Earlier this year I wrote about using xbmc to create your own private Netflix.  I thought I’d update my readers on how I like it.  Here’s what the current version looks like with the default skin:

[caption id=“attachment_5672” align=“aligncenter” width=“500”] xbmc - default skin as of 20121031[/caption]

I have linked it up with trakt.tv to track my tv and movie watching (just like music scrobbling with last.fm) Using it has allowed me to catch up on shows that I might not have otherwise had the time to watch.  It was easy to start going through all the Buffy episodes while waiting to feed Scarlett at night since they were sitting on my computer and I didn’t have to go find the DVDs.

One always wonders if and when those classes you take in high school will be important.  For me, as an engineer, most of my high school classes were laying the foundation for the classes I’d take in college.  I’ve used plenty of those classes in my work and personal life.  One of the classes that has served me well all these years was Speech and Debate.  You don’t realize how long a minute is until you have to talk for a minute in front of class.  It has helped me with college presentation and work presentations.  Most recently, the following two video reviews were completely ad-libbed.  I didn’t even have any notes to go off of.  (In the AvX video I did take the comic with me to remember the name of the penciller)

[caption id=“attachment_5661” align=“aligncenter” width=“500”] last.fm top artists[/caption]

This has been the configuration of the top eight artists on last.fm for a very long time.  Only Five Iron Frenzy and Weird Al have traded spots.  Everyone else has been secure in their position for years.  The Beatles might soon overtake Anberlin.  Both of them have a long time to go to unseat Fantastic Plastic Machine.  But the weird thing is how long Andrea Echeverri has been ther.e  I haven’t listened to her in at least three years.  There are two really close artists and a third not too far behind, but it is definitly interesting how quickly the listens fall off.  The 15th position is 300 listens less than Andrea.  We’ll see how things continue to evolve as the time passes and I abandon some artists that I no longer like and listen to others that I’ve newly discovered.

A while ago I wrote about my first ever useful GUI program.  And in one of the series of posts that followed I explained that the reason I hadn’t made a useful GUI program before now is because all the typical stuff has already been made over and over.  We don’t need any more tetris clones, word processors, or music programs.  Recently I had reason to create my second program.  A while ago I created a an amortization calculator in python which you can find here.

I started a new feature over on Dan’s blog since his blog is so focused on video games.  It’s called You Never Forget Your First Time and it’s about reliving the first moments with a game.  The first entry is here.

My most interesting photos from a year ago are from my Maine trip.

For the first time since I started keeping track The Beatles did NOT make the list!  That’s mostly because I have been acquiring TONS of new music (over one thousand tracks) in this quarter and haven’t really been listening on random as much.  Although my #1 artist doesn’t have as many listens as some other quarters, I think this is the first (or second, at most) time where my #15 artist has more than 20 listens.  There are some great new artists making their debuts on my list and hopefully you can discover some new music to listen to!

Went to Brooklyn and had Grimaldi’s for the first time.

From my trip to VM World last year

[caption id=“attachment_5592” align=“alignleft” width=“480”] Saints Row: The Third - My Engineer Mask[/caption]

Team Fortress 2 (5 hrs) - a lot of this time was spent testing out my new private server which I described setting up in this post.

Civilization V (1 hr) - played a little bit in the game I’m documenting at onemoreturn.ericsbinaryworld.com .  Been too busy to play much more than that.