Don't Back Down

Because of my recent communication issues with a cable telecommunications provider who just can't seem to get things right, I've had to log into my router a number of times to reset the line. And in case you're wondering, it's because I use a Cisco router at home, rather than the standard Linksys fare. It provides a better connection - provided the line itself is working. Unfortunately, if the line goes down, it doesn't do quite as good as job as recovering, which is odd, since it's a lot more expensive.

So it means that I need to log into the router and shutdown the line and reset it anytime the line goes down - which over the last week and a half has been several times a day. This isn't a difficult process, but it is a pain. Either I have to load up a serial session or a telnet one, and then type four commands. Like I said, it's not hard, but it is tedious. In fact, it's really tedious. So I decided to come up with a solution.

Read "Automated PuTTY Session to a Cisco Router via VBScript" »

Since it's Christmas, that means many of you may be looking at new gadgets at this time of year, so I'm going to look at one of the most common - and perhaps the most disregarded - of all. The keyboard. Even though we use the lowly keyboard every day, we don't pay it nearly as much attention as we should. This is very likely the most important piece of our computer, yet it usually gets pushed behind just about everything else.

Over the years, I've worked with a huge number of keyboards. In the beginning there were those old beasts that came with the original IBM computers. Some people like them, but I have to say that I don't. They just don't work for me. I've used laptop keyboards. I've even used keyboards for mainframe and midrange computers. Today, I'm still searching for the ultimate keyboard. It might go on for a while. But here, I'll take a look at the last four that I've tried.

Read "A Christmas Keyboard Comparison and Giveaway" »

A while back, I converted an original XBox to something new - an XBOXMEDIACENTER. It actually was a whole lot easier than I expected. I didn't even have to open it up, because through the judicious use of eBay, I managed to find a copy of the original Mech Assault (not the Platinum Hits version, that's just what comes up at xbox.com), which allowed the loading of a softmod.

Once I did, it's like a whole new world opened up. The people who have developed XBMC have done a bang-up job, by packaging a nice interface along with a great platform for playing all sorts of videos and even being able to load games - both those developed for the XBox and ROMs of all sorts. But I was frustrated because I couldn't get some AVI files to play. They would act like they were going to start, but after a second or so, they would just stop. I was pulling out what little hair I had left. Luckily, I finally appear to have found the solution.

Read "XBMC Won't Play AVI Files" »

The power just went out for the second time in recent memory. It actually stayed out for a few minutes, which is unusual. In fact, I really thought that it would be gone for a while, so I had just shut down the computer. It didn't quite get through the whole power-down cycle before the power came back up.

Before you wonder how I was doing all this with the power out, I have a UPS, so I normally just ride it out. In this case, it didn't seem like I'd be able to do so, so I shut everything down and was getting ready to do something else. Then the power came back on. As mentioned, this is the second time in recently that the power has gone out for more than a second or two. The last time it was out for hours.

Read "How Often Does Your Power Go Out?" »

Just a bit over seven months ago, TiVo announced that they were making the Amazon Unbox service available to everyone. Well, perhaps not users of Series 3 boxes, but they are already out in the cold for so many reasons that it didn't really matter. What seemed interesting was that this meant that you could actually download content from Amazon straight into your living room. It's an interesting model, and one that bears looking at.

I have to say that even though I'm a fan of online purchases - I regularly buy things online - the online delivery of video isn't really something that I've been a fan of, and the problems that came along with the Unbox service (not being able to transfer content elsewhere, etc) made it seem all the worse. Perhaps being able to use it on the TiVo would make those issues go away. As it turns out, that's not really the case.

Read "Is Amazon Unbox on TiVo Worth the Effort?" »

Now that we had been able to find some caches with the Garmin eTrex Vista CX Handheld GPS Navigator, we had determined that we didn't really like it all that much. There wasn't anything exactly wrong with the unit, it just didn't seem to work as well as it could. After doing a bit more reading, I determined that I'd like to see if I could find something a bit better.

I had originally been looking for something that was small and easy to carry about. Of course, the problem with this is that the antenna is internal. That alone may have been part of the problem, so I crossed of that requirement, and looked again. That's when I noticed that the Vista, though it lists a "high performance" chip, did not have an "extremely accurate SiRF" chip, which is apparently the latest and greatest. Does it make a difference? Heck, I don't know, but if I'm going through the trouble of upgrading, I might as well check it out to see. Inquiring minds want to know.

Read "Garmin GPSMap 60CSx Handheld GPS Navigator" »

Recently, based on an article in the paper, our family decided to take another look at Geocaching. I had already decided that this would be one of those things that I pursued one day, but it was just "added to the list", and I figured that I would get to it when I could get to it. There was no date attached or anything. But with summer dragging on, and looking for something to fill the last couple weeks before school picks up, the article seemed to be almost an omen. So that meant that we needed the one essential ingredient for the task: A handheld GPS device.

In order to become a family who risks life and limb - or preferably, does not, we needed to be able to determine not only where we were, but where we wanted to go. Enter the GPS. Using coordinates that we could obtain at the Geocaching web site, we get a nice path to the destination. So it's fairly critical that we had one. You see, most caches aren't just laid out on the roadway for people to find - they are typically stored in tree stumps and under piles of rocks and things. So we started searching, so that we could go searching.

Read "Garmin eTrex Vista CX Handheld GPS Navigator" »

Though I've used TiVo for some time, and though I'm really quite fond of it (we actually have two), it's done little more than whet my appetite for the day that I can create an actual media server. Up until recently, the problem has been that the TiVo itself does a great job at what it does - but what it does is make you realize how clumsy all those other interfaces are at providing you with access to your data.

The primary downfall of the TiVo is that storage space is limited. Older boxes had terribly small hard drives. Newer ones have larger hard drives (while the Series 3 has a mongo hard drive), and just about ever since they came out, you've been able to expand the capacity of the device. But movies are just so big. Even though you don't have to record at best quality to get a decent recording, a movie at high quality will take up 3 to 5 gigabytes, and that means your drive is going to fill up fast. Surely there has to be an answer. Luckily, I've finally found it.

Read "How to Create a Real Media Server with Tivo and pyTivo" »

It's been a good while since I've built a PC, so when I decided that it was time, I figured that I should start with a solid motherboard. The problem, of course, is to decide how to choose. I mean it's not like there is only one motherboard out there, after all. So I did what any sensible person ought to do and I start reading. A good place to start might be somewhere like this post from Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror.

Though not specifically about building a computer, Jeff has put together a number of good posts on the subject that are worth reading if it's something you think you might do one day. Or even if you think you might want to do it one day. That, plus he shows that he has a good head on his shoulders by not automatically buying the top of the line anything. That's not to say that he doesn't - just that it's not always the best decision. It's just that it's a good place to start.

Contrast that with John Chow, who seems to take the other extreme. That's not to slight John, either. If I had those sort of parts lying around, I might do what he did, but most of us probably don't. It is just a different approach, that's all, so you can get a couple of different ideas on where you might find your own muse for the process.

For me, there were a few necessities.

Read "EVGA nForce 680i SLI 775 A1 Motherboard" »

For the first time in quite a while (we're quite likely talking a measurement of years here, rather than months), I decided that I wanted to build a new system. Inspired by two things - posts such as Building and Overclocking a Core 2 Duo System and the utterly abysmal performance of an off-the-shelf HP desktop that I purchased a few weeks ago - I figured it was time.

Up until perhaps three months back, I had been using laptops for the last three years (give or take). This is because I was on the road quite a bit. But since I don't really travel all that much any more, I figured it didn't really make much sense to worry about a laptop at this point. Sure, I have a laptop if I need one. But I want to make the leap to two identical monitors. I've been using dual screens for some time, and using two that are the same, rather than a laptop screen and an external monitor seems like a good choice.

So I looked about, and found what appeared to be a reasonable compromise - the HP. It came with a video card that had dual DVI outputs, allowing me to power the monitors of choice (more on those another time). Unfortunately, that's about all it did, and I rapidly determined that my measly single-core laptop seemed to have better performance, so I needed to do something about it. Here's what I did.

Read "How I Overclock My Intel Core 2 Duo E6300" »

In recent years, USB drives have gained popularity as storage needs have grown. I had a 230 gigabyte drive until perhaps a year or so ago, at which point I outgrew it. Yes, I really do store more than 230 gigabytes, but that's not what this is about. I'll talk about that another time. When I did, I bought two 500 gigabyte drives. Those were nearing capacity. Not completely full, mind you, but close enough that I was needing to think about getting something that could hold more. Enter the Infrant ReadyNAS line of products.

They actually come in a number of flavors, which means I had to decide which one I wanted. The ReadyNAS 1000 models are rack mounts, which are nice in that application, but I don't have a rack at home, so I dropped them. The 600 and X6 don't appear to support hot-swappable drives, so I skipped them. This left the NV and the NV+. These two are similar, but the NV+ includes an LCD display and EMC Retrospect backup software. But more importantly, you can't seem to buy the NV without disks (an important distinction). The NV+ it is!

Read "Infrant ReadyNAS NV+" »

One of the first things we noticed on our new TiVo was that it already had some shows recorded, in a group called TiVo Video Tours. Our first thought was that it was going to be something like the quasi-spam email that you get from Microsoft when you fire up Outlook. But our second thought was to check them out and see what they were like.

Read "Get to Know Your TiVo" »