Archive for the 'Tech Nerdery' Category

Being Green is about more than being Green

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BigCat
on October 26, 2008
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Lauren and I have been trying to do better at recycling (unfortunately Minneapolis makes you sort it, so I forget a lot) and we have probably cut our actual trash in half or better in the last 6 months.

Also, I’ve been doing a lot of work over the last year for the solar market (CIGS solar to be exact), and I’ve been attending a lot of talks on Green buildings (particularly churches) at the conferences I’ve attended and I’ve had an interesting realization.

Being Green, particularly the principal of understanding where things you consume come from, and where the waste and other end products of consuming those things goes, and who that affects, can be really relevant to other areas of life.
( A application that matters to me )

So, let me know what you think. Am I over-thinking here, or is there a way you think that I or we as global citizens could be more ‘green-minded’ in areas that aren’t necessarily considered green.

Standards Matter

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on September 19, 2007
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To most people computers are about accomplishing a task. Getting from A to B as simply as they can, so to speak. Almost no one reading this really cares much about what file format you are saving that word document in as long as the person you are sending it to can read it. Likewise, you probably don’t care how these web pages get from the server to your computer, you just care that it works.
( Standards make things "Just work )

A good collection of software

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BigCat
on September 11, 2007
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This is a CD filled with some high quality free software.

http://softwarefor.org/

I can speak for the windows one in saying I use almost half of those programs on a daily basis, and have about 2/3 of them installed on all of my windows machines, and most of the cross-platform ones I have installed on linux as well. Also several others that I’ve been reading about on their website that I’ve never heard of appear to be hidden gems to me that look very useful and very well done.

Check the Questions and Answers section to see the list of software packages on the CD.

The Open CD is also a good project with a similar aim in mind, but I prefer some of the Starving Students CD software in comparable categories (i.e. I prefer uTorrent instead of Azureus for my bittorrent needs)

Beyond the Catlin MythTV Project

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BigCat
on August 9, 2007
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Current Mood: nerdy

Now that MythTV works (but alas, it still doesn’t output to my TV, and the HDTV signal is choppy as hell on the P3 1GHz machine), I am thinking beyond it to move my home to the next level.

For a while now I’ve talked about home automation, integrated with the computer network, available from the TV or computer. Something I thought MythTV could be extended to do.

Well, some other people have decided to not extend MythTV, but to build an over-arching program that controls MythTV, Asterisks PBX, some home automation stuff, and a bunch of other neat stuff.

It is called Linux MCE
(More details in this great video discussed here if you are interested)

I’m slowly building parts to work towards this, and here are the details on how.
( Parts list from a computer standpoint )

And there you have it, my next really big multi-year project. I’m just glad I know I can make the mythTV part work going into it.

A good article on migrating to Ubuntu Linux

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BigCat
on July 19, 2007
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Current Mood: nerdy

Over at Tom’s Guide Daily they are doing an article on switching to Ubuntu.

Link to article

While this is nothing new these days, I was particularly enjoying it even in the first page because of this paragraph.

Have you ever been some place you really didn’t want to be? I mean, have you ever really, really had a desire to leave but for some reason you just couldn’t? There was always something holding you back. Maybe it was circumstance, the comfort of your surroundings, or it was just too familiar (even though you know you should’ve moved on long ago)? Sound familiar?
Conditions like these keep many people tied to Windows. Those users feel there has to be an alternate way, but are unsure how to proceed. Well, there are alternate solutions to Microsoft Windows. Many are robust and allow users to make the migration with little knowledge and no loss. For anyone interested in finding the route out of Redmond, WA, please continue to read on. Today, we’re looking at the new face of Linux: Ubuntu.

Check it out if you have that same feeling. I know I had that feeling last summer when I made the switch, but it subsided after I got the feel of things.

MythTV project - Update 3

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BigCat
on June 17, 2007
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New Antenna is completely built, and working. I had to buy nothing, I had everything in the house that I needed to complete the design from the lumen labs forums that I linked to earlier.

The Pentium 3, 1GHz even with the GeForce 6200 isn’t exactly down with decoding the HDTV stream and displaying it well on the LCD monitor. I’m wondering if it will do better when it isn’t downsampling (the LCD is at 1024 x 768, and 720p is somewhere around 1398 x 720). I have the XvMC set up correctly as best as I can tell from the guides, and it looked a little better after it was enabled, but still it isn’t holding up all that great.

Also, I’m wondering if upping the RAM from 384 to 512 would work better.

But anyway, the cool part is that it is working, and it is doing what it should. I think next for antenna purposes I will either build a better version of the antenna I built and put it in the attic or on the roof, or just keep moving it around inside the house until I get a really good spot.

So, until we get the new receiver or the HDTV this project is pretty much done.

MythTV project - Update 2

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BigCat
on June 15, 2007
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I received the Kworld 115 Tuner on Tuesday. I tried to use this guide on mythTV’s wiki, but that alone didn’t give me everything I needed. Instead, if you follow my path and buy this card and run ubuntu, start here and follow the first 4 steps (ignore the modprobe step) for the ATI HDTV card.

So, I had to reboot, since I’m an idiot at getting linux to reload kernel modules properly. This then yielded lots of weird dmesg errors about readbyte and i2c or something when trying to load the nxt200x firmware.

But the analog signal part of the card worked…so it was at least part way there.

I somewhat figured out that it was a permissions issue. So I went to where the card is located.
/dev/dvb and it was adapter0

and I used the ‘chmod -R 777 adapter0′ command
and then rebooted.

This seemed to fix this error.

Now, I’m having trouble with signal strength, and getting it to lock on any one channel.

A while ago Barney pointed me to AntennaWeb which is a great start for getting antenna orientations down. But, today I found TV Fool, which is much better because it actually lists the real channels for the UHF signals that local stations use (instead of the 2_1 fake names). And it gives much more detail, which I need. See the image it created for me with all this information here. It is pretty freaking detailed….Electrical Engineers like these kinds of details.

Right now, I’m trying to play with antennas. This weekend I’ll probably build my own using these plans or some variation.

And, I’m trying to get a worked up channels list in the format that some video players use, called “channel.conf”.

I have yet to get the scripts to work that are supposed to make them for me. there is one called make_atsc_chanconf.pl that supposedly will do it, but for some reason I’m getting a “stationXML” variable something something error that I didn’t have time to look into deeply this morning.

My plan is to get this channel.conf file all set up for the local stations, and then try to turn on the TV software, and use the visual cue’s instead of the “lock / not locked” cues to aim the antenna. No one seems to have a good signal strength program that I can set to a single frequency and then just leave it there until I get the antenna aimed. And, since I don’t have the antenna aimed I’m getting no signals on any HD channels.

My hope is that this is an antenna problem, and not a hardware problem, but we shall see, and I will keep everyone updated.

The MythTV Project Plan

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BigCat
on June 7, 2007
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Current Mood: nerdy

I’ve been rambling a lot lately about MythTV, which is an open source project that aims for something akin to Microsoft’s Media Center application for Windows XP (MCE edition) and for Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate.

But it is a lot more than that, with an amazingly flexible client / server architecture.

So, I’ve finally amassed enough computer hardware that is old enough I don’t want to give it away, but new enough so that it is not useless, such that I can build a “front-end” or TiVo like computer appliance for my living room.

This journal entry is to lay out what I have in terms of hardware and software (with links for my own reference, as well as to share with you), what things are already done, and what things I need to do. Also, I want to lay out some longer term plans to refer back to, so I can avoid confusion in my own head later.

So, without further babbling, here is what I have.
( The Hardware )
( software )
( Current status )
( ToDo )
( Long Term Ideas )
There you have it folks, my Audio / Video / Home Automation / communications nirvana project. I wonder if I did this, if it would actually be valuable to anyone who owned the house after me?

Ben = Intel Fanboy?

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BigCat
on March 10, 2006
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Yes, that is right ladies and gentleman, after many years of Intel bashing, and hating them because they are the microsoft of the hardware world, I am going to jump camps unless AMD pulls something amazing out of their ass.
( Nerdy explanation of why I was an AMD fanboy )
So, now I like intel again, and I basically realized that I can like either company as long as they aren’t trying to screw the consumer like Intel did with the P4 and their strong-arm monopolistic buisness practices in the 90’s.

It is going to be a fun year for the processor wars, just like 1999 and 2000.

Linux Advice

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BigCat
on March 3, 2006
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I’ve just started this super-nerdy project and I need some advice from my more linux-literate friends.
( Don't read if you don't want to be nerded out )
In other news, Kyle and Ellen are going to be here this weekend, and Saturday Lauren is having a girls night, and I’m taking Kyle out to do something fun that is still TBD. So if you are a girl stop by my house on Saturday for good girly time, and if you are a guy give me a ring and I’ll tell you where we end up going.

Installing Linux

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BigCat
on February 23, 2006
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Since no one seemed really interested in my Computers 101 idea from before, I’m just going to go ahead working on my project in my spare time.

But, Josh 3 seemed interested in taking a look at how Linux installs and what-not, so tonight I’m planning on using a little of my free time to run through a setup and install of Ubuntu Linux.

So, if you’ve ever wanted to play around with Linux, and see how it looks, and installs, or anything like that, without the hassle of messing with your own computer, come on by.

I’m thinking around 7 I’ll start working on things, getting hardware ready to roll and what-not. If your interested come by around then.

Get paid to blog?

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BigCat
on February 17, 2006
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I applied for Googles Adsense program yesterday, got accepted, and now I’m in the process of augmenting my Wordpress theme to add Googles little text-only adds to the sidbar of my page.
( Need Ideas for what to blog about )

Wanna Learn About Computers?

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BigCat
on February 16, 2006
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I have parts laying around for somewhere from 2 to 4 computers at my house right now, and as soon as I get a case from a guy at work I’m going to build them up.

I was wondering if it would remotely interest anyone if I turned that into a little info session. I could go over some basics about hardware, proper grounding for working in computers, and things like that, and then maybe walk through an installation of Windows or Linux. It could be a really hands-on kind of thing, very lab-like.

If no one is interested I’m just going to make it a weekend project for myself. But I figured since the sum total of these parts value isn’t more than a couple hundred dollars it might be a good way to get your feet wet with computers if your a person who has wanted to, but has always been a little afraid of making expensive mistakes.

Anyway, leave some feedback, and if there is enough interest I’ll set a formal date and time for this to go down at my place. (That date will be after I finish helping set up sound and tech stuff at church though)