Random Musings: a blog of technology things

  • That’s not a PVR… *THIS* is a PVR!

    Yeah, I know it’s a complete misquote of Crocodile Dundee, but when you compare my PVR to the beast here – you see what I mean… More details and comments when I get a chance.

  • Blogging from my Browser…

    Okay, I’m supposed to be on holiday, but since the in-laws are running a Bed & Breakfast called The Olde Millhouse B&B in Renwick, Marlborough they have got themselves broadband (yep – ADSL ‘JetStream’ is even avalible in the South Island!) so they can stay on top of their guests emails and stuff. Anyway, it […]

  • Crikey – what a cool CMA!

    In a number of my previous roles I’ve developed and led development teams to build some rather significant websites, these were all using enterprise level Content Management Applications (CMA) – my own personal site has however suffered somewhat from the ‘mechanics car’ syndrome and, though it’s had a few random refreshes, I’ve kept it flat, simple HTML, and it’s looked like it too.

  • Weather

    Much to the amusement of (some) of my collegues, I enjoy tracking weather conditions and, as sad as it sounds, I plan to get myself a wee weather station which I can stick on my house to monitor conditions there via my home network… This entry is simply to pull in the details which I’m currently gathering from the MetService website and graphing via my Linux server.

  • Debian Sarge and Cacti

    As my network at home has got busier, I�ve been finding weird things are going on and so have needed to implement a degree of monitoring on my network (if only to keep tabs on where all my hard drive space is going), I looked at a number of possibilities but have settled on SNMP monitoring via �Cacti�, running on a Debian 3.1 �Sarge� linux server�

  • Backing up this Blog

    Well – since I’m gettign a bit more organised at home with our renovations, it seems to be trickling down into my online/digital life too. I then got to thinking, how MUCH would it suck if I lost my blog entries? I figured the answer was “Quite a lot”…

  • Viewing multiple video streams using Linksys WVC54G

    We’ve got a couple of Linksys WVC54G IP cameras lying around the office from a previous project, so I was thinking “How hard would it be to create a page I could navigate to from my home PC (or media center) to view live video streams from these cameras?” Apparently, it’s a bit harder than one would think…

  • Rotateable Racks are Rad!

    (Or �Swivelling Shelves are Sweet�) I *finally* got around to installing my HT gear into the rack I bought for it ages back. It�s been one of those parts of the house renovation which I�ve really been looking forward to and now (apart from a bit of cable tidy up and the attachment of the IR blasters) it�s in place!

  • Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility

    As I’ve posted earlier, I’ve been running Microsoft Windows Media Center 2005 (MCE 2005) for quite awhile and, for the most part it’s great – however I found a utility on the Green Button forums this morning which I wish I’d discovered a loooong time ago…

  • Battlefield 2 � Flying a Helicopter

    I�ve yet to find a suitable �Helicopter Flying 101 for Battlefield 2� page out there � so if you know of one (or have written one yourself) then please send me a link so I can point people in it�s direction. Give this lack of (easily found) flying tips, I�ve compiled a number of pointers which I�ve managed to glean from forums, message boards, in game chats and the occasional fleeting reference on clan and fan pages � while I�d like to attribute the original authors, the sources are too many so I�m only planning to link/reference pages which are outstanding in the depth of information they hold. Read on, enjoy and please � play nicely