Tag: Personal

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Turned off my server

As I’ve previously written, I started making the move to turn off some of the services running on my server. Last week, I managed to move the last service (SlimServer) running on my server somewhere else; in this case to my AppleTV which is quieter and more energy efficient than my monster server. So, last Monday, I sent an init 0 to the server and turned it off. I then moved my UPS to my office. It is such a relief to no longer have to make sure my server is running; while I do have some services running on my virtual private server, I don’t have to worry about it physically being up. In addition, by not using my server as a router, I don’t have to worry about restarting my server and having it affect my internet connection.

Things have been humming along and Google for Domains is working out quite well. With GoDaddy handling DNS and email forwarding on some domains, I don’t see a need for me to turn on my server. It has been a great experiment and has taught me a lot; I first brought a dedicated server online something like 8 years ago!

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Radio Hanukkah == Radio Not-Christmas

The other day I heard an ad (yes, an ad) on XM for Radio Hanukkah. Cool, I thought, and tried to tune it in. After a few false starts (I kept getting a message that I wasn’t authorized to play the stream and then online streaming stopped completely), I was able to tune it in. We started listening to it while lighting the candles and thought it was cool to have Hanukkah tunes, but unfortunately there isn’t enough Hanukkah music to fill a full station. XM Radio has decided to play all music that is Jewish, like “Going to Israel”, “Eliyahu Hanavi”, etc.

There are some pretty funny songs like a Hanukkah song to the tune of an Outkast song. I haven’t heard Adam Sandler’s Hanukkah songs, yet; they’re always a crack up.

Oh well, at least I don’t have to listen to endless repeats of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

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GPS Search continued

So today I saw that Staples had the Navigon 2100 for $149 and I had a 12% off coupon bringing it to 132. So, I decided to give it a try as it is a bit cheaper than the Garmin units. I was surprised that Staples had it, so I bought it. It came with free lifetime traffic alerts which was a pleasant surprise. After using it for about 5 minutes, I’ve decided that the unit is a piece of crap. First off, I crashed it by ejecting the SD card, second the navigation is awkward, third the unit is very slow when tapping anything, fourth, the POI database with over a million POIs is quite small. It couldn’t find the local Costco that has been there 7 years. Overall, I was quite disappointed with this and will be taking the unit back tomorrow.

However, it reaffirms my research that the nüvi is the unit to get. I should have taken it as a warning that the Navigon website lists that it is running Windows CE. Frankly I don’t care what it runs as long as it runs well. It has a 400 MHz processor in it and it seemed slow as molasses in January (of course, somewhere cold).

Oh well, I’ll just bite the bullet and buy the nüvi.

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In search of a new GPS unit

About a week and a half ago, I pulled out my trusty Garmin iQue 3600 to find out the exit for a mall to check out some sunglasses. Well, I managed to not seat the unit properly in the cradle in my car, so it reset itself and wiped out the contents of its memory. That’s the major problem with older Palm OS based devices (one reason I recommended that Qualcomm not use the Palm OS for the pdQ smartphone; losing all your data when the battery dies really sucks). I got royally annoyed at the device and since have been on a quest for a new (modern) portable GPS unit to replace it.

On black Friday, I dragged my wife to the store in hopes of getting a cheap unit. Of course, that didn’t work out. So, I’ve been doing my research on devices. Most GPS units sold come with a suction cup mount that adheres to the windshield. As I was looking at Costco’s website, I discovered that these types of mounts are illegal in California. Yes, I realize that most people either don’t know about it or don’t care. I, however, do my best to adhere to the law. In that light, it appears that the Garmin devices are the only ones that have an optional bean bag portable mount (my iQue has this). So, I’ve narrowed down my search to either the nüvi 260 or the nüvi 360 with the bean bag mount.

However, I don’t need a GPS unit at the moment. My father dropped his iQue 3600 and it no longer charges, so I offered him mine as I don’t use the Palm functionality like he does; he won’t pay me for it (I’m a nice son, aren’t I?), so a new GPS unit will cost me over $300. Most of the time we go somewhere new, we drive my wife’s car which has a built in navigation system, so maybe I’ll just wait until after the new year when maybe there will be rebates or reduced prices.

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The Roomba Saga

I finally got tired of the dog hair around our house, so I decided to purchase a Roomba. I purchased the Roomba 560 as it had a number of features that I liked and with the 20% off coupon at Linens N Things, it was $280. At the same time, they had the Scooba 5800 on sale for $250 and with the 20% off coupon, it was $200. I was pleased that we had a chance at clean floors; nether my wife nor I like to clean, but like to have the house clean which creates a problem.The Roomba started making funny noises and the Scooba stopped charging, so I took them back and exchanged them. The next set worked better, but I soon learned that the virtual walls of the Roomba 560 were not compatible with the Scooba, so I’d have to buy extra walls for BOTH devices as we have a large area that I need to clean in sections. Even if cost were not an object (extra virtual walls are about $30 a piece), having 2 sets was not realistic.So, I returned the Roomba and ordered the Roomba 416 direct from iRobot as it was $200 + tax with free shipping (Linens N Things had it for $200 – 20%). iRobot had a special where I’d get a free accessory kit that included 6 replacement filters, a set of replacement brushes, a remote control and another virtual wall. This time, however, the virtual walls of the Roomba and Scooba could be interchanged. The Roomba arrived today and while I didn’t get the remote control, I did end up with an extra virtual wall. So, I now have 5 virtual walls that work with both devices. I like the Scooba and it is doing a decent job; the Roomba seemed to do an acceptable job, but unlike the 500 series, it really bangs into walls. I’ll keep putting both devices through their paces and hopefully I’ll be pleased with my purchase.

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When money gets in the way of donations

The mantra of many that want to reduce waste and help the environment is reduce, reuse, recycle and in that order. So today I tried to do the second step of reusing by donating some of my old stuff to Goodwill. I went to Goodwill‘s Miramar landfill location as it was the closest location to me (less than 10 minutes away). I had a bunch of stuff to donate including a monitor, a sewing machine, an old laptop, old video camera, old cell phones, clothes, etc. The guy at the station informed me that they couldn’t accept anything with a plug on it at that location because they had a deal with the “recycling center” next door. Which to me meant that the recycling center wanted the stuff as it charges to recycle things like monitor whereas Goodwill just takes it. It would seem that they don’t adhere to the same mantra that I do and want me to skip the reuse step and go right to recycle.

In the end, I had to drive an extra 15 minutes up the road to their Sorrento Valley location to donate the rest of my stuff. This makes no sense to me as Goodwill takes all their stuff and resells it if it is in sellable condition. What a waste of extra time and gas to do the right thing.

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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.  
  19. Make the SlimServer file executable
    sudo chmod +x /Library/StartupItems/SlimServer/SlimServer
    20.  
  20. Change the owner
    sudo chown -R root:wheel /Library/StartupItems/SlimServer
    21.  
  21. Disable auto updating
    sudo bash -c 'echo "127.0.0.1       mesu.apple.com" >> /etc/hosts'
    22.  
  22. Restart the AppleTV
    sudo reboot
    23.  
  23. From Safari goto: http://appletv.local:9000/
    24.  
  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.
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Fixing a microwave with soap
One of the problems with being an engineer is that I have ideas on how to fix things and it takes a lot for me to have someone else fix things. Lately we’re been having problems with our microwave door closing; it was just sticking. So, I finally got annoyed at it and decided to take a stab at fixing it. I figured it just needed to be lubed up, but what type of lubricant would work that wouldn’t blow up. I had WD-40, but that was a bad choice as I thought that it could be smelly, wasn’t good around food, and could blow up the microwave. My second choice was a bar of soap. Sounds stupid, but what did I have to lose. I used a bar of Irish Spring (it makes things smell better) to lube up the prongs on the door that go into the microwave. That seems to have been the ticket; after less than a minute of trying to fix the microwave, it was as good as new!
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Email and DNS Services turned off!
I’m pleased to say that I’m out of the DNS and email services businesses. I’m now relying on GoDaddy for DNS and some of my email forwarding and Google/Gmail for email. While it may seem risky to rely on Google’s free service and GoDaddy’s low cost service for stuff as important as mail, but I’m confident that things will be fine. Gmail did have some slowness yesterday, but it cleared up today. The only hiccup is that my brother-in-law couldn’t send mail when he got home. After asking my sister a bunch of questions to nail down the problem, I discovered that Cox blocks outbound connections on port 25 which is great of them to try to prevent spam from originating from customer machines. Luckily, Gmail also accepts outbound mail on port 587, so a quick change got around the problem.
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One year of selling ReceiptWallet
Yesterday marked the 1st anniversary of ReceiptWallet! When I started ReceiptWallet, it was simply out of my own desire for a program to keep track of my receipts.  A lot has happened in one year and I’m quite pleased with how mature the product has come as well as the number of users using it. I hope that the next year brings as much success as the first year and then some!