However, I appear to be experiencing something more hardware-related. It’s what I can only describe as GSM buzz. When I’m making calls, I can hear a buzzing noise in the earpiece which sounds like the noise you get when you place a mobile phone too close to a set of speakers. It’s also getting so loud that I now hear it faintly when the phone is just sitting, unused, on my desk.

Do any of my readers experience such an issue? Should I be taking it into Apple for a warranty repair? Comments welcome!

The key element of any smart home is structured cabling – in my case Cat5e. I was planning on running HDMI to a couple of different rooms, but in lengths greater than 10 metres, its unreliable and expensive. So, how do I plan to get the HDMI signal from my V+ box in the loft, to my TV in the living room? By using a pair of HDMI baluns, of course! By using a pair of these boxes, I can use my structured cabling to send the HDMI signal from the V+ box to my TV. Simples! In case you’re wondering what these baluns look like, here they are:

Quite small and unobtrusive, I think you’ll agree. It’d be easy enough to cable-tie one of these bad boys to the wall mount or the VESA fitting at the back of the TV, or just to hide away with the rest of the cables, so SWMBO will be happy, and this leads to a quiet life for me. Its really a win-win situation. SWMBO is happy, I don’t have to spend loads of money on long HDMI cables and these boxes are £30 on Amazon. In fact, you can buy them here.

I’ll post a review when I put them to use, but all in all, these look great!

I’ve been a fan of home automation for a long time, and whilst still living at home with the parents, I’ve been able to experiment with X10 with great success. Thankfully, the house is all on one level, with loft access. So far, it’s been decided that I’ll be running Cat5 cable to every room – maybe not the bathroom, but there’s still potential for that if I can justify it – along with speaker cable and possibly two or three HDMI cables.

I’ll have an automation server running Homeseer as a backend to the house, which will pull together pretty much all the tech in the house. My main media server will run Windows Home Server, serving up audio and video to Windows 7 PCs which run Windows Media Center.

Broadcast media will arrive in the house in a variety of different ways: 2 Virgin Media boxes will provide cable TV to either the TVs directly, or to the Windows 7 boxes to be played out via WMC; at least one Freesat box (there’s already a satellite dish feeding into the house); and regular old council telly – Freeview.

My studio equipment will live in its own room, herein referred to as my studio. The studio PC will live in the loft along with the servers so I can reduce the equipment noise in the studio itself. Monitor and keyboard/mouse will arrive in the room via an Adder standalone KVM box.

I’m sure there will be all kinds of pitfalls along the way, but with the help of the folks over at Automated Home, I’m sure things will go pretty well! Stay tuned for more news on the tech house. I can’t wait!

It’s been a bit of a journey to get them, to be honest. I had to wait A-G-E-S to get served in the shop, so I whinged about it on Twitter, and immediately got a follow from Richer Sounds. They’ve offered me a tenner for my trouble, but I can’t imagine what else I’d buy out of there.. I’m poor AND I’m getting married!

Moving on from that, I decided to mount them on the wall yesterday, and the first speaker went up fine. The second speaker however, did not. It lasted all of two minutes before all 1.4kg of it started to come away from the wall. There was nothing else I could do but curse myself for making four bloody big holes in my nice, newly decorated wall.

Fast forward to today, and a chat with one of my colleagues, Brian. He’s an Active Directory wizard now, but he’s a joiner to trade. He suggested larger rawl plugs, so off I went to B&Q after work, and I bought the next two sizes of rawl plugs. I got home, tried them out, and BINGO! I now have a pair of speakers on the wall, not just one lonely speaker. I was on a roll, so I got my nice glass shelves from Ikea – which have been sitting in their boxes for weeks – and stuck them up on the wall. Now I think I’m a DIY god!

I’ve christened my speakers by playing The Jam Song, and I’m now load-testing the shelves! Woo!

Oh, and before I forget, check out ‘AutoTune The News’ on YouTube! It’s excellent!