Warning, this post will be boring and useless to anyone who isn’t me. (Thank you 3am insomnia witching hour).
Now that we are relatively settled in our new place, it’s time to get our tech setup a bit more streamlined. One thing I love about my townhouse is that it is wired for ethernet, which means that I can set up a wired network. Previously I’ve primarily maintained wireless networks and they were never without problems, particularly around security protocols and various devices having differing and incompatible requirements, meaning I could never have everything connected at once and would often have to switch protocols in order to go from, say, accessing the internet on my bedroom computer to watching a movie on our Roku box. I surely will be happy to no longer deal with this problem!
Also, now that I’ve started to do some more serious web-related work, I want to make sure that I have a computer/network setup that supports that instead of making everything a hassle. Right now the only running computer in our house sits on the floor in my boys’ room. That definitely makes everything a hassle.
Here’s an outline of what I see as our technology needs:
Boys’ room: Ability to watch movies from a hard drive/network, ability to watch DVDs/listen to CDs, ability to play computer games, both web-based and whatever else we can get to run on Linux. Currently my six year old falls asleep while watching movies (he’s done this since his dad got him in the habit when he was three) and my version of attempting to break that habit is to require that on some days he merely listen to a book on CD (thus the movie/CD requirement). And of course, he likes playing computer games (and happily, there are a decent assortment of open source games available to us).
My room: When we were in the midst of moving and I was thoroughly exhausted, I stole the little tv and Roku box that my six year old used to use to watch movies while falling asleep and hooked it up in my own room. Wow, what a glorious treat that proved to be! I don’t know that I’ve ever had a tv in my room and it’s so nice to snuggle in bed and watch movies! And further, although I tried to get my boys to sleep in the same room and thus reclaim my bed for myself, two boys in one room generates far too much energy to allow either of them to sleep. Having a tv in my room means that I can separate them and put my three year old to bed in my room with a movie. Yes, yes, I’m getting him started down this same path that I hate, where he falls asleep watching a movie, but the alternative is that I lay with him every night for an hour or two until he falls asleep and sacrifice all of my time for myself and frankly, I would very quickly go insane from that option.
The living room: This is where our big tv lives and where family movie nights happen. Currently, we only have a second Roku box hooked up to the tv, but I’d like to be able to watch DVDs as well. Some kind of computing ability might be nice as too, but I don’t know that we need an actual computer hooked up to the tv. That need might be best met via a small laptop, maybe one of those tiny $200 linux laptops.
My office: Ideally, this should be my main work space so I should have a computer that supports me in doing web development/design work. I don’t care about watching movies or anything like that, but I do care that I can use the technology that I need with minimal pain and hassle. My current dilemma is whether I should build myself another linux machine (I have three linux boxes already, but two of them are much too under-resourced for my needs and the third is likely to stay in my boys’ room) or whether I should buy something running OSX. On the one hand, the initial cost would be about the same (especially if I bought the OSX machine from psystar) but if I start using OSX again I’d be back to buying proprietary software and expensive proprietary software at that. On the other hand, while I’ve found the linux tools I use to be pretty good, they are often still buggy and are definitely not the “industry standard.” Is it worth spending an extra $1,000 or more for a less buggy experience with the “industry standards?” After I finish my current web development program, there’s a web design program that I’ve been looking at but it requires PhotoShop and Dreamweaver, among others. Obviously, if I was going to pursue that, I’d need a computer on which I could run them. But then again, how hard would it be to integrate that computer into my otherwise all-linux network?
