Vacation in Wintry Europe

I have always wanted to visit Europe sometime in life. It is like

a rare celestical event when Vacation time, money, interets to

travel unchartered territory aligns in a line. It happened for me

and I didn't blink a second. My friend was working in Enschede

Netherlands. With christmas holidays conviniently lined up, I

kick started a long process of planning Euro trip. After several

rounds of chat, we decided to visit Germany in addition to actual

destination The Netherlands.

Planning Euro trip can be daunting for anyone. Making a trip

without any plan is a disaster. Luckily, there are several tools

to assist one in the process. Travel Guides.

There are lots of travel guides available (city specific/country

specific etc). I borrowed several Travel Guides from local library

to evaluate which is better:

1. Rick Steve's guide on "Europe through Back door"

2. Lets go Germany on budget

3. Fyodor's Germany

Rick Steeve's guide on "Europe through Back door" offered lots

of interesting suggestions on planning the trip. I would recommend

it to anyone planning to go to Europe to first read the book. Though

Rick Steeve's travel guide on Germany is popular, I just wanted to

try other guides.

I settled for "Let's go Germany on budget" for my travel. It offered

lots of interesting tips on saving money while travelling.

Here are some tips that I missed while reading and figured out the

importance of the tips while traveling:

1. Never exchange money from where you are starting your travel

2. Do not forget to get PIN number of your credit card for use in

    Europe

Apply for visa a month prior to travel.  With hotel reservations taken

care  by my friend, I was all set to go.

I arrived at Amsterdam on a christmas day. Amsterdam-Schipol is one

of the well engineered airports I had ever come across. The inter-city

trains stop right inside the airport. It is fairly straight forward for anyone

to find their way to hop on a train to any destination of their choice.

I realized the hard way that I forgot to note down the PIN number for using credit cards in the automated ticket vending kiosks. The practice of using

credit card just by swiping is virtually non-existent in Europe. This fact needs

to well emphasized in all travel guides. I was lucky that the Ticket service counter was open on that day. Eventually hopped on a train to Enschede.

For non-dutch speaking traveler (which is the case of any tourist), traveling

in train can be daunting. All announcements are in dutch. It is a good idea

to pick up a cup of coffee, a train map to stay alert to get off at the

intended station. Lucky for me...Enschede was the last station for the train. So I allowed the jet lag to kick in....:D

After 2 hours it was ....Hallo Enschede!!!!

Stay tuned...

The One box to rule them all

I had always wanted one single box to sit in my entertainment center and control all the things I want in the form of entertainment: play blue-ray, watch netflix streams, youtube, hulu or anything. Of course, this train of thought has flashed across millions of minds. So it is comforting to know that I am not alone. But has anyone succeeded? Nope. In this world, encumbered with DRM, corporates pursuing policy to lock in customers and strangle every penny until we drop dead there can't be a perfect solution.
So I started with the first box, which incidentally was a PS3. I read rave reviews about "Cell" broad-band engine. How their 8 core processor is so cool. One master core and seven synergistic cores that can crunch numbers at "x" FPS. Given that it could play blue-ray scored some brownie points in my initial thoughts. Of course, with the fancy "install other OS" trapped me. But only after buying it, I figured out that linux is a virtual machine running as Guest OS (as a slave). So Linux was restricted access to synergistic cores and GPU. With such restrictions, other OS would be totally crippled.
As if that was not sufficient, Microsoft rubbed more salt in to the wound by signing deal with Netflix that XBOX 360 would be exclusive game console to allow access to netflix streams through the console. So my PS3 as media center came crashing down.
So finally, I came down tried and tested path of setting up HTPC (Home Theater PC) which would be one box to rule them all...:D...
You can buy off the shelf HTPC for 800+ bucks....but where is the fun in that. And that is a mine field with a myriad of traps..You don't get to choose what processor you want on board...no choice of OS, whether it will 5.1/7.1 channel audio out, can you run other OS like Linux....will it have a powerful graphic card that can play nicely with your HDTV what TV tuner card will be part of package....
I went for the option of build your own PC...yay...
Here is my Feature specification:

1. need to look like a media box - who would want to have an ugly tower in their entertainment chassis
2. need to play nice with open source ..GNU, Linux and friends
3. need to have powerful processor that sips very less power, produce less heat, cooling fan should make less/no audible noise...
4. HDMI out, dual head video out through DVI and VGA (in case you want to connect a monitor) prefer to have graphic card on board (that way no heat sinks/cooling fans for graphic card)
5. 5.1/7.1 channel audio output (optical out) - prefer on-board
6. A reliable Power supply unit (this is one of the most crucial component and often under-estimated) - must be modular, have enough power cables (sata/ide/etc) to power anything and every thing on board....

I cannot say I got every feature covered by the following Hardware specification:
But here it goes:

1. AMD Athlon II X2 250 Dual Core Processor - sips 65w at full load. ( has enough horse power to deliver the performance, I expect.).
2. Asus M4A785-M Motherboard - it has all the stuff I want: AM3, AM2+ socket provide for future upgrade, on board ATI Radeon HD4200 with HDMI, dvi, vga output. VIA 5.1 channel audio with optical output.
3. Corsair XMS2 4 GB (2 X 2 GB) PC2-6400 800 MHz 240-PIN DDR2 Dual-Channel Memory Kit
4. Antec BP550 Plus 550W ATX12V V2.2 Modular Power Supply
5. SiliconDust HDHR-US HDHomeRun Networked Digital TV Tuner
6. nMediaPC Black Steel HTPC 5000B micro ATX HTPC case
7. Adesso wireless keyboard with trackball.
   
8. Microsoft certified MCE IR Receiver and Remote

Will my rig work? Stay tuned....