DIY - MAKE YOUR OWN SMART TV & MEDIA CENTRE

Many owners of flatscreen TVs may not realise that these multi-input display platforms can also be used as a large screen display for their desktop or notebook PC, so they can turn it into a DIY smart TV & a media centre.

In fact, many such TVs come with an HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) port which connects to the HDMI port on your satellite or fibre TV set top box, a DVI (Digital Visual Interface) port perhaps and quite often, also with a VGA (Video Graphics Array) port found on almost all desktop PCs and on many notebook PCs. All you need do is to switch the input on your TV to either the HDMI or VGA port to which your PC is connected. On some TV remote controls, you press the "Source" button and select the input.

One of my friends connected his Hisense large screen LED TV to his compact desktop PC (under the TV stand), which in turn is connected to his Unifi fibre-Internet router and he controls the PC using a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Thus the TV can be used to play You Tube, Vimeo and other streaming videos, listen to online streaming radio, podcasts, etc. in any language from around the world, it can play downloaded video and music files as well as view photos on your hard disk, send and receive e-mail, access social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc., all from your couch and who knows, you may even end up writing letters, creating spreadsheets and presentation graphic presentations all from your couch.

You can also install the open source Kodi (formerly XBMC) media available for Linux, Mac OS, Windows, etc. and turn your Into -- well a media centre.

http://kodi.tv/download/

And when you're done with running the PC, you can always switch your TV back to your satellite or fibre TV provider.

At first, he was running Windows on the PC and I found it's response rather sluggish and advised him to install a Linux on instead and after trying out a few Linux distributions, he settled on Pearl Linux with a MATE user interface.

COULD THIS BE A PART OF MH370?

At long last there could be hope of solving mystery of the whereabouts of Malaysia Airlines MH370 which went missing on 8 March, 2014.

There are several media reports posted within the past four or so hours about the discovery of a part of an aircraft wing which had washed up on La Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar off the eastern coast of Africa.

Former military pilot Xavier Tytelman believes that it could be a wing flap from a Boeing 777. (Screen cap of his Tweet below)
https://twitter.com/PeurAvion/status/626391215349612544

From the sea shell encrustations which have built up on the part, Police in Reunion believe that it has been in the water for over a year which fits the time of disappearance of MH370.





"UPDATE 17:30UTC Experts: debris found on Reunion Island show 'incredible similarities with Boeing 777."
http://www.airlive.net/2015/07/breaking-piece-of-wing-found-on-la.html

IF YOU GET A MESSAGE WITH A WHATS APP SCREENSHOT DELETE IT RIGHT AWAY

Dear Relies and friends,

If you receive a message with a Whats App image like the one I screen captured below which asks you to click on a Play button, pleased DELETE IT RIGHT AWAY and DO NOT click the Play button and DO NOT REPLY to the sender even if they are close to or well known to you.

If you want to communicate with the sender about it, CREATE A NEW EMAIL MESSAGE to them like I am doing now.

I had an e-mail message dated May 13th 2015 at 19:36 hours (7.36pm) purportedly from a friend and fellow alumni association committee member with a supposed Whats App screen asking me to click on the Play button to play a video as in the screen cap attached.

Thinking it to be a legitimate message, I clicked on the play button and it opened a browser and played a video advertisement for a health product extracted from what looks like a mangosteen fruit.

I then replied to the message thank her and a doctor friend called me about the product and asked me to buy some for him.

Several others also replied to me in response and one was alerted to the danger by the anti virus or anti spam on her computer and instead e-mailed me separately instead of replying to me.

Admittedly, I was a bit curious since the purported sender does not have a WhatsApp account as far as I know but I understand that one can still send and receive WhatApp from a web browser like one sends and receives Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Twitter, Facebook, etc,. so I did not think further about it.

I have done a Google search on "Whats App virus" and it is confirmed to be a known virus.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/dlKKBID9JWw

If you use a web mail service such as Gmail like I do, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and others, it would be best to purge all your old messages and messages in your deleted, spam and other folders to deny the virus access to e-mail addresses.

I deleted everything from my Gmail web mail,including the over 5000 contacts since I receive and send my Gmail messages using an e-mail client, so I do not need the contacts in my Gmail web mail.

Apologies for any inconvenience I may have caused on my part by not being more suspicious about this message I had received purportedly from this friend.

Regards

Charles

 

THREE DAYS OF TYRE PROBLEMS

I thought I would like to share this experience with you.

On Monday I drove my car into the city and noticed that my front right tyre was soft so I went to the petrol station and pumped it up.

While going out that evening I noticed the car pulling to the left and after I stopped for tea with a friend I noticed that the front left tyre was now soft, so I drove to a 24 hours petrol station and pumped it up, intending to go to the mechanic the next day to have it checked.

I was about to go out Tuesday afternoon and noticed that the  front left tyre had gone almost flat, so I jacked the car up and replaced it with the spare and went straight to the mechanic and asked his workers to check both tyres to see what was wrong.

They later informed me that they had replaced the valve of the left front tyre but found nothing wrong with the right front tyre.

Yesterday (Wednesday) evening I got a call from the secretary of my school alumni association to inform me that we had a committee meeting which was about to start. I was confused by the exchange of e-mails that the meeting was this evening so I had a bath, got ready and when i got to my car, I found that my right front tyre was almost flat but short of time, I drove slowly to a petrol station and pumped it up and then went looking for a mechanic but all were closed as it was past 7 pm, so I proceeded to the meeting and kept my fingers crossed that the tyre would not go flat.

After the meeting, I pumped up the tyre again and decided to replace it with the spare when I got home and stopped by a coffee shop for a bite on the way back and parked my car under some trees.

When I got back to my car, I felt a plop on my left shoulder and a bird nestling in the tree for the night had shat on me, so I quickly drove the car out from under the tree. By then, there was bird shit on my windscreen and car as well but I decided to go to a petrol station to pump up the tyre again before I went home.

FOUND A GREAT HOME FOR THIS PC

I had been trying to find a home for this Pentium III PC for a long time and by a happy coincidence I found it one of the best homes - i.e. a centre for autistic children.

I bought this old PC at a give away price of RM90 from a used PC shop in Amcorp Mall some years ago and enhanced it to 512MB of RAM, 80GB hard drive and replaced the ropey CD ROM drive with a working used unit.

It came with Windows XP but I soon got rid of that and installed Linux on it.

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE FOR A CLEARER VIEW

On Sunday 18th of January afternoon I took a friend who was in pain to Assunta Hospital and waited for about four hours until he was admitted.

It was evening and I felt like having some of those delicious curry puffs at Raju's Restaurant, so went there and by chance met the director of an autistic home whom I had not met for several years.

Raju's did not have any curry puffs that Sunday but we got chatting about computers, etc. and luckily I had my netbook in my car, so I showed the director DouDou Linux for children and invited him to come by by home to view this Pentium III PC.

He came by that evening with one of their PCs on which they were having problems opening Word documents.

I fired up the PC which runs PicarOS Diego Linux especially developed for children in Spain and let him try it out and the director said that the games and educational programs were ideal for autistic children.

The screen cap below is old. Since I captured it, I have customised PicarOS Diego further to be in English as much as possible.

He then took it away and installed it in the centre the next day and informed me that the children loved it though the teaching staff found it a bit intimidating, since it is not Windows which they are familiar with.

Anyway, I am happy that I finally found this PC a very good home for it to serve out the remainder of its useful life benefiting autistic children.