I have an older HP Pavilion d9600 in my bedroom as a Media Center. The 17″ screen seems to be ideal when paired with the docking station to elevate it an give some larger speakers. One problem I had was that I was having to use my phone as an alarm clock. After about a month of this I got tired of it and decided to find an alternative way using the PC.

There are many alarm clock solutions out there but I wanted something full of features. After trying 5 or 6 different solutions I found Atomic Alarm Clock v5.87 which did everything I needed. This software allows you to set multiple alarm clocks at any interval on any day. This was perfect for me since I work one set of hours Monday – Wednesday and another set of hours on Saturday and Sunday.

Key Features:

• I love being able to set any MP3 as the alarm (I use the beep.mp3 which comes with it)
• I also love the ability to gradually increase the volume until you turn it off. This makes for a better wakeup for me.
• Another feature I like is that it can launch any program when the alarm goes off.
• It will also wake up your computer from sleep/hybernate! Perfect for my power settings.

The Problem: The only problem I had with the program is that it normally becomes the focus window when the alarm goes off, but doesn’t take focus when Media Center is open. As a result I would have to minimize Media Center, then turn off the alarm. I wanted to be able to just hit the OK button on my remote to turn off the alarm. Since I always fall asleep to a TV show or movie (I have my Vista power settings set so that the computer will go to sleep after 1 hour and hibernate after 2) and have the alarm wake the machine up, I was sick and tired of minimizing Media Center.

The Solution: After googling for about 30 seconds I found the command to end a program. I set Atomic Alarm Clock to run tskill with a parameter of ehshell. Now when the alarm goes off, it closed Media Center for me and makes the alarm dialog the primary window. A quick fumble for the remote and a tap of the OK button and everything is perfect!

Click here to download it: Atomic Alarm Clock (100)

A few weeks ago I built a new machine from spare parts here at work. I decided to bring in my own TV tuner so I could record shows from the AFN network on post then take them home and watch them that night. One problem I ran into was how difficult it was to find out when a show was on which channel because of the time differences and inaccuracies of the guide channel.

I found out that there is actually an RSS feed at MyAFN.net. I figured it could easily be converted into an iCal feed and I could just throw it into my Google Calendar. After several days of tinkering with Yahoo Pipes I was finally able to get it working.

Give it a try!

Here is what the main pipe looks like:

Click to view the pipe