Inane ramblings of Tim

My new Ubuntu tablet...

2012-01-18T12:46:00.004-05:00

Ubuntu released that thay are working on a tablet to be released next year, I did not want to wait, so I built one.
I have been using tablets for a very long time, longer than most think tablets existed. I had a Dauphin DTR-1 running Windows for workgroups 3.11 pen edition back in the 90's. This little device was the very first tablet ever made, specifically designed for the FBI, but I got my hands on one. It had an amazing 1.5 hours of battery life and a screaming 486dx processor. I graduated to several Fujitsu tablets over the years and finally ended on the ipad2.

But I want a Ubuntu tablet! So I bought a used Fujitsu Stylistic 5011d and started the process of installing Ubuntu!.

$100 later and a week of waiting for the ebay item to arrive I had one well used tablet with no OS.
First upgrades. 1gb of ram instead of the stock 512, 80gig 5200 rpm drive, and a better wifi card. The battery is holding a charge for now, but I should get one before they dry up on the cheap used market...

I built a Ubuntu install USB stick from a live CD. set the boot order on the tablet and booted from the USB stick. Starting with a generic Ubuntu install just to get the OS on there.

Step 1 - install ubuntu from USB stick. Not too hard, the live CD will make the usb installer.
Step 2 - install fjbtndrv by doing the following....

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:khnz; sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get -y install fjbtndrv

Step 2.5 - the keybinding for fjbbtndrv is wrong for the two portrait rotations. they rotate but the wacom does not rotate correctly... http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3187962&group_id=196222&atid=956591 that is how to fix it, it's not a high priority bug so it will probably not be fixed in the next release.

Also note: if you put the tablet to sleep in a rotation, waking up the wacom rotation will be wrong, Still working on a fix for that.

Reboot.

Step 3 install apps that make life more fun. Xournal for handwriting notepad.

Thats it to get a functional Ubuntu tablet. I'll post more about added tweaks and awesome programs to add to make the tablet even better.

Step 4 - to fix Ubuntu's broken Broadcom wireless support go to http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1859668 for more information about it. It seems that Ubuntu's support for Broadcom is completely borked because of developers not actually testing it.

After playing with a Linux/Ubuntu tablet for a while I am formatting the drive and installing XP tablet edition. Why? well simply Linux sucks on the tablet. The OS has no tablet extensions for handwriting input that are seamless. you have to launch a separate program and juggle. Also the killer app on a tablet is Microsoft's One Note. this piece of software makes a tablet full of win, and unfortunately there is nothing at all like it on Linux. Actually Windows XP tablet is out of the question, Windows 7 actually runs faster on this tablet than XP when you upgrade it to a 5400rpm drive and at least 1 gig ram. Install went effortlessly from a $35.00 usb dvd record drive I picked up at Staples. Only the display drivers have a problem.

How to get the display working click here to follow the procedure on how to get the Intel 855GS chip-set to work. It seems that Intel in their infinite stupidity never bothered to make a driver for windows 7 for this chip-set. Thanks Intel!

In reality, Linux on a tablet is useless. I tried to make it work for something other than a web browser, The failing point is that the on screen keyboard and handwriting is not integrated into the Window manager. Linux NEEDS a version of gnome designed for Tablets and handwriting.

Debunking Speeding

2012-01-05T08:00:00.015-05:00

I know a lot of people that claim that speeding will get them to work a lot faster. I argue that it makes very little difference. I am going to this week debunk that with a real world test and real math.

Here is the rub, Speeding = faster is only true if your average speed for that trip IS higher. Most people do not know enough math to calculate an average speed AND include reality in it. Reality is the time it takes from when you get in your car to when you get out of your car at work.

So I am using the following formula : Average speed = Miles Driven / Minutes driving * 60
This is a well know, accurate and respected formula for calculating average speed.

This morning for example, I set the cruise control at 66 mph, that is 4 mph UNDER the highway speed limit. My commute is 39.1 miles on the nose from my driveway to my parking spot at work. My GPS, Odometer, and Google maps all agree on this. My commute is 15% city and 85% open highway.

the SECOND I was able to hit the highway, I floored the car to get up to speed as fast as possible, I then set the cruise at 66 mph and maintained that speed as much as I could. Any time I slowed down for traffic I would floor it to get back up to speed as fast as possible. I am doing everything possible to keep near my target speed. Speeding on residential streets is only for scumbags, I refuse to do that, all residential streets will be at the speed limit when possible.

It took 44 minutes to get to work with an average speed of 53.05 Mph.

This was mostly an effect of traffic and the 3 miles of residential 35 mph at the beginning of my trip and the 2 miles of residential 35mph at the end of my trip.

Let's see what the rest of the data points prove. I will do 3 runs at 70mph, and 3 runs at 75mph, this will give a good average of what the real travel times are and the effects of traffic. I have already seen that luck has more to do with a fast commute. There are a total of 9 traffic lights I have to deal with. Not stopping at those light has already made a HUGE impact in time saved.

70 mph :
Day 1 - 42 minutes Avg 55.57mph : Clear weather, Almost no traffic at all
Day 2 - 39 minutes Avg 59.85mph : Clear weather, hit all green lights and light traffic slowdowns.

I have had trouble remembering to log my end time when I get to work. Not enough coffee. So I am going to try an app on my phone that will log the trip with start and end time as well as miles driven. It is an app called "Automilez" no confidence in the bad name, but I will run some test to see if it is even semi-accurate.

What I have been noticing though is that traffic and luck of the traffic lights has a HUGE impact on drive time. Shifting my commute time to work by 10 minutes earlier made the biggest difference. so far, One day I made it in about 36 minutes by leaving early and the cruise set at 70.

Ok this is getting real data... it is much more consistent on identical driving days.

70 MPH

Day 1 - 57.23 avg mph : 39.1 miles, 40minutes 58 seconds Clear weather light traffic
Day 2 - 58.58 avg mph : 39.1 miles 40minutes 01 seconds Clear weather light traffic
Day 3 - 58.65 avg mph : 39.1 miles 39 minutes 53 seconds light rain light traffic

75 MPH

Day 1 - 58.35 avg mph 39.1 miles 40 minutes 18 seconds light rain light traffic.
Day 2 - 58.58 avg mph 39.1 miles 40 minutes 03 seconds light snow light traffic.
Day 3 - 53.93 avg mph 39.1 miles 43 minutes 21 seconds light rain, light traffic, one accident on side of road

Driving stress is far higher at 75MPH. I am constantly slowing for traffic I am finding that I try to go even faster than 75 to "make up time" and am driving far more aggressive. This in turn is making me cranky.I am already seeing the proof that there is no time difference. I also noticed the more aggressive drivers trying to do 90 do not get any farther ahead to make a difference. When I enter the city I can see their car only 5-10 car lengths away. And yes It's the same car, not everyone drives a 2002 civic in lime green with a chunk of aluminum siding on the back and a "Monster" logo on both sides.

Traffic is sucking up time far more than the speeding is making it up. And any traffic slow downs like an accident can add so much time that even driving 120mph when you can will not make up for the time lost due to traffic.

I also was seeing at 10% drop in fuel economy, so I am not only getting minimal to zero gains by speeding, but it costs more in fuel and stress. I simply can not see why anyone would speed. you are not going to get there any faster, at least not any faster than driving the speed limit.

Used car extended warranties, dont waste your money.

2011-12-23T08:18:00.000-05:00

I recently was scammed by a local car dealer on a used car warranty. the finance guy promised that if I did not use it I would get my money back, yadda....yadda.. I did have to use it, only after I knew it was about to expire.   I had 3000 miles before it would expire so on a nagging feeling I went to the dealership and started asking very VERY pointed questions. and suddenly I discovered that I was in fact lied to, although they will not admit it was a lie but a "erroneous educational event" and I was able to use the warranty to get some small items fixed that I was going to fix on my own.

It seems the "promise" of giving back the cost of the warranty if you don't use it is ONLY if you don't use the warranty AND trade in the car to them on a new car before it runs out. This is not spelled out on ANY paper, and after searching my paper packet when I bought the car, the one that i was shown that DID say I got the money back was missing. Yes I was stupid and did not look through all the papers in the envelope that the finance guy handed me. I was stupid and trusted him.

So I was out the $1900 for the bumper to bumper warranty that I had 3000 miles left on. I ran over to the service department and talked to their manager, who rolled his eyes until I said, "you can keep the car for a week, find absolutely anything wrong and fix it."

A week later, they replaced all the motor mounts to the tune of $800. he said only 1 was needed to be replaced, and I knew this, but he reported that all of them were bad so he could get them all replaced.   He then shared with me that this is a known problem that the maker is keeping quiet, but would have been replaced for free if the car was brought in 20,000 miles ago with the problem.

I lost $1100.00 on that warranty. I would have been far better off keeping that cash in the savings account.   In fact, after doing some research..   a transmission failure would cost me $1100, and a whole engine replacement is $2100.00

In reality, any warranty you have to buy is worthless. the cash you spend on it will cover 90% of any repairs that may be needed. My Honda is still running great, and now with non defective motor mounts, I am sure I'll go 250,000 miles without any major problems.

When you buy a new car or used car, do NOT buy that extended warranty.   It's a waste of money no matter how you look at it.   Yes there is the 1 in 1,000,000 guy that it has saved money. But that is gambling with an awfully expensive lottery ticket.

Nerd out: RPG weather.

2011-11-28T18:58:00.000-05:00

I am going to write a "iphone" web app. it will actually run for any smartphone or tablet, but i have an iphone so that is where it will be tested. what I am going to write is a "Game weather generator". I have the following idea down. Select a world city that is closest to what your "world location" is like as a random seed starting point of weather or set your own starting point.. all I care about is the barometric pressure and temperature. From those two I will generate the weather and wind as well as temperature. a random number generator will generate from -1 to +1 this will move a scale of -5 to +5 and each 1/2 hour passed the barometer will change that amount. As the barometer get's lower the weather will get worse, as it get higher it get's better. Now based on the barometer and another random number slider the temperature will also change. if the barometer is high then the temperature will be encouraged to trend upwards but not forced. two successive negative will move it negative. also temperature will follow a typical day/night curve with the 2 hour delay like we see in real life.

Wind I need to think about. to do it right I need to simulate fronts. so if it was trending up but is now trending down the wind will be out of the prevailing wind direction. the other way will have the winds reversed. with some north-south randomness.

it's a start, hopefully I can find some better weather simulation rules to base my code off of.

Now the GM can select, "4 hours have passed" and now they will get the new current conditions.

Why I like Old tech....

2011-11-18T21:20:00.000-05:00

I sit here this weekend with several very expensive things broken that is making a part of my life a bummer. I am a Crestron programmer and AV expert. I have in my home Crestron automation and a Crestron Whole house audio system, their new-ish but recently discontinued AADS. 6 sources and 6 zones, enough for my house. But it's dead, everything looks like it works but none of the speaker outputs are working. it's only 2 years old and already dead. I have some older Crestron gear that is well over 10 years old that is still going strong. it's out of date but it was built to quality standards instead of cost standards.

and this is what bugs me about new electronics and tech. Laptops from 6 years ago are still running strong, yet a 2 year old HP is on death's door. My old ZENITH TV lasted 35 years, My panasonic plasma lasted 24 months.

Heck I have a 26 year old Pontiac fiero that has needed far less repairs than the 2001 Aztek, the 2003 Grand Caravan, or anyone elses GM car made in the past 10 years.

it is because companies are not making things to last for with an eye to quality or doing it right. they are making things where profit margin is the #1 driving force in it's design and manufacture.

And it's why I am starting to NOT buy anything new anymore. I need things to last, not be disposable. Even very high end companies like Crestron are starting to make low quality products to meet profit margins and price. I cant afford their profit margins anymore. It should last until I throw it in the goodwill donation box.

Ubuntu 11.10 Review: It's a lot better than 11.04

2011-10-20T12:56:00.001-04:00

Unity in Ubuntu 11.04 was something i really hated. it was half baked and bad. I tried to live with it for a while but it was just not working well. Plus I hated the change because it seemed to remove functionality and confused the interface.

Fast Foreward to today, I installed 11.10 on a spare junk laptop. It's a P4 with2 gig ram and the slowest hard drive on the planet. so far many of my gripes with Unity have been resolved. back are the application sections instead of "one big mess"(tm) of app icons, and many of the administration tools have been ported over than they forgot about. #1 was the touchpad tools for disabling tapping and clicking. They finally added it back making Ubuntu useable again on a laptop.

There is still no way to add useful widgets to the menubar, and the "themes" for the Unity interface are still limited to 2 useable ones and 2 broken ones. So customization is still very limited for the power user.

My big gripe change that Unity has compared to 10.10 is that the wireless hardware firmware detect and load is not working still. the intel Wifi board is not working because 11.10 wont detect it from the click and drool tools. I can fix it in the command line, but that makes it an epic fail for the target audience that Ubuntu is aiming for.

Basically they are Fixing Ubuntu. It's still early Beta as far as I am concerned. Maybe 12.04 will actually be a RC1 quality where I can start recommending it again to non techie users.

One thing that does drive me nuts is the really dumb 2 pixel wide pop up slider bars. I hate them with a passion. I want real sliders back. But you cant get them back.

Fall/Winter camping

2011-10-17T18:22:00.000-04:00

I love this time of the year. and tent camping or camping in general is plain old fun in the late fall. The campgrounds are empty compared to the days before September, and the hiking trails are empty.

But it does present some challenges. Keeping warm and keeping dry are two that stand out. You cant use that junk coleman tent that is 90% screen and 1% tent. you need something that is a three season tent or at least has screening that can zip up AND a full size rain fly that goes almost all the way to the ground on all sides except the entryways. nothing will teach you about tent comfort than trying to do a fall campout in a summer only tent when the overnight temps hot 36F degrees and a breeze kicks up. Even more miserable is trying to do that when you expect the weather to stay above 35F and it hit's 25F degrees and snows overnight. it's not fun being the only one out of a sleeping bag trying to start a campfire at 6 am in a winter wonderland because the tent collapsed under the weight.

Proper gear is important, and having a back up plan is double important. Get a tent that will handle worse weather than you ever expect to camp in. Honestly my choice from now on for a tent will be a Cabelas Alaskan guide tent. I love my westwind, but after a few years with it I wish I bought the better tent. Sleeping gear is just as important. I have tried EVER sleeping pad out there and I'l tell you this. they all are complete junk. hard foam is uncomfortable, the $1.99 cheapies are the same as the $47.99 mountain climber specials. The self inflating pads are worse unless you are a 95 pound waif. All of them are comfortable for the first hour and then the air starts moving and finally drops you to the ground with most of the inflation at your feet. My wife and I bought 10 different brands and kept going up in price and found a set that in our living room were fantastic, but in the woods are junk after an hour. They in fact kept us less warm than the $1.99 cheap hard foam pad. If you want real comfort you need to bring a LOT of padding to lay on or better yet, a cot of some type. I am not sold on air mattresses yet, Every one I have slept on was cold. great in summer, bad in fall/winter. Maybe someone will come up with one that is not as bulky as a suitcase, squeek all night long and insulates. My wife and I Love the double tent cot for comfort sleeping, but we cant transport it anywhere. It's too big to fit in any car. One nice thing of the tentcot, it's a 4 season tent as you can seal it up tight and with a foam pad in it you are really warm with 2 people inside. I have yet to find a small, easily packed, and and comfortable sleeping system.

Sleeping Bags; Why has there been ZERO effort in making sleeping bags comfortable? I dont want to own 10 bags so I have one for every temperature range. Why not a good bag that has zip open panels to let air in when it's a 50 degree night? Why do they not add in venting that can be closed so a bag can cover 80 degrees to 10 degrees? I have never had a good night sleep in a sleeping bag. the Best night I ever had in a tent was when I was on a cot with a couple of quilts from home. the cotton is comfortable, you can slide a leg out when hot, and completely disappear under them when cold. it's time to start searching again for comfortable and small packing sleeping bags. someone has to make a bag that packs small, is comfortable, and designed for an adult and not a child. Again, that 95 pound waif design factor for camping gear rears it's head. I am built like a football player, not a horse jockey.. I dont like the wrapped in a rug feeling that most bags deliver.

for cold weather camping, the sleeping bag I prefer is a huge one, it's for "Extra tall" people so I can slide in and disappear. we also have a pair of summer fleece bags as well. my wife will slide one into the other and be warmer than a bug in a toaster. if the wind picks up, it will strip the heat from your tent fast, having two layers in your bag will make a huge difference. Also double up on your ground pads. you need that extra layer, and I strongly suggest the firmer cheap pads for insulation. they are far superior to self inflating types. If in doubt, bring both and stack them. error on the side of being comfortable and you will have a far more enjoyable time.

as for tent heaters, I say no. Honestly even the new flame-less catalyst type make me nervous. you are wrapped in flammable material. do you really want to risk it? if you are bringing a 12 person cabin for the two of you? Ok, I can understand. but a correct sized tent that is correct for the season will do just fine. and in a wind your tent heater is not going to make a difference.

Also bring some finger-less gloves. works great for keeping warmer while you light he morning fire and use the stove to heat up water for coffee and get the oatmeal cooking over the fire.

My beef with current technology...

2011-10-04T12:19:00.000-04:00

I have a PC, an iPad and an iPhone.   yet I cant have something on one device sync to the others.   For example, On my PC I look up recipes and find a couple of good ones, I cant send them to my ipad or my iphone. and if I select them why cant the ingredients needed get put into my grocery list that is on my iphone for me automatically?   Why cant I do my grocery list on my ipad and then leave for the store with the list on my phone?

None of this is technically impossible. in fact it's all technically highly possible, but it seems that nobody in software and hardware wants to cooperate to make things work well and give everyone that "future world" or jetsons kind of life.   Apple could care less about what I do on my PC, and app developers are not interested in communicating with each other. Most of the time it's actually the opposite. Software makers go out of their way to make sure they are incompatible with other software and hide their data formats to try and force you to use their product forever.

I want integration. I want my technology to do what it should.   Sadly I dont think it will ever happen.

The return to hiking.... I remember this!

2011-09-09T08:49:00.002-04:00

This past holiday weekend I took the family to one of the large state parks for the day, Ludington State park in Ludington, MI. I grew up camping there every month all summer long for years at a time. By the time I was 13, I knew every inch of that state park. For a while it was my summer home away from home... And all that came rushing back to me when we pulled into the park entrance. I had a fantastic day hiking the trails with my family being in nature far away from the noise of the city. One thing I did notice is that everyone else we padded on the trail had no clue about hiking. Dressed in flip flops and t-shirts they all looked cold on the lake side of the trails where the wind blew hard. And by the sheer number of water bottles thrown on the ground it seems that most also have no respect at all for nature let alone being prepared for a day long hike in the woods. Granted, not everyone in my family was prepared completely but I did a partial job of it, here is what I carried...1 small backpack, I took a camel-back pack and removed the bladder. I put 4 bottles of water in place of it. 4 people sharing a single camel-back hose is kind of icky.In this back pack I threw in about 6 granola bars and 2 small packs of nuts and fruit, and a small first aid kit.I also had my iPhone with an extended battery sleeve that lets the phone go for about 3 days with my gps apps.Oh and a trail map.. something that most people don't grab.That was it. I dressed in shorts but wore decent tightly laced tennis shoes with high socks and I had a light windbreaker I was wearing. I knew we were hiking less than 5 miles into the woods so at most carrying a person we had no chance of getting stranded, plus I was in territory that I knew completely. I felt comfortable that if something happened, we would be fine.But it's not enough if you are hiking in one of the massive parks in territory you do not know like the back of your hand. If you were to go hiking in the deep woods or Arizonan desert what I brought is not nearly enough.my "day pack" for a unfamiliar hike is the following...Compass.Map.Water filter strawsurvival whistleemergency blanketsignal mirrorfirestarterwaxed cotton in strawsfirst aid kit.5 oz small spray bug repellant or single serving bug repellant packets2 packets of sun screen.36" of duct tapesmall sewing kit2 gallon sized ziplock freezer baggiesbright orange or red bandanasmall LED flashlight no batteries in it2 sets of batteries for the flashlight wrapped in separate small baggies and ends taped.pack of juicy friut gumat least 2-3 sugar hard candies1 carefully wrapped white thin plastic shopping bagPlus at least 2X the food that I think I would need while hiking.ALL of this can easily fit in the camel-back bag with room to spare.. What I also would bring is some technology as well and require others in my hiking group to do the same...1 FRS/GMRS radio that uses AA batteries1 small GPS that uses AA batteries1 SOLAR AA battery charger4 rechargeable AA batteriesat least 1 set of spare Alkaline AA batteries for emergency use.The most important part is that all devices use the SAME battery type. my GPS uses 2 AA batteries. My FRS radio uses 1 AA batteries, my LED flashlights also use AA batteries.This way my power supply for every device can be used in every other device. This can be life saving.the GPS Is useful if you know how to use it. the way-point of your car MUST be set before you leave. Better GPS's have a stored database of way-points like cities and hospitals. Color screens do not last very long on battery power, black and white screens can go for days on a single set of AA batteries and are easy to read in high noon sunlight. the GPS in your car is junk for hiking, get a REAL hiking GPS. should not cost more than $200.00 for a fancy one.Many hiking "purists" will scoff at the GPS use. MY GPS will get me out of the woods faster than your compass and maps. and because I am planning for power consumption batteries are not an issue. What is an issue is breaking the GPS, which is why you get a hiking model. Plus I have the compass and map as a backup. Longer hikes I also bring the following.2 more emergency space blankets.1 emergency tube tent4 chemical light sticks3600 calorie emergency ration brickThat's it. other than the water you need, but that should be in everyone's camleback bladder and canteen, if you do it right all of it will take up very little space.The above stuff will make a huge difference if you get lost or worse.

Tent Review: Cabelas Deluxe Tent Cot

2011-08-10T13:32:00.000-04:00

Last year I had to stop at the Cabelas store near Chicago... every time I drive through on I-80 I HAVE to stop, it's a great place to stretch your legs... really... I picked up a killer deal on the Deluxe Tent Cot (double) in their returns department. For $125.00 I scored a brand new $300.00 tent. Put it in the back of the van and drove home happy.. Well giddy over how much I saved. Then reality set in.

This thing is BIG, folded up it will NOT fit in the back of any car, and the minivan had to have both rows of seats folded down. Plus it's heavy, the steel frame to hold two 250 pound adults is built like a tank, so it feels like you are hauling a tank. What I was after is the siren song of tent setup that takes 6 seconds and a tent teardown and pack up that takes... 6 seconds. and in this promise it completely delivers. It is the easiest camp setup and teardown you could ever hope for. and if you are setting up next to the minivan, it's great!

The night of sleep in it was wonderful. I opted for the padded mattress insert that is 1.5 inches of foam, open the windows and you have an awesome cross breeze, and the rain fly closes up fast from inside when the showers hit at night. completely zipped up it will get very warm inside. My wife loved this feature.

This tent is built beautifully out of premium materials. It oozes quality everywhere you look and the glow in the dark on the zipper pulls were a really cool surprise the first night.

If you need an instant place to sleep and takes no effort to set up or tear down and delivers a fantastic night sleep... this is the ticket. Except for one problem.

Packed up it's huge. 35 inches by 53 inches by 14 inches. and weighs at least 80 pounds. I am unable to get it in the hatchback of a civic, and it would not fit in a Pontiac Aztek without folding down the back seats. this thing is gigantic and heavy even in a packed state. and you CANT leave the mattress pad in it when folded. you must pull that out and carry that separate. so now you have a 53" wide 14" round roll along with the tent/cot. If you were thinking of getting one of these for light camping you need to stop right now and cancel your order. they are NOT for light camping as you need a pickup truck to move it. and if you have a minivan to carry it, get a mattress for the minivan and camp in the back of that instead for more comfort and better noise control.

This tent does have it's uses. Outside events where you have period tents such as reenactments or vendors at outdoor events like motorcycle rallies or car shows will live this tent as it can be set up instantly inside your vendor tent for very comfortable sleeping while keeping the bugs away. This is a very small market tent only usable by people that have the need to set up a tent to sleep in quickly but have a large vehicle to carry it around in. In fact I am trying to figure out how to make a small motorcycle trailer to carry this tent. if I can "trailerize" it easily it could become a fantastic tent for motorcycle camping where a great night sleep is important.

Tv show downloader setup for a linux server or XBMC.... Part 3

2011-08-04T17:00:00.000-04:00

I finally have a complete perfect working automatic and hands off TV show scraper from RSS feeds for my XBMC media center. Here is a quick list of what I am using....

Ubuntu Server 11.04
utorrent server version (latest)
utorrent server updated GUI (latest)
sorttv.pl (first version released on sourceforge, newest has problems)

I built a server that does more than just the above, In fact you can add ALL of the above to your XBMC Linux box if you want a self contained solution. I just want to be able to turn off the XBMC when not in use and the Server is also running other things so it's not wasting energy. The entire process above is NOT very intensive, even a old Pentium 4 can run this without putting more than a 5% load on the processor.

First you need to download and install utrorrent and update it's GUI from the links above. if you are running a 64bit server you need to install the 32 bit libs. in order for utserver to run.

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

for more information take a look here

Once you get that guy running you can now add your RSS feeds and add filters to make it start downloading you TV shows to your hard drive. This will pile them all into one location for you. Not good for any organization...

sorttv.pl to the rescue!

SortTV, the version I use, is the first release. v0.2.. why? because it's small and fast and not bloated. It does do one thing I don't like, it will put files in "Showname/Season XX" and I dont care about seasons... You might, but I delete the TV shows after I watch them, I have no interest in storing episode 37 of Top Gear forever and watching it later.. That's what Netflix is for. IF you like saving the tv shows forever and want to keep them in season folders, This is all ready for you. Now I do not use the latest version of sorttv.pl because it has became huge and unruly. AND it uses libraries that Ubuntu cant install, nor do I want all the added features. IT tried to do things that honestly XBMC does for me. So I'm using the earliest smallest version. I will fork it and release it with my code changes to eliminate the season folders and add a few other features I am looking to add that are not in the newest version at all.

Sorttv.pl will need to be run with command line arguments in a crontab. I run mine every 15 minutes, but ever 30 to 60 minutes is more than enough. you don't want it to have to copy 30 shows at once, as that will take some time if you are moving from a recording drive to a storage drive. I DO recommend using the same drive if possible to save time and processor, but some of us cant afford 2TB drives. so I "record" to the 80gig scratch drive and then transfer to the 750gig storage drive that has the TV folder and the Movies folder.

if you fire up a couple of shells and launch the utserver in one you can start downloading files now. in the other shell you can launch the sorttv.pl to move the downloads to the folder of choice and it makes show folders for new shows! Nifty!

once you have everything working and tested perfectly in manual mode you can start automating everything.. WE need to make a crontab entry and a init.d entry to make all this start on boot and run automagically for us....

First let's tackle utorrent.... make a new file called utdaemon.... and put the following in it....

# chkconfig: 3 99 1
# description: my daemon

case "$1" in
'start')
/path/to/utserver -configsdirectory /path/to/utserver -daemon &
;;

'stop')
pkill utserver
;;

'restart')
pkill -HUP utserver
;;

esac

now copy that file to /etc/init.d and set it executable (chmod 777 /etc/init.d/utdaemon)

now you can issue the commands....

service utdaemon start|stop|restart

Cool, it's like a real Linux service! MAke sure this works manually!

now let's make it start automagically...

update-rc.d utdaemon defaults

Now it will run on it's own on boot!

Sortv.pl now needs to run every 15 minutes to 1/2 hour to move the finished tv shows to your share where your HTPC can find them. All automatic and stand alone.

Works great. I've been running this now for 2 months and it's reliable.

The rich mans/ Poor mans Whole House mp3 server : Part 1

2011-08-04T16:51:00.001-04:00

I have a Crestron AADS for my whole house audio. Being a Crestron programmer I was able to pick one up cheap, and I dont have to pay for programming. I also have a horribly out of date DAS-750 mp3 server from Lansonic. That made these back in the 90's and did a crappy job at it before the company went out of business. All the Lansonic DAS750 has is a PC with a hard drive in a fancy box and a outrageous price tag (when it was new)

Today Linux is easy as pie and mini ITX boards can do far more than anything made in the 90's Using MPD (MusicPlayerDaemon) and thttpd I will be building a mp3 server that will also have Crestron control via tcp/ip. Under $200.00 in parts to replicate what rich people pay upwards of $8900 for...

What is needed...

Small low power PC, ITX motherboard and hard drive in a 1u rackmount case or smallish case.
Basic linux install, no GUI, CLI only. DSL linux or Slackware. Maybe Ubuntu server. I want it to boot in seconds.

MPD
I next need to make a LAMP server using thttpd. I will need PHP to run and a smallish database. as I will need to run PhPMp for a web front end for management

I am also writing a Crestron Simpl+ module that will tie it all together.

Next time, I'll build the software list and a guide to building the OS setup and software (we will start with a VirtualBox server before we spend money)

The Android Car stereo get's closer....

2011-06-24T12:58:00.000-04:00

http://www.bybyte.com/ makes a double din enclosure for a 7"touchscreen LCD and a mini ITX computer. installing X86Android will become the start of a real Android car stereo.

Except, it needs on screen controls. I.E. always on screen back button, volume and mute buttons, etc....

I guess I need to start learning Android programming...

Why I wont buy Samsung Hard Drives.....

2011-06-13T14:32:00.001-04:00

Being an IT guy for decades I know my way around parts. One thing I have been able to do for years is take a laptop or computer that was out of warranty and still get it's hard drive replaced. Dell has a 1 year warranty on their computers, but Hard drive makers typically have 3 years on the drive. I have been able to get Seagate drives that were OEM from dell in the laptop or PC replaced under the Seagate warranty period from Seagate.

This is not true for Samsung. They sell lower grade hard drives to Dell with a special Serial number set to make sure they do not hold any warranty on the drive at all.

This means that OEM Samsung drives are so low end that Samsung themselves will not warranty them.

Even Western Digital will warranty an OEM drive directly. I'm avoiding Samsung drives completely from now on. IF they will willingly sell low grade parts they don't warranty to OEM builders, then what else will they do?

Rainmeter for Ubuntu!

2011-06-03T10:14:00.002-04:00

http://www.onehitgamer.com/forum/threads/installing-conky-rainmeter-like-ubuntu-script.24133/

If you love rainmeter on Windows and would like something like it for linux, Conky is the answer..

Conky scripts

The Death of CableTV... It's here now, and yes it's decent.

2011-05-02T22:00:00.000-04:00

Ok I tried it. I have been using the future of TV for a week now and it's very acceptable to me.

It's Netflix + Hulu Plus on a Roku box. For Massively less than the price of Cable TV I get Internet + Movies on demand + TV on demand. Most of the TV shows I want to watch are On Hulu and Netflix. The $59.00 Roku box is all that is needed to get both in 720p goodness (News flash, your cable TV or satellite is in 720p, I don't care what the box tells you, the signal you receive is 720p) so I can get one for each of the TV's in the house.

Granted, you can NOT watch things on all 3 tv's in the house at once, it saturates the internet connection, but the chances of it happening are -10% Even with guests over there is zero chance of it, it's a non issue. Families that hate each other and have 6 or more TV's so the kids never need to see the parents may have an issue but most families will not. It's mostly convenience for us. One for the bedroom, one for the Game room and one for the theater. I could get away with one for the game room+theater, but it's more expensive to do the video switching and cabling than it is to get a third roku box.

It's interesting, you have about 1-3 weeks to watch back episodes of TV shows. so you can browse and watch what you want.

What I dont like is that I cant have a "favorites" list of tv shows I like so I dont have to go searching for the shows. I can make a playlist but that is for specific show episodes.

Hulu Plus is $7.99, Netflix multi device is $14.99 and a fast internet connection is $39.99...

$63.00 a month for high speed Internet and all the TV I want to watch. Cant beat that with a stick.

This is the start of the death of Cable TV.

Encountered my first defamation...

2011-04-27T17:16:00.001-04:00

Very wierd week. I have experienced my very first defamation/lie about my work in my 30+ year career. I was working at a job that a previous employer had me work at before and I said hello to all the people I knew and set to work. One of the people I have met and dealt with before showed up, I gave him some information and as I had lunch plans, I left for lunch. Came back in 30 minutes and continued to work the rest of the day and doing a great job in making sure it had a high level of usability.

3 days later my employer get's a email claiming that I refused to make any changes and was rude to him. He demanded that I do not return to the job site. This is a complete and utter fabrication. I can not believe that someone, let alone someone I have dealt with before would lie like that. Throughout my career I have had stellar reviews and kudos from every customer for my attention to detail and flexibility. And this person knew this. The only reason I can think of is that he is angry at something that happened in the past that I am unaware of and decided to be unprofessional and fabricate a lie to make an excuse to "punish" me.

My employer did not believe him at all, they know me and my track record. I was told to just ignore it as someone having a bad day.

By the way, the persons name is Brian Regan, he is the IT supervisor at Baker College Muskegon Campus. I have found in my experience with him that his level of honesty and integrity, as well as his professionalism is not acceptable. I would strongly caution anyone dealing with him as a vendor or as an employer based on my personal experience with him. I am posting this so that others searching for his name will read this and be informed by my experiences with him and my personal opinion.

This is my personal opinion of the man. I wish I could let it just roll off my back, but his vulgar attempt at personal defamation to my employer is simply appalling to me.

Gnome 3; nice try... not really useable.

2011-04-25T17:44:00.000-04:00

I have tried to live with Gnome 3 now for a while. and there are some neat features, but it's not a more useable desktop, it's a more "get used to it and work around it's quirks" environment. And many of the quirks are simply productivity killers or are simply there to get in the way.

I applaud them for trying to change the computer GUI. not an easy task with everyone pretty glued to how things have worked, but it needs to be faster, easier and honestly more intuitive.

Gnome 3 is not any of those.

Ubuntu 11.04 : great idea, in the end it sucks because of Unity.

2011-04-22T17:11:00.000-04:00

Ubuntu over the years has been turning into an incredible Linux distro. It's easy to use and works great..... Until 11.04 came along.

Ubuntu decided that how Linux is used is flawed. it allows people to easily use their computer and they need to take away that. Linux needs a fisher-price really dumbed down interface... They call this "unity"

And it's horrible in every sense. I tried to use it for 6 hours today. and all it did was frustrate me. It's great for a tablet or a netbook, but for a real laptop that needs to be used for work, reducing the computer to a row of shiny buttons and making any and all configuration or system utilities impossible to access is not smart.

I spent the last hour looking online how to get rid of this garbage called "unity" I found ho to enable "ubuntu classic mode" but it keeps trying to force this Unity garbage on me.

I guess it's time to find another Distro and start recommending another distro to others. If at release 11.04 has unity in it as default, Ubuntu will have officially jumped the shark and starting it's rapid slide to death.

Tv show downloader for a linux server.... Part 2

2011-04-12T16:55:00.003-04:00

Today WE continue down the TV show down-loader path. Rtorrent and screen is installed, and a basic config is in place. Additional settings for rtorrent like adding upload_rate=3 to limit upload speeds to 3Kbps might be a good idea, at night you can increase that using the scheduling portion of rtorrent.

rtorrent unfortunately is designed as a program that runs interactively. It really should be redesigned to run headless but the programmers don't want to. so we need to cheat. That's what "screen" is for. screen runs the rtorrent program in a virtual terminal window that we can keep running even when we log off.

Screen is easy to use....

screen rtorrent

this will launch screen with rtorrent running in it.

To detach the session, type Ctrl-A then Ctrl-D. Ctrl-A tells Screen that the next keystrokes will be a command. Ctrl-D is the detach command. Once you are detached you can exit the session and whatever is running will continue to run -- barring a crash or a reboot.

When you want to reconnect, you need to get the name of the detached session by using the -ls parameter (screen -ls) to list all of the screen sessions that are running. To reattach to one of them, use the -r parameter and pass in the name:

screen -r 12345.pts-1.machine

If only one screen session is running you can use the -r parameter without the name of the session.

now isn't that neat. we can launch the program and let it run while we log off.
But what if I want it to start on boot like a service? The guys that write the documentation for rtorrent though of that and put together a nice little script we can put in our init.d folder

Step 1: Assuming a Debian-based distribution, create /etc/init.d/rtorrent with one of the rtorrentInit files attached to this page, editing the Configuration to suit your needs.

Step 2: Make sure it has appropriate permissions:

# ls -l /etc/init.d/rtorrent
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3000 2007-03-06 22:40 /etc/init.d/rtorrent

Step 3: Update your init system (as sudo/su/root):

# update-rc.d rtorrent defaults

This will get rtorrent all set up for out automatic downloading. Next time we cover the automatic downloading of the .torrent files from the rss feed. I'll cover using the showrss feed, although any setup you use to grab the files. in fact you may need to use multiple feeds. showrss does not cover all shows I like, so I have to use a second one that has a lot of the BBC shows I like to grab as well as Australian tv that you just cant get here.

NOTE: If you will be saving the files to a NAS on your network instead of a local directory... you will need to mount that nas as follows....

lorofallisee@security:~/TV$ sudo mount -t smbfs //192.168.1.66/video /mnt/mynas -o umask=022,rw,uid=lordofallisee

this will mount that nas with RW permissions for the user "lordofallisee" if this is the user that your file copying script runs as, this is what is needed to give it permissions to write to that directory. these settings can be added to the fstab to make life easier.

There is a new option available that works better than rtorrent, although it is a bit limited, I like that it's a real service, although not open source.

uTorrent has a "service" version that has a web-ui it uses less resources as rtorrent and is a whole lot easier to set up as the documentation is up to date and not really out of date like Rtorrents is. I am currently stalled comparing the two and updating with details on how to use uTrorrent with this process.

URLs of interest as follows....

WEbUI for uTorrent
utorrent for Linux

Tv show downloader for a linux server.... Part 1

2011-04-11T22:27:00.001-04:00

Ok, I am going to put together a automatic TV show downloader that uses the RSS feed generated from showrss. The downloader server is headless so everything not only needs to be command line, but also run as a service and crontab entry. I have extra needs such as the torrent needs to stop seeding very soon after downloading because I live in a non-free country (USA) where you are persecuted for downloading a TV show you can easily record off of the Satellite TV I already pay for. I dont want to use their DVR, I want to use XBMC so I can have subtitles as well as a far superior scan converter.

Step 1 Set up your RSS feed at showrss. everything that is in this feed will be downloaded so dont go nuts.

Step 2 install rtorrent and screen on your server... Ubunto did both easily by using the following commands....

sudo apt-get install rtorrent
sudo apt-get install screen

configure rtorrent to watch a directory. set up your .rtorrent.rc file as follows....

# This is a resource file for rTorrent.

# Default directory to save the downloaded torrents.
directory = /home/timgr/torrents

# Default session directory. Make sure you don't run multiple instance
# of rtorrent using the same session directory. Perhaps using a
# relative path?
session= /home/timgr/torrents/rtorrent.session

# Watch a directory for new torrents, and stop those that have been
# deleted.
schedule = watch_directory,5,5,load_start=/home/timgr/torrents/*.torrent
#schedule = untied_directory,5,5,stop_untied=

scgi_port = 127.0.0.1:5000
encryption=require

# Enable the default ratio group.
ratio.enable=

# Change the limits, the defaults should be sufficient.
ratio.min.set=1
ratio.max.set=1
ratio.upload.set=1M

# Changing the command triggered when the ratio is reached.
system.method.set = group.seeding.ratio.command, d.close=, d.erase=

#Sort file
system.method.set_key = event.download.finished,move_complete,"d.set_directory=/home/timgr/TV/;execute=mv,-u,$d.get_base_path=,/home/timgr/TV/"
system.method.set_key = event.download.hash_done,sort_finished,"branch=$d.get_complete=,\"execute={~/scripts/torrentSorter.py,$d.get_base_path=}\""

This setup will stop seeding and delete the .torrent at 1% ratio or 1Meg downloaded whichever is first. It also sets up encrypted only and it moves the finished files to a different directory. I need to figure out how to stop seeding and delete the .torrent when download is finished, but right now it segfaults when you set it up to do that.

I now have a system that will automatically download any .torrent that appears in the /home/timgr/torrents directory, and when finished it moves them to the /home/timgr/TV directory.

I now need to write a script that I run with crontab every 20 minutes to grab the rss feed, and download all the .torrent files listed in it and put them in the /home/timgr/torrents directory. This will auto-feed the rtorrent program as the torrents are released.

Step 3 will be writing a sorting system that will take the files, clean up the naming and sort them into directories on the NAS that holds all the TV recordings.

Finally in Step 4 we will clean it all up and automate it so that on reboot everything starts automatically and rtorrent runs as a "service"

That's it for step 1, Step 2 will be the code to grab the feed...

Review of the Dual XML8100 / XML8110 ipod stereo 18 months later....

2011-04-11T12:31:00.001-04:00

This is a long term update to the Dual XML8100/XML8110 car stereo. After 18+ months in a rarely used minivan with my wife it has started to fail on the iphone dock connector. the audio crackles and the right side speakers cut out unless you press down on the iphone. The FM tuner got worse, the selectivity and adjacent channel rejection is so bad that it's unusable in town.

Also contrary to the documentation it will only pair to one phone. you can not pair it to multiple phones, only the last paired phone is useable.

Also the promised app never existed.

If it came with the bluetooth module and retailed for $50.00 it's worth it. but at it's $99.00 price plus $50.00 for the bluetooth module, it's overpriced for it's quality.

LG LCD and Plasma TV set woes..

2011-04-11T11:18:00.000-04:00

Lg has really went down hill on the quality of their TV sets lately. Their RS232 port for integrator control has become unreliable. I have noticed and others as well that if you send it a ON command and then ANYTHING ELSE before it's completely on or the next 8 seconds the TV set will lock up it's RS232 control and need to be unplugged to reset the RS232 control once again.. Yes this is not a problem for the typical home user that can not afford a home theater control system or integration system. But for the top 2% of America this makes LG a "low end brand" that they will not want in their home. Add to it that Integrators are starting to recommend against LG brands to their customers because of unreliability issues and it spells trouble for the Brand.

LG started life as Goldstar and gained a reputation for selling junk. They rebranded as LG and vowed to become a leading top name brand, and did a good job until the past year when the quality on their DVD recorders, BLuRay players and TV sets started to take a dive. I really hope they can pull a turn-around and get back to the goal of being a top brand in quality.

Gaming sillyness and observations about "survivalists"

2011-04-03T13:11:00.000-04:00

I got sucked back into the world of RPG gaming with a set of friends. What we have been playing is a game called "The Morrow Project" a Post apocalypse game where you are a frozen team of trained personnel set up to help restore society. So in order to do some research about what kinds of people they would run up against after a nuclear war, giant meteor, or other wipe out the world apocalypse, I started researching the "survivalist" websites. And came to a quick conclusion that they would have no problems at all. 90% of the Survivalist info out there is either bad or flat out wrong. Guys talking endless about how a giant jacked up pickup truck is important, and lits of jibber jabber about useless junk. none of them talk about bringing information with them that will help them survive. They all believe what they need to survive is a lot of ammo and a big pickup truck or SUV. Anyone that has done Any real research into this knows that in order to survive on your own requires to understand hunting, farming, homesteading, and basic skills. The real thing that makes you survive is knowledge.

So drawing a realistic picture of what my team would encounter in the aftermath would not be any survivalists that followed any of the information on the Survivalists websites. Well some of it is good, but not enough to help.

So what would I call a successful Survivalist? Well the ones that my team would encounter that actually survived would be two types. One would live very much like the Amish do today. Well the purist Amish, not the ones that have adopted a lot of modern things. As a society we have a lot of junk, and the end of the world will not eliminate that junk, it will still be everywhere. They will have abandoned cars completely as you will not be able to buy the consumables that a car or truck needs. Yup the big redneck 4X4 with lots of lights and jacked up with 56" tires is 100% worthless because they get 3-6 mpg so they consume gas so fast that it's a useless tool.

The other kind of Survivalist that will succeed is the scavenger/scientist. The guy/gal that spent decades learning about how all things mechanical work, Learns everything about all the sciences, learns basic medicine, I.E. EVERYTHING. He/She spent their time learning, learned how to build a home, how to saw trees into lumber, how to build a ground forge to forge their own metal, everything. This person typically would not have a giant truck but the most COMMON vehicle found. Something that would have parts for it everywhere. Being a scientist and scavenger they would be the type that planted several acres of farmland. they would not have picked a remote and hard to get to "bug out Lodge" but a place where they had enough clear land to feed themselves, cover their needs AND make enough extra to sell to others. A smart survivalist would know how to turn corn or switchgrass into alcohol to run the car. Or more likely the small tractor.. the car/truck is useless as it cant do work, a tractor can. Plus they would not have electricity.. that's a useless luxury. you will not be watching your 52" plasma and your collection of BLuRay disks in the aftermath.. With one exception.. a computer WOULD be a useful thing as it is a compact and dense source of information. a modern laptop can hold more than the entire library of congress. a ipad can hold more than someone would ever need for advanced survival. Problem is a ipad is not serviceable, a laptop is more serviceable but not easily by someone that is not a watch maker. a small desktop computer can be maintained by a non expert and spare parts kept to keep it running for decades. this cache of information would make any survivalist that had it pretty much the king of the area, and that computer would be the most valuable thing around. The computer would not have to run 24/7 but only for a few hours here and there for when learning is needed. so scavenged solar panels and scavenged windmills would be common with someone that had such technology. plastic 55 gallon drums and a couple of car alternators plus other electronics can generate more than enough electricity on a mildly windy day to run a small computer.

Survival is about staying alive and having at least some comfort. and the only way to have any comfort in any society is to be the person making and selling skill, products and services.

everything I found in survivalist websites was silly stuff. wasting a ton of resources on building up your truck, building an arsenal to fight off the horde, stocking up on MRE's to feed yourself for 10 years.... all of which are 100% useless for survival in the long term like these people claim they are all about. These will be the first people to die as they will run out of their food and not know how to get their own food and either starve or resort to robbery and murder to take what they want.

Real survival means education, knowledge, and community. My gamers will experience small towns and villages that have grown up out of existing towns that were untouched, or where people that all could contribute to society came together slowly to form a new community.

Problem is that leaves me without any "bad guys" for them to fight.... I think I'll use the "internet survivalists" that can't fend for them selves so they take what they want as the bad guys!

Overall it's an interesting though experiment that I would love to continue with others. What would the picture of the world be if everything collapsed? no more corporations, no more electricity, no more gasoline or other modern anything. Just the leftovers of the world from today.

how would communities re-form? Who would become the most valuable in society? the skilled hunter? the backyard blacksmith? The farmer? What could you do to preserve knowlege? Books are obvious, but hard to carry 90-200 books needed to complete knowlege... what portable device from today could be kept working that can help speed up or improve survival of a community or even just a family?

Ipad screen "protector" installation

2011-03-12T12:56:00.001-05:00

I have read all the reviews and everyone says that ipads screen protectors are impossible to put them on. so I decided to let my secret out on how to do these perfect every time.

First I used the Speck brand anti glare screen protector, this is one of the best you can buy and they are slightly smaller than the screen so they do not end up edge bubbles.

Once you pull the sheets off of these, they create a gigantic static charge and will attract every speck of dust. so the ONLY place to install one is in the bathroom AFTER you have ran the shower on super-hot for a few minutes to make the room 100% humidity. then stop the shower, have the fan off and shut the door, let it all cool down and the dew to fall. This will clean the air completely and give you a near clean-room environment. you also need to make sure you have no dandruff ready to fall AND your clothes are clean and dust free... Honestly doing this in the bathroom in your underwear is best if you want to avoid dust specks.

Now clean the ipad heavily, q-tip the edges to get rid of any crud or dust. clean the screen, set it down, wash your hands and clean it again. you need your hands dried out and oil/grease free.

I set the ipad on a clean microfiber cloth on the clean counter. I then follow their instructions using a credit card to spread the edges, do NOT try to lift to readjust, be sure as you can to get the starting edge with the button hole aligned and right first. slowly lay the sheet down revealing only a little of the sheet at a time, careful to not crease it. rub the bubbles out as you go, dont rush.

I then let the screen rest for a few minutes, attack the bubbles if any and press along the edges.. then remove the top cover sheet to expose the screen.

I love the anti glare screens as the super shiny ipad screen looks great on a shelf but stinks in real use.

you must do this in a bathroom prepped like I listed above, if you try this in your living room or kitchen table you will get dust particles and as soon as they touch the screen protector it's ruined.

Why Ford Motor Company is a failure.....

2011-02-10T21:51:00.000-05:00

Ford is a company that survived the economy collapse. The raging stupidity of the Automotive industry in making Canyonero giant trucks that get 2.3mpg, and is still there. But, they are STILL making very dumb decisions that simply underline that they still, as a car company, dont get it.

The Ford Focus RS, a complete FWD sports car from Europe that is an incredible car that would embarrass a corvette in a drag race or even a road race is NOT SOLD IN THE USA. This car would sell well with the younger crowd that want a car that is sporty, usable, and not horribly overpriced. The RS has performance numbers that make it faster than a BMW M5, it's traction control and differential give it superb grip for a FWD car, AND it has a gigantic after-market already built for the car. But this car is missing from the USA website. you cant buy it, they dont want your money, you cant have it.

and that is the single most stupid thing that Ford could ever do.

Computers: Get rid of InstallShield update manager.

2011-02-07T07:54:00.004-05:00

Some companies claim they know better than you do, you need their software running all the time. InstallShield is one of them. They shoehorn in a "update manager" in to run on bootup to look for updates for your software. most of the time I'll update it when I need to, I typically hate updates as they either remove features, or add new ones that I don't want. I bought version 3.4.2.1-43.a7 I want version 3.4.2.1-43.a7 dang nab it!

So in order to get rid of this useless program that is making your pc boot slower...

http://consumerdocs.installshield.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=Q111006&sliceId=1 is a link to installshields own FAQ page where they admit to how-to get rid of it and have an uninstaller. DOWNLOAD THE UNINSTALLER ONLY NOT THE OTHER APP.

Get rid of this crud from your computer, and keep the uninstaller around, because the next app you install that is wrapped with installshield will probably re install the dang thing.

Energy "shots"..... oh and changes for 2011

2011-01-03T09:52:00.004-05:00

I tried several of these "energy shots" lately and I notice a theme in them. they all taste HORRID. They are nothing but a huge dose of corn syrup with some vitamins and guarana+caffeine. I get better results by taking my daily vitamin and a nice large travel mug of home brewed coffee. Honestly, why do people drink things that taste that bad that really do nothing for them at a premium price. These things are an epic fail for anyone with tastebuds. YUCK!

2011 will be an interesting year. Analog sunset is in effect, this means that HD content providers can hold you hostage and disable the component video out on your Bluray player. Why? Well because you are a evil dirty consumer that will copy that precious content.... They ignore the fact that all Blurays are copied from the disc in a computer. This invasive DRM measure rang in the new year, all it means is that I have another reason to not buy a BluRay player. I'll stick with ripping the discs in my laptop and put the HD mpeg4 file on my media player for enjoyment.

Netflix looks to be kicking it in hard, I really hope this means that streaming content will become commonplace. My dream is to be able to subscribe to TV Shows and not networks. 90% of what NBC does is of no interest to me. Cable TV and Sattelite TV is overpriced for what we get. I would rather give my money to the guys that make the TV shows.

Speaking of giving money, Poineer One an indie TV show is gaining speed and strength. Run completely on donation they have enough money to continue filming and is producing some top quality drama. I strongly recommend watching episode 1 and 2. These guys are proof that you don't need a network or to be on CableTV to be a success. Same as with what Leo Laporte is doing with the TWIT network and the Revision3 group is accomplishing. This stuff is the future of TV...

This year is also the year of the "meee tooo!" tablet/Pad ipad copies. The past year has released nothing but dismal failures from Android tablets because of really bad hardware designs. Hopefully this year we get a company that has a clue to make one that is fast, well built and has a full version of android and not a crippled version.

End of the year ramblings...

2010-12-24T10:09:00.002-05:00

Another year gone, and another year where corporations try to ruin a new technology. Amazon Kindle, allows Amazon to delete books without your permission. Many authors had their books deleted from customers Kindles for various reasons, all of which never had any moral right to delete them from a Private persons device without permission. This pushes people to go and pirate books. Why? This is the only way you can get a book and not have someone delete it without your permission.

The iPad was released, and then 10,000 Android copies trying to catch up to the iPad were released and failed. They fail on being badly designed hardware, horribly old and locked down android, or are way overpriced. Samsung chose to price themselves higher than an iPad. Other chose to price at too low of a price point or try to lock out the users. All of them failed.

The talking heads on the news claim the economy is recovering, reality shows that it is not. 3D tv explodes onto the market with rampant failure. The TV sets cause headaches in some and the glasses cost $150.00 or more. None of the hardware or systems are comparable causing almost no adoption except by those that think they have to have the latest thing. This does not stop the marketing engines from plastering the word "3D" on everything they can find. real home 3D is still at least 3 years off.

Ubuntu linux releases it's best Linux desktop yet. XBMC releases the most polished release ever bringing the world of high end home on demand video to the poor ($599 for a 2 room setup versus $19,000 for what was available previously) Google TV was released with great ideals and was only used as an example of how greedy corporations are... Within weeks of the release all network websites were redesigned to block it. Comcast afraid of the strong competition from Netflix uses corporate extortion tactics to either block them or make them pay for access to their customers forcing the FCC to pass a net neutrality law in hopes of blocking such tactics in the future. Problem is the law is poorly written and allows giant loopholes.

Overall technology did not change much. The potential was there. But really silly reasons got in the way. I predict that the next year will be more of the same. Lawsuits to protect old business practices from innovation. Greed will win over progress. Ignorance and Apathy will allow marketing machines to continue to drive the public away from the issues that affect them; and redirect their focus on the next new shiny to distract them.

I really hope that the world proves me wrong. There is potential to do great things out there if the public stands up and demands that they are allowed to happen.

Search for a CMS that works on Godaddy....

2010-12-13T14:20:00.002-05:00

I have been for years trying to find a CMS that would work on Go-daddy decently. Joomla = slow as heck, All the others also do the slow or barely work dance. or typically require a custom install. This means manually maintaining it forever. No thanks.

Well it seems, recently Word Press has become fer more useful with the additions of a set of plug-ins that work around the Go-daddy overloaded and super slow server syndrome. I have 3-5 second page load times on a WP site hosted on a el-cheapo Go-daddy install. Joomla was giving me 15-45 second page load times. This is a GIANT step forward in making websites that don't take most of my life to maintain for customers.

Now to test for a couple of months and start migrating customers over to it.

Poor Mans Rich looking Home Theater Part 1: Parts

2010-12-01T20:31:00.003-05:00

Moving forward on my home theater. Buying the parts for the build, trying to find the best deals possible. I think I will skip buying a used projector, Epson has a new home theater projector for $1200.00 that is utterly incredible. The screen is a used/surplus ebay screen, MCM electronics speakers, Sound control panels are Lowes/Home Depot fiberglass 2X4 ceiling tiles Wrapped in a very nice light brown burlap.

I was working on a high end lighting system today with a very cool device. Color Kenetics from Phillips... http://www.colorkinetics.com/ These are $500.00 to $3500.00 LED lighting systems that give you color for accent and cove lighting. They look incredibly cool, and in a theater they make your poor man's theater look that much more over the top. I stumbled across on ebay a Poor guys setup. 5Meter long spool of RGB LED strip and a controller that uses IR control this means I can easily have the same effect for $60.00 instead of $590.00 for the base system I was looking at. The ceiling will be rimmed with these LED strips hidden by trim so they have a glow that hit's the ceiling.

My theater size is set. 17' long by 12' wide. I have a 7' tall ceiling so a 92" screen will be perfect. Equipment will be a used ebay Kenwood Soverign surround sound amp and reciever, a XBMC PC, a Roku box for netflix and hulu, and the Xbox360 will be shared between the theater and the gameroom. That all the sources. No BluRay player at all, no reason to have one.

Sound control is going to be easy, Carpet Tile for the carpet, and I will continue it up the wall 3 feet, then a chair molding and the top is the fiberglass panels covered in fabric. The ceiling will be all drop ceiling tiles. cheapies painted black. I'll save nearly $29.00 a tile by doing it myself.

Seating is still up in the air. I'm probably going to go with couches instead of theater seating. I cant justify $2000.00 in specialized seating. The theater needs to be comfortable and easy to clean, not Trendy with glove leather seating. A couple of $399-$499 each cheapie couches or love seats will be enough.

My budget for the theater is very low. $6500.00 total budget. So far I have spent $1100 in gear. I have the Crestron processor, touch-panel, remote, Amp and receiver, Lighting control and lights along with the screen.

hard parts: I need to run 2 110V runs from the breaker panel to the theater. 1 for lighting and 1 for the equipment rack. Luckily I know people that can do this that are experts that will gladly come over and work for beer.

Deciding on doors: Sliding pocket door or single folding door? I cant use a standard door, not enough room and I want to not waste space. Carpet: floor carpet to be black? light brown? checker? I will be laying the waterlock subfloor tiles down that will reduce my headroom by 3/4 of an inch, but it will make the floor a lot warmer.

Decisions Decisions...

XBMC still better than anything else....

2010-11-24T13:47:00.003-05:00

I have spent the past couple of months playing with Media centers from the $99.00 AppleTV to a $5800.00 Crestron ADMS. and all of them fall on their face flat when compared to a $300.00 pc built for XBMC live to be installed on it.

Apple TV is great, dont get me wrong, it's the only way you can legally watch downloaded TV shows. and it's the best choice for rentals. BUT playing your own content is incredibly painful. you have to stream it from itunes... No thanks. It's an epic fail if I can not pount my device at a NAS full of videos and have it play them.

The GoogleTV also fails. CLunky, more like turning your TV into a telephone running Android. The UI for finding and playing Videos is the most unfriendly I can imagine for a non techie.

Crestron AADS; Nice hardware, well designed but jam packed so full of DRM that it treats you like a criminal for having your own content. It will not play from a NAS, but copies the content to its self for playback, making updating a home movie painful at best. No support for playing Internet TV channels like TWIT, REvision3, etc... IT's great as a rental movie device, it stinks for a home media server. No way to stop the movie in the living room and go to the bedroom to resume where you left off.

The latest release of XBMC does all the above misses and does it with a Interface that even the wife loves and can use without training. The only thing it is missing is a netflix plugin.

If you want complete control over your media, XBMC is the only choice.

Why Camcorder reviews suck....

2010-11-01T09:56:00.002-04:00

I am in the market for a new Camcorder. I jumped on the HD bandwagon back a few years ago and really jumped on Digital tapeless recording hard. and Who would not want to get rid of the easy to destroy tapes? I have had many projects ruined by having a tape get damaged when transported back, or the tape head getting misaligned from use or a light bump. I really liked the JVC video cameras for the HD side. But coming from a Standard Def guy that was used to the Canon XL1 and Canon GL1/GL2 I was never truly happy with the JVC cameras. They always were lacking. Image stabilizer was a joke compared to Canon's IS system. Even the ones in their low end models. Image quality is GREAT in the JVC's in the right lighting conditions. Otherwise you need ND filters and careful scout your location well to avoid some serious video artifacts.

Granted, Canon GL1/Gl2 lenses kicks the utter crud out of anything from JVC, and the XL1 lens is unmatched even today. But some of the problems with other camera makers is unacceptable. My biggest complaint... Purple fringing. Every camcorder I have tried except for canon cameras exhibit purple fringing from light purple halos to nasty thick purple smears. Panasonic HMC150, JVC high end, JVC mid level, and low level as well as the Sony prosumers ALL do this badly. Shoot a tree against the sky and see a giant amount of purple. Somehow Canon does not have this or minimizes it. The HD-XL1 does it by having $1300.00 lens on the front of the camera.

The problem is that all the camcorder reviews out there. from the crappy ones to the supposed experts NEVER review this major flaw that most people care about. It's almost as if most reviews are simply echoing the makers press release. And the real review sites do tests indoors using conditions that are perfect for the camera. I want reviews that torture the camera. USE it like a real person would, find and showcase the glaring flaws.

The way I get usable reviews on a potential camcorder, I find a place that has one I can touch and handle and convince the sales guy to follow me outside to take some footage with it. IF I can not find a local place to touch the camera, I look for rentals. $100.00 week rental on a $1400.00 camera is worth it. and if the camera completely stinks right away, you can usually call up and complain and they will refund your rental if you ship it back within 24 hours of receiving it.

Until video camera reviewers actually get off their butts and USE the camera in real life situations, all video-camera reviews are worthless. You can look at footage, but anything from the company will be in the best conditions, and shot to avoid exposing flaws. Youtube is way to low resolution or way too over-compressed to get any usable information. And people that own the camera, they typically wont say it's a piece of junk or has a major flaw as it means they admitted that they made a bad purchase. Go to forums and ask for specific shots... I.e. a shot of trees with a bright sky background is the HARDEST Thing for a camera to shoot. Video of moving tree leaves also will show you if the video falls apart. a fast pan or video of fast moving objects shows off if the sensor will tear the video or deliver wiggly video like DSLR's currently do in fast motion situations.

It's up to you to make sure the camcorder you get does not fall short of what you expect.

new Google TV failing to impress people....

2010-10-26T06:39:00.002-04:00

I have been investigating the GoogleTV. And initial reactions are not good. all over Logitech's own forums are posts about major problems and limitations.

Logitech's revue forums

It seems that the media player portion does not play most videos but only some videos. Playing an AVCHD stream with DTS... what most HD camcorders record today... Does not work. that alone is an EPIC FAIL on Google's part. Browser problems as well as stability problems seem to be plaguing the device heavily.

This does not surprise me. I have tried every other Logitech Media device made and they all were horribly engineered devices playing a very limited subset of video and had lots of other issues... like no rewind... Logitech was not the right choice to make this device. They make good mice, ok keyboards, and decent webcams... That's about it.

Hack yourself a high end home router/firewall for cheap.

2010-10-16T21:44:00.002-04:00

I needed to upgrade the network at home. I am tired of the low end linksys and other brand all-in-one router and wireless access point. Some of them can be upgraded to ddWRT or OpenWRT to get a real firewall and router, but the hardware is highly limited in performance and space.. you cant get any real logging in them, or really upgrade the features easily. Yes I have messed with OpenWRT and added packages, but I have limited time to spend a weekend with my router to add some features. 2 weeks ago I stumbled back onto a old friend I have used for commercial networking. pfSense... It works great. In fact works BETTER than any cisco firewall or router. Honestly the torture that is configuring IOS is only enjoyed by the die hard certified cisco guys. I hated configuring cisco gear and it's convoluted operating system. But it's powerful.

Pfsense is a cisco router and firewall OS on steroids. Based on OpenBSD it is running on a OS that is rock solid and time tested. and the pfsense guys work hard to keep it secure. you are looking at something that many corporations and major universities use. So it is more than you need for home. It's like putting a 3 foot thick safe door on your home, a tad overkill... I'm into overkill.

What to run it on though. Build a PC to run it... nope. too much power use and low reliability... I can get a used 1u server to increase reliability, but 1200 watts to run a firewall is insane. I need something small, the size of a router, and low power use....

I remembered some slightly older commercial firewalls that Nokia made. the Nokia IP330 is used all over corporations. It also has a baby brother called the IP130 It's designed for small satellite offices... It also is standard PC hardware.

To create a super-router for your home, buy a used IP130 from ebay.. $35.00 is a fair price for a working one with the power supply.. Any more is a rip-off. get a copy of the pfsense embedded version (I used the 4gig file) and follow the instructions on their wiki for install. A linux machine and a usb->laptop IDE drive adapter is the easiest way. 30 seconds later re-install the IP130 drive and reassemble the unit, hook up to the serial port and do the initial configuration. The system is ready to go!

Network speeds went up, VoIP studder is way down, and I have the ability to do way more than any other home router can.

If you want to step up to a high end router for the least cost AND have corporate quality hardware.... put pfsense on a IP130... it works really well.

Geeks and Gaming.. RPG's with technology...

2010-10-14T13:31:00.002-04:00

I was drawn into RPG gaming once again in my life as I have mentioned.. Last night I ran a RPG game that was my own mish-mash of Morrow Project and Gurps. But I added a twist. I tried to bring in as much technology as possible. No not in game technology.. real in my hands technology... Laptop for tracking stats in game. photos, images, plans, but also sound files and video.

It really impressed the players.. no interruption on my part to say "you hear....." I simply started playing the file and waited.. it worked better than I could have imagined. while they were talking I started playing a file into a set of headphones that was the "radio techs" headphones... they were sitting near him but not on his head.. another player noticed it and mentioned that something was making noise..

Worked great.. Instead of a "perception roll" I used the players own attention spans. it made it all feel more cinematic.

Why I think Android tablets are a failure...

2010-10-03T11:39:00.002-04:00

I spent the past 2 months fiddling with Android based Ebooks and tablets. From the Archos to the IRobot to the no name brands. They all fail horribly, event with a tech guy owning it. ALL of them need hacks to get a better android install on them. Then there are battery issues as android will wake up on it's own at random times and not going back to sleep... This makes the battery die when not used, so you need to power it off.. making it take 60 seconds to boot to read a book or use the tablet.... Fail.

The iPad is wonderful. I used one a lot to see it''s advantages, I just can not get past the price point. It's just too darn expensive.

I need a tablet that will read PDF's from all sources flawlessly. none of the Android devices can do this. I need it to go 3 days between charging if use lightly. Heck 1 long day in airports being used for 6 hours straight reading... would be enough.

I also need it to be fast response when I use it, not sluggish.

Again fail.

I am getting rid of my android tablets and buying a sony ereader. It's scary that the company that is king of making sub par everything or treating it's customers like criminals makes the best ereader device under $300.00....

Advanced Crestron Learning...

2010-09-30T13:12:00.002-04:00

Spent the week at Crestron HQ in New Jersey getting my certifications. Learning a lot, but the best part is the networking with others in the field. Never underestimate the worth of meeting people that do what you do and their ideas and outlooks on a problem. Seeing how others look at and approach a problem has a gigantic value in life and learning. Crestron is a very cool place, and everyone I met from the company are incredible. I would certainly take a job there if one was offered.

Why Hyper-threading is worthless.....

2010-09-11T20:47:00.003-04:00

I have been a Computer Scientist for decades. My foray into computers started with digital electronics in the 70's as a curious kid and snowballed from there. I have built computers by hand, no not buy parts and plug it together, I'm talking buy chips, design the board, etch copper and solder, then write the software for it.

With that background, I want to explain why I personally think that hyper-threading is 100% useless today. Multi processing or Multi Core, IS useful. but hyper-threading is not for a big reason. Most software, even today are not multi threaded. This makes your 4 core 3.5GHZ monster machine, with hyper-threading turned on, act like a old slow 1.7ghz Pentium 4 from 75 years ago. Even modern Video editing software and Graphics software do NOT use multiple threads for anything but the rendering process.

for example: I have a shiny new i5 3.32GHZ quad core video editor. I buy Sony Vegas 9 pro and install it and then spend 3 days trying to figure out why it''s slow as a dog EXCEPT for rendering. It will render a project insanely fast, but the program is sluggish and acts like it's running on a Slow machine. the reason was Hyper-threading was ON in the Bios. This cut all 4 cores in 1/2 and gave me 8 processors with 1.7ghz speed. Super fast for render, useless for 90% of computer uses. when I turned off hyper-threading EVERYTHING sped up 2 fold. The whole computer acted as if it was twice as fast. Games ran super fast, everything.

Why? because 99.997% of all the software out there is STILL written for single processors, single threading. and it will stay that way for a long time because it's simply far easier to do that than write a complex program multi threaded for the UI and basic functions.

So speed up your computer. TURN OFF HYPER-THREADING. And this worked on the low end i3 Dual core. that computer also sprang to life after hyper-threading was disabled. Even the Old P4 that I use for ripping DVD's significantly sped up by disabling hyper-threading and going to single process single threading.

This is my personal experience. I strongly suggest you try the same experiment and see if you get benefits from disabling hyper-threading.

Why I wont buy or Recommend HP laptops...

2010-09-10T09:30:00.003-04:00

I just spent a week with 3 brand new laptops. 1 dell, 1 compaq(hp), and 1 HP. The Dell and HP were both i3, although the dell is a 14" and the HP was a 17.8" they had nearly identical specs. The Compaq is a Core Duo, and was a el-cheapo Sub $400.00 laptop. ALL THREE of these laptops were purchased at Staples, and staples staff bent over backwards for me.

Firstly, I have had extensive experience with Dell tech support for friends and work. Both their corporate and consumer tech support is top notch and you can easily by asking get to a USA tech support person if you have problems with the accent of the support person. Generally my tech support call expectations is SET by what I experience with dell.

I bought a Compaq 15" for my wife, Windows 7, but that was going to disappear for Ubuntu. The laptop is fine except for build quality, but I was forgiving because it's a dirt-cheap throwaway. What I find a bad design is the keyboard and the track-point mouse. It's flush with the laptop surface and the same texture. so it is impossible to stay on it unless you look at it. plus the buttons are flush so they are hard to find. Very low usability.. the designer at HP that designed this needs to be fired. Before I wiped the Windows 7 install, I investigated a bit, the laptop came with 5 metric tons of crapware installed. Typical. But the windows experience index ran at a 5.1! Wow! that's pretty high for a throwaway cheapish laptop. Install of ubuntu 10.10 and all went well, my wifes only complaints are the useless trackpad for mousing and only 1 USB port.

Fast foreward to my purchase of a high end HP 17.3" laptop... It has the same garbage trackpad that is flush.... in fact it looks identical to the cheap compaq expect it's larger and a trendy silver color. Keyboard is also a very bad design. First power up and "Hard Drive SMART ERROR your drive is in danger of failure...".... Oh that's nice. so I call HP tech support. I get a runaround for 2 days of I need to restore the software, then let it run for a while to see if it goes away. Hello? Does HP hire idiots for TECH support? SMART errors dont go away. I ask when they will send a guy to replace the hard drive...

Silence....

"You have to ship it to us for that repair sir...."

Um no, this is going back to the store...

"You are not allowed to do that. you have to send it to us."

I hung up. packed up this piece of crap and went back to Staples.. They gladly took the return and even let me select a different laptop as they were out of that model and frankly I did not want anything from HP after how horrible HP tech support is. They gave me a Dell that was the same specs.. This dell worked perfect on first power up. It also did not have very much crapware expect for Norton Antivirus and a couple of dell helperapps. the trackpad is recessed a little to make it east to stay on it, the keyboard feels like a keyboard and has real F keys.

I personally will never ever recommend or buy a HP product to anyone ever again, in fact after my experience with HP support, I will warn people away from buying HP products. Ship it to them, are they on drugs? Defective out of the box and they want me to spend money shipping to a facility across the country insured.

Dell will send a tech to my home and replace or fix the problem within 48 hours. Yes even on their low end consumer products.

Do Not buy HP, badly designed, and questionable quality, coupled with very bad customer service.

Drawn back into my past hobbies....

2010-09-04T10:07:00.004-04:00

Friends recently have had a resurrection of RPG gaming. I was into this back in high school, but college, girls, and beer became my biggest world of interest as I became older. Fast forward to the past few months, I was encouraged to play a game of D&D and had some fun... hey this game is better with Beer! I started talking to the guys about what I used to play... Traveller, a space future RPG, and my favorite.. The Morrow Project. It was a post WW-III game where you roamed the united states after it has been wiped out after a major nuclear war.. None of them heard of it, and they all went nuts wanting to play it.. they all envisioned a Fallout3 world. Morrow is not like that, it is more of a humanitarian, rebuild society kind of thing. So here I am on Saturday morning scouring the internet for Morrow Project only to discover it's been out of print for decades and can not be bought if you wanted to. How can I do this?

Enter Steve Jackson Games and his incredible GURPS system. GURPS is a generic universal Role Playing Game system that you can use to play almost any scenario. I'm using it to re-create the Morrow Project. Luckily all the materials are available used on Amazon.com

Here's to wasting my friday evenings being a geek again....

Time to build a Home Theater....

2010-08-25T14:45:00.003-04:00

It's time, My wife and I have lived for 4 years now without the poor-man's home theater we had in the other house. WE used it a LOT, and it made movie nights extra special. with our purging of stuff we decided to reclaim the basement for usable space and decided to divide the main "wreck room" into a game room and a separate small theater. Nothing too big... 92" screen, 7.1 surround with all built in speakers, seating for 6... All with a shoestring budget.

The thing is, I have years of experience doing this stuff, plus being a Crestron programmer, Integrator and technologist; I can do a few things that set it all apart from the typical DIY home theater.

Here is my plan of attack....

Projector : 720p 1080p if I can get a really good deal. Must be rs232 controllable. Under $1000.00 new. This will be my biggest single purchase.. Maybe I can get one used.

Screen : I want a negative gain grey or silver screen. I will have full light control so taking advantage of a grey screen will give me a far better looking image with better blacks.. That means I can shop for either DLP or LCD.. whatever is the cheapest.

Speakers: Other than the side and rear surround speakers, everything else will be hand built into the walls. What I want cant be bought for less than $1000.00 each. so I'll build them for $90 each. Yes.. I can build $1000.00 a piece speakers for $90.00... I'll show you how.

Sound control: It is important to keep the theater from making the house sound like a nightclub so filling the walls with insulation and covering the walls with sound control is important. I will be making my own cloth panels for the walls to control the audio..

Amplifier: Used here. I have a Kenwood Sovereign I got from a good friend that will work great and is 6.1 (5.1 is all you need really) Nobody needs new stuff for their theater unless they are filthy rich.

Video source: PC running XBMC and a RoKu box.. Yes that's really it. if I did not rip the DVD or LbuRay before hand we will not be watching it in the theater. I might add in a sattelite reciever in the future, but we have spent the last 5 years without CableTV and do not miss it. if we want TV shows we watch it streamed from Netflix. I Might add in a AppleTV so that we can subscribe to seperate Tv shows on itunes.

Video will be HDMI from the projector to a DVI converter and into the XBMC box. if I add more sources then an extron HDMI switcher will be added. From my experience only the Extron strips out the HDCP problems with switching sources.

I will have full crestron control, I bought $350.00 in old outdated junk to give me a CNMSX-PRO with ethernet card, a STX-1700C a two way gateway for the wireless touchpanel and a VC-1500 touchpanel with video. This will allow full control of all devices with feedback AND a master control touchpanel that will display the security cameras if the doorbell rings and we are in the theater. Being a crestron programmer this stuff is free to program for me (I'm only $55 an hour for others! call me!) Lighting will be 3 circuits (ceiling cans, sconces, rope light) on extron switches that respond to IR for control... cheapest RELIABLE way of controlling them.. X-10 is NOT an option as it's junk.

Seating is my only issue... no cheap theater seats are out there... I need to figure out this little problem as I am unwilling to spend $2500.00 on 6 seats.

So keep tuned. I'm going to document my project here and share my secrets of making a high end home theater for almost nothing.

Android for RPG and PnP Gaming....

2010-08-20T09:43:00.002-04:00

Recently I bough a Pandigital Novel to get a android tablet for hacking around on. It runs Android 2.0 so it's the most "up to date" Android tablet that exists and is easy to hack to get to the underlying android OS. My first search was for a PDF reader, I needed a way to read all the gaming PDF files I have to eliminate the carrying a metric ton of books problem. Android is missing a good PDF reader. RepliGo is OK, but it has problems rendering many PDF files, and it only loads a page at a time so flipping through the book is very slow. 3-5 second page turns.

The other problem I found is there is almost no gaming apps. Nothing compared to the iPad/iPhone. This is not a problem as writing an app for the android is not hard, just you need the time to do it.

The other is that all the Android Tablets can not get on the app store. So that means you need to do software pirate tricks to get software you buy to run on the tablet. I was able to buy a copy of RepliGo and then had to do some hacker moves to get it extracted as a APK to install manually on the tablet.

Tablet's have a possibility of being a BIG part of RPG and PnP gaming. problem is the software is not there and the platforms are a bit difficult to get apps installed if it's not blessed. Android does allow you to write the app and not have it on the store, but 99.97% of all app writers do not release raw apk files.

Hopefully someone will make a nice character sheet app to start with for android tablets. It's a killer app that a lot of people could use.

Modern Laptops and Ubuntu....

2010-08-16T08:41:00.002-04:00

Ubuntu 10.04 is great.... except when used with the current crop of HP Compaq and Lenovo laptops. It seems that they use a strange ATI/Intel audio chipset that does not stick with normal protocols. the current Alpha 3 of Ubuntu 10.10 DOES work with these chipsets, so it's just over the horizon for compatibility. But until then you need to manually upgrade ALSA in your Ubuntu install.. 10.04 will probably NOT get the update officially for a while, and 10.10 will be the earliest you will be able to get it.

there are other problems with 10.10.. like ATI video drivers not working. and update completely broken.

Why I feel all the HD cameras out there suck.

2010-08-07T08:41:00.002-04:00

I have shot for years with canon XL1's XL2's Gl1's Gl2's Sony digibeta with 30,000 fujinon lenses... and I never had the problems I have now with HD...

The dreaded Purple Fringing....

Every JVC HD camera I have tried has purple fringing. Panasonic HMC150 it's there too.. and all the canon Digital recording cameras have it. It is not visible in the Canon HDV cameras... Which surprises me.

If you use Sony Vegas, you have a option to fix it, well reduce it. you can run the color corrector and pick the purple and use a slider to remove it. It affects other purples in the video though.

A major win for Sony vegas... now only if they had bundled the steadicam plugin like they do with their low end consumer version of Vegas...

Poor mans time lapse pan mount.

2010-08-02T09:43:00.003-04:00

Like those time lapse videos that also pan the scene? Found out that the commercial slow pan tripod heads are insane priced?

Go to a cooking store and buy a super cheap kitchen timer, the mechanical type that turns.

Install a 1/4-20 bolt into the face to mount the camera to, and then glue a 1/4-20 bolt to the bottom.

Mount to the tripod, wind the timer, set up the shot and let go. the timer will spin the camera while the camera takes the photos to assemble the time lapse shot.

Just a quick and dirty fun hack for you.

Why I think Blackberry's are useless for small business...

2010-07-27T09:00:00.002-04:00

I have an iPhone, I have had Nokia smartphones, Android phones, Palm phones and yes blackberry's... I have had extensive experience with all of them. Recently work wanted me to have a blackberry. No simply using my iPhone is not an option I need to carry two devices... Ok, fine they are paying the bill....

Every other device that is NOT a blackberry was simple to get set up for email. Took me 10 minutes max and worked with Exchange, IMAP or even good old Pop.... Except for a blackberry... For some reason they try to force you to use their service. and if you use a exchange server in your small < 50 employee business... they want you to buy their $8900.00 exchange app to communicate with their special servers...

After wasting nearly 2 hours getting this set up all I have now is my email forwarded to the blackberry phone and when I respond it comes from my blackberry account. Yay! My iPhone was able to use the exchange server... Android phones work perfectly.. Blackberries... the ONE thing they are designed for? They are utter garbage at.

If you are a small business person dont use blackberry. They will cause you grief and more expenses than giving all your employees iphones.

The Hackers Android tablet...

2010-07-15T10:11:00.003-04:00

I picked one of these up yesterday. bed Bath and Beyond had them on sale for $159.00 + $20.00 rebate. It runs Android 2.0 unlike the others out there, and it's got a 533mhz processor and a SD slot. It's mostly battery so it goes all day, well almost all day.... 5 hours of all the time on use.

The stock form it sucks. the Adobe PDF and ebook reader for Barnes and Noble books is complete junk and laggy. the whole device feels half done and horribly slow. Plus it locked up 3 times in the first hour... Not a good thing.

But, you can easily hack it to get to the underlying android and get past the adobe garbage on top.

http://www.slatedroid.com/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?43-Pandigital-Novel is the repository of all the current hacking of this device....

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2010/07/12/hacking-the-pandigital-novel-video/ has the details, howto and zip file of the goodies needed to hack it.. It still leaves the adobe based junk in there, but allows you to install android apps manually.

If you are a hacker wanting a cheap android tablet to hack on, this is a good buy. If you want a cheap color ebook reader/tablet.... Stay far away from this. it's not stable and it certianly is not worth the price considering how slow and unstable it is. Buy it at the clearance price of $89.00 that it will show up at in 6-8 months.

Why I'll never own another GM car...

2010-06-28T07:46:00.004-04:00

Ok, not "never" as in nothing ever again... But as in Never own a Gm car that is newer than 1990. Gm stopped making decent cars around that time as far as I am concerned...

I had been a Die-hard Pontiac guy forever. As a little kid my dad was a GM UAW worker, Uncle worked in a Lansing Oldsmobile plant, We were a GM family. We Owned and drove GM cars... But things changed in 2001 when I bought a Pontiac Aztek. I bought the most expensive car I ever owned at the time.... $27,995.00 for that GM vehicle and it was full of promises that it's gonna last forever due to GM technology....

Fast foreward 10 years and only 120,000 miles. Bad head gaskets due to GM sourcing China junk. Bad Intake gaskets due to bad engineering design. Bad wiring harnesses due to inept engineers not checking placement. Bad BCM modules due to having them made in china for the lowest possible price. Bad dashboard lighting LED's due to lowest bidder china parts. Bad Wheel bearings due to engineering flaws. Poorly designed plastic gas tank that cracks and causes dangerous fuel leaks. Defective condenser coils for AC, Low quality AC compressors. And all of it wrapped up in a nice bag of "sucks to be you" from GM management to all owners of these vehicles and owners of any GM vehicle with a 3400 engine in it. 90% of the major flaws with this car are NOT covered under any recall. Gm with their insulting 36,000 mile 3 year warranty knows that most of this stuff will not fall apart in the first 36,000 miles because they intentionally designed it to fail around 40,000 miles. If I was an isolated case, I'd understand that I just ended up getting lemon. But the majority of Aztek owners have experienced either all or most of the above problems. I then discovered from friends and relatives that other GM cars had the same pile of problems and even new ones. Any car with the 3400 engine can and will have the head gasket and intake gasket failures. Most cars made after 2001 will have wiring harness failures because of inept engineers running the stupid harness from inside the car to outside placing a key connector under the car within the salt spray area from the tires unprotected. Low quality parts to increase profit are also incredibly common. Buick, Pontiac and Chevy cars all share the same pile of problems, and the number of people reporting the same problems across product lines is staggering.

What does GM do? Spend a ton of money to put a commercial on TV saying "Oops sorry about our bad quality".

I give my cars better than recommended care. 3000 mile oil changes, all maintainable tasks listed in the manual done on time. Even items not listed that I know are important are done. Heck I even wax the underside of my cars (before winter) to reduce corrosion. Every failure I experienced was due to a manufacturer defect or Bad engineering. None of which GM will own up to.

Guess what GM. I'm not buying your cars EVER again... Gm screwed up big time to make a UAW kid that loves his pontiacs to leave and A TV commercial saying sorry will not get me back.

Ubuntu, Wine, and running Windows apps to get past the gatekeepers

2010-06-03T20:16:00.005-04:00

I've had it with windows 7 64 bit. I beta tested the 32 bit for a very long time and it worked great for all the company apps. So I bought a new laptop and it came with windows 7.... 64 bit... The version that microsoft wants everyone to use. WEll it's also incompatible with 90% of the drivers for older hardware, and 100% incompatible with most of the software that businesses use.. Biamp Nexia and audia work most of the time... Crestron apps are 80% stable... a major fight with any of the DSP programming apps... I'm done. Windows and it's being a virus magnet and the instability of the OS along with the lack of apps for a developer to use easily (and for free) has finally pushed me to explore running linux and wine to get all my work done.

AS you can see by the image, I have IE6 running under wine. Something the Windows fan-bois at slashdot say is impossible. They typically know nothing about linux. And in fact the latest Ubuntu + Wine is brain dead easy to do this and install windows apps. you right click on the windows installer and select "run with wine" and the installer starts. It even ends up in your programs directory.

Outlook is a problem. Outlook 2000 is funky. and I have yet to find my office 2003 cd to try outlook 2003. I can always use the OWA web outlook interface...

So starts my saga to run windows business apps under linux that interface to hardware....

Lightroom replacement for linux....

2010-05-28T11:00:00.002-04:00

I have used lightroom on the Mac. It's a awesome program for photo work. Switching to Ubuntu at home has me stuck though. I really wanted lightroom under linux. It does not run worth a darn under wine and Gimp is just clunky for some quick photo fixes...

Then a friend turned me on to a relatively unknown program..... Bibble 5 Pro This is a Lightroom replacement that Runs under linux! It's lightly rough under the edges compared to lightroom but it replicates enough functionality that it's worth every penny of its $199.00 price tag. It works great and does some great fast work of simple photo fixes. Plus it comes with a noiseninga engine in it to really clean up the nose from the 3200 and faster shots.

Download the demo from these guys... I'll be testing it more myself when I can afford to buy it and reporting a better review of it here as soon as I get the chance.

Ubuntu 10.04 CUPS failure....

2010-05-25T14:39:00.001-04:00

Upgraded from 9.10 to 10.4 last week. discovered that CUPS is not running so all printers are dead... Hmmm. It seems that the upgrade function in Ubuntu is borked.

I issued the following.....

sudo apt-get install --reinstall cups

and now cups is working once again. This is a bad thing(tm) as printing is important and a upgrade should not completely bork an important function like printing. Here's hoping that that issue a fix in the upgrade servers so that it stops borking people's installs.

Disapora: Taking on Facebook....

2010-05-17T11:52:00.002-04:00

Diaspora

This is a very interesting open source project that has been in the news lately. They are working on a distributed "social portal" setup that you have full control over. none of the facebook tricks to hijack your information and sell it to the highest bidder, everything under your control... And it's a great idea. A lot of other people see it as a good idea They have received over a hundred thousand dollars for support in donations...

too bad it's doomed to failure.

Why? Facebook and myspace exploded for a simple reason. It's brain-dead easy to get going on it. No knowledge at all is needed to get your facebook or myspace page up. No software to install, and if my internet is down at home, My facebook page is still online.

People wont do things that take effort. Look at the amount of effort people use to keep their information private. They don't read the fine print that that survey they took will be sol to everyone and their brother and then posted online at various places for all to see. They don't read EULA's that state all their personal information is now the property of XYZ corporation. Their videos become the property of the video sharing site, and the photo site can sell their photos and make money off them.

I really do hope these guys are successful. but I cant see how they plan on getting their product used by the bottom 2/3rd's of the population that think their computer is a toaster, and believe it when a pop up says their computer is infected and they need to enter their credit card numbers now to clean it up.

First Thoughts on Ubuntu 10.4

2010-05-14T12:41:00.007-04:00

My first tests with Ubuntu 10.4 are in Sun's virtualbox. I had a bit of trouble but that was because Virtualbox needed updates. After that It went smooth. The polish on the Ubuntu installer is impressive. It looks as good as apple's installer for OSX and is very clear and easy to understand for even a non computer expert. I give them an A+ for the installer, It's simply fantastic.

Installing the Virtualbox Guest Addons worked. although I still wish there was a left click context that was "run with admin privileges" instead of having to go out to a shell and sudo to run it as admin. A reboot was required but only because of the kernel modules, and I am sure I could have skipped the reboot, but it's simpler to just reboot the box. Running Ubuntu on virtualbox on my outdated and under powered Dual Core 2.8ghz laptop with only 4 gig of ram was sluggish. but that's probably because of the Windows 7 install that is the Host OS.

Overall I really like the clean new look to the theme. Nice default for newbies to enjoy. Seeing that Transmission is installed by default is a nice touch as well. Problem though that I am not introduced with any easy and obvious way to get the non-free "illegal" things installed like mp3 playback. video codecs, etc... so a newbie will still have to find a Ubuntu guru to get the fresh install up to speed and ready for the internet. medibuntu is still your only easy way of getting all that done.... It needs to be a single click though.

My first stop with firefox was to download and install google chrome. Simply because I prefer it above Firefox now and it's significantly faster. (Plus flash does not crash it like it does firefox) It was easy as pie to install with a single click from the web page. gone are the days of linux software installs where you had to spend 20 minutes hunting where the thing went and manually adding it to the software menus in X. It's magically there on it's own.

I was glad to see open office and evolution installed by default. The rumors of the switch to the awful "could computing" office apps would have been a bad thing. Honestly, until we all have free 100% reliable wireless Gigabit internet cloud computing is simply a pie in the sky thing. Give me a word processor that runs on my machine and saves to my machine. It is nice you now have a section of "partners" for other software. Adobe's real flash is available there for a single click install. you still have to go digging for it though. Most users will not know it's there.

I'm not sure about the social networking integration. But honestly Ubuntu 9.10 had this just without the Ubuntu one service defaulted. It's kind of neat that the app is hidden as a single icon. Cleaner in a way.

Ubuntu is still borked when it comes to windows networking. Just like 9.4 and 9.10 it still fails to browse a windows network without having to fix it by hand. I have a domain and a Workgroup here and ubuntu out of the box fails when you click on the windows network icon in places... They really need to fix this ASAP. It's been an open bug for over a year now.

Overall It's just like 9.10 Clean, mostly stable, and very easy to use IF you dont have a windows network you have to interface to. Most home users where they can only afford 1 machine will never see this as a problem. Add a NAS and now you have issues as many dont do NFS out of the box without configuration.

I like what I see, I probably wont upgrade my wife's 9.10 install until this october when 10.10 comes out. hopefully by then they will have fixed SMB networking issues.

Android based car stereo.... Final Notes.

2010-05-10T12:04:00.004-04:00

Archos 7

It seems that the best way to make a android based car stereo is this device right here. It will do everything you want PLUS it would easy to make it sit in a nice dock to be completely removable. I've stopped all work on the Android car stereo and will simply get one of these. It eliminated almost all my work and is a cleaner design than I would have ever came up with. someone with some good plastic skills could easily get this in the stereo slot on most cars without effort.

I love it when companies make my hacking easier.

Why the User Interface is important....

2010-05-03T07:49:00.006-04:00

I won some used Crestron gear on ebay this weekend. I bought it from a frustrated user that paid a lot of money for a home theater control system and the company that installed it delivered the ugliest turd they could. Ignoring the programming and any issues there, the initial turd-factor was the User Interface. This couple bought a budget install, the Mt-1000c remote is a one way, small low cost color touchscreen unit. and when I received the used hardware and powered it up, I can see why they hated it and sold it to me for a loss.

First the User Interface(UI) had no effort at all put into usability. it was a sea of buttons and basically ended up as a simple Universal remote. every button on every page, nothing to help you. They could have bought a cheap RCA learning remote and got the same thing that their $5500.00 Crestron install did. It was horrible even from a techie standpoint, it took 3 clicks to even get to where you wanted to be. It has to be easy. Wait, no.. it has to be brain-dead-easy.. If someone that has no idea how anything works can not pick up the remote and run the system, then the system is a complete failure. This is not only for home automation or theater design, Software, computers, cars, etc.. If I cant get in your car and figure it out without the manual for any previous experience, then the car design is a failure... for example, GM cruise control compared to Chrysler cruise control. GM hides theirs on the turn signal stalk that is hidden by the steering wheel. Chrysler put theirs as big clear buttons on the steering wheel.

Secondly, graphic design. no it does not have to look like a master artist designed it. but the colors have to make sense and not make the eyes bleed. The installer that designed this touch-panel must have been color blind. red-green-neon blue-pink-yellow. Holy cow it was hard to look at and hard to read. If you as a designer or programmer do not have any graphics skills, then find someone that does. College students are cheap to hire and honestly can do some fantastic things, I have seen some really intuitive designs from 1st year graphic arts majors. make it clean, pleasing to look at and EASY TO READ AND UNDERSTAND. That last pat is more important than anything else. BIG interface, EASY to read, MAKES SENSE to dumb ol' common people. It may make sense to you that the copy function is in the data submenu of the file menu, but it does not to the rest of the planet.

What do I do? Well one of my personal strengths is that I can search the internet better than most people. I can dig up things that many dont know exist or cant find on their own. I have found a ton of repositories of PSD and other files of interface graphics and use them for my own stuff. Crestron themselves give you nice looking themes that take out 80% of the work, that 90% of all Crestron professionals dont know exist or how to use them. In order for you to do the same, learn to use google image search, look at the different graphics sites and search for UI or buttons, etc.. what you want are PSD files with all the layers, but at time a finished png,jpg or gif button is useful. Also you can buy graphic sets pre-made from places like Gui-FX if you are selling to a customer.

Basically, look at your design. is it easy to use? a single button push to start doing what you want? I.E. Everything is off, they press "watch tv" and everything turns on and set's up the equipment to TV viewing, then switches to the controls for TV viewing. I switch to a list of presets and basic control. Making them press on, then select a source is too many steps. Take time to design your UI, design your interface for super easy use. Aim for no training simplicity and you will be way ahead of all the other guys out there that don't even think about usability.

Making your laptop less appealing...

2010-04-26T07:41:00.007-04:00

It's not a case of IF, it's a case of when. One of these days your laptop will be lost or stolen. And someone will find it and use it or buy it. Not only do you lose all that money for the hardware, but think about what is IN your laptop. Documents, files, photos, everything that is private to you. Tax returns with everything needed to hijack your credit.

Or worse... all your usernames and passwords for every website you go to and log in. No they don't have to crack them, if they can get into your account and log onto your computer as you, the computer will not only hand them the keys, it will help them open the doors. your worst nightmare has just came true. and guess what. All your personal info is worth more than that low-end $1500.00 laptop. If you have good credit and a good job, your personal info is worth tens of thousands or more. If you are a CEO of a corporation? millions... But even a $35,000 a year poor factory workers info is worth at least $20,000-$30,000 in credit and loans they can get under your name. THAT should make you sick because banks will try very hard to hold YOU responsible for that money.

What can you do? There are plenty of options. If you use windows, Mac or Linux you have a ton of options to keep your data safe, AND make your laptop, and other devices, less desirable to steal. Remember the front line thief, the crack-head that sees and opportunity to swipe your laptop as you waled 5 feet from it to refill your coffee, does not care about whats in it. he cares about if he can sell it fast for enough to get his next high. The front line thieves are typically idiots. So make step one is to make it less attractive or even hidden. if you carry your laptop to class/work/whatever, don't use a laptop bag or something that screams, "I HAVE A LAPTOP INSIDE"! you need something that looks like it has nothing valuable. Backpacks work great if you dress like a backpack carrying person... I.E. College student, trendy young hipster, etc.. If you are wearing a executive suit and carry a backpack that tells the thief that the backpack has something special in it. Hide it. That custom Gucci leather messenger bag with the big apple logo on the side is a billboard for "steal me".

Carrying your laptop is one thing, making it even more "undesirable" is another. No you don't have to spray paint it and make it look beat up with duct-tape. you can keep it "beautiful" just add non removable or not easily removed markings that clearly identify it as stolen and your property. If you have a aluminum Mac book pro you can have the body laser etched with your name and cellphone number. I typically add the words, "Stolen from Tim Gray. Reward if returned call XXX-XXX-XXXX" If it's plastic like my dell, I have it engraved in the bottom in LARGE lettering that I then fill with white paint to make it VERY obvious. I also have a sticker plastered across the lid that I had made at a custom bumper-sticker site that says the same thing. You can have a nice engraving done on the lid or inside as well to make it permanent and highly visible. Thieves don't like to steal things that boldly advertise they are stolen. One friend had his laptop cover painted. STOLEN FROM: STEVE with his face plastered on it and the words," IF the person who has this does not look like the photo, call the cops and claim your $500.00 reward" That's and extreme, but it works. He has yet to have a laptop stolen and he will walk away from it for 30 minutes at a time. A good bit of insurance is though to get a laptop lock Like these.

You can also add things like software.... laptop alarm will make noise from the speakers, but is easily defeated and many laptops are quiet already. as well as changing the startup screen to say the laptop is stolen. This is easy to do, but a crack head wont know how to change it. I do this to my laptop, desktop, phones and even my GPS. It says it's stolen every time it's started. Don't pay much for any laptop alarm software, most is barely useful at best. All it takes is the thief to turn off the laptop to shut it up.

The BEST thing you can do is to use the security in the OS. use a password and login every time, and no not an easy password. DO NOT have your browser remember your usernames and passwords or any fields. This is handing the thief your information. Programs that remember it for you that require you to log in with one password and keep the content encrypted are ok to have. Finally, encrypt your files or at least your user directory. keep that stuff safe. Even basic encryption will keep thieves at bay from getting into the data. They will move on to greener pastures that are not encrypted. I personally will not leave any data like that on my computers after I am done with it. Tax files? as soon as I file all those files are off to a CD and a Thumb drive and put in the safe. If I need them again I simply get the thumb drive and read them off that drive.

Yes it adds some complexity and logging in all the time is a slight inconvenience but it's worth it. I extend it further. my iPhone locks automatically, I have to enter a 4 digit pin to use my phone, and the phone will erase it's self if someone tries too many times. it's home screen says it is stolen from me as well as engraving on the back of the phone.

yes, there are drawbacks, if you are a person that likes to sell their stuff after a few months, you will find it harder to sell something you engraved all over. Just like how it's hard to sell a lime green and orange polka-dotted Cadillac CTS. But it's the price you pay to keep your stuff safer and at least make it difficult for the thief to sell your stuff.

you might still lose your laptop, but you will know your data is safe AND the thief will have a hard time finding someone that will buy it.

Converting to Ubuntu wrap up.

2010-04-23T17:20:00.002-04:00

It's been a while. Well over a month now running Ubuntu on my wife's laptop. Short of some Firefox instability and a change to Chrome for her browser. to be fair, firefox is also unstable on my work windows 7 box and my OSX laptop, so it's a firefox failure not ubuntu. So far the laptop is nice and stable, only one issue that the filesystem needed to run fsck after firefox crashed hard taking everything including X down and she powered it off instead of doing a shutdown. Chrome and Flash work well together, all her facebook games work well. regular Games she is happy with, she found a lot of games in the repository that she enjoys... Crack attack is one of her favorites.

Some limitations, these are only app limitation not OS limitations.. No real decent photography management apps for linux. I really wish that someone would make a decent photo management and light retouching app for linux. Google did release Picasa for linux, and it is somewhat useful. I just wish there was a Aperture replacement.

Word processing is smooth as silk as well as all other office duties. OO.o is more than usable for word processing and spreadsheets. In fact many businesses are no longer paying the extortion fees to Microsoft for the regular Office upgrades that do nothing. Setting the apps to save as DOC and XLS solves all the problems with having to think about format.

The only outstanding issue is iPhone sync. I can not get itunes to run under Wine and sync via USB. and there are no linux apps that will sync the iPhone without jail-breaking it.

Overall ubuntu is perfectly usable for any regular pc user. it does everything they want as long as they can get over using appps that have a different name and slightly different operation. There is no excuse for staying with Windows for home use. and I personally would use it for work if the apps I needed for making money would run under wine or had replacements under linux.

if you are thinking of trying linux, dont wait, do it now. You wont regret it.

About time I updated it....

2010-04-23T15:59:00.003-04:00

Ok Blog makeover. It's high time I updated as it looked the same over the past 6 years.. Change is good, maybe this will encourage me to update the other websites and blogs I currently run.

Google Chrome my new browser

2010-04-22T16:09:00.000-04:00

Google Chrome - Get a fast new browser. For PC, Mac, and Linux It started with my Ubuntu install at home. Random times that firefox would "go grey" and simply stop responding. I figured it was the fault of flash... Honestly Adobe only half-hearted released flash for linux... nobody really uses linux as far as they are concerned... But it started on my work windows 7 machine. many time Firefox would simply "go out to lunch" and stop responding for a bit then come back. I took another look at chrome and saw that not only do they now have a linux port, but most of my extensions I love on firefox also work for Chrome!

So I switched. I ditched firefox. Sad to go, you used to be a great browser... but locking up like that is unacceptable. they need to cut out all the "features" and get back to speed and reliability with firefox.. until then, I'm moving to a new browser that my horribly out of date dual core 3.0ghz windows 7 laptop can run without pauses and freezes...

Finally bottling the batch of Cider....

2010-04-01T19:41:00.002-04:00

I back sweetened this one. added 1 cup table sugar and 1 can of the apple concentrate, mixed it and bottled. It's dry with a lot of flavor, but adding the sugar brightened up the flavor and the concentrate really punched it up. It's gotta be good, I've got a bit of a wine buzz from drinking about a 1/2 glass full from tasting the sweetening. and YES I killed the yeast so I'm not launching corks later....

It in the bottles and tastes great. I racked a second batch of the same recipe to verify that it's a good one.

Starting a batch of honey mead..... My first, and I'm nervous as instead of a couple bucks in apple juice it takes $45.00 in honey.

Smartphone Woes: part 2

2010-03-30T09:39:00.002-04:00

Ok, I finally gave up on the fights... Nokia has basically told me that they will NOT be fixing their blue-tooth stack, as it works perfectly with their products. Too bad Ford Sync and BMW is not a nokia product. I also gave up on the signal strength problems. 3g Nokia phones tend to not be very sensitive and lose signal a lot compared to Motorola phones and iPhones. They are on part with samsung phones. I need my phone to work 100% of the time. not 90% of the time, and it MUST work with my bluetooth headset, my helmet, and my car, 100% of the time. So I gave up. I bought an iPhone. it works on all these and seems to work for receiving and sending calls 100% of the time. I get 2-3 bars in the bad coverage areas of my house where the Nokia phones will have no service. AND it will reacquire a new tower quickly instead of the 30-80 seconds the nokia phones take. Sitting there knowing you have coverage but looking at the "no service" indicator for over a minute while the phone finally get's around to doing it's secondary phone function is dumb. I was a Nokia phone fan for over a decade. I loved their phones but the latest crop with S60 has made the reliability drop to about 80% enough to get below my tolerance threshold and give up on them.

I'm not a fan of the closed hype that is the iPhone, but I do give them credit where it is due. this 3Gs just works, battery life is dismal at less than 16 hours of mixed use and in a pocket, charging it when you get home is a requirement (I get a boost charge in the 40 minute drive to work and home so it makes a solid day for me) but you will never go 2-3 days between a charge on these phones. they MUST be charged nightly. That's a pain in the arse for traveling and camping.

P.S. DONT use push for email. it will suck your battery down in 3 hours even if you dont use the phone.

XBMC Internet TV on the Easy....

2010-03-25T10:04:00.003-04:00

I'm a HUGE fan of XBMC (X box Media Center) it's hands down the best media center setup that exists. Yes far better than Windows Media center, because it's 100% free. and open. It has video and audio support for every single video and audio format. Plus it's really easy to add internet TV channels to it.

Simply go into the videos section and add a new source, select brows and network location, then choose type RSS.

for a site like Frederator.... at http://feeds.channelfrederator.com/channel_frederator/rss

Put in server address the "feeds.channelfrederator.com" part
and then for the location section you put in the "channel_frederator/rss" part.

Now in your videos folder you have a nice new source that lists all the feeds from that RSS. click and watch, Internet TV rocks. to find more feeds simply look around your favorite sites... TWIT.tv has RSS feeds for all the different Video shows they make. Revision3 does as well... new episodes are automatically inserted in your listings of episodes. Life is what it should be.... Now only if the brain-dead networks would do the same. I'd LOVE to be able to get scifi and discovery network show feeds. I'd even pay a couple of bucks a month to get them with commercials.

Note: This only works with open and standards based podcasts. Scummy companies that wrap their video up in flash dont want you to watch them outside of a web-browser so those do not work. if the podcast is created and ran by competent people it's a standard RSS feed with a standard video file format for the video.

Smartphone bluetooth car woes...

2010-03-23T15:32:00.002-04:00

I have discovered that the current crop of ALL smartphones from the Nokias to the iPhone to the newest android Nexus 1 phone all have huge problems with vehicle bluetooth audio and phone calls. No this is not the car's faults it's the phones. Every car that has problems with calls or A2DP have ZERO problems with my wifes older Razr or my old Nokia N62.

It seems that all the smartphone makers (all Nokia's current phones are unusable in bluetooth enabled cars) decided to not test their hardware before shipping. Companies like Nokia are ignoring users. Google is silent as to their Bluetooth failures, and Apple is at least trying to fix their bluetooth stack, but its' still broken.

Honestly the only phone that is 80% reliable with your car's bluetooth is the iPhone. The Nexus 1 phones and all the current Nokia smart phones simply do not work or are intermittent.

integrated bluetooth in the car is the future and is not new. Why these phone makers cant get the phone-call portion to work 100% reliably and let the A2DP fail I'll never know.

Ubuntu at home: week 3.5

2010-03-18T19:54:00.003-04:00

Ok almost a month. My wife has been using linux exclusively on her laptop for 2 weeks now. No windows machine at all to fall back to, cold turkey, 100% ubuntu. And her only issues have been simple. Wifi does not blindly auto-connect when we go to friends or other places. she has learned that she has to connect if it's not a secure and known wireless access point. Secondly, if she has the laptop go to sleep, it requires you to log in and log into your password wallet. And installing software requires you to type your password. Anything else has been simply issues with settings needing to be tweaked. She changed her own wallpaper, done other setting changes to suit her style all on her own, I have not helped one bit.

My personal walk with Ubuntu has also been fruitful. I keep trying to stump it with software needs and I keep coming up with a very useable solution. I thought I had linux with dreamweaver... HA! got you! no dreamweaver!........ I lost that one. Dreamweaver CS3 runs under wine fine. But there is also a open source dreamweaver that works very well. It's called Kompozer and it actually renders CSS better than dreamweaver. I was able to edit a blogger template visually in it, while dreamweaver looks a bit funky. Heck even filezilla, the best FTP client is linux native now.....

Oh and I have Sony Vegas 9 running under wine. Have not tried a Firewire capture with it, but I rarely use a firewire camera anymore... My JVC prosumer uses a hard drive, and you can convert the .TOD files under linux to MPG easier because ffmpeg will simply strip the extra bits and leave the files perfect. Linux wins with that camera over my MAC... although I still prefer Final Cut Suite...

Skype on Linux works great even with a video camera as well...

Ubuntu at home: Week 2.5

2010-03-09T16:40:00.003-05:00

Just a quick update.... I grabbed a old Mustek scanner from the basement pile of junk and hooked it up to the Test Ubuntu PC. It worked without drivers. Try THAT with windows. My wife is still happy with Ubuntu taking over her laptop. She is 100% microsoft free except for the copy of IE that is installed under WINE for accessing the State websites that are IE only. She has mentioned that her laptop is a LOT faster than with XP. Granted I bumped the ram to 4gig and added a 7200rpm 250gig drive.. But her laptop would not play youtube video smoothly under windows. It's perfectly smooth even in HD under Ubuntu Linux. Not bad for a old outdated single core 1.66ghz dell laptop with intel graphics.

It gave the laptop new life, plus she is immune to all the viruses and spyware out there. Yes, ALL I know of the 4 linux viruses and 12 trojans. All of which require you to download and run them plus give them root access. If windows required all that work to run a user app as administrator it also would have almost no viruses or spyware. It's this same principal that keeps Mac OSX machines clean of viruses and spyware without running a scanner.

Ubuntu at home: Week 2

2010-03-06T09:23:00.002-05:00

This week I threw a lot of hardware at the linux box. even my M-audio Xsession pro DJ console works, along with a crappy labtec usb webcam I found in the basement. I have skype installed (easier than a windows install, that was cool!)

Youtube works fine, probably because I made sure to install a 32 bit linux. Flash sucks under 64 bit linux because adobe is dragging their feet. All of facebook works just fine as well... Actually all of the internet except for silverlight and Active X sites work. Or the ones designed by webdevs that cant code to HTML specs, you know... I.E. 6 only websites.... This is the same experience that OSX users get.

I was not able to get my UareU thumb scanner working. I found some detailed info on how, but honestly this thing did not work well under windows, so I dont expect a miracle with this uncommon device.

One interesting note that Ubuntu does that windows does not. the junk hard drive I threw into the box is failing with excessive bad sectors. Windows ignores this ... Ubuntu gave me a warning that the drive should not be trusted to live much longer... That's cool.

Best way of dealing with JVC TOD files Convert to mpeg

2010-03-05T21:55:00.005-05:00

I love my JVC GZ-HD7 High Def hard drive semi-pro camera. when ran in Manual mode it works awesome, but it records as wierd "TOD" files. They are actually MPEG files but with some junk bytes added to each frame. Why? to avoid paying MPEG royalties. The handy part is that it's easy to convert them to real mpeg files... You dont need their crappy software or any special applications. All you need is the open source ffmpeg library. It's available for Linux OSX and windows.

Install it on your pc and then simply issue the following command....

ffmpeg -i myclip.TOD -acodec copy -vcodec copy myclip.mpg

This will process it incredibly fast but only strip out the garbage 4 bytes. No conversion is actually done, no re-encode, it's preserved 100% and converted to a real HD mpeg 2 file as it was recorded in the camera.

The cool part is that you can easily script that command in a Unix or OSX environment. Windows people are stuck having to come up with a way to automate the command.

Ubuntu at home : week 1

2010-03-02T14:00:00.002-05:00

A quick update on the Ubuntu Experiment at home. Things have went well, after installing the mediabuntu extensions, mp3's, flash video websites, and other media now works great. Lynne has discovered several games on it that she likes and installed. one major downfall is that it's NOT readily apparent how to get the Nvidia non-free drivers installed so that 3d acceleration works. It's a simple task but took 1 hour of googling to get the real answer among the hundreds of convoluted solutions. out there. Honestly, Ubuntu needs to swallow their pride and make a simple "click me to install Nvidia non free drivers" button on the desktop right after installation.

My own experimenting has uncovered several apps that install easily. I'm ripping DVD's to mpeg 4 files without effort as Handbrake is a no-brainier install (it does require you to install VLC to work, something that is not mentioned on their website where the download is.) Ripping CD's to mp3 is going good and even ripping Last.fm streams are working.. (I'm a ripper by nature) The old Pentium 4 3.0gig processor plays back a 720p Mpeg 4 decently to my surprise.

I even found a cool DJ program called Mixxx that replaces my VirtualDJ software package from years ago.

The Printers in the house are all working good without driver installs. I'm still trying to get the Artisan 810 scanner to work, but that is a smaller issue as you can walk up to the unit and scan to a thumb drive. The biggest problem is getting her iPod connected and syncing. The biggest problem I have is that nothing on linux replicates apple's software. She wants her pod-casts to automatically sync and delete the ones she heard. Everything linux treats the ipod as a usb storage device... Great for me, bad for the wife. she wants automatic.

A return to Linux: a review of Ubuntu Linux

2010-02-24T17:29:00.009-05:00

I have been a linux guy ever cince the pre 1.0 release days. I cut my teeth after the home PC on a real os with a login to a local BBS as an admin on a Unix machine, a Cromemco running Cromix. I moved to Xenix and discovered how a real OS was compared to the toy that dos was. So when linux came around I was all over it. Up until 5 years ago I always had a *nix machine. But about 5 years ago Linux became "unusable" for me at home. Video editing was my new hobby and you simply cant edit video on Linux. the apps out there at that time and even now are an utter joke and useless for anything but cutting together your home video. I needed composting ,real editing , real soundtrack software and graphics software. so I migrated to the Apple world and lost sight of Linux.

I've used linux though for the past 2 years with XBMC on a dedicated media center pc in the living room, that works fantastic, in fact it works better than the Windows XP Media Center edition running every one of the media center apps available. I spent a year trying to get a media center in the house that was family friendly... only XBMC was able to deliver... but that was then, this is now. I dig up an old PC from the basement and downloaded the latest ubuntu. I haven't tried Linux on the desktop for quite a while. My favorite was mandrake before they went all greedy, The one that was dearest to my heart has always been Slackware... but that has never been "easy to use" but more of a hot-rod dragster Linux. It's time for a linux test run just to test the hardware out. Boy was I surprised.

Ubuntu's install is now incredibly simple, in fact it's easier than windows from XP to Windows 7. I answered a couple of really easy questions and one hard one. The hard one was, "I want to erase all of your hard drive, can I do this?". that question can be incredibly difficult for newbie or non techie users. I simply clicked along on the next button, selected my timezone, and off it went... installing ubuntu. A bit later I was greeted with a Cd drive open and the screen asking for me to remove the disk and press enter. I complied, and the computer rebooted into a very VERY friendly user interface.

Everything was easy to use I did not need to install any drivers as it already did that for me. I was on the internet surfing the web, checking email, and writing on my blogs. Even Open Office dot org was pre-installed. I have a full office suite out of the box!

Everything was easy, installing new software was even easier, I like handbrake on the mac for ripping my DVD's to mpeg4 files on the media center, so I went looking, Ohh there's a linux version and there is a ubuntu installer! click to download, click to run, it installs everything it needs and it's all done. I even have an icon in the media menu! Adding other software is even easier as I discovered by paying attention to the start menu. There is a software center that will let me browse and install apps with a single click.

Linux, specifically Ubuntu linux is Grandma and Mom ready. for two simple reasons... It will NOT get full of viruses and spyware for you to clean out every visit, AND via VNC or even log-me-in you can easily help them remotely if you need to. Not having to fix and clean a PC every week because the user is not a computer expert is a holy grail for any tech person. It's easier to use than a Windows PC, Far FAR cheaper as there are no licensing costs, and most software someone would want at home is available free for it with a single click. But the big test is a real world non-techie. can they use it? My wife will be the test subject. Yes that will do nicely, use family as guinea pigs!

My wife will be using linux for 2 weeks and I'll update everyone on her progress as well as her opinions of what she thinks of it's ease of use and how it meets her needs....

ASus T91MT review

2010-02-23T10:13:00.003-05:00

I got my hands on a Asus T91MT for using as a crestron Touch-panel at work. This comes with Windows 7 which is a shame.... It's DOG slow. My first steps to making it less slow are to remove a ton of the bloatware installed on the unit. There is a large pile of garbage software included. This all needs to go away to speed up the unit and give you space back.

It's built nice, as good as any netbook, and it stays in tablet mode well. Tablet mode is a low power mode. so things will run slower. youtube video is useless on this. Horribly choppy.

The screen is OK, not as bright as my Acer aspire one. which is a disappointment.

Asus should have sent these with XP tablet edition. It would have ran fast and worked well. This may be what I do to it if I cant get the speed of the machine up to usable.

It's not worth the almost $500.00 it costs. I would buy it for $400 though with it's shortcomings.

Because you are all Dirty Thieves.....

2010-02-22T09:45:00.003-05:00

Well they did it, they made it "illegal" for bluray players to output unencryptred analog signals....

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=2849

to qoute: "The "Analog Sunset" will be staggered. New players after December 31, 2010 must limit analog video output of BD content to interlaced standard definition (480i/576i). Then, 2013 is the expiration date for analog video: no player that passes "Decrypted AACS Content" to analog video outputs may be manufactured or sold after December 31, 2013."

Yes this is old news, but it's the first I heard of it because they are intentionally keeping it quiet. Honestly it's time to buy your blu ray player NOW to avoid getting a crippled one, and I'll bet they will send out a "update" for all current players to enforce the disabling of analog HD.

It's all because the content industry thinks of every single one of you as a dirty thief. All you want to do is steal their precious precious content.

All I want to do is use my HD gear for as long as possible. It looks like I wont be buying a new Blu Ray player and holding onto my old out of date one.

Review of the Dual XML8100/XML8110 ipod stereo

2010-02-18T12:37:00.006-05:00

I have been in search of something very specific for my car audio needs. I dont want a cd player, Cd's are dead, I have everything I want to listen to in my ipod. Problem is most car stereos really stink at ipod control. JVC has horrible navigation for ipod use, you will crash your car trying to find a favorite podcast with most car stereos. I want to control my ipod from the ipod in an easy to see location. I also require bluetooth integration. not only for answering the phone but for streaming audio from my cellphone. I found a few candidates that fit the bill, but after buying all the parts needed, I would have over $600.00 in car stereo excluding amps, speakers, etc... I also work in the city so a nice shiny fancy stereo is a sure fire way to lose a window and have the dash ripped apart because a scumbag stole your stereo.

So I wanted clandestine, with blue tooth, and good ipod control. The Dual XML8100 is what I settled on. It's a ugly beast, but it does the job, kinda....

First of all, no other stereo out there can beat this radio for ipod control. it cradles your ipod right there on the stereo. the ipod touch makes it super easy and safe to select what you want to listen to and does not require deep though to select a playlist or podcast. Super easy, very little attention draw away from the cars outside or the roadway.. I'm happy as a clam! well kind-of. to mount this in the car required me to build a custom mount that held it out an additional 1/2 inch to clear the trim plate on the van. the flip down needs to not touch anything and it tends to get in the way. I cant have a super big coffee cup in the cup-holders anymore and I cant see the top slider of the heater controls.

Sound quality is good, surprisingly good considering the brand. line in works cleanly and then you also have AM/FM.... this one is disappointing. The receiver in the XML8100 (the XML8110 is the same item, just a different model so walmart wont have to meet someone Else's price) is crappy at best. It sounds good but it cant reject strong adjacent channel interference to save it's life. the sensitivity is also horrid. a station that my tired old JVC cheapo could pull in clear in my driveway was static on the XML8100. If you don't care about FM radio, then this is not a big issue to you.

On to blue-tooth. you have to buy an additional module that you can find most places for $50.00 This is a good thing as you can mount it up by your mouth on the headliner to get great audio. it syncs easily and works great. when a call comes in you know it no matter how loud the stereo is, and it's simple to answer and hang up. and even voice dial from my nokia while it's buried in my pockets if I can time an exact 2.5 second push and not accidentally get to 3 seconds that start a pairing function.. another problem is that the display that shows the calling number is not visible... It's on the front of the flip down. so if your phone does not have voice caller id you have no idea who is calling.... epic fail Dual.

Fora total of $150.00 plus 2 install kits I was able to cobble into a mount I needed for my van, I have an easy to use Ipod stereo that will play music from my blue-tooth a2dp phone and kinda answer a call once. It's a great concept that fails miserably(see update below). It's ugly so no thief will steal it is also a bonus.

Dual simply rushed it a bit. the display should be the same inside and out, also the flip down is a big problem for installers, slide out would have been better. they promise a iphone app for the stereo to make up for some of the control issues, but I highly doubt we will see it, or it will cost $29.95 to further suck money out of their customers...

UPDATE: Fast Forward 1 month. Bluetooth functionality is crappy at best, un-useable at worst. On a call it's great, caller is clear, they can hear me well and they dont hear any road noise. problem is I need to reboot my phone after EVERY call. No this is not a problem with my phone, as it does this to 3 different nokia phones and 2 different Motorola phones. The stereo does NOT disconnect from the phone for end of call, so the phone is stuck in a audio connection that will not release without shutting the phone off or the car stereo off. Plus the controls for bluetooth are completely screwed up. to do a voice dial I need to hold the call button down for 2.5 seconds. Problem is Dual thinks that nobody does this so they programmed the stereo to enter pairing mode if you press it for 3 seconds. Plus to hang up you dont press the hand up button, that will only mute the call. you have to press and hold the end button for 2 seconds, but you better let go fast because if you hold it for 3 seconds it disconnects completely from the phone. Dual did not even test this when they were designing it.

Honestly you can buy a higher end stereo with a real blue-tooth interface for only $100.00 more in price. I strongly suggest NOT buying any Dual car stereo for bluetooth calling. save a little more money and buy a real stereo where they actually test things for saleability before they start selling it. Oh, the iPhone app is still non existent and from what I have been able to get from some of the forums, it probably will never arrive.

If you have to buy a stereo for a car you are selling, or park in a place where it get's broken into nightly, then buy a Dual car stereo. Otherwise, if you really want to have a stereo that works, look somewhere else.

Cant receive FM clearly, does not display the caller number on the inside display, no play pause button on the face, and bluetooth is borderline un-usable.

Fixed Dell bluetooth on Windows 7 for my studio laptop.

2010-02-17T10:50:00.002-05:00

http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R205174.EXE

Install that. It fixed my bluetooth on my Dell studio 1737 laptop under Windows 7.

Strange how Dell wont tell anyone about it, yet a VISTA installer for a different laptop works and fixed it. Dell is becoming 100% worthless with their tech support.

Lack of anything useful in Linux for Tablet computing.

2010-02-16T08:10:00.003-05:00

I am back in the corporate world after my stint at a Start-up... I enjoyed the work but I need to be able to afford a decent apartment and basic components to life... I.E. food, car maintenance, entertainment.... So I'm back in the corporate life, but I want to do it my way with better data management. I got myself a Asus T91MT tablet/netbook. I'm using it as a tablet only with one-note for meetings and projects, even Microsoft project is pen enabled! I'm really enjoying this but I wish I could do this with Linux to deliver even better performance and simply to be different. So I went searching for the first time in 4 years for tablet computing apps for Linux. While Distros like ubuntu handle the hardware almost perfectly out of the gate, there are ZERO apps that are for tablet computing. nothing for PDF annotation, nothing for pen based Note taking, nothing to leverage the power of a tablet in a meeting or in a business setting. It's great for web-surfing, useless for social media (in tablet mode) and alas leaves a tablet PC as a glorified toy.

Linux software writers really need to create a better one-note and other pen enabled apps for Linux. I would also love to see photos apps or other items that are Multi-touch enabled as well, but Multitouch on laptops is still rare as hens teeth.

Until then, Linux stays off my tablet and I have to suffer with Windows 7 starter edition and the windows apps that will let me do what I want.

I really wished I could make my way back to linux on something I use day-to-day. But the laptop needs vertical apps that are windows only and wont work under wine...

Android car stereo update..

2010-01-13T14:34:00.004-05:00

Got it running in a VM, I'll get the hardware on it's way and start a live build soon. My current vehicle cant use a double din so I'll have to use a lilliput flip out touchscreen and a microITX in a seperate box as the brains. FM radio is possible as the dash-pc guys have built one that costs $200.00, which moves it way down my list. I do not listen to FM radio except for NPR on saturdays. So Mp3's and podcast only capabilities will be first to get working as well as Sirius radio. GPS will be a no brainer, and navigation should be easy with the ton of android nav programs out there.

That is the exciting part. as soon as it's working I'll have a RAFT of apps for my design instantly. That's something that none of the other car computer guys can say or have.

Basing this on Android is a HUGE advantage.

The Android Based Car Stereo....

2010-01-12T11:33:00.002-05:00

Ok, I got my hands on Android X86. Ran it and though it was super cool. I instantly though of a use. The car stereo. Why does microsoft get all the fun. WE dont have a good car stereo automotive PC platform to hack on and this would create it.

Imagine, the dialer uses your cellphone via bluetooth. the camera can use a usb camera mounted behind your rearview mirror. all the functionality can easily be used PLUS gain navigation and other goodies. it already has a great mp3 app for music. and writing apps for it is easy, it's android!

Simply add in support and a app to use the Sirius rs232 radio and you now have satellite radio. Add in a USB FM tuner with RDS and you have the FM radio. CD is not really needed anymore so just dont put it in there.

Batch 4 of the Hard Cider/ Apfelwein

2009-11-09T20:02:00.002-05:00

Ok I finally got around to starting batch 4. I know, It took me several months to get around to it. I got lazy...

Changes...

Cote de Blanc yeast. A friend suggested it as it makes a sweeter wine. I also cut the sugar in 1/2 but added an extra can of concentrate to make a total of 11.

I will do primary fermentation as normal, and then rack twice same as batch 3. Straight apple. I am never doing a flavored again in fermentation. I'll flavor after in the bottles.

Cool tent....

2009-11-07T14:04:00.004-05:00

got me a very cool tent for camping. No you will not be backpacking this one. It's a 2 person "cot tent" from cabelas. We went to their store in Chicago and found one on the "clearance" section for less than 1/2 the price of new. It had a stain and scuffs as if someone bought it, used it, and then brought it back. They normally cost over $290.00 plus shipping and at 50+ pounds due to a steel frame that can hold nearly 600 pounds shipping will be expensive. The cool part is it takes 30 seconds to set it up, and 30 seconds to tear it down. No more 20 minutes to pack the tent in a rush or 40 minutes to pack it right. I am sure it will fit on the motorcycle trailer for some great 2 up camping trips. It is very comfortable. both of us in it feel comfy and have enough room to turn over without bopping the other person. it is set so that two guys can sleep in it head to feet, It has cup holders and stuff pockets at each end. Plus it has a full rain fly with flaps that can be staked out for sleeping in a strong thunderstorm. My only concern is any splashing rain getting the underside wet, I wish the rain fly went all the way to the ground.

Heavy, bulky, and it wont fit in the back of the Aztek without lowering the seats. BUT it will fit on top of a larger motorcycle trailer as it's 53" wide by 32 inches by about 7 inches folded.

Period Camping, fall faires, and unemployment.

2009-10-13T09:58:00.002-04:00

Well, I've been busy. Lost my job to the monster that is the economy. had to replace the entire ignition system on my motorcycle, and had a Fall Ren Faire to go to. Starting with the Faire, I ended up as the "camp cook" and have been enjoying it quite a bit. It's rather fun to make a huge pot of beef stew and feed everyone in the camp.

I decided that if I am to continue Faire stuff, I need to make it myself. I need period boots, but I am unwilling and unable now to part with $350.00 for a good pair of boots, Becoming unemployed really cuts your income down hard. So I'm learning to make shoes in my spare time between job searches and duties at home.

Most of my other projects are on hold until I get a new job, I am probably going to have to relocate as Michigan is the worst place to get a job, It's been this way in the state for 5 years now, I really feel bad for people that own a home here and lost their jobs. They have to destroy their credit to live by walking away from the house and let the bank take it. You cant sell a house unless you give it away around here, and if you don't have a job, you cant get a job that will pay enough so you can pay your $800.00 a month house payment.

I'm keeping my spirits high. I'm very employable and a job somewhere will turn up, I hate the idea of leaving my friends behind, but I have to work.

A lesson about being nice and open...

2009-08-31T09:32:00.002-04:00

The beginning of this year I came up with an Idea. I shared that idea with friends online at a favorite motorcycle forum. The idea I was coming up with was innovative and designed for a SPECIFIC classic motorcycle.

A friend of mine on the forum sent me a link to a Ebay auction, I checked it out and there is my idea for sale. This guy stole my idea, and is selling it as if he came up with it.

Be warned, if you post your idea with any details, there are lots of people out there that will gladly steal your idea and pass it off as their own. Dont give details. Dont post pictures of it.

The biggest thing that bugs me is they guy claims it's his idea, It's not.

My first Mead.....

2009-08-26T19:32:00.003-04:00

Got a OK deal on some Michigan wildflower honey. I'm gonna make my first mead.

Here is my base recipe...

10 Lbs of Wildflower honey.
2.5 Gallons of clean water
2 teaspoons of Yeast Nutrient
2 teaspoons of yeast energizer
1 packet of Lavlin 71b-1122 yeast

I'm going to heat the honey and water to the 180deg mark simply to mix the honey and water better. Let it cool in the fermenter for a day with a couple of crushed camden tablets just to be sure. then pitch in the yeast + last ingredients and give it a stir.

Ferment for 3 weeks or until done bubbling, rack, let sit until clear, bottle it.

This is a very simple Recipe for a plain medium/sweet yeast. Good starter and well tried. as I have over $30.00 in honey invested. I wont be giving this one away as much. Too much money invested. when all done I'll have $3.00 per bottle in ingredients and consumables alone, plus $1.00 for the bottle and $0.10 for the cork. No freebies for everyone this year.

as soon as my yeast shows up, I'm going to start the process. I will also start a cider at the same time using the same yeast.

I really wish I could find a local farmer that would sell it in a larger quantity for cheaper.

Note: I was harsh on batch 3. After aging it has mellowed a LOT. becoming drinkable as it ages. Let's see how it tastes at 6 months.

Economy still stinks....

2009-08-10T21:41:00.002-04:00

It seems that the Economy is going to get far worse for me. I cant see having a job beyond the next 8-12 weeks. Sales at work have been near zero. I have been working hard to come up with new ideas but nobody is buying. New home construction is still incredibly low, and people are excluding things like structured wiring, theaters, and whole house audio. Companies that were larger than us have already disappeared log ago, we were able to weather it out for 6 months but it seems to me that the end is near.

Batch 3 is in the bottles

2009-07-01T21:00:00.002-04:00

Bottled batch 3. After 2 rackings it's as clear as water. Racked it all and tasted for the first time.

This is the first and last batch of Raspberry/Apple I will do. It's sour. Really sour. After adding a tablespoon of sugar to a glass it's still very sour. High octane, I'm feeling it already after a 1/2 glass though...

I hope that time will mellow this out. But until then I'm calling it a failure unless you like sour wine. Dont do raspberry.

Batch 4 will be batch 3's process but with apple only.

Summertime.

2009-06-29T13:28:00.002-04:00

Well I've been busy as all get out with the Ren Faires. Derbyshire is over as of yesterday, and only Bike Time is the looming Photography event left this summer unless we decided to green-light the Michigan Motorcycle Festivals book.

I rode 300 miles last week, I strapped a desktop computer and a full tube-type monster monitor to the bike and brought it to a friend. Kind of a test run for camping, the bike was full of gear for a 2 day stay and about 80 pounds of computer gear. I used a combo of straps and bungies to get it all secure. it did not move at all during the trip.

Updates on my cider/apfelwein....

2009-05-10T17:55:00.002-04:00

Batch1- what I considered a failure because in the bottles it had a TON of sediment and it was cloudy because of being made from freshly squeezed and unfilted cider ended up far better 6 months after bottling. I opened a bottle and shared with friends and being dry, it was still fantastic.

Batch2- I was worried about. I had a bottle explode. Soooo, I opened one and we drank it. It's carbonated, so I bottled too soon. it's crystal clear, no yeasty taste and a very little sediment in the bottles, but's it's fizzy! I need to do something before more wine bottles start shooting corks. It is far dryer than when I bottled it, this means I bottled way too early. 6 weeks is TOO EARLY! Still it tasted far better and had a LOT of flavor due to using a high concentration of the frozen stuff. I am very happy with the results, I need to make the process better.

Basically 6-8 weeks ferment. Rack into a clairification bottle and let set for another 4-6 weeks. This is the process I am using for batch 3.

If batch 3 comes out perfect then batch 5 will be ramped up to a 10 gallon batch. Batch 4 will be a repeat of batch 2 using batch 3 process modifications.

new toy: Sheevaplug...

2009-04-28T10:33:00.006-04:00

I have heard of these for a year now, I finally got the office to buy one for testing and evaluation. The Sheevaplug is a Marvell chipsets "plug computing" embedded network computer. It runs linux and is a cute little thing for many uses. for example, I'm using one to harvest images from the internet for touch-panels. Weather radar, etc all get's pulled to a single device and then the other devices pull from there. This eliminates internet traffic and allows smart decisions. If the weather.com radar is unavailable, grab it from another location.

There are a few things you need to do when you get your new sheevaplug. I follow the information I found at Cowlark.com and at the http://www.plugcomputer.org/ web pages and community. Lots of great info there. One thing that makes this sheevaplug different from the other embedded platforms available is that there is a nice apt repository set up for it. you can apt-get install most packages you need. Plus the SD card slot on the side allows me to harvest gigabytes of data without causing internal issues.

So here's a quick get-started for this neat little device...

First, the embedded Ubuntu distro that is in it is broken in a few places. Mostly by not paying attention. The first thing you need to do is SSH in after hooking it up.. root Password is nosoup4u, go into /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf and delete the supersede domain-mname-servers line. why that was in there to break dhcp DNS resolution I have no idea. save change and reboot.

NOW it has working network parameters.. Let's update it....

mkdir /var/cache/apt/archives/partial
apt-get update
apt-get install ntpdate
ntpdate pool.ntp.org

I want php and a webserver... so I add the following...

apt-get install lighttpd
apt-get install php5-cgi
apt-get install wget -- I do that just for fun wget is a cool tool to have around.

edit the /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

add mod_fastcgi to the server.modules

add fastcgi.server = (".php" => (( "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi", "socket" => "/tmp/php.socket" )))

Mine came with samba installed, so you can adda windows share for a usb driver without much effort.

it's a really cool device. I can see all kinds of uses for it.

RANT: Vista64 incompatable with everything.

2009-04-23T09:59:00.003-04:00

Ok, I gave vista a good shake. 6 weeks. And I hate it with a passion, specifically Vista64. It's incompatible with nearly everything. Almost NONE of the work software will operate on this thing. The last straw is that our backup software, the world class Barracuda Yosemite will NOT work under Vista64. I am tired of fighting with this. I know it's not Microsoft fault that the rest of the world will not support their OS, but they need to not force it down everyone's throat.

If you buy a new computer, be SURE it does not have Vista 64 on it. Demand Vista 32 so you do not have to fight with drivers, and software just not working.

I am done with it. Drive is getting formatted and I am going to install XP on this machine. It works, it does not cause issues with everything and honestly is a lot faster. I need to work and make money, not spend hours fighting with the Operating system

Bikes back together.... YAY!

2009-04-17T08:46:00.003-04:00

It's technically been together for a week now. But I finally brought it home and finished the important round of work on it. Panels are all on, Brakes are fixed and brake fluid changed.

I have been worrying about the paint job. When working this winter painting everything It looked really good, then I got it in the bright sun and all of a sudden I can see flaws I never knew were there. Oh crap! But, after several people have seen the bike and all of them are going nuts over it, I'm OK. Yes it was my first paintjob ever done by me. Yes I had a great friend help hold my hand and help me get it done that was good at painting. It's still not a perfect show paintjob.

I love how it looks, I guess that's all that matters :)

Details: All the paint is lacquer except for the primer/sealer and the clearcoat. I used a primer sealer that is an epoxy base, then sprayed Firemist orange lacquer, black for the graphics with erriedes special effect in the black, followed by some red and yellow candy colorings from airbrushing. Then I sprayed a red and gold metalflake in a clear over all that. top it all off after sitting for a week with a urethane clear that is a new type that has a lot of UV additive and is harder than nails.

time spent - 100 hours. I still have some finish work to do to get it done-done.

Apfelwine batch 2 update

2009-04-03T08:34:00.002-04:00

I had a bottle explode. Well it shot the cork across the room and emptied it's self on the floor. It seems that I screwed up batch 2. Even letting it sit for 6 weeks and then bottling it through a filter it was still too sweet to not completely stabilize it.

Batch 3 will be treated with wine stabilizer and let set for a week to make sure all the yeast is dead before bottling. I need to crack open one bottle and see what it tastes like. I am hoping it's not a doughboy like batch 1... I really hate the yeast flavor in the apple.

Spring Motorcycle work

2009-03-19T19:07:00.003-04:00

Spent the day covered in carb cleaner and gasoline. Ahh a wonderful thing. I'm finishing the repairs on the bike, rewired a few things and cleaned up others. Helped Steve get his bike fixed, we tore apart the carbs and cleaned it all up by hand. Put them back in and .... nothing... until we realized that the ignition fuse was funky. some sandpaper to clean the connector and my magical copper grease and it's starting and running like a new bike. Now he needs tires.

I got the Headlight problem fixed on my bike, upgraded the lighting systems and even rewired the speaker wires for fun. I got new loom to clean up all the wiring and a 136db bad boy air horn to install that will hopefully make more car drivers freak out or have heart attacks when they cut me off. Not looking fore-ward to the dumb car drivers, but glad I have a weapon that will fling the cellphone out of that persons hand by startling them even if their windows are up.

Cant wait to get the bike done. I still need to get it in to the shop for a trailer hitch so camping can be more enjoyable. but having a buddies 1979 classic running perfect for the first time in years is encouraging for this riding season.

REVIEW: Dell Studio 17" laptop

2009-03-09T21:07:00.002-04:00

I had to do it. My old work laptop was getting old and I was outgrowing it. It still worked great, dont get me wrong. But I needed more in my line of work. The tiny 15" screen was too confining, the tiny compact keyboard was getting tiring to type on. Also many times at job locations I'm in a customers theater in the dark making programming changes. So a backlit keyboard was high on the list. I priced things out at Dell.com and other websites and said nope. I cant justify paying $1200-$1500 for what I want. It stayed as a "someday" item on my list. Well this past week things changed. Super discounts at Staples made me think twice. I picked up this unit with Bluray, a full power dual core, backlit keyboard for only $699.00! Dell.com cant get me even close to that price so I do not know why Staples had is significantly cheaper.

The cool part about this laptop is it's expandability. It can handle 2 hard drives inside it. Yes it's a massive laptop, but I'm into getting work done and not looking trendy. The Backlit keyboard makes programming in the dark easier, and the fact I can upgrade all the way to 8 gig of ram is unheard of! Everything about the hardware is great. I love it. But IT came with vista. I have to use Windows at work, I have not tried to live with vista for any extended period of time and It's proving to me that it really is the dog that I know it as. I currently beta test Windows 7 and it hands down kicks the crud out of Vista. Easier to use, faster, smarter design, less dumb things like vista is full of. I will stick with it for a while longer, but that retail copy of XP pro I have (and that license sticker that I refuse to attach to anything) are waiting for me if I need it.

The hardware it's self is nice, it still fits in my laptop bag which is a bonus. Also the claims online that the battery life stinks... I have been working on this thing now for 2 hours without charging and I still have another hour left.

If you want a laptop that gives you desktop feel check out the Studio line. Also watch for killer deals outside of dell.

Detect and respond to a Thumbdrive getting inserted on Ubuntu.

2009-02-17T13:07:00.003-05:00

I decided to start automating my TV show setup. I have a separate Mythbox at my office and a different XBMC at home. Why? well XBMC is a far better Media center than MythTV will ever hope to be. Myth is an awesome TV recording system but it royally sucks at a media center.

I got tired of manually copying. so I wrote the following script...

#!/bin/bash

DRIVEDIR=/media/TV
VIDEODIR=/video/converted

DRIVEIN=$(ls /media | grep -c TV)
if [ $DRIVEIN = "1" ]; then
beep -f 200
beep -f 600
echo "Drive named TV detected. Starting move operation..."
mv $VIDEODIR/*.avi $DRIVEDIR 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null
echo "File Move operation complete. Unmounting drive..."
beep -f 900
beep -f 1200
beep -f 600
umount /media/TV
fi

It runs from crontab every minute (* * * * * /location/script.sh) and will do a copy to the drive from the mythbuntu box. The reverse at the XBMC linux box will move all files off and to the storage location there.

Apple-Raspberry Apfelwein(cider) batch #3

2009-02-15T16:39:00.003-05:00

With the apparent success with the last batch and recipe I am going to try something different. "old orchard" frozen Apple-raspberry 100% juice was on sale for $1.00 a can and I'm trying a different yeast based on recommendations from several people.

1 3-gallon better bottle cleaned and sanitized
10 cans of thawed juice
1 pound table sugar dissolved into water to make a thin syrup.
1 packet EC1118 yeast
3 campden tablets crushed and dissolved into the mixture at the end.

Same as before. I'm using 1 less can of juice because this stuff seems thicker/sweeter than the walmart cheapie apple juice. I dont want the mixture to be too sweet.

Started the batch today. Will pitch the yeast in 36 hours (monday night) to let the campden tablets do their job.

Initial tastes of Batch #2 were well accepted. It was sweeter than expected. but after bottling and giving a friend a bottle of what was left over on the bottom and it sat for a week, something smelled off. I'm going to uncork one bottle in another week to see if everything in the bottles is OK.

Notes from Batch #2 - I did NOT rack to a second better bottle at 4 weeks. I let it got the full 8 weeks in the same bottle. I will be doing the same this time except I will rack off to a second bottle at 8 weeks and let it clairify/finish for 4 weeks in the second bottle before filtering and bottling.

Notes on the wine filter. DO NOT FORCE IT. it will take several hours for it to filter. Dont get in a hurry and BURST the filter like I did by pumping. Let it filter and gently restart the filter when it stops with a little pump action.

Threats of Spring and Thoughts of Riding.

2009-02-10T09:25:00.002-05:00

It's popped up to the 40's this past week but today, at 58 degrees I've got the motorcycle itch hard. I have not finished the sanding and buffing on the bike let alone the re-assembly of the luggage, trunk, etc... or the replacement of the front wheel bearings, chrome polishing, wiring changes, upgrading the light bulbs in the dash. Basically I got paint shot on the bike parts and half of it buffed.

I hate it when mother nature taunts me.

All the Fruits of spontaneous creativity.

2009-02-06T08:57:00.002-05:00

I was "bored" at work this week. It's slow and I hate busywork so I started a unauthorized project. A Twitter Client for Crestron. I noticed that a lot of people wanted one, I wanted one, so I started down that path. Yesterday I finished it and demoed it to the boss.

He loved it as soon as I explained what twitter was and how big twitter has become.
I'm refining it up today, and we are going to sell it to crestron integrators starting next week.

So now my toaster CAN twitter. (crestron can detect if the toaster is on or off, so in theory it can twitter when the toast pops up.)

The Economy caught up with me.

2009-02-04T09:05:00.002-05:00

yesterday, dreaming of spring when I can finish my motorcycle and ride in the wind, Ren faires, overall getting away from the snow. Care free, took my wife out for lunch, bought my daughter a Xbox360, verified the appointment for the plumbers to finish $4800 in work in the house, everything was doing great. got home and the wifes car is there, She's not supposed to be home for another 2 hours....

Economic Downsizing got us! Well her specifically. They let her go because they cant afford a full accounting department. She was upset, I mentioned how she hated working in a hen-house. She worried about projects not finished at work, I mentioned that she does not have to worry about anything there anymore. I did my hardest to put on the happy face and spin it as a positive. They just paid for her Degree, Now she has it free and clear. She was working hard daily with more and more work piled on, I told her that now everyone else get's to feel what she did all day.

Our income is cut in 1/2. This is gonna suck in a big way because a couple of projects that need to be finished will not have the financing...

I was hoping to cruise on unaffected at least 1 more year so that my daughter would be graduated from high school and we could look for jobs anywhere in the US instead of being tied around here. Funny how the world ignores your carefully laid out plans.

A personal Musical discovery, The Strumstick.

2009-01-31T10:34:00.003-05:00

I am starting back in to "rennie" mode with Spring approaching and I'm having to edit more Ren Faire video to produce 3 TV show episodes by the time May rolls around. I was looking around the goodwill auction site when I found a set of what I though were medieval lutes. Looking for things to "accessorize" and make the look of the faire more authentic and a good deal I bid on them and won. 2 weeks later I get them and was initially disappointed. One had cracked from being in subzero temperatures and zero humidity during shipping and they were far smaller than I though they would be. So I strummed them a bit though they were quaint and I might be able to sell them at the faire to get my money back... This morning I decided to inspect hem further and discovered some writing inside the sound--hole. I used the almighty google to look up the info found in the hole and discovered what these things were.

What I had were two things called a Strumstick and are one of the easiest to play stringed instruments ever invented. I have owned a really expensive Ovation Celebrity guitar for 5 years now and still have not learned to play it. Guitar is not a pick it up and play something in 10 minutes kind of instrument. This strumstick though... I was after tuning it and going through the first 2 lessons on the website was playing something that was pleasant and even my wife enjoyed. When learning my guitar there was not much of the smiling and enjoying myself during the first lessons, it was all disappointment and frustration, only by the 10th lesson did I start to play something that actually sounded like music and it was only 3 chords.

This strumstick had me playing the first bars of "piano man" and a couple of sing along rhythms in the first 30 minutes and then my fingers started to hurt.

This is one of those very VERY few instruments that are a perfect thing to give to those that want to learn an instrument but cant learn something complex. It looks very exotic, I was surprised by the quality of it's build. The neck and body are carved out of a single piece of exotic hardwood which makes it look very upscale.

The neat part is these things are cheap, you can buy them new for under $200.00!

I still am going to learn the guitar. This strumstick has renewed my desire to learn it, but I'm going to master this little guy in the next 3 months so I can play some tunes at faire!

Success in HD DVD ripping.

2009-01-28T08:46:00.003-05:00

The following recipe worked for my HDDVD ripping test. I am certian it will work for BluRay as well.

Step 1 you need a Windows machine. something beefy. 3.0ghz dual core at LEAST or this is going to take a while. I did my testing on a 3.2ghz single core Pentium 4. It took 52 hours to rip the HDDVD.

Step 1.5 Get a BluRay reader or write drive. You gotta read the disks, I prefer LG and Pioneer.

Step 2 you need to buy AnyDVD, the HD version specifically. This actually is the key to all this. without anydvd you cant crack the encryption. You have to have it and it's cheap.

Step 3 find and download Ripbot264 and follow it's detailed instructions to get it installed. This part is a tad tricky if you have ever installed any other ripping tools.

Step 4 clear out a huge swath of free disk space. King Kong took 50 gigs total during processing. It ended up as a 5 gig 720p HD mp4 file when I was done but ripbot needs all that space to do it's work. a really fast 500 gig drive is recommended. Faster the drive the faster the rip as a lot of this is disk intensive.

A LOT of the people out there ripping use the strange MKV format. I refuse to as it's not compatible with most media center systems. I rip to mp4 as almost all HD capable media centers will play this file. MKV may mature into somethign that will be compatible, but right now it's not and I'm avoiding it, I suggest you do too unless you like only watching the rip on your PC. I had some huge delays in my ripping by using a USB HDDVD drive (Xbox360 drive I got for $15.00) I am certain that using a sata Bluray drive will help a lot in speed. I rip and re-size to 720p simply because the quality difference between 1080p and 720p are minimal for 99% of all the movies released. and if you have a 720p set, it's a waste of your time to rip to the larger format anyways. when movies start getting release that have real 1080p quality, I will reevaluate my procedure, but even the latest digitally filmed releases don't look any better from 720p to 1080p even on a 108" screen. It's a limitation of the original film not the technology. And the older stuff that was shot on film, it's barely worth watching on HD. Films from even the 90's were so low resolution that HD does not give any benefit other than now you can see the film grain.

now you have a basic recipie to rip your BluRay and HDDVD discs to files for use on your XBMC or Media Center PC allowing you to safely store those high cost disks away from the kids and get the clutter out of the living-room.

Poor mans Automation Phase 3

2009-01-27T20:53:00.002-05:00

Crestron lighting control is right out. The light switches cost $300 each alone and need wiring or you need to buy the Infinet ones and a RF gateway for even more money. X10 is absolute garbage unless you like randomly functioning lights. But an X10 like technology that does actually work and is affordable is available. It's called insteon. It goes in your wall and uses wireless and X10 communication to control lighting. You can get a simple insteon controller and automator to run your system and home. Insteon works GREAT for smaller homes. 18 switches/loads or less. Apartments/ condos/ small homes it works great. You CANT just buy the switches and hope for the best. you need to buy the repeaters and gateways and locate them correctly.

There is a problem though, and it exists for ALL lighting control systems. If you home is IMPROPERLY wired like most were in the 20's-50's and dont have hot, ground and common all in the switch and then run the load line to the lamp, none of these will work. It seems that it was common for older homes to be wired wrong and run the power to the fixture and then split a pair of wires to the switch. This kind of home will need to be rewired correctly for the switches to work. X10 has some that work in this instance, but again, X10 is garbage.

The other drawback is if you use dimmers, you cant use CFL lamps. even the "dimmable" ones really hate automation systems. You can get relay based switches from insteon that will work great for CFL lights, but you dont get the cool fade on fade off effect.