Curious Notions

Between yesterday evening and this morning, I finally enacted a plan that’s been niggling at me for months and months now - namely I modded my old Xbox to run XBMC. I did so on the cheap, using a refurbished Linksys gaming adapter ($40) to hook the console up to my wireless network, hacking together an Action Replay device from a female USB dongle ($6) and an Xbox breakaway cable ($3), and buying a used copy of a game I needed ($2). I had a few hiccups along the way, but, all in all, things went smoothly and I felt damn geeky when I got it all up and running. Nothing like starting with a razor blade, wire cutters, and a soldering iron and ending up with a powerful media center set-up.

I haven’t had a chance to play very much with XBMC, but my plans include setting up streaming from my external drives upstairs and perhaps even installing a wake-on-LAN script that will turn on the computer attached to the drives without me having to climb upstairs to do so. The upshot of all this is that I should soon be able to watch any of my videos (including digital media and Region 1 and 2 DVDs) or listen to any of my music from the ease and comfort of my couch. Win.