After-market navigation with XM data

December 29, 2004 · Posted in Electronics · Comment 

Pioneer Electronics AVIC-NC2 In a previous post, I mentioned that XM is delivering navigation data in their stream, and the Acura RL is using this data in its navigation stystem. I was hoping that someone would come out with an after-market system that uses this data. This post at Droxy mentions that Pioneer has announced their AVIC-NC2.

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Replaced router

December 29, 2004 · Posted in Computer · Comment 

Last night, I replaced our Netgear FR114P with a Linksys WRT54GS. I wanted to get this new router for a couple of reasons:

  1. Better QoS. The QoS in our Vonage ATA only handles upstream bandwidth. The QoS in the Linksys does QoS on both upstream and downstream. (previous post)
  2. Better reliability. I was never sure about how reliable the Motorola VT1000v is. Since the Motorola VT1000v was connected directly to the broadband connection, and the Netgear was connected to the Motorola, if the Vonage ATA crashed, my whole network would be in accessible.

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s/mime certificates

December 27, 2004 · Posted in Computer · 2 Comments 

A while ago, I setup s/mime certificates for my email accounts. I just noticed that the certificates are about to expire. So I created some new certificates, and these are the steps that I followed. These certificates will work with Apple’s Mail as well as Mozilla.

There are several reasons that I do this:

  1. Whenever I send emails, I always sign the messages. Many email programs (Apple Mail, Mozilla, Outlook) will automatically notify the recipient that the sender has been verified, and that the message has not been modified. So when someone receives an email from me, they can be certain that I sent the email.
  2. Signed messages get marked with a lower score from spam filters, so there is less of a chance of false positives
  3. When sending email to a recipient that also has a s/mime certificate, most email programs will give you the option to encrypt the message.

I originally got these instructions from this page at macosxhnts.

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DVDAttache

December 26, 2004 · Posted in Computer · Comment 

For Christmas we got a lot of DVDs (Baby Einstein 15 DVD collection), and last night I wanted to enter them into the application that I use to manage our DVD collection. During the process of entering the DVDs, the application started crashing. So, I decided to find a different one. DVDAttache is the best one that I have found.

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Fixed bug in plog xmlrpc

December 22, 2004 · Posted in Computer · 1 Comment 

I fixed a bug in the code that I did for implementing MetaWeblog xmlrpc support. If no categories were specified for a post, the server would get an error.

The thing that I want to work on next is to get the dateCreated that is specified by the client to be used for the resulting article.

I have posted the updated script here.

Post with tips for dealing with stolen blog content

December 21, 2004 · Posted in Blogging · Comment 

The ProBlogger blog has a post that describes some very good steps to take when you find that someone is stealing your content.

Upgraded PostNuke

December 21, 2004 · Posted in Computer · Comment 

Since there is a new worm that is using Google to spread itself to phpBB forums, I decided to upgrade my PostNuke and PNphpBB to the latest versions.

After backing up my previous installation, I downloaded the latest version of PostNuke. I then followed the steps listed here. (They should do something similar to gallery, where the archive always expands to the same name, so it is easy to do upgrades).

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Door Knob Covers

December 21, 2004 · Posted in General · Comment 

It is fun watching our son defeat the childproofing devices around our house. We have the Safety 1st Secure Grip Door Knob Covers on one of our door. I had been noticing that the door was open when I could have sworn that I had closed it.

Normally an adult will squeeze both sides of the covers and then turn the knob. A kid can’t do this so I was interested how he was getting in.

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Google Response for copyright infrigement

December 21, 2004 · Posted in Blogging · 1 Comment 

In a previous post, I mentioned that there was a web site that had been posting my content without permission. I had contacted Google since this web master was attempting to make money by posting Google AdSense ads on these pages.

The response that I got was that Google only is responsible for the contents of the ads, and not the content of the the web pages that the ads are displayed on.

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UPS works

December 21, 2004 · Posted in Computer · Comment 

This morning the power went out at our house. This was the first real use of our Tripp Lite UPS 1500VA system. The power was out for about 40 minutes, and the UPS was up for about 35 minutes. I was very pleased that we got it.

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