XBMC Remote

Had to post about XBMC Remote from collect3, if you have XBMC running on any device and own an ipod touch or iPhone this is a must have app. The app basically uses the http server functionality built in to XBMC to control XBMC. A remote control I hear you say, no, much more than a remote control. With this app you can see your whole media library, control XBMC in many ways and do it all from anywhere in the house (or world). The fun part of this means you can freak everyone out by stopping and starting playback from the kitchen but the serious part means when your young kids disturb you to come and put a different film on and you are upstairs, whip out the trusty ipod and start a new film, happy kids, happy you!!!

Wireless Wake On LAN (WWOL)

Having just started using XBMC remote on my ipod touch I wanted to use the wake on LAN feature. I have a Sony Vaio VGN-AW21XY that uses an Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN wireless chipset, it spends a lot of time plugged in to my TV. It was relatively straight forward to set up WWOL, I went to the properties for the network device in device manager and under Power Management enabled "Allow this device to wake the computer". I then put the MAC address in to the setting on XBMC remote, disabled require password on wakeup in windows and then rebooted.


Now starting XBMC remote on the ipod wakes the laptop up and as long as XBMC is running I have full control.

Windows Vista Folder Size

I am sure alot of people are already aware of foldersize, an awesome little program to add a foldersize column to windows explorer:-

http://sourceforge.net/projects/foldersize

Biggest problem with foldersize is that it doesn't work with Vista/Windows 7, I have recently got to the stage on my C drive where I have little remaining space but can't find where all the space is being used. Short of going through every folder to find my missing hard drive space I needed to find a solution, I wanted to find something similar to the Disk Usage Analyzer in Ubuntu. There are tons of programs out there but I decided I wanted to use the Disk Usage Analyzer in Ubuntu.

Welcome to my blog

I have decided to start a blog for two reasons, the first to keep track of stuff I get up to. A lot of this will be computer/gadget related stuff, I am always figuring out how to do things and then 2 months later forgetting what I did. And secondly to share hours of searching on the net with other people. Please feel free to leave comments