Andrew's Inner Sanctum

Well, it’s Australia Day 2010, the last day of holidays before school properly resumes tomorrow and year 12 begins. It will be a busy year but on that day November 19th 2010, it will be worth it because school will be officially over. I hope to have time to keep blogging here, but school work might get in the way of that, I also hope school work doesn’t interrupt my Andrew Tech Help news and how to articles.

Today I had a number of different things happen. Sadly my digital TV will be off for a couple of weeks as the small adapter for the aerial broke off, so it will take at least a week to buy one off ebay I suspect. So that’s a bit disappointing, but not much you can do.

I did play with Microsoft’s Windows Virtual PC today. I had some terrible trouble getting it going though. Microsoft software was giving me some contradicting messages. One Microsoft utility said it was all working perfectly and another one said it was not working at all. I had to do a BIOS update and now it works perfectly. I can run applications designed for XP like Macromedia Fireworks 8 in a virtual XP mode which acts like a Windows 7 application. I shall hopefully write about it on my website soon.

I have a new sleep time of between 11:30pm-12:00am EST on school nights for the next 10 months and then I’m finally free from bed times! Thanks for reading this blog and yea – 10 months of school left :O

Tomorrow, the Last First Day of School!

I haven’t updated this for a few weeks because I’ve been very busy with a number of different things. Firstly I have TV on my computer now, which I mentioned in last blog post. I’m using a Pinnacle Dazzle 71e USB stick with Windows Media Center on Windows 7. Windows Media Center is a great piece of software. Thankfully it now has a nearly complete channel guide. Channel 9 is the stick in the mud here, not properly categorising programs into genres and not always labeling programs properly on 9 Digital, 9 HD and Go!

I’ve found Go! to be the best Channel on Digital TV at the moment, because it keeps showing episodes of Get Smart,  Seinfeld, Hogan’s Heros, The Flintstones and Frasier. It works just like a TiVo except the recordings aren’t encypted, I can burn them to DVD, copy them to USB or do anything I like with them. I also have a great program installed which lets me automatically cut out the commercials out of recordings! There is series recording available which means I can automatically record any show I like for an entire season automatically, as long as the computer is on. Doesn’t matter what Channel or Time it’s on, it will be recorded. The only 2 issues I have is that I only bought 1 tuner, which means I can only watch the channel I’m recording and only record 1 channel at a time. I’ll eventually fix this problem by buying either another tuner or a more expensive dual tuner. The other issue is that networks in this country don’t have to stick to the times they put on the EPG, so shows will always run late which is really annoying. Other than that, a TV tuner and Windows Media Center is a cheap way to record digital TV!

So other than spending my time watching TV, the computer which I’ve set up to be my TV computer is also my data server, because I bought 2 x 500GB hard drives for it, giving me 1TB of storage now. My laptop now is just a computer which reads and write the data from the server computer, while also caching a copy so I can use the important files while I’m away from the server.

Lastly I also turned 17, and I’d like to just share 2 gifts that I received on my birthday from some very awesome friends Ashleigh, Ashlee and Caitlin (but then again, all my friends are awesome ) Just the pictures will explain all that’s needed to know.

Painting By Ashlee and Caitlin

Shirt By Ashleigh

Well that’s all for this blog post. Next week I’m back at school for my final year of school. I’ve achieved a lot of things I’d like to do during the holidays and so am ready to polish off my schooling life with a good OP hopefully to get me started in University in 2011.

Today I made my first steps towards a Media Centre PC. AC Nielsen gave me a $100 gift card which I needed to use before April 2010, so I decided to buy something I probably wouldn’t have purchased otherwise. So I purchased a $99 Pinnacle Dazzle *TV 71e stick from Dick Smith. This stick doesn’t work on my laptop yet. The Release Candidate version of Windows 7 and Windows Media Center mustn’t support my stick, because it works fine on the final version of Windows 7 on other laptops in the house. So next week when I install Windows 7 Professional onto my system, It will work.

I’m also going to buy two 500GB hard drives and this will mean I can record and store shows on it. My sister wants me to record Ugly Betty and Gossip Girl (I can hear Caitlin and Ashlee cheering from here at the sound of those words ) and then using Windows 7 Homegroups, share it directly to her Windows Media Center.

This is also the first time I’ll have digital TV in my house, access to 7Two, Go! and ABC2.  The other final thing I have to do is buy an extension aerial cable so I can use the roof aerial, because the little tiny one doesn’t give me the coverage sadly.

So yea – I’m excited, I’m basically getting a TiVO for $120 instead of $699 – screw that Freeview and your non recording ways! As Uncle Leo says “Screw You!”

Well the last time I wrote here, it was 2009 and now it’s 2010. I now have all 3 of my websites back onto the net and I must stop procrastinating and actually write the 11 articles I promised I would, there’s been lots of stuff happening lately that I really should cover. I also need to record 2 podcasts, 1 is my TechPod, the audio summary of those 11 articles and also Sam Anderson, KG and myself need to record our, look at 2009 in 2010 podcast, basically our thoughts of the last 10 years.

I’ve also got a bit of spending to do to get myself equipped for 2010. 2010 is going to be very different to 2009 I suspect. Already Odie from MMM has finished at Triple M Sydney (he finished his final shift today) and my friend KG starts his first job tomorrow, things are moving ahead. In only a few short weeks, I shall be entering year 12, so quickly this has happened too.

Also this is the official rule that my friends and I have decided (and I’ll try and follow), this year is ‘Twenty Ten’, not ‘Two Thousand and Ten’, because we never said ‘One Thousand, Nine Hundred and Ten’, we said ‘Nineteen Ten’.

Hopefully this decade will be the decade of Rock again, rather than hip hop and dance, therefore I nominate Hip-Hop, Dance and Rap for a GTFO award!

The GTFO awards were held on a show I listen to called NSFW and these were the winners of some of the categories

• In the Celebrities category the GTFO award was given to: Lady Gaga and Her Penis
• In the Internet Behaviours category the GTFO award was given to: Saying ‘First’ in the comments of items on the web.
• In the Memes category the GTFO award was given to: ‘I’ma let you finish, but’
• In the Organisations category the GTFO award was given to: the RIAA/MPAA
• In the People’s Choice category the GTFO award was given to: Mac Vs PC arguements

In previous years the GTFO award has been given to Chris Crocker, Playboy, Motorola Razor, Soviet Union, Y2K Bug, Hitler and American Online.

Lastly, I really hope Triple M Sydney & Melbourne make their way out of the rut they’re currently in at the moment, I think Triple M Melbourne has a chance, but at the moment Sydney doesn’t look very promising!

That’s all for tonight, plan to blog soon, hopefully after my 11 articles are done.