saw X2 over the weekend. I thought it was a pretty decent flick, not something I’m itching to run out and see again, but it was a fun way to waste away an evening. One thing that bugged me though was the hydro dam. They imply a couple of times that the dam is active, but when they show a room full of generators, none of them are turning, and there was no loud overpowering noise coming from them. I also think they’re use of the spillway was dubious, but I’m not 100% sure on that.
Andrea came over to see me on Sunday. We talked a little, and spent some time together, and I think everything’s going to be okay. I’ve missed her a lot, and it’s good to have her back as a friend. So, for the time being, everything in life is going pretty good.
Which just means some huge bad thing is waiting around the corner, but there’s nothing I can do about that, so I might as well enjoy it while I can. 
