Keeping ourselves entertained

The following post is not cycling related by any stretch of the imagination.

While waiting for my neck to recover and for parts to arrive for the only cycling purchase (other than maintenance items) of the 2010 season we have been doing other things to cut down on our living expenses. Gone is the extra phone line, gone are the additional set top boxes, gone are magazine subscriptions, as well as cutting back on most recreational/discretionary spending.

During that time you also need to find ways to entertain yourself and family. While outdoor activities are a good start, physical limitations put some restrictions on the type and quantity of those activities. There is also still the need, on occasion, for mindless entertainment. The kind of entertainment television and movies provide. Looking for a way to maximize that proposition and at the same time minimize our dependence on cable TV can be challenging. We have settled on a way to do just that and that way is cheap linux based PCs running XBMC. This is not going to be a tutorial or even a review of XBMC but rather just informational about what XBMC is and how we are using it.

XBMC is short for XBox Media Center and it has its roots in the older Microsoft XBox. It has evolved from that to support Macs, Apple TV, Windows, Linux as well as still supporting the original XBox. We are running three Intel Atom/nVidia ION based boxes running Ubuntu Linux one connected to each of the three televisions we have in home. In addition we are also running a server with a 6TB hardware raid array to store all the content. The server is not essential as XBMC can handle not only presentation but also storing media but it does make it much easier to “share” content between TVs.

We have taken all the DVD, HDDVD and Bluray disks we own and re-encoded them as single files for storage and use from the centralized server. Now when we want to watch a movie or older TV show we just navigate to the appropriate choice with a Media Center based remote control and select play. If we need to pause or move our viewing to another set, we can do that. If we want to watch different things on each set, we can.

Now on those rainy days when I am re-lacing a wheel or patching tubular tires or planning for our next outing I can watch the original Planet of the Apes and be entertained mindlessly without wondering in which room I left the DVD.

So I did manage to get a couple of cycling related statements in this post!

Happy cycling and keep the rubber side on the road.