I was messing around with the Tivo the other day and discovered that the Tivo Desktop application communicates with the Tivo via simple HTTP and HTTPS calls. I found that if you submit the same request that the Tivo Desktop application sends, and use 'tivo' as your username and your Media Access Key as your password, the Tivo returns an XML file describing the shows currently stored on the drive. I then spent about four hours hacking up a script to parse that XML file and output a nice pretty HTML listing of the stuff currently on the drive. Why? I don't know. Nobody gives a crap what I've got stored on my Tivo. I guess now I can check it from work and see what shows it has recorded for me while I was gone, but I think I could handle the suspense with no problem before :) Basically I just like the idea of having this big complex interacting system. If only I could think of more useful ways of putting this interest to use.

If you're curious, here's what's Now Playing on Dan's Tivo.