It’s sad that we have become so terrified of litigation that we safe-tify the world that we simply dumbify ourselves and our children.
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Hi all,
After trial and error, I finally figured out how to convert an old divx 3 (you know, the old hacked version of the codec) video file to a format that my Sony Playstation 3 (PS3) could handle. Why is it that Sony has made the PS3 to be such a finicky beast when it comes to reading video files, I will never know:
How to convert a video file using AviDemux v2.4.1 on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron):
If you’re going to put the video on an USB thumbdrive, you will need to create a folder:
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Back in 1985, The Computer Chronicles demostrated how the hard drive works by removing the cover and explaining what each component did. While the hard drives of today come in gigabytes and terabytes, it is the same:
Computer Chronicles: Hard Disk Storage (12/17/1985)
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Taken from the Canon Pixma MP150 manual but here in a nice convenient place:
Press the Maintenance button (icon of a pliers & screwdriver) until the code you want shows up then press the Color or Black button:
| Code | Meaning |
|---|---|
| A | Print nozzle check pattern (prints nozzle patterns on paper) |
| H | Cartridge cleaning (uses a little bit of ink) |
| F | Deep cleaning (uses a lot more ink - use rarely) |
| P | Align print head (prints alignment lines on paper) |
| U | Read in print head alignment sheet (P) and auto aligns print heads |
| B | Clean print rollers (can prematurely wear out the rollers - use rarely) |
| J | Clean bottom plate |
| 1 | ???? |
Does any one know that the “1″ code is?
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This year’s Flourish Conference was held at the University of Illinois in downtown Chicago (UIC). The Flourish web site describes Flourish as: 
The goal of the Flourish Conference is to promote the use and adoption of Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) by demonstrating the practical applications of FLOSS in the business and academic world. While everyone is familiar with businesses that focus on creating non-free proprietary software, the same cannot be said for those who specialize in developing and supporting FLOSS software, and an Open Culture.
I missed a part of Bruce Perens’ Innovation Goes Public presentation due to
Chicago’s closing several sidewalks that go over or under the tristate. I’m not quite sure I agree with him that the road a head for open source is all rosey. Perhaps I misunderstood him but it seemed to me that the idea of simply giving the source of an application to the public would allow the programmers to still be paid via the support/service agreements. This may work for some applications, but for others there wouldn’t be a sufficient number of support contracts to financially support the programmers Personally, I prefer open source but I will also pay for commercial proprietary software. I use what works.
The company I work for, Sungard Investment Systems, uses open source for many internal projects. One such product uses VMware
portable monitoring system so I was highly interested in rBuilder Online from rPath. I attended the Appliance Development and Conary session presented by Stephanie Watson from rPath. I’m currently investigating on how well and easy it is to make a VMware appliance that would house a Sybase ASE server (DBMS) with no unnecessary os files. If the testing turns out well, I will ask my fellow Sybase ASE DBAs whether Sybase need certify it or whether we are ‘on our own’. The monitoring machine itself really doesn’t need Sybase ASE on it but since we have the license….
Dr. John Waclawsky, from Motorolla, gave a feel good presentation about the state of communication between wireless gadgets. The Revolution at the Edge of the Network Abstract. Short version: things are going to get very interesting in the next year 
James Gray, from IBM, presented IBM’s Open Source Strategy - Turning Threat into Opportunity. While
essentially a case study of how IBM has interacted as a semi-liason between the business executives and the open source community. IBM, to me, has seemed to be stuck in a love/hate relationship with open source and a dislike/hate relationship with the Free Software Foundation. That being said, it is necessary to give IBM credit giving credence to the open source community with the business executives. The IT folks no longer had to quietly use open source in the business but were free to use it extensively in many places. Linux, in particular, is no longer the wild west in many CTOs’ eyes but a integral part of their business. 
I met Tony Wong in the Chicago Perl Mongers ‘booth’. We discussed the upcoming Yet Another Perl Conference (YAPC::NA 2008) that is being held in Chicago and the horrible documentation of the Catalyst MVC web framework. I informed him that the only way to learn Catalyst was the new book Catalyst
The panel discussion on Friday afternoon was highly entertaining and a bit of a kangaroo court for Bobby 
Moore of Microsoft. I do not believe Mr. Moore was expecting Bruce Perens to repeatedly ask very pointed and informed questions. Moore did an excellent job of remaining cool and listening with an open mind to the criticism of Microsoft as a company. He explained that, yes, Microsoft did some not so nice things in the past but they are attempting to work with the open source community. Bruce Perens, Jon “Maddog” Hall, and James Bottomley brought up the pending MS Office OpenXML standard format issue where much of the format is proprietary and the published format won’t actually be used by Microsoft. 
Moore conceded that it was unlikely that Microsoft would use the published format as-is but the Office developers would likely base the actually used format off of the published format. Perens, Hall, Bottomley and James Gray all expressed their opinions that this was very typical of Microsoft. (side note: Microsoft has been accused of having the attitude of Embrace, Extend, Eliminate when it comes to industry standards.)
Perens, Hall and James Bottomley, as well as members of the audience, pummeled both James Gray of IBM and Bobby Moore of Microsoft for their companies’ approach and support of software patents.
Unfortunately, I was only able to attend the first day as my mother was in town from North Dakota to visit my three month old daughter (and the rest of us). If only I could have cloned myself… Don’t forget to check out the Flickr photo group for the Flourish 2008 Conference in Chicago!
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This past Sunday my 30GB iPod photo finally died. It lasted just over three years and it was a true veteran. It was dropped, kicked, washed (accidentally), and chewed on by Tonks. Sunday afternoon after returning from the build site of the new house, I went back out to the car and dropped the iPod three times in 60 seconds. Low and behind it finally died. I took it apart, reseated everything but when the iPod started, I heard the click click of a dead hard drive. After an hour of trying to coax it back to life, my wife offered to buy a new 30GB Video iPod for my birthday.
I loaded it up with podcasts, music and video. What I’ve noticed is that when I go iPod -> Music -> Podcasts -> The Chris Pirillo Show, I saw a normal podcast and no video. After a few seconds of thinking I messed something up, I didn’t, I tried iPod -> Video Podcasts -> The Chris Pirillo Show and video was found :) I would have thought that it wouldn’t make any difference if I played the video podcast from “Podcasts” or “Video Podcasts”, but apparently it does.
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Erica Sadun wrote an application, written in Perl, to convert your iPhone backup files into a SQLite3 database:
Here’s a nice way to recover notes from your iPhone without having to mail them to yourself–although it’s not for the faint of heart. Read more at The Unofficial Apple Weblog…
It would be a simple matter to have the data imported in to your favorite DBMS if you prefer Sybase ASE, MS SQL Server, dBASE / xBase, etc.
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The name Froebe is the Americanized version of the German name Fröbe. My family have been out of Germany for a number of centuries but the Fröbe part comes from the Black Forest region of Germany. Other variations of the name include: Froebel, Frobe and Froebal.
How do you pronounce Froebe? Well, it depends on the family branch. My family pronounces it as FRAY-b. I’ve heard many many different pronounciations and people can pronounce it anyway they wish, but to me it is and always will be FRAY-b.
Historical:
Probably the most famous of the Fröbe’s is Gert Fröbe, the German actor that played Goldfinger in the James Bond movie Goldfinger. No, he did not speak english.
Gert Fröbe playing Auric Goldfinger
The Froebe brothers, Doug, Theodore and Nicholas, of Homewood, Manitoba, Canada built Canada’s first helicopter and ornithopter (the ornithopter never actually flew but the helicopter did!)? Did you know that the contraptions were made primarily out of bicycle parts??
Nicholas Froebe was my grandfather.
Current:
Rebecca Froebe opened Froebe Fibers with her mother, my mother-in-law, in March of 2007. They currently specialize in hand dyed sock yarn.
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The nice folks over at Roomba Review have provided us with the instructions on how to reset the battery so it is (almost) as good as new
If your Roomba Red, Roomba (sage), Roomba Discovery, or Roomba Discovery SE is indicating a full charge, but it only runs for 15 minutes when you press clean, you need to reset the charging system. You can do this by removing the battery from the robot and unplugging the charger from the wall and robot. Please hold the power button down for 30 seconds. You then should charge the robot…..
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Getting a real honest opinion from a woman regarding gadgets can be very difficult as they often will either give a bogus answer or will tell you what you want to hear. The Chip Chick blog give us guys a little help in selecting a geek gadget for the girl geeks in our lives. I wish I knew about it when I bought a really bad mp3 player (it looked good on amazon) a couple years ago.
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Introduction
Did you know that BlackBerry can now be used just like an external modem for a laptop computer, so that a laptop can have full Internet access? This is useful when you need to do certain things that a BlackBerry cannot yet do. Increasing numbers of success reports have caused me to post this message. (Note: Mark Rejhon has not himself yet successfully used a BlackBerry as a modem; I am aggregating information). Sometimes, it is still tricky to set up a BlackBerry as a modem for a laptop, but this feature is becoming more and more common in cellphones, and BlackBerry models are following suit.
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Item Code: 209-198-001 |
I was more than a little skeptical at this iPod/mp3 player/cell phone/usb charger & FM transmitter. There weren’t any reviews that I could find whatsoever on this contraption. After looking around and seeing other combo units at about $90, I figured, that I would get one of these and worst case, I’d be out $20.
Well, it arrived today when I was working at home. Of course, I had to take a little time and try it out. Since I’ve been sick all week, I’m more than a little stir crazy to get out of the apartment even if it was just a jaunt to Starbucks and back.
Hooking it up was simple:
To turn it on, you hold down the power button for about 3 - 5 seconds and tune the fm transmitter to the desired channel.
That’s it. The only downside I’ve found is that the FM tuner doesn’t retain the channel frequency so you will have to tune the FM channel everytime you turn it on. I consider this a minor downside and one that I can live with.
Hooking up other mp3 players is done by attaching the usb cable to the mp3 player and the audio cable to the mp3 player. Both cables are provided. Charging a cell phone will work as long as you have the (not provided) usb <=> cell phone cable.
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