Category: Tech Stuff

Stuff dealing with the site or anything else technical

WordPress Upgrade

I’ve upgraded to the newest version of WordPress. It was relatively easy. Let me know if you notice any bugs in the site.
It took a little longer because I had to figure out which FTP software to use since I’m on Ubuntu. gFTP looked like the program I should use, but FileZilla turned out to have the functionality I needed.
I’ve gotten almost everything I need working in Ubuntu so far. I haven’t run Windows on my computer in almost a month!
A lot more has happened over the past few weeks. I hope to expound soon.

Ubuntu 7.10 – Gutsy Gibbon

OK, so I have spent the last week strictly using Ubuntu at home. It has been quite nice learning my way through the installation and configuration.
I’ve gotten the advanced desktop working – you’ve probably seen the videos online of people using it and having a cube of desktops to spin through. I’ve got DVD playback, DVD ripping, software to sync my iPod with my music collection, and a way to share my files with my xbox media center.
I’ve read a lot of stuff about converting to Linux over the past several months, even over the past few years. Linux and the experience around it is improving quickly. I showed my mom the desktop effects on my computer, and she quickly said, “I want mine to do that!”
The articles out there that explain switching their mother, grandmother, or aunt over to Linux are missing out on a very critical point. They are the person that got it set up for their friend or family member. The articles make me want to install it for myself, so I can enjoy the ease of converting.
Therein lies the problem… I installed it myself, and it isn’t as easy as they said it was. My computer has an onboard Realtek network card that apparently has a problem. When Windows shuts down, it disables the card until Windows is restarted. I had to spend approximately 2 hours searching forums before I found out that all I had to do was disconnect the power to my computer for a good 15 seconds and then boot into Ubuntu to have a good network connection. Sure, it was my computer’s network card that caused the problem, but it was something that held up my work on the rest of the system.
I could enable the advanced desktop. Then I had to figure out how to activate the restricted drivers. Then there was installing the yet to be named video settings tool so that I could activate and set options for the advanced video card drivers.
For every thing that seems simple in Windows, it takes an average of an hour to set it up in Linux. Sure, maybe next time it will be quicker, but for the people who aren’t used to searching online forums all the time for code to make their video tool play DVDs or make something work just right are just going to give up and go back to Windows.
My PC is only a year old. The hardware is great. It just doesn’t fit into the specs of an ideal Linux candidate. I do a lot on my computer, and I have to make sure that everything I do works before I can make the full commitment to Linux.
So far, everything works, but I’ve had to put a lot of time into figuring out how. The Samba share was one of the dumbest things ever. I changed setting after setting, until I finally found a reference to a samba.conf file that I decided to read to see if there was a problem. Sure enough, six little semicolons were the only things standing in the way of what I was trying to do. I deleted them, saved the file, and all of a sudden I could see the folders from my xbox.
Ubuntu has come a long way in a short amount of time. I am going to continue using it at home until I find something that I cannot do that I need to do on my PC. Gutsy Gibbon is a strange name, but in the Linux community, they need the humor to keep them going.
If you really want to try Linux, try out a Live CD. Ubuntu distributes Live CD images on their website. The CD loads in memory so that your hard drive isn’t affected. Once you determine that you want to install it, they put a nice little icon on your desktop that says “Install”. It’s real easy up to that point. If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to try and answer them. I have a little experience.

175,000,000 Listeners

A guy (we’ll call him L) at work today was talking during lunch about Howard Stern. He made the statement that Howard Stern got as rich as he is because he is the highest rated talk show host in the country. I objected to his claim, and he retaliated by claiming that Howard Stern has over 175 million listeners.
Everyone at the table froze. I began by asking everyone at the table if they listened to Howard Stern, and everyone said that they did not, even though a few have subscriptions to Sirius. I then started explaining that there are only 303 million people in the United States. You could see the fear in L’s eyes begin to show as he realized how dumb his argument was, however he continued to defend his statement by claiming that a superior at Circuit City stated it as a fact when going over sales of Sirius radios.
Needless to say, everyone at the table sat in awe as L explained why he thought that 175 million listeners was even possible, and that because his superior was convinced of it, he believed it. He then tried to convince me that Howard Stern was also available on the standard radio stations… just not in our area.  Maybe he didn’t see the news when Howard left radio to join Sirius.  I may be wrong, but his site doesn’t list any affiliates other than Sirius.
Sirius has just under 5 million subscribers.  They estimate that for each subscription, there is an average of 2 listeners. Through an independent study, they found that around 58% of all subscribers regularly tune in to listen. Based on estimates, there are just over 5 million listeners to the Howard Stern show each week. Compared with Rush Limbaugh’s ratings of 13.5 million listener minimum each week, I may be wrong, but Howard Stern is not the highest rated show.
I have called L out before, but this one was awesome.  We’ll be having fun with this one at least until he admits it was a stupid thing to say, much less believe.
I know that there are instances where something way out in left field may be easy to accept as truth, and I don’t approve of having this much fun at just anyone’s expense when it comes to being gullible In this case, however, L was either pulling the number out of thin air, or he was dumb enough to be that gullible. In L’s case, he has always given me the impression that he is fairly intellectual, so that evidence suggests that he made 175,000,000 listeners up to make a point.
87% of all statistics used in arguments are completely made up, and we just need L to own up to it.
If I am wrong about anything I post on here, let me know. I’ll admit it as soon as I see the evidence.

Cheap Laptop

Asus is apparently building a laptop that will be cheap and make computer ownership as low as $200. This laptop looks like a good deal. It’s known as the EeePC and it should be available this fall.
It will have a 4GB flash hard drive and 512MB of RAM. With 802.11g wireless card installed as well as built-in web cam and microphone. Part of the reason that it is so cheap is because it is preloaded with a Linux OS.
More information can be found at Engadget.

iPod Hard Drive Replacement

I recently had the misfortune of losing the hard drive in my iPod.  It was about 1 year and two weeks old, so the warranty was expired when it first started giving me problems.  I ran some hard drive utilities, such as SpinRite, and got it back in good enough shape to work.  Then it got worse and worse, until the thing wouldn’t sync at all.  I even tried some other programs, in the hope that iTunes was the culprit.  It wasn’t, so I started doing research.
I bought a tool kit with instructions online.  The instructions came through email, so I had those that day, but the tools took 9 days to arrive.  The day after I ordered the tools, I found a hard drive for under $90 that had the recommended model #, and ordered it with ground shipping.  I received the drive in 7 days, but the tools weren’t here yet, so I sent the guy I purchased the tools from an email asking if they had been sent yet.
The next morning I was too excited to wait for the tools.  I knew that using a metal screwdriver would ruin the finish on the iPod, so I tried my thumbnail.  I got my nail between the front and back panels in the top left corner of the device, and used my other thumbnail between them too.  I slid my nail down the left side and across the top and made my way all the way around.  It just took a very little bit of pressure to separate the two panels.  You can’t yank too hard, though, because they’re connected with cables that could be damaged if yanked out.
It was relatively easy to see what to do.  If you look hard enough you can find the instructions on the Internet for free.  You only have to separate one cable to split the two panels apart.  When you lift up on the hard drive there is a ribbon connection.  That connector was tricky and it would have been damaged if I hadn’t read the instructions and seen a picture of how to loosen the connection.
If you have experience with taking things apart, the only thing the instructions add is that one connector.  Although, I really think I could have figured it out with a little bit of time.
If you have a small plastic screwdriver or if your thumbnail is long enough and strong enough, the tools are a waste of time as well.  Mine were just about at the length when I usually clip them.  My nail got a little scraped from the separation, but I clipped them shortly after I changed out the hard drive and verified that it worked.
I should have taken pictures, but if anyone asks, I’ll take it apart again just to get the shots.  I received the tools in the mail later that day, so they’re in my cabinet if anyone has weak or short nails.
The one thing I looked for when looking for a hard drive, was to only purchase one that was advertised as new.  I would be wary of any that are refurbished, as those would normally come from another iPod, and might have the same type of problem my iPod problems started with.

Online Television Shows

News Corp. and NBC Universal have signed a deal to create a web site, or ‘YouTube Killer’, that they will use to allow users to view selected television shows free of charge.  This is one step I have been looking forward to for some time.  They have already posted a number of television shows that will be on the site, such as 24, Heroes, House, and The Simpsons.  I highly doubt that they will be available until the day after they’ve aired, but to have a centralized location for all of the content will give them an edge.
I wouldn’t doubt that whatever bandwidth they expect to get in the first few weeks of start up will be too little.  If they surprise me there, it only makes the experience that much better.  Although, streaming content has been around for a while, so we may have some people with experience on the launch team.
They have also stated that movies will be available on the site for free, including the Bourne Movies (Identity & Supremacy), Borat, and The Devil Wears Prada.
Post-launch plans are to acquire access to more content once the site has been established.  The site will be ad-supported… I’ve found myself at a loss for words.  The best part is that they will be launching the site this summer.
Many of these shows have been available online already.  However, to watch 24, you’d have to go to fox.com and go to their myspace page to be able to view the content.  If you wanted to watch Heroes, you’d have to go to nbc.com and find it in the videos section.  Once all of the networks have taken the plunge to create centralized viewing sites, the problems with unauthorized media distribution will take a natural plunge.  When I only have to visit 2 or 3 sites that each have easily accessible content, the networks should be able to make more money than they ever could have on television, and therefore be able to produce better/more content.
One more thing before I shut up… they’re going to allow you to insert the media from their site on your myspace or other web pages.  This apparently means that the advertising will be embedded in the content.  ABC does this with the content they have.  They include 4 commercials in each episode of Lost.  I don’t know about the other shows, but I’m fairly sure they do the same with them.
On ABC, you can watch a 42 minute show with 18 minutes of commercials in 1 hour.  On their web site, you can watch a 42 minute show with 2-3 minutes of commercials in 45 minutes.  CBS has 5 commercials on each 42 minute show, but the time to watch it is about the same.  If they’d just release the content with the same amount of commercials for free on iTunes, they could make a killing on that advertising income.
This announcement is exciting news for me.  I’ve been looking forward to this type of announcement from one of the major networks for a few years now.  I can’t wait to test it out… wouldn’t it be neat if they just went with a content provider that’s already in development, like Joost?

Blurb

I saw a video podcast today that had a short segment about the site blurb.com.  This site provides software called BookSmart to download and install on your computer.  BookSmart will allow you to create a book in a number of different sizes.  Once you have finished creating your book, you can actually have it published and printed in hard-cover of soft-cover. 
There is the option to keep it private and only for you, or for anyone to purchase.  Blurb sets their price, then you name the customer’s price and keep anything higher than Blurb’s minimum.  In other words, if Blurb sets a minimum price of $21.95, I could set the price at anything higher than that.  If I set it at $28.95, I would be making $7.00 per book sold.
From what I’ve seen, the quality of the book is high.  You can actually configure how each photo or text looks on each individual page, as well as the entire cover.  I plan to have something published by the end of the year for my family.  It will be for us only, but I will definitely post my reaction to the final product when that time comes.  Check out blurb.com and let me know what you think.

Vista Update

Vista’s got a lot of bugs.  If you have a computer that’s less than 2 years old and you’ve been contemplating the “upgrade”, I wouldn’t do it.  The major problem right now is not entirely Microsoft’s fault, but as normally happens with any Microsoft update, there are many driver issues right now.  That is caused primarily by 3rd party hardware creators who haven’t created compatible drivers for their products.
There are some tremendous features in Vista that will eventually make the upgrade worthwhile.  The speech recognition is fantastic and has surpassed the few that I’ve tried in the past by leaps and bounds.  The security side of Vista works well, unless you turn it off, of course.  No matter what anyone else out there says, ReadyBoost works.  Aero is pretty, but a resource hog and I turned it off.  They added the Desktop to the Alt-Tab shortcut, although my shortcut was always to hit “Windows+M”.
I’m not using Vista for my primary computer yet, because I have too much 3rd party hardware that doesn’t work yet.  I have moved the family computer over because it’s a pretty basic machine that everyone uses, and I like the parental controls I can use with Alaina’s account.  Even though it’s a step down from my primary computer, it runs very smoothly.
When it comes time to purchase a new computer down the road, I’ll probably go with Vista… preferrably on a Mac with BootCamp+Parallels.

A Full Week of Technology

This week has been full of technology announcements.  Hitachi announced that they will be releasing a 1 Terabyte hard drive by the end of this quarter for $399.00.  The price is just over half of what most people expected the first Terabyte drive to be.
Apple introduced the much anticipated iPhone (name might be changed due to copyright).  Check it out at the Apple website HERE.  The features of this thing are sweet, but the price is just out of my range.  Hopefully there will be a good price reduction for signing a contract with Cingular.
Microsoft introduced a new file storage and backup server that is meant for the home.  Not everyone will really use one of these, but I’d recommend that everyone have some way of backing up their data.  This is one possible way to do it with ease.
Those are the three that stick out for me.  There were hundreds (if not thousands) more that I haven’t even seen yet. 
A co-worker of mine went to CES in Las Vegas on Wednesday and Thursday.  I look forward to hearing about the gadgets that interested him the most.