Setting up wireless lan between 2 macs

Hi,

I've got a macbook pro and a mac mini. The mini is used solely as a media centre and is connected to my hi-fi and tv. I've got an external HDD connected to the mini which is used for time machine backups and all music/films. (SSD internal on mini). Both the mini and macbook are connected wirelessly to my sky router.

What i would like to do is be able to backup the macbook to the external drive with time machine. I don't even know if time machine can backup 2 systems? I'd also like to be able to access all files on the mini from the macbook and also file transfer from/to each other.

Not sure where to start as even though they are connected to the same router i don't know how to see them both on my network! Probably quite a simple thing to do but i don't want to start goofing about with network preferences when i don't know what i'm doing. Any advice/help would be greatly appreciated!

Perfectly feasable.

Firstly you'll have to turn on file sharing on both machines (System Preferences -> Sharing)

Once this is active, each machine should show up in the Finder (of the other machine!!)

At this point you should be able to access the external HDD in Time Machine (You can put as many Time Machine backups on a Time Capsule as there is space...)