Eek.

My IM'd response after reading it was "Well, now I'm depressed. Good thing i have a game about unilateral clandestine actions on behalf of a benevolent government to cheer me up later!"  3:46:59 PM  (comments [])   

This Sunday's home improvement project was to remove the obnoxious adjunct entertainment center shelf, and collapse it into stuff that can go under the TV, and stuff that can go behind the TV. Not having instant access to the GameCube seems a small price to pay for being able to actually see the fireplace. Sadly, I was only midly successful at getting the tangle of wires behind the TV under control, but I'm sure I'll give it another wack later on. I did, after all, buy a whole passle of nylon wire ties.

I did end up getting the EyeHome, and it demonstrates a remarkable amount of adequateness. The UI is confusing and irritating, but it does play AAC files purchased from the iTunes Music Store, as well as any MPEG and DivX movie files that I might just happen to have laying around. This means I no longer have to drag a PowerBook out to the living room, I just get it over the network. The digital audio seems quite nice, but I feel dubious about the amount of utility added by the component video in this case (especially when viewing images from iPhoto -- the fact that they're downsampling the images poorly to 720x480 is kind of glaring). But the damn thing is small, which is kind of the most important part.

Freakishly, I now have five component video sources and only four ports on my component video switchbox. (Although I have an extra slot in the back of the TV, so I just squeezed it in.) And, between XBox Live and the EyeHome, I found myself in the strange position of dropping an ethernet hub in my entertainment center. Watch out for falling convergence!  3:14:39 PM  (comments [])