Was able to get Airplay working

Ok, thank goodness for small victories. I was able to get Airplay working on my new coffee table laptop. I bought a program called Aerodrom and loaded it onto my laptop. I initially had a great many problems with Symantec until I disabled it for 15 minutes while I installed. It seems that one of the items in the installer is a dll that is packed and Symantec doesn't like it. Symantec wants to be able to scan a dll as it is installed to avoid a package putting something malicious into the system. It turns out that after installation, Symantec recognizes the dll as being okay, it just needs to not be allowed to interfere with the installation.

I was able to launch Aerodrom and found that it allows me to stream both my iPhone 3GS and my iPad 2. It doesn't give the ability to duplicate the screen from the iPad 2 but at least a lot of the apps will stream Airplay wise to it. I found that Aerodrom does have some hiccups in starting however. I still have to figure out what is causing that to happen. It may be some settings with Bonjour, which has to be on the laptop in order to work. I was also successful in playing something using the Plex client on my iPad 2 and having it show up on the laptop. This means that I can stream from my Plex Media Server to the iPad2 and then to the laptop. I think that I might invest in an AppleTV now that I know that the Plex client will stream. Oh well, more tests are in order. Now if I can just get some time with the laptop when my granddaughter is not doing homework.


- LW

What is the next great project?

I still have much work to complete the network Media Server as I have seen it. I need to ensure that my iPad is able to stream the HD content from my new HDHomeRun Prime. Right now, I am limited to the non-HD channels via the 3rd party HDHomeRun app. I am still unable to stream TV content through my PLEX client. Strangely enough this doesn't bother me so much since I do have a streaming capability on the new coffee table Laptop that I bought about two weeks ago. I updated the PLEX media server version last night and over the weekend I converted some more DVDs to digital form for streaming. I am still not at the point where the wife is using the Roku to get her DVD content (we have been concentrating most of our time helping the granddaughter do her homework at night). So things to be accomplished include:
1. get more DVDs from the library converted to digital form on the PMS
2. figure out how to stream the HDHomeRun Prime to the Roku via PLEX client
3. figure out how to stream TV content to the iPad via PLEX client
4. check out the output of the new coffee table Laptop on the living room HDTV
5. look into getting a new Roku if #1 and #2 pan out
6. possibly get rid of the second STB if #2 and #5 pan out


- LW

Added some Microsoft Office to the Mix

As much as I hate to say it, business runs on Microsoft Office. Are there better products out there that don't cost as much? Depends on what you need to do. So many people use Microsoft Office to do their writing and spreadsheet work that they typically assume that it is the only product available. Libre Office is coming into it's own. However, in order to remain compatible with my work situation, I purchased a copy of Office 2010. I got a really good deal primarily because it was purchased through a deal made with my work. I was able to get most of the packages that I use on a daily if not weekly basis. I am missing Visio and Project, but I really don't necessarily need them for home use since I bring my work laptop home every night.

Having Office at home allows me to now move some personal things that I had on my work laptop to my new big screen laptop. I may actually use my work laptop less and less. Go figure.


- LW