Puttering in the Study

Harmony 890 remote

Last Monday Jamie and the boys got me a new universal remote, a Harmony 890.  I had been using the Harmony 670 since January of last year, and a year and a half of tweaking the programming was enough to get it working more or less perfectly controlling the study DVD, TV, CD, the home theater, and most recently the master bedroom TV/satellite receiver.  The study has worked flawlessly for months - I press different buttons for TV (DirecTV/TiVo), DVD or SACD, and never have a problem.
The only problem with the 670 is that it's a IR remote, meaning it can only control what it's pointed at.  I had gotten a IR to RF unit a year or so ago for the home theater (all the electronics are behind the seating) and it didn't work very well, and I've been wanting to get the study A/V and TV receivers into the wiring closet (they're too large for the study shelves) so I've been looking forward to getting a remote that was RF, specifically the Harmony 890, so the home theater.
I installed the remote itself Tuesday morning - it was simply a matter of upgrading the remote on my account.  Unfortunately that means I can't update the programming on my old remote now - I'll have to just re-enter all the device information as soon as I need to change something.  But as it's being used to control the master bedroom, it should be good for a while. 
The remote itself has a color screen, which is nice, and one of my favorite features is that the backlight comes on as soon as you pick it up, so there's no groping for the "glow" button.  I initially really didn't like the buttons, which aren't buttons at all, but just little nubs.  But after a little practice you realize they're actually pretty easy to navigate to by touch, and the play/forward/reverse/pause/stop button are backlit and big.
Yesterday I installed the home theater IR blaster, which sends the signals to the theater A/V equipment.  The main unit (which you program on the computer, using a USB cable connection) was set up to reach the projector, and I put an emitter in the component cabinet to control the receiver and DVD player.  Working out the right geometry to get widely separated units took a while, but it eventually worked, and now everything works perfectly in the home theater.  I'll be adding a Z-Wave unit to control the lighting, and then the theater will be done - at least as far as automation.  I was really impressed with how well the IR extender work - the only problems I had were because of the room's odd layout, and the unit accommodated that well.
Today I disconnected the A/V receiver and the TiVo receiver in the study, labelled all the wires, and moved them to the wiring closet immediately behind the study, where they sit on a metal laundry cart with the home server.  It took most of the day to rewire them (although only a few minutes to install the IR extender in there), and when I was done, I had gained a shelf and half in the study, and the only exposed equipment (other than the TV) were the DVD and SACD players, which fit comfortably on the 12" deep shelves.  And by attaching emitter to them, I can now control my TV (audio), CD and DVD without line of sight, meaning I can play music from my desk.  Only the TV is still controlled by the remote's IR signal, as opposed to RF and that was just to avoid attaching a IR emitter to the front of the screen.  I spent a lot of the day in the wiring closet getting the wires grouped and the speaker wiring cleaned up (better connections and longer runs where needed).  I also tacked the dozens of existing Cat5 and coax cables in the room up so, for the first time since we moved in, the wiring is organized and off the floor.  I can now get in front and behind all the stereo and computer equipment to check and change connections.  It's still not exactly neat, but it is organized, and the excess cabling is out of the way.
The old problem - that I can't tell what the receiver is really doing because I now can't see it - is still there, but the remote's programming has been reliable enough lately that I'm not really worried about it any more - it's doing precisely what I want for the common activities, and I'm not needing to change settings any longer.  And I can still go sit in the (tiny) wiring closet and study it to see what's going on if needed.
So it's been a really good experience so far. 

The Dream of Scipio - Iain Pears

This is my second Pears book, and it was as original as the first.  The story is an odd one about three different men in three different eras wrestling with decisions and looks back at a late Roman nobleman's writings in something called The Dream of Scipio, copying the title of a writing by Cicero.  The writing is the common thread between all three.  One thing I particularly liked was the constant back and forth among the three stories, and the way the narrator explained how the site of one event in the fifth century or the fourteenth century became the site of something else in the twentieth, thus physically tying the events together.
Overall a really interesting book - I enjoyed it a lot,