Replacement Nipples (for the ThinkPad)

My wife has an X23 series model 2662 IBM ThinkPad. For years, she's avoided using the TrackPoint pointing device embedded in the keyboard as the standard rounded one was extremely abrasive and worn. She'd always attach an external mouse or (after meeting me) a trackball, or when in need using a piece of tissue to protect her finger. Well, dutiful husband that I am, I finally bothered to do a Google search if there was some replacement nipple or eraser tip for her model.

I was happy to find that Lenovo sells an inexpensive ThinkPlus TrackPoint Cap Collection. So for $10 shipped, I bought a variety of replacement caps, and she likes the wide flat type with the rim. Much more comfortable.

MythFrontend and HDHomeRun Wireless on a MacBook

[Update: check out Signal GH, an iPhone utility for monitoring the signal quality of an HDHomerun].

I've been running the MythTV Frontend for Intel OS X several hours a week for the last month. This is on my original MacBook (1.83GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM) connected wirelessly via a 802.11g router to the basement MythTV server. I'm typically on the couch in the TV room upstairs, or on the bed in the basement; 30 feet from the wireless hub at most.

Performance has been good, and I've been happy with it, but it does lock up if you quit the application directly from Live TV mode. It's an odd sort of lock up in that the video keeps playing, but the beach ball of death cursor indicates the GUI itself is locked. So I'll command-tab out and force quit the application. Of course, the audio is nothing compared to the 5.1 speakers on the actual MythTV, but I have been known to watch even such sound intense shows as 24 on the MacBook, too lazy to watch it properly. Occasional flickers could be wireless instability, noise on the antenna, other processes grabbing the MacBook CPU or packets lost in Ethernet. It's hard to say.

I had worried whether my Ethernet network was up to the task of carrying 2 HD streams down from the HDHomeRun in the network closet to the MythTV (both the PC and the HDHomeRun are 100Base-T, the routers are 1000Base-T and the wiring is Cat-6) while simultaneously streaming a 3rd stream back up the same Ethernet cable to the wireless hub in the network closet. But, this works surprisingly well. I do like to give Live TV a couple seconds of buffer to give it a chance for error.

The GUI actually works better than the Linux version on my desktop, where I long ago lost the overlay GUI in TV mode. On the Mac, I actually see the Paused/Play time HUD window when I pause playback. Interlacing is not as good though.

In preparation for writing this blog entry, I put the MythTV frontend into a small window mode, and I'm just noticing it mirrors the video content in the OS X Dock. This is probably a bad idea, and a waste of cycles. I know it's cool and all, in a 2001 sort of way, but not that cool. Also, the UI for changing the window size is completely lame: holding down the right arrow key while it counts up to 480 horizontal pixels when I have a perfect good 4, 8 and 0 keys is unforgivable.

In summary, MythFrontend for OS X is nice to have, and I'm glad network and computer hardware is finally up to the task of this kind of high bandwidth application.

Be careful with your CFBundleVersion

This post is along the way of a reminder to myself should I ever have to figure out how my application's plist has caused the Launch Services manager to act strangely.

If you accidently setup your CFBundleVersion element badly, by for example, putting it in quotes, you will end up with the Launch Services database treating it as if it had a version of zero. You can see this clearly by running the lsregister utility:
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -dump

[Update: lsregister has moved in Leopard:
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -dump
]

Static Libraries dependent upon static libraries in XCode

Just a helpful hint to try and prevent your wasting time like we did at my day job. We have a large C++ application which has several different levels (Standard, Pro, Ultra....). So to speed compilation and linking, we put large chunks of code common to all the levels into separately compiled static libraries. Thus, we only have to compile that code once every time we build all the applications, resulting in a massive time savings.

Unfortunately, this was not working under XCode as when we linked in our libraries, there was always some symbol or other which was not available, and we ended up putting large amounts of code into the main project and compiling it for each application level (making our build process at least twice as long as it should have been).

My boss finally got so sick of this he spent a couple days tracking down the problem, and it was that our static libraries were dependent upon other static libraries, but those libraries were not linked in until the application as a whole was linked. Somehow, this confused the XCode linker (ld) and it ended up missing symbols. The trick was to link the other sub-dependent libraries into the libraries static libraries and not directly from the main project.

I know the above is confusing. Here's a more graphical description.
(Before)

• Main Project


• Static Library 1 Project (needs Static Library 2 & 3)


• Static Library 2 Project


• Static Library 3 Project

(Now)

• Main Project


• Static Library 1 Project (needs Static Library 2 & 3)


• Static Library 2 Project


• Static Library 3 Project

HDHomeRun - Networked HDTV Tuner

[Update: check out Signal GH, an iPhone utility for monitoring the signal quality of an HDHomerun].

I have a PCHDTV 3000 PCI card in the Dell Dimension which serves as my MythTV. Since DVB drivers became part of the standard Fedora install, it has been problem-free. But, it doesn't meet all of my needs.

First, there are occasions when the broadcast networks show 2 or even 3 good shows at once. I'd like to be able to catch these rare alignments, but my PCHDTV can only record one show at once. I could buy another, but that would be the last open PCI slot in the Dimension, and what if I wanted to expand internal storage later with an SATA card? Second, the MythTV was banished to the basement for excessive noise, which means it is about 80 feet of RG6 cable from the main antenna splitter in the second bedroom, meaning it is getting less signal, and noisier signal than an upstairs device. Third, to be useful, the MythTV has to be on all the time, which means draining a minimum of $9/month of electricity. Fourth, I've never been able to figure how to access a PCHDTV card with non-root level privileges; I'm sure it's possible, I just can't figure it out, which means I run the mythtv backend as root. This is frowned upon.

Then, I came across the HDHomeRun networked digital TV tuner (both ATSC and QAM). This simultaneously overcomes all 4 problems with the PCHDTV.

• It has 2 tuners.
• It doesn't use up a PCI slot.
• It can be located as close to the antenna as I like.
• It can be accessed via any user account with network access.
• I can access the data stream directly from my MacBook, albeit kludgily, even when my MythTV is off. [Update: It is no longer cludgy on the Mac. You can buy an HDHomerun bundled with El Gato's slick EyeTV application.]

It does cost more than a PCHDTV, but less than two.

I held out for a while, but I finally ordered one. It came Wednesday. I've been happy.

MythTV 0.20 has built in support for this device. However, be warned that you have to open your firewall to its traffic. If you try to run mythtv-setup and you can't get it to scan for channels. Maybe it's your firewall.

I was amazed by how well my MythTV box pumped massive amounts of data. At one time, I simultaneously recorded 3 HD programs over the air--2 over Ethernet from the HDHomeRun, and 1 via the PCHDTV--while watching a recording of Day Break from the night before, and it was smooth as silk. There have been a lot of improvements in MythTV over the last year; I don't think it could have taken all this back then on my aging hardware.

Lately, whenever I buy new hardware, I measure it's electrical usage. There is a hidden cost to every gadget we buy. According to my Kill-A-Watt, my HDHomeRun draws 6 Watts at all times, whether capturing or not [Update: I've heard that subsequent revisions (those you would buy new today) use less power] . A low power mode while awaiting network commands would be nice, but the usage isn't bad compared to the 90 Watts the MythTV box draws. So it's less than a dollar a month to power it. However low the power, it does get a little warm, and I worry about it's life span, but time will tell.

In order to control the device from my Mac, I downloaded the hdhomerun_config source code from the Silicon Dust Forum. It was a simple matter to create an XCode project and compile the command line tool for Mac OS X, and I could then use the instructions for using VLC to watch TV directly from the device on my MacBook. Entering a series of obscure command line commands is much too klunky, and I hope VLC will absorb these functions, but it did work and looked great on the 13.3 inch screen.

Dell 2005FPW with the LG LST-3510A HDTV receiver

I have a two year old Dell 20.1" widescreen LCD display (2005FPW). I also have three LG LST-3510A HDTV receiver/DVD players. Just so any Googlers might be curious, yes you can watch HDTV on your DVI capable LCD monitor and this receiver. No, you can't watch upconverted DVDs, at least not with the firmware in this particular 3510A (1.93), it gives me a warning about needing a HDCP connection and refuses to play. HDTV is a little distorted, as the 2005FPW is not a true 16:9 monitor (closer to 16:10), but it looks fine driven at 720p.

I like the 3510A as an HDTV receiver. I bought this particular unit for $49 shipped via an eBay auction, The low price due to the description saying it couldn't play DVDs well. Well, guess what? I don't care. It's a sensitive, reliable, flexible HDTV tuner and that is what matters to me. I can hook it up with DVI, VGA or component connectors to any number of display devices. Plus, it has both coax and optical digital audio connectors. I got another one cheap (not as cheap) with the preferred 1.91 firmware because the seller didn't know how to get it out of Spanish menu mode.

Here's its manual.

As is typical, neither eBay units came with remotes. Luckily, my third unit has a remote. Also, you can get most (not all, the DVD arrow keys are wrong) of the functionality from a cheap One-For-All remote. The One-For-All even has the codes for a proper fast forward/reverse on the DVD player, which the original remote does not have. Even the Harmony remote database has a few holes, so I'm glad to have at least one master remote.

Actually, I have little clue how people choose the proper eBay price for one of these things. I just saw an auction close for $58+shipping on a unit which was clearly marked as broken and being sold for salvage/repair. But it did come with a remote.

I don't really need 3 HDTV receivers. This third one is a family gift.

XCode debugger exited with status (1)

All of a sudden an XCode project which I was sharing with a collaborator refused to be debugged. The debugger was evidently exiting unexpectedly with "exited with status (1)" message. 

It took a long while to figure this out, but the project had been modified by my collaborator to hard code ppc generation. There were 3 such references in the project file. Had to change that to get the debugger to work again.

How not to use the boost singleton class

This is an odd and frustrating warning I was seeing while using the templated singleton class which comes with the boost C++ libraries while compiling under Visual Studio 2005. I used the following code to define a class which would be controlling a thread. It worked, but I was scared by the warning.



template< class T > class MySingleton : public boost::detail::thread::singleton < T >
{
};

class MyPayloadThread : public MySingleton< class MyPayload >
{

};



1>c:\src\hdrs\MySingleton.h(133) : warning C4624: 'MySingleton < T > ' : destructor could not be generated because a base class destructor is inaccessible
1> with
1> [
1> T=MyPayload
1> ]
1> c:\src\MySingleton.cpp(16) : see reference to class template instantiation 'MySingleTon < T > ' being compiled
1> with
1> [
1> T=MyPayload
1> ]


I did a lot of googling and couldn't find a direct answer to how I was supposed to give access to the singleton's private destructor. Then I had an epiphany about how I was supposed to use this class. The proper usage is:


typedef boost::detail::thread::singleton < class MyPayload > MyPayloadThread;

In retrospect, it's obvious that I couldn't sub-class singleton, I had to make use of it as a pure template.

New version of Remote Remote GH for MythTV

Just posted some fixes I did over the last several hours in a new release.

Blogger Dashboard Widget

Google has a bunch of Dashboard Widgets out today. Just testing to see how that works.

Setting up a Cheap Version Control Server for XCode

If you program, you need a version control system. We've all heard it, we all know it. But it's a trouble to setup and a pain in the pocketbook to dedicate a server, and even if you have a used computer free for the asking, it's still going to take up space and $10/month for electricity.

Because of a collaborative project, I felt an acute need for a version control system. My collaborator and I were spending much too much time stepping on each other's code trying to maintain a collection of source files via diffs and hand editing. So Sunday morning, I woke up with the resolve to set up a system.

My first thought was just to run a version control system on the Linux box I use for MythTV, but I've been rebooting into Windows XP every couple days to play Madden 06, and during the summer, when nothing much is on TV, I often turn it off to save energy. So it wouldn't be an ideal situation.

I thought of posts I've read about hacking NAS boxen to run Linux and a quick bit of googling came up with the consensus winner, the Linksys Storage Link for USB 2.0 Disk Drives NSLU2. This is a really cheap ($80), amazingly small, embedded Linux computer with 100 Base-T ethernet and 2 USB 2.0 ports. Plus it has an active development community of hackers extending what it can do.


I also decided to use a popular open source version control system Subversion (svn), if for no other reason that it isn't CVS, which I hate, or Perforce, which hates me.

Disclaimer: I am not a Linux expert. I am a decent Mac coder and software designer. You could very easily end up with a $80 paper weight, and not a good paper weight at that. Be careful.

Setting up the NSLU2

I am not going to go deep into setting up an NSLU2. I used the Unslung firmware, the instructions which came with the firmware, and the NSLU2-Linux HowTo.

Some important warnings about the process: test out the NSLU2 before modifying it. Bring it up in its unhacked form. Have it format your drive as EXT3. Make sure it works. Mount the shared volume on your Mac, copy some files, etc. The ethernet on the first unit I bought failed moments before I was going to flash its firmware, saving me from returning it modified. Think about your needs when it comes to hardware, I had a 60GB notebook drive in a compact USB 2.0 case lying on my desk; the capacity is fine for running a version control system, it's low power (it's actually powered by the two USB ports in the NSLU2), and I already had it. I used a cable tie to attach it to the NSLU2, and it became one, very portable solution. My Kill-A-Watt says the NSLU2 and the hard drive together draw 4W idling (9VA).



[Update:
One thing I didn't take into account while setting this up is spinning the drive down to save noise and wear. According to this page, this is problematic and should be looked into before settling on a drive. I'm sitting at my desk 3 feet from the NSLU2 and I can definitely hear a bit of sandy whirl coming from the drive. Of course, the beauty of a server is that I can store it anywhere with an ethernet port and a electrical socket, like next to the upstairs router.]

[Update: I replaced the 2.5 inch drive with a standard 3.5 inch external USB drive, and that has been going strong for 2 years now. Having said that, I should look into backing it up.]

Use the NSLU2 web interface to give yourself an account with the same name as your account on your Mac. This will make ssh'ing into the unit just a bit easier. In the text below, I will use "jim" as a user name.

Again using the web interface, Give the NSLU2 a static IP address in the range used by your router, for example 192.168.0.21 if your router uses 192.168.0.x IP addresses which is common.

Change the password for the admin account to something more secure.

Also make a group for all the collaborators of your project. Add yourself and the collaborator accounts to this group. This can all be done from the web interface. Make sure to give all these new accounts their own private folder.

At this point, you should have installed the new firmware, "unslung" Linux from running embedded to running off the USB 2.0 hard drive and been able to telnet into the box (Enable telnet from the web interface), and know your root password. Your NSLU2 is not going back to its old self, it's married to its hard drive.

I'm going to take over with the instructions.

Installing OpenSSH.

• Telnet as root into the NSLU2 and install the OpenSSH package.

#ipgk update
#ipkg install unslung-feeds
#ipkg update
#ipkg install openssh

• Reboot (unplug the NSLU2, plug it back in, push the on button, wait)
• Turn Telnet back on via the Web Interface.
• Telnet into the NSLU2
• Edit the ssh server configuration file at /opt/etc/openssh/sshd_config (I used #sudo vi /opt/etc/openssh/sshd_config)


...
#LoginGraceTime 2m
PermitRootLogin no
#StrictModes no
MaxAuthTries 6
RSAAuthentication no
PubkeyAuthentication yes
AuthorizedKeysFile %h/.ssh/authorized_keys
...

• If you like the bash shell, then
  #ipkg install bash
• Make sure your user account is setup to take you to your home directory with your favorite shell by editting /etc/passwd

jim:sc0MOzL8dVGa6:2003:501::sc3B6pVbVCgxc:/dev/null
to
jim:sc0MOzL8dVGa6:2000:501::/jim/:/opt/bin/bash

• Edit /opt/etc/init.d/S40sshd by changing

/opt/sbin/sshd
to
/opt/sbin/sshd -f /opt/etc/openssh/sshd_config

• Restart the NSLU2

So at this time, you should be able to ssh into the NSLU2 via a command like: ssh jim@192.168.0.21 Confirm this is so, and if not remember that you can probably get back in via telnet. A point about what we have done. We disabled ssh as root because hackers might get lucky guessing your root password. My /var/log/messages file is filled with miscreants trying to get in as root.

Setting up public/private keys

Y
[Update: I had had outdated instructions for setting up certificate based login here. OS X Leopard makes it much easier. Instructions Here.]

At this time, you should be able to ssh into your server without being asked for a password or passphrase as long as you are running SSH Agent. Now it's time to install svn.

Setting up the svn server

Subversion is a version control system. Version control systems are complex and have a high learning curve. Subversion is complex and has a high learning curve. There is a free O'Reilly book which covers its usage pretty well. At least read the Getting Started Chapter.

• Install the svn package


#ipkg install svn

• Copy the directory tree of the project for which you are starting source control onto the NSLU2 (let's say in /tmp/myproject)[Update: don't copy the build directory]
• If you haven't already, create a directory for your project.
• Make sure that your project group has access to this new directory.
• Import the project under the control of svn


#mkdir /MyProject
#chown jim:myprojectgroup /MyProject
#cd /MyProject
#svnadmin create /MyProject
#svn import /tmp/myproject file:///MyProject/myproject -m "initial import"

At this time you should have a project under version control. You just need to be able to access it from your Mac.

Setting up the svn client on the Mac

[Update: Try to install the same version of subversion on your Mac as you do on the NSLU2. I had trouble with version 1.4 on the Mac and 1.3.2 on the NSLU2.
svn --version
]
Here are two ways to install Subversion:

1) Go this page on apple.com.

2) Install Fink and use Fink Commander to keep installing packages until svn-client and svn-shlibs are listed as current. I found that fink balked at compiling all the pre-requisite libraries, but I could install those from binary and finally get svn itself to compile. It will take a while to compile.

At this point, you should have the svn client installed in your /sw/bin/ directory and be ready to checkout your project.

Checking out your project

• Create a clean directory into which you want to check out your project.
• Open up a Terminal window and cd into the newly created directory.

$svn checkout svn+ssh://192.168.0.21/MyProject This is where it was important that you use the same user name for both the NSLU2 and your Mac. Notice I didn't have to specify "jim@". It was all implied.

At this point, you should have your project checked out onto your Mac.

Setting up XCode

• Open up the XCode project file in your checked out project directory.
• In the Groups And Files panel, choose the topmost blue project icon.
• Right click on the project; select Get Info
• In the General tab, choose Subversion as the SCM System
• In the General tab, click the Edit... button. Enter /sw/bin/svn
• In the General tab, click Enable SCM.

At this point, you should be able to commit changes, revert changes, and other basic source control functions from XCode's SCM menu.

Allowing outside collaborators access to the svn server

Obviously, a big part of source control is allowing outside collaborators access to your code. That's one of the big reasons we've gone to the trouble of using the ssh tunneling method for accessing the svn server. It should allow safer access to your network. But people outside your local area network will need to locate the NSLU2 from the Internet.

To do this, you will have to have a router which supports DynDNS. I have a previous blog entry about setting up a DynDNS account. In addition to the setup there, you will have to have your router redirect port 22 (ssh) traffic to the NSLU2. Do not do this until you are satisfied you are secure; it's a jungle out there.

Also, your collaborators will have to setup their own DSA public/private keys for their own accounts on the NSLU2. An easy way to download their private key is via CyberDuck. I had initially recommended the old standby Fugu, but I didn't have a Universal binary version of Fugu and when I looked for one, found a lot of positive feedback for CyberDuck. Just be sure to choose the SFTP option for the new connection.


At this point, you should have a network setup where a collaborator could checkout your project using a command like:
$svn checkout svn+ssh://mydomain.homeip.net/MyProject

Good luck, and sorry if I missed anything.

Throwing RAM at XCode Linking

In my day job, I spend a lot of time compiling and linking a fairly large commercial C++ application. My PowerBook G4 was not up to the task of compiling the whole thing in a reasonable time, although I could distribute the compilation to two G5 desktops when I was at work. But this did not help when I worked from home, nor did it help with linking. And no, zero-link never seems to work for me.


So I bought a MacBook, and home compiles are now peppy. But linking is still fairly slow, especially if I'm running my normal selection of apps, and I rarely compile the whole application, but I have to re-link it every time I want to test a change. I ran the Utility Monitor utility while linking and I was shocked to see that linking, which drags my whole computer down to a crawl, was only using 10% of the CPU; it was crawling because even in 1GB of RAM, linking caused a horrible virtual memory paging thrash. Well, one of the nice things about a MacBook is it is upgradeable to 2GB.


I first measured my linking speed on my 1GB 1.83GHz MacBook with a 5400 rpm SATA 120GB Momentus hard drive. It actually wasn't too bad, linking my work application in an average of 150 seconds. If it was like that all the time, I might not have seen the need to upgrade my memory, but adding applications running concurrently makes linking time progressively worse. Launching Safari, iTunes, and iPhoto and doing light browsing while the link completes, bumps it up to 197 seconds, adding Skype to the mix increases the time to 248 seconds. (150/197/248)


Then I upgraded the RAM to 1.5 GB and the times improved markedly. (91/110/102)


Then I upgraded the RAM to 2.0 GB and the times really got fast. (39/54/61).




I noticed that as the times got quicker, the fraction of the CPU taken up by the linker (ld) went up. At 1GB of RAM, ld was using at most 14% of the CPU, at 2GB, it was up to 50%. It wasn't spending all it's time paging out. In fact, Activity Monitor
showed only 7 page outs after my testing versus hundreds of thousands of page outs after the 1GB testing.


You might have noticed, I didn't mention the size of my application. That is because, the size of my application is irrelevant to you. The point is, I was having slow linking, and upgrading my memory capacity improved my linking speed by around 4x for an investment of $165 (shipped) in name brand RAM. If you are having a slow linking problem, maybe you will get similar results; but you will have to measure to find out.


My brother Joe also has a RAM hungry program he relies upon, Parallels Desktop, and he tells me that bumping his MacBook to 2GB made it the fastest Windows XP computer he's ever used. (And that's with one core tied behind its back.)

Windmill vs. New Refrigerator

Must resist urge to use the word tilting


I recently bought a Kill A Watt energy consumption measuring device, and have become an enthusiast for saving electrical power. Several co-workers have borrowed it and now have a better understanding of how they can conserve power.


In the course of my evangelism, I fell into a conversation with a co-worker who planned to buy and install a windmill on his property in New Hampshire. He feels this is a good way to both save resources and money. I asked him how much electricty he could generate, and he replied that his measurements indicated he could generate an average of 450 Watts. At $0.15 per kWh, this would be around $45 a month in energy. I asked him how much a windmill costs: $4000. How long would it last: 30 years with little maintenance.


By way of comparison, I had lent my Kill-A-Watt to another fellow, who reported back that his 15+ year old refrigerator was using $45 a month in energy. My refrigerator uses $12 a month in electricity, so this person could save $33 a month if he were only to buy as efficient a refrigerator as mine. Checking online, indicates a refrigerator should last for 15 years, and a top rated model (by Consumer Reports) such as the Whirlpool ET1FHTXMQ costs $750.


So the question is: If I had $4000 should I get a new refrigerator, or a windmill? (this thought experiment does not take into account subsidies, inflation or taxes). Interest income calculated using this online calculator.

Scenario 1 (buy windmill)
Initial investment account balance: $0
Return on energy generated: $45/month
Investment account balance after 30 years (assuming 8% return):$67513


Scenario 2: (buy $750 refrigerator and replace it again in 15 years)
Initial investment account balance: $3250
Return on energy saved: $33/month
Investment account balance after 30 years (assuming 8% return):$82571


Scenario 3: (buy neither)
Initial investment account balance: $4000
Investment account balance after 30 years (assuming 8% return):$43743


So, from a purely monetary point of view, investing in a new refrigerator is better than buying a windmill if your old refrigerator needs replacing. And if you have both an old refrigerator and an old dehumidifier, I suspect you will end up saving as much energy as a windmill generates at a fraction of the price. The guy with the bad refrigerator was also spending $60 per month on dehumidification.


The amazing thing for me is that the 50+% return you can get from buying a new refrigerator makes it such an incredibly good deal if your old refrigerator is inefficient. (Over 15 years you save $6000 in energy costs, which if invested at 8% would yield $11,500) Obviously, not everyone has such an old clunker as my co-worker. Your mileage may vary, but I highly recommend getting a Kill-A-Watt and finding out.

Brenthaven Laptop Bags: MacBook Slim

I purchased a MacBook two weeks ago. I am replacing my trusty PowerBook simply because the MacBook is so much faster and Apple no longer sells a Pro compact laptop. Believe me, if there was a MacBook Pro 12 or a MacBook Pro 13.3, I would have bought one. Which means replacing my Brenthaven Pro File 12 shoulder bag. And since I have such a fond regard for the Brenthaven—compact, well constructed, protective of my computer, attractive—getting another.


Therefore, I went to www.brenthaven.com and what do I see but their featured laptop bag, the MacBook Slim. The name evoked compactness, and the picture appeared to be a clone of my Pro File 12, so I mustered up the will to spend $100 on a bag, and ordered one.


It came Friday, and it is beautiful, and well constructed. And I sent it back Saturday morning. The thing is huge. Great for frequent travelers who keep their office in their bag, not so great for me, who slips his laptop into its case every morning and every evening and needs only enough extra storage for an iPod. Moral of the story: read the dimensions in product descriptions. I've asked BrentHaven to replace the Slim (width = 17.2 inches) with a Glove (width = 13.5 inches) and I'll see how that works out.


By the way, Brenthaven makes returns easy. The box they shipped me already had a pre-printed RMA address label, which I just slapped on the box and brought to the post office. (I did have to pay postage.)


Another BTW, my wife thinks my tiny Pro File 12 bag is somewhat unmasculine, and I should get a bag more in proportion to my physique. Well, I'm not that vain, I guess.

[Update: After more than two years of use, I'm quite pleased with the Brenthaven Glove as a bag for my MacBook. I shows little wear, has comfortable handles, and has protected my MacBook well against numerous bumps and the occasional short drop. Highly recommended. ]

Advice to the 30 year old car buyer

And now for something completely different. Advice on buying cars.

Three years ago, I was single, dating, and car shopping. I had always driven manual transmission two door coupes; and could easily have bought another. But I was dating with intent to marry, and had to envision what my needs might be over the course of the 5-10 years I might own my new car.

A friend of mine had started her married life with a two door, with the daily grind of dealing with a back seat baby seat. Given my plans at the time, I planned for the future and bought a four door sedan (a Honda Civic LX). Someone asked my future wife what kind of car I had bought, and on hearing the choice had said, "He must be serious then."

What I did not take into consideration, but should have, is that fewer and fewer people are adept at driving a stick shift, and my wife to be was one of them. In fact, she can't drive at all, but would like to. You might prefer a manual transmission, but your future spouse most likely will not. So my advice for anyone dating with intent to marry and shopping for a new car: buy something with at least 4 doors and an automatic transmission. You're going to have to live with your purchase for a long while.

The Ongoing Expense of MythTV (or why is my electric bill $105 with no air conditioning?)

A few months ago, I purchased a Kill-A-Watt power monitoring device, and today I went around the house and measured the power usage of my various devices and appliances. I wanted to figure out where the 19 kilowatt hours of electricity I was using per day was going. The results surprised me.


First, I measured my refrigerator, a Sears Frigidaire which came with the house. As it's energy use varies depending on whether its compressor is running, I used the Kill-A-Watt to monitor its energy usage for an hour. After an hour, it had used .110 kilowatt hours, so it used an average of 110 Watts. Assuming this is representative of a month's usage and at 15 cents per kilowatt, in a 30 day Month I pay (0.11*24*30*0.15 )$12 keeping myself in cold raspberry ice tea.


I also measured my TiVo (32W/$3.46), and satellite receiver (28W/$2.92) as they are also on all the time. My TV and speaker system are not on all the time (really, I swear), but assuming they were on 1/3 of the time then I am spending 0.33*(.090kW+0.037kW)*24*30*0.15=$4.50 per month for the energy used by my speaker and TV systems, for a grand total of TV room energy usage of around $11, very close to my refrigeration costs.


Which brings me to the MythTV in the basement. It's a Dell 2GHz Pentium 4. Just sitting there doing nothing it draws 90 Watts. If MythTV's preview panel is showing a thumbnail preview of 720p content, it draws 120W (the same as if it were actually showing 720p content), if it's 1080i content it draws 133W. If I turn on "CPU Friendly" preview, it draws 110 Watts. Yes, that's right, whether or not the monitor is on or not, whether or not the blank screen-saver is on, the preview is using a minimum of 20W. Assuming my MythTV spends most of the month doing "CPU friendly" previewing, it's costing me $2.16/month extra just for the previewing. Therefore, I turn off previewing. Previewing or not, the computer is still drawing 90 Watts just sitting there, costing $9.72/month.


My MythTV is attached to two monitors, a 15" Sony LCD, and a 20" Dell Widescreen LCD. While on, the Dell draws 40 Watts, and the Sony draws 20. KDE had been set to use the "blank" screen saver after 2 hours inactivity. You would think, this would cause the monitors to use less electricity; not according to the Kill-A-Watt. Assuming I neglected to turn off the monitors half the time, I was spending $3.25/month powering unwatched monitors. I opened the display control panel and told Linux to power down the monitors after 2 hours which will eliminate most of this expense. Also, I often neglect to turn off my speakers (24W on/12W "off"), indicating I'm spending $2/month powering unheard speakers.


Adding this all up, and my MythTV had been costing me $17 a month in electrical costs. Turning off previewing and having the system power down the monitors should bring this down to $12 which is precisely the same amount of money I spend on my refrigerator, and coincidentally is the same amount of power used by the upstairs TV room. Now if I could only figure out where the other 11 kilowatt hours a day is going.


[Update: My MythTV box has two internal hard drives. Drive /dev/hda is used when I boot into Windows or when I want to share files with Windows. Drive /dev/hdb is used when I'm running Linux. It occurred to me I could put the unused drive into standby mode (not sleep mode) using the Linux hdparm utility, doing so saved an additional 7W. So now my MythTV computer is drawing 83W instead of 90W; I hope it's just a bit quieter now.

The following line tells my unused drive to go into standby mode after 30 minutes. I'll have to figure out which command file to put this to make it automatic.
#sudo /sbin/hdparm -S 241 /dev/hda
]

Channel Master 7775 versus Radio Shack In-line Amplifier

In my, seemingly, never ending quest for reliable reception of the Boston Fox affiliate, I decided to upgrade my rooftop antenna's (Winegard 9032) pre-amp. I had been using a Radio Shack In-line Amplifier. As people on AVS Forum like Channel Master pre-amps, all my local stations are UHF, and my antenna is UHF only, I purchased a Channel Master 7775 UHF only pre-amp from Solid Signal. The Channel Master pre-amp costs $19 more than the Radio Shack model (plus shipping differences).


My hope was that by substituting a higher quality UHF only pre-amp, I would get somewhat less noise, somewhat more signal and have fewer hours when Fox pixelates.


By the way, this is not a definitive comparison. Atmospheric conditions might have changed significantly between the time I checked signals with the Radio Shack and when I finished installing the 7775. I did mow the lawn in the interim. However, I hope this report will help anyone wondering if the higher priced pre-amp is worth the money.


I receive 9 digital over the air channels. The following are of the form Network channel# (True channel#) Strength

PBS 2 (19) Strong
CBS 4 (30) Strong
ABC 5 (20) Strong
NBC 7 (42) Mediocre
FOX 25 (31) Intermittent
UPN 38 (39) Mediocre
PBS 44 (43) Mediocre
WB 56 (41) Intermittent
TFA 66 (23) Mediocre

According to AntennaWeb.org these are all UHF stations (higher than channel 13), as 2, 4, 5, 7, are actually broadcasting on UHF channels 19, 30, 29, and 42. I'm about 31 miles away from the antenna farm and all of these transmitters are in the same general direction. I have a three way splitter which sends half the signal to my TV Room and a quarter each to my bedroom and my basement office.


Late this morning, I wrote down the "signal strength" for each of these channels from the Dish Network 411 receiver in my TV room, I then disconnected the Radio Shack in-line amplifier and recorded the signal strength without any pre-amp. And finally, I installed the Channel Master 7775 and recorded the results. I do not know what the receiver means by signal strength; I do know if it drops below 58 it will pixelate, stutter, show a signal loss dialog, and sometimes even crash the receiver making me unplug and restart it. BTW, the Dish Network 411 is an unreliable piece of junk.

The following is of the form Network Channel#: Signal with no pre-amp, Signal with RS in-line, Signal with CM 7775. NS means no signal.
PBS 2: 74, 83, 84
CBS 4: 74, 87, 88
ABC 5: 74, 86, 79
NBC 7: NS, 74, 76
FOX 25: NS, 58, 65
UPN 38: NS, 69, 74
PBS 44: NS, 62, 73
WB 56: NS, 59, 66
TFA 66: NS, 73, 79


From this data, we can see a few things. Without a pre-amp, I would only get 3 stations. The 7775 is not appreciably better than the Radio Shack for the strong UHF stations, and is even a good deal worse on ABC 5 (actually 20). But these channels are more than strong enough either way. More importantly, it is noticeably better at boosting the signal of the marginal and intermittent stations with which I've been having trouble. In particular, it boosted FOX and WB above the magic 58 level. I've been watching the signal on Fox and it oscillates within a range of 60-68 over an hour. I suppose that with the Radio Shack, the range was something like 56-64, resulting in frequent picture loss. At least the current operating range is all good enough, although a little close for comfort. My stronger channels oscillate by a point or two at most.


I've also started getting the Manchester N.H. ABC affiliate with reasonable strength ~65 despite my directional antenna being pointed in the opposite direction. Of course, other than local news, which I do not watch, there is little difference between the programming on ABC Boston versus ABC New Hampshire.


These numbers drift over the course of the year as tree leaves grow to block my angle, and then fall. Hopefully, summer has the worst conditions and this upgrade will be good enough to keep me in tacky reality programming till the leaves fall in autumn.

Signal Strength Script for EyeTV 2.2.1

[Update: check out Signal GH, an iPhone utility for monitoring the signal quality of an HDHomerun].


The following script works with EyeTV 2.2.1 to speak the signal strength every 5 seconds. I'm posting this because the script I posted a few weeks ago was broken by the new release.


repeat
tell application "System Events"
if UI elements enabled then
tell process "EyeTV"
-- make sure everything between "tell" and ""EyeTV Preferences"" is
-- on one line when you copy and paste
tell progress indicator 1 of UI element 1 of group 1 of tab group 1 of UI element 1 of UI element 4 of UI element 6 of window "EyeTV Preferences"
set mySignal to get value
set mySignal to mySignal * 100
set mySignalInt to mySignal as integer
end tell
end tell
else
display alert "Enable GUI scripting in the AppleScript Utility"
end if
end tell
say mySignalInt
delay 5
end repeat


Tuner card versus an HDTV receiver

A coworker, who knows I am an HDTV know-it-all, asked me whether he should get a tuner card for his desktop PC or buy an ATSC tuner box for use with his new 1080p LCD monitor. He wasn't going to build or buy a specialized media PC, and in the beginning he just wanted to watch TV with no DVR functionality. Nor does he want to pay for cable or satellite. I immediately told him to buy a standalone receiver, and recommended the Samsung SIR T-451 based on comments on the AVS Forum.


For many years, I did not own a TV, but I watched a lot of TV. In the days of Mac OS 7, 8 and 9 I used my desktop Mac (first a Performa 6214 and then a PowerMac 7600) to watch cable TV via a tuner card. It became tiresome waiting for my "TV" to boot, or worse reboot. Plus, it was noisy. Then I bought a NTSC tuner box sold by ViewSonic to which I could hook to my TiVo, my DVD player, my computer, and analog cable; this was quite a step up as I could still use my VGA monitor, but I didn't have to boot my TV.


When it looked like the dreaded broadcast flag was going into affect, I bought a pcHDTV card for my Dell, and started playing around with MythTV and was hooked on the quality. Then I bought an LCD HDTV ready TV, and hooked my MythTV computer to it, and it was good. But it was noisy; and in exchange for perhaps an hour a night of watched HDTV programming, my TV room was noisy 24/7 with the sound of cooling fans. Thus the banishment of the MythTV computer to the basement. The upstairs TV gets its HDTV programming via a Dish Network receiver, and my TV room is blessedly quiet.


The same thing with the digital TV I threw together for the bedroom using an LG HDTV receiver. It's quiet, boots in seconds, and doesn't drain my electrical bill while off.


There is a place for media PCs in the entertainment center, but they should be quiet, specialized PCs (or of course iMacs or Mac Minis), not cheap, noisy, general purpose boxes. If you aren't in a position to shell out the big bucks for a new PC, a standalone OTA receiver is a good value and a good match for the "HD Ready" TV.

Don't act like a tourist in New York

My friend Mindy has another blog site exploring New York City both day and night. It's New York City Nomad.

I read her first post about visiting the new flagship Apple store, and later finding good Korean food, and think she's off to a fine start as a blogger.

[Update: My friend has lost this domain, so this post is no longer operative.]