house – Page 6 – frans goes blog

Media room project, part 3

Media room project, part 3
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Among all the other stuff, the media room project has progressed, too. During the Easter weekend, we finally got the cables into their canals and fixed to the corners of walls, and after carrying in the chairs the project reached some sort of temporary finale. There must be over 50 meters of medium-heavy loudspeaker wiring alone in the room. The most critical point currently is heat: few people, computers and a powerful video projector can easily transform a small home theatre into a sauna. Moving the server and printers into the storage room helped a lot, though. After a couple of movies (Happy Feet, Pirates of the Caribbian) I am actually rather impressed by the quality of audio and images. But there is always something to improve, of course. (Note the custom-made projector logo: “Mäyrän mediakellari”.)

Easter 07

Easter 07
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

This is the first Easter in the new home. We have been working hard on everyday things like trying to find all the clothes and other necessities for daily life. Most of these few days and nights when there are no work related appointments have been used on organising and reorganising the house. But: a quiet, peaceful moment when there is no other need than just to be silent and enjoy life — this is what Easter is at its best. And to eat some Mämmi, of course!

Moving stuff

Moving stuff
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

We only have two days to move all Laura’s stuff in, after selling her apartment, and after one day we both feel pretty much like someone would have beaten us with sticks and stones. Many things go into contemporary living, many of them big and heavy. Oh, did I mention the aquarium?

Upgrading Ubuntu for printer support

My server moved today from its short-term temporary place in upstairs floor to the medium-term temporary place in downstairs media room corner. I would very much prefer to have it in cool, air-conditioned room where its noices would not disturb movie or gaming sessions, but at the moment there is no such room available. This time I attempt to have Ubuntu box to function as file and printer server as well as backup/web/Wordpress one, but lets see how it goes. Of my two HP printers, the multi-functional PSC 1210 seems to print just fine under Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, but HP Laserjet Series 1000 would not print anything, even if it is recognised and the driver appears to install. Well, there was some talk in the forums that upgrade into Ubuntu 6.10 might help, so here we go — this might be the last message going out, of course… See: EdgyUpgrades – Community Ubuntu Documentation

Data-cables ready

Ok, last night was a long one, but thanks to Miska from JettVision, who did good work late at night and tested that all rooms of my house now have a functional Internet connection. Yes, I now, I could have achieved this much easier with Wi-Fi, and that is what I’ll be mostly using, but our house was internally Ethernet cable-ready, so it would have been shame not to make use of this. Now, lets see when we can plug in our fridge to the connectors in kitchen, and see what groceries we need to bring home from the supermarket today…

Media room project, part 2

Media room project, part 2
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

I have now the projection wall and the rotating ‘tech tower’ mostly set up, but the sturdy table beneath it was not deep enough for my old CRT display. Well, it was time for a new editing screen in any case. My choice was Samsung SyncMaster 226BW — a piano black 22″ widescreen beauty boasting 2ms response time, 3000:1 dynamic contrast range and some clever new finetuning technologies. I must say my old photos suddenly gained new life. (The only downside is that my old media workstation is even more sub-standard now than it was before this…)

Cable connection work available

There are various “rough edges” in our house still, and I am currently testing the power of social media in getting help in fixing them. If you are a professional in the hardware aspect of home IT cable connections, check out my ad in Urakkamestari service.

Media room project, part 1

It would of course be nice to be able to dedicate weekends just for resting, but since there are always various deadlines that require an academic to work also during weekends, you might as well dedicate all mornings and late evenings to house repair or building projects — logical, isn’t it?

I have been spending some hours lately downstairs doing my “media cave”. This is essentially just a small home theatre room, located at cellar level, but it should offer us rich opportunities for enjoying that DVD or HD movie in the dark, or playing games in the big screen. Looking some high resolution digital photos in this scale would be nice to try out, too.

The starting point was to build a tech centre at the back of the room; this is still half-finished, but I aim for a sturdy table fixed to the back wall, and on top of that there will the ‘equipment tower’: a rotating cabin filled with amplifiers, media players, computers and game decks. It is build for rotation and to such a height since I am too fed up to plugging and unplugging cables that lie among piles of dust somewhere at the back of some heavy piece of furniture. This time, every connection is planned to be accessible at the comfortable, working height. And since I am building it on top of large, round bearing, it rotates easily to show all those connectors and cables (the bearing is one I got from Isku’s “Multiplan” tv furniture, it claims to be able to handle max 100 kg mass). Near the ceiling there is the new video projector, Sanyo PLV-Z5; a nice, moderately priced thing with sharp and colourful image. (I wanted mine in black, and ordered it from Germany where prices are a bit lower.)

The actual projection surface has taken most of work so far: the front wall was uneven fibreglass wallpaper which needed to be whet, dusted and then covered with another, special wallpaper (a smoothing wallpaper, ‘tasoitustapetti’, made by Sandudd; see the link: http://www.sandudd.fi/fileadmin/kuvituskuvat/Tasoitetapettiohje.pdf).

Now I am having a break after one round of painting. The entire back wall will be painted several times with Tikkurila’s Harmony indoor paint, hue H499. It has non-reflective matta surface and as light grey it will give better dark levels on LCD projectors than an entirely white wall would had done. More on its use: http://www.tikkurila.fi/kotimaalarit/index.jsp?cid=valkokangas_edullise&hid=01.01.06.01.
There are still several steps remaining on this, and there are half-a-dozen rooms (and the garden, the courtyard and the garage) with several other projects waiting after this, but — you need to start with the essentials, after all! 😉

Water, oil and the Internet

Water, oil and the Internet
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Learning the ropes in detached house living; there must be at least a dozen contracts you need to negotiate and sign before your new house is linked with all those invisible networks this society consists of. We got water, we got electricity — but we never got the process of
acquiring and comparing competing bids from oil companies finished until the oil actually run out. In -30C nights, in an oil-heated house, having no oil is not fun at all. Happily Esso (Exxon over there) managed to deliver us this precious, soon-to-be-extinct stuff in six hours next day — with some extra cost, of course. In the evening, feeling the warmth come back, and seeing the online content (and hearing it, Last.fm is now available across the house, Wi-Fi) come streaming in, it occurred to me that with water, warmth and Internet you could probably go pretty far. Or then again, I am just being nerdy.

View into the night from the new home

View into the night from the new home
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

There were some ice chrystals in the air when I took this photo from the upstairs window of our new home. The neighborhood appears quiet, beautiful even when the Finnish winter shows its better sides. Now I just need to learn much more about boiler systems, oil heaters and water circulation piping, pressure levels and ventilations, among other things. But it is good to be this far, already. Following couple of weeks will be filled with housing work, in any case. Keeps you in a hurry.