I spend a lot of time writing software on the PC and I've always been interested in making it work as hard as possible for me. This is not always easy. Both software and hardware conspire to place road humps in the path of an otherwise smooth ride. However, with some patience you can achieve quite a lot. This site is a random collection of personal PC-related achievements and links to others with similar interests.
I have my own electronics company manufacturing PC-based automatic test equipment but my own speciality has evolved into writing the software that controls the systems that we make. In addition to this use of the PC, I am particularly interested in home automation - a natural progression from a teenage attempt to automate my bedroom curtains with some string and an old car wiper motor. Today, much of the house lighting and garden watering is X10 controlled and managed by a house server PC fitted with a webcam. More recently Windows Media Center edition (MCE) has grabbed me. This is Microsoft's digital home offering for recording TV, playing music and viewing photos in the home. I've spent time building MCE PC's, interfacing them to various displays and linking them on a network to distribute video and audio around the home. There are so many issues associated with this that I've started to maintain my own page of MCE links and details.
ArtSplit - a file-splitting program which works with huge files.
New! Click here to see how to upgrade media center from a single tuner to a dual tuner.
Building a really quiet Media Center PC for the bedroom.
Convert DVR-MS files to MP3 automatically.
And on a lighter note, take a look at Katie - the new addition, presently with her brother and sister at Sandra's.
Brian Frost, Ferndown Dorset.