I just used my second government issued $40 coupon towards the MaxMedia digital converter box. This is the first S-Video capable box I could find to purchase. The local stores near me do not have any s-video boxes, and only one online store has it. The government is controlling which boxes, and who can sell them. In any case:

Coupon eligible s-video converter box, with smart (and regular) antenna
input:
http://www.convertmy.tv/
The “maxmedia” model has s-video.

Find stations near you, and they type/size of antenna you’ll need:
http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx

My family has a large directional roof-top mounted antenna. We are pointing it towards Boston, and can get all the major channels in digital. If we had a smart antenna or an antenna rotator we could probably point towards NH or Worcester and get some other channels.

Smart antennas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_antenna

Some converter boxes have a special input for a “smart” antenna. The
smart antenna is essentially non-directional, but can determine what
direction a signal is coming from and tune to that direction and
eliminate other signals. I couldn’t find too many, but here is one:
http://www.summitsource.com/product_info.php?ref=1&products_id=6320

Order your coupons here:
https://www.dtv2009.gov/

I was able to successfully install my copy of DeLorme Topo USA inside my Windows XP virtual machine in VMWare Fusion on my mac. I was able to export all my map data from my last machine, and imported it no problem. I’ve got all my routes and data from all my bike rides from last year, and am ready to start planning this year’s Middlesex Century route.

I had to enable 3D graphics in order to get the 3D DirectX 9 view to work. VMWare says this is experimental, and that I don’t have the correct features in my graphics card, but it seems to work anyway. I won’t mind if it crashes once in a while. I usually keep the 3D mode off until I need to examine a way around a mountain.

I’m very happy with it running, this is the fastest I’ve seen this program move.

About a month ago I got a $100 coupon for a new phone with Verizon. I looked online then ventured out to the store to see what I could get. The chocolate was being promoted for $150 with a $50 rebate, so I got one basically for free. They programmed it, moved all my contacts and whatnot from my old phone over, and synced it with my bluetooth headset. So I left the store with a nice new deep red LG chocolate.

The phone has mostly the same capabilities as my old phone, but with a sleeker form factor. It does everything just a little better. The MP3 player works better, the camera is faster, the interface has more eye candy.

As far as MP3s and pictures goes, it still has issues. BUT, nothing I couldn’t fix with a perl script! The lowest volume for the Mp3 player was too loud for my little ears. The phone also caches ID3 tag info, only reads id3v1 tags, and doesn’t support long filenames. So, I wrote a script that reads an iTunes playlist, copies the files to a temp directory creating an MD5 hash based filename from the original name (with some salt sprinkled in to force filenames to change anytime I need to update existing tags). It also reads the id3v2 tags and pumps them into the id3v1 so the phone can read them, then uses mp3gain to force the lowering of the volume (just sets a “gain” tag – doesn’t actually change the amplitude of the sound). I then do an rsync to the memory card, and I’m a happy fellow with a 1 gig mp3 player built into my phone. The phone supports up to an 8gig micro sd card, but my wallet doesn’t.

As for images, I haven’t exactly figured out how it sorts them on the phone. In any case, I wrote an importer script that can read the phone images, or images from my digital camera – it assesses the date and time based on either the filename or the exif data, then renames the files to a sortable format, changes the modified times to match, and resizes the image if necessary. For the most part all these files are sorting in date order (with some weird anomolies) on the phone. I think it may look at the date accessed field, which is dumb.

I’m also using the calendar more on this phone, and I’m using bitpim on the mac to sync the contacts and calendar via bluetooth. I also found in the mac developers kit where you can create your own phone profiles for iSync, so if I ever have time I’ll take a look at that.

Talking about bluetooth, but not the phone – I’ve been very happy with my Logitech wireless bluetooth laser mouse. It syncs with the mac no problem, has decent tracking on multiple surfaces, great battery life, no dumb usb dongle to futz with, and fits nicely in my notebook bag.

I managed to live with Ubuntu for over a year. I learned to do almost everything that I used to do in Windows, and the few apps that I couldn’t find replacements for I ran in Windows within VMWare. Of course, my Ubuntu rig was never fast (much faster than it would have been running Windows), but with a 1.2ghz AMD chip and only 768 megs of ram, it was time for me to find a replacement.

When I found out my buddy Tev was upgrading to a new Mac, I dove in and bought his old one. And by old I mean, only a 2ghz Intel Core Duo, 2GB ram, 160GB HD, DVD burner, 13″, 3+ hour battery MacBook. He gave me a great deal, and included two power supplies, two batteries, case, iLife and iWork.

With a fresh install of Leopard I had to fight some of the newbieness of a new system, but now I feel I’m fairly up to speed. My time with various flavors of linux and unix definitely helped make this system my own. I got some of my favorite open source apps installed (audacity, imagemagick, gimp) and even figured out how to compile some of the command line tools that I like (burp blowfish encryption, mp3gain, etc.)

My first real tasks were to collect all my MP3s and photos from all my portable hard drives, old computers, current computers etc. and then de-dup all this to have a final definitive collection of both. I used iTunes to import all my MP3s from the various sources. A few perl scripts helped find the most basic duplicate files, but then I moved to Dupin to do some serious work.

Photos were a lot more difficult. I needed to de-dup them before importing into iPhoto. So, again, a perl script to remove exact file duplicates. Then I slimmed it down with a mac app called Duplicate Image Detector. It was fairly easy to use, but only did the most basic duplicate finding. For advanced visual duplicate removal, the only tools I could find were for windows. No problem, I was able to move my existing vmware windows image from my Ubuntu box over, and it ran directly in Vmware fusion on the mac (I’ve also got Ubuntu running in a VM!). The best results I got, even though the program frequently crashed and just blinked itself out of existence, was with DupDetector.

So, now I’m at a point of actually using the computer to stay organized and be creative. I’m organizing photos, and trying to decide whether to use iPhoto to export to Picassa or Flickr (I’ve given up on rolling my own photo site). I’ve also bought some gear to start recording music again, so I’ve got to play around with Garage Band.

Of course, summer is just around the corner, so I’ll be busy biking and towing the kids about. I’ll have to compute in my spare time (but with 3+ hours of battery life maybe I’ll just bring the Mac along on my bike rides!).

We received our set of two $40 coupons from the government for our digital television converter boxes. We don’t have cable or dish or any kind of subscription TV at our house. We have a good old fashioned antenna on our roof. We live about 30 miles outside of Boston, and I always thought our reception (with the big antenna) was fairly good. For a while we had comcast basic cable, and our over the air reception actually gives us better picture quality.

In any case, in February of 2009, all standard analog over the air broadcasts will cease. So, everyone that has a TV that does not have a digital tuner will need a converter box. Even if you have cable or satellite, in some extreme emergency situations the only way you’ll be able to get a TV signal is over the air.

I took our coupons to Best Buy for the converter box. They have only one model there, an Insignia. I was expecting the box to be about the same price as the coupon ($40), but they are charging $60, so I had to pay $20 out of pocket. The only outputs on the box are composite video or RF (modulates to channel 3). I was really hoping for an s-video connection, so I only bought one unit in hopes that in the next few months (coupon expires in 90 days) a model with s-video will be available locally.

I brought the unit home and hooked it up – it found 21 digital channels off my antenna – and they all look crystal DVD clear! I thought that I would only get the same channels as before – but no! Because of the increased bandwidth, many networks are broadcasting multiple channels. PBS (GBH 44) has 4 channels all to itself, including one just for kids. There is also the Qubo network, which appears to be also just for kids that only broadcasts in digital.

• https://www.dtv2009.gov/

My wife’s computer has been running slow and hot, so I figure it needs a re-install at least. But, recently she has been complaining about the USB ports, with the mouse loosing connection sporadically. Great. Of course she also reminds me how I didn’t send it back to HP while it was under warranty and what a schmuck I am.

So, to prove what a schmuck I am, I completely disassembled it. With screwdriver in one hand, coffee in the other, and Lonewolf Online: Disassembly of the HP Pavilion ze5400ea Laptop on my screen – I pulled out hard drives, memory, wireless, screws, ribbon cables, rubber pieces, cat hair and lots of dust. I hit the hugeoidal heat sync cooler thing with some canned air, and I think I removed a whole cat – a cat filled with dust.

When I was finally holding the motherboard in my hands I saw that the USB ports were in deed loose from the motherboard, and would require some careful soldering – much beyond my expertise. So, put the project down, took the kids out for the day, and returned later to re-assemble.

Yeah. Re-assembly.

Remind me never to take apart a notebook computer again.

Re-assembly was not fun. Especially when I got it all back together and it wouldn’t turn on. Of course, after I put the battery in it worked better. I only had two screws leftover, and it booted up and everything that should be working appears to be working. The screen has flickered a few times, so I hope it is just a figment of my wife’s imagination – otherwise I hope I can just re-seat the video cable.

Now that all the gunk has been removed, it is running a lot cooler. The fans can actually do something. And, to fix the USB issues I bought my wife a PCMCIA-USB card. I also got a wireless mouse for $15, and a retractable wired notebook mouse for $10 – but I’ll probably return at least one – she wasn’t too keen on either.

I bought my 2004 Mazda 6 new back in 2004. I have the Bose audio system with 6 disc changer. Ever since I bought it, I’ve been trying to find a decent way to plug in an MP3 player.

I found the Mazda6Club forum, but back when the car came out everyone was wondering the same thing and nobody had an answer. I tried an FM transmitter, but it was horrible. I upgraded to an FM modulator, which seemed to work okay. It was similar to an FM transmitter, except it gets plugged into the car power and directly into the antenna of the radio. It didn’t have any static (at first), but was kind of muddy and dead sounding. I didn’t really use it much until recently, and now when I went to use it I’d get about 10 minutes of muddy sound, and then it would start getting static. I bought the modulator used, so I imagine it was just on the fritz.

So, I went back to the forums, and, lo and behold, there was a solution! The Sylfex AuxMod Basic plugs into the factory radio, and emulates the optional tape deck. I installed this yesterday and, shebang, awesome direct plugged in sound. They are also making an AuxMod advanced, which will emulate the optional MD player – this will have the added ability to send signals to a computer or ipod to pass on the radio/steering wheel controls do the remote player. Since all of Mazda’s audio gear now shares components, this device will work on most newer Mazda’s. Getting this device was a lot cheaper than the alternative (replacing the car for one that has an audio input).

Installation was very easy, especially with my 2 year old son helping. He sat in the driver’s seat and made sure that all the buttons and dials everywhere within reach could all be turned, switched, etc. Here are the guides I used:

• Mazda6Tech: How-To Remove the Center Console
• AuxMod Basic install guide (pdf)

My buddy Google Reader sent me these great links today:

• Jon’s Blog: The Four Best Ways to Sit at Your Computer
  I’ve been thinking about bringing a yoga ball to work to sit on, except all my friends will make fun of me even more. You guys suck chat.
• CNET News.com: Gates keeps close eye on kids’ computer time
  My wife and I limit how much TV and computer time our kids get. We try to keep the TV between 30 and 60 minutes a day. Computer is usually about an hour a week for our older, nothing for the younger. Truthfully, we only let them watch that much TV because we need to get stuff done dangit! And when the TV is on they are focused on it, and not pouring out the legos and mixing them with playdough.

I have a Deskjet 722C that my wife and I bought in 1998, and the thing just won’t die. The printer is so reliable that I bought a second one a year ago for $10. The second one is installed at my office, and my coworkers prefer printing to it rather than the laser.

At home for the last couple years, I’ve had it connected via parallel cable to my D-Link DI-704p router. I had used this as my primary broadband router, but when I switched from DSL to cable and got Vonage, I got the Linksys WRTP54G voip (Vonage) wireless router. I set a static IP address on the old D-Link, plugged it in lan to lan against the Linksys, and have been using it only as a print server only. All my windows machines (which are all wireless) have been printing to it fine.

When I first built the Ubuntu rig, I tried connecting, but could never get it to print. So, today I plugged the printer directly into Ubuntu and… still couldn’t print. To make a long story short, I had to manually edit the printer driver’s config file (/etc/pnm2ppa.conf) – so that it includes the version number.

Before:
version
#version 720 # 710, 712, 722 also acceptable
#version 820
#version 1000

After:
version 722
#version 720 # 710, 712, 722 also acceptable
#version 820
#version 1000

Once I got it printing over parallel, I connected the printer back to the D-Link. I then setup a network printer in Ubuntu, set it to the D-Link’s IP address and print queue (which is “lp”), and yay! Network printing!

So, here’s my network. Cable modem connects to the Linksys WRTP54G, which does all routing, DHCP, wireless, etc. The D-Link DI-704p plugs in for printing, and the SMC 2655W 802.11b wireless access point also plugs in for more wireless. The old SMC 802.11b is a much more reliable connection than the new Linksys 802.11g, so I continue to use it. My Ubuntu box is the only PC plugged directly into the Linksys router, my wife’s windows notebook and daughter’s win desktop (and my work notebook if I ever bring it home) are wireless to the SMC.

I pulled the plug on my Gallery installation on BushelAndAPeck (password required). It is awesome software, lots of functions, one could say it is a little bloated. This combined with running on a massive shared server meant unacceptable response times.

So, I switched to the much simpler Plogger. So far I have been very happy, gets the job done and is very quick. I also went ahead and switched the photo album on this site.