Zdenka & Dave's Web Site

Welcome to Our Family Web Site!

The purpose of this site is for communication with our family and friends. At this point it contains mostly family and friends' pictures and slide shows that I have posted. In the future I intend to permit any one of you to post pictures, communications, maps. event notices, comments, etc., for other family members and friends.

I'm still playing with the theme and concept so any comments are welcome. I hope you enjoy the pictures. t

8/10/04 Update

Had a moment so I thought I would add a few words. A lot has happened over the last year and a half. I have added a lot of pictures to the web site and added a lot more media stuff. We now have almost 750 movies and 16,000 song tracks (that's the equivalent of 1,333 albums) but in most cases I have only the best songs from the album. We have added a 50" plasma display to the media center connected to the computer and have also added a high definition television feed from Comcast to the center.

One problem occurred after we started watching high definition is we realized how really bad regular TV and current DVD technology is and have now lost some of the incentive to add more movies to our collection. I now know that the high definition DVD format is inevitable (no brainer- it is that much better) and all of my current movie collection will become obsolete. That's progress!

I am still looking to upgrade our speakers and build it all into cabinets and the fireplace.

6/30/04 Update

I am now married, or as my best man, Robert, called yesterday to ask me "well Dave, are you still married?". A lot has happened since I last updated our web site in what now looks like almost a year and a half and as you guessed the biggest event is Zdenka and I got married last weekend in Maui. I will have to update some of the other happenings also real soon but for now check out these pictures. The week was fabulous.

1/5/03 Update

Well I noticed that I haven't updated anything here for three months so I probably should add something so here goes. I now have almost 400 movies on our multimedia server and have also started muxing in the original 5.1/6.1 channel surround sound for absolutely perfect high quality movies (still dependent on the quality of the original but I can't improve on that). I have ordered a 50" plasma display to add to our home theater and a new Denon model 5803, 7.1 channel surround receiver. We will be watching TV and movies from our computer which enables all of the intelligence from the computer on the big screen (multiple windows, automatic TV listings, automatic Tivo recording capabilities, etc). I'll let you know next time if it all plays out like I think. This should also play real nicely with Microsoft's coming technology of wireless screens which we should see in the next few months. This technology should enable many new cool applications around the house.

I am also strongly considering switching from MP3 compression technology to Windows Media's lossless compression format for absolutely perfect reproductions of the original audio tracks of audio cds. Although I can't tell the difference from my high quality MP3s and the lossless format (or the original CDs for that matter) I think I just want to make the sound the best quality I can so as other technologies improve in the future I will have the best available to flow with it.

9/1/02 Video Update

I have been ripping movies now for a couple of months and we have over 300 movies on our video server- classics as well as latest releases mostly from Netflix as well as the public library. I now am including in the movie the original 5.1 channel original Dolby sound tracks. Things are going great. I have also identified my next project other than the house addition.

My next project will be music- mostly piano, but it will be computer based, of course, and a grand piano will also be a component.. This should easily occupy 15 hours a day to keep me busy along with keeping all my other projects going.

I'm also looking forward to deploying Freestyle and Mira, new technology incorporated in the WindowsXP upgrade due this month, and working on the build out of our multimedia center throughout the house.

7/7/02 New links & Video

I now have found new software for compressing movies and have also signed up with Netflix (movie rental by mail) to try it out. The new software is really slick and we now have 105 movies in our movie collection on the multimedia server in the house and plan on adding about 30 new movies a month for a while. Anybody in any room in the house can now watch a movie whenever they want, independent of what anyone else is watching.

I am also looking at some new ideas for adding, hopefully, interesting content and links to out web site. As usual, any feedback is highly desired since this is all new to me.

3/7/02 New ISP & DNS

Our second ISP now went bankrupt and we are now at Covad which also just came out of bankruptcy last year. They are now hosting our email and DNS services. Our web site was down for about 5 days during the switchover Thank goodness we got a domain name for our email. All we had to do was change the address that @godave.net pointed to and the email comes to the new host. Big suggestion, get a domain name if you don't have one already.

2/11/02 Tracy's Web Site:

Tracy now has a web site she is working on. (http://www.gotracy.net) This web site is also on my computer under my desk.

1/28/02 Video Ripping:

Tried ripping a video to a hard disk. Works pretty easy and takes about 15-20 minutes. Playing the movie from a computer looks just like the original. I will next play with video compression and see how that works. If all goes well we will also be able to load videos onto our multimedia server set up in the family room as the central movie and music control point for the house. Right now we have 38GB (8,000) songs on the hard disk that plays through the stereo (the equivalent of approximately 800 cds). If the video works as good as I think, we will load movies onto the server also and will have a choice of movies all online with just a click and the movies and music will be able to play anywhere in the house. WinXP is cool!

1/27/02 Jon & Robynn:

Jon and Robynn got their web site up in Paris. What a vacation they are having- 9 months in Europe. Take a look at their web site here. We hope to see a lot more of their trip.

1/27/02 Great Photo Sample:

I came across this sample of an excellent macro picture taken with a Canon G1 camera. It is higher resolution so it will take a little while to view but it is absolutely stunning. Maximize your viewer to feel the effect!

1/8/01 Zdenka's Web Site:

Zdenka wanted her web site up and I've been putting off trying to figure out how to run multiple web sites from windows XP (afraid because of how much time it would take and I would screw things up). Microsoft requires the purchase of their $1,000 product to do this.

Amazingly, after spending about 10 minutes on it I figured out how to run as many web sites as I want - all on one server under my desk using DomainMonger.com's web forwarding feature. Really cool! This stuff is much easier than I thought and Windows XP is loaded with features to do a lot of stuff. Her web site address is www.egrafika.com.

11/5/01 A Home Grown DSL Line:

Jon came up with a way of getting our own cheap DSL line by using a dedicated circuit from the local telephone company, something I ordered for a company I was with 15 years ago for a price of about $20.00 per month, and then putting DSL modems on each end. Just had time to start researching it. Will update this after I look at it. This could upgrade my speed from 144Kbs to 1.5 Mbs which is a WOW.

10/30/01 WinXP Upgrade:

Upgraded to WindowXP and the latest Internet Information Server software which comes free with it. (This is the program that lets anybody have a web site on their home computer.) Everything is working fine on the web site but with over 22,000 files on my web site (each picture creates 3 files) and over 600 MB of storage and I'm not even half done I will be upgrading to a much faster computer to organize this.

10/15/01:

Started working a little more with Microsoft SharePoint Team Services, a free program included with Office XP. This program would allow any of you to make changes to your page or section of the web site, add pictures, etc, from a computer wherever you are in the world. I need to talk to you to get more ideas on organizing the pages so everyone would have their own area to update.

9/28/01:

Learning more about this stuff - its pretty easy when you get time. I'm now adding more picture slide show download pages.

9/17/01:

I have now transferred my web site from a third party to my home computer using Microsoft Internet Information Services, a free program that comes with Windows 2000. Since I have more than 300 GB of disk space now, I will be able to post all the slide shows I want without worrying about disk space limitations. The only problem is that my internet connection is only 144 Kbs, which is not bad, but not nearly as good as all of you, so your downloads will not be as fast, but better than nothing. The web site is running on a Pentium II, 450 MHz computer; old, but it works!

4/1/01:

I got the idea to set up a web site and set one up at a web hosting service for $8.25 per month, which I thought was pretty reasonable for a home enthusiast. I learned quickly that picture storage takes up a lot of disk space and while disks are cheap to purchase, to rent their usage is expensive. I only have 10 MB of disk space available at my web hosting site so there is not a lot of room for pictures. They want to charge too much for me to get the space that I need. I'm working on trying to find other solutions to this problem - if you have any ideas please let me know (send me an email below).

mailto:Dave@GoDave.net

This page was last updated on 01/05/10.