Inane ramblings of Tim

Batch 3 is in the bottles

2009-07-01T21:00:00.002-04:00

Bottled batch 3. After 2 rackings it's as clear as water. Racked it all and tasted for the first time.

This is the first and last batch of Raspberry/Apple I will do. It's sour. Really sour. After adding a tablespoon of sugar to a glass it's still very sour. High octane, I'm feeling it already after a 1/2 glass though...

I hope that time will mellow this out. But until then I'm calling it a failure unless you like sour wine. Dont do raspberry.

Batch 4 will be batch 3's process but with apple only.

Summertime.

2009-06-29T13:28:00.002-04:00

Well I've been busy as all get out with the Ren Faires. Derbyshire is over as of yesterday, and only Bike Time is the looming Photography event left this summer unless we decided to green-light the Michigan Motorcycle Festivals book.

I rode 300 miles last week, I strapped a desktop computer and a full tube-type monster monitor to the bike and brought it to a friend. Kind of a test run for camping, the bike was full of gear for a 2 day stay and about 80 pounds of computer gear. I used a combo of straps and bungies to get it all secure. it did not move at all during the trip.

Updates on my cider/apfelwein....

2009-05-10T17:55:00.002-04:00

Batch1- what I considered a failure because in the bottles it had a TON of sediment and it was cloudy because of being made from freshly squeezed and unfilted cider ended up far better 6 months after bottling. I opened a bottle and shared with friends and being dry, it was still fantastic.

Batch2- I was worried about. I had a bottle explode. Soooo, I opened one and we drank it. It's carbonated, so I bottled too soon. it's crystal clear, no yeasty taste and a very little sediment in the bottles, but's it's fizzy! I need to do something before more wine bottles start shooting corks. It is far dryer than when I bottled it, this means I bottled way too early. 6 weeks is TOO EARLY! Still it tasted far better and had a LOT of flavor due to using a high concentration of the frozen stuff. I am very happy with the results, I need to make the process better.

Basically 6-8 weeks ferment. Rack into a clairification bottle and let set for another 4-6 weeks. This is the process I am using for batch 3.

If batch 3 comes out perfect then batch 5 will be ramped up to a 10 gallon batch. Batch 4 will be a repeat of batch 2 using batch 3 process modifications.

new toy: Sheevaplug...

2009-04-28T10:33:00.006-04:00

I have heard of these for a year now, I finally got the office to buy one for testing and evaluation. The Sheevaplug is a Marvell chipsets "plug computing" embedded network computer. It runs linux and is a cute little thing for many uses. for example, I'm using one to harvest images from the internet for touch-panels. Weather radar, etc all get's pulled to a single device and then the other devices pull from there. This eliminates internet traffic and allows smart decisions. If the weather.com radar is unavailable, grab it from another location.

There are a few things you need to do when you get your new sheevaplug. I follow the information I found at Cowlark.com and at the http://www.plugcomputer.org/ web pages and community. Lots of great info there. One thing that makes this sheevaplug different from the other embedded platforms available is that there is a nice apt repository set up for it. you can apt-get install most packages you need. Plus the SD card slot on the side allows me to harvest gigabytes of data without causing internal issues.

So here's a quick get-started for this neat little device...

First, the embedded Ubuntu distro that is in it is broken in a few places. Mostly by not paying attention. The first thing you need to do is SSH in after hooking it up.. root Password is nosoup4u, go into /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf and delete the supersede domain-mname-servers line. why that was in there to break dhcp DNS resolution I have no idea. save change and reboot.

NOW it has working network parameters.. Let's update it....

mkdir /var/cache/apt/archives/partial
apt-get update
apt-get install ntpdate
ntpdate pool.ntp.org

I want php and a webserver... so I add the following...

apt-get install lighttpd
apt-get install php5-cgi
apt-get install wget -- I do that just for fun wget is a cool tool to have around.

edit the /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

add mod_fastcgi to the server.modules

add fastcgi.server = (".php" => (( "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi", "socket" => "/tmp/php.socket" )))

Mine came with samba installed, so you can adda windows share for a usb driver without much effort.

it's a really cool device. I can see all kinds of uses for it.

RANT: Vista64 incompatable with everything.

2009-04-23T09:59:00.003-04:00

Ok, I gave vista a good shake. 6 weeks. And I hate it with a passion, specifically Vista64. It's incompatible with nearly everything. Almost NONE of the work software will operate on this thing. The last straw is that our backup software, the world class Barracuda Yosemite will NOT work under Vista64. I am tired of fighting with this. I know it's not Microsoft fault that the rest of the world will not support their OS, but they need to not force it down everyone's throat.

If you buy a new computer, be SURE it does not have Vista 64 on it. Demand Vista 32 so you do not have to fight with drivers, and software just not working.

I am done with it. Drive is getting formatted and I am going to install XP on this machine. It works, it does not cause issues with everything and honestly is a lot faster. I need to work and make money, not spend hours fighting with the Operating system

Bikes back together.... YAY!

2009-04-17T08:46:00.003-04:00

It's technically been together for a week now. But I finally brought it home and finished the important round of work on it. Panels are all on, Brakes are fixed and brake fluid changed.

I have been worrying about the paint job. When working this winter painting everything It looked really good, then I got it in the bright sun and all of a sudden I can see flaws I never knew were there. Oh crap! But, after several people have seen the bike and all of them are going nuts over it, I'm OK. Yes it was my first paintjob ever done by me. Yes I had a great friend help hold my hand and help me get it done that was good at painting. It's still not a perfect show paintjob.

I love how it looks, I guess that's all that matters :)

Details: All the paint is lacquer except for the primer/sealer and the clearcoat. I used a primer sealer that is an epoxy base, then sprayed Firemist orange lacquer, black for the graphics with erriedes special effect in the black, followed by some red and yellow candy colorings from airbrushing. Then I sprayed a red and gold metalflake in a clear over all that. top it all off after sitting for a week with a urethane clear that is a new type that has a lot of UV additive and is harder than nails.

time spent - 100 hours. I still have some finish work to do to get it done-done.

Apfelwine batch 2 update

2009-04-03T08:34:00.002-04:00

I had a bottle explode. Well it shot the cork across the room and emptied it's self on the floor. It seems that I screwed up batch 2. Even letting it sit for 6 weeks and then bottling it through a filter it was still too sweet to not completely stabilize it.

Batch 3 will be treated with wine stabilizer and let set for a week to make sure all the yeast is dead before bottling. I need to crack open one bottle and see what it tastes like. I am hoping it's not a doughboy like batch 1... I really hate the yeast flavor in the apple.

Spring Motorcycle work

2009-03-19T19:07:00.003-04:00

Spent the day covered in carb cleaner and gasoline. Ahh a wonderful thing. I'm finishing the repairs on the bike, rewired a few things and cleaned up others. Helped Steve get his bike fixed, we tore apart the carbs and cleaned it all up by hand. Put them back in and .... nothing... until we realized that the ignition fuse was funky. some sandpaper to clean the connector and my magical copper grease and it's starting and running like a new bike. Now he needs tires.

I got the Headlight problem fixed on my bike, upgraded the lighting systems and even rewired the speaker wires for fun. I got new loom to clean up all the wiring and a 136db bad boy air horn to install that will hopefully make more car drivers freak out or have heart attacks when they cut me off. Not looking fore-ward to the dumb car drivers, but glad I have a weapon that will fling the cellphone out of that persons hand by startling them even if their windows are up.

Cant wait to get the bike done. I still need to get it in to the shop for a trailer hitch so camping can be more enjoyable. but having a buddies 1979 classic running perfect for the first time in years is encouraging for this riding season.

REVIEW: Dell Studio 17" laptop

2009-03-09T21:07:00.002-04:00

I had to do it. My old work laptop was getting old and I was outgrowing it. It still worked great, dont get me wrong. But I needed more in my line of work. The tiny 15" screen was too confining, the tiny compact keyboard was getting tiring to type on. Also many times at job locations I'm in a customers theater in the dark making programming changes. So a backlit keyboard was high on the list. I priced things out at Dell.com and other websites and said nope. I cant justify paying $1200-$1500 for what I want. It stayed as a "someday" item on my list. Well this past week things changed. Super discounts at Staples made me think twice. I picked up this unit with Bluray, a full power dual core, backlit keyboard for only $699.00! Dell.com cant get me even close to that price so I do not know why Staples had is significantly cheaper.

The cool part about this laptop is it's expandability. It can handle 2 hard drives inside it. Yes it's a massive laptop, but I'm into getting work done and not looking trendy. The Backlit keyboard makes programming in the dark easier, and the fact I can upgrade all the way to 8 gig of ram is unheard of! Everything about the hardware is great. I love it. But IT came with vista. I have to use Windows at work, I have not tried to live with vista for any extended period of time and It's proving to me that it really is the dog that I know it as. I currently beta test Windows 7 and it hands down kicks the crud out of Vista. Easier to use, faster, smarter design, less dumb things like vista is full of. I will stick with it for a while longer, but that retail copy of XP pro I have (and that license sticker that I refuse to attach to anything) are waiting for me if I need it.

The hardware it's self is nice, it still fits in my laptop bag which is a bonus. Also the claims online that the battery life stinks... I have been working on this thing now for 2 hours without charging and I still have another hour left.

If you want a laptop that gives you desktop feel check out the Studio line. Also watch for killer deals outside of dell.

Detect and respond to a Thumbdrive getting inserted on Ubuntu.

2009-02-17T13:07:00.003-05:00

I decided to start automating my TV show setup. I have a separate Mythbox at my office and a different XBMC at home. Why? well XBMC is a far better Media center than MythTV will ever hope to be. Myth is an awesome TV recording system but it royally sucks at a media center.

I got tired of manually copying. so I wrote the following script...

#!/bin/bash

DRIVEDIR=/media/TV
VIDEODIR=/video/converted

DRIVEIN=$(ls /media | grep -c TV)
if [ $DRIVEIN = "1" ]; then
beep -f 200
beep -f 600
echo "Drive named TV detected. Starting move operation..."
mv $VIDEODIR/*.avi $DRIVEDIR 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null
echo "File Move operation complete. Unmounting drive..."
beep -f 900
beep -f 1200
beep -f 600
umount /media/TV
fi

It runs from crontab every minute (* * * * * /location/script.sh) and will do a copy to the drive from the mythbuntu box. The reverse at the XBMC linux box will move all files off and to the storage location there.

Apple-Raspberry Apfelwein(cider) batch #3

2009-02-15T16:39:00.003-05:00

With the apparent success with the last batch and recipe I am going to try something different. "old orchard" frozen Apple-raspberry 100% juice was on sale for $1.00 a can and I'm trying a different yeast based on recommendations from several people.

1 3-gallon better bottle cleaned and sanitized
10 cans of thawed juice
1 pound table sugar dissolved into water to make a thin syrup.
1 packet EC1118 yeast
3 campden tablets crushed and dissolved into the mixture at the end.

Same as before. I'm using 1 less can of juice because this stuff seems thicker/sweeter than the walmart cheapie apple juice. I dont want the mixture to be too sweet.

Started the batch today. Will pitch the yeast in 36 hours (monday night) to let the campden tablets do their job.

Initial tastes of Batch #2 were well accepted. It was sweeter than expected. but after bottling and giving a friend a bottle of what was left over on the bottom and it sat for a week, something smelled off. I'm going to uncork one bottle in another week to see if everything in the bottles is OK.

Notes from Batch #2 - I did NOT rack to a second better bottle at 4 weeks. I let it got the full 8 weeks in the same bottle. I will be doing the same this time except I will rack off to a second bottle at 8 weeks and let it clairify/finish for 4 weeks in the second bottle before filtering and bottling.

Notes on the wine filter. DO NOT FORCE IT. it will take several hours for it to filter. Dont get in a hurry and BURST the filter like I did by pumping. Let it filter and gently restart the filter when it stops with a little pump action.

Threats of Spring and Thoughts of Riding.

2009-02-10T09:25:00.002-05:00

It's popped up to the 40's this past week but today, at 58 degrees I've got the motorcycle itch hard. I have not finished the sanding and buffing on the bike let alone the re-assembly of the luggage, trunk, etc... or the replacement of the front wheel bearings, chrome polishing, wiring changes, upgrading the light bulbs in the dash. Basically I got paint shot on the bike parts and half of it buffed.

I hate it when mother nature taunts me.

All the Fruits of spontaneous creativity.

2009-02-06T08:57:00.002-05:00

I was "bored" at work this week. It's slow and I hate busywork so I started a unauthorized project. A Twitter Client for Crestron. I noticed that a lot of people wanted one, I wanted one, so I started down that path. Yesterday I finished it and demoed it to the boss.

He loved it as soon as I explained what twitter was and how big twitter has become.
I'm refining it up today, and we are going to sell it to crestron integrators starting next week.

So now my toaster CAN twitter. (crestron can detect if the toaster is on or off, so in theory it can twitter when the toast pops up.)

The Economy caught up with me.

2009-02-04T09:05:00.002-05:00

yesterday, dreaming of spring when I can finish my motorcycle and ride in the wind, Ren faires, overall getting away from the snow. Care free, took my wife out for lunch, bought my daughter a Xbox360, verified the appointment for the plumbers to finish $4800 in work in the house, everything was doing great. got home and the wifes car is there, She's not supposed to be home for another 2 hours....

Economic Downsizing got us! Well her specifically. They let her go because they cant afford a full accounting department. She was upset, I mentioned how she hated working in a hen-house. She worried about projects not finished at work, I mentioned that she does not have to worry about anything there anymore. I did my hardest to put on the happy face and spin it as a positive. They just paid for her Degree, Now she has it free and clear. She was working hard daily with more and more work piled on, I told her that now everyone else get's to feel what she did all day.

Our income is cut in 1/2. This is gonna suck in a big way because a couple of projects that need to be finished will not have the financing...

I was hoping to cruise on unaffected at least 1 more year so that my daughter would be graduated from high school and we could look for jobs anywhere in the US instead of being tied around here. Funny how the world ignores your carefully laid out plans.

A personal Musical discovery, The Strumstick.

2009-01-31T10:34:00.003-05:00

I am starting back in to "rennie" mode with Spring approaching and I'm having to edit more Ren Faire video to produce 3 TV show episodes by the time May rolls around. I was looking around the goodwill auction site when I found a set of what I though were medieval lutes. Looking for things to "accessorize" and make the look of the faire more authentic and a good deal I bid on them and won. 2 weeks later I get them and was initially disappointed. One had cracked from being in subzero temperatures and zero humidity during shipping and they were far smaller than I though they would be. So I strummed them a bit though they were quaint and I might be able to sell them at the faire to get my money back... This morning I decided to inspect hem further and discovered some writing inside the sound--hole. I used the almighty google to look up the info found in the hole and discovered what these things were.

What I had were two things called a Strumstick and are one of the easiest to play stringed instruments ever invented. I have owned a really expensive Ovation Celebrity guitar for 5 years now and still have not learned to play it. Guitar is not a pick it up and play something in 10 minutes kind of instrument. This strumstick though... I was after tuning it and going through the first 2 lessons on the website was playing something that was pleasant and even my wife enjoyed. When learning my guitar there was not much of the smiling and enjoying myself during the first lessons, it was all disappointment and frustration, only by the 10th lesson did I start to play something that actually sounded like music and it was only 3 chords.

This strumstick had me playing the first bars of "piano man" and a couple of sing along rhythms in the first 30 minutes and then my fingers started to hurt.

This is one of those very VERY few instruments that are a perfect thing to give to those that want to learn an instrument but cant learn something complex. It looks very exotic, I was surprised by the quality of it's build. The neck and body are carved out of a single piece of exotic hardwood which makes it look very upscale.

The neat part is these things are cheap, you can buy them new for under $200.00!

I still am going to learn the guitar. This strumstick has renewed my desire to learn it, but I'm going to master this little guy in the next 3 months so I can play some tunes at faire!

Success in HD DVD ripping.

2009-01-28T08:46:00.003-05:00

The following recipe worked for my HDDVD ripping test. I am certian it will work for BluRay as well.

Step 1 you need a Windows machine. something beefy. 3.0ghz dual core at LEAST or this is going to take a while. I did my testing on a 3.2ghz single core Pentium 4. It took 52 hours to rip the HDDVD.

Step 1.5 Get a BluRay reader or write drive. You gotta read the disks, I prefer LG and Pioneer.

Step 2 you need to buy AnyDVD, the HD version specifically. This actually is the key to all this. without anydvd you cant crack the encryption. You have to have it and it's cheap.

Step 3 find and download Ripbot264 and follow it's detailed instructions to get it installed. This part is a tad tricky if you have ever installed any other ripping tools.

Step 4 clear out a huge swath of free disk space. King Kong took 50 gigs total during processing. It ended up as a 5 gig 720p HD mp4 file when I was done but ripbot needs all that space to do it's work. a really fast 500 gig drive is recommended. Faster the drive the faster the rip as a lot of this is disk intensive.

A LOT of the people out there ripping use the strange MKV format. I refuse to as it's not compatible with most media center systems. I rip to mp4 as almost all HD capable media centers will play this file. MKV may mature into somethign that will be compatible, but right now it's not and I'm avoiding it, I suggest you do too unless you like only watching the rip on your PC. I had some huge delays in my ripping by using a USB HDDVD drive (Xbox360 drive I got for $15.00) I am certain that using a sata Bluray drive will help a lot in speed. I rip and re-size to 720p simply because the quality difference between 1080p and 720p are minimal for 99% of all the movies released. and if you have a 720p set, it's a waste of your time to rip to the larger format anyways. when movies start getting release that have real 1080p quality, I will reevaluate my procedure, but even the latest digitally filmed releases don't look any better from 720p to 1080p even on a 108" screen. It's a limitation of the original film not the technology. And the older stuff that was shot on film, it's barely worth watching on HD. Films from even the 90's were so low resolution that HD does not give any benefit other than now you can see the film grain.

now you have a basic recipie to rip your BluRay and HDDVD discs to files for use on your XBMC or Media Center PC allowing you to safely store those high cost disks away from the kids and get the clutter out of the living-room.

Poor mans Automation Phase 3

2009-01-27T20:53:00.002-05:00

Crestron lighting control is right out. The light switches cost $300 each alone and need wiring or you need to buy the Infinet ones and a RF gateway for even more money. X10 is absolute garbage unless you like randomly functioning lights. But an X10 like technology that does actually work and is affordable is available. It's called insteon. It goes in your wall and uses wireless and X10 communication to control lighting. You can get a simple insteon controller and automator to run your system and home. Insteon works GREAT for smaller homes. 18 switches/loads or less. Apartments/ condos/ small homes it works great. You CANT just buy the switches and hope for the best. you need to buy the repeaters and gateways and locate them correctly.

There is a problem though, and it exists for ALL lighting control systems. If you home is IMPROPERLY wired like most were in the 20's-50's and dont have hot, ground and common all in the switch and then run the load line to the lamp, none of these will work. It seems that it was common for older homes to be wired wrong and run the power to the fixture and then split a pair of wires to the switch. This kind of home will need to be rewired correctly for the switches to work. X10 has some that work in this instance, but again, X10 is garbage.

The other drawback is if you use dimmers, you cant use CFL lamps. even the "dimmable" ones really hate automation systems. You can get relay based switches from insteon that will work great for CFL lights, but you dont get the cool fade on fade off effect.

HDDVD/ BluRay now rippable at home.

2009-01-22T08:18:00.002-05:00

I finally started testing and researching how to rip HDDVD/BluRay to HD mp4 files. I've been meaning to but no linger making 80 grand a year kind of hurts the hacking budget. I came across a XBOX360 HDDVD drive at meijer for $15.00 and said, what the heck.

I found that Ripbot264 is the only workable solution right now. I tried it manually with all the other old school tools and only ripbot does this right. You MUST have a windows XP box with anyDVD and Ripbot and LOTS AND LOTS of hard drive space.

I am ripping my first real run (king kong hddvd that came free with the HDDVD drive) with it and will report back here how well it worked and what settigns I found to be useful

GRUMBLE: More video podcasts should be in HD.

2009-01-18T21:36:00.002-05:00

Been having fun today with XBMC live. I loaded up bashpodder in the background to pull down video podcasts to a special directory. Being a Geek I watch DL.TV and Systm as well as Channel Frederator.

Problem is, only Systm is available in HD. I started looking around and most Video Podcasts are low grade 320X240 video. I want HD. Video Podcasts are the TV of tomorrow and they should be available in HD.

It's fun to have the future of TV in my living room, bummer that there is no content.

Eradicate Windows from the living room : XBMC Live

2009-01-18T12:48:00.003-05:00

I have bee waiting for this for nearly 4 years now. XBMC is the absolute best media center setup that exists. It completely kills Windows media center in both the Old XP and the new vista iterations hands down. but it required a hacked Xbox and cant do HD at all. This left me using windows and Mediaportal, a windows media center that is better than Microsoft own MCE.

recently the guys that wrote XBMC started porting it to linux. and they have a live version called XBMC Live. this will convert a PC to a HD media center without most of the effort. It's still not for the newbie.

All of XBMC resides is /usr/share/xbmc

first thing you need to do is log into the box and execute "alsamixer" and raise all the volume levels.

Second, you need to edit the xorg.conf in /etc/X11 if you are using anything other than HDMI or DVI or VGA to hook it to your TV.

you can find the right settings for an NVIDIA card at This location which will set things up right for use with component video.

Those are the basics. I use it to play the TV shows I watch. so I need to be able to delete a video after I watch it. so I had to edit the Keymap.xml file to change one of the useless "my TV, my Videos, My music" buttons to delete. and then reprogrammed my universal remote.

I will have more details as I continue on this project. I started at 11:00am this morning and have it as functional as my Mediaportal box was before I erased it by 4:00pm

I'm just glad to get rid of microsoft from yet another machine in my home. It reduces my liability and my expenses. Maybe 2009 will be my year to eradicate Microsoft from my home.... except for my watch. I really like my Fossil Microsoft data watch.

The END of 2008.

2008-12-31T07:55:00.002-05:00

The end of 2008. 2008 had some good parts and some bad parts. One of my favorite parts is that my business is taking off and I got back on a motorcycle. Both of those make me really happy. I published a Book and a DVD this year, both ended up as surprises to me as to their popularity. Major changes in my relationships with friends family and loved ones really solidified and became better, I am happier now than ever, I feel more loved than ever. I stepped outside the box, and will never go back in the "normal" box again. I laughed more in 2008 than in 2007... that has to count for something.

The bad is that my daughter has made it her career to get into trouble. 2008 was nothing but a string of bad and worse decisions by her. I learned that you cant direct them anymore at 17 you can fight like the world depends on you and in the end they punish you for all your efforts. she's burning bridges, refuses to accept help, and I'm helpless to change any of it short of getting her incarcerated. If she wants the life of trailer park trash and losers then so be it. She was not raised that way. Your kids friends are the biggest influence in their life, do what you can to control TIGHTLY what friends they have. It sounds bad to say it, but many of the poor kids are trash, many of the rich kids are complete garbage, and the number of good kids are getting smaller and smaller every year. I just look back and wish I would have put her in private school before she got to 5th grade, as she is turning out to be a prime example of what public schools have become. Granted my corporate career, and working 60 hours a week to climb the corporate ladder did not help. And my abandoning the corporate executive path was too late to change her path.

I have regrets, but you cant change what happened. And you cant let those regrets stop you from moving forward in life. I have always has more drive than the normal person. In 2009, I will harness and unleash that drive. Excuses are not allowed in 2009.

That is my biggest new years resolution, that and getting less fat.

Your cellphone company is ripping you off.

2008-12-28T11:50:00.002-05:00

Something I have known for decades and have told many has finally came to light in mainstream media.. How much Cellphone Text messages really cost was published in the NYtimes and hopefully will make people finally scream at the cellphone companies.

Your text messages cost the cellphone companies nothing. They go over the data comms channel that already move data to and from phones about status and other information. you sending a text message costs zero, nada, nothing to the company because they need to maintain the channel for the phones to work for regular phone calls.

American cellphone companies gladly rip you off charging their incredibly insane rates to send and receive text messages. And they do it because you quietly pay it without complaining.

Holidays, Shopping, Work, Family, Friends, Insanity.

2008-12-18T18:07:00.002-05:00

It's 1 week to Christmas. I just had to cancel an order with my favorite online store because they lost my order, and then when I call up they claim that paypal refused to charge, Yet paypal says, "nope it's all ok!". So I am forced to go into the fray and shop in the stores with all the crazies. I got what I wanted, I wasted an hour of my life waiting in lines. All fixed now.

The stresses I fell this time of the year are always the same. Choose between family, friends and those that are the closest to me. Do we decorate the house and then try to act cheery that in 2 more weeks we get to take 2X the time taking it all down? Do we not decorate and be accused by everyone of being "BAH HUMBUG"? Honestly I know the reason for the season, Both the Religious and secular reasons. It's just as I get older I see less of a reason to spend an entire weekend decorating so we can spend an entire weekend undecorating.

Then the gift thing... I dont care to get gifts, I can honestly buy whatever I want. well to an extent.. I want a $16,000 new Powermac tower with a triple 22" monitor setup. But the chances of that being given to me on Xmas are zero so the point is moot. People expect gifts. I hate giving gifts to people that expect them, I think they are rude for expecting them. On the other hand I love giving gifts to those that dont expect them. Two of my best friends are getting gifts they do not expect. He's getting something for him and his wife. Juli, she's a different story. Juli is a far bigger part of our life.. She is not expecting anything at all. In fact she is very blue about the holidays with not having anything to really give her daughter. Being a starving artist/student she really cant afford much and we really understand. Lynne and I dont want her to spend money on us because she cant afford it. but she's getting something. something very special and quite possibly something she has never had in her life. We both hope she likes it a lot.

Then my daughter... she has been in a TON of trouble this year.. well the past 4 years.. but it's getting bad. She did some very bad things and I dont know what to do about her christmas. Why is it that Teenagers go completely insane? I didn't, at least I think I didn't.

The holidays this year are an enigma to me. It's not a definite point of festivity it has been in the past. It's not a cloud of gloom. It's eh. It's blah. Friends stress about money and family dont help. But it's not making it blah.

I just wonder why some years the holidays are a burden, others a blessing, and others just eh.

Poor man's High end home automation Take II

2008-12-09T08:51:00.004-05:00

Crestnet wire is a "special" wire for crestron interconnection. you CAN use CAT5 wire for it, but I found a better wire that works as good and is cheap when found surplus.

Balanced audio wire. it's got a shielded pair and an unshielded pair. all are larger gauge than crestnet wire and works perfectly. I have 500 feet of it installed in the house right now. I got the spool of 1000 feet for $25.00 at a local auction.

Cheap wireless control can be had by getting your hands on a RF universal remote. 418 mhz is the typical RF remote range. Then learn in or program it from the Crestron codes online. I have a really old URC remote controlling my gear for the bedroom I got off ebay for $39.00. but I had to buy a 418 RF gateway for Crestron... That was $100.00 but will handle 10 remotes just fine.

Open source tv recording... Try #47

2008-12-01T08:58:00.007-05:00

Ok After screwing around with Mythbuntu I'm back using mythtv for my tv recording. I was trying to update and be the new maintainer for webvcr+ but it needs a complete rewrite to be useful again... so in order to make my TV recordings seamless I slammed a bunch of el-cheapo PVR-150 recorder cards into a machine and installed mythbuntu... then spent a week making nuvexport do what I wanted and to actually work. (Note lots of things in mythbuntu will break running nuvexport)

Step-1 copy your ~/.mythtv contents to the /home/mythtv directory. This missing fact will fail to launch any job after an encode.

Step-2 Install ALL dependencies. Mythbuntu is missing a lot, but you can apt-get all of what you need.

Step-3 test it a LOT. I still need to tweak my conversion settings and it still does not delete the original file when conversion is complete.

I'm recording with 3 tuner cards, and it's doing a decent job. but I really want it to delete the source recording after the encode is finished.