Mike Schoon » Technology

On a Quest for a Universal Remote

mike — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:39:14 +0000

I am thinking it is time for change.

It is time to simplify things a little. I am on a quest for a universal remote. This is the assortment I currently use on a daily basis, and it is driving my six year old absolutely crazy. That’s not mentioning the fact that it is driving me crazy trying to keep them all in one place with a six year old.

From left to right, you have two Wii Remotes (for the Wii and also the Media Center), a Roku Player, the Magnavox DVD Player, the Philips TV, and the DirecTV Tivo Series 2.

I am very skeptical that I can find one universal device for all of them. The Wii Remotes will have to stay and are pulling more than their share of the load. I have my Media Center computer connected with them over Bluetooth as well as using them for normal gaming. The Roku Player is fairly new. I am hoping I can find something compatible, but might have to manually program it for that. The DirecTV, Tivo, DVD Player, and TV should work with most devices.

I am going to look at the Logitech Harmony and see what I can come up with. Anyone else have any suggestions?

BMW Efficient Dynamics

mike — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:10:24 +0000

That is a mean looking automobile. I’m all for green, but I don’t want my car to look like a go-cart either. This kind of aggressive design is going to make me want to go hybrid someday.

Lifestream Plugin

mike — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 06:00:01 +0000

I just implemented an awesome plugin that keeps track of all your social junk in one place. If you look to the right, there is a link to my Lifestream page. So far, I’ve added twitter, youtube, flickr, jaiku, brightkite, my Gallery feed. Those familiar with with FriendFeed and Facebook will understand what this functionality provides. I love that this is integrated into my own site (that I own). It’s not like I am going to sell my own marketing data to other companies. Anyone with WordPress should really check this out.

http://www.ibegin.com/labs/wp-lifestream/

Adventures in GPS

mike — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 02:36:11 +0000

I have been in need of a new GPS receiver for a while. While I love my Garmin eTrex and it has been a lifesaver on several occasions, the netbook lacks serial ports. Carrying a serial to USB adapter is out of the question. I wanted ultra-portability for my kit, especially on vacations and while traveling. Whatever solution I came up with, I knew from previous experience what package would need to be installed first:

sudo apt-get install gpsd

Enter this device:

No brand name, no fancy package. I plugged it in and it functioned beautifully. Ubuntu detects it as a Prolific PL2303 USB to Serial Bridge Controller as revealed by dmesg:

[ 950.076139] usb 2-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
[ 950.242660] usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 950.246324] pl2303 2-2:1.0: pl2303 converter detected
[ 950.271393] usb 2-2: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0

That last line is important. I needed it to issue the next command:

gpsd /dev/ttyUSB0

As this device lacks a screen to indicate satellite fix, my next step was to install xgps:

sudo apt-get install gpsd-clients

I mostly use xgps for testing connectivity. It is a very basic interface with limited information. Pretty useless for navigation unless you work with satellites all day and know where they are supposed to be in the sky.

Eight years ago when I started experimenting with laptops and gps, I quickly found GPSdrive. It was really the only map-based GPS software available. Recently, using a netbook’s small 16:9 screen became a major problem when I realized the application wasn’t written for the Gnome toolkit. I was unable to maximize to my screen resolution of 1024×600, making any buttons at the bottom of the app hidden. TangoGPS has most of the functionallity necessary to track where you are on a map. Like GPSDrive, it is compatible with the Open Street Map project, works with gpsd, and even allows for friend updates.

For now, I have a system that tells me where I am, how fast I’m driving, and allows me to contribute to open street map. I will be eperimenting with another program called viking shortly and will discuss it here when I know more about it.

After The Fact?

mike — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:00:30 +0000

All of my computers are now on Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex). That’s a Dell D820, a Precision 650, the GQ computer that I picked up at Fry’s a couple years ago, and even the One. I’m usually cautious about moving from a LTS edition to a newer version, but for some reason I decided to pull the trigger on upgrading each of my systems instead of performing complete reloads. All four machines upgraded without catastrophic failures. I did have to reload the kernel modules for my sound card on the Aspire, but it’s not a big deal. On the Precision, some lunkhead sysadmin (who is reamining nameless) forgot to move /home to the second drive last time. All I needed were these instructions and I was back in business: http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/01/29/move-home-to-its-own-partition/

This had to be shared…

mike — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:27:12 +0000

I wish I could do cool stuff like this all day sometimes…

My Own Aptitiude Repos

mike — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:56:33 +0000

I now have several machines running Ubuntu and Debian on my home network. Each one had an inconsistent version of the packages on it, and I finally decided this morning I was done upgrading each machine individually and downloading updates when I got around to it. Mikey’s got his own repo now and Mikey likes it.

I found some very simple, very focused instructions at this link:

http://mediakey.dk/~cc/howto-create-your-own-debian-or-ubuntu-package-repository/

Next step: Add a GPG key.

More AA1 Tweaking

mike — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 05:32:14 +0000

Okay, so the Acer Aspire One now has a nickname of AA1. I kind of like it, so we’ll see if it sticks. I received my own Acer netbook for my birthday and am in the process of tweaking it to my satisfaction. My biggest annoyance so far has been the lack of codec support out of the box. XVID has been my favorite codec for a couple years now and I am not about to go back to wmv, especially on a Linux machine. One little tip I can throw everyone’s way though, the Fedora Repositories were intruded upon back in August. VLC is the package I noticed this with, but if you tell yum to install vlc, you will receive these errors:

Error: Missing Dependency: libpulse.so.0(PULSE_0) is needed by package vlc
Error: Missing Dependency: libopendaap.so.0 is needed by package vlc-core
Error: Missing Dependency: libdvdnav.so.4 is needed by package vlc-core

This is a result of the security breach (looks like file corruption to me). To fix it, you need to run this command:

sudo yum install fedora-release

Information can be found on the following page:

http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=48759&p=161972

Acer Aspire One

mike — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:41:32 +0000

Acer recently released the Aspire One. My wife was looking for a laptop to check email and visit her forums while on the road. The tech details were GMail and phpBB, for those interested. We met at MicroCenter after work to look at netbooks on her birthday. I will not criticize Asus. They have made large strides in creating the market for the cheap ultra mobile pc, and I love them for it. But there they were, right next to each other, the EEE Surf and the Acer Aspire One. Comparing the two, spec to spec, the Acer made the Asus loook like a toy. It has a standard resolution width (1024). It has a larger keyboard (80% of a standard keyboard). To be honest, the “triple-E” looked breakable.

So anyway, we picked one up at a store after dinner. The clerk gave us the question that I often get hit with when trying to purchase items. “Now, you know, this isn’t exactly what most people expect from a computer…” I promptly interrupted, “It runs Linux, right?” Then we walked out the door with her new laptop and weren’t concerned about the price we paid.

I am more than impressed with the thing, mostly for it’s flexibility. The distribution that it runs standard is called Linpus. It’s essencially Fedora with a Mobile interface. It’s very easy to get to a terminal and start customizing to your heart’s content. I have already added Skype and upgraded the browser to Firefox 3 with AdBlock Plus to prevent the annoyances, both easy tasks if you already understand how Fedora. For the sake of resource management, Linpus uses XFCE and it’s a simple matter of editing an XML file to modify what your default apps are on the screen interface.

Due to it being Fedora based, I was able to successfully get the Citrix Presentation Server client functioning for her work stuff. The only major hiccup in this was replacing Thawte’s security certificate in the Citrix package. It wasn’t very difficult, just a minor annoyance of downloading from elsewhere. I could see this being a problem for someone with less computer experience. Here’s my suggestion to Citrix: Make your software update the certs automatically. This is the only reason the RPM didn’t work properly.

Well, regardless, the Acer Aspire one is very impressive piece of hardware and I am considering getting one myself just to have the convenience of an extra machine with ssh and a web browser. Acer really thought this one out.

It’s DR time!!!

mike — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:25:00 +0000

With the hurricane season at it’s peak, I’ve decided to include a section focused on DR. I hope to add links to sites detailing weather and EOC information for the United States. If anyone elsewhere would like to contribute, please email me at . I’d also like to add sections convering power systems and other details.

Stay Tuned for More Info!