My Hulu machine III - Hulu Castle II

So I put the mother board into the Lego castle, it was a snug fit. I was surprised the motherboard would take up just about all the spaces and left barely any room behind for anything else. There was simply no way I could have stuffed in both a CD-ROM drive and a hard disk. Luckily, the IDE socket was right by the draw bridge. I would just let the cable out from the draw bridge to the CD-ROM outside of the castle while I installed the OS, and then disconnect it once I was done. But that still leaves the hard disk... My lucky day, I actually had a 2.5 IDE hard disk, you know, those intended for laptops, laying around. It is much thinner and much lighter. I was able to just put in a bracket to hold it above the CPU heat sink.


I even had a hook that guided the IDE cable to the back of the drive.


All set, it's time to power this thing up... oh, wait a minute, the power button. All the while I had forgotten about the power button. But who says you can't get luckily twice in a row. I don't have a case but I just so happen to have a power switch. But where should I put it?? It needs to be easy to reach but not visible. I built an enclosure around it and figured, if I put a column of bricks above it, the spring action and the weight of the bricks would counter each other perfectly.


With a guardsman standing on top, the power switch nicely hidden, all I needed to do was to push the little guy.



It works perfect. There, my Hulu castle.


I installed the OS and the Hulu desktop application, set up the wireless supplicant and encryption keys, set Hulu to start on boot,, and then unplugged the keyboard and mouse and CD-ROM. I know having an open case like this, static will eventually destroy alot of the electronics, but I don't care. I was ready to sit back and enjoy my TV on demand. I pointed my remote at my Hulu castle ready to choose a show when I realized - crap, there is no remote. I don't have an infra red receiver. What am I gonna do!?!? Shell out another $20 for a remote?? Live with a very very long USB cable tethered behind?? No way!

I can make something up... I am this close...