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Paul's Time Sink

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HP MediaSmart ex475

Paul Westbrook | 11 May, 2008 23:44

HP Windows Home ServerI have been interested in getting a Windows Home Server for a while.  Last week we got a HP MediaSmart ex475.  I was looking forward to installing it, and transfering everything off our NAS and our Mac mini.

When I plugged it in, it started up fine.  I installed the software fine on my laptop, but when the setup assistant tried to find the server, it failed.  It looks like this problem is happening to many other people. Reseting the server back to factory defaults didn't solve the problem.

I am extremely frustrated with this.  I am going to try creating a network with only the server and my laptop, to see if a noisy network could have caused the communication to be interrupted.  If that doesn't work, I will call HP techinical support.  (Unfortunately, this is hard for me to do, as they are only open during business hours, and I am at work at that time.)

I am very close to sending this back.

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apt-get download speed

Paul Westbrook | 09 May, 2008 15:24

This post has a good tip for speeding up apt-get downloads.  Ubuntu will check all of the mirrors to find the one that has the smallest latency.

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Sound, XPS m1330 and Ubuntu 8.04

Paul Westbrook | 08 May, 2008 22:40

In this previous post, I mentioned that everything was working correctly after upgrading to Ubuntu 8.04.  Unfortunately, after I wrote that post my audio stopped working. 

I went through several steps to get audio back, including building and installing the latest version of alsa.

I found that if I put the following line in my /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base file, everthing works

options snd-hda-intel model=dell-3stack

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Windows Home Server

Paul Westbrook | 26 April, 2008 22:51

HP Windows Home ServerI am thinking about getting the HP EX475 MediaSmart Windows Home Server.  I would replace our NAS with his server.  Also be able to install SqueezeCenter on it as well, and then I can disconnect the Mac mini.

I can use the Windows Home Server to share our photos, music and videos to our XBox for viewing on the TV.

Also, I was thinking that I could install some software that would allow my TiVo content to automatically be archived.

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Upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04

Paul Westbrook | 26 April, 2008 22:21

This evening, I upgraded my laptop from Kubuntu 7.10 to 8.04.  I followed their recommended upgrade steps, where I used the alternate CD and then updated from that.  When I was prompted for conflicts for configuration files, I just selected "use the package mantainer's".  I was a little concerned about this, as this was necessary to get sound to work with Ubuntu 7.10, on my laptop.

After booting, everything seems to be working OK, including sound.

The only thing that I have had a problem with so far is that the upgrade upgraded my previous Firefox installation to the 3.0 beta.  Many of my plugins are not compatible with 3.0.  I know that this will be fixed soon.

Also, I haven't made the switch to KDE 4 yet.  I haven't configured it to how I like it, and until I do that, I will stick with GNOME.

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links for 2008-04-19

Paul Westbrook | 19 April, 2008 02:33

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links for 2008-04-11

Paul Westbrook | 11 April, 2008 02:37

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MSN Direct

Paul Westbrook | 06 April, 2008 22:17

I have been using the Nuvi 680 for several months.  One of the reasons that I bought it was for the traffic information provided by MSN Direct.  I have been unimpressed with the quality of the data.  There are several problems:

  1. There are many areas that don't have coverage.  For example, when driving from San Jose to Sacramento, as soon as we left the local area there was no coverage. Unfortunately, we encountered a traffic delay that we could have been routed around.
  2. Many of the roads that I travel on to and from work are not included in the MSN Direct data.  I only have seen information on interstates and state and US highways.
  3. The data seems to be stale. I have had many occasions when the Nuvi stated that there was a delay, when the delay had already cleared up.

 (More)

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StupidFilter

Paul Westbrook | 31 March, 2008 22:17

StupidFilter looks pretty interesting.  This is an open source project to filter rampant stupidity.  When they release the core engine source code, I will write a plugin for LifeType.

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links for 2008-03-25

Paul Westbrook | 25 March, 2008 03:22

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Daily sending quota exceeded

Paul Westbrook | 25 March, 2008 00:56

My wife has been having a problem sending email.  We currently use Google Apps for our domain, and when she sends email, she gets the following message:

5.4.5 Daily sending quota exceeded

This message is supposed appear if an account has sent more than 500 messages, or more than 100 when using a mail client.  The problem is that she has only sent 2 messages within last 24 hours.

 I have filed a trouble ticket, and have posted a message on thir Google Group.  In the mean time, I have set up one of our Godaddy email accounts, to allow her to send outgoing mail.

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OpenDNS and Verizon Wireless MMS

Paul Westbrook | 19 March, 2008 23:29

As soon as I got my Samsung SCH-i760, I configured the phone to use the DNS servers from OpenDNS.  Everything seemed to be working fine, and web browsing seemed faster.  A while later, I tried sending an MMS message, and it just didn't work, but an error messages was shown.

I finally, got around to tracking this down today.  It looks like Verizon uses a MMS server that has a host name that only resolves from inside the Verizon Wireless network.  So OpenDNS is not able to resolve this hostname.

Once I switched back to the default servers I was able to send picture messages again.

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links for 2008-03-19

Paul Westbrook | 19 March, 2008 03:20

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Opera Mobile

Paul Westbrook | 17 March, 2008 00:22

The built-in web browser in Windows Mobile is pretty bad.  It doesn't support tabs, and it the rendering of html is not that good.  A while ago I tried Opera Mobile, and I really liked it.  Right about the time that I was going to register it, Skyfire was announced, and this browser looks very interesting.

But, I haven't been accepted to the public beta yet.  Since I have still been frustrated with the built in browser, I registered Opera Mobile. 

Now, maybe I will look into Opera for Linux.

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Speed Racer

Paul Westbrook | 16 March, 2008 02:49

This looks like it will be a fun movie.

 


New Speed Racer Trailer
Uploaded by spykestar

 

[via Autoblog]

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