Light a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.

I love my mini. I love having a media server. I will never go back to regular TV and I can’t see how more people don’t have them. “Where is the down side?” you might ask yourself.

Downside=lots of cable mess.

And that is after I routed the power and coax up behind the television, which is another story for another time.

Note to Self: Secure cables onto bent hanger well before attempting to fish them up the wall because they will fall out in the middle of the wall.

As some of you read about I have been having fun with Plexiglas lately, and I decided that all the shelves on the market weren’t deep enough so I made my own. I bought the Plexiglas and shelf supports at Lowe’s.

I know- I should work harder to gain some weight, but it’s just soo hard when all you want to do is sit around and have an overactive metabolism.

I decided before I started the project that if was going to put this much time and effort into changing the setup of my mini that I would make it totally seamless. To do that I would have to run all the cables connecting the mini and the TV behind the wall. Now, I have it on a good source that if they are low voltage cables that you don’t need a casing… anyone care to comment about that?? Anyway, so I wanted to work it out so that I could put these though the wall but not leave a gaping hole. While I was at work one day I noticed the hole in my desk where all the stuff for my monitor came up and a cover that went over it. Ding! So I went to Office Depot and got some. I figured that if they worked good for the desk they could work good for a wall.

Now you might be asking yourself- how is he making those holes… I hesitate to tell you because you will totally think I’m white trash. “Ya’ll don’t even know me! Don’t you juuuudge me!”

Note to self: Make the holes smaller than the caps and smash them in otherwise they will fall out. (I put marker on the back and pressed them to the wall to get the right size.) Then just smash them in.

With both of the caps in place I ran a hanger down the back of the wall to pull all the cables up.

I was really worried about fitting all of the AC to DC converters in the back, between the TV and the wall. With the TV that I bought from dealmac.com though it was a breeze. It’s a ViewSonic and has removable pieces in the back so it all fits great.

I put the TV back on the wall, hooked up the mini and now I have a sexy biznatch!

I had a fun 4th, even though I had to go into work for the bulk of “prime” firework time. We (the Mac and I) were involved in the family festivities in the morning, had a great nap, and then it was off to work. While I was at work however, I found something interesting on the internet.  I found the video too.

Well anyway, I thought that I would add a picture of our morning. This is the family float.

It was a boom of a float!! 15 blocks I think.

A while back my father-in-law, being the generous guy he is, handed me 2 laptops. They were both in working condition, with all the plugs and cables needed for usage. What is the catch you ask yourself…. nothing… if your a nerd and don’t plan on using them as your regular pc, you see these lappies barley run Windoz ‘98. 64 meg of ram doesn’t really get you to far in the computer world today.

These lappies sat in the back room of my house when one day I was reading one of my favorite blogs TUAW (BTW this isn’t the post I saw but you get the idea.) Well, being the master of self-control that I am I got off work at 11:00 pm and went straight home and started on my new project.

***Note to self- install the operating system and pictures before dismantling the lappie.

The keyboard was a pain in the butt to get off. I eventually decided that I didn’t care if it came off in one piece- and then it did. After removing the hard-drive and the screws in the back of the casing I was able to remove the inside cover (where the keyboard once was) and start the real work.

I removed everything. Everything.

Then I took what I wanted out of the pile and starting putting back together what I needed for the Photophrame: the motherboard (processor was still intact with fan), the hard-drive, the screen, the disk drive, and the keyboard. (You only need the keyboard and disk drive for set-up on most lappies, then you can toss them.)

With dismantling done I needed a light snack at 1:00 am. My hot wife hooked me up.

Man I look bad, ummm.. I mean hot.

I pieced it all back together on the table and did a test run of the boot up. ***Note to self- hard drive cannot be touching the motherboard or lappy shorts out.

Now to make the casing. I wanted to do something nifty that I saw on the original post, which was to mount the whole thing on two pieces of Plexiglas. I put the motherboard and the screen on the pieces that I had purchased at Lowe’s (they also cut it for free if you buy it there) and marker-ed in the mounting holes. I had to borrow a drill from my parents house and I drilled the holes in my living room.

*** Note to self- put something under the Plexiglas or you drill into the carpet.

I mounted the screen and motherboard onto the Plexiglas with some nuts and bolts that I purchased at Lowe’s as well. Total cost at Lowe’s: give or take $20.

I decided to go with a different distribution of Linux than Knoppix. Kubuntu gave me a workable desktop and a GUI that I was more familiar with. I used Synaptic Package Manager to grab FEH (a light weight image viewer). FEH is great, if you aren’t a big linux user just type “man feh” in the command line and it gives you all the instructions you need. My buddie Justin helped me write a script to run FEH at startup, and Vua-La “et voila” your own homemade photophrame for cheaper than dirt.

It’s sooo hot, I want to touch the hiny.

Its really power efficient, and with Kubuntu you can configure the screen not to go dark when not being used and have scheduled shutdowns. Now I only really turn it on at our weekly Cookie Night to impress the other nerds that show up to my house.

**Update: Thanks to Tess I now know that proper French is “et voila” as reflected in the post. I have the script that Justin helped me make as well if anyone is interested I will post it.

In my many interactions with friends/co-workers about the “in’s and out’s” of this thing called the (Interweb) (SerfingNet)… Internet? I have come across the most intelligent (and attractive) man I have ever seen. As depicted above from Michaelangelo rendering of our Divine, we see the embodiment of Glory. At times I wish I could eat his brain in an attempt to ascertain a glimmer of his intellect.

Here is my tribute- To the father of my webshite, my wifes’, and many others “I’m naming my first kid after you, and if it (my website) ever brakes I’m coming to blame my foibles on you, Dad.”

p.s.- it was working when you touched it last.