Archive for March, 2006

The Tale of the Harmony 880 Remote

Mar 26th

Posted by mstroud in Rants

I recently became the owner of a new smart remote control, the Logitech Harmony 880 via a friend of mine who will remain nameless (he knows who he is).  After months of pain with the previous remote, the Philips Pronto NG (I think the NG stood for “not good”) I was ready to switch to something better.  The Harmony 880 looked to be the ticket.

To be fair, I was warned that the setup process for the 880 would be a little, um, rough.  The warning was correct.  It was an unholy terror to setup the remote due to a few factors, which More >

Long Ride Up and Back, with Good Ski In-Between

Mar 15th

Posted by mstroud in Rants

There was good skiing to be had last weekend, but a lot of pain on the ride to and from Tahoe made it bittersweet.  It was the first time I’ve ever seen snow in Placerville, a town located at 1800 feet above sea level.  It’s rare to find snow that low in California, so out came the Caltrans chain crews and down goes the speed limit.

It took just over 7 hours to get to Tahoe that Friday evening.

On Saturday and Sunday there was a bit over an inch of new snow, really cold weather, and very light crowds.  Slopes were More >

Multi-room audio coolness

Mar 5th

Posted by mstroud in Music

After a little searching around (OK, a lot of searching) I’ve found a solution to help kick music around throughout the homestead with only a little fussing.  The equation works like this:

Roku SoundBridge + SlimServer 6.2.1 + SoftSqueeze PC client + MP3s = whole house synchronized* audio

I have to put the * caveat in because the Roku really doesn’t handle sync terrifically.  But it does it well enough to walk around the house and hear the same song everywhere at nearly the same time.  Considering the extra cash outlay was zero, its not a bad solution.

Now, when am I going to get some More >