jsierra.net

Add Monitors w/out Extra Video Cards

2007-12-28T12:43:00.000-05:00

Bwana sent me an article about a USB display adapter. Before this device existed, if you wanted to connect multiple displays to your PC you would need additional video cards in order to do it. Not with this cool little gadget! Just plug it into a USB port and connect a DVI cable into a display and voila! It display a max resolution of 1600x1200 on up to 6 monitors (you will need one adapter per display). With a price tag of $150 it's probably better to just buy cheap PCI video adapters if you have additional empty PCI slots. However, if you use a laptop then it's an ideal way to add more displays to it. Still a cool gadget, nonetheless.

We Made It!

2007-04-11T18:56:00.000-04:00

Finally, a new post! Well, we finally made the move to Jacksonville! We've been in the new home for a little over a week and a half, and are more or less settled in. The first weekend we were here, Jose and David helped me to unload the PODS we rented (that's singular not plural). Bwana even came by and visited for a little while, just in time to help us hang up the blinds!

I also installed a ceiling fan in the master bedroom over the course of several days. I really only had a chance to work on it in the evenings, and much trial and error was involved. I installed the same kind of fan in the office bedroom, and it took much less time. I actually was able to do it in just an hour or two after work one day.

Yesterday, our new desk arrived and Sheila and I put together that very same evening. The old desk we were using had seen much better days, although it was a pretty cheap-ass desk to begin with. We were up until about midnight putting it together. I was determined to finish the job, because I felt bad for Sheila being at home all day without Internet access. If it wasn't for my work laptop, I think we probably would have hooked up the computer and just used it on the floor.

We have just two more major "upgrades" to do to the house. This Saturday we're having a sprinkler system installed, which our lawn is badly in need of. Next Wednesday we get our water softener, because the water in Jacksonville is nutoriously hard. Along with the water softener we're also going to get a reverse osmosis filtering system for the sink.

Last week we closed on the sale of our home in Davie. Although we didn't get as much as we would have liked, I really cannot complain too much. Of course, the closing was Thursday afternoon and the banks were closed on Friday for the Easter holiday. Monday I got a call that there was a problem with the wire. Apparently Bank of America uses a different routing number for wires than they do for handling checks and ACH transactions. Fortunately, we had our money by Tuesday.

All-in-all we're all doing pretty well. Sheila is adjusting to all of the nature surrounding us. I think she's already gotten used to hearing the geese in the morning. Gabby is having fun running all over the house. Gatina is adjusting and spends most nights sleeping between us. I'm still trying to get used to working in a different office, after having worked in the Boca Raton office for the past seven years. The first week it felt like I was just visiting. This week it doesn't feel quite so much like a temporary visit. I'm sure by the end of the month it should become routine.

Upgrade to New Version of Blogger

2006-12-12T16:19:00.000-05:00

I was finally able to upgrade to the new version of Blogger yesterday. I think I have the template more or less looking similar to what it looked like before. It's great how the new version is designed to be modular. This makes it very easy to update the template without having to insert manual code. So far I'm really pleased with it, and it is certainly a major improvement over the old version.

Saving the World, One Light Bulb at a Time

2006-09-16T18:43:00.000-04:00

A few weeks back, I read an excellent article about compact fluorescent lightbulbs, or CFLs. Although they have been around for a while, they have improved drastically in recent years. They come on nearly instantly, do not make any noise, provide constant and consistent light, consume much less electricity than traditional incandescent light bulbs and last MUCH longer. According to the article, they are so energy efficient that if every household in the U.S. (110 million) replaced just one single incandescent with a CFL, it would be equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off of the road!

The article describes a campaign Wal-Mart is launching to promote General Electric's CFL products. Wal-Mart is aiming to sell 100 million CFL bulbs over a 12-month period. If successful, it could actually help everyone at the pump. Sheila and I have started doing our part, and have replaced at least a dozen incandescents with CFLs. I bought some of the GE bulbs at Sam's club, for less than $11 for 8 of them.

Unfortunately, they are slightly taller than traditional bulbs, so there were a few light fixtures where they wouldn't fit. However, today we went to the Home Depot, and I found some bulbs that were slightly smaller. We brought them home, and sure enough they fit just right. As it turns out, the bulbs we bought at the Home Depot (n:vision brand) actually work even better than the GE bulbs. The GE bulbs take about a half-second to come on, but the n:vision bulbs come on instantly. The n:vision bulbs are also rated for 10,000 hours, whereas the GE bulbs are "only" rated for 8,000 hours. The n:vision bulbs were slightly more expensive. I think it was about $7 for a pack of 4. I think due to the longer life and more responsive turn-on time, the n:vision bulbs are probably worth paying a little bit more for. So do your part, save the environment, help lower the price of gas, and buy CFLs!

jsierra.net Federates with Google Talk

2006-09-12T07:58:00.000-04:00

I recently set up Google Apps for Your Domain for my domain. At first, it seemed it wasn't possible to set up the required SRV DNS entries with GoDaddy. However, after looking around the Total DNS Control Manager, I saw it was possible to create custom DNS entries by adding TXT entries. I just set the value with the information as required by Google, and it worked like a charm. I was even able to set up Gaim to work with my jsierra.net chat account:

Screen Name:
Server: jsierra.net
Resource: Gaim
Password:
Use TLS if available (enabled)
Connect port: 5222
Connect server: talk.google.com

Gaim didn't work right away. Eventually it worked. I don't know if it was something I did in fooling around with the settings, or perhaps the new DNS entries hadn't yet propagated.

Gotta Love Gmail

2006-07-19T09:50:00.000-04:00

I know Gmail has been out for quite some time now, but today I needed some info on some computer parts I ordered over a year ago, and Gmail made it trivial to look it up. Although it wasn't the first time, I realized what a Godsend Gmail is. I then also realized that Gmail really has really changed the face of free email. Whether you have a Gmail account or not, you gotta love Gmail.

If you don't know what Gmail is, it is Google's free email system and in many ways similar to Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, etc. Before Gmail came along, typical free email accounts would have quotas on the order of 20MB or so. If you wanted more, you would have to upgrade your service and shell out a few bucks a year. In this day and age, 20MB is quite pitiful. With that type of quota, you have to go in and clean house relatively often. Otherwise, if someone sends you an email with some attachments, it would easily cause your mailbox to overflow, and you would never receive the message.

Gmail changed that by offering a whopping 1GB. With that much storage, you could esentially never delete an email again (at the very least, keep emails for a VERY long time). Soon afterwards the other freemails began to follow suit and dramatically increased their quotas as well. So whether or not you have a Gmail account, you have Gmail to thank for your larger mailbox. If Gmail hadn't been born, you would probably still be manually deleting emails and cleaning up your freemailbox.

One thing that still seperates Google from the others, is that Google's quota is still increasing daily. As of this post, it is 2745MB and counting. Of course, Gmail also gives you the great searching features you would expect from Google. Consequently, if you still don't have a Gmail acocunt and would like one, just let me know and I can send you an invite.

Google Notebook

2006-05-16T07:51:00.000-04:00

Last week Google announced that Google Notebook was coming soon, and yesterday it was released. I've taken a quick glance at it, and it seems like a great new product. It allows you to save snippets of useful information on web pages and organize it into "notebooks." You can create multiple notebooks and within each notebook create seperate headings. I would say it is somewhat like having hosted bookmarks, but even better since you can isolate the sections within pages that have the information for which you are looking.

My Latest Blogger Hack

2006-03-31T16:48:00.000-05:00

I've written a brand new Blogger hack called Dynablogger! It is a pretty slick rewrite of my prior hack for comment notification. This one provides notification of new posts as well as old posts with new comments. It also makes use of some nifty AJAX programming to load things on the fly without having to reload the whole page. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Take Advantage of Your Free Remote

2006-03-21T21:29:00.000-05:00

My standard cable remote control supported some simple functions for my TV such as Power On/Off, Volume +/-, Channel +/-, etc. However, for the longest time I've been very annoyed by the fact that it does not support more advanced functions such as input selection, TV menu options, picture-in-picture, etc. Recently I was able to find a lot of great info that helped to change all that and now I can use my Comcast remote control to do everything on my TV!

The model number of the remote control that they gave me with my Motorola 6412 Series III DVR is URC-1067ABG1. It is manufactured by a company called UEI. From what I've read, a lot of remotes that come with DVRs (TiVO included) and cable boxes are UEI remotes, and are all reprogrammable. CJH Engineering has good instructions with all of the important detail for reprogramming the remote. CJH even uses screenshots of my remote, but chances are yours might work too so give it a try.

Another resource I used was the JP1 Remote Control group on Yahoo. Once I joined, I went to tools folder in the files section and downloaded the Keymap Master spreadsheet. The spreadsheet allows you to import the programmable device codes for a plethora of devices. I went to the TV device code folder and downloaded the codes for my TV (an HLN-series from Samsung). The JP1 group has other great tools to use your PC for downloading codes to your remote (you will need some hardware in addition to the software tools in the group). Unfortunately, my remote doesn't support the JP1 interface. However, I was able to use the EFC codes to manually map all of the advanced functions of my TV remote.

For example, the advanced code for the PIP function on my remote is 213. To program it I did the following:

Press the TV button
Press and hold the Setup button until the TV button flashes twice.
Press 9-4-4. The TV button flashes twice again.
Press the Setup button.
Enter the 3-digit code, preceeded by two 0s (5-digits in total): 0-0-2-1-3
Press the button to map the code to (in this case, the PIP On-Off button)

Voila! The PIP button works! You can even program macros (multiple button pushes mapped to a single button)! You can also move buttons from one device to another. For example, you might want the PIP button to control the TV PIP when you're in Cable mode. This is another very useful feature to use. CJH has all of the info on how to do this. I never have to use my old TV remote again!

Unfortunately, I was unable to do the same button remapping for my home theatre system (a Panasonic HT700 series). The JP1 Yahoo group does have the EFC (Extended Function Codes) for it, however I tried them and they don't work. Now I have the same frustration I had with the TV, where basic functionality is supported. I can't use it for playing DVDs, selecting inputs, etc. Only the volume and power buttons work (at least they do, so I can use the stereo for my TV audio). The code I used to program the AUX on my remote was 1907. Hopefully one day I can find the EFC numbers for it.

Xenoppix

2006-03-07T21:59:00.000-05:00

Xenoppix is a customized Knoppix disk that includes Xen 3.0. This is a great way to test out Xen without having to install it to a hard drive. If you have an Intel CPU that supports Virtualization Technology, you can actually run an unmodified operating system with it. Knoppix is an ideal platform to use as a host system, as it provides excellent automatic detection of system hardware. I suspect (although have been unable to confirm) that it should be possible to use Xenoppix to run a Windows XP guest operating system. I wish I had an Intel VT CPU to confirm first-hand. The newest Intel Macs have VT support, so theoretically one should be able to use Xenoppix on it to run Windows XP and other operating systems.

Gabriella is Born!

2006-03-03T11:29:00.000-05:00

Well, she finally made it! Be sure to check out Gabriella's blog for the story and pictures.

Fetus With a Blog

2006-02-22T10:21:00.000-05:00

Our little baby girl may perhaps be the first fetus to ever have her own blog. Be sure to check out her website at http://gabriellablog.com. She'd rather have her very own blog rather than clutter up my site with the hodgepodge of posts that I tend to make. She'll be posting pictures up on her site as well as updates on what is new in her life.

Google Maps at Night

2006-02-21T13:45:00.000-05:00

Stumbled across Google Maps at Night today. I must say, this is a pretty cool albeit somewhat useless Google Maps hack.

Random Thoughts

2006-02-21T12:41:00.000-05:00

The other day some friends of mine and I started a new blog on just random things. Although much of the content is video-game related, we also mix in a lot of funny, odd, and interesting things we see from day to day. Be sure to check it out, you might become a fan.

Chat in Gmail

2006-02-07T05:53:00.000-05:00

There are some interesting new features coming to Gmail that integrate Google Talk with it. You can now save chats in Gmail and soon will be able to chat from Gmail. I'll have to fool around with this today and see how it works.

GAIM

2006-02-02T07:53:00.000-05:00

Those of you that use AOL's own AIM client, you may want to refrain from installing the latest update, AIM Triton. In typical AOL fashion, it is very bloated and filled with crap that you may not need or want. It is difficult to decide what is the most annoying thing about AIM Triton.

It takes forever just for it to draw a frickin' window. When a program fails at something as fundamental as that, you know it is time to unistall. It also installs extra programs such as Plaxo and AOL Explorer without giving you the option to prevent the installation. I've uninstalled it and installed GAIM instead.

I last used GAIM long ago, when experimenting with Linux desktops. Since then, they have developed a Windows client as well, and so far I'm quite pleased with it. It is very simplistic and through plugins gives you all of the functionality in AIM and more. Like Trillian it also has the ability to connect to multiple networks, so if you like it you can make it your sole instant messaging client. If you're an AIM user, I would highly recommend you abandon AOL's client and go with GAIM.

Gabriella's Baby Shower

2006-01-29T21:19:00.000-05:00

By popular demand, I've posted pictures for the baby shower we had last weekend down at my parents' house. Enjoy!

Creating Economic Value

2006-01-18T20:08:00.000-05:00

Lately, I've been thinking a lot of how some amazing companies, like Google and Wal-Mart, have actually created tremendous economic value. Both companies (and many others) help individuals and companies to make money as well as save. In doing so, they have provided economic impact and have facilitated economic expansion. I decided to "put my thoughts on paper" by creating a new blog called Creating Economic Value. Be sure to check it out.

New iPod and Musicbrainz

2005-11-21T22:53:00.000-05:00

Sheila's xB has a direct connection for an iPod. It allows you to directly control an iPod from the head unit. So yesterday we went to Best Buy and picked up a new 60GB iPod. I had some old MP3s, but the tags were a total mess. I didn't feel like manually editing everything, so I started searching around for a good automatic tag editor.

A while back I fooled with a program called Replay Music, which allows you to record music played on the sound card. The best feature is that it has the ability to try to figure out what a song is by actually analyzing the audio and looking up information in Gracenote's CDDB. I tried it out and it worked rather well. Very cool technology.

I figured if the technology was available to acoustically fingerprint streaming music, certainly there had to be programs out there to do it with existing MP3s. After a lot of searching I finally found the answer: Musicbrainz. Musicbrainz uses TRM to create the acoustic fingerprint that their tagger program uses to help correctly identify the tags for an MP3. I downloaded it, tried it out, and it works like a charm! I highly recommend it to anyone who has a lot of MP3s and needs to do a lot of retagging.

Sheila's New Car

2005-11-19T13:00:00.000-05:00

Last week we went to the auto show in Miami to find a new car for Sheila. Her old Sentra was dying on her and Gabriella is on the way, so it was definitely time for a new car. With gas prices being what they are and Sheila driving as much as she does, a large SUV was out of the question. We decided to take a look at hatchbacks and wagons for the most part.

The models that caught our attention were the Toyota Matrix, Pontiac Vibe, Toyota Corolla, Hyundai Tuscon, and the Scion xB. I had done some research on fueleconomy.gov and was a little surprised to see the Scion xB close to the top of the list for fuel economy. I previously thought the xB was somewhat unattractive, but after seeing it had a fuel economy of 30 in the city and 34 on the highway I began to reconsider my opinion.

The xB was one of the last vehicles we saw at the car show. We were all pleasantly surprised at how roomy it is inside, although very small on the outside. It really began to grow on me after sitting inside of it. We took it for a test drive the day after the auto show and fell in love with it. Although it is a 4-cylinder, it is not terribly loud on the highway. I've owned loud 4-bangers before and I think this one is the quietest.

It has very responsive handling for such a vertical vehicle. After the test drive I asked Sheila if she wanted to test drive the Tuscon, and she said she was sold on the xB. We went into the dealership, signed some papers, and anxiously began to await the arrival. It arrived 5 days later and we picked it up. I'm looking forward to taking it to Gainesville on Wednesday when we drive up for Thanksgiving.

Google Base is Live

2005-11-16T06:14:00.000-05:00

Google Base has gone live! It appears to be a hodgepodge of posts for anything and everything. It certainly may give eBay a run for its money, as certainly items for sale are within the realm of items that will be posted. It should be interesting to see exactly what unfolds.

Google Analytics

2005-11-14T07:38:00.000-05:00

In March, Google acquired Urchin Web Analytics, and cut the monthly service price from $400 per month to $199. It is a really nice web analysis tool, now called Google Analytics. They've now made it available for free! It's very easy to "install" and just involves pasting some simple code into your web pages.

Xen

2005-11-12T09:19:00.000-05:00

I've been fooling around with a new open sourcevirtual machine program called Xen, and now that I've got some things working, I must say that I am quite impressed with the stability and performance. If you have a spare machine and you want to try it out completely from scratch, you can find an installation CD here:

http://www.option-c.com/xwiki/Xen_Debian_Quick_Start

It will install a minimal version of Debian 3.1 (sarge) along with Xen. This will allow you to have Debian 3.1 as your Dom0 (host operating system). There are similar quick start guides for other distributions as well. The only fundamental change I made after the installation was to set up Dom0 to have a static IP address. You can do this just by editing the /etc/network/interfaces file. Rather than using DHCP, i set up eth0 like this:

iface eth0 inet static
     address 192.168.x.y
     netmask 255.255.255.0
     gateway 192.168.x.x

Once you have the host Xen system up and running, you can download images of other operating systems. I went to jailtime.org and downloaded Fedora Core 4. I extracted the disk images (has a primary partition and swap file), move the config file into /etc/xen and rename it to something easier to remember. I had to correctly set the paths to the virtual disks in the configuration file, as well as put the correct path for the kernel, /boot/xen-linux-2.6.11-ocxenu. Then I was able to start up the virtual machine:

xm create -c <configfilename>

The virtual machine works like a charm! The yum package manager is already set up with some mirrors, so I was able to immediately install additional packages I wanted with ease. Again, the only basic change I made was to make eth0 static. To do this in Fedora Core 4, I edited the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 file to contain:

TYPE=Ethernet
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=none
IPADDR=192.168.x.z
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=192.168.x.x
ONBOOT=yes

I'll probably fool with some of the other distributions jailtime.org has put together. As of right now, they have CentOS 4.2, Debian 3.1, Fedora Core 4, Gentoo 2005.0, and Slackware 10.2.

New Google Travel Search

2005-11-08T15:29:00.000-05:00

I found an interesting article about a new travel feature that Google is testing. If you search for the route (for example, "Fort Lauderdale to New York"), in the search results it gives you the option to select two dates. You enter the dates (by default it selects the current day and one week after for the return date) and then click on one of the travel sites (currently Expedia, Hotwire, Orbitz, or Priceline).

Google Local for Mobile

2005-11-07T17:09:00.000-05:00

Google has written a nifty little Java program for mobile phones that works with Google Local and Google Maps. If you have a web-enabled phone, visit http://www.google.com/glm. Although my phone wasn't listed, I selected Spring and used the lowest model # Sanyo phone, and the app works like a charm. Very cool! The only additional feature I wish it had was that it would take advantage of the GPS on the phone.