www.TheJoe.com

Back in January, we started working on a Home Media Center/Home Server configuration. I started moving some of the equipment that was normally found in my home office to the living room.

We started to build this monster machine that I thought would handle everything. Theoretically, it would and could but when it came to practice, it just didn’t work out. Here’s the YouTube of where we started with this thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqcJ45XRNDM

I decided to turn that computer to our media editing machine and it worked fine, but not great. From my perspective, Vista was just not ready to handle the larger demands we were placing on this machine. So, we decided to throw OS X on it. We were quite surprised at how well it worked. So much so that we have decided to move to the Mac platform throughout our household. (As some of you have been reading)

Moving forward, we decided to look into the feasibility of using the Mac platform as our main Media Center that is connected to the living room television. We’re gonna re-configure our big black quad core and set it up and test it. If this works out for us, we’re planning on getting a full Mac Pro and do the same.

Here is the configuration:

Motherboard: Asus Maximus Formula
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Memory: 8 Gigabytes of Corsair DDR2 (4 x 2GB sticks)
Boot Drive: 500 Gigabyte Seagate
Data Drive: 1 Terabyte Seagate
Video: xFx nVidia GeForce 8800GT w/ 512 MB DDR3
NAS: ReadyNAS NV+ w/ 4 x 750 Gigabyte Seagate drives

Operating System: Leopard OS X 10.5.2 via Leo4All (See NOTE)

“Server” Capabilities:

We will configure the DATA drive to do sharing via bonjour and smb to share our data throughout the house computers.

The ReadyNAS NV+ will be set up as our Time Machine backup drive over the network.

We are still looking into several DLNA/uPNP solutions.

This machine will have iTunes library sharing enabled as well.

Software to be installed and configuration:

VMWare Fusion

We will use VMWare Fusion to run various linux and windows VM’s for our needs. The main Windows VM will be running Vista Ultimate and will provide extender capabilities to our Xbox 360’s.

Toast 9 Titanium

We will use Toast with it’s Tivo functionality to pull and archive our favorite TV shows. We will also set up automatic conversion for use on our iphones.

That’s about it. We’re gonna try to do a full video of this when we do it and will add it to the technochubby stuff on YouTube.

Wish us Luck!

NOTE: Yes, we own a full copy of Leopard. We’d also like to point out that this machine is purely for testing. If this meets our wants/needs we will be purchasing a full Mac Pro. (Just like I just finished purchasing a MacBook Pro once I decided the platform was for me)

Also we do own licenses for all the commercial software that we install on our computers.

For a long time now, I have wanted to run an Internet radio station.  Since I have been back in Entropia Universe, I have been hanging out on Club Neverdie a lot.  They have a live music stream that goes into the virtual world.  

Recently, they opened their stream for rental.  This interested me, so I am going to rent the stream during an event I will be hosting on Club Neverdie.  I found out they use SAM Broadcaster and Windows Media Services for their stream.  I’ve been a user SAM Broadcaster for a bit, but it was always one of those things that got pushed aside for other projects. I decided to take another look and set up some stuff with my servers.

First off, I set up one of my servers in my Data-center as a streaming audio server.  For this, I used the Icecast2 server for Linux.  Fairly straight forward set-up.  I installed Centos 5, then did an install of Icecast and edited the config files to the settings I liked.

I then installed SAM Broadcaster on one of my laptops and plugged in one of my portable HD’s with a copy of my MP3 collection and had SAM catalog it.  This too was fairly straightforward.  After the install and cataloging of my mp3’s, I set up a stream to my Icecast2 server and I was broadcasting on the Internet.  Good stuff.

This config is all fine and dandy for most people that just want to broadcast occaisionally.  For people that require constant or continuous 24/7 streams, I saw a slight flaw, your internet connection would be constantly used in sending the broadcast out to the server.  So, I came up with a plan.  Read on…

Read the complete Post.

Well, since I have been too lazy to blog, I have decided at least to try to do a weekly update on Sun/Mon and see if I can stick to it.

This past week, we have been prepping for Draylan’s first ever day in school.  He starts Kindergarten in about 4.5 hours.  WOW, time flies.  I remember when he was born.  Seems like yesterday.  He’s got his haircut (Mohawk of course), he chose some new shoes and an outfit.  He’s raring to go!  (I’ll try and post some pictures when I can)

On the Linux side of things, I am designing a new server for home.  I’ll post the specs when I get it all figured out.  I am getting ready to play with MediaTomb and see how that does as a DLNA server.  We’ve decided to move again soon, so we’re gonna postpone the LinuxMCE configs till we get in the new place.

Well, I’ve been preparing for two larger projects, one of which will be my first non-adult endeavor on the web.  This should be interesting, yet again, I will post more on this when we get a solid framework up.

The last several months, I have been so busy with getting things going, that I have not had time to do any gaming or anything along those lines.  As you know, I went back to Entropia Universe almost 2 weeks ago and I am playing when I can.  I have joined a great society, Entropia Asia, and I am working on getting a website set up for them.  When it is completed it will be at http://www.entropia-asia.com I hope to get it done in the next couple of weeks and I am gonna have Andrew (www.hoodyhoo.com) work on a couple logo designs and see how they like it.

Anyways, that’s it for now.  

I have been using either Debian or Ubuntu server to run my home server. (I’ll be blogging the final configuration when I get it done)

I kept getting the following error:

Unable to change virtual machine power state: Failed to connect...

It was a fairly simple fix, I just want to blog it before I forget

You just need to install the ia32-libs:

apt-get install ia32-libs

And voila! it works!

For years, one of my pet projects has been to create a low cost (below $20K) central solution to store and serve my massive media collection. I have thousands of DVD’s, Video, Audio, Pictures, etc. ( Click to see about 2/3 of my DVD collection )

I also want a central location to serve up my TV/Satellite feeds etc. I have played with probably every possible combination of OS, Hardware, Embedded, Software, etc that I could get my hands on.

Lately, you all know that I have been on a Linux kick (yet again). I was beginning to play with MythTV but that would just solve the issue of serving the media to MythTV frontends. I was playing with several DLNA servers but the issues I ran into with those was one of transcoding, most linux DLNA servers don’t transcode. (transcoding is taking media of one type, say WMV and serving it up another type, say MP4, so your device can play it properly) So for now, I kinda put DLNA on the back burner. Read the complete Post.

I got the moblin/hildon desktop running in a Xephyr window on a Gutsy Tribe 3 desktop.  It has promise, but in this Tribe 3 phase, it’s not ready for prime time.

I downloaded Tribe 4 this morning and will play with it over the next few days.  We’ll see how it goes.

Well, I am fascinated by the stuff that’s coming down the pipeline. I have been playing with the moblin stuff ( www.moblin.org ). I really think that this is the direction mobile devices should be going.

Now, the extent of my knowledge in the Unix/Linux world is mostly command line based and server knowledge. I am fairly new to display managers and how they work. I downloaded a base gutsy distribution to play with the Ubuntu Mobile stuff and am anxious to play with this interface.

I have gotten the image creator to work and have seen the mobile-ubuntu stuff working in gutsy but in a window. I would really like to put it as the native or default desktop on my UX280P. From what I have read through my google’s, this is a possibility.

I will continue my search and once I learn how it is done, I will post a ‘How I did it’ here.

The search begins!

PS If any of you know if there is a Howto out there already, let me know.