Another sweet item I saw at Hive 76 was an older Sony Vaio automated DVD changer that connects via 1394 (FireWire 400).  Supposedly, using DBPowerAmp and some basic scripts it is possible to batch rip up to 200 CD’s at a time into .flac image files with good metadata and .cue sheets.  Alex Wetmore wrote several years ago, and I’m paraphrasing his sentiment here, that he had better things he’d like to do with his day, like go on bicycle rides, because the fact is that he is not a CD changer.

So the general idea is you use one of these big Sony Vaio XL1B* changers, load it up with your music, walk away from it for about 24 hours and when you come back hopefully you’ve got a hard drive full of music in a format that is future proof.  If I can actually get this to work it would be a beautiful thing, and Brendan said it was good go.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sony VAIO XL1B* Series 200 Disc Changer

Zoe & Mark LIC Gantry (Blingee!)

Found this buried from last Winter on Zoe’s laptop.  Somehow I don’t think she ever showed it to me.  It’s amazing what you can put together these days on the web, for further examples see http://blingee.com.

Thankfully I found our trusty old Buffalo flashed to DD-WRT packed away and once reset, it was plug and play.  There were about five fruit computers suckling off the 802.11G wireless connection within short time.

Still TO DO: a cheap ultra-low wattage Open/Free RADIUS server?  What’s the easiest method for ultra secure wi-fi?

Buffalo WHR-G54S running DD-WRT Epic Win!

Netgear WGR614 v3 Epic Fail

The problem was in the versioning and not where the files were pointing (hd0,0 or hd1,1 sda1, sdb6, etc).  Thankfully from within the Super Grub Disk utility I was able to revert the master boot record (MBR) back to native Windows 7 boot and then from there re-booting into Super Grub I was able to boot directly into 9.10.  Once in 9.10 (and not on a rescue/live CD) I was able to run Synaptic Package Managers’ update.  During the Synaptic Update (code: sudo apt-get install update) 9.10 re-overwrote the MBR with GRUB 2 and it worked.  I can now boot either Windows 7 or 9.10 no problem.

My hope is to try the .22 (near release) of MythTV and see if that helps me in my backend woes.  MCE & Win7 work fine but doesn’t have the scheduling or Apache features of MythTV.  Worst case scenario I need to make a friend at the hacker’s space in NYC (http://www.nycresistor.com/) who actually understands channel mapping tables in MYSQL for QAM ATSC (free and clear) digital cable tuning.  Currently the SliconDust HDHomeRun has each of its tuners plugged into the same QAM feed, which is good because now the antenna is gone, but bad as I’ve never gotten all the free digital cable channels to work reliably in MythTV.

Super Grub Disk

Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10

Lets pretend for a moment you have a 32 bit Core-Duo laptop running Windows Vista Home 32bit that is infected with malware and viruses and acting generally poorly, what do you do?  Well, my friend, you take your 8GB flash key that has an already built 9.04 Ubuntu Kernel on it, you boot it from that and run ClamAV using the ClamTK GUI.  It works.  It found a couple of viruses on the backup HD and  I feel safer about backup data as well as my data on my Windows 7 machine.  Thankfully, since I’m principally running OS X and 9.04 MythBuntu these days we’re highly prone to viruses, but nonetheless, I was concerned about re-infection with her external USB hard drive as well as her 4GB Flash Key.

Step 1) Use Unetbootin to load a flash key with a bootable version of the Linux of your choice

Step 2) Boot up the sick (dying) notebook with that USB flash drive

Step 3) Scan all files with ClamAV under Linux, then backup all data

Step 4) Wipe the old computer clean and re-install Windows (this part is oh so familiar) & leave ~ 20GB for a separate EXT3 Linux partition

Step 5) Institute a backup as well as best practice anti-virus procedures

Step 6) Install Linux in the 20GB spare rescue partition in case this happens again!

Step 7) After about a year  Windows XP will be gunked up again, so repeat! (see Step 1)

I had to get a new battery once for a black Macbook and my options were: 1) schlep to Staten Island 2) buy one or 3) schlep to the 14th Street store because they are less busy.  I sat around the 14th Street store for about 45 minutes, crossed my fingers and waited for a lull in the ever present traffic.  The Genius there was very nice, she took pity on me and warranteed a new battery. But my other option was to come back to the 59th store at 5AM on a Friday. Their system blows, but I digress…

The employee didn’t have any specific answers about 802.11n on the new Touch.  It was his belief that it works, though I imagine if this were the case I’d have read at least one technical blog mention it.  Right now the word is that it has Broadcom’s mobile n chipset and it has a single antenna and it should be capable up to 30 Mb/s. Most tech writers speculate it’ll be enabled in the next 6 months. Oh well. Also, there is no camera yet on the Touch.

The image below links to the tear down, and if you’re into such things, click here for the Broadcom PDF spec sheet.

Click here to view the embedded video.

iFix it 802.11n iPod Touch Teardown

802.11n in iPod Touch

I haven’t checked all the applications I’d like to use, the ones I found myself booting to XP the most were A/V stuff like Foobar2000, MediaMonkey, EAC, etc.  But the good news is that under Leopard Darwine v1.21.1 runs Foobar2000 just fine, a fine Wine if you will (hah).  So that’s exciting.  Codeweavers sells something similar called CrossOver but Darwine is free and I figured since I already had X11 installed it was worth a shot.  Pretty cool stuff.

Darwine

I like Ubuntu 9.04 with MythTV…. I’m going to go back to that but probably do a dual boot leaving Win7 RC just in case…. Sadly, for Netflix playback due to Silverlight DRM a Windows XP/Vista/7 VM or even an OS X VM is necessary for Netflix streaming…. or buy a Roku box, unfortunately our TV doesn’t have 2 HDMI inputs… I’m surprised no one has been able to reverse engineer the Roku Box’s chipset and put the Silverlight DRM code out there…. Or even just have a “Roku Box VM”…. Why not, right? Seems possible, when you consider how almost all old video console games can now be played and fit on one flash drive.

I brewed with the Yama 5 Cup Vacuum brewer today. Thank you Conor and Leigh, awesome gift BTW; best of luck in your trip West. The coffee is very good, very clean, very smooth. I currently am grinding Gimme’ Coffee’s Picolo Mondo variety. Thank you Japanese vacuum brewing technology and to Chris for the awesome vintage German Peter Dienes grinder which does it job remarkably well for a hand grinder over twice as old as I am.

Yama Vaccuum Brewing by Digital Colony

My Vintage PeDe looks similar, all metal on top though

Hackable? Image from ehomeupgrade.com blog