Paul's Time Sink

29 Jul, 2008

I am trying to figure out how to process a rss feed and have the publsh dates of the items change to "now".  I know that I can use magpierss to do this, but I wanted to see if I can do this in Yahoo Pipes. 

I created this pipe, which should do what I want, and it looks like it is working in the debugger.  But, when you look at the resulting rss output, the publish date of the items aren't changed.

Technorati tags: yahoo pipes, rss, feed, Magpie RSS

29 Jul, 2008

The HP Media Smart Server Update includes the optional PVConnect add-in.  PVConnect is a DNLA compliant media streaming server.

I am trying to figure out why someone would want to install this. There seem to be several problems, some with workarounds, with running this add-in:

• Conflict with SlimServer
• Extra configuration needed for PS3 support
• Speed degredation with installation

Windows Home Server already has a DNLA server.  I haven't seen anything that explicitly calls out the features that PVConnect adds.  If I could find something that would state that this will transcode all of the vidoes that I have, that are not supported by our Xbox 360, so I could play them, I would install it.

Technorati tags: PVConnect, Windows Home Server, HP Media Smart

29 Jul, 2008

After talking to some friends at TiVo, it looks like my Series3 was not getting the 9.4 update.  So I guess that the drive just failed enough to cause this problem.  I am going to get a new drive for the box, and hopefully that will solve the problem.

27 Jul, 2008

I belive that my TiVo Series3 was upgrading to the new 9.4 version of TiVo's software.  The problem is that the upgrade was not successful.  The message on the screen states something like "The DVR has detected a serious problem....  This will take about three hours...."

Since I used to work at TiVo, I know what state the TiVo must be in for that message to appear. (And in fact, in a internal development build, I did have a bug in my code that caused this problem.)  Unfortunately, it looks like the TiVo does get past that error, and then reboots, but then gets back in that state.

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Technorati tags: TiVo, Series3

12 Jul, 2008

This tweet mentioned AddThis, and I went to check it out.  AddThis is a serivce that will generate buttons for web pages or blogs, where readers can use them to bookmark or share links. 

I have been using my port of Sociable for LifeType, but AddThis looked interesting enough that I created a LifeType plugin for it.  I will try it out for a while.  One concern that I have about AddThis over Sociable is that the javascript needs to be loaded from their servers.  So if there servers are loaded, this could affect my page load.

I will post a link to the wiki page for the LifeType plugin, once I create it.

Technorati tags: AddThis, social, bookmarks

11 Jul, 2008

Since is is now a requirement to use hands-free devices for use in cars, I started to look for a solution for our van.  I wanted to find something that would connect to the main headunit, where it would automatically mute the audio, to allow the call audio to be heard.  Also, I wanted the device, when installed, to look releatively stock. The Parrot 3200-LS looked like it would work perfectly.  

I had it installed a few weeks ago, and the install looks nice.  It was easy to configure with my Samsung iSCH-760.  On the Parrot, I went into the setting menu for pairing, and selected Windows CE, and the Parrot displayed a password.  Then on my phone, I searched for Bluetooth devices, and then selected the Parrot 3200-LS.  Once paired, the phone numbers on my phone automatically appeared on the Parrot 3200-LS, so I could select phone numbers directly from the Parrot's interface.

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Technorati tags: Parrot, 3200-LS, Bluetooth, Palm, 750wx, Samsung, iSCH-760

2 Jul, 2008

This post had the tip that fixed the problem that I was having using java in Firefox 3.  The fix was just to uninstall the icedtea-gcjwebplugin package.

Technorati tags: Firefox, Ubuntu, java

2 Jul, 2008

Wordle is an interesting site that will generate a stylized tagcloud for some entered text, a site or a rss feed. Here is the cloud that Wordle generated for the feed on this blog:

[via Sad Salvation]

Technorati tags: Wordle, tagcloud, tag