skettle.com

For Christmas last year, my sister gave me one of those spiffy new video iPods, and it launched me off into another video server project. At first, I just wanted to rip some DVDs to play on my new toy, but of course, one thing led into another, and I now I’m off on a whole thing.

Collecting files has always been a constant struggle balancing convenience, space, and redundancy. How do you maintain a system that’s easy to access, easy to expand, and will be safe in case of catastrophic failure?

I’ve been a file packrat for years, and I’ve never been able to work out a cost-effective way to deal with the constant struggle of balancing convenience, space, and redundancy. How do you maintain a system that’s easy to access, easy to expand, and will be safe in case of catastrophic failure? Time and time again I amass a huge mountain of music and video files that eventually overwhelm me and become more trouble than they’re worth. The hard drives end up in a cardboard box filled with packing peanuts, the CD or DVD backups end up on spindles on the shelf, and I wash my hands my of the whole thing for a year or two. Invariably, though, drives get bigger, hardware gets cheaper, and some neat new thing comes along to inspire me to dig everything up and start over again.

This time, I intend to document my proccess as I go along: the hardware, the software, the various settings, and the missteps. I don’t anticipate this information being particularly usefull to others, though, as a home theater is as unique as the person who decides to build one- there are hundreds of possible combinations for encoding and playback, and what is considered “acceptable quality” can differ greatly from geek to geek.

No, my goal is to have a record of how everything works so i don’t have to start from scratch after the next big lull, and (hopefully), to provide some regular content for this stupid site.

Since I started working on this site, I’ve gained a new appreciation for the concept of Content. Back in the early days of the internet, it seemed like anyone could put up a site and throw their opinions out into the wild blue net like so much feces at the zoo. With so much content management software available now, though, and the blogging and the social networking and the what have you, saying anything about the amount of shit on the web “in the good old days” is analagous to reminiscing about “how fat you were back then.” Trust me: you’re much fatter now.

I guess my point is that I wish it hadn’t taken me this long to realize the the technical ability to build a site pales next to the ability to generate quality content.