Citizen Blog 2.1

Thank you

....and goodbye. You made it very clear to me now. Im a waste of space n time. Today has come to an end.

The game corner grows!

OK this media corner is expanding in a waaaay to fast speed. Even I'm getting little stressed over the expenses and speed that money is leaving my wallet but if you wanna play you gotta pay. So short backstory: Started my console gaming with the NES 8Bit...as you can soo nicely see in the pics in earlier posts. I love this little machine. Mario 1 and 3 are still great ways to spend time. Dr Mario I used to play with my cousin for hours..days..weeks at a time and the love for that game will never go away. I remember begging my dad for years to get one. It took some time. I think even the 16 bit had been out for a year when I finally got the 8 bit for christmas. Gotta be one of my best christmasgifts ever. Maybe only beaten by the Amiga 500 that I got I think the christmas before ^^ Gaming guy I know :P One of these days Im gonna have to write a nostalgia story of my gaming. 

So I love the 8 bit still. 16 bit was daaaamn cool aswell, but I haven't gotten one....yet ;) But pretty much after that I gave up on the gamemasters that is Nintendo. Mostly casue I didn't have the money for gaming consuls nor really the interest in them. The Amiga runned just fine! It still kinda does its just a mess to set up. But then ofcourse came this lil "toy"

 

Had my first encounter with the Wii about a year ago, in Mexico. Where MJ's dad had one hooked up in their guesthouse. Gotta say I got hooked pretty much right away and found Wii Sport being loads of fun. Its still strange to move around and get tired from gaming...but ok....its cool. Was a great group activity, but also a fun consul to play with on your own. After a few days of play I've gotten all addicted to the tennis game. 

Gotta thank Katie Morgan for pushing the idea of Wii into my head with her twittering on and on and on over her tennis addiction. Woohooo I got something in common with a porn star xD Another reason that I got a sudden interest for the Wii again is their Virtual Console, where you can download some classic games and play them on the Wii. Very fast I got mario 1,3 and super mario world. Sadly the classic controller totally sucks in game play. On the upnote however there Is a company that sells cables making it possible to hook up the original 8bit controllers to the Wii....so fuck yeah I'm getting two of those any week now :) Cause beside the controller I'm very happy with the old games. Even thou they do look even shittier on the 16.9 42 inch screen. But still not all pixely so Nintendo has done an amazing job. To bad that not all games seem to be in full screen mood. Mario 1 covered alot more screenspace than Mario 3 :/ 

But yeh it's still all good. Looks good, feels good and I'm happy with my purchase. Also glad that Game lowered the price just now. I wanted to wait another month but couldn't turn down a deal like this. Now I just gotta find some fun games to this thing. Not an easy task let me tell you. Most of the games get lil silly. I love silly, but maybe not fully Wii silly. I got my eyes on the new Mario coming in end of november. Not sure I can afford to buy so many games. Might just look into "alternative" solutions ;) Realized today that these consuls are like puppies. The damn thing in it self aint that expensive. It's all the stuff on the side that costs the real money. For example another Wii remote costs like a 1/4 of the whole starter package...I mean....whyyyy?! Think Ill force my friends to buy their own remotes if they wanna come over and play xD I can pay for the charger station ^^ Speaking of which I gotta go into town and buy this puppy another toy...a cable that allows some HD resolution, cause the image looks alil blurry with the standard cables.....BAD Nintendo btw!! It's one thing to not include an HDMI port but you could atleast give us the best cable you got out there. Why would anyone seattle for the second best? I think you are making just about enough on accessories as it is. 

Well it looks good on the shelf, doesn't it? One big happy Nintendo family!

  

New Storage

With a new media center and new furniture of course came the idea of a new shelf for all the media. A big point of this was that I've gotten alittle tired of my main shelf in the livingroom. It takes alot of space and gives back very little storage. So while running around IKEA looking for draws I found this, and for a fairly cheap price aswell :) So i got that one aswell and now I got all my games, movies and cds in one place. Not only did it give a good collected storage, it also opened up alot of space in my small room ^^

The only issue was that I had the light switch right there. But never fear...everything has a solution, and this one resolved with some drilling and sawing and voila!! a hole. It's like you can hardly see it...yet its kinda reachable. Haven't had any issues with getting the lights on yet. Plus I needed a space for my cute Mini Cooper :)

Snow!?

We got snow in Bratislava :o already!?!? Well damn we have reached mid october already but ok. With all this global warming ive just gotten used to not seeing snow....at all xD

Gotta love price warz

You just gotta love pricecompetition. I sure do! With 10 big actors out there fighting for the digital audience you as a consumer get some pretty sweet deals. So with amazing timing comhem dropped an offer on me last week about cable tv. Woooow I just had to have it ofcourse. So said n done, last tuesday I ordered their large package with 50+ channels :) With a great TV come great need for channels to enjoy. 

I havnt watched much tv lately, but reasob for that being that the basic channels suck after 10 aclock (when i get home). Forse at work reminded me how much fun discovery is to watch so the mind started working shit out....n here we are! Yesterday i got my box n card. Also a nice deal is that ive got all the channels for the first days/week. So this weekend im sitting on 130 channels. 

Hahahha i realised fast that 80% of the time now is spent zapping, n that all the good movies you wanna actually watch have just started 20 minutes ago...so now u cant watch it fuck!! ;) Its kinda hard to plan ahead with so much variety. So this weekend is gonna be spent zapping n enjoying the bigtime channels. To bad their aint any premier leauge this weekend :( 

So far I only have it hooked up over Scart so can't fully enjoy HD quality, but there is always a solution. A solution that costs alot of money..and has to wait.

 Time to return to the tv set! What a great fit for my lazy weekend that I wanted ^^

fock yeh!!

Finally got The Black Album onto my computer and onto the phone. Hahaha I know Jay Z just dont fit very well with the rest of the music on there...but ow well.....99 problems is still an amazing track, something I understood again when watching The taking of Pelham 123. Great opening song :)

Anyway got a tip on a nice Verve/Jay Z mashup....but there I found an even better one, so here you go:

A nice weekend, even if there was some work

Owww it feels so nice to finally have a day off!! For the last month or so Ive felt like im constantly on the move or working. Not an easy moment at all. Ive worked alot of weekends and the few weekends Ive had off have been filled with birthdaypartys. The workingschedule has resulted in me only having one day off in a row...kinda like today aswell. Sure its nice to have two days off in the middle of the week, but the fact that they aint together kinda takes away half the fun n rest out of it. You can't really seattle down over one day. Especially not when I've spent alot of my days off also setting up new furniture, moving out old furniture and setting up the media center. Don't get me wrong its been fun! But not really relaxing. 

So when the suggestion came to have a party after work on friday I wasn't really jumping of joy on the suggestion. But then again its been awhile Ive been out for some fun, and also had turned down alil to many partys last few weeks. But now with Angelica having her own flat, with a sofa she gladly shares when needed ^^there was not real excuse...except the work on saturday n sunday. Then again the time I spend on traveling back n forward, it ended up being a save in energy and time so stay over after the party. Such a good saver even that I decided to go do the same between sat-sun. Well that was the timesaving aspect, but also the aspect of the yuuuuuummy pizza and cool movie evening that came with it :) I also realised that the whole being out of my flat thing made it feel like a mini vacation, just chilling with a great friend, having a laugh and disconnecting (as much as we could) the facts n worries from the work place. Something that ain't easy when spending time with someone you work with. So yeh a wellneeded rest and recharge of the battery :) Even thou some worries of mine has been brought to the surface the last few days so now Im kinda waiting for the weekend again so I can hide away for two days again. 

Again a happy happy birthday for Radu! 

Now I just want the time to move on fast til decemeber....need to re see another old friend. Its been way to long. These recharging friends are few. But with most of them far away its nice to see that some are just around a not to big corner ^^^^ The next party on the 24th could just get even better! No work in the way to control times for sleep hahaha! 

Ok now its time to put the final touches on the new shelf so I can share it with you here aswell ;)

   

Sugababes RIP

This is Sugababes

....so is this:

 

but this......

 

...is not!! This is a cover act that sings the songs of the Sugababes and lives on their name. Making a nice popgroup that I enjoyed for some years into a true branded product. Now I can fully leave this old poplove of mine aswell behind. 

RIP Sugababes!

Alot of changes this week but its finally here!

Starting about a week ago I finally had the money to start my long awaited and planned mediacenter build. And it started of with a rough start. I got to Ikea and soon realised that the bench I had planned would be waaaay to big. Proved to be correct when we got home to set it up. Thankfully I went for the somewhat smaller solution. Still fits alot. One problem thou.....no TV! Apparently LG are dropping this model to make way for the 2009 models. That would explain the rough price cuts that I soooo loved about this tv. But yeh getting hold of it was a whole other deal. Another issue was that I had already set the wheels in motion for Peter to take over my old TV on sunday. So setup 0.9 beta looked something like this:

A nice clean setup with the Xbox connected via Scart. The NES looking all cool on one shelf and putting up some old external drives on one shelf to check if they would fit. Right now that corner is reserved for the maybe to be/soon to be Mac mini to rule the mediacenter. For now the iMac is doing an ok job. Just have some issues with Plex fitting correctly on the screen and giving me the right resolution. 

So saturday was spent TV hunting all over the internet. Trust me this TV just not easy to find. All of them were selling fast. What else can you imagine from a fairly good TV in its price range, that also has dropped like 200 € in a month. Finally I did manage to find one at Inwarehouse. Somewhat costly shipping but well....what can you do? Placed an order, and impressive enough it was in town by sunday evening. Sadly enough it took the postoffice two more days (and alot of calls to customer support^^) to get it to my doorstep. Then again those that wait for something sweet never wait to long!

Made its way here and got set up over Tuesday evening. Amazing timing after all, as I had the next day off! So I could sit all night and set it up! Mediacenter reaches its prime version 1.0. Dada:

Oh yeh I should say what it is as well ;) An LG LH4000 42" And so far it looks amazing! Some annoying lil things in navigation and screen setup but nothing that can't be dealt with. Its not like these issues don't exist with more expensive models. Channel flipping between the HDMI and normal TV is a mess, but Im hoping that a future Harmony One might just deal with that issue. 

So today I finally had all my toys in place, so now I could recount my account and see whats left to be spent on goodies :) So went back to IKEA and got two draws. One mainly for extra stuff like cam and chargers. The other one however..alil more interesting. Got this idea when I started planning this thing that: 1) Id set up as many devices as I could on the one spot and 2) hide away as much of the wires as possible. My last setup was a cable mess behind the bench. Not to mention the 20 of meters of cables that went all around my flat back and forward for phone, internet for the computers, internet for X-box and so on and so on. So the solution being that the modem, phone and most connected devices get to share space instead. Other brilliant plan being this:

 Putting away all cables and power bricks into one hidden away place. Gotta say it already looks brilliant, and thanks to the nice design of our swedish friends there is air coming through and heat coming out. So it shouldn't overheat in there. Its still alil of a mess in there and not at all final. I wanna get myself a Belkin surges protector. Just an extra way to keep internet/power/phone alil extra protected from the influence of the evil bad outdoors. Plus its a huge hub for alot of outlets in a compact design. Mess in there doesnt really matter anyway as its not like people are gonna be opening it for a peak. 

Also got some new cables today. First of setting up the X-box with an HDMI connector, and woooow was it worth every penny! It looks so bright and clear right now and the sound is a blast. The volume is hardly up at all and the sound is really loud. Cant wait to play worms on this thing xD Hahaha and who needs the surround system ;) Next up was setting up the phone with the modem, and using only 2 meters of wires instead of 20. Looks nice and easily accessible throughout the whole flat. 

Only two cables going through the flat now is the scart from the iMac and its internet connection. Didn't feel like it was time to go wireless just yet. Alot of money for a solution that I might not like in the end anyway. Besides most of that wiring goes behind the couch so its hardly noticeable.   

There is a future plan to set up some doors in front of the shelves as well, but we will see about that. I think it would really nice and classy but then again the show off open solution is nice as well. Could be alil messy to have to open a door every time I wanna answer the phone. Then again it only needs to charge there. And most of the other stuff I don't really use physically that often. The X-box switches on by the remote and ones the game is in its in. So on that note it could just aswell be hidden away and serve its purpose quietly....letting the LG take all the credit for its combined hard work. 

Oww I also cleaned up some space in another corner of the apartment but Im not gonna show that just yet. Some parts missing there so as off now its more a mess then a space saver xD But again another investment I'm very very happy with! This place is really starting to get my personal touch....and getting alot more tidy in the process! ^^ yay me!!   

Time for alittle TV before bed. Gotta use these things now after all the hard work its caused me today ;)

Mac pack

Waiting patiently fot next weekend and hoping to be able to start my mediacenter built with buying the tv n furniture for it :) This is gonna be a long term built for sure. A year atleast ill be fully happy with it.

The silly thing being that pretty much anything except the tv is hiigh luxary. Take for example the AV reciever which is a central part. But then again i live in a small flat so cant really crank up the volume to much nor build a 5.1 setup. So that can wait. Same with getting a PS3 or Wii as i dont game that much to begin with....n with these cost there is no room for games nor blueray movies :p.

So whats left? Buying a mac pack n replace (aka sell) the iMac. I put together a sorta basics package last night. A mini with 2 gig ram, hdmi cable, wireless keyboard, external 1tb drive with firewire hub n on top of that an airport extreme. All n all 1200 € :o feels alot but still not a bad package to recieve. I could maybe go 200 € on the iMac deal after paying the remaining debt on it.

Thats the real trick with this whole build, and my only holdback: all this has to be paid cash! No expensive loans till the end of time. In this economy I dont really know how long ill have a job, so getting debtfree is priority one. Priority two guess would be spice up life with nice stuff that you own ^^

Its at days like this one can regret that I found out about macs n Apples ;) I could prob half my budget by going for some ok HP mediacenter and a Dell laptop n have the whole network talk over a netgear hub. But that just aint gonna happen ;)

I want qualitybuild, that if i want it to, will run great today n for four years more, atleast. A friend of mine had a mac mediacenter running for five years i think he said. Just running 24/7. Keeping up with the new technology till now it finally died. Damn mine n Lars G5 mac could prob run as a center aswell. But yeh i wanna get something that will still work when i choose to replace it, n not something that forced me to spend cash when it desided to die :)

We will see where the story goes ^^ stay tuned!!