For the last several years, I've been wanting a home theater PC. A few of my friends already had home theater PCs, through which they could play their music on their stereo, display their pictures on their TV, and play their videos on their TV. Some of these systems were based on the Windows Media Center edition OS. I didn't want a Windows-based ( Read more... )

Over the past few years, while I've been dreaming about the synth and DAW (digital audio workstation) gear I'd love to get, I've also been thinking about some projects to put this gear to good use ( Read more... )

Last month, I finally got started on one of my long-term projects: convert my collection of video tapes to DVD.

I have about 500 VHS tapes and 100 Beta tapes in my collection. A couple of years ago, I picked up a copy of the Honestech VHS to DVD 3.0 package at Big Lots for about $25. It came with capturing and editing software, and a device to ( Read more... )

Many years ago, in my college days, I was exposed to the Usenet, a store-and-forward bulletin board system that ran on computers running Unix. Machines would call each other and transmit the day's posts. The groups were named and partitioned by subject matter. Needless to say, I spent many hours reading the Usenet news, or netnews for short. I' ( Read more... )

One of the things I've wanted to do with my computer is to use it to digitize my record and tape collection, and convert them to audio CDs ( Read more... )

After cleaning out my kitchen of extraneous stuff, I now feel more inspired to do things in the kitchen. I think I'm a pretty good cook, especially when I follow the recipe. :-)

One of my favorite things to eat in the winter is homemade bread. And so, I took the bread maker out of its box and put it to use.

( Allow me to share some of my more recent successes. )

Years ago, I purchased a complete set of The Photo partworks magazines, published by Marshall Cavendish UK. The series is like a photography tutorial; the issues form volumes that can be referenced like an encyclopedia or dictionary. I'd like to put these into binders, but the series has been published so long ago (early 1980s) that I doubt the " ( Read more... )