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Apple just finished up their special event this morning. Among other things, they announced a $200 price cut for the iPhone. I’m sure this is all well and good from a business standpoint, but I do feel kind of screwed. I bought the phone on day one, and while I don’t regret it, I might not have gone through the uncertainty of early adoption if I knew I could wait a measly two months and saved several hundred dollars. For taking a chance on an untested, controversial new product, it feels like Apple owes me a little more loyalty.

This also gives everyone who said the iPhone was too expensive an excuse to say “I told you so.” Apple could have waited until November to announce the cut, given us another couple of months to feel good about our purchase, and still had plenty of time to boost sales for the holiday season.

I’ll just have to take some solace in the fact that, as a stock holder, I’ll probably make a little money off the whole deal.

This is the first in a series of articles that will detail the tools and methods I’m using for my personal media server at home. Part 1: Hardware gets the ball rolling with an in-depth look at the physical devices that power my system. Future articles will detail ripping, encoding, integration and disaster management.

The heart of the system is Wilbur, a 1.42 Ghz G4 Mac Mini with 1G RAM. I’m not ashamed to admit that I love this little guy. It’s quiet, reliable, Unix-based, and it’s never given me an ounce of trouble. That being said, though, it could be faster. While fine for day to day tasks, and a great desktop, it just can’t cut it when it comes to the heavy lifting. Enter Clyde.

Clyde is an Intel 2.8 Ghz P4 with 1GB RAM, running Windows XP. Clyde is not super fast, but he’s faster than Wilbur, so I use him for ripping and encoding. In addition to saving me time, using Clyde instead of Wilbur means I don’t have to tie up the machine I actually like to use.

Each machine has a 500GB SATA HDD. Clyde’s is internal, but Wilbur’s drive is mounted in an external FireWire enclosure. This setup has proven not only fast enough to stream video, but substantially faster than the internal drive. I’m currently using an enclosure from a company called Coolmax. It’s ok, but it will eventually get phased out, in favor of another solution that has an added FireWire port for daisy-chaining… and better matches the aesthetics, of course.

The final piece of the hardware puzzle is the AppleTV. This is the box that connects the TV to the network, and streams music, video and photos from a machine running iTunes. It’s slick, it’s easy to install, and it works great. One thing to be aware of, however, is that it only works with HDTVs.

Up next: Ripping.

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.

Twice now, the doorbell has rung in the middle of the day, and it’s some kid who, for some reason, is “running around the neightborhood, to talk to 100 friendly people.” I know I should just ignore it, but I’m usually sitting at my desk, next to the window, which is right next to the door. If the wall weren’t there, I could reach out and slap someone standing on the porch. Even though the blinds are drawn, I have this feeling that they know I’m right there… I can’t peek through the blinds to see who it is, either, because it’s right at eye level. They’d totally see me.

I feel forced to get up to see who’s at the door, and it’s some high school kid, oozing young-republican from every pore, who wants to talk to someone friendly, and I find that I can’t shut the door fast enough. LIterally. Something about the whole situation makes me incredibly nervous. Flustered. Not scared, like there’s danger, but just… the whole thing is wrong, and at that moment I couldn’t think of anything to say. I think I said, “No, thank you,” and he gave me a puzzled look, and a “What?” This makes a certain sense, since he didn’t seem to be selling anything, but what was going through my head were questions about why he was at my door, and who sent him.

It had to be a church group, or some kind of right-wing over-achievers club filled with kids with 3.9 GPAs and two safety schools. An after-school activity group where the outgoing, socially comfortable people I resent so much apparently train by going door to door.

“I don’t really have time,” I mumbled.
“Why not?” he asks.
“I… I have to go to bed,” I stuttered, while these conjectures about this guy’s origins continued to swarm through my head and my bitterness rose. Who was this guy? Why was I the nervous one? What gave him the right to intrude on my space and invade my privacy? How dare he be comfortable doing that?! And now I’m suddenly in the position where I have to try to explain to this interloper that I work graveyard and this is my sleepy time?! I don’t think so!!

“I’m not interested,” I told him as I closed the door, “I don’t care.” Just before it shut all the way I heard him give a condescending “Wow.”

I understand where he’s coming from, though. All he saw was a weird, nervous little guy who was rude to him for no reason. What I saw was a clean-cut. athletic, soon-to-be-fratboy-type who would never understand the depth of insecurity I was experiencing.