Blog entries tagged with "house"

Tomorrow is the start of a new year, it is also the day that I am allowed to leave isolation as the weekend before Christmas was great, I went into the city for a number of podcast recordings and comedy shows, but what I didn’t know at the time was that I caught COVID-19.

I have since been in contact with people who were at the same shows on Sunday, some have also gotten it while others have not, it is quite variable. There is also a splash of irony to include as some of the talk over the weekend was about the new omicron variant and how maybe we shouldn’t be at an event crammed into the same room…

Monday was a typical day of working from home and even managed to fit in a few hours of gardening.

Tuesday also started out typical, then I went to get my booster shot and afterwards had a sore arm and a slight headache which cleared in time for me to meet up for a trivia night.

Wednesday started with a huge headache, so I called in sick and went back to bed. When I got up in the afternoon I still had the headache and now had a blocked nose, I was putting it down to reaction from the booster until I got an email from the venue saying that a positive case was at one of the shows, so I went to get tested. I’m glad I went when I did as it took about two hours to get through and that was before the huge delays that were coming.

Thursday was much the same with headache and blocked sinuses with added cough, so I stayed in bed. Then at 11:30pm I got a text message with the word POSITIVE and information on how to isolate.

Friday was better with less of a headache but still the blocked sinuses and cough, I again called in sick and in between laying down I spent the most time on the phone than I had in years:

• First up was a medical call asking my symptoms from when they first started until now and providing advice on what to do if things got worse
• Then there was a call from a group at Monash Health that partially repeated the first call but also explained that I would get a message each day to report the progress of my symptoms
• The final call was from the Department of Health about where I had been and who I had been in contact with.

That final call was the most surprising to me because of what they didn’t ask. They asked for details of where and when I had been to places, but this was all over the phone, none of it was using the data collected by all the scanning of QR codes. As the connection wasn’t the best and the more I spoke the more I coughed it took a while to get accurate information across. Even if the QR code data wasn’t being used, I would have loved to be able to type the info into a webpage…

There were also discussions with family as I would not be making it to Christmas lunch the following day. As it is my tradition to provide the ham I had already purchased the ham and related items. The ham was still sealed up so I put it outside for my mum to sanitize and collect, she then prepared it for Christmas lunch.

The next week was relatively uneventful but also surprisingly productive. I watched a number of comedy specials that I had been meaning to get to, and as I felt better I started on my annual deep clean of my house, one room at a time before moving on to some overdue gardening. It can’t be that bad if I am still able to disassemble and move around furniture…

The time between Christmas and New Years is never that eventful for me, I was already planning to do the cleaning and gardening, it was just a couple of social things that I ended up missing out on.

So here is to the end of another year and the start of a new one. I might stay up to watch fireworks on television, but I might also go to bed early…

Recently I wrote about how the RemotePi Board was the key to my desired setup for using a Raspberry Pi running Kodi as a media player. After the initial setup I needed to tweek some things related to my universal remote and while I don’t expect the RemotePi website to disappear, this post is my documentation on how I set it up (and how it works).

Raspberry Pi hardware

When I ordered the RemotePi I also ordered their open case as it has a hole for the power button and I didn’t want to hack up the existing case I was using. Based on the provided parts you shouldn’t need the instructions, it is pretty obvious how it all goes together.

Raspberry Pi software

It was interesting adding the scripts and config as I learned how it hooked into the LibreElec Startup & Shutdown process.

/storage/.config/autostart.sh

Runs at boot, in this case used to launch irswitch.sh in the background

#!/bin/bash
(/storage/.config/irswitch.sh)&

/storage/.config/irswitch.sh

Running in the background monitoring GPIO pin 14 for a signal from the RemotePi. This is how pressing the power button on the remote results in a graceful shutdown of the Pi.

#!/bin/bash
# this is the GPIO pin receiving the shut-down signal
GPIOpin1=14
echo "$GPIOpin1" > /sys/class/gpio/export
echo "in" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio$GPIOpin1/direction
while true; do
  sleep 1
  power=$(cat /sys/class/gpio/gpio$GPIOpin1/value)
  if [ $power != 0 ]; then
    echo "out" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio$GPIOpin1/direction
    echo "1" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio$GPIOpin1/value
    sleep 3
    poweroff
  fi
done

/storage/.config/shutdown.sh

Runs when the Pi is shutting down this tells the RemotePi via GPIO pin 15 to also shutdown and kill power to the Pi.

#!/bin/bash
if [ "$1" != "reboot" ]; then
  GPIOpin=15
  GPIOpin1=14
  echo "$GPIOpin" > /sys/class/gpio/export
  # execute shutdown sequence on pin
  echo "out" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio$GPIOpin/direction
  echo "1" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio$GPIOpin/value
  usleep 125000
  echo "0" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio$GPIOpin/value
  usleep 200000
  echo "1" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio$GPIOpin/value
  usleep 400000
  echo "0" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio$GPIOpin/value
  # set GPIO 14 high to feedback shutdown to RemotePi Board
  # because the irswitch.sh has already been terminated
  echo "$GPIOpin1" > /sys/class/gpio/export
  echo "out" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio$GPIOpin1/direction
  echo "1" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio$GPIOpin1/value
  usleep 4000000
fi

Remote control

MSL Digital have provided instructions for two remotes, a generic DVD player remote (that they can also provide) or how to configure a Logitech Harmony remote.

I wanted to keep using my old Harmony 650 remote so that is the path I choose. I was a bit surprised that once I dug up the MyHarmony software and remembered how to login that the config for my remote was still there. It was reasonable straightforward to add a “Media Center PC” device and configure a new “Kodi” activity.

The tricky part of the config was that I found it best to go into the settings for the device and change the power settings from “I press the same button for on and for off” to “I press two different buttons for on and for off”. The MCE device has PowerOn, PowerOff and PowerToggle commands. Not using PowerToggle is a cleaner solution, eg if the Pi was off but the Harmony thought it was still on, pressing the all off button would actually turn the Pi back on. Using discrete on and off will avoid that.

Once I had my remote sending MCE commands I trained the RemotePi to know about PowerOn and PowerOff:

1. hold down button on RemotePi for 10 seconds, until the LED flashes red/green
2. On the Harmony press PowerOn (be in devices and not activity to get the list of all commands)
3. The LED will flash, then press PowerOff
4. The LED will flash twice

Telling LibreELEC/Kodi about the remote and its buttons was amazingly easy and involved putting the SD card in a reader (so not on the Pi) and adding one line:

config.txt

dtoverlay=gpio-ir,rc-map-name=rc-rc6-mce

The documentation does say that CEC has to be disabled for an IR remote to work, I wonder if there was some automatic detection going on as I found that CEC stopped working as soon as the RemotePi was installed, in the end it didn’t matter as I knew I would be disabling CEC anyway by going to:

• System > Settings > System > Input Devices > Peripherals > CEC

Update 12 September 2021: Force resolution

After working fine for many weeks, LibreELEC/Kodi started only running at 640×480, I tested with another Pi and something seems to have changed with my television and it wasn’t detecting the resolutions correctly, to get around this I force the Pi to boot up with 1920×1080 by adding the following:

config.txt

hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=16

Update 27 December 2022: LibreELEC 10.0.3 with Kodi (Matrix) v19.4

After performing a fresh install of LibreELEC on a new SD card I was able to follow the above instructions to set up the RemotePi. One critical step missing (but is in the original support guide) is to make the new scripts executable with chmod +x.

I also learned that the makers of the RemotePi permenantly closed shortly after I got by board. If I had known I might have ordered another for the Pi 3 and a couple for Pi 4.

I also didn’t like how Matrix had moved the seekbar while playing videos to the top. I preferred the fuller version which showed the progress at the bottom but also more information such as chapters and the current time. I found a mod of the skin which (amongst other tweaks I probably won’t use) gives an option to restore the seekbar as it was in Leia.

A long time ago I wrote a couple of times about different methods of playing media on my television, it looks like I never posted about the solution, which ended up being to use PS3 Media Server (now known as Universal Media Server) with all transcoding turned off, not via writing a custom FUSE filesystem to alter file extensions, but by finding the right configuration option.

As well as working nicely for my television I also picked up a cheap Android tablet and used a UPnP/DNLA app and VLC to be able to play the media on that as well. That tablet started to show its age so I picked up a newer one, at which point I found the UPnP/DNLA app didn’t exist anymore, but fortunately the ability to browse is now built directly in to VLC for Android.

It also turned out that I don’t often watch things on my television, instead playing them on my second monitor in my study, so I wasn’t that concerned when I noticed that media using newer codecs wouldn’t play on my television. This is now an eleven year old television that hasn’t had a firmware update in a long time, so I started looking in to media players again, and not just for me, but also for my parents.

Chromecast

About two years ago I picked up a basic Chromecast to try. It was quite easy to set up and worked exactly as described. However after some hands on experience I found that it wasn’t suitable. If you want to stream from somewhere else it is great, but the lack of control while playing (my deal breaker for a WDTV Live) and that you can’t just use it to find something to start playing is a problem.

It did come in handy for the first few months of lockdown last year when a couple of podcasts livestreamed episodes each week. The player is browser based but supports casting so I could get it started from my PC and then go relax on the couch.

I did try using my phone to control the Chromecast, but I wanted to use a traditional remote control and look at the television screen, not at the touchscreen in my hand.

Kodi on a Raspberry Pi

I find it interesting that as much as things change they also stay the same as ten years ago one thing I was considering was XBMC, well these days it is called Kodi and late last year I loaded that (using LibreELEC onto an old Raspberry Pi. This worked astonishingly well with it getting commands from the television over HDMI-CEC and importantly it being able to play the newer codecs.

Unfortunately there was a glaring issue, the Model B+ that I was using was not powerful enough to smoothly play those newer codecs. As I had proven the concept I ordered a Pi 3 B+ (at the time the only place I could find with reasonable postage didn’t have stock of Pi 4 models) which resolved that issue.

After a few months of using it every so often I was finding it ok for my purposes as a UPnP/DNLA browser and player, but I was unhappy with:

• The odd way that Kodi would browse the UPnP share, it would display them all with a year of 1969 (aka zero in unix epoch) and put everything in alphabetical order, not folders at the top like is typical.
• No way to power off the Pi, you can shut it down but it can’t wake up, to do that you need to power cycle it. Not what I wanted for something I might use a couple of times a month where I wanted the convenience of everything through my existing universal remote control.
• It took me a while to work out what the controls were, which wasn’t helped by being limited to the set of commands my television would send over HDMI-CEC, and it seemed a bit laggy.

Chromecast with Google TV

While the Pi with Kodi was working fine for my occasional needs, a bit over a month ago I cam across something talking about the newer Chromecast, not the one that I already had, but the “Chromecast with Google TV” which looked like quite a nice Android device for a very good price, so I picked one up.

Like my previous Chromecast (which I still have in the cupboard) it was quite easy to set this one up, the remote control was nice and responsive and it didn’t take me long to install VLC and browse my media. As I used it I started to dislike it more and more…

• You can’t get rid of the ads. Even though I uninstalled the included apps and switched to the app only mode, the minimal I could get the home screen down to was three ads and the icon to start VLC
• You can’t configure overscan. I understand that on newer televisions you can turn off overscan on HDMI inputs, but not on mine and the Chromecast doesn’t have any configuration (like there is with Kodi) so I was stuck with missing edges. Not that noticeable when watching a movie, but when the menus are chopped off…
• Google Assistant. I’m not comfortable with a microphone under the control of Google, it should only activate when you press the button and I was pleased to find that app only mode should disable it, but I was still uneasy
• Remote control. While the bluetooth remote is nice and responsive, it isn’t that comfortable to hold and I couldn’t get it to reliably turn off my television by HDMI-CEC or IR. Being bluetooth I couldn’t use my existing universal remote, and I don’t fancy spending $$$ on replacing that with a hub type remote.
• Signed in to Google. Unfortunately this is expected these days, but you have to be signed in for it to work, it can’t operate as a standalone media player
• Wifi. While the wifi is convenient, I have wired ethernet at my television, so it would be good to be able to use that. Yes I know you can buy an official wired adapter or go the USB-C dongle route…
• VLC for Android needs more work. I understand that this version of VLC is still new, but it was too glitchy (eg would jump when scrolling through a list of files, or jump to an odd place when returning from playing a video) for me to use as an (almost) out of the box solution

Returning to Kodi on the Pi

The more I was using it the more I realised that I preferred running Kodi on the Pi as I didn’t need to be signed in, I could just plug it into the wired ethernet at my television. So made sure to return the Chromecast within 30 days for a change of mind refund. The one feature that I will not have with Kodi is the ability to cast a livestream, but I do still have the older Chromecast…

Once I had Kodi running again I started to look into the issues I had with browsing over UPnP. I quickly learned that the recommendation is to simply not use UPnP, to instead share over the network using HTTP, NFS or SMB… Ah, why was I fixated on UPnP? I am constantly accessing the storage on my Linux box from Windows via SMB, how did I not think of using that? And yes it is the right option, the ordering is what you expect, I get file sizes, it even gives preview thumbnails and video resolution/codec information.

So now my remaining issue was the convenience of powering the Pi on and off, there are lots of open source projects based around a Pi, surely someone has designed something I could build? I was also aware that I could add an IR receiver directly to the Pi, that might be better than relying on HDMI-CEC for control.

I was kicking myself again as it didn’t take me long to find the RemotePi Board, an infrared remote controlled power switch for the Raspberry Pi that will work with LibreELEC/Kodi and also give me an IR receiver to control Kodi.

At half the price of the Pi itself there are people I know that would consider this too expensive, but for a ready made solution it is perfect for me so I placed an order. As the pricing was in EUR I assumed it was coming from in Europe, instead they are based in Thailand (it does say this on the ordering/shipping page) and it took three weeks to get here, yay for inconsistencies of international shipping!

The good news is that the RemotePi arrived today and I wasted no time in installing it on the Pi, following the instructions to add the startup/shutdown scripts, telling it to enable the IR receiver for an MCE remote control and then reconfiguring my universal remote control to know about a MCE device.

It is already so much more convenient. I can pick up the remote and select the “Kodi” activity which will turn on the television and the Pi, It takes about 20 seconds to fully boot and I can then browse to a video to watch. Once I am done I can then hit the off button and the remote will turn off the television and tell the Pi to shutdown. Very nice!

but what about…

It would be remiss of me if I did not mention that during all of this there are other media players that I looked up. There are a bunch of cheap Android TV based devices, there are the Amazon Fire ones, there is the Nvidia Shield, there is the Apple TV, etc… Some of these are quite expensive, some are reported to be of poor quality and some are biased towards particular services. For me there is something that feels right about opting for an open source solution, not just that it does what I want for the least money…

My final note is that earlier I mentioned my parents who have a (newer than mine) Samsung TV with apps for ABC iView, SBS on Demand and some others. These apps have been painful in getting updates in the past, so I can imagine at some point I will recommend they they get the Chromecast with Google TV as that does seem to fit their use case quite well.

Ten years ago was the day that I picked up a set of keys, I predicted that settling in would take up a lot of my time, and it did. While I have done a number of things to make this place my own, there are also some things that are still on my todo list.

In rough order of outside to in, these are the bigger things that I have done over the ten years:

• concrete edging between the lawn and garden beds, giving a nice clean line that is easy to maintain
• removed large trees/shrubs that closed in the front yard and entry, the replacements will never get as big
• weeded and mulched the garden, this is really an ongoing task, weeding always needs doing and I need to re-mulch
• replaced locks and added an entrance set to the front door, having all the locks keyed alike makes it so much easier
• replaced gutters/downspouts and had tiles repointed, the old gutters were rusting through so needed replacing
• replaced the flimsy screen doors with more substantial security ones, on hot nights can have doors open for airflow but still be secure with the screen doors
• added a garage door opener, without this I kept my car outside and had to use the side door and gate to get my bicycle in and out
• cleaned and oiled the deck, though this is well overdue to be done again
• ethernet from my study to the TV and additional TV aerial in my study, though there are only a couple of shows that I record from free-to-air TV and wireless has improved a lot
• control the central heating from my home automation
• replaced side counter top in the kitchen with a piece that matches the other counters
• replaced oven and stovetop, the original oven thermostat failed and I got my parents ceramic cooktop when they upgraded
• put images up on the walls, mostly my own photos but also some posters, everything framed in a consistent style

But what about the things that where intended but are not yet done?

• paint the hallway to have off-white instead of white to match all the other rooms
• redo the laundry to have a broom cupboard and a benchtop over the washing machine
• paint under the eaves to match the gutters and screen doors (from white to a cream, should have been done when I did the gutters)
• planter boxes to go on the deck, also some outdoor furniture

I really should get moving on these tasks, but as there is no urgency I hope they are not still pending after another ten years. I do have a todo list from seven years ago, some of the items have been done, but some have not…

On this day ten years ago I called out numbers of an increasing amount, wrote out a related number of a special piece of paper and applied a big sticker to a sign. What am I talking about? The day that I was the winning bidder for my home.

How has it been ten years already? Time never seems to pass at the right rate, it either passes to quickly or too slowly. The current situation has messed things up even more and I have been reflecting on things a lot more, but I will go into more detail later…

This day six months ago was my last day working for Monash Uni. Though not much work was done, it was a matter of making sure I had all my personal things, the handover of my (and others from my team that also took the package) laptop and ID card before heading over to our usual last day BBQ. Except that this time it was also a farewell for those of us leaving, combined with commiseration for those who were not.

The next month was surprisingly busy with Christmas, new years, two weeks in Perth, and even a call in for jury duty. But that was part of my plan, to have some long overdue time off from work.

In February and March I got through a number of house related tasks (some like gutters and cleaning study were from my original list, others like drip irrigation were not) but an unexpectedly large amount of time went into research for two trips, the easter long weekend up to the Victorian high country and my four stage trip to the US which includes TAM and OSCON. (In fact I am still researching what to do for my six days in San Francisco, apart from accommodation and the Alcatraz tour nothing is booked, it it just a big list of places to go…)

In between these other tasks and travel research I was slowly going through old records to build up a list of things I had achieved while at Monash, eventually this was refined down into a resume. At various times I was toying with the idea of changing career direction, moving away from writing code to something else (eg interface design), but the act of listing my achievements and continuing to write code for little things at home reminded me that I really enjoyed building things by writing code.

By late April I had an updated resume, but that it only part of the job search process. Through a couple of my former colleagues I ended up in contact with a recruiter (but he didn’t know about any jobs at the time) and I started looking through online job sites. While I did send off a couple of applications, my expectations were low as they were for technologies that I didn’t have much experience with. I was also not very active with the job search as not being available for four weeks in July could be an obstacle.

Then I got a call from the recruiter, would I be interested in a job that had come up? I said yes and they must have liked my resume (no opportunity to write a cover letter) and I went in for an interview. While I had been on the panel side of interviews many times at Monash, it was my first interview in eight years and my first proper interview with people I did not know. Luckily it wasn’t as formal as what Monash imposes – more of an extended discussion – and I must have done well as I was offered the job. I am going in this afternoon to sign the paperwork and I will start right after I return from my trip.

I only have a little over two weeks until I leave for my trip, but I think they will be the busiest in months as while there a couple of trip things to do, some of the house related things (such as getting quotes) will be easier to do now while I am available during the week.

A little over twelve years ago (8 November 2001 to be precise) I sent an email regarding a position listed on the student job site at uni. This was the start of my work on my.monash as a casual. Later becoming full time, then a senior developer and eventually a team lead responsible for not just my.monash but also email hosted via Google Apps and the email routing infrastructure. Throughout this we moved to offices off-campus and endured a number of rounds of organisational change.

This is all coming to an end in just a few short days, Friday 20 December 2013 will be my last day at Monash.

The last couple of weeks have been the busiest in a while as we try to tie up as many loose ends as we can, but unlike the previous years they have not been stressful. I attribute this to actually writing code and doing technical things, not managing people or dealing with internal politics.

I do not have a job lined up and I am looking forward to having a break. This is my list so far:

• clean and oil deck
• clean gutters
• sort garage
• paint hallway and laundry
• Arduino based home automation
• get flyscreen doors
• paint gutters and eaves
• sort through remaining old computers
• assemble some Lego
• tidy up study
• change which photos are on my walls

One year ago today was settlement day, the day that I picked up some keys and took possession of my place. Within two weeks from then I had moved in, but in the almost year since then I have been working through a todo list. A list that is seemingly endless as items are added at around the same rate that they are completed.

The completed things (mostly in order of east to west through the property) include:

• new television
• mounting said television on the wall
• new shelves to fit in the alcoves on either side of the television
• additional antenna socket in the study
• network cabling between the television and the study
• a two seater couch and two armchairs
• a number of my photos mounted on the walls in 16×20″ frames
• all sorts of kitchen utensils, cutlery, crockey and appliances
• swing out rubbish bin under the kitchen sink
• two stools for the kitchen bench
• new deadlocks and entrance sets, including the garage
• remote opener for the garage door
• additional towel rail in the bathroom
• shelves within the cupboard in the study
• cutting down trees and removing stumps from the front garden
• digging over front garden beds
• removing bamboo along driveway
• taking down unused curtain rail hooks

The larger items currently on the todo list include:

• put up venetian blind (currently on order) in kitchen
• get quotes for new screen doors
• finalise new line for edge of the garden beds and put in concrete mower strip
• rug in the lounge and a new coffee table

Here’s to another year…

Shortly after musing about a media player, and before I moved, I picked up a WD TV Live. My reasoning being that it was cheap enough that replacing it later wouldn’t be much of a sunk cost and I knew it would serve my immediate needs once I moved.

And it did, albeit on an old CRT TV. So, thanks to the boxing day sales, I bought a new TV, a 40″ Samsung Series 7. I had decided on 40″ as that was a suitable size for the space and I ended up with the Samsung as it was both thin and the sockets on the back did not come straight out. This model supports 3D which I didn’t really care about, but the price difference with the next model down (only 2D) wasn’t much and the 3D model has a redemption of a second TV, some 3D glasses and some 3D movies. As I don’t need a second TV, my plan is to sell it and also some of the 3D glasses (I don’t need six pairs) which makes the price even better.

I am fortunate that the previous owners had removed a gas heater and converted the space into an alove with a pipe running through to the wall where, after buying a nice thin mount, I have mounted the television. Inside the alcove are powerpoints and the aerial socket, the only thing mising is a network connection.

So what is in the alcove? Two devices, the WDTV Live and a Sony BluRay player. While the WDTV Live will get the most use in playing media from the network, I wanted something that could play DVDs and since I have a 3D TV I decided to splurge a bit on an inexpensive player that supported 3D movies. My choice came down to the Sony and a Samsung player for the same price, but I decided on the Sony as when I was fiddling with the Samsung player on a Samsung TV in the store, I couldn’t tell if I was in the menu for the player or the TV as they looked the same.

With the addition of an ethernet switch and a cable running around the walls (eventually I will run it under the floor) all three devices are on the network and I am satisfied with the setup. More so after picking up a universal remote to control it all

But there is an issue. An issue with the WDTV Live that is could turn into a deal breaker.

For some reason the WDTV Live does not let you skip forward or backward when playing a video. It does let you fast forward or rewind, but skipping back 30 seconds is much easier than rewinding the same amount. It is also an issue skipping forward to a point where you want to resume playback.

An alternative is to watch videos directly on the TV – it does support an impressive array of formats – but it cannot read off network shares and connecting via USB storage isn’t as convenient. The TV can play from a UPNP server, but so far I am not impressed with the couple of Linux based ones I have tried so far.

Investigations will continue…

It is now two months since I started living in my own place and the most surpising thing I have how is how much gardening I have been doing.

It all started with the grass, which I mowed a couple of times using a borrowed lawn mower. While the edges in the backyard were easy to handle with some shears, in the front yard there was a ground cover plant blending in. I say ‘was’ as a few hours with the shears filled up my green bin and exposed a rock border.

My long term strategy is to have a garden that doesn’t annoy me. This means that the things that need doing don’t take much time or do not need doing very often. In the case of mowing the grass, I will at some stage add a concrete strip in front of the rock border to simplify future mowing.

For a week or two nothing annoyed me, until the bushes around the letterbox started to envelop the letter box and the bamboo down the side of the driveway started to rub against the car. An afternoon with shears solved those problems, but only for the time being as they will eventually grow back. The long term strategy there will be to remove the bamboo completely and put something else near the letterbox.

The outcome of this and other jobs (such as trimming back the other edge of the front lawn) is that I have been filling up my green bin every fortnight and it looks like it will continue to be filled up for many fortnights to come.

To enable this gardening I have accumulated some tools; spade, fork, shears, secateurs, gloves, broom, etc. While I did borrow a lawn mower a couple of times, I realised that I needed to get one of my own as I intend to get into the habit of keeping the grass mown.

To avoid the hassle and noise of a petrol lawn mower, I decided on electric. Granted, I did buy the cheap small electric mower from Bunnings, but so far it has worked out nicely. Although I haven’t quite worked out a good way to manage the power cable as running over it with the mower is not a good idea.

Tomorrow I shall take posession of a two bedroom unit in Mount Waverley. I expect that settling in to it will occupy every spare minute I will have for the next few months. I have lists of things to get and stuff to do, but once I move I expect that there will be numerous things that I haven’t yet thought about.

On another list are three blog posts that have come about from events in the last two weeks. One about OSDC, one about the first ever TAM Australia and a final one about Microsoft ruining an otherwise useful product.

I will try to write all three posts tonight. The first two should have accompanying photos, but I am even more behind in sorting photos…

Update 11:13PM: The posts are done:

• OSDC2010
• I went to TAM Australia
• Continuing with Linux for home server

Settlement for my place is coming up soon, in two and a bit weeks. My current plan is to move the big items (bed, drawers, corner desk) in on the following Saturday, three weeks from today. Although not high on the list of priorities, I have been spending a fair amount of time researching my options for a media centre. While the television I will have initially is a CRT hand-me-down, I expect to have something more modern with HDMI inputs.

At a high level I have been considering three option types: small dedicated device, XBMC running on a low power PC, or Windows Media Center on a PC.

All three of these options will allow me to play media from the network on the television, while the third option allows addition of a TV tuner so that broadcast TV can be recorded directly on the media centre. Also the PC based options can include a DVD (maybe Blueray?) drive for playback from discs.

The small dedicated device that it at the top of my list is the WD TV Live. I know at least three people with it (they are happy with it) and it could be a nice simple cheap solution. It may be possible to use third party firmware and a USB DVD drive to add on DVD playback.

The low power PC running XBMC would be based on something like the ASRock ION 330HT. This specific unit has the nice advantage of coming with a media centre remote that is fully supported, however the much larger disadvantage is the significantly higher price tag. XMBC does have additional functionality over the WD TV Live in regard to having a library of media instead of just being file based, but I cannot see myself using that enough to justify the extra cost.

The PC running Windows Media Centre would be based on common desktop PC hardware, from what I can tell the cost might be comparable to a ready-made low power PC. With a TV tuner I could directly record broadcast TV, and as it is on top of Windows 7, I could also switch out to a web browser or any other installed application.

Until today I was going to head down the Windows Media Centre path, but I am now considering the WD TV Live again. It will work out of the box and it is very cheap, so cheap that I would have no problem replacing it later with a Windows Media Centre box. It also has a composite video out so I could use it with the hand-me-down CRT television.

After bookmarking it a few weeks ago, today I got around to having a look at DV Scheduler. This is one of many alternatives I found for recording TV in the background of a Windows box. I had begun researching that as my new ‘server’ will be Windows based, so why not have the computer that is on all the time anyway handle the recording?

I know I could have been doing that for a while now under Linux with MythTV, but I am lazy and I wanted something that would install and just work. I had looked at other Windows based recording (eg the TV engine from MediaPortal) but I hadn’t been able to get them working properly. DV Scheduler on the other hand just worked once I installed it. Another option would be to record in the same way I currently record TV, using the software that came with the tuner card, but that doesn’t have a web interface or the ability to schedule recordings based on a search of an electronic program guide.

In the next few weeks I may change my mind again, but a followup post can be expected…

Today, after spending many Saturdays looking, I bought a place. In principle.

At the auction I made some bids (against one other bidder and a single vendor bid) then later I signed various pieces of paper (one being small with special printing). All of this means that come Tuesday 7 December I will entitled to vacant possession of said unit.

Does this mean I will get my Saturdays back?

Sort of. While I no longer need to go to open for inspections, I should be spending that time sorting through my stuff. Decimating the collection has been a big part of that so far, but I have a lot of other stuff that I don’t need. This is compounded by the stuff I don’t have but will need. That second group contains items such as furniture and appliances.

Since late last year I have been looking for a house to buy and then live in. I ramped this up a few months ago which means that on almost every Saturday I have driving around to various open for inspections and watching a couple of auctions.

On two occasions I placed offers. In one case the successful offer was $70k above my offer and in the other the successful offers was $45k above. Ouch.

So what am I looking for, where am I looking, and how much can I afford?

Money

Of the above three factors, the money is the easiest to sort out as it boils down to two factors: my savings, and the most of my take home pay that I am comfortable committing to loan repayments.

Working backwards from a loan repayment figure gives me the loan about. Adding my savings and then allowing for other costs (stamp duty, etc) gives me my maximum figure.

Location

Where to buy is the hardest of the three factors to work out as it has a number of sub factors:

• I don’t want to be too close to work, but I also don’t want to be too far to make commuting by bicycle impractical.
• Some areas are clearly out of my league, but I don’t want to be in what I have come to think of as a rental area, especially in a block of units where all the other units are rented.
• I would like to be close to public transport, including making it easy to get to and from the city.

Based on these I have been looking in the Mount Waverley/Chadstone/Ashwood area. Less than 10km from work, has a fair number of units and is near the Glen Waverley railway line.

What

My budget and location have led me to look for a two bedroom unit, preferably with its own street frontage (ie no common driveway). A two bedroom house in my price range would need too much work, as would a three bedroom unit.

When I started this I had no idea how much of my time would be consumed by it. May an evening has been spent reviewing listings online and my Saturdays have been taken up by going to as many as six open for inspections. In two weeks I am intending to bid at an auction and hopefully that brings the hunting phase to an end and I will be a home owner.