Wireless Access
Most of today was spent trying — and failing — to persuade DNA to be stickier than it wishes. The rest of the day was spent on a personally more interesting, but equally frustrating project. I’m converting my old desktop into a media-serving, AVI playing, MP3 streaming beast. This makes inordinately huge amounts of sense because (a) I listen to all my music via MP3s, (2) I only really use my laptop, which has crappy sound, and (iii) I have a big old, shiny old, fairly new old widescreen monitor just BEGGING to display Hulu.
This project results in gallons of wire being chucked around the room, hard disks being ripped out, stuck back in, pulled out again, cursed at. It also results in the largest dilemma currently known to Ben-kind: what do I do about my radio? Do I get rid of it and wire everything through the computer instead?
No. I don’t want to get rid of my radio. I love my radio, despite its single 3.5mm input. Even if I had the most amazing freakin’ internettified electronic orgy of a media server imaginable, I would still want it. All the digital satellite stations in (or hovering above) the world can’t replace the warm-blanket reassurance of the local station identification monologues. It feels like someone is keeping an eye on the empty corridors of the county while I am falling asleep.
I think what the cool rich kids do is buy a huge fancy schmancy receiver type dealie, with fifty thousand audio inputs on the back. However, since I’m a destitute graduate student I’ll stick with my cute little 1-input JVC jobbie, and try to resolve the wiring issues with careful thought (and also maybe duct tape and solder).
Hmmm. I guess that wasn’t really much of a dilemma after all.
