For the last few years, I’ve wanted to move the Windows7 media center from a physical PC onto a virtual machine.
To accomplish this, I knew that I needed a few things setup and ready to go first.

• Virtual Machine Hypervisor that was stable and efficient
• TV Tuner device that worked from inside a VM
• Storage to hold the recorded files.

Life is too short to deal with filing (paper or electronic) very much. We all have better things to do with our time than waste it on excess organization. The goal is to locate a receipt or statement fast enough. Nobody is watching your filing – there is no test later. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I usually need to find a single document every year, no more. Minimal effort for maximum return is the goal.

At my day job, I’ve been doing some Android development. Due to the nature of the application, we’d like to connect the device to larger screens both directly using HDMI and by streaming through a DLNA client/server connection.

Anyway, I ordered a 10 foot HDMI cable off Amazon last week and it arrived today. After connecting the Android tablet to the TV and pressing “play”, I was happy to see the same thing displayed on the tablet show up on the 37 inch HDTV here. Pretty sweet …. until ….

A few times every week, we all get offers from the local cable company or telecom that has a low-low-low price in a 48pt font. The price is so low that we open the letter and read a little. I’m staring at an offer from AT&T right now, but it could be from the cable company just as easily.

$29/month for U-Verse TV +
HD-Ready DVR Included +
No Equipment to Buy!

Wow! That sounds like a great deal. How can I possibly pass it up? Then I read a little more, you know, the fine print.

For Six Months

So what’s the price after 6 months? Will they say?

I was reading an article on Lifehacker about adding fancy effects to a Linux desktop. Of course, they showed how to do it with 11.04 Ubuntu – which is unstable on my systems. Should I be without the wobbly windows? No! You shouldn’t do without either.

If you want smaller image file sizes at the same resolution, but files that still display nice. Check out the ImageMagick tool convert.

The size reductions can easily be 50% to 90% without a noticeable loss in quality.