Pandemic Dawn

Well after recycling my laptop with the broken screen into a media center for the front room TV, I decided what it was missing was a remote control!

So I installed TightVNC, a FREE open source program for controlling another computer, on the laptop, and the viewer on my Pharos GPS535 PDA.

After a minute to install, and a minute to set up, I had full control of the Laptop media Center from my PDA!

Added bonus, it’s full color screen on the PDA offers an awesome view when working on the Laptop remotely!

A few years ago, I was at church and a friend of mine approached me and asked if I wanted her old Toshiba laptop because it wasn’t working and she was tired of fighting with it.

Of course, me being the Jawa that I am, never let good junk pass me up.  By the way, all junk is good junk in the hands of a Jawa.

So I got the laptop, and it was in great physical condition, with all the original case and everything.  So I was excited.

It wouldn’t boot up, and after testing, it appeared to be a bad hard drive.  So I jumped on eBay, and picked up another laptop hard drive, and it already had Windows Pro installed along with Microsoft Office XP, and I got it for about $20!  That includes shipping…

I installed the new hard drive, and everything ran great!

I then decided to mod the laptop…

You can see the Photo Album of that HERE…

It has worked great for me over the past couple years with no problem, until about 6 months ago.

The screen started acting funny, and it didn’t like the color black.  The more black that was on the screen, the more flicker it would get, and if there was a big portion of black, say 60% or more…good bye screen, it would turn pure white and wouldn’t come back unless I restarted the computer.

I finally got tired of this, and took the screen completely off yesterday.

Trying to decide if I wanted to actually pay for a new screen or not, I had a great idea.

I decided to turn the laptop into a media center on our TV in the front room!

So I connected a video/out from the laptop to the VCR inputs, so all we have to do to access the laptop on the TV screen is press the video button on the remote.

I then ran the headphone out to the VCR so we could hear whatever sounds the laptop is playing.

I installed an open source media center software called Media Portal, you can find them here.

The I took an external hard drive I had from a couple years back that was full of Clean Flicks movies (about 170 DVD’s worth)  some from Clean Flicks, and some from DVR off my TV, and attached that to the laptop.

I also connected the laptop wireless to our home network to access our pictures, music and internet.

So, now when I turn the laptop on, it starts the media center, and I can access all of our music, photo albums, internet, and movies on our front room TV.

Media Portal also allows you to customize the look, feel and operation of the software with mods, you can even connect to your incoming TV signal and DVR!

I like the cool local weather feature that allows me to see my local weather with one click.

My satellite does this as well, but operates a lot slower and takes longer than the laptop.

This is how I like to recycle!

Well I finished building the gas station for “Pandemic Realm”, the online sim built around the world of my novel series “Pandemic Dawn“.

This is the first building to be set in the sim.

I am building an old police post directly across the street from the gas station next.

Well I have finally started working on scripts for some new videos which will help promotemy second novel in the Pandemic Dawn Series, Rise of the State.

I spoke with a friend who will be able to film the videos in true HD, and I have secured most of the things I need to do all of the editing myself.  I got quite a bit of practice editing the first video which was released with the first novel in the serires, Pandemic Dawn.

There will be at least two videos, maybe more depending on the scripts and how difficult they are to complete.

One will be ‘A day in the life of Taylor’, showing the difficulties of everyday survival in the post-apocalyptic world, and the second will showcase some of the cursed.

I look forward to producing and directing these, as well as acting in them too!

I will be playing the part of Taylor.

I will also be posting some pre-production promotional pictures as well.

After a few weeks of development and working out some of the minor glitches with the OpenSim software, I have a stable version of Diva running on my home server.

I built a home server with the following specifications;

AMD Athlon 64bit 3700+ CPU

2GB RAM

HD1 – 250GB

HD2 – 120GB

VIDEO – ATI Radeon HIS HD 3850 (AGP 512MB GDDR3)  which is capable of 1080p full HD

SOUND – Creative Sound Blaster Pro

OPERATING SYSTEM;

Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid)

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I have just purchased the D-Link DGL-4500 (Gamer Lounge) which I have not connected as of yet.

This will allow me to set up my OpenSim for visitors from the outside world to come and enjoy my realm for free whenever they want.

I am nearly done with Welcome Island I, and will post pictures as I build.

I hope to post more information about other regions I am building along with more pictures as I build as well.