how to kill a sunday afternoon

Saturday I rearranged the living room.

Today, I built a computer out of spare parts, sans case (since I don’t have two):

It worked:

(click pics for bigger versions)

I had to borrow the power switch from my main computer, which is why the two computers are so close in the first picture. Making a custom power switch for the caseless PC could be a fun future project. Maybe next weekend. =)

I wasn’t thinking about it when I first started building the new PC, but since I lost my iPod, we need a new way to listen to music at our “gatherings”, and this might be a fun way to do it. Once I get a cheap video card for the new compy (I had to borrow from my main PC to get this one up and running), I think I might try to stuff all of the hardware in a cabinet in the entertainment center in the living room. All I would need to do then is put my computer speakers on top of the entertainment center and run them through the back of the EC into the sound card in the case-less PC. I imagine it might be confusing to people at first, but that’s kind of the point.

I should be able to Remote Desktop/VNC (Windows or Linux, that is the question, though Ubuntu is currently installed) from the computer in my room to the PC in the EC and run the party music that way.

Our iPod setup was ghetto-rigged last year, but I think this definitely takes the cake. It should be a fun project.