Paul's Time Sink

29 Mar, 2009

I was going on a trip a few weeks ago.  I wanted to make sure that my iPhone would not run out of power, especially since there would be longer times than usual that I would be away from a charger.

I bought the mophie iPhone 3G Juice Pack .  This is a battery pack for the iPhone that connects to the iPhone like a case.  I chose this battery pack instead of others, as it would fit in my pocket while it is attached.

The Juice Pack is 1800 mAh battery, that doubles the battery life of the iPhone.  It connects to the iPod dock connector.  The Juice Pack has a USB port that it uses to chare the battery.  If a iPhone is also attached, the iPhone's battery will be charged before the Juice Pack's.  Also on discharge, the Juice Pack's battery is discharged before the iPhone's internal, so you can remove it from the battery pack once the battery pack loses power.

The only problem that I have with the mophie Juice Pack is that after I put on a BodyGuardz protector on my iPhone, it takes a significant amount of force to put on and take off the battery pack.

Technorati tags: mophie, iPhone, juice pack, battery, BodyGuardz

25 Mar, 2009

The Windows Media Center has been working for us.  I have been interested in finding a way to copy recorded TV shows to my Windows Home Server.  This would allow me to record TV shows, and save them off the Media Center hard drive, but I can still watch them when I have time.

Recorded TV Manager has two main functions.

1. It copies recordings from the Media Center to a Windows Home Server when they finish
2. It copies recordings from the Home Server to a Media Center PC
3. It fixes a problem in Windows Media Center where it will delete duplicate recordings and will enable playback by Original Airdate.

The copying/moving is controlled by rules that enable you to do things like:

• Archive all episodes of show to a Windows Home Server
• Automatically copy recorded shows to a Windows Media Center that doesn't have a tuner
• Lets you play a series in order of air date

Here is a page that has come example usages of Recorded TV Manager

 (More)

Technorati tags: Recorded TV Manager, Windows Media Center, Windows Home Server

25 Mar, 2009

I have been trying to get the Google Reader items that I share and the links that I add on delicious.com, and post them to my blog once a day.  I wrote a rss plugin for LifeType that would create a post with the contents of an rss feed.  The problem is that I have not been able to generate a rss feed that only contains that last 24 hours of items. The problem is that the rss feed of shared items from Google Reader doesn't include the date/time that the item was shared. 

LoudTwitter is a service that will post the last 24 hours of your Twitter entries to a blog.  A while ago, FriendFeed added the ability to post to Twitter.  I have already configured my FriendFeed account with my Google Reader Shared item, and my delicious.com account.

Setting up LoudTwitter was pretty easy.  I created a new user on my blog that LoudTwitter would use (that doesn't have as much prividledges as my normal account. Also I can disable the account if needed.)  It was able to post to my blog well.

I don't think that I will use this service.  The problem is that I want to limit the types of content that gets posted. I don't want to post random twitter post, but I do want to include links that I post on twitter.  Also, I don't want to include links to articles on the blog that LoudTwiter is posting to.  LoudTwitter does have the ability to limit content to those that include a #loudtwitter hash tag.  The problem with this is that, I can't control the text that Google Reader uses for the shared items.

I think that my ideal solution is that FriendFeed adds this functionality.  I imagine that they should do something like their integration with Twitter.  I should be able to select which services I would want included in the post.

Technorati tags: twitter, LoudTwitter, rss, FriendFeed

25 Mar, 2009

• tweets of the day ff.im/-1GXHI #
• Paul is waiting.... ff.im/-1HyyA #
• Awesome price - Dell Outlet Studioâ„¢ Hybrid desktop PCs starting at $399 - is.gd/oLYD (via @DellOutlet) #
• Paul is at Starbucks with K before picking up M from school. ff.im/-1HPsH #
• Paul is feeling pretty proud watching his kids' swim lessons. ff.im/-1HRRd #
• Boxee Adds Pandora, PBS, and New API tinyurl.com/cqb2hz (via @Lifehacker) #
• Creme That Egg! ff.im/-1IaD1 #
• RoninRevenge - Playing Call of Duty: WaW; Playing Free-for-All on Dome #
• RoninRevenge - Playing Call of Duty: WaW; Playing Free-for-All on Station #
• RoninRevenge - Joinable - Playing Call of Duty: WaW; Playing Team Deathmatch on Nightfire #
• RoninRevenge - Joinable - Playing Call of Duty: WaW; In Pre-Game Lobby #
• RoninRevenge - Playing Call of Duty: WaW; In a party #
• RoninRevenge - Playing Call of Duty: WaW; In Pre-Game Lobby #
• RoninRevenge - Playing Call of Duty: WaW; Playing Search and Destroy on Knee Deep #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

24 Mar, 2009

• Howto: Install Google Chrome Alpha in Ubuntu! ff.im/-1FKXg #
• Windows Home Server Power Pack 2 Features and Links ff.im/-1GWc2 #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

20 Mar, 2009

I just installed the Media Center Health Monitor on our Media Center.  This application parses the Windows Event Log and presents the Media Center related events.  In addition to displaying this information in the application itself, it will also upload the data to the Media Center Health Monitor web site, so you can see this information remotely.  You can also configure this application to email status changes and post them to Twitter.  I created a twitter account for my media center and I followed it with my personal account.  

There is also Windows Home Server add-in, that will let you view this information for all of your media centers, without logging into the web site.

Technorati tags: Vista, Media Center, Windows, Windows Home Server

19 Mar, 2009

I never remember how to recursively add files to perforce.  This page describes a command to do it.

On the Linux/Mac OS X p4 command line tool this is the command:

find . -type f -print | p4 -x - add

Technorati tags: p4, source contol, perforce

19 Mar, 2009

There are a lot of services that integrate with Twitter.  Twee60.com posts messages to your twitter account with your status on Xbox Live.  This includes the title of the game that you are playing, and the information of where you are in that game, if it is available.

Technorati tags: xbox 360, Xbox Live, twitter, twee60.com

19 Mar, 2009

A new feature was added to Gmail Labs that will show a previews of photos or videoes in email messages in the Gmail web interface.  This will happen when only a link to is included in the email.  I tried this, and it works pretty well.

I wonder if a following version of this feature will present your email in a graphical view, based on the content either attached or linked to email messages, instead of a text based view of the email messages.  This could be someing similar to Xoopit, but wouldn't have the security issues that I mentioned before.

Technorati tags: Gmail, Youtube, flickr, picasa

16 Mar, 2009

My grandmother uses Incredimail on her computers to check her email. She uses POP3, so when one computer downloads a mail message, it is not available on other computers. This causes a problem because, if instances of Incredimail are running on multiple computers at the same time, you don't know which computer has the email messages.

While I was down there, I figured I would switch the configuration to IMAP to help alleviate these problems. This is the situation where IMAP is supposed to work. I set up Incredimail to use IMAP, but the same behavior was happening.

It looks like Incredimail doesn't implement IMAP correctly. It doesn't synchronize the IMAP folders, but instead just downloads the messages, while leaving them on the server. I don't think that Incredimail should even state that it supports IMAP.

Technorati tags: Incredimail, IMAP, mail, email, POP3

14 Mar, 2009

This past week, I installed a Windows Home Server for my grandmother. One of the pieces of software that I wanted to install was an anti-virus program for the server, and all of the computers in the house. I chose the avast! Professional Family Pack, which includes the avast! Windows Home Server Edition and a 10 pack of avast! Profession Edition client versions, Avast! really seemed to work well for her install.

This post has a review of the home server version of avast!.

[via MS Windows Home Server blog]

Technorati tags: avast!, anti-vrius, Windows Home Server

13 Mar, 2009

I have been trying to limit the software that I install on my laptop running Ubuntu to that which is available in repositories, as opposed to manual installs or building it myself.  The main reason, is it is a hassle to keep up to date as software changes.

I was holding off installing the Firefox 3.1 beta, as I thought that I would have to download and manually install it.  This page describes the repository that has the latest Firefox 3.1 beta.  Once I configured that repository, all I had to do is run

sudo apt-get install firefox-3.1

 Everything is working great with this version of the browser, except that Google Gears is not compatible.  This just means that I will not be able to use the offline mode of several sites.  If I need that, I can always revert bact to Firefox 3.0.x.

Technorati tags: Firefox, Ubuntu

9 Mar, 2009

I know that I have seen this before, and have run through these steps to use Gmail as my mailto application in Firefox 3.  Since then, I have switched to a different computer, and attemped to use Thunderbird as mail client, but have started use the web interface more.

This post describes how to use the Gmail web interface to handle mailto urls.  This page also describes what you need to do to get it to work with Google Apps domains. 

Technorati tags: firefox, gmail, email, mailto

6 Mar, 2009

Our Windows Home Server was running out of disk space.  We had four drives in the internal bays of the HP MediaSmart Server.  I also had two external USB drives attached to the rear USB ports.  (I have a DVD drive attached to the third USB port) I wanted to add a few more drives, and also I wanted to reduce the number of enclosures next to the server.

I wanted to find a drive enclosure that had an SATA port replicator.  This would allow me to attach several SATA drives to the external eSATA port. (This solution will mean that the bandwidth will be shared among the drives.)  The Sans Digital TR4M-B is the best enclosure that I found.

I set it up several weeks ago, and it works perfectly with the  HP MediaSmart Server ex475.  The drives appear the same as they interal SATA drives do on the MediaSmart server.

The only think that I suprised me is that the power LED on the TR4M-B is orange.  When I normally see an orange LED, it makes me think that there is some error.  But it appears that this is just the normal color of it.

One issue that I had is with the design of the case.  You can hot swap SATA drives and the TR4M has a door in front, so you can access the drives.  The problem is that the drives are screwed directly into the enclosure itself, and not in drive sleds.  This is not the major problem itself, but to get access to the screws, you have to remove the top/sides of the enclosure.  What I do is only leave the thumb screws on the top back of the case.  When I want access to a drive, I remove those screws, and just slide the cover back enough for me to get access to the drive screws.  This allows me to hot swap drives when I need to.

The TR4M-B will not work with the new MediaSmart Servers (i.e ex48x).  The new servers do not suport SATA port replication.

Technorati tags: San Digital, TR4M-B, SATA

6 Mar, 2009

I have been trying to figure out what to do with my Xbox 360 games after I finished them.  I have been selling games back to GameStop, but the amount of money that you get is pretty low.  My friends recommended that I try Goozex. 

Goozex is a site that you can trade your games for points, and you can use those points to get other used games.  Goozex sets the point value for the games.  You can list your games, and then when your offer gets to the top of the list, you print out a label and send the game directly to the person who requested it.  When they receive it, they acknowledge it, and you get credited for the trade.

The main benefit of Goozex over GameStop or Amazon Video Game Trade, is that the value of the any game that you trade, is a lot higher.  You can actually get a game by trading a single game.  With GameStop or Amazon, it is very unlikely that you can get a recent game after a single trade. 

Technorati tags: Goozex, Xbox, PS3, trade