I've been messing with my own front end for an HTPC. Why? There are dozens, but there are some really strange setups out there that are overly restrictive. In some, the plugins can only be written in C. In others, you have to use specific DVD players or media players. In short, most of them suffer from being a core plus plugins with the interchange being a bottleneck. I wondered if, using basic scripting tools, something similar to these systems could be whipped up. If made from things like HTA, web apps, PHP shell scripting and ActivePHP, Winamp COM object, Windows Media Player COM object, etc. it would end up not being core+plugins. Rather, it would pretty much nothing BUT plugins. Screens can be sourced locally on the machine, can pull data or entire screens from remote servers or a blend of approaches.

I'm currently calling it TomE (pronounced Tommy) for This Odd Media Environment as well as short for Thomas Edison (without having to deal with any trademarks on "Edison") since he invented/popularized most of the precursors to the stuff in a Home Theater PC: the light bulb, recorded audio and the motion picture.

HTA is the primary container for the user interface and drives the whole thing. As such, anything that HTA supports is directly available and anything HTA can access (which I've not run into anything it can't) is also wide open. Obviously, basic DHTML/HTML/Javascript/CSS is supported, as is Flash and any other plugins you have, PHP directly using the ActiveScript extension from PECL, all of the IE-only stuff we avoid in normal site development like powerpoint-style transitions and HTC components are open as well. As my particular niche has always seemed to be gluing things together, this approach fits very well with my way of thinking and things flow well.

I picked up a bunch of icons from kde-look.org, which has quite a bit of really nice vector-based (SVG,etc.) icons and wallpapers which give you nice smooth exports to PNG for whatever size you want. Had to use one of the available PNG alpha transparency scripts to enable that, but once enabled, it makes for a much better framework for theming (I hate calling that "skinning". Coming from a taxidermist family, skinning has some different connotations for me) while still retaining the same look and feel. Should work well for being able to have multiple color schemes for the same theme.

It's pretty much a pile of prototypes right now, but I'm really happy with how it's turning out. These technologies glue together really easily and allow me to leverage existing web development technology experience and built-up components, thus speeding the glueing process.

Photo screen:

This screen is a mockup of a basic image gallery. It uses PHPThumb to build both the web images and the thumbnails without modifying the original source directory or files. Currently requires local (or at least network share) access to the images.

Weather screen:

This one is more complete and is actually fully functional. I had some code and notes lying around for building a weather web page anyway as XML based weather fetching has interested me for some time. So, stringing that together into the TomE framework made sense as a test-case. It really went together easily. It still needs some better setup for handling more of a range of weather, but I'll add that as the weather changes with the seasons. It gets it's data from RSSWeather.com, which is a relatively new service. It's easier to parse/read than the stuff from NOAA/the weather service, but not as complete.

1st, another instance where the "diet" rhetoric and reality don't match up. McDonald's, ever the target of viligant diet evangelists, has an interesting pair of menu items: The Grilled Caesar Salad with dressing and the french fries. I've heard the fries criticized on the raw calories as well as those who say the calories are OK, but the hidden fat is killing us. Yet, the dressing for that salad (just the dressing) makes for the interesting comparison. The caesar salad dressiong has 190 calories with 170 as fat calories (and most non-reduced-fat similar dressings have similar numbers) and the fries have 230 calories with 100 coming from fat. Now, compare how full you'd feel in comparison, just eating the contents of the dressing packet or the small fries. Just another place to watch out for the real food numbers. Keeping close track has opened my eyes further to these kinds of situations. Especially in the "right" foods.

To me there are 2 "dietary" issues at large, both contributing to societal problems and somewhat related: eating and drinking enough extra calories to gain weight and eating and drinking nutritionally unsound proportions of food groups (poor nutrition). The 2 problems are related, but seem to get caught up in one another in ways that are self defeating. The advice given is often that by solving the nutrition problem, an adherent will lose weight. This is often expressed more along the lines of, "If you just quit eating hamburgers and fries for lunch and ate salads instead, you wouldn't be fat."

As an aside, this is also a symptom of the my-anecdotal-experience-can-be-extrapolated-to-everyone syndrome that seems to affect large numbers of self-righteous people.

Back to my main point, given the fluctuations in what is considered a "good" or "bad" food, combined with easily misinterpreted information, like the accused above starting to eat the taco salad at Taco Johns which has more calories than 2 Big Macs, leads to often disappointed people who say, "If I ate salads and gained weight, I'm a hopeless cause." People are already confused by (and use as an excuse) those fluctuations in good/bad. X food is bad for you, but 3 years later, it turns out that it prevents some kinds of cancer, etc.

However, the approach that Dr. Straughan uses (and countless other scientifically minded doctors and experts) is that calories and only calories are what counts. If you burn more than you take in, your body will take the deficit from your reserves. Period. This is not one person (or even 1000 people) stating anecdotal evidence. This is countless studies and clinical evidence, backed up by solid science.

The irony of the "Only Calories Count" approach is that it often *leads* to better nutrition. I know that I, when faced with 4 ounces of steak or 8 ounces of chicken for about the same number of calories, chose the larger portion to satisfy my hunger on the diet. Similarly, I've started eating peas, beans, rice and carrots in MUCH higher quantities as a way to fill up the plate while still keeping my calorie count for the day under the magic number. Net result? I'm losing weight and eating better.

While our new house didn't "require" anything to be done to it, we've been pretty busy doing preventative maintenance as well as making it "our own". Shelly's office is pretty much done with new carpet, paint, full shelving units, etc. The theater is pretty much put together, though it required a complete reorientation to give more room and a complete teardown and rebuild in order to get all of the components into the cheap Target audio rack that I put in to keep things off the subwoofer and prevent the rattling that was getting irritating.

My office started on it's path to "completion" this weekend as well. After moving a bunch of the boxes full of wires (it's amazing how something like 50% of my boxes are nothing but wire and cable) to the spare bedroom/storage room, the room was empty enough to contemplate starting to paint it. I wanted to do the painting before doing anything with the carpet so I didn't have to mess with drop-cloths etc. The Tiffany-style lamp that Shelly gave me a while back has been the biggest hurdle for decorating this room. It's beautiful, but the orange and green accent colors in it have left both of us stumped for what to do for colors. So, we took the lampshade off and brought it into Hirshfields to see what they'd suggest. We ended up with a dark brown below the chair rail/shelf, a warm white for the shelves themselves and a light brown similar to our old living room for the upper portion of the wall. Sunday afternoon I did the wall facing the street in all 3 and I think I'm really going to like the results. Once I'm most of the way done painting, I'll bring in the carpet folks and hopefully have a complete office in a month or less.

Otherwise known as "Get Off Your Ass", GOYA is really helping my diet program. The weeks since we moved where I spend a great deal of my weekend/evenings doing things like moving boxes around, painting, cleaning, etc. have resulted in significantly better numbers when weighing in at the doctor. Actually, the numbers are better than the raw exercise numbers (calories per hour for "house cleaning" etc.) should indicate.

So, if you're looking for a dietary supplement (and the sales figures indicate that a large number of people are), I can't recommend GOYA enough.

As those of you who've spoken with me in the last month already know, I'm in the middle of a diet/exercise program that, for the first time for me, is actually working. I'm under the supervision of a doctor, on an 1800 calorie per day diet helped out by prescriptions. I started on about Feb 26, and, as of March 30, I've lost 27 pounds of fat, gained 5 pounds of muscle and am generally feeling more energy, and clothes are definitely starting to change their fit. I've got another 60 or so pounds to lose to get down to my ideal weight, but it's looking good so far.