Back to the Gym - Month 1- January

Well I have decided its time to make it back to the gym on a regular basis. (Yes I realize this is a cliché New Years resolution)

I got my Polar FT80 heart rate monitor serviced and started putting to to good use this month.

• 16 workouts (all Precor Crosstrainer work this month)
• 13:38 hh:mm
• 8550 calories burned
• dropped 15 pounds
  

The FT80 heart rate monitor allows you to download all the stats via USB link-up and also stores stats on their polarpersonaltrainer.com website for tracking and analysis.

Snow and Pumpkins

Well this post is about as delayed as me pulling in the Halloween pumpkins when it started snowing on December 5th.

It was one of the earliest snows here in Chatham, NJ that I can recall in quite a few years.

pyTivo - Media Server for the Tivo

Its been nearly a decade since I started using Tivo, and it has been one of the few technology appliances that has been popular with my wife.

When I upgraded my trio of DirecTivo players to Tivo HD a few years back, I briefly used the Tivo Desktop, but wasn't happy with the limited video format support for transferring videos. I had upgraded to the Desktop Plus but found that pyTivo was a much more flexible alternative.

A few years before the Tivo HD arrived I was tired of my kids being rough with the DVDs so I had encoded our entire DVD library and stored in on my NAS (now using a Synology DS508 with 7TB of disk space) and was using a dedicated HTPC to drive the videos on the TV the kids watched. Witht he Tivo HD paired up with pyTivo I ditched the HTPC altogether.

With pyTivo allo of the Tivos around the housefull access to my entire Video Library.

Check it out it works on Windows, Linux and Mac

I'm currently using:

• wmcbrine's Tivo Fork
• rdian06's latest ffmpeg

SketchUp 7

I used SketchUp originally back in 2003 when planning a garage addition.

The addition had to objectives:

1. A bump-out so I'd be able to park my F150 Crew Cab in the garage which was built at the turn of the century and sized for Model T's
2. A shed enclosure so the kids would have a place to park their bikes.

pics of the plans and construction here: http://picasaweb.google.com/bob.willmot/Garage#

Google acquired SketchUp in 2006 and has made numerous additions since then.

I just stated playing with the latest 7.1 version and there are quite a few new features. Check it out if you are in the market for building 3D models or architectural plans:

http://sketchup.google.com/

All Bobby wants for Christmas is his 4 Front Teeth

Well Bobby has lost his 4th tooth last night -- and he declared that "All I want for Christmas is my 4 Front Teeth!"

For all the pics visit: http://picasaweb.google.com/bob.willmot/Teeth#

kmttg - Tivo transfer tool

I have been a Tivo user and hacker since 2000. I have done hard drive upgrades on all of them through the years and on the DirectTV models I used to have, had added TurboCache network cards to make them network connected (this was before the network connectivity was added in the Series 2 Tivos).

Getting content on and off the Tivo has been the primary interest of my hacking (other than expanding capacity) and tools to assist in this have improved significantly over the years.

One tool I've used for some time which is great at getting content off the tivos is kmttg

http://code.google.com/p/kmttg/

This program was originally written in perl, but the current incarnation was re-written in Java. It includes the following features:

• View all listings on all your networked TiVos with full details of recording size and bitrates
• Can automatically pull files from all networked TiVos as background service
• Encode transferred shows to different formats
• Integration with commercial detection and cutting tools
• Close integration with pyTivo - can generate metadata files and push files automatically back to TiVos.
• Cross Platform: runs on Windows, Mac or Linux
• Open Source
  

If you have a Tivo you have to check it out.

Garage Squirrel Hole Repair

A squirrel decided he wanted to get into the garage and chewed through the pine siding to get in.

A top-notch work crew (which consisted of 3 kids and dog) made short work of this problem with some wood, screws and patch made from body filler.


For all the photos -- check out the Picasa Album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/bob.willmot/GarageSquirrelHoleRepair#


The last time we used body filler on the garage was back in 2004 when I had removed the hardware when installing the garage door openers.

Pics from that project here: http://picasaweb.google.com/bob.willmot/GarageDoorOpeners#