My Gibson ukulele!

I turned 24 last week, and today Ellen and Andreas gave me a superb gift! They announced a gift on my birthday, but due to postal delay it arrived today. I love my flatmates, they gave me an ukulele!

I’m looking forward to learn how to play it!

I would like to share with you my latest project. Nothing much, but it looks good and works fine. This post is the story of my Radionette Menuett HTPC.

History

The idea for this project started a couple of years ago, in 2007 I think. It started with some inspiration, an old Radionette radio at my grandmother’s that I have always found very pretty. I didn’t want to take my grandmother’s radio, so I found a similar one online. I ended up buying a beautiful 1951 Menuett radio from Radionette (Norwegian Wikipedia). I wanted to make it into a HTPC, something that could be a livingroom furniture and a computer. The radio I bought didn’t work, so I cleaned out the inside ending up with a nice future HTPC case.

Then the project stopped. I had lots to do and the whole project went to a halt for about two years. Fall 2009 however I restarted it.

Specifications

Since I wanted a HTPC and the fact the HDTV is becoming more and more normal, I wanted a machine that could play Full HD material. At the same time I wanted to keep the computer as cheap as possible, and simple to build. I chose a Zotac ION motherboard that includes NVidias PureVideo™ HD Blu-Ray/HD DVD acceleration and HDMI output. The CPU, a Intel ATOM N230, and 12VDC power supply was included with the motherboard.

Building process

The building of this project was very simple. First step was to remove all excess electronics from the old radio. Then I cut a hole in the side of the radio to fit the motherboard backside. The motherboard was then mounted on a metal plate, separated with spacers. The plate was then screwed to the case.

ON/OFF and RESET pins were soldered to one of the front panel buttons. Additionally I used the 12VDC harddrive output with a voltage regulator I made to power two light bulbs, lighting up the old tuner. And that’s about it. Keeping it simple.

Software

I installed the latest version of Ubuntu (9.10) and Boxee, a free media center software. Two problems were encountered. The first problem was overscan, thus that the outer parts of the output was not visible on the TV. This was solved by a setting on the Samsung TV. The second problem was that I had no sound through the HDMI cable. This was easily solved by unmuting the HDMI sound output in Ubuntu (alsamixer). Both of these problems were quickly solved by Andreas.

Conclusion

So, to sum up. My Radionette Menuett works perfectly, it plays full HD movies and is great for surfing. But the best thing, it looks great in the livingroom! Click the images to enlarge them.

Long exposure image showing the lit tuner

Motherboard connectors

Type and 1951 prize

Seen from the back

The backcover removed

Radio originates from Fjellhamar

On/Off and Reset

A relaxing day is soon over, it’s has truly been a nice Sunday. The best part was the concert at Bybroen Antikvariat at Bakklandet. Eva and Kristina invited me and I had a fantastic time. I don’t know who was playing (anyone?), but it was a great guitar playing! I really enjoyed it.

Bybroen Antikvariat is a little 2nd hand bookshop that closed around three months ago. Now it has reopened not far from it’s previous , but has reopened not far from the old shop. Every Sunday at three o’clock there’s a concert, if you’re interested in watching (they serve coffee and waffles), you find the bookstore by entering “Rabarbra” café at Bakklandet.

First of all, I managed to hand in my project report January 15th. It felt good and I’m pretty happy with the outcome. Just a few hours later, I left for Austria to snowboard.

The week in Austria was really exciting, and the 13 of us going had a great time. No injuries! The Gastein valley was great, with plenty of resorts to visit. If I were to complain, I would have loved 30-50 more centimeters of snow. We had, nonetheless, a great week with loads and loads of snowboarding, on- and offpist!

15 minutes walking for 6 great turns in Sportgastein. Worth it!

When I got home, I started to work on my master thesis, but spending night time finishing my home theater PC (HTPC) project “Radionette Menuett”. It’s practically ready, more in a later post.

One issue with the HTPC was that our old TV doesn’t work with any output from the PC. I therefore decided to invest in a new TV. After a quick lookaround I ended up with a 37″ Samsung LCD-TV (LE37B535). It’ll be exciting to see how the HD world looks and feels.

PS. Andreas, one of my flatmates won a Playstation 3 the other day, the timing couldn’t be better!

I would like to give Apple credits for their swift action to correct the problem. Only a few hours after I reported the problem, I received a mail stating that the orders that had disappeared could now be redownloaded to my library. Great!

One thing though: In the mail I sent Apple I wrote that four orders had been deleted during sync. However,  I managed to write down one of the orders number twice, thus I was only able to re-download three orders.  My bad of course, but I wrote another mail including the final order.

What I find odd is the reply I received this time. I was told the money I had paid for the order would be refunded and that I should re-buy the music in iTunes Store. Fair enough, but why couldn’t I just download this as I had done with the other orders? Beats me …

The important thing is however that I now possess of the music I’ve bought. Time for a backup.

The other day I formatted my computer, installed iTunes, imported my music library from my harddrive and connected my iPhone (as I’ve done many times before). New this time was that I had bought songs using the iPhone that weren’t on my external harddrive.

When I connected the phone to the computer iTunes started synchronizing. It told me I had purchased items on my iPhone that weren’t in my library and asked if I wanted to copy the items to the library. Yes, I would like that.

However, iTunes decided the songs I had purchased weren’t worth keeping and didn’t synchronize them to my library and deleted them from my iPhone! All the apps on the other hand, got synchronized without any problems.

After going through my receipts, I’ve found out that iTunes deleted 6 albums from my collection, all bought with my iPhone.

The issue is of course that I, according to iTunes Terms of Sale, am only allowed to download the music I’ve bought once.

Going to Apple Support online was no use what so ever, as it suggested I should use Windows search to locate the missing files. Give me a chance to copy the music to my harddrive and I’ll be perfectly capable to find it!

I have reported the problem to Apple and will let you know what happends. In the meantime I’ll have to live without that great music!

I’m back in Trondheim!
Christmas holidays have been great with my family, good food and time to play guitar, some piano, reading books and playing Fifa with my younger sister. I got several great books for Christmas, a new duve and Trivial Pursuit :)

New year’s was celebrated on Kjerringøy near Bodø in relation with my uncle’s 50th birthday. We stayed at the old minister’s house and it was great, though without water for three of the four days due to ice blocking the water supply. The scenery on and around Kjerringøy was truly mind blowing, it’s easy to understand why tourists love the northern parts of Norway!

As I said, I’m back in Trondheim, now eager to finish my project report!

The semester is over, but my work isn’t. However, I’m going to have a well deserved Christmas holiday before work continues. My work isn’t over? You say. Well that’s because I wasn’t able to finish my project report due to several delays related to malfunctioning machinery. Most is done, I just need to get in touch with my supervisor, currently in India, and discuss my results with him. This has been harder than expected, thus the delay in handing in the report.

Off-school things: Øystein and I have played Call of Duty: Modern warfare 2 on xbox360. Incredible game! Special ops. two player is a magnificent time spender :D

I’ve also discovered Fast Flip from Google Labs, a neat way of serving news from different sources. It’s really useful on the iPhone! Worth a try!

Merry Christmas to you all!

Today, the Climate Change Conference starts in Copenhagen, Denmark. COP15, as it is so nicely called is a United Nations conference, the 15th of the so-called Conference of Parties.

Barack Obama and the Norwegian primeminister, Jens Stoltenberg, will attend the conference along with over 60 other world leaders and discuss how to reduce emissions that harm our climate. A lot is expected for this climate meeting, but is there a lot to hope for? Everyone seems to be willing, but keep the cards close to their chest, so in the end it will be hard to get anywhere.

Barack Obama is the world leader with the biggest pressure on his shoulders. During the eight years of Bush administration, the United States didn’t contribute to an active climate policy. Now it’s up to Obama to show that he can contribute actively to the change we need. Unfortunately, Obama has met a lot of resistance back home, where republicans are pushing hard, saying the climate changes aren’t man made and where surveys show that Americans don’t really care about the climate change.

The COP15 conference will probably not end with spectacular agreements in emission cuts, but it’s a step in the right direction. Most countries agree that action is needed in order to reduce CO2 emissions, the important discussion is the time perspective. What we can expect is agreements on principles and time schedules.

A lot more was expected from the COP15 conference. Many countries, including Norway, hoped for a legally binding agreement to reduce climate change. Now, most of these hopes have been abandoned, partly because the US Senate didn’t pass Barack Obama’s climate bill earlier this fall.

I’m confused. The entire COP15 conference is hard to understand for us outsiders. All the participants are willing to contribute, but unwilling to sacrifice too much. The game has begun, let’s see what it brings.

Please comment:
What do you expect from the COP15 conference?
What do you hope for?
What achievements are realistic?