Sunday, 5th February, 2006

Disjointed

apple mac mediacentre

Building the perfect home media system is not an easy task. I have this general sense that things have come just far enough to be able to piece something elegant together right now — but all the bits don't seem to meld properly.

The arrival in my house of an Elgato EyeTV 410 whatchamajigger has radically (even in the space of a couple of hours) altered the way I feel about television — moreso even than when I first got a Sky+ box.

The Sky+ was great — but I always felt I was battling against it. It didn't do what I wanted it to do. I wanted to be able to integrate it with everything else around here that masquerades as cutting-edge 21st Century yumminess.

The Elgato is wonderful. Seriously. The UI is slick and gorgeous, it worked out of the box (after a momentary *doh* session from myself¹ )

I had thoughts when I first looked into it, that I would have to write some clever scripting mumbo-jumbo to take the programmes I'd recorded, and squirt them out into archivable MPEG-4s or h.264 QuickTime.

But it does it for me. All I have to do is click on a little box, and it automatically exports whatever I save as an iPod-ready .mp4 — and imports it into iTunes. (Sorry, I was confusing it with NetNewsWire)

And did I mention the interface is gorgeous? (I did, didn't I?)

Everything does just what you'd expect it to — and does it slickly. I dunno if you've ever used http://www.radiotimes.com, but imagine that, without any of the clunkiness of the web, and imagine that it actually controls your TV at the same time.

And not just that — using CyTV, I can stream the output all over the house, on any machine that can connect to the network and run VLC, meaning that if I did buy myself a Palm TX or something, then I could watch TV in the bath.

...

The thing is though, and it's something that's been troubling me all day, just what kind of hardware set-up should one use? I know Jon went with a TV-connected-to-a-Mac-Mini kinda thing, but I'm not sure that's exactly the route I'd take.

Not just yet anyway.

The thing is, whatever hardware setup you plonk for, you're going to have to stick with it — and see it through. (Unless you're made of money — and let's face it, senior or not, as a part-time lecturer I'm not exactly in my brother's league when it comes to income...)

The ideal in my head, is some kind of Mac Mini system — probably with a LaCie hard drive attached to it. And in a sense — apart from the inevitable "Apple are in a state of flux" and I'm not doing a thing until they bring out an Intel Mini — that seems the obvious route. That and a Front Row based software implementation.

But that's not the main thing that's bugging me. What's really confusing me at the moment is two things:

1. What kind of screen do I want?

2. Where, in God's name, am I going to put a screen?

I try (despite the evidence that would have confronted you if you popped round today to show me your new Honda Civic) to live in an uncluttered way. My parents home is Trebus in nature — a collection of crap and clutter that they've managed to transport between Dunmurry and Carrickfergus, despite having the perfect opportunity to 'dejunk' their lives — and the encouragement of all three of their offspring, who unanimously said "Just throw it away" when asked what to do with their childhood possesions.

As such, I live in fear of becoming like them. I teeter on the verge of complete hoarderism — unable to throw anything away.

(You should see my attic)

I aspire to some idealistic Terence Conran lifestyle — a place for everything, my home revolving around me and not the other way around. I don't want to stick a TV (ha ha ha ha ha) in the corner and turn my chairs towards it. I want to put a TV (ha ha ha ha ha) in the sight-line of where I just happen to sit anyway.

But I'm looking around me at the moment, and I just can't see anywhere that I could put a television that wouldn't (a) ruin the aesthetics of this space, and (b) not get in the way.

(If you happened to pop round earlier to show me your new Honda Civic, can I just point out that I've tidied up since then. OK?)

There are a couple of projector-based solutions running through my head — I could hook up a retractable screen in the space where the wall used to be, or I could be really clever and use the blind as a screen.

I've done that in the past incidentally — on nights when I had a projector in the house after doing a VJ stint. I would project the TV onto the front-window blind, and scare the crap out of anyone walking past

...

I dunno — I'm feeling like I have all the software elements in place to make a seriously stunning home-media-centre, but the hardware is lacking.

Or maybe not the hardware — it's my decision-making abilities that are lacking

...

You may be wondering just why I'm telling you all of this BTW. And if you're hoping for some 'deep and meaning insight into transgenderism', then this is not the night to be reading this.

I'm not even wearing a dress FFS. (Just jeans. Naked torso and jeans tonight. The fire's been on and it's a bit toasty in here)

The reason I'm spouting all of this, is because it has serious implications/parallels with my blogging.

Technically, I don't blog. I went for a long time trying to resist that word — having come to this from a completely different perspective to the majority of people that I know. I didn't think, one day, that I would start a blog — someone once pointed out to me that I'd been blogging for several years, and that I should probably call it by what everyone else called it.

The parallel (before I go off on some kind of self-congratulatory bullshit) is to do with aggregation.

The media that I watch comes from many different places. Some of it comes from traditional broadcast mediums — but an increasingly large amount comes from podcasts I subscribe to.

(Note to self: Create some kind of podcast directory to link to the cool things I've seen)

The idea of a home media centre, to me, is something that combines all the different feeds — whether RSS or broadcast — and makes it all available to me in one central location. Something easy to navigate, and something that (going back to an old argument — and one I should probably never bring up again) "Just Works".

And that's exactly what this weblog is to me. Somewhere that takes all the things that I do — photographically, textually, video — er — ly, and maybe even audibly — and combines them altogether into one single feed.

A feed that you (dear reader) can filter to your heart's content so that you only get what you want to out of it.

(Although, increasingly, if you filter for just the crossdressing stuff, you'll get a whole lot less that you thought)

...

I'm an egotistical bitch sometimes. And I do, if I'm honest, regularly check Google, Technorati, and del.icio.us to see who's talking about me.

But it was on one of my vainity-induced browsing escapades that I came across April's description in her del.icio.us links:

more of a "life dump" than a blog

That's what I want to do. Both in the media aggregation in my house, and what goes on in this weblog. In the same way that I just chuck everything that gets created on my G5 into a folder and let Spotlight take care of sorting it — I want to do the same thing with (a) some media centre, and (b) this weblog.

I have some coding to do³...

...

¹ I plugged my aerial — the semi-barbeque-rack I have on the roof² — into it, but could only get about a 65% signal. Nothing I did — even going out and buying top-notch connectors — had any effect. Then I thought I'd check the connection where the aerial comes into the house, and discovered that I'd installed a booster a long time ago. A booster that was connected to the same 4-way as the phone that I'd made a very conscious decision to turn off a while back. A flick of a switch later, and I had 98% signal, and the full 70-odd channels...

² When I first got Digital TV, I was dismayed by the signal quality. In the evenings, I couldn't get Channel 4 at all. It always confused me why the signal depended on the time of day, until I got some guys around to fit a new aerial. Turns out, the transmitter is north of me, and standing in the way is a great big fat gasometer. My signal strength was determined by how much gas people in Lancaster were using — or, to put it another way — when the city started cooking, I couldn't watch TV.

³ Did you notice, BTW, in that letter I posted yesterday, how my writing style hasn't actually changed over fifteen years? I always finish of what I'm saying/writing with a short, throw-away line at the end. Its been pointed out to me several times, and I'm very aware of it.

I guess that's just the way I do things.

you need to use rweason for it to be an argument

That, I believe, is a quote lifted directly from "Philosophical Reasoning For Dummies", written by Elmer Fudd

Naughty Erin. Bad Erin.

spam bork whoops

In which Siobhan's server gets blacklisted...

(This is yet another geeky post. Sorry. Would it help if I mentioned I was wearing satin pyjamas? )

As proud as I am of the code of this weblog, it's quite a buggy thing. Never having actually been trained to programme, I tend not to really know what I'm doing, and stumble around in the dark.

Sometimes, as a result, there are great big gaping holes and ghastly bugs.

One of the things that the code does is sends me an email every time a comment gets posted — whether it's spam on not. The spam stuff get's a "SPAM!" prefixed to the title, and Mail.app filters them off into a seperate mailbox so that they don't clutter up the place.

I do it for two reasons — one: to check that everything's working, and two: to pat myself on the back and congratulate myself on being a clever little wotsit

But the past couple of days has seen a new kind of spam attack on Erin — strangely formed comments, with huge lists of email addresses in them. They show up in my logs as this:

"POST /index.php?target=&newcomment=yes#end HTTP/1.0"

Not being directed to a particular day, they wind up (or at least they would had I not scripted a thing that catches them) on day zero.

...

Coincidentaly (or not, as it turned out), I've been finding my internet connection slowing down for long periods recently. I thought is was the students uploading lots of stuff, but it wasn't.

I couldn't work out what was taking up all the bandwidth — or why Erin was making hard-disk noises ... until I checked the mail logs.

Hundreds and hundreds of email were being sent — all to AOL inboxes. And the addresses matched the addresses that were in the spam comments.

I flushed the queue, but they kept on coming. So I've turned off the "email spam comments to Siobhan" part of the weblog script — and that seems to have stopped it.

...

However, I thought I'd do a bit of digging through the logs, to see if I could find out what was happening, and came acros this url in the error messages:

http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/421dynt1.html

The IP address you are sending from has been blocked due to AOL Member complaints

I didn't mean too! Honest!

Is this some kind Karmic Payback for me slagging off AOL the other day?

Nope If the Elgato had a composite in socket, then it would be ideal. As it is, if I want to bring Sky into the bundle, I'm going to have to get an Analogue->DV convertor

When General Thoughts Collide

frustration

Lemme try and paint a picture for you. I'm lying — no, lounging — here on the settee, glass of wine in one hand, fag in another, laptop on lap, typing away. The fire is trickling warmth throughout the living room, and the smell of peat is rife. There's some gentle appropriately Sunday music on (folk), and on the stairs, Biscuit is chasing her tail.

She's a dog, trapped in a cat's body.

Having just watched Smallville on E4 (OMG! I worked out "AC" was Aquaman all by myself ) and pootled around with various installers, I'm noww enjoying the delights of Front Row on my laptop controlled by my phone.

I'm feeling, frankly, smug with myself, and rather the Geeky Princess™

My tits are firmly in place. And I'm enjoying a moment of calm contemplation at the end of the weekend, preparing myself for the mountain of things I have to do tomorrow.

But there's something niggling me.

...

See, Im trying to make this house a rather fabulous place to hang out. I'm trying to make it so that I can glide, effortlessly, through media and stuff — possibly in the hope that it becomes a welcoming environment.

I spend ages and ages trying to make everything seamless — and when I get there, I tend to think "OK. What now?"

Permit me a moment of moroseness here OK?

A few months ago, this sort of thing would all be about nest-building. I'd be doing all this for a reason — a reason apart from myself.

And now I'm a tad grumpy that I can't share this with someone.

You know how (apparently a lot of people feel this way) it's so hard to get up the enthusiam to cook a nice meal for yourself — but when you've got company you can rustle up something stunning? It's kinda like that.

...

I was trying to explain to Becky the other day why I'm feeling so grumpy at the moment, and the only analogy I could come up with involved that red dress that I just got.

The huge one.

When I got it (and the hooped skirt), I was ecstatic. As I said, I waltzed around the bedroom for ages, knocking things over left right and centre.

And then I thought "What now?"

I have a general feeling of frustration at the moment — a frustration that seems, oddly, to spread itself through every single thing I'm up to at the moment.

The website I've done at work — I really want to talk about it, because it's a fucking brilliant thing. But it's not ready to share yet.

The way I'm setting up the house is going to be great — I just know that it is. But even when it's reached its full media-presenting potential, I've not got anyone to share it with.

The clothes I've been buying recently, they're all gorgeous. But Ive got nowhere to wear them.

I'm lying here, on the sofa, scruffy but kinda cute (if I do say so myself) — but no-one ever sees that.

...

A long time ago, I'd be upstairs, plonking myself in front of the camera. Snapping fifty million images and whittling them down to three shots that I'd shove online and push in as many places as I could. But it all kinda feels a little pointless and futile at the moment.

...

D'ya know what all this is about? It's about a realisation that although I can be a complete hermit at times, I need other people. I've been stupidly shutting myself off in my own little world for a while now — and I'm not really sure why.

There's a notion in the back of my head that it's got something to do with being exceptionally busy with work things — but I'm sure it must be something more than that.

I dunno. Maybe I do know why, but I'm loathe to admit it.

Whatever. I'm going to go put on something less butch and swish for a bit

A Small Confessional

dress uniform sissy

I very nearly succumbed to temptation the other day. I very nearly threw my credit card details at this and sat back to wait for ParcelForce.

OK, so I resisted — in a moment of unnatural calrity and reflection, I decided to hold back — but the temptation is still here.

Despite being an Artist Who Is A Transvestite™, I'm not about to go about my daily life dressed as a little girl. The debate surrounding the whole "LG" thing is far too complex for me to have anything other than a knee-jerk reaction to it.

(That knee-jerk reaction being: "Um guys, this can't be right can it?")

In general, I'm the kind of transvestite who happens to think that the things that I do when dressed as a woman have a great deal of bearing on what I think about women — and that at the very least, I should be aware that feminism exists before I waltz up a street dressed like someone out of the Victorian Era screaming "I'm a lady! I'm a lady!"

(BTW, the latest issue of Repartee — am I the only one to read through that contents list, see the "Martine spends a weekend in Victorian costume." bit, and want to scream "EMILY!!!"? ... I am so going to get in trouble for that one)

The thing is, I have to confess that whilst the whole concept of sissy maids makes me feel deeply troubled about the State Of Transgenderism Today™, I can't help but feel — in the deepest, darkest regions of my soul — that prancing about in some frilly explosion of a dress would be the most stunningly wonderful and deeply erotic thing I could possibly do.

You know — to be bedecked in swathes of lace and satin, and crinoline, and bows, and taffeta — God, wouldn't that be great?

It goes against every Right On sentiment in my body, but I'd love that.

Is it just me?

(It is just me isn't it? I should probably not have admitted to that )

The thing is though, that you can never tell just from a tiny little photograph online whether or not something will actually be as nice as you think it is. I'm a little sceptical myself...

Mmmmm — Finger-licking good

(Sorry)