She’s A Little Weathered, But Doing Fine!
Canon i550
We purchased the Canon i550 inkjet printer about 7-8 years ago. It is the only color printer that we own. We rarely have a need for printing anything in color, but when we do, I can depend on this bad boy. Like most inkjet printers, the heads occasionally clog up when not used for a long period of time. What set this one apart is that I can usually unclog the heads without a problem. The actual print head is separate from the ink cartridges which allows me to completely remove it and clean with warm water. That's right water! Even with the circuits on the heads! I just let it complete dry before putting it back into the printer. However, I must warn you. This printer is the only one that the warm water trick has worked. I have turned several printers (mostly Epson brand) into what I like to call "page counters" trying the warm water trick. Another plus of this printer (the main reason I originally purchased) is the low cost of ink. It takes 4 ink cartridges each cost individually about $10 or about ~$35 for all 4 in a bundle. Angela found some on the eBay daily deal site for $20 (all 4 colors), so we ended up getting a couple extra sets. Anyways...just had to use it again tonight to print out some labels for Marin's birthday party at school and it worked out perfectly.
Marin is turning 3!
Coloring Away!
Images in the Sky
When you look up at the clouds what do you see? I see Marin, Angela, myself, friends and family, and several vacations! Before you ask...there is just Diet Dr. Pepper in this cup! I have slowly been sorting through a bunch of photos that I have stored on my computer. I have a little over 5,500 pictures and a few video clips from the digital camera that add up to about 12 gigabytes of data. I have gone through and got rid of most of the duplicates and started organizing them into relevant folders. I have been using the new Picasa 3 for managing the photos. The newest version includes face recognition abilities.
Once you name a few, it will try to find others based on the facial features. I have noticed that it sometimes suggests the wrong person when it comes to children because their face changes so much, but it does well on adults.
As everyone, I always try to keep backups of files that are of importance. This use to be in the form of burning files to multiple CD/DVD's every so often. Of course you have to remember to do it. Another problem is that burned CD/DVDs do not last forever. I have had several issues trying to read back burned discs that were only several months old! Sometimes I could only end up reading the disc by placing in the original burner that I had used...weird!?
Over the summer I implemented a RAID 1 configuration for storing my videos, pictures, and documents. This works great to protect against a failed drive, but they will tell you to always keep a copy elsewhere in case the worst happens. There are plenty of online backup companies out there, but I'm not talking about them today.
Google Picasa 3 will let you sync your web albums! I have uploaded images to Picasa in the past, but typically reduced the quality to keep the file sizes low due to the 1 GB limit. You can now purchase additional storage at a dirt cheap price in my book. I just added 20 GB to my Picasa account for $5 per year! I dare you to find an online backup company that is cheaper and as trustworthy. So I now have 21 GB's of available storage to store my 11 or so gigs of photos (taking away about 1.5 GB of short video clips that will go to Google Video or YouTube). Luckily I have a decent ISP that will allows me 5 MB upload speeds. So it will only take about 6 hours to upload all of my photos.
Don't get me wrong...I'll still keep the RAID of course. In fact, I added another RAID 1 of 2 750 GB hard drives for Marin's movies and shows!
Taking it to the WiMAX
The other day I was running through a Vegas casino with a couple of buddies chasing after this terrorist with a machine gun and something strange caught my eye...it was an advertisement for a mobile Internet company in metro areas that do not require a contract and as low as $30/month. I know what you are thinking...month-to-month Internet for my laptop for $30!?! Crazy! I then proceeded with my mission at hand.
Okay, so it did happen in a game, but still! It's kinda cool on a couple of levels. The wireless Internet and in-game advertising. I assume it somehow updates the ads from the Internet as well so they are somewhat current?
The company offering the wireless Internet is Clear.com. They offer several different packages with or without a 2 year contract. They also are currently running some specials for reduced rates for the first 6 months. I have read some good and bad reviews, but for the price it is worth a shot if you are in the market for something like this. The idea is that you use WiMAX technology and is currently only available in certain metropolitan areas (at least by this company), DFW being one of them. The connection speeds are quite nice as well.
Below is a short video clip I made of the in-game advertising experience.
I Am Loving WordPress More And More
Alright!
Okay, so it has been a couple of weeks with WordPress. WordPress is a blogging engine, the underlying "meat and potatoes" of this blog and many others. There is no charge for WordPress nor its required components (PHP and MySQL) and it is VERY configurable. You could easily use it as a foundation for a small business web site. If I were a bit better with graphic design and creativity I would create a business out of creating web sites for small businesses and use WordPress as the engine. I would choose WordPress over Joomla everytime. Joomla is a similar engine that is popular with small to mid-size companies...even larger sometimes. It is highly configurable as well. In a computer comparison, Joomla would be a PC and WordPress would be a Mac (although in reality they run on Linux). I am a little bias when it comes to Joomla. A company I previously worked for had their site built with Joomla as the core and there was always something wrong with it or getting hacked. Maybe WordPress has similar security issues, but I haven't personally heard of any yet.
Here is why I like WordPress:
Free Software
As I mentioned, WordPress is free as well as its requirements. This means that hosting will be much cheaper than something requiring ASP or .NET.
Tons of plug-ins
There is a huge growing list of plug-ins available to do just about anything you might want. Although this is kind of the reason I hate Linux servers...add-ons. If you wanted to get a Linux server up and running, you had to first install one of many versions of Linux. Then you had to install Apache (web server), then MySQL (database), then PHP (script language), phpMyAdmin, Squirrelmail, Perl/CGI, etc. OR you could install Windows Server and SQL then go out for some beers.
Easy to add plug-ins
My biggest complaint to plug-ins is their complexity to add. WordPress has done a great job of making it a few mouse clicks. It's not just WordPress that has easy to install plug-ins, but it's still a plus.
Clean database structure
Compare a Joomla back-end (database) to a WordPress and see what you find. You would find that Joomla is equivalent to Kim Kardashian in the comparison. Although neither compare to the last software application I worked on which consisted of 367 tables, 513 views, and 3200 stored procedures! Talk about junk in your trunk!
Image Storage - Done right in my book
You should store DATA in databases and FILES in your filesystem (disk). And don't try to argue that images/files are data...I'm familiar, and that's not my point.
Finally setup Marin’s TV: HDMI over CAT5 and IR repeater and XBOX 360…Oh my!
Well, I finally got around to installing Marin’s television. I have had her television in my office for several months now using it as a second monitor, but finally got the urge to get it all setup. Now she can watch all the Elmo she wants!
Most of you can stop reading from this point unless you are interested in the specifics. I have been known to sometimes go a little overboard with electronic setups. This one isn’t too bad.
We were originally going to get a LCD TV that had a built in DVD player, but wasn’t sure how I would get a TV signal to it…I did not want to get another cable receiver since she would likely not use it, but didn’t want to be limited to only DVD’s.
So the plan was to use a LCD display along with an XBOX 360 which would allow the use of a DVD player along with XBOX’s built-in Media Center support. This is basically our setup in our master bedroom.
I started with a 26” LCD computer monitor that had built-in speakers. I picked up a pretty inexpensive Westinghouse (L2610NW) from 1saleaday.com for $250. LCD televisions are so expensive for some reason so I figured I would use a computer monitor since I did not need a built-in tuner. This particular monitor will do up to 1900 x 1200 which means it will handle all the way up to 1080p HD television, and the only inputs are VGA andHDMI. The XBOX has an HDMI output, so that worked perfectly for video and audio in one cable.
The problem with mounting a television on the wall is: Where do you put all of your components? In our living room we have a plasma on the wall with the components tucked away in a entertainment cabinet below the TV. I trimmed it down to where I only needed a power cable and a component cable (red, green, blue) which I ran in the wall up to the TV. Our stereo receiver handled the component switching to switch between the STB (set top box for Verizon FIOS), the DVD player, and the XBOX (when it is in the living room). I got lucky with the LCD in our master bedroom. Directly behind where the TV is mounted resides my closet. So I put a XBOX 360 in the closet and ran the needed cables through the wall to the TV. In both of those situations, you only see a TV and no components.
I decided to do Marin’s setup the same way. After thinking it all out. There was nowhere to put the XBOX 360 without it being an eyesore. We were going to neatly place it on her bookshelf, but have you seen the power supplies for an XBOX?! The are practically the same size as the XBOX itself. I though about placing the XBOX in her closet, but finally decided to place the XBOX in my coat closet that I like to refer to as the “Server Closet”. This closet if fairly centrally located in the house and is where all of the network cables run to. It holds the patch panel for the 10 network jacks I have through the house along with a 16 port switch, router, Vonage box, a small server, and now, a XBOX 360.
Now, how to get the HDMI signal from theXBOX to the TV that is ~50 feet away? I decided to try out this HDMI over Cat5 device from Monoprice.com. It will sent an HDMIsignal (which will carry audio as well as video) over two Cat5 or Cat6 cables.
So how do you change the channel? Unfortunately pretty much all remotes use IR(infrared light) which does not go through walls, cabinet doors, etc. My first attempt was in the living room where I used a Sony MRD-D1. These are mainly used in multi-room satellite distribution systems. I came across some of these on eBay for $10 each, so I bought two. These are pretty cool for 2 reasons. 1) They will let you modulate up to two inputs on two different channels. 2) They will repeat an IR signal from their supplied IR receiver through a coax cable. I used the modulator portion to put two of my security cameras on channel 80 and 82 in my cable signal (not the digital cable signal). I used the IRrepeater part in my living room so that it would repeat the IR signal into the cabinet where the cable box sits. In the bedroom, I used a Next Generation Remote Control Extender to repeat the signal to my XBOX 360 in the closet. This is actually a pretty cool little device. It will repeat an IR signal, but does not require a IR receiver that you would point at. It comes with a small transmitter and a battery. You put this in your remote control and it will repeat anything that the remote sends. You can get extra transmitters incase you needed to use multiple remote controls.
For Marin’s room, I decided to use this device to repeat the IR signal. That way I could cleanly mount the IRreceiver on the wall. This particular device also has a status light which lights up when it gets an IR signal. I put the other end in the Server Closet where the XBOX is located.
Okay, got it all planned out, now the crappy part…the attic! I hate getting in the attic to run cables. I think it is a combination between the heat and the fact that my previous attic cable run landed me in the ER. I decided to take a picture of the culprit this time, I had to run 2 Cat5 cables for the HDMI signal and 1 Cat5 for the IR receiver (only needs 3 wires, but I already had the Cat5 cable). Luckily it is not peak summer time yet so I only sweated out about 4 of the cold beers from the night before!
After running the cables, I finished hooking up everything on the inside. I mounted the LCD wall mount and installed a plug on the wall by jumping off of another outlet between the same studs…something you want to remember when picking out where to hang your TV.
It all turned out alright. About the only problem is that the video cuts out for 2 seconds at random times. Sometimes it will happen every few minutes, and sometimes it won’t happen at all. I may try shortening the two Cat5 cables that carry the HDMI signal and see if that helps. I probably had an extra 6 feet of cable when I was done and if that doesn’t make a difference, I could run a more direct path in the attic to cut off another 10 feet or so. If that doesn’t do the trick, I may just have to run an HDMI cable. I really want to give the HDMI over Cat5 another chance because I would prefer that method, plus they are cheap.
A plus is the XBOX 360 wireless remote reaches fine from her room, so you should have no problems playingXBOX as well!
The idea is to have everything expandable. Right now, this is just in Marin’s room. But I could replicate the same thing in all of the rooms. Run the HDMI cable and have an IR receiver in each room. You could then put all of your components in the one closet and every room could have use of any of the devices using a HDMI 4 x 4 matrix switcher. So you could put an HD receiver, 2 XBOXes, and a DVD player and send any of those signals to any of the other rooms.
Part List:
- Westinghouse 26” HD LCD Monitor (L2610NW)
- HDMI over CAT5E / CAT6 Extender Wall Plate
- Wired Home WHIRK1 Basic Decora Style Target IR Kit
- 3 Way Adjustable Tilting Wall Mount Bracket for LCD
- XBOX 360
- Some short HDMI cables, Cat5e cable, wall plates, electrical outlet, and a couple other small things.
Dust off the old FPS games
I have started eating lunch at work instead of eating out everyday.
Vongo: Update your TOS, you POS!
I guess it takes 2 requests and over a week to get a response from Vongo.
Vongo: I hate your face!
You may recall an earlier blog from Angela talking about our Vongo trial.
Google Maps…well played.
Google Maps has now added the ability to click and drag your route around to change it!