Factory un-fresh

This'll be a techie, nerdy post. I've been dorking around with my cellphone, finding out the new-ways-to-do-old-things, and hit one of those binary brick walls.

One of the critical activities I like to do with my phone, is use it as a cellular modem. "Tethering" my phone to my laptop through a USB cable, allows me to surf the internet on my wireless provider's signal. The advantage is that I can be online anywhere I can get signal bars. The disadvantage is the additional cost...that is, if I were on some non-SERO, charge you by the kilobyte, limited data plan....which I am not.

But back to task...it turns out that, while my phone could tether to my laptop successfully, I would always get the error message on the phone that the battery could not charge while being tethered. That seriously put a limiter on my otherwise unlimited broadband activities. I ensured that the usb cable I was using was high-speed/2.0 certified, and that my phone was loaded with the most-recent firmware. I also started seeing application slowdowns and java-incompatibilities with the browsers. The next step was to totally wipe the phone.

Now, when you wipe a phone, you erase all the installed applications as well as all the locally-stored music, photos, and contacts. For me, all of my music is stored on the microSD card (eight gigs...can you believe it), and the contacts are kept safe on an Exchange server. Using the appropriate button-combination, my phone was lobotomized back to the day it emerged from HTC's build plant. It re-connected to Sprint's CDMA signal, initialized itself, and (more-importantly) was able to charge it's battery while sharing the Internet. I can now surf all day, and still have battery life.

Here's another one. I'm also exploring DLNA. I've got Windows 7 and a Samsung LCD television. The TV has media players built in to it's firmware, along with an ethernet jack. Last night, I was successful in establishing a media playlist specifically for the television. I can drop any number of video, photo, or music files into the TV's playlist on my server, run over to the Samsung, then access that content via the built in applications. It's got pretty good codec awareness and I no longer have to copy content to a usb thumbdrive just for the TV.

The next step is to fix the "Play On" feature in Windows 7, where I can click on my file, and send it directly to the television instead of the TV's play-queue...it's not activating for me yet, but this may also require a firmware upgrade for the television (I'm one revision behind).

And in closing, Father's Day is coming up. I've asked for one of these. My Roku Soundbridge suddenly DIED in the middle of the night and I have no alarm clock now. I did an autopsy on it, but could not revive. There are plenty of iPod/iTouch docks out there that will function as an alarm clock....but you need an iPod....and owning one of those is strictly against my religion. Chumby is open-source, has an active discussion forum, founded on hackability, is priced right, and contains a snooze button. This will be exciting.

The Leaky Sink

Last weekend, I gained a great deal of appreciation (and a bit of sympathy) for plumbers.
The bathroom faucet was beginning to leak. Since I knew nothing about repairing faucets, combined with the fact that the bathroom was a little outdated, pile-on an 8 year-old son who is ravenous about interior design and renovation, and top it all off with a Sunday morning meltdown by the children and the day's mission was clear: separate the kids by taking the son to Ikea and fix the bathroom.

The Ikea.com website provided all the details we needed for choosing a sink and faucet - right down to the local store's inventory. We headed out and returned with our items.

Shut the water off at the valves under the sink, have a bucket handy, unscrew the connections for the water lines and the drain, remove the plug plunger (which never worked reliably), and lift out.

For the new sink, attach the lines to the faucet and install the faucet onto the new sink (better do it now rather than when it's already installed in the cramped vanity), dry fit the drainage piping and cut them to length. Once you have everything set, lift out the sink one more time, run a bead of caulk around the vanity top, then lower the sink back on.

Post-Op notes:

Apparently, Europe uses 5/8" water valves. I had 3/8" installed, so I needed an adapter. $5.00 x2 (yes, but it was better than trying to replace my valves - that would've involved blowtorches)

Also, when you're going to Lowes for plastic parts, be sure to bring all the parts you want to fit together.

"Schedule 40" is plumberspeak for really thick PVC plastic parts.

Hose connections use compression to achieve a watertight union.

Be prepared to get a little wet.


Bathroom is dry and leak-free. Mission accomplished (and look at that smile)

The Mother's Day Present

My son and I decided to do something special for mom/wife this year. Of course, I did the usual let-her-sleep-in / breakfast-in-bed thing. But we also had a present in mind.
Rewind a few months back and we decided to get rid of our living room torchiere lamp (a 90's era energy-sucking fire-hazard). We got this. I wanted to customize the lampshade, so I took a tip from eHow.com and shopped for some plastic. Instead of using sharpie markers, we decided on using paint (more on that later). My son idolizes David Bromstad, so his thought process was as follows:

• Interview mom and find out what her favorite color scheme is. (She likes cool tones)
• Use a heavy brush with stippling patterns and lots of gradation
• Use a spray bottle of water to get the desired artistic effect

The tempera paints in the kid's art-center wouldn't hold up to the plastic and the water, so we took another trip to the crafts store and scored some acrylic paints. After some test paintings, we had a working solution.

She was quite surprised and loved the finished product. Happy Mother's Day!

TOYS!

Boys and toys. You know the rest. Here's my latest:

528 MHz, 512MB, 3.2 MPx, WinMo 6.5, GPS, headphone jack, TouchFlo3D, tetherable, etc. I've got music, ringtones, and picture contacts already installed. I was prepared to flash the OS, but this model already came with the update applied.

Improvements desired:

• Ability to delete mail messages when browsing them - right now, you have to open the message then delete.
• Ability to mark messages in Inbox-view for mass deletion. As it stands, you have to delete messages one at a time.
• More integration of contacts data with the other functions of the phone. For example, I should be able to search for a contact, then navigate to their address via the GPS. The Sprint navigation app doesn't even allow pasting in an address - you have to type it in manually.
• Ability to delete music files from the Sprint Music application. They force you to use a file manager for tune removal.

The love affair continues...

And to show that I'm not totally heartless, I'm planning to spoil my wife with the following Mother's day presents:

• A hand-painted lampshade. The artist would be our son.
• A macro-lens for the DSLR camera (yeah, I want this too)
• Dinner out or in, her choice
• Kid-free day, duration dictated by her
• Upgrade her phone to the HTC Touch Pro 2

The love affair continues...

My whereabouts

I last reported about the new soundcard that I purchased. The PCI-Express X-Fi Titanium is working rather nicely. I've already submitted the rebate, so let's hope that gets processed without too much drama.

One tangible benefit with the new hardware is that it can handle my drumkit signal. Yes, I've adjusted the volume levels on the three pieces of equipment involved to get a live stream into Second Life. I'm tempted to close out my next DJ gig with a drum solo...

In other news, I read for a part in a SL Television series. Apparently, they make TV shows in Second Life, too. Well, the directors like me for the role of Zepplin - he's the teen love-interest in the series. Go figure.

I've also got to formulate an entry for a photo contest. I was supposed to go on a vacation to Europe, this week, but the planet had other intentions for me and my family.

Filed my taxes

New sound, we hope

A few months ago, the onboard audio on my Gigabyte motherboard suffered what I can only describe as an unrecoverable, electrical anomaly. Once that happened, the soundcard portions of the motherboard were unresponsive - no detection in windows, no reinstallation of drivers, etc...

As a temporary fix, I had to install an Audigy 2 PCI card. This was capable of handling routine audio (playback and dj duties), but I was getting a lot of distortion trying to stream my drumkit live through this method.

Fast-forward to today: NewEgg has a special on the Creative X-Fi Titanium PCI-Express card.

Of course, I was in the market, but I also needed to do some research, quickly...it has drivers for Windows 7 - 64-bit, it's got 96kHz sampling, user-selectable parameters, HDMI pinouts, and some optical interfaces. The PCI-Express bus will offload audio processing to the dedicated Creative hardware, hopefully lowering latency further. Apparently, no one else has been insane enough to specifically stream live drums through the X-Fi Titanium - but we can't have it all now, can we?

The card usually retails for $99. Using the promo code, EMCYRYW45, and sending in a $25 rebate, the final cost is $49.99 delivered tax-free. This promotion ends on 4/14.