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Microsoft Outlook - "Beyond Next Month"

The other day Microsoft Outlook 2003 did an odd thing... Typically, when I look at the "Sent Items" folder, messages are divided into groups by the time period sent. There are usually headers like "Today" and "Yesterday" and "Last Week".

But now everything fell under the header of "Beyond Next Month". How amazing, I thought! Outlook knows about emails I haven't even sent yet.

As it turns out, I had accidentally changed the Windows clock earlier in the day; it had been bumped forward a year. When I set the system clock back to today's date, everything went back to normal.

So much for telling the future.

Microsoft Iowa Settlement

My check came in the mail from the Microsoft Iowa Class Action Settlement. Below is a copy of what they sent. Its not every day that Microsoft pays you.

(I'm thinking this will go towards a new Apple Macbook)

DTV Converter Box Coupons

The government has started sending out coupons for $40 off the price of a DTV turner which will allows continued use of older TVs using Antennas instead of cable or satellite. Considering the typical box will cost approximately $50, this means the government (Dept of Commerce) is subsidizing almost the entire cost of upgrading technology for you. "Perhaps not the best use of tax dollars" is my initial thought. But then you realize that the FCC made $19 billion auctioning off the radio spectrum currently used by Analog TVs, I guess it's allowable.

Although they were supposedly giving these coupons out as early as February of 2008, it didn't make much sense to get one until recently. The DTV converter boxes weren't even available in stores until maybe late March. Now a days you can stroll into your local Walmart and pick one up without a problem.

Coupons can still be requested for a limited time. Go to https://www.dtv2009.gov to do so. Below is a copy of what was sent to me when I requested 2 coupons.

Iowa Caucus Night

My Iowa Caucus experience, for those of you that may be interested.

I arrived at the local middle school for the republican caucus shortly before 6:30pm. The crowd was very large, with little room to move. We were supposed to come in through the lobby and register at a small table, but with the amount of people, it was not possible. We were told we could register later, when we broke into smaller groups. First we were to all meet in the auditorium as a large group. The auditorium held about 900 people, and with the overflow, it was estimated that there was over 1000 people in attendance. I'm not sure when things were supposed to start, but they didn't get going until after 7:30.

The event started with the pledge of allegiance, and a prayer. Next the chairwomen for the local party gave us a short history of the Iowa caucus. There was applause when she noted how seriously Iowans take their roll in the presidential election. She then introduced representatives from the campaigns to speaker on behalf of the candidates. There were speakers for Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Ron Paul. The man speaking for Mitt Romney was his older brother, Scott Romney.

Next she introduced our state senator, who gave a state of the senate address. This was followed by a short speech from a women who was running on the republican ticket as our state representative, and then a man who solicited attendees for the Marshall county republican steak fry fundraiser. Finally she announced directions to the rooms where we would break up into smaller groups for the actual vote.

My precinct was located in a small science class room at the other end of the building. Of the 1000+ voters that turned out from Marshalltown's 8 precincts, only 21 were from mine. I suspect this is because I live in a heavily Hispanic area, and many of them can't vote. The precinct Captain told us that we would need to elect 2 delegates to the county convention. Two people willingly volunteered. We then elected a secretary, and a helper for the precinct captain. The precinct captain then said that if any one person wished to have a secret paper ballot vote then we would do so. No one requested this, so votes were taken by a show of hands, and written on the white board. The results are below.

Mike Huckabee 8
Mitt Romney 7
Fred Thompson 4
Ron Paul 1
Rudy Giuliani 1

That was all, and everyone left. The helper stayed with the captain to call in the results, and to be certain it was done correctly according to the vote.

My Problems Running Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn"

1. Support for wide screen displays

I have a Dell 2005FPW 20 inch widescreen LCD monitor. It has a native resolution of 1680x1050. This is getting to be a more and more common screen resolution. And yet Ubuntu doesn't use this resolution "out-of-the-box". Ubuntu set the resolution to 1280x1024, which looked squished. And it didn't give the option to set the resolution to the native 1680x1050, it only detected that the best the monitor supported was 1280x1024.

It's not just my monitor (which I think is a very common model), other 20 and 21 inch widescreens with 1680x1050 resolution cause the same problem.

2. Hard Drive Removal

When I did this Ubuntu installation, I did so with an extra HD drive attached. This had all the data from my old install, which I could copy onto the new install. This extra hard drive was mounted somewhere similar to /media/hd1. I point that out because this drive contained no system information, no partition was mounted as /home or /usr or something important. It was just a one partition drive with lots of media files on it.

When I had copied everything from the extra drive to the new install, I powered down and removed the IDE drive. On the next startup, Ubuntu displayed all sorts of drive mounting errors, and booted into the terminal interface. No GUI. I understand where the mounting errors came from, but no GUI? Windows handles this in a much more clean manner. When you remove an extra drive (of course, not the primary partition with the Windows install on it) Windows simply ignores the fact that the drive was ever there. It keeps on working fine.

3. Super User File Manager

Shouldn't this be available? I understand and agree with the arguments that a user should have a limited access account. But there are times when you need to move files around outside of your home directory. Say I want to drop a new icon for an application I installed in /usr/share/pixmaps. Or drop a program's executable binary I downloaded or built from source into /opt. I know this can be done from the command line, but someone coming from a Windows background will expect to do this in the file manager. All the other distributions have a super user file manager available in the menus. Any reason Ubunutu can't? The solution to this is to run "gksudo nautilus" from a command line window, or create a launcher with the same command.

4. Dual Monitor Support.

Ubuntu should detect this and have tools to configure it. There's no way to use dual monitors on an out of the box install. You shouldn't have to go edit xorg.conf. Or install additional programs or the restricted drivers. More and more users will be using 2 or more monitors, and it should be better supported.

Using a HP LaserJet 1000 in Linux

Here's the steps I used to print from my HP LaserJet 1000 in Linux. From the command line, enter the following:

1. wget http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/foo2zjs.tar.gz
2. tar xzvf foo2zjs.tar.gz
3. cd foo2zjs
4. make
5. ./getweb 1000
6. make install
7. make install-hotplug

At this point you should open your GUI printer configuration utility, and add the printer. Print a test page. If all went well, it should work.

Foo2zjs is an open source printer driver for printers that use the Zenographics ZjStream wire protocol. What is the ZjStream wire protocol? You can read more about it here. For trouble shooting, or to donate to the author (I did), visit his page here.

Upgrading to Flash 9 in OpenSuse 10.2

By default OpenSuse currently comes with Flash version 7, which works for much of the interweb, but not all of it. Increasingly video websites and other neato stuff like Google Maps Street View require Flash 9. In order to install Flash 9 in OpenSuse:

Go to http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer

The site will know you're running linux and present you with the appropriate installers. DO NOT download the .tar.gz. It will not work.

Instead right click on the .rpm and select "Save Link As...". Save the RPM somewhere in your home folder, like your desktop.

Go find the file. If you're running Gnome, right click on the file and select "Open with Install Software".

You'll be prompted for your root password. Enter it.

The Software installer app will soon present you with a list of packages to install with only one item. Flash Player 9. Click on Install.

When it's done, restart your browser and browse on over to http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/welcome/ to see if it worked. There should be a test flash object embedded in the page. Click on about to see your current flash version.

This Is My Macbook

This is my Macbook.
There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My Macbook is my best friend. It is my life.
I must master it as I must master my life.
My Macbook without me is useless. Without my Macbook, I am useless.

10 Linux Applications You Want, But Didn't Come With Your Distribution

Most Linux Distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora Core come with an impressive list of applications to do just about everything you could want. But there's plenty of neat software out there that doesn't come with your operating system. Below is a list of free Linux applications, that I'm sure you will agree are the "bee's knees".

1. Azureus

Your distribution probably came with a bare bones BitTorrent client. But You'll want something a little more full featured.

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/download.php

2. Second Life

You've heard a lot about it. Why not try it yourself, in Linux. Warning, requires a reasonably modern 3D graphics card.

http://secondlife.com/community/linux-alpha.php

3. Google Earth

Although not an entirely native Linux port, (it relies heavily on Wine, which it will install for you) the folks at Google have made the popular Google Earth application available. Again, a modern graphics card is needed for the best experience.

http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html

4. Picasa

F-Spot is pretty good for managing and editing your photos, but you may like picasa better. Also from the folks at Google.

http://picasa.google.com/linux/download.html

5. Wine

Want to run the Windows version of iTunes or World of Warcraft or another application? That's possible with Wine, the Windows compatibility layer. It often takes a bit of searching and configuration, but if you want to run it under Linux, you can bet there's someone else out there that wants it to run under Linux too.

http://www.winehq.org/site/download

6. VMware Player

If you're using Linux, then what distribution you currently have installed probably isn't your first, and certainly won't be your last. VMware Player is free virtual machine software, that will let you try out other operating systems, without having to actually install them.

http://www.vmware.com/download/player/

Free images of operating systems are available for download here:

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/

7. Smart Package Manager

Sure, if you're using Ubuntu, you've got Synaptics. But if you're using RedHat or Suse, you probably have learned to hate the slow software management tools that came with your system (like YaST). Replace them with Smart, which provides better package management for most distributions, even when working with their own packages.

http://labix.org/smart

8. Opera

Yes, Firefox is probably your browser of choice. But recently, it's become a bloated memory hog. Wouldn't you like a truly speedy, lightweight browser?

http://www.opera.com/download/index.dml?platform=linux

9. VLC

You're Disto may have come with some something like Totem, or Banshee, or Kaffeine. but does it play all the video formats you want it too? Probably not. Why not give VLC a try?

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

10. Skype

Free VoIP calling from anywhere, with amazing audio quality.

http://www.skype.com/download/skype/linux/

Do you have any others that should be included in the list? Post your thoughts in the comments below.

Low Power Computer Running High Definition MythTV

It's generally concidered that if you want to record and play back HD content in MythTV, you need at least a 2.8GHz CPU. Thanks to the miricle of XvMC and an old available system, I've been able to get a working HD MythTV setup on a 1.66GHz system, with the following Specs:

AMD Sempron 2400+
512MB PC-2700 DDR SDRAM
nVidia GeForce FX5200 128MB DDR AGP
250GB SATA HD
pcHDTV HD-5500

Here are the settings used in MythTV under:
Home > Utilities/Setup > Setup > TV Settings > Playback
1. Deinterlace Playback Algorithm: Bob (2x framerate)
2. Preferred MPEG2 Decoder: Standard XvMC
3. Disable OpenGL vertical sync for timing

Other items that help are in the nVidia server settings. Exit out of the MythTV front end to your window manager. Then launch "nvidia-settings".
1. Disable Video Texture Adapter: Sync to VBlank
2. Disable Video Blitter Adapter: Sync to VBlank

With these settings, live TV can still be unwatchable. But when you record shows for later playback, the video is smooth with only minor hiccups occasionally. This should give hope to those wanting to build a HD MythTV system with an underpowered computer.

Installing Knoppmyth with the pcHDTV HD-5500

The pcHDTV cards have become perhaps the best supported cards for MythTV, that's why I selected the HD-5500 for my Home Theater PC. Below are the steps that worked for me to get things going. This Guide is for setup of a MythTV system using the pcHDTV HD-5500 for over the air digital TV. The Knoppmyth version used is R5E50.

When you first boot the Knoppmyth CD, you'll see the grey Knoppmyth splash screen with a prompt on the bottom. It's a good idea to enter "tv" to ensure setup will continue at a resolution compatible with your tv or monitor. Do so and press enter

The first option on the Knoppmyth install menu is to test the install media. That might be good idea, you should first select that. When it has completed checking the CD, select option 3, Auto Install.

Enter the current time zone, and if necessary correct the time and date.

You'll then be given a warning (Danger, Will Robinson!), select yes.

Next enter your real name (or fake name), and select next.

Enter a user name.

Enter a password for that user, select next and do so again.

Enter a password for the root account, select next and do so again.

Next you'll need to select a hostname for the machine. The default "mythtv" is fine.

It will ask "Do you want to process with these parameters, select next.

One more warning, select yes to continue.

Another (this time for real) final warning.

Now sit back and let Knoppmyth install. When is has completed, it will prompt you for a reboot, select OK

When the CD is ejected, remove it and hit return.

-----------

When the machine reboots, you'll find a terminal window open in a GUI environment. You'll be asked for a root password.

Next, to begin the configuration of MythTV select ok.

Select the correct time zone and press OK.

If you have your computer plugged into a typical router, then you will be using DHCP to get an IP address and get internet connectivity. When prompted to use DHCP brodcast, select yes.

Next you should be seeing the blue MythTV user interface.

Select General. Go through the screens until you reach the "Global Backend Settings".

Change the TV Format to ATSC

Change the channel frequency table to us-bcast

Continue to select next through the rest of the general setup. The default selections should be fine.

Once back at the main menu, select capture cards.

Select new capture card.

Toggle through the card types and select the DVB driver. (NOT THE V4L driver even though it says pcHDTV!!!)

Select Finish. You should now see the card added to your list of capture cards ([ HDTV: /dev/video ])

Press escape to exit to the main menu

Select video sources.

You'll need to enter a unique name for your video source. For example, "myTelevision".

Next enter the data for your listings grabber. If you haven't done so already, you'll need to sign up for an account at http://labs.zap2it.com.

Finally change the Channel frequency table to us-bcast.

When done, select finish. Again, you'll need to press escape to return to the main menu.

Now select the Input Connections (item 4).

In here you'll need to select the video source you created earlier.

Now, assuming you have an antenna connected to the card, select scan for channels.

Make sure the frequency table is set to Broadcast, and the ATSC is set to Terrestrial. Then select next, and begin the scan.

When it's done scanning channels, you'll see a list of what as found. Select finish to return to the "Connect source to input" screen. Select finish here too.

At this point you will exit the MythTV interface and return to the terminal window. It's possible at this point you could returned back to the MythTV setup GUI. Just exit again.

You will be prompted for a zip code, enter your local code.

You will be asked about BootSplash, a nice looking splash screen. type in "yes" or "no".

You will be asked about your remote. Since the HD-5500 does not come with it's own remote, you'll have to acquire one separately. I highly recommend the Streamzap, in which case, everything will be configured automatically. Otherwise, enter the correct information for your remote.

You will be asked about a serial port IR Blaster. Type in "yes" or "no".

You will be asked about using RomDB which is used by MythGame. I would answer "no".

When prompted for a password for MythWeb, enter one (twice)

When promted about donating space CPU cycles to Folding@Home, make a selection.

That's it. You should now see the typical MythTV user interface. Enjoy!

Viewing WMV, XviD, DivX and more in Suse 10.2

These days I just can't use Linux unless I can play all videos encoded with the latest and greatest codecs. Luckily, this turns out to be pretty easy in OpenSuse 10.2. Now there are many ways to get XviD, DivX, WMA, MOV, etc. to work, But this is probably one of the easier ways to go.

First we need to install the SMART Package Manager. Then we'll use it to install MPlayer with all the latest and greatest codecs. SMART is a software package manager that has "notable advantages over native tools currently in use". Basically it's faster and easier to use then the YaST package manager that comes with Suse by default. And it works along side YaST, so hopefully you will keep it around and continue to use it in the future.

The long versions of these instructions for installing SMART are here. Follow it though to the point about running the SMART GUI.

If all goes well, at this point you should be able to find an icon for Smart Package Manger in your program launcher. Go ahead and start it. It will require your root password.

Once Smart has launched, select from the edit pull down menu Edit->Find... Search for the word "mplayer". When the results are displayed, expand the category named "Productivity/Multimedia/Video/Players" and click on the box next to "MPlayer". If you are using KDE, you may wish to select "kmplayer" instead. Now from the File pull down menu, select File->Execute Changes... Smart will show you a change summary. Select OK. When the operation is completed, you may close Smart.

You should now have MPlayer installed, along with all the necessary codecs to play just about anything. Give it a try!

Ubuntu: Configure Wireless From The Command Line

Although Ubuntu and other distributions give us easy to use graphical user interfaces for configuring almost everything, it's nice to know how to get things working without them. Here we'll show how to connect to a wireless access point and get on the internet from the command line.

First things first, you have to know what the device name of your wireless interface is. Typically this is wlan0, but in my case, it's ath0. Be sure the interface is turned on.

user@ubuntu:~$ sudo ifconfig ath0 up

Next we'll get a list of all the available access points using the iwlist command.

user@ubuntu:~$ iwlist ath0 scanning

You should see something similar to the following:

ath0 Scan completed :
   Cell 01 - Address: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
     ESSID:"Larry"
     Mode:Master
     Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
     Quality=3/94 Signal level=-92 dBm Noise level=-95 dBm
     Encryption key:off
     Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
     24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
     12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
     Extra:bcn_int=100
   Cell 02 - Address: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
     ESSID:"MYACCESSPOINT"
     Mode:Master
     Frequency:2.452 GHz (Channel 9)
     Quality=45/94 Signal level=-50 dBm Noise level=-95 dBm
     Encryption key:on
     Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 22 Mb/s
     6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s
     36 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
     Extra:bcn_int=200
   Cell 03 - Address: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
     ESSID:"motorola"
     Mode:Master
     Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
     Quality=4/94 Signal level=-91 dBm Noise level=-95 dBm
     Encryption key:on
     Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
     24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
     12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
     Extra:bcn_int=100

The output shows a quite a detailed list of the surrounding access points. You probably know which one you want. Take note of the essid. We'll use that to associate with that access point.

user@ubuntu:~$ sudo iwconfig ath0 essid MYACCESSPOINT

If the access point has some sort of WEP or WPA encryption enabled, you'll need to enter the key. If not, you can skip this step.

user@ubuntu:~$ sudo iwconfig ath0 key 12345abcde

You should now have a connection to the access point. But before you start using the interweb, you'll need to get an IP address. Most access points have DHCP servers that make this part easy. Just run the DHCP client to ask for an address.

user@ubuntu:~$ sudo dhclient

That should provide output similar to the following:

wifi0: unknown hardware address type 801
can't create /var/lib/dhcp3/dhclient.leases: Permission denied
Can't create /var/run/dhclient.pid: Permission denied
drop_privileges: could not set group id: Operation not permitted
pete@pete-laptop:~$ sudo dhclient
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.4
Copyright 2004-2006 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

wifi0: unknown hardware address type 801
wifi0: unknown hardware address type 801
Listening on LPF/ath0/00:XX:14:01:6b:XX
Sending on LPF/ath0/00:XX:14:01:6b:XX
Listening on LPF/wifi0/
Sending on LPF/wifi0/
Listening on LPF/eth0/00:XX:43:45:92:XX
Sending on LPF/eth0/00:XX:43:45:92:XX
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPREQUEST on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPDISCOVER on wifi0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 4
DHCPACK from 192.168.0.1
bound to 192.168.0.101 -- renewal in 39598 seconds.

Finally, let's check that everything is working. Ping an address.

user@ubuntu:~$ ping www.google.com

Reinstalling Windows In A Dual Boot System

If you've ever setup a dual boot system with Windows and Linux before, you know that you have to install Windows first. Then you install Linux, which will include a boot loader that will allow you to boot into either operating system. But what do you do if want to reinstall Windows when you're using a boot loader like lilo or grub?

If you just put in the Windows CD and do a fresh Windows reinstall it will take over the system, and require you to reinstall Linux again, even if there's no need. What happens is Windows writes over the Master Boot Record (MBR), the first 512 bytes of the hard drive. The MBR points to the partition to find the bootable operating system, and Windows points it to itself. To avoid this, you can save the MBR before you install Windows, and write it back after the install to resume using your dual boot system as usual.

I did this in Ubuntu, but it will work in any flavor of linux. On the command line, enter the following:

sudo dd if=/dev/hda of=/path/to/save/mbr.image count=1 bs=512

Substitute the path you want to save the MBR image and the correct device of your hard drive, which is probably hda. You've now saved a copy of your MBR from your dual boot system. At this point you should save MBR image to a USB drive or email it to yourself. Now go ahead and install Windows.

When the Windows installation is complete, you need to write back the original MBR. Boot into Linux with a knoppix disc and find your MRB image. From a terminal run the following:

dd if=/path/to/saved/mbr.image of=/dev/hda

Of course remember to sub in the path to your MBR image and the device name of your hard drive. That's it. Reboot and things should be back to normal.

Pink For October

Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer affecting one out of every nine females up until the age of 90. Although rare, one in 1000 men are also diagnosed with breast cancer as well. Educate yourself and consider a small donation to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. If you feel inclined to enter your own website in celebration of Breast Cancer Awareness month, check out Pink for October.