I’m not a high-fashion guy. I don’t get the whole avant-garde fashion thing, I don’t follow trends, and I’m not paying $300 for a shirt. That said, I know what I like, and what I like generally tends towards what I guess could be considered “simple classics.” I generally stick to the Ralph Lauren area in the store because I can’t deal with the unkempt “thug” look they try to sell me in the juniors and I’m not going to wear the golf pants they try to sell me in the “adult” section. I have an even more particular taste with what I find attractive in women’s clothing - IMHO, a simple black dress will beat out some crazy, extravagant number any day. With that in mind…

Jenn and I went shopping at Macy’s on Saturday. I was thinking about getting a new shirt or two and she just wanted to see what’s new for the season. When we walked in, though, I really felt like I was caught in some sort of time warp. It was the 70’s meets the 80’s with a touch of 60’s thrown in for good measure. All of the colors were muted browns, greens, and oranges like you see in pictures from the 70’s. The dresses all looked either like something you’d need to wear gogo boots with or like something that might go great with some stirrup pants underneath. Patterns were big, blocky, and geometric - they gave me a headache just looking at them.

I started feeling like I was listening to an orchestra perpetually tuning up. Everything was dischord and no notes stood out whatsoever. Every color on every garment was flat - not quite red, but not quite orange and not really yellow, either. It seemed like the aim was for a sort of haute couture jazz to emerge from the noise, but I wasn’t hearing it.

In the end, I didn’t find anything I liked (the stock seemed to be sort of between-seasons; I don’t need a bulky sweater, but I’m not looking for an unimpressive standard button-up shirt, either) and Jenn came out with a pair of pants and a dress that look great on her and did their best to separate themselves from the visual onslaught on the racks. Here’s hoping they snap out of it soon.

I got my Windows XP Media Center 2005 virtual machine to stream a movie stored in VIDEO_TS format to my Xbox 360 last night. The picture was sort of choppy due to the virtual machine overhead and limitations, but I saw it work, proving the concept.

Here’s what I had to do:

1. Install Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.
2. Activate Windows XP. You have to do this to get all the updates you need.
3. Hit Microsoft Update to get all the available patches.
4. Install .NET 1.1 and SP1.
5. Install MCE 2005 Update 2. (You might be able to get this from Windows Update; I got it from a separate download.)
6. Install My Movies.
7. Install Transcode360.
8. Hit Microsoft Update again to make sure all the patches are in place. (I did this twice because the first time I missed getting Windows Media Player 11 - I might have been able to skip it had I done everything the first time. I also had tried to avoid activating my MSDN copy of media center because I knew I’d only need it for a few days… but you have to be activated to get everything up to date.)
9. Start up Windows Media Player and configure it.
10. Install FFDShow to get the MPEG2 codec. Set it to be the default decoder for MPEG2. (I’m given to understand that if you install some DVD player software you don’t need to do this. I was looking to do a proof of concept for free, so I went this route; I think if I do it for real I’ll get TheaterTek.)
11. Install DVD Decrypter for the movie ripping.
12. Rip a DVD to a known location. (I ended up ripping on a different machine and transferring the files to the virtual machine - there was some weirdness getting the ripping to work inside the VM.)
13. Run the My Movies collection editor and add the ripped movie to the collection.
14. Start Windows Media Center.
15. Turn on the Xbox 360. Navigate to the “Media” tab and select the “Media Center” option. After you read a couple of screens, you’ll be given an eight-digit number that you need to write down.
16. Windows Media Center automatically detects the Xbox 360 and asks you to connect to it.
17. Follow the Windows Media Center extender setup on the Windows Media Center. It will ask you to install some software to allow streaming to extenders.
18. When the extender setup is done, it’ll finally ask you for that eight digit number. Enter that, and you’ll be connected.
19. On the Xbox 360, you’ll be in a Media Center screen once the connection is complete. Navigate to the My Movies section, select the movie, and select the “Watch Stream” option. Transcode360 will do its job and transcode the VIDEO_TS directly to your Xbox 360.

The downside to this is that you don’t get the option of setting up sound or other options. If you have foreign language movies, you won’t get the ability to decide whether you watch it overdubbed or in the original language (or whether you see subtitles). You also don’t get to choose which feature you watch, so if you have, say, an episodic TV DVD, you’ll only really be able to watch the first episode on the disc. But for the 80% case, you should be set.

Now I have some decisions to make. It turns out my wife isn’t quite as hot on the media center idea as I am, but since she only saw the proof of concept and it was jumpy and sort of sucked, I don’t think she’s fully realized the coolness (sort of how the coolness of DVR is still setting in - we still end up watching “appointment TV” even though we know things are getting recorded). That means I need to be super frugal about how I go about this.

I can start getting storage together and using the standard Windows XP UPnP file sharing deal to get movies to my Xbox, storing two copies - the VIDEO_TS and a compressed Xbox version. Not optimal, but it would get us in the habit of using the Xbox for movies and would be a cheap way to see if we like it.

If we do like it, the question will be whether we have a single media center and several extenders or whether we have a network attached storage/file server setup with several full media centers. I think that, too, will have to be in stages. I’ll be getting a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate from MIX and I could upgrade our existing PC to use that and be a more “central” media center to stream to extenders. It doesn’t have a TV-out on it, so it wouldn’t do for a full media center. If we get to a point where we want the full menus or the streaming just isn’t enough, we can get a cheap media center PC for the living room and have it get movies over the network.

Anyway, I’m glad to see it works. Time to determine next steps.

I went to my local comic shop to pick up some back issues I was missing and noticed the selection wasn’t quite what it used to be. I’m not normally picking up a lot of back issues, so I talked to the clerk about it and it turns out that back issues (unless they’re rare/expensive) really don’t get a lot of business. The best value-per-square-foot-of-floor-space they can get is on new merchandise, so they reduced their stock of back issues to make room.

Not wanting the inconsistency of price, selection, and quality that is generally offered at eBay, I chose instead to take my search to some of the online suppliers. To that end, I bring you the Comic Back Issue Showdown: Midtown Comics vs. Mile High Comics!

I think my virtual machine trials for Windows Media Center may be coming to an end. The reason? I’m running into unfortunate limitations due to the video RAM that Virtual PC 2007 gives me. Virtual PC emulates an S3 Trio 64 video card with 8MB of video RAM

• apparently not enough to get a DVD to play, at least for me.

See, I installed Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 on a Virtual PC yesterday and while I got a bit further than I did with Vista Ultimate (My Movies installed correctly, for example), I’m still unable to actually play a DVD in the virtual machine because there’s not enough video memory. Of course, that’s not the error I get - it’s usually something about files or drivers not working or some crap like that, but since I’ve got actual physical machines running Windows XP that can play DVDs fine, I have to blame it on the video RAM because everything else seems to be just fine.

Hmmm… unless it’s the whole virtualized video card that’s the problem. Eh. Regardless, there’s trouble in video town.

I can see why people go with VMware for anything beyond the most basic virtualization needs. Virtual PC is great if you’re throwing together a quick server-based, non-UI-intensive thing, but when you get to trying something like a virtual media center, it falls flat on its face. (Granted, I haven’t tried this in VMware, so it, too, might fall flat. But since I don’t have VMware and it’s not free, I can’t really do much to test that theory.)

I did get DVD Decrypter installed on the Windows XP VM, but it kept coming across errors when I tried to rip a movie. I’m guessing that, too, is virutalization problems having to do with the drive or something.

My last ditch effort with both of these VMs: I’m going to rip a movie on a non-virtual machine. I’ll transfer the movie over to each virtual machine, making the assumption that if these were on real hardware we wouldn’t be running into the ripping issues. I’ll then try to get my Xbox 360 to communicate with each virtual machine and see how that goes. Technically speaking, if it works, I won’t really be playing movies directly on the media server anyway, so I’ll just make the assumption that everything works as far as the ripped movie is concerned and see if the media server can at least serve it up to the extender.

If I can get that to work, it’ll at least give me hope that allocating actual hardware to the effort is worth it. Assuming it works, I’ll see if I can dredge up some sort of low-end spare computer from someone and try it on actual hardware.

My last-ditch e

I had this weird dream last night involving super heroes, magic, and Scarlett Johansson. I think that’s what I get for playing a lot of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and then watching The Prestige right before bed.

Friday night Jenn and I tried out a new Mexican restaurant called Costa Vida. It’s [yet another] one of those build-your-burrito-to-order places, but they have this sweet pork that’s just fantastic, especially when coupled with their mango salsa. I’ll definitely be having that again.

Saturday we went to my parents’ house to watch Borat. They hadn’t seen it yet and somehow thought it would be, I dunno, less crazy or something if I was there. We laughed, we screamed. Good times.

Oh, my dad got his Xbox Live router configuration issues under wraps and picked up a copy of GRAW 2, so now I’m going to have to get that so I can trounce him. Not that I’m very good, I’m just better than him. And isn’t that what matters? Hehehe. He’s promised to devote at least an hour a week to get used to the controls and stuff so he can play without having to call “time out” and ask how you shoot guns or ride in vehicles or whatever.

Saturday night we went to Jenn’s friend Kristi’s 30th birthday party. It was a pretty cool party and was at Kristi’s mom’s house, which is super huge and really nice, so we not only got to attend the party but also get some home improvement ideas. (Kristi’s mom is an interior designer.)

Kristi has this really cool huge dog that’s part Chow and part Saint Bernard or horse or cow or something. I’m not a dog person, but this dog was really mellow and pretty cool. I sort of wanted to ride him around the house. Yes, he was that big.

Sunday the kitties were nice enough to let us sleep in a bit and not cry outside the door, so we woke up reasonably late (9:00a is super late for the kitties to not be crying wanting love). We intended the day to be a “preparing for Spring” day since it was supposed to be nice, so I was going to get the awning on our back deck ready (plug it in, unpin the winter cover on it, clean it, etc.). Of course, just as I got started the rain kicked in so I didn’t get much done. I think we’re going to need a pressure washer anyway because the moisture rolled up in the awning molded over the winter and now it needs a good scrubbing.

While I was outside, I noticed that over by our air conditioner there’s this hole through one of the vents under the house where the A/C pipes go in and connect to the central distribution system or whatever. Anyway, there was a piece of sheet metal that was sort of jimmied in there to make sure no animals can get under the house. “Was” is the operative word - that piece of metal wasn’t really “in place” so much when I looked.

Now, every so often - maybe once a month - we’d get this really strong pee smell going through the house. We didn’t know if it was outside, or maybe just the smell of one of the kitties not burying their business very well in the litter box, but every so often, it’d accost you and take a couple of hours to go away.

Okay, so flash forward to Sunday. I started thinking about this pee smell and realized maybe some animal was getting in there and peeing, so I put the sheet metal back in place.

It occurred to me a couple hours later that the next smell may not be “pee,” it might be “dead animal.”

I didn’t get under the house to look. Just what I need is to be bitten by some rabid squirrel or some crap. There may well not be anything under there. I guess we’ll find out in a couple of weeks, won’t we?