Monday, June 30, 2008

Netgear Open Source Router

Ooo, I may have to get one of these!

from Lifehacker by Adam Pash

netgears-open-source-router.pngThe Netgear Open Source Router is aimed specifically at running third-party, open-source firmwares like previously mentioned Tomato or DD-WRT. We've covered installing these firmwares on supported routers here and here, but Netgear's Open Source Router is unique in that it's designed specifically to support these open-source projects; Netgear has even created a community web site where enthusiasts can contribute guides and more. The Netgear Open Source Router costs $57 from Amazon.

Sunday, June 29, 2008

FeedM8



Feedmate has a nice rss to mobile page.

Pocketcasting


Stream live video from your mobile phone with livecast and the mobile version.

Here is my first webcast and my live page and the live page for mobile.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Hyperwords Firefox 3 extension

Hyperwords is a really cool addon that makes any word into a "customizable hyperlink".

Select any text on any page for one-click access to References, Searches, Conversions, Translations, Email, Blogging & more.

Try it!

Really big laptop

Peeps

March of the peeps.

wirenode.mobi


I've mobilized the rss feed over on wirenode.

Also check out my tiny Missouri travel wiki on wirenode.

Winksite


I've recreated the rss feed from this blog over on winksite.

Friday, June 27, 2008

DVD collections


Free web application DVDSpot is a mostly easy way to catalog your DVD's.

Alltel text message blocking

To block text messages that are received on your Alltel handset send a new text message to number 8888. The body of the message should be formatted as:

B numbertoblock

To unblock a number send a new text message to 8888 with a body of:

U numbertounblock

That's it!

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Springfield Cardinals Baseball

Photo from the Cardinals game in Springfield, MO on June 26, 2008.

Sadly they lost 5 to 3.

View from the "Press box A" suite above the first base line.

Monday, June 23, 2008

June 23rd rain

Wow, lots of rain. This is the fourth time this year that we've had a stream in our back yard.

Trial pay google search

Want free stuff for completing an online offer? Trialpay may be what you're looking for.

Here's a google search to find various offers.

Big list here too, and here.
Wavosaur has all the features to edit audio (cut, copy, paste, etc.) produce music loops, analyze, record, batch convert.
Wavosaur supports VST plugins, ASIO driver, multichannel wav files, real time effect processing.
The program has no installer and doesn't write in the registry. Use it as a free mp3 editor, for mastering, sound design. The Wavosaur freeware audio editor works on Windows 98, Windows XP and Windows Vista.
Go to the features page for an overview of the software.


Freeware sound editor - Wavosaur

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Storm clouds in June

Many large storm clouds today




Bass Pro racoon.

Hmmm, what's that racoon holding?

Nifty ipod case

This case has built in speakers.

30+ tools for cheap travel

With airfare on the rise, planning a trip can be expensive and complicated.

We’ve lined up over 30 tools that let you do everything from finding more affordable tickets to predicting the best time to buy them, and even using a 3d map of your plane to select your seat.


Read more here.


A few gems from the original post:

AirlineQuality.com - A site for rating airlines, their seats, airports and their premium lounges. Also offers chat rooms for people to discuss everything related to the airlines.

Farecast.Live.com - Microsoft powered service to search multiple sellers and predict for you if you should buy your ticket now or hold off for a possible price drop.

FlightArrivals.com - Check on flight arrivals, departures and reschedulings in the USA and Canada.

FlightAware.com - Track all of the flights in the United States in real-time. You can also narrow it down by carrier and see exactly where a flight is at any time.

FlightStats.com - Check the status of airports in regions all over the world, flights, rate the airports and discuss on the forums.

FlightView.com - Get real time updates on flights and the status of airports.

FlyMyCase.com - A shipping company specializing in picking up and delivering your luggage to and from just about anywhere in the world.

SeatGuru.com - Detailed plans for different models of planes that gives you ideas of what each seat is like in advance so you can choose the best one for you.

http://www.yapta.com It's a cool start-up in Seattle that tells you when it's the best time to buy tickets (read=when they are priced low).

Sidestep.com is very similar to Kayak.com.

mobissimo.com is the best by far. It actually probably aggregates most of the sites mentioned, so you are almost guaranteed to find the best deal.

dohop.com to find low cost connecting flights. eBookers.com is another great one.


Movies on Windows Mobile

So, you have a movie and you want to encode it to play on your windows mobile device.

If you want to encode it to play full screen then:

Let's say the movie is 720/480 and you want to play at 320/240.

320/240 = 1.33333
720/1.33333 = 540
720-540 = 180
180/2 = 90

This means that you need to crop 90 pixels from each side of the encoded file.

Now set Handbrake to

  • 320 x 240 Width/Height
  • Xvid and mp3 encoders
  • .avi extension
  • Crop manual with 90 on left and 90 on right
  • Video bitrate at 300 or so
  • Leave Video framerate blank
  • Audio bitrate at 56 or 64

See the handbrakescreenshots.pdf file attachment for visual info.

Now, want to use http://www.erightsoft.net/SUPER.html Super to convert video files? First download super from here. Use the same formulas as above to get the proper crop dimensions. Follow the screenshot in the handbrakescreenshots.pdf file attachment for more info.

Opera Mini on Windows Mobile

Forum post and here where this information came from.

Install a midlet manager

You'll need a JVM. Esmertech Jbed works really well download from xda-dev. Here is a roundup of midlet managers.

Next visit Opera Mini from PIE.

Making a direct shortcut to Opera Mini (or any other Java Midlet)

Copied from pdaphonehome

Since Opera Mini is a Java Midlet application, one annoying aspect is that to run Opera Mini, you must first run the Java Midlet, tap on the “Applications” list item, then tap on the “Opera Mini 4 beta” item. Luckily, some industrious users out there have figured out how to create a shortcut that launches Opera Mini (or any other Java app) directly. Assuming you haven't installed any other Java apps, you need to create a shortcut file (e.g., opera.lnk) pointing to (“\windows\jeodek.exe” -run s1_), or (“\windows\jbed.exe -run s1_”), if using Jbed instead.

The magic portion is the number after the the letter “s” in the shortcut target. This is the list position of the Java Midlet in the Jeodek/Jbed application list. If you install Jeodek/Jbed as a fresh install (non Mogul users), and then directly install Opera Mini, just use the number “0” to refer to Opera Mini (“\windows\jbed.exe -run s0_”). If you install another MIDlet (after Opera Mini), its index will become 1, then the next installed Midlet will have an index of 2, and so on.

Locating the number that corresponds to a Java Midlet

To find which number corresponds to an installed Java Midlet, navigate to the (windows\appdb) folder. There should be some .jar files in there, with one of them being the Opera Mini jar file (or other Java Midlet you wish to target). Whatever the number is after the letter “s”, is the number needed in your shortcut link. Only the first part of the file name of the midlet is needed, so lets say, in the appdb folder, you have “s0_suite.jar”, for your shortcut target, leave out the suite.jar, and only put “s0_”, so your shortcut should point to (“\windows\jbed.exe” -run s0_), NOT (“\windows\jbed.exe” -run s0_suite.jar). A pre-made shortcut file can be found here.

You can use Total Commander to create the .lnk file.

Copied from pdaphonehome

Skipping the Connection Permission Prompt (Only applies to JBed) One of the only negatives of using Jbed, over Jeodek, used to be that any time an application wanted to access to the Internet, Jbed would ask twice if you want to allow the action. It will also forget this permission next time you ran the application, so you would have to give permission every time you ran a Midlet that tried to access the Internet. Thanks to forum user g-funkster, a work around for this annoyance has been found!

1.) Copy the file \windows\appdb\selector.utf to your PC (make sure backup this file first in case something goes wrong!) 2.) Remove read-only attribute 3.) Open the file with a hex editor, and find the line

Code:

domain=untrusted, \

Replace the text untrusted with the text tckmax. Add space characters between the x (in tckmax) and the comma (otherwise connection warnings or a nullpointerexception error may occur). The above line may appear multiple times in the “selector.utf” file, each corresponds to a different Java Midlet you have installed in JBed.

If hex editing is too blackhat for you, g-funkster has created a desktop application that can do this for you automatically! You can find it here.

Mobile Proxy Sites

Mobile proxies are used to strip complex html/javascript and to reduce the size of images to allow a better mobile browsing experience.

These are also known as mobile transcoders.

Transcoders

HP rx 5915 GPS

HP Software Downloads

Drivers and Updates

Business Support Center

Users Guide

You might need to perform a soft reset if your HP iPAQ stops responding. The two types of resets are soft and factory.

Performing a Soft Reset

A soft reset stops all running applications, but does not erase any programs or saved data. NOTE Be sure to close all running applications before performing a soft reset. To perform a soft reset:

  1. Locate the recessed Reset button on your HP iPAQ.
  2. Use the stylus to lightly press the Reset button.

The HP iPAQ restarts and displays the HP QuickStart Tour.

Performing a Factory Reset

A factory reset clears all user-installed settings, programs, and data, and restores your HP iPAQ to factory settings. To perform a factory reset and return your HP iPAQ to factory settings:

  1. Press and hold the Quick Launch and Rotate Screen buttons.
  2. While holding these buttons, use the stylus to lightly press and hold the Reset button on the HP iPAQ until the device restarts.
  3. When the HP iPAQ restarts, release all of the buttons, and then remove the stylus from the

Reset button. The HP iPAQ restarts and powers on.

Open with Notepad context menu

Manual Registry Hack

Open regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key:

  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell

Right-click on “shell” and choose to create a new key, calling it “Open with Notepad”. Create a new key below that one called “command”. Double-click on the (Default) value in the right-hand pane and enter in the following:

  notepad.exe %1

The change should take effect immediately… just right-click on any file and you'll see the next menu entry.

Windows Drive Mapping

Batch file to allow password protected drive mappings in Windows XP.

MapDrive.bat

net use M: \\server_name\share_name your_user_password /user:your_user_name
rem pause

Windows Defragging

Batch file to defrag the hard drive. Use through the Task Scheduler.

defragit.cmd

echo ---====********====---- >>r:\defrag.log 2>&1
date /t >>r:\defrag.log 2>&1
time /t >>r:\defrag.log 2>&1
defrag r: >>r:\defrag.log 2>&1

If your user account does not have a password you'll need this registry entry to allow scheduled tasks to run under non-password protected user accounts.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa]
"limitblankpassworduse"=dword:00000000

Fayetteville Travel

Drive Times

From To Duration Distance
Ozark Barnhille Arena 2:35 hrs 165 miles
NOAA Forcast
NOAA WML Weather
NOAA Radar
NOAA Radar Animation

Maps


View Larger Map

Tom Tom POI Editing

TomTom POI's are stored as .ov2 files in the \iPAQ File Store\iPAQ GPS\North_America directory on the ipaq.

Create your poi in google maps and then use the “View in Google Earth” button to save a .kml file. This .kml only contains a web link to the actual poi's and none of the conversion programs know how to handle it so we'll need to do a “preconversion” first.

Next open the saved .kml in Google Earth and create a new folder. Now drag and drop your POI's to this new folder inside of google earth. Save to a new file name.

Start PoiEdit 2007 and open your new .kml file. Your POI's should now display in a tabular format in poiedit. If they don't then something is borked. Use the saveas command to export your .kml as a .ov2. Copy to the tomtom and your all done.

If you want a custom .bmp icon to display in the tomtom maps then open an existing .bmp from the \iPAQ File Store\iPAQ GPS\North_America directory and edit with mspaint.

Oshkosh Weather

Weather.gov forecast
Weather.gov mobile gateway

WeatherUG Radar zoom
WeatherUG Radar wide

Weather.gov Radar

Movies from Yahoo

tiny.wirenode.mobi

Orlando Weather

Weather.gov forecast
Weather.gov forecast discussion
Weather.gov mobile gateway

WeatherUG Radar zoom
WeatherUG Radar wide

Weather.gov static radar
Weather.gov animated radar

National Hurricane Center
Air quality forecast
Florida drought map

Disney menus from AllEarsNet
Disney menus from Guide2WDW
Disney menus from Intercot

Movies from Yahoo

tiny.wirenode.mobi

St. Louis Weather

Weather.gov forecast
Weather.gov mobile gateway

WeatherUG Radar zoom
WeatherUG Radar wide

Weather.gov Radar

Movies from Yahoo

tiny.wirenode.mobi

Kansas City Weather

Weather.gov forecast
Weather.gov mobile gateway

WeatherUG Radar zoom
WeatherUG Radar wide

Weather.gov Radar

Movies from yahoo

tiny.wirenode.mobi

Columbia Weather

Weather.gov forecast

Weather.gov mobile gateway

WeatherUG Radar zoom
WeatherUG Radar wide

Weather.gov Radar

Movies from Yahoo

tiny.wirenode.mobi

Springfield Weather

WeatherUG Radar small view
WeatherUG Radar zoom in
WeatherUG Radar zoom way in
WeatherUG Radar zoom out

Weather.gov mobile gateway
Weather.gov forecast
Weather.gov forecast discussion
Weather.gov Radar

Weather.com national radar

Greene County pollen count

Pollen.com national map

tiny.wirenode.mobi Springfield Weather Page

tiny.wirenode.mobi

SCH-R500 Ringtones

Sites

Many free ringtones atfun for mobile.
Try soundsnap if your looking for sound effects.

Original article from cellphoneforums.net

Summary

Connect via bluetooth serial port only.
Use bitpim to navigate to the /brew/mod/18067 directory.
Add .mp3 ringtones here.
Reboot phone.
You may need to delete and recreate the bluetooth connection.
Transfer the MSInfo.db file to desktop and change the last 0, to a 5.
Transfer back to phone and reboot phone.
Done.

Detail

In your phone go to Settings>Phone Settings>PC Connection>Set this option to Bluetooth…

Now go to, Tools>Bluetooth>Bluetooth Settings>Enable, and turn on discovery mode.

On the computer, tell it to find the phone,select advanced and only select serial port mode… Once found it'll do everything to set it up for incoming, and you just need to manually configure it as a serial port… The serial option is ONLY available when setting the PC Connection setting to Bluetooth…

Hehehehehe…. I have succeeded… The process is pretty much the same as earlier Samsung model phones, right down to putting the .mp3 file into the /brew/mod/18067 directory, which puts the ringtone in the “My Sounds” directory, and you also need to edit the MSInfo.db file and change the last 0, to a 5…. And voila, this sucker works like a freaking charm

Edit: Ok, just to be just a tad bit clearer… Just I was just goofin' off before and was so happy figure it out….

1. Go to alltel store and purchase your phone, after agreeing on a price with the sales associate, have him activate the phone in the regular fashion an Alltel associate would use to activate the phone. This is actually a relatively simple process which if you can't perform this step you should probably stop here.

2. Bask in the phone's glory for a bit before you embark on a path which may potentially and totally destroy the usefulness of your phone.

3. Push the button which opens the menu, and go into the following section: Settings>Phone Settings>PC Connection>Select Bluetooth and hit OK, once it says its selected, hit end. (This step is important or you cannot write to the phone, as is typically needed for these types of tasks)

4. Push Menu again, and go to the following: Tools>Bluetooth>Bluetooth Settings> Select Enable.

5. Go to your Bluetooth enabled computer and ensure that the Bluetooth functions are turned on.

I will take a moment and explain the setup I have… I went out and bought a 40 dollar Kensington Bluetooth 2.0 adapter from Circuit City. My machine runs Windows Vista Ultimate x64 edition, as a result I used VMWare and installed Windows XP Professional in a virtual machine and told it to hijack the Bluetooth adapter, and I set it up in there… As a result the rest of these instructions assume you've got XP installed on a computer, in some way shape or form… And that your Bluetooth configuring software is similar to mine.

6. There should be a Bluetooth logo on the bottom right corner of your screen, next to your clock, right click on this and select “Add a Bluetooth device”.

7. On your phone in the Tools>Bluetooth>Bluetooth Setting menu select Discovery mode, and turn it on.

8. On the Add a Bluetooth Device wizard hit next… It should find your phone… Go ahead and double click on it. Where at the very least you want to select OBEX and Serial port and hit finish.

9. It should be configuring things and you should now have 2 new COM ports.., typically 3 and 4…. COM4 should be the Outgoing FROM your computer TO the phone…

10. Download and install BitPim…

11. Run BitPim

12. Click on the Wrench x Screwdriver icon

13. Under Phone type select “Other CDMA phone”, and select COM4, or which ever COM port is associated with the Serial port you created for your Phone.

14. Click on OK

15. Click on the Phone with a magnifying glass icon, it'll search for a phone and say “I either can't find it, or don't know I'm connected to it”

16. Left hand pane you'll see “FileSystem”, click on this, center pane, you'll see a folder with a + sign in front of it, click on the + sign. If you shows you the contents of the phone GREAT, you're almost there… If it doesn't then stop, cause I'm being a little sarcastic in this “tutorial” and you'll have to wait for someone who can explain it better…

17. Navigate to /Brew/Mod/18067 and right click in the right pane and select “New File…” and navigate to the MP3 file you're planning on adding and tell it to put it in there… The copy process can take a minute or two depending on the file size (My file was 1.7MB) Once copying is complete, right click again and select reboot phone. and close BitPim

18. Once the phone has fully rebooted go ahead and restart BitPim and repeat steps 15 & 16

19. Navigate to the same directory as step 17

20. left click on MSInfo.db and select Save… And save it somewhere obvious…

21. Go to the obvious place you saved the file to and right click it, select “Open With…” and open it with WordPad…

22. Once open in WordPad you'll see something like ”/ff/brew/mod/18067/filename.mp3|0|0”, change that last 0 to a 5, and save it….

23. Back in BitPim, go ahead and right click on MSInfo.db again and select overwrite and again navigate to the obvious place you saved the file to and and overwrite the one on the phone.

24. Right click an empty area and select reboot phone again…

25. Once the phone has rebooted go ahead and go to Settings>Sounds Settings>Ringer type>Voice Calls>My Sounds> and you should now see your MP3 file at the top of the list… Select play to make sure it work, and then hit OK to make it your new Ringtone…

And voila, assuming you didn't toast your phone, you're good to go…

Total cost of project? About 40 bucks for the Blurtooth adapter…

SCH-R500 Pictures

Specs

The SCH-R500's interior screen shows 262,000 colors and measures 2.12 inches (220×176 pixels).

The Hue's 1.3-megapixel camera takes pictures in six resolutions, from 1,280×960 down to a special Photo ID resolution for caller ID.

SCH-R500 offers 64MB of shared memory.

Specs from ZDNet

Good source for wallpapers or here too.

Seems that the phone wants a 1.333:1 image to display a caller id photo.

May as well make it 176 x 133 pixels since the display is at most 176 wide and it's reduced for use.

I usually make the photo with a black background.

SCH-R500 Video

Using MediaCoder

MediaCoder can be used to encode videos for display on the SCH-R500. You will need the AMR codec for Mediacoder. Try this first. If not then proceed here or here.

Encode as

Xvid video
.mp4 container
AMR narrowband audio with or without dtx
8000Hz resample
150 Kbps
176x144 resize
15 fps

Download the MediaCoder preset.

See Mediacoder AMR page for more information on the AMR narrow band codec.

For a successful AMR encoding in MediaCoder, you have these steps to follow:
1. Update MediaCoder to 0.6.0.3760 or later
2. Download and install AMR Codec Pack for MediaCoder
3. Start MediaCoder, switch to Audio tab and set Audio Encoder to AMR
4. You can choose between AMR-NB or AMR-WB in the AMR tab on the right side
5. Do click on either AMR-NB or AMR-WB radio box as this clicking will make the
correct resample and channel options (8Khz/mono for AMR-NB and 16Khz/mono for AMR-WB)

Codec can be downloaded here or here.

Visit csite.net for various forums on converting 3gp video.

Mediacoder information about a recorded video file.

General #0
Complete name 1225070858.3g2
Format 3GPP2
Format/Info 3GPP2 Media
Format/Family MPEG-4
File size 418 KiB
PlayTime 24s 133ms
Bit rate 142 Kbps
StreamSize 2.61 KiB
Encoded date UTC 2007-12-25 14:59:21
Tagged date UTC 2007-12-25 14:59:21
Video #0
Codec MPEG-4 Visual
Codec profile Simple Profile/Level 1
Codec settings/BVOP Yes
Codec settings/QPel No
Codec settings/GMC 0
Codec settings/Matri Default
PlayTime 24s 133ms
Bit rate 128 Kbps
Bit rate mode VBR
Width 176 pixels
Height 144 pixels
Display Aspect ratio 1.222
Frame rate 15.000 fps
Resolution 8 bits
Interlacement Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) 0.338
StreamSize 378 KiB
Encoded date UTC 2007-12-25 14:59:21
Tagged date UTC 2007-12-25 14:59:21
Audio #0
Codec AMR-NB
Codec/Info AMR narrow band (3GPP)
PlayTime 24s 120ms
Bit rate 13 Kbps
Channel(s) 2 channels
Sampling rate 8000 Hz
Resolution 16 bits
StreamSize 37.7 KiB
Encoded date UTC 2007-12-25 14:59:21
Tagged date UTC 2007-12-25 14:59:21

SCH-R500 Accesories

Many low priced items can be had from www.cellphoneshop.com.

Alltel customer service

Customer Service

To reach a real live person via 1-800-alltel-1 follow this sequence:
1-800-255-8351 then option 3
you may be asked to enter your mobile number next
Now enter option 3, 4, 1 , 2 and your in queue for the next operator.

Direct line to the number portability group is 1-800-761-3179 option 2.

Linux xscreensaver

Homepage

Documentation


Install

apt-get install xscreensaver
Now add ”[startup] {xscreensaver}” to your ~/.fluxbox/apps file.

Configuration

xscreensaver-demo

Log file output

Go to the Phosphor saver and enter this:

phosphor -root -delay 10000 -scale 2 -program "tail -n 100 /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log"

Linux open files

List open files by process

lsof -p processid

You can track which process is reading/writing the disk by doing:

echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/block_dump

Then use 'dmesg' to tell you process is using the disk. Turn off tracking again with

echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/block_dump

Linux sendemail script

Homepage

Install

mkdir /myth/bin
cd /myth/bin
tar -zxvf sendEmail-Vx.xx.tar.gz
ln -s /myth/bin/sendEmail-Vx.xx/sendEmail /usr/local/bin/sendemail
sendemail -f mythtv@mythtv -t toaddress -u "Subject Line" -m "Body of the message" -a FileNameToAttach

From a knoppmyth forum post:

I've got my Myth box setup to send me a daily email listing of each days shows that it has recorded. I'm leveraging 'sendEmail.pl” which is available here http://caspian.dotconf.net/menu/Software/SendEmail/

Here is my shell script that pulls the data from Mysql and pushes the email. It doesn't require a local SMTP server or any other whacky dodads. I just sends the mail to my ISP mailbox. Easy as pie.

#! /bin/bash
echo "" > /usr/src/sendemail/today.txt
mysql -H mythconverg < /usr/src/sendemail/dumptoday.sql >> /usr/src/sendemail/today.txt
echo "

See the full listing of recorded programs" >> /usr/src/sendemail/today.txt
echo "" >> /usr/src/sendemail/today.txt
perl /usr/src/sendemail/sendEmail.pl -f "Our DVR " -t insertTOemailaddresshere -u "Today's Shows" -s insertISPserveraddresshere -xu insertISPauthcredentialshere(opt) -xp insertISPpasswordhere(opt) -o message-file=/usr/src/sendemail/today.txt

The dumptoday.sql looks like this:

select title,starttime,description from recordedprogram where date_sub(curdate(),interval 0 day) <= starttime;

It's a quick and dirty solution so if anyone can improve on it I'd be very happy to reap the benefits.

Linux USB DVD drive

This works for an autodetected external usb dvd player.

Create mount point for the dvd.

mkdir /dvd

Add symbolic link to /dev/sr0

ln -sf /dev/sr0 /dev/dvd

Now mount the dvd.

mount -t iso9660 /dev/dvd /dvd

Edit /etc/fstab to enable automounting.

/dev/sr0 /dvd auto user,noauto 0 0

Linux smbmount

apt-get install smbfs
mkdir /myth
smbmount //mythtv/myth /myth -o username=mythtv,password=mypassword

Linux screen

What is it.

Screen is used to emulate multiple login windows inside of one terminal. It can be usefull when ssh'ing into a machine.

Linux Journal Article.

wiki

Another wiki

delicious links

screen Start screen
screen -R Reattach to a running screen
screen -x Share a running screen

This will start the screen prg and leave you with one “screen”.

Control and the “a” (Ca) key is used to tell screen that the next key is a command key.

Ca c Starts a new screen and switches to it.
Ca space Cycles the screens
Ca ” Shows all of the active screens and allows you to pick one
Ca ? Shows the quick help
Ca t Shows a title bar or status bar view of the processor load
Ca A Change the name of the screen (that is shown when Ca ”)
Ca Cr Toggle word wrap
Ca d Detach from the running screen

Linux mplayer

bash command to generate a valid playlist file

find /myth/music/direcoryname -name "*.mp3" -print > my.playlist

Now add this to your ~/.lircrc file

begin
remote = grayHauppauge
prog = irexec
button = green
repeat = 3
config = killall mplayer; mplayer -shuffle -quiet -playlist /myth/music/favorite.playlist
config = killall mplayer; mplayer -shuffle -quiet -playlist /myth/music/all.playlist
end

Every time the green button is pressed lirc runs the “config”ed command. This ineffect switches the playlists.

The playlist and gallery respond to the same button presses, i.e. next, prev, stop, etc. controlling one but not the other is troublesome. Maybe defining the number keys to do next/prev song would work.

Note that for the irexec to connect to lirc it must be running. The knoppmyth (and maybe other) start script is

/usr/local/bin/launch_irx.sh

* -playlist * -shuffle * -quiet

Forum Post for info on setting the mplayer command line to mplayer -fs -zoom -ao alsa -quiet -vo xv $s

Adding the -ao alsa line significantly boosted the volume.

Linux Mail

Mime headers

Want to send mail using /usr/bin/mail that has html encoding? Then use the -a switch.

sh commandwithoutput | mail -s "Subject here" -a "Content-Type: text/html;" user@yourmail.com

If you want this output from the crontab then you must pipe the output of each command as above.

* * * mythtv sh /myth/bin/emailrecordings | mail -s "Daily myth recordings" -a "Content-Type: text/html;" user@yourmail.com

Linux hdparm

Report of the settings on the drive.

hdparm -i /dev/hda

Set dma on and mode to ultra66 mode.

hdparm -d1 -X66

Time reads and reports on throughput.

hdparm -t /dev/hda

Firefox

about:config

Minimize the cache when minimizing the browser.

config.trim_on_minimize = true

Some good info can be found here if you ignore the kde stuff.

Install was easy.

apt-get update  apt-get install mozilla-firefox

Linux Cron

To nice a cron process

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/nice -n 19 command

To point its output to /dev/null

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/nice -n 19 command > /dev/null 2>&1

Linux backups

backup howto

And another

sudo telinit 1

now login as root user

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc bs=2M&

Want to see the status of the dd command? Record the PID from the line above and

kill -USR1 PID

Storm clouds

Clouds

Walgreens Photo Adjustments

Walgreens offers a good value in photo printing. From their website you can upload your photos and then pick them up within an hour from a local store.

I find that the photos come out a bit drab and under saturated. To correct this add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer in photoshop and increase the saturation slider from +20 to +40 on the master channel.

Photo frames

Chris's frame

Photos

Frame is 480×234 as reported in the manual. It is a 16:9 display…but the ratio is not 1:1.77777 It is really 1:1.7647 That's a small number that makes a huge difference when viewing the photos.

Using photoshop, crop width to 6 inches, height to 3.4 inches and resolution to 100 pixels/inch. This will generate a file that is 600×340 and fits the frame pretty well. Size is about 40kB to 60 kB.

Specifications and link

7" TFT color screen displays photos, slideshows, videos and plays MP3 file music
Installed card reader for additional memory -SD/MMC/MS and XD card compatible
Calendar and clock with alarm feature
Resolution: 480 X 234 / Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Built-in speaker
USB host
Display in auto slide show, thumbnails or picture rotate
Can be used in portrait or landscape mode
Adjustable slide show delay interval: 3, 5, 10 or 30 seconds
AC powered, adaptor included
Remote control

Videos

MediaCoder can be used to encode videos for display on the frame.

Encode as

MPEG4 video
.avi container
mp3 audio
44,100 Hz resample
3 dB of gain
300 Kbps
320x240 resize
15 fps
-400 msec of audio delay

Download the MediaCoder preset.

Same photo dimensions work for Lisa's as for Chris's.