Friday, October 29, 2004

VNC Video Card

I have a server running RedHat 9, that I do not keep a monitor or keyboard connected to. I want to upgrade it to Fedora Core 2, but it is such a hassle, having to connect it to a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

I would love to see someone make a "network video card". This would be a video card that does not actually connect to a monitor. It would actually have a ethernet port. Instead of rendering the video to VGA it would render it to VNC. Then anyone with a VNC client could look at the computer "screen". Also, I was thinking that this video card would have either a USB cable or a PS/2 mouse and keyboard out, so the clients could control the computer. This solution would allow remote controlling of all features, including BIOS settings.

SkiFi 2

Skyfi 2As I am sure most TiVo users have experienced, I have wanted to replay things other than TV. When driving in the car and you miss something on the radio, I want the ability to replay. Delfi, as reported in Engadget, has come out with a new version of the SkiFi that solves some of these problems.

The SkiFi 2 has some minor tweaks, but the most interesting change to be is that they added a 30-minute buffer. Son now it willbe possible to pause and rewind into the buffer.

Growl

Growl is a great new application service that allows any Mac OS X application to present notifications in a unified manor. This allows notifications for iChat, Mail, iTunes and other applications to present a unified notification. So now instead of having some applications bounce their dock icons, some opening windows, and others putting badges on the doc icon, there can be an integrated notification system.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

WhoLinksToMe.com

WhoLinksToMe.com is a very simple service that will determine what webpages link to a given host. What it does is automates searching on Google ( link:www.yourdomain.com query) , Yahoo! and MSN with (linkdomain:www.yourdomain.com), and then puts it on a web page.

Basestation with built-in hard drive

Ximeta Combo 160GB 802.11g routerEngadget has a post that describes a new 802.11g wireless access point and router that also has a built in 160Gb hard drive. I am not sure what protocols this supports, but I am assuming that it will suport SMB

iPod Photo

iPod PhotoNow I actually am really interested in buying a iPod. The 60Gb iPod Photo has enough space to hold all of our 40+ Gb of music, as well as all of our photos.

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Removed Blogsnob

I have noticed that BlogSnob has started to put adds for commercial products/companies in thier listings. When I signed up with BlogSnob, it was meant for advertizing other blogs. I don't like that they just changed the types of ads, but even if they did, I should get some of the money that they get.

Monday, October 18, 2004

Script to inventory computers on network

Macosxhints has a post that describes a script that will list the computer on a network. It uses the arp cache to get the list of computers on the network. It also will map the MAC Address to manufacturer for each device.

Since it uses the arp cache, the post has instructions on quickly access each machine on the network to populate the arp cache.

New Product Idea

Imagine you are on a long road trip, going 60 or 70 on the freeway, and your kids (2 years and 6 weeks) have finally fallen asleep. And it is even during their nap time, so they should be rested in a couple of hours. You and your wife can now listen to the CDs of your choice. But then suddenly traffic comes to a stop... And they wake up, not getting enough sleep

I think that this product will solve this problem:

Sunday, October 17, 2004

Navigation in Honda Odyssey

This weekend was our first chance to have a long trip in the Odyssey. I though that the navigation system was great, and was really useful. There were a few bugs/limitations that I hope get resolved in a future release of the software:

Saturday, October 16, 2004

EyeHome

EyeHomeatmaspheric | endeavors has a review of the EyeHome media player. It looks like a great networked media player, that is intented for Mac OS X. It uses rendezvous to locate Mac OS X computers on the network.

It shows photos from iPhoto, music from iTunes and all music files from the Movies directory in the home directory. It will play MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX¨, 3IVX and XVID video files and AIFF, MP3, WAV, (unprotected) AAC, Ogg Vorbis adn unencrypted WMA audio files.


Sharing drives between Windows XP and ME

Today, I was setting up sharing between a Windows XP computer and a Windows ME computer. This page had the instructions that worked the best for me.

Arnold Called

I must be important... I got a personal call from Arnold Schwarzenegger .....

ArnoldMessage.wav

I think that this is soo funny. Do these types of calls really affect the election? Are there people out there who really think that this an individual call from the Governor?

What does this cost the Republican Party, to call each of the registered voters in the state? Who pays the bill if they call my cell phone, and I have to pay minutes?

Monday, October 11, 2004

Playing with the Sims

Sims tortureThis is a little sick, but I laughed so hard I made my self cry. Here is a great account of what happens when you put two Sims in a box with a chair, fireplace and picture of a clown.

I start out by creating a random couple. I build them a little
room,
seen below, with a door. One they've both walked in to check their
"home" out, I get rid of the door. As you can see, the room contains
the following:

* A ghetto chair
* A fireplace
* A clown painting


Link (via Boing Boing)

Network problems resolved (hopefully)

Last week, and then earlier today, our network connection would suddenly stop working. It appeared that all incoming connections would timeout, and all outbound connections would never receive responses. The other interesting fact, was that our Vonage ATA, which had a different ip address was working fine.

Sunday, October 10, 2004

XM FM Modulator

XM Delphi FM modulator
This afternoon, I installed the Delphi FM Modulator for the Delphi SkiFi in our 1993 Nissan Sentra. It is great to be able to listen to XM, without using the tape adapter or the cigarette lighter. Also there isn't the problem with tape hiss.

Thursday, October 7, 2004

Switched to Etheric.net

We had our wireless broadband, by etheric.net, installed today and it is working great. We are seeing upload and download speeds of areound 3Mbs

Speed results

There was only one problem that we saw. When it was first installed, there was about a 5 minute period that the connection stopped working. Since the installer was still here, he called technical support and by the time that he was off the phone it was working.

BlogExplosion

BlogExplosion is a website that is a way to bring traffic to your blog. It is a site that will generate traffic to your blog when you view other blogs. So if you are interested in finding new blogs, this is one way to do it, and get more traffic to your blog.

The one thing that I would love to see is BlogExplosion generate an rss feed that contains urls to the blogs to be viewed.

Update: This rss feed would just have a url to the blog, and not show each of the blog entries.


Wednesday, October 6, 2004

Show ip address GeekTool script

Macosxhints has a post that describes a pretty cool script for GeekTool that shows the ip addresses for each of the active network interfaces, as well as the public ip address for the computer.

Check IP screen shot

2000 VW Jetta GLX for sale

JettaIf you are in the bay area, and are in the market for a 2000 Jetta GLX, we are selling ours

Craigslist post

Cars.com post

Monday, October 4, 2004

Importing self-signed certificates

I have been trying to read a rss feed on a secure web site with a self-signed certificate, but Shrook has been having a problem loading it. Shrook uses Apple's Web toolkit to do http communication, and it looks it will not load data from a site with a self-signed certificate, when the certificate is not loaded in the keychain. Here are the steps that I used to get it to work:

Change Trash IMAP folder in Mozilla

I was having problems using Mozilla on an Exchange IMAP server. The web interface to the IMAP server wants to use a folder called "Deleted Items" as the trash folder, while Mozilla, by default, wants to use a folder called "Trash". I got tired of having two different folders that deleted emails get moved to, so I found a page with some instructions to tell Mozilla to use a different IMAP folder for the trash folder.



Best error dialog .... EVER!!

Best error dialog ever!!!

Unlocking Seamless Integration: Navigating Unexpected Hubitat Device Queries and VLAN Challenges for a Smoother Home Automation Experience

During my network debugging efforts , I came across an intriguing observation related to the two Hubitat devices on our network. The logs b...