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Geek-Chic Power Houses
nakhla writes "Wired.com is running a lengthy article on wired houses of celebrities. The article describes some of the tech that has gone into the houses of actors, businessmen, and professional athletes, outlining the steps they've gone to in order to obtain techno-nirvana. Included in the article is a profile of JAG's Catherine Bell (my vote for sexiest geek), and her use of a wireless network to connect her to her TiBook, Gateway Laptop, and...get this...Sharp Zaurus Linux PDA. For those of you who are just dying to string fiber around your entire house, this article will have you making a run to your favorite networking hardware store."
The article talks about how Tony Hawk has a special PS2 that will play anything he burns. Game-makers FTP him games, he burns them and plays them as a beta-tester. Do I have to learn how to skateboard to get that job?
No, you just need a mod chip and some warez sitez.
So can she still be a 'geek'? Of the Slashdot kind?
:)
(She is hardcore into Dianetics, and at least somewhat under "church" control... This is from radio interviews I heard with her, so I wasn't distracted by her looks.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Actually, one of the cheapest and easiest things I have done with our house is to set up an older Powerbook with a minimal installation of OS X and iTunes. Our entire music collection from CD is now 40GB on the hard drive. The Powerbook is hooked up to the stereo system so it can be piped anywhere throughout the house and the Powerbook is equipped with an Airport card so one can access it from anywhere in the house. Pretty easy and certainly cheaper, yet more sophisticated than many of the other high end stereo systems I've seen. In fact, our next door neighbor (an orthopedic surgeon and her husband who have a VERY expensive home multimedia system with dual 300 CD changers etc...etc...etc...) are absolutely blown away by this simple solution. We have mixes on it for dinner music, work out music, punk, bluegrass, classical and on and on. The other cool thing is that you hook your iPod up to it and you can synch driving music mixes when you plug the iPod into your car stereo system for road trips.
Pretty cool.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
HELP (Hollywood Education and Literacy Project)
"to achieving your goals"
"this program has the solution."
The description has a lot of scientology cult buzzwords. Be afraid, very afriad!
- LightSpeed Chick
- Hacker Barbie
And now for the obligatory pics:Wow, only 30K eh? I guess I will get a second mortgage on my house so I can be the low end of those who have WAAAAAAYYYY too much money to spend. Was there anything actually interesting in the article at all except that Tony Hawk has a chipped playstation so he can play burnt ps/2 games? There wasn't anything in the article that really pointed out anything extroadinary technology-wise.
(Back to Reality Now) I wired my house recently (not a fun thing to do in Arizona mind you, at least when it is warm out). I put in two lines of CAT5, two lines of RG6, and one line of CAT3 for voice. Each of the bedrooms got a set, the living room got one, and the kitchen is next. Everything goes to my office (which used to be the family room before I walled it off) down from the attic to a structured media center box (whatever you call them) that I got for $10 from a surplus building supplier. It came with one telephone distribution module and I also got some extra 5 jack network modules from them too. So my Sprint MMDS internet connection goes into the room to my Linksys router, which then is plugged into the panel so the other rooms have internet connectivity. My phone line also runs into the panel and gets distributed to the other rooms. The panel can handle 4 pairs, so when my daughter gets old enough and assuming we are still using copper phone lines I can just punch down her phone line from the main house phone to her new line.
I go to local auctions a lot, so I paid minimal prices for the cables and stuff, probably $10-$15 for the the CAT5 and CAT3 total, and $5 for the RG6 per spool (I have about a mile of coax now, don't know what the heck to do with it). I used Snap-N-Seal connectors for the cable, with connectors I got from Ebay, and the RJ stuff with a professional crimper set from Ebay as well (Sargent tools). So my total cost to wire my house myself? Less than $150.
I have a friend who neglected to tell me he wanted to have his house done and it cost him over $500 for 3 or 4 ports with a hub. I would have done it for cost of parts and free food. Oh well, his loss.
ngoy
(Remember to wear a dust mask if you have an older house. That blown in insulation is nasty sh!t!)
--ngoy
Yes, the famous porn star is probably just as "hardcore" a geek as anyone in the Wired article, if not more. I bet none of those profiled builds their own systems, did their own web sites, kicks butt in UTK, has a 150 IQ and has starred in hundreds of high quality porn flicks. Oh yeah, Wired is a "family" magazine.
I could swear that this title was reused not so very long ago. I remember it because it took me a minute last time to realize that the title rhymes...
She's not as wired as she would be. She's in the Cult of Greed & Power (Time, 1991). Which means she'll never go to that website there. She'll probably never go here either. I hope she doesn't end up here.
How can a woman so tech savy get duped by them?
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Check this site for a how-to on your own wireless computer and home theater setup...using iTunes & Mac, of course :)
In a pinch, just use your iPod to drive the house system...
Have you ever read, actually read Operation Clambake?
Scientology is, frankly, a company/cult. It is not even remotely close to being a religion. It was founded by a science fiction author who had been quoted earlier as saying "If a man truly wished to become wealthy, the best thing he could do would be to start a religion."
Techies have a legitimate beef with the Church of Scientology -- the CoS went on a series of attacks on USENET against people that had escaped Scientology. These people had been posting information about Scientology (the stuff that you aren't *supposed* to find out about until you're deep in debt and will believe anything that makes it look like you haven't been suckered.)
Being a real, tech loving geek and being a Scientologist may not be completely incompatible, but it's damn near.
May we never see th