Simon Macneall's Blog

Why is it that whenever I am looking for a technology product I can't find exactly what I want?

After getting a 1080p HD LCD TV a couple of weeks ago, I am looking to upgrade my PC playback hardware. Currently I have a video sender hooked up to the s-video output from my PC graphics card. This sends the video over the air to the TV, it also has the problem of interference, both from wireless devices, and other electrical appliances (for instance you can't watch anything when the microwave is going).

What I am looking for is something that can wirelessly access the files on the PC, and either play them from there (which won't be able to keep up with HD playback) or copy them to a local hard drive and play off of that. I would like it to do 1080p playback of as many formats as possible.

These don't seem like such an outrageous requirements, however I haven't really managed to find anything that suits. I did find the A.L. Tech MG-250HD which, according to the specs seems to do everything I want, however it doesn't seem to have been actually released yet, and emails to their support trying to find out about availability in Australia have gone unanswered so far.

So, if anyone out there knows of a product that will fulfil my requirements please let me know, and even better, if you have something like this send me your thoughts about it's pros and cons.

Ok, so things have been a bit quiet in here lately.

That's because real life has been kinda hectic, and I just haven't really had the time to post anything.

What's been going on?

Well work has been pretty busy, there are only 2 of us on the development team, and lots to do. We tried to hire someone else, but after three weeks it just wasn't working out. The technology is really cool, and we are doing some funky things with Ruby on Rails in our web portal. Hopefully I'll be able to get my sh*t together in the future and have some ruby/rails posts, as I am learning alot, and coming across several gotchas.

At home, Daniel is walking (actually running most of the time) now, and playing with him fills up alot of my time when I am not at work. He is on the verge of talking English (at the moment there are what sound like sentences, they just don't contain any words).

We just bought a new TV. A Samsung 46" HD LCD. It is kick ass (even when you don't take into consideration the fact that we have been watching a 51cm TV for the last 7 years). I can now read the sports scores easily - along with just about anything else on the screen.

Our computer blew up in the storms at the start of June, it took about 3 days to source a second hand box from ebay, and then another couple of days for me to find the time to image the old drives across and move most of the non-fried hardware (graphics card, ram, dvd burner etc) across. But after just over a week I had the old OS up and running on the new (and faster) hardware.

Other than that, we managed to catch up with some good friends on Sunday, which was totally awesome, and we haven't been getting much sleep this week as Daniel has a cold. Which means he is having trouble breathing through his nose. Breathing through the nose is kinda important when you still sleep with a dummy. This means that Carolyn has been up alot during the week (it's a deal we have, as I have to go to work, Cal looks after Daniel during the week nights, and we take turns on the weekends) and I have been woken up heaps, even if I haven't been having to deal with Daniel's sleep problems. So, lots of Coke during the days, and early nights to try and catch up. In fact, that is why I was up just after 5 this morning, and finally had time to update this blog.

Ok, time to have breakfast and get ready for another busy day at work. Hopefully, the silence won't last as long next time.

Just came across this article from news.com.au about treasure hunters finding a lost train graveyard in the middle of the Simpson desert. Sounds like something out of a Clive Cussler novel doesn't it?

Just a short post on how to make Silverlight work in Opera. Once I found it, this was a very simple thing to do, and now I can check out all the videos etc on mlb.com (the main place that I encounter Silverlight).

So, Carolyn, has been using Evolution as her email client at home for the last year or so, but we finally gave up on it's constant crashing and inability to do things that most emails clients should.

I looked around, and apart from Opera (my client of choice) Thunderbird seemed like the best bet. It is at least being worked on (Evolution seems to have stagnated, particularly in terms of Windows installers) and has a decent user base.