Another Word for Nerd

Coming Soon…

Ginger ale, spicy ginger beer, regular beers, and eventually mead….

A week ago (on Wednesday the 9th), I went down to The Electric Chair on Richmond here in Houston for an appointment with Stephanie.

A couple of hours later, I left with this on my upper left arm:

It’s an Elder Sign from the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

Willa (my current ladyfriend) has been using an old decrepit laptop with a bad keyboard hooked up to her TV at home to watch NetFlix instant-streaming movies. I took pity on her as the “geeky boyfriend” and bought her a Roku HD Player (e.g., “NetFlix Box”) a few days ago.

We just finished doing the initial setup and account connections via my TV and Internet connections here, and she’ll take it home with her to try out tomorrow.

Today’s color choice, “Pinkle”:

I love my new socks.

From here.

I’ve updated the Trackman Marble FX post to reflect that the three I have are now up for sale.

A few weeks ago, I built an XBMC-based media player to use with the 32″ TV in the living room:

I decided to make another system using an original XBox for the bedroom, since I don’t need to play HD content on the 19″ TV in there. I bought a refurbished XBox from Gamestop for $54 shipped, and picked up the rest of the pieces I needed (XBox-to-USB cables, an 8M memory card) off eBay and from a local shop. I used a 10″ LCD TV while setting it up, so I didn’t have to run back and forth to the bedroom.

Here’s the XBox after doing a “softmod” to install Linux and the UnleashX dashboard:

Here it is with XBMC installed, running the default “PM3″ theme:

And here’s the final setup. Hooked up to the 19″ TV, running the same Confluence theme as the system in the living room, with the XBox DVD Playback kit plugged in so I can use a remote instead of a wired controller.

Am really happy with both systems; the living room unit cost me around $200 total while the bedroom XBox setup cost me $90.

A new friend taught me how to crochet last night.

I’ve joked with friends that I’m the “Free Hardware Fairy” a lot lately, as I get rid of stuff and fix their computers up.

Well, it came time to setup http://www.freehardwarefairy.com/.

I think I’m going to try baking this week – specifically this.