http://volumeconv.appspot.com

Anything missing? Please contact me at pete {at} stoltenow {dot} com.

Old faithful is a Apple Macbook (black) 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 1 GB of RAM, circa mid 2007. I recently realized for the low price of approximately $20 USD, I could double the memory. And while the 2 year old machine still seems to be fast enough, for only $20, why not?

I could have gotten 4GB for $30, seems like a good deal right? Unfortunately, the laptop only "officially" supports 2GB of RAM. Doing some reading, it seems 3GB *may* have been possible, but for my web browsing, 2GB will probably be alright.

All went well with the upgrade, the little dude seems to boot twice as fast.

The old memory (2 x 512 MB SO-DIMMs)



The new memory (2 x 1 GB SO-DIMMs)



Battery Removed, Ready to upgrade memory



Inserting the new memory DIMMs

When a program is selected and starts streaming, the Roku box decides what is the best quality level you can get with the current internet connection. 1 star for the slowest connections, all the way up to 4 stars for the best speed connections, which is typically cable internet. (They're not actually stars, but I like to think of them as such)

I have a DSL connection (Qwest) with a 1.5 megabit download speed. When I first plugged in the Roku player about a year ago, my 1.5 megabit DSL connection, I would typically get the "2 star" level of quality. Occasionally, it would give me the horrid "1 star" level of quality. But I would never see anything above level 2.

Well in the past few weeks, I've been seeing "3 stars" of quality, over the same speed internet connection. Once I even got 4! I didn't change anything, and yet suddenly I'm getting better quality streaming video? And It looks great. It's on par with VHS quality, if not a touch above.

I can't be sure, but I *think* the audio quality has gotten worse. Could Netflix be sacrificing audio quality for better video?

That seems like a firmware problem. Looking at Netgear's website, there have been a few hardware revisions of the FVS318, a version 1, version 2, and version 3. This one was a hardware version 2, which means it could only be updated to firmware 2.4, which is the version it already had. I tried to go back to older versions, but it wouldn't take them. Nothing really else I could do.

The router was headed for the trash, when I figured something out. The device has 9 RJ45 jacks... a single "Internet Port", and 8 LAN ports. If I connect the cable from my modem to one of the 8 LAN ports instead of the "Internet Port", the device functioned as a simple switch.

So the FVS318 has now been given a second life as a 10/100MB, 8 port switch. Kinda a waste of such full featured firewall/router, but better then winding up in the landfill.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

1. Azureus

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

2. Second Life

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

3. Google Earth

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

4. Picasa

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

5. Wine

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

6. VMware Player

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

http://labix.org/smart

8. Opera

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

9. VLC

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

10. Skype

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.

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.

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!

]]> http://www.stoltenow.com/archives/2007/03/installing_knop.html http://www.stoltenow.com/archives/2007/03/installing_knop.html News Thu, 01 Mar 2007 01:17:36 +0000