Earlier this week I wrote:

I’ve officially crossed into remote control overload. The Cox remote for the HD-DVR doesn’t recognize my Pioneer receiver, so I can’t use the DVR’s remote to control the system volume, and my MX-500 Universal Remote Control doesn’t have a preprogrammed code for the Cox remote. So I’ll have to get out the manual and “train” the Universal remote this week.

I finished that chore Friday night, and the process was surprisingly simple.

Previously, I had used a Philips Pronto as an all-in-one remote. It’s a powerful, programmable device, about the size of a very fat Pocket PC. Unfortunately, it uses virtual buttons on an LCD screen, which can be hard to control, especially in the dark. The MX-500, by contrast, uses hard buttons, most of them arranged in a fairly intuitive layout, with a group of 10 customizable buttons at the top.

Several of my devices already had pre-programmed setup codes for the MX-500. For those, I just needed to check that every button worked, tweak the few that didn’t, and fine-tune the customizable buttons at the top. I especially like the fact that the MX-500 has a “punch through” mode. This allows the volume control to work the same way, no matter which device is selected. All of our home theater audio comes through a single receiver, and we never use the built-in speakers on the TV, so I set up the remote so that when I’m controlling the TV, the volume controls still get “punched through” to the receiver.

The MX-500 supports crude macros, which allow you to chain together commands for limited automation. Universal Remote Control has several higher-end devices that are fully programmable. The MX-700, in particular, gets rave reviews from the folks over at RemoteCentral, who are the experts on this sort of thing. But the MX-500 was good enough for me.

I picked it up at Amazon.com for under $70 with free shipping. Highly recommended.

I used to spend a small fortune at Starbucks and Seattle’s Best Coffee and Peets. Not any more. About six months ago, I bought my own home espresso maker, and I’m pleased to say it works great.

The model I purchased is now on sale at Amazon.com. If you’re a fellow coffee lover, check out the Cappresso C1000. The $599 price tag may seem high, but trust me, this is a screaming deal. (Update: As of January 2005, the price tag is back up to $799. See what a deal it was?) I read lots of reviews at CoffeeGeek.com before settling on this machine. No regrets. At $3 per latte it will pay for itself in just a few months.

Engadget links to a half-dozen reviews of Dell’s new Axim X30 Pocket PC:

[It’s] the very first Pocket PC to come out that runs on Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition, the latest version of the Pocket PC operating system. The Axim X30 is basically an updated version of the Axim X3i (it actually looks about the same), and comes in three versions: one with a 312MHz processor, 32MB of RAM; a mid-range model with Bluetooth, WiFi, a 312MHz processor, and 64MB of RAM, and a top of the line model with a superfast 624 MHz processor (the speediest we’ve seen in a Pocket PC yet), both Bluetooth and WiFi, and 64MB of RAM. Sounds like the only downside is that it lacks one of those new higher-resolution screens that have been showing up in a few Pocket PCs.