Category: T.V. Shows

Home Theater PC Plans

I have plans to set up a HOME THEATER PC for my place and my head has been spinning about the right way to tackle this project. I have been searching blogs and consulting with friends on the best options and setups I could have.

My drive to take on such a project was a result of my mothers last visit to my place. In the evenings she liked to watch movies. That is it’s self is not something hard to do. However, when you have a collection of over 400+ DVDs it can be not only daunting, but intimidating to find a movie and watch it. So I wanted to get all my movies digitized in a way that someone could turn on my TV, scroll through my collection of movies, pick one and play it.

For this I have chosen to go the Apple Mac Mini route. I plan to pick up a Mac Mini and hook it up to my tv and start encoding all my movies.

For someone with 200 movies or so this would be a perfect solution. However I have 400 movies. So I started to look into additional storage options. I believe I am going to go with a NAS storage server setup with enough extra space so I can continue to grow my movie collection, but also allow all the computers in the house to be backed up to the NAS.

I am still working out the details of everything, but when I am done I am planing on having quite the blog post about my setup.

My Dad, Netflix and Foreign Films

Farsi
Farsi

My dad came up to Juneau to visit recently. He came at a good time because we have been having some amazing weather up here. Mid to high 70s with very little overcast or rain. We are  having a good spring and summer this year that’s for sure.

While he was here we did all the normal sight seeing stuff like visiting the Mendenhall Glacier, Eating at the Twisted Fish, Checking out the Shrine of St. Therese, ect.

One of the unexpected things we got to do was to watch some Persian movies in Farsi. I discovered that Netflix has a great foreign selection. I was able to do a Google search for some movies in Farsi that won some awards and queued them up to stream to my PlayStation 3 so we were all able to watch the movies on my television.

All the Farsi movies I found on Netflix where subtitled in English so we where all able to follow along with the movies.

Richard Proenneke

Richard Proenneke Building His Roof
Richard Proenneke Building His Roof

The last couple of times I have gone back home to Washington State for a vacation, I have caught a film on P.B.S. called “Alone in the Wilderness“. It’s a film my mom and brother Abe, really enjoyed and they thought I would too.

This film is more of a documentary about Richard Proenneke, who retired in 1967 to Twin Lakes Alaska where he built his log cabin  home by hand, and all by himself. The film consists of shots of Proenneke performing tasks around his cabin, canoeing and walking, and views of wildlife, along with narration. For shots of himself (since he was alone), Proenneke fixed the camera in place, and then performed his tasks. This would necessitate him returning to the camera after walking or canoeing away.

Proenneke originality was creating this video intending to be used as step-by-step instructions for creating a hand-built structure. He lived in his cabin for 30 years, only returning to the lower 48 states occasionally to be with family.

In 1999, at age 82, Proenneke returned to civilization and lived the remainder of his life with his brother in California. He died of a stroke April 28, 2003. He left his cabin to the Parks Service.