chuma.org

Author: chuma

  • Modchip Status: Good

    This weekend – Saturday actually – was a whirlwind of activity. Besides changing the oil in the car, a mundane affair, I also had to somehow figure out how to flash my Xbox modchip with someone else’s Xbox so it would work with my Xbox. Luckily, I was able to borrow Josh’s Xbox, which he didn’t mind me opening at all, swap my chip in, and flash it. There was a lot of fiddly wiring and CD burning as well but I won’t bore anyone with the details. Long story short: my Xbox is now an Xbox Media Center and therefore kicks ass. XBMC is one really slick piece of code. Unfortunately I couldn’t flash the other modchip for some reason, and ran out of time to work on it.

    So now I can use XBMC to play all the media files on my home server, instead of having to use my downstairs PC and the slow-as-heck Java VNC client on the Pepper – sweet! This also means I don’t have to use the A/V panels in my wall anymore to go from PC -> TV, so I spent 5 minutes and used some RCA Y cables I had lying around and rewired it to go from TV -> PC. Meaning I can now record TV with my All-In-Wonder again. I think I’ve made my VCR obsolete again finally.

  • Getting rid of Bell: still a head-spinning exercise

    The debate at home about going VoIP with Vonage for our main phone line heated back up at home yesterday. It’s something we’ve been thinking about for months, and according to our calculations we’d save $40 a month – but it has two main impediments:

    1. We use DSL for our internet connection and are not willing to switch to cable. “Dry” DSL is now an option (DSL service without local phone service on the same line) but it’s so new no one seems to know about it.
    2. Our security system requires that we have phone line monitoring. Nevermind the fact that we get reamed out the ass paying for it. And we’re locked into our contract until the summer of 2007.

    (1) is no longer an issue, now that “dry” DSL is available – DSL without Bell phone service. #2 is still an issue, though it might be possible to get it to work over VoIP.

    I called up my ISP to ask them abou dry DSL and they didn’t have a lot of answers for me unfortunately. They said to switch my line I’d have to fight Bell tooth and nail, and also that Bell still requires that you pay for using their wires even when they’re not providing service on it.

    I poked around online and found another provider – TekSavvy out of Chatham, Ontario. They mention dry DSL right on their website so I figured I’d call them up to talk about it. Well, I spent about 15 minutes on the phone with a fellow named Bill who answered all my questions and generally impressed the hell out of me with his candor and straightforward facts. Here’s what I learned:

    1. Yes, Bell still charges your DSL provider for using their copper when Bell isn’t charging you for phone service. In most places, that’s $16.99 a month. HOWEVER, that fee is currently unregulated (Bell set it themselves) and the CRTC is expected to set this fee in the next few months. It’s likely that the CRTC will force Bell to lower it. Right now, for my dry DSL, it would be $16.99/month on top of the DSL service.
    2. It is really hard to get Bell to convert a currently active phone line with DSL to “dry” DSL. They will fight and bitch and complain. Also you might be without any service for two or three weeks. BUT, if you have another free line running to your house (and you probably do – they always run lots of extra copper for future service), it’s much easier to get them to bring up dry DSL on that unallocated line. The wait time is still 2-3 weeks but since they’re not losing any money out of the workorder, there’s less crap to cut through. Once you get DSL up on the other pair, you can cancel your phone service and the other DSL service. You might have some overlap for a while though, but it sounds like less of a mess.
    3. If I wanted Vonage to keep my existing phone number, I’d have to ask Vonage to take it over when I activate their service. Yet another reason to do point #2 (get a second DSL service temporarially) first, because if I cancelled my phone number without Vonage taking it over, I’d never get it back.

    4. I even picked the guy’s brain about running my security system over VoIP. I’ve read about some people doing it but he said there are two main problems:

      the reason the security companies are so dead-set against internet monitoring is because of insurance and possible outages. If your internet went down say four or five times a year, that’s considered a lot of times. They are very slow to change their tune because they’re afraid of not being able to provide reliable enough service, and of losing their insurance coverage. And insurance policies take forever to catch up to technological advances.

      the reason that you will have problems trying to trick your security system into running over VoIP is because VoIP is asynchronous – only one side transmits at a time. Normal phone service it, by definition, synchronous – both ends of the line can talk and hear each other simultaneously. Security systems talk like this and need a synchronous connection. Your VoIP provider would have to be able to switch very fast between the two ends of the link while your security system is talking in order for the connection to work. I think this is what I have read about where people phone up Vonage and get them to change some setting on their line which improves the security system communication

    What I would kill for is for my security provider to just install and support a dialer capture module like this one. It tricks your existing system into thinking it’s talking to a phone line, while retransmitting the data over the internet using TCP/IP. Boy, would I.

    So that’s a lot to think about, but it’s also more information than I’ve ever gotten on the subject. Many thanks to TekSavvy, I might just be calling them up for my new DSL service if I can solve issue #2.

  • Software upgrade “shot in the arm” for Pepper coming soon…

    More info about the Pepper’s software update is around, and it’s oh so tasty. It’s also been officially announced – more coverage on Engadget.

    The applications page on pepper.com has been updated with the three major application enhancemnets coming in Pepper Keeper 2.1:

    • MobiPocket Reader: looks like Pepper hooked up with MobiPocket for an e-book reader. They say you can download content from MobiPocket to your Pepper Pad or Pepper Desktop. Will it work with MobiPocket’s publisher software, so I can convert PDFs for reading on the Pepper? Geez I hope so.
    • Flickr-enabled Photo Library: performance improvements to the already good Photo Library are bundled with Flickr enhancements. You’ll be able to put your Flickr account info on the Pad and publish your photos to Flickr. Did you know that the Photo Library already has lots of easy to use retouching tools – like red-eye reduction, cropping/rotating and more? For me it’s like the best parts of Picasa but portable.
    • TitanTV-enabled Remote Control: I already wrote about setting up the Pad’s excellent Remote Control app, but now it will be integrated with TitanTV’s interactive program guide. You’ll be able to tap on the IPG and the Pepper will automatically take you to the channel, no matter what TV or Satellite/Cable box you have. Sounds frickin’ sweet, except that TitanTV only has US program data – I live in Canada and use StarChoice Satellite TV.

    This is all in addition to the stuff I’ve already talked about: Linux 2.6 kernel, speed improvements, hardware-accelerated video playback, FireFox 1.5 update, and development libraries.

  • Holidays Redux, and adventures in chipping

    It’s 2006 and I’m still writing Newton software.

    I whipped up a quick and pretty durn effective solution to get important yearly dates and holidays onto your Newton – convert Apple iCal public calendars to Newton packages. I call it Holidays Redux.

    In other news, it was like Christmas II at the office yesterday – my new hard drive from Western Digital and my order from Divineo both arrived. One has 80GB of storage goodness, the other has an XBox modchip for me and some other chips for my brother in law. Stay tuned for tonight’s episode, “Good Times Voiding the Manufacturer’s Warranty!”

    The only thing up in the air: will the 80GB drive be returned to my PC, or will it end up in the XBox?

  • How’s the Pepper going? Great, thanks.

    Thought I’d write some more about my Pepper Pad, especially since more and more people are writing about its competition, the Nokia 770.

    I’ve been using the Pad for quite a few months and am enjoying it for the most part. It’s simply great to surf the web on, period. In a few weeks a ton of software updates are scheduled to be released, bringing us a Linux 2.6 kernel, Keeper 2.1 with the latest FireFox 1.5, and finally some developer libraries. Once I get those devel libraries loaded up, I’ll be compiling SDL and then my favourite SDL-based emulators. The new kernel should be bringing us accelerated graphics and video playback… I can’t wait!

  • Where u been dog?

    I been around. You know. Stuff goin’ on. Many Xmas-related tasks to take care of. I was recently holed up at home for two weeks while some major renovations were done at the office. Let’s just say I’m halfway through Paper Mario after that little sabbatical. And also Paper Mario is a great, GREAT game.

    Sandy’s been working twice as hard as I these past weeks, with two jobs on the go. I was a judge at the First LEGO League Canada Ontario finals, which was some great fun with hundreds of great kids. Watched all our favourite shows go on holiday hiatus, had a great holiday lunch at work, and relaxed as much as possible of course.

    Been following the election news as well. Last night we went to the opening of our local NDP candidate’s campaign office, and got to speak with her and pick up a lawn sign.

  • A Rickin’ good time

    On Friday evening we attended a taping of Rick Mercer Report down at CBC Television in downtown Toronto. It was a blast and an interesting experience. I’d never been in a real television studio before, so I was interested to go just to see what the inside of the building looked like. Both of us were stoked to see Rick Mercer live though. The show was great, and hilarious – even funnier than just watching the show, because half of the fun is Rick and the production crew keeping the audience amused while they change set pieces, setup new shots, etc etc. I’d never seen unionized stagehands move large glass desks to the tune of the Mexican Hat Dance before. Also we got to see the full taped segments before they were edited for time. Many Sony cube monitors, namely PVM-2030s, were hung over the audience area. And boy do they pack’em into Studio 46 – the studio is much smaller than I thought it was. And the icing on the cake was that Sandy got Rick’s autograph at the end.

    We’d go again in a second – but tickets are already all gone for the entire season! So the rest of you will have to tune in to CBC, Tuesday night at 8. See that bald guy in the blue sweater in the audience, on the left side, second row? That’s me.

  • I’m a listener, I’m no threat

    NO THREAT::Lyrics

    Got a window-washer’s head
    for an unmakeable bed
    for loneliness
    the past is no place to
    rest your weary arms ‘cept at sevens at yer sides
    your face a campaign debt, reflected sky
    you die to your fans one window at at a time – that’s right!

    gotta a window-washer’s eye
    for an untuckable sky
    for lonely design
    the past is no place to
    try, but I’ll get my mind’s armies moving at full-stride
    singing in one voice, preoccupied
    and with nothing to say, I’ll sing it bright – that’s right!

    I am here
    it’s only me
    I ain’t freed nobody yet
    it’s just me
    I’ll just be a sec
    I’m a cleaner, I’m no threat, no threat, no threat
    I’m a reader, I’m no threat.

    who sings lonely?
    everyone sings lonely
    it doesn’t sound so bad
    who is free?
    everybody’s freed from the tired of being sad
    so sad

    how will I know?
    how will I know if I’m helping?
    moreso, how will she know if I’m helping?
    if I’m not in the saddle, I’m nothing – that’s right!

    I am here
    it’s only me
    I ain’t freed nobody yet
    it’s just me
    clearing spider-webs
    I’m a listener, I’m no threat
    I am here
    failed and failing breath
    I’m a listener, I’m no threat, no threat, no threat
    I’m a watcher
    I’m no threat
    no threat
    no threat

  • The garbage that is the ticketmaster system

    From: chuma@chuma.org
To: CSEast@ticketmaster.ca, sales@ticketmaster.ca, info@coldplay.com
Subject: The garbage that is the ticketmaster system

    When I sit on the toilet in the morning, I crap out better web systems than your pathetic piece of garbage which I have been suffering through as a member of the ticket buying public for years now. I’m talking about ticketmaster.com and ticketmaster.ca of course.

    I want to throw up when I think about how after 4+ years of online ticket sales you still come up with ways to screw up people’s transactions. The latest effort being the “word verification” garbage currently coming down the pipe. When this system (wt.ticketmaster.com) obviously blew up around 10:15 AM EST today and stopped responding, and I was in the middle of purchasing Coldplay tickets – great tickets, I might add (Thu, Mar 23, 2006, sec 121 row 20 seats 16 & 17) – and suddenly I couldn’t load this stupid verification image – even though you already had my credit card number, via my account, and I had already solved one of these pieces of garbage – no, you couldn’t generate a 290×80 pixel image in THREE MINUTES, the timeout for my transaction.

    Haven’t you people learned how to plan for a major traffic surge? Don’t you know how to run lean, optimized code so people can USE YOUR BLOODY SERVICE?!!

    Oh wait, I forgot, you don’t care because you can make so much more dirty money by running auctions to inflate ticket prices, and besides, someone will buy all the tickets anyways and you’ll get your extortionist $9.75/ticket service fee and put it in your pocket and never actually improve your service. Bands are forced to enter into evil contracts with you because you run around North America bribing venue owners with envelopes of money, and when someone does try to do business without you you go out of your way to discredit and muscle them out of business.

    Your monopoly on ticket sales across North America is disgusting. I hope that your sickening business practices cause you fester under the boiling hot sun of public opinion until you wither into a pile of dust and the wind blows you away into history.

  • What giving $300 to Microsoft gets you, more or less

    The Xbox 360 motherboard in all its glory. Click image for full-size version. From AnandTech.