My weekend was relatively relaxed. Took the wife to the airport and went to the local DMV to get my car registered… I decided after a few months it was time to do it. Getting the address on the title changed and registering the car were both pretty easy, fill out a few forms and give them $121 — only slightly highway robbery. Then, I had to take the vehicle for “inspection” — note that this vehicle is less than a year old. Anyway, after waiting about 40 minutes they complete the inspection and give me a rejected because (a) the light that illuminates the license plate in the back is apparently out and (b) my insurance is still New Mexico. Both problems are easily remedied and I have 43 days to take care of them and get reinspected. The nice thing is that vehicle inspection in NJ is free if you have it done at one of the government run places (not a private place).
Saturday afternoon I went to see The Exorcism of Emily Rose which I really enjoyed. It is very well done, quite creepy, not preachy, good effects used sparingly. I highly recommend it if you can handle the subject matter. It is an interesting different take on the exorcism subject.
Saturday night I spent some time figuring out how to run XBMC. After some mucking, some fussing, some frustration, and some hair pulling I finally figured out the correct voodoo. My initial impression was that it was incredibly unstable, but, after switching dashboards and upgrading XBMC to a newer version I find it to be quite stable and a real joy to use. I am using it “streaming” from my PC (over a hard wired 100mbps network) and it works flawlessly, plays pretty much anything you throw at it, has a great UI, the control is very nice. I am incredibly impressed. Comparing it to PS2Reality or Gameshark Media Player is really a laugh, they don’t even come close to comparing… the different in ability and quality is night and day, black and white, apples and oranges. If you find yourself with a bunch of media files (audio, video, pictures, etc.) on your PC that you would like to play on a TV elsewhere (as long as you have the network connection going to the elsewhere) this is absolutely a great solution. That said, I don’t know how well it would work over a wireless bridged connection and initial setup, while not difficult, isn’t for the meek – the instructions aren’t bad but they are by no means comprehensive (but much better than they used to be).
I am now completely caught up with Battlestar Galactica season two, watched episode 9 yesterday. This continues to be a really stellar (pun intended) show. So much better than I ever expected it would be.
Until next time…