Scott Gruby's Blog

May 15, 2009
Closing the barn door...
About a month ago, our local Bank of America branch was robbed. My wife called me as she was leaving the area and told me that there were a lot of cop cars at the bank. Since we live in a pretty sleepy part of town, we knew something was up. I turned on my police/fire scanner (I got the scanner several years back to monitor fire communications in case there was another wildfire as the notification system is a bit slow and if I see smoke, I want to know what is going on) and heard that the bank was robbed. Wow, pretty scary. I go in the bank every week without fail.
May 14, 2009
How not to do ecommerce
Years ago when I started with ecommerce, email was an acceptable way to do this including sending credit card information (or at least no one knew better). Today, informed consumers know that email is not the right way to do ecommerce.
May 13, 2009
Installing SlimServer on an AppleTV
One of the services I needed to move off my server before shutting it down was SlimServer which runs my Squeezeboxes. I had looked at a few small PCs that were ultra quiet and as I was looking at the Shuttle website, it compared one of their boxes to a Mac Mini. Hmmm, I have an extra one of those lying around that I could use and then remembered I have an AppleTV that I'm not using. So, I decided to see if I could install SlimServer on the AppleTV as it is fanless and super quiet. Here's what I did:
1. Download Patchstick
2. Follow the procedure and install Patchstick from a USB thumb drive
3. Download the Mac OS X version of SlimServer
4. Download the XMRadio plugin
5. Edit XROAPI.pm in the plugin by commenting out
```
	if ( defined( $self->{activeClient} ) ) {		return [			$client->string('PLUGIN_XMRADIO_ERROR_HEADER'),			$client->string('PLUGIN_XMRADIO_IN_USE') . ' ' . $client->name()		];	}
```
  So that I can have more than 1 Squeezebox talking to XM at the same time.
6. From the AppleTV, enable AFP in the awakwardTV menu
7. Mount the SlimServer dmg file that was downloaded above
8. From the image, copy Install Files/SlimServer.prefPane/Resources/server to your desktop
9. Place the modified XMRadio plugin in ~/Destkop/server/Plugins
10. Mount the AppleTV volume via AFP
11. Modify ~/Desktop/server/Slim Launcher.app/Contents/Resources/Start Slim Server.sh to add
```
HOME=/Users/frontrow; export HOME
```
  before the ./slimserver.pl line
12. Copy ~/Desktop/server to the AppleTV's AFP volume
13. Create a folder on the Desktop called SlimServer
14. In that folder create 2 files. The first is called StartupParameters.plist and it contains:
```
{  Description     = "SlimServer";  Provides        = ("SlimServer");  Requires        = ("Disks");    Uses		= ("mDNSResponder", "Resolver", "DirectoryServices", "NFS", "Network Time");    OrderPreference	= "Last";    Messages =    {	start = "Starting SlimServer";	stop = "Stopping SlimServer";    };}
```
  The second is called SlimServer and it contains:
```
#!/bin/sh. /etc/rc.commonSERVER_RUNNING=`ps -axww | grep "slimp3.pl|slimp3d|slimserver.pl|slimserver" | grep -v grep | cat`StartService() {ConsoleMessage "Starting SlimServer"if [ z"$SERVER_RUNNING" = z ] ; then	pushd "/Users/frontrow/server"    sudo -u frontrow "Slim Launcher.app/Contents/Resources/Start Slim Server.sh"    popdfiif [ z"$#" != z"0" ] ; then    ConsoleMessage -Sfi}StopService() {if [ z"$SERVER_RUNNING" != z ] ; then    kill `echo $SERVER_RUNNING | sed -n 's/^[ ]*([0-9]*)[ ]*.*$/1/p'`fi}RunService "$1"
```
15. Copy the SlimServer folder to the AppleTV's AFP volume
16. Login via ssh using
```
ssh -1 frontrow@appletv.local
```
  password is frontrow
17. Change the root file system to read/write using
```
sudo mount -uw /
```
18. Move the SlimServer folder using
```
sudo mv /Users/frontrow/SlimServer /Library/StartupItems/
```
19. Make the SlimServer file executable
```
sudo chmod +x /Library/StartupItems/SlimServer/SlimServer
```
20. Change the owner
```
sudo chown -R root:wheel /Library/StartupItems/SlimServer
```
21. Disable auto updating
```
sudo bash -c 'echo "127.0.0.1       mesu.apple.com" >> /etc/hosts'
```
22. Restart the AppleTV
```
sudo reboot
```
23. From Safari goto: http://appletv.local:9000/
24. Change the music directory in the SlimServer prefs to /mnt/Media/Media Files
The only problem so far is that it creates multiple Albums for each album due to how the AppleTV stores the music.
May 11, 2009
EeePC
Several weeks ago, I received an ASUS EeePC 901. I've been looking at them for awhile now and finally had an opportunity to play with one. The first thing that happened when I first pulled it out of the box was I cut myself on the box! It was one of those corrugated cardboard boxes that kind of looked like a picket fence. After that unpleasant experience, I was excited to power it up. I was easily able to get it on my WiFi network and began surfing away.

Closing the barn door...

How not to do ecommerce

Installing SlimServer on an AppleTV

EeePC