Well, I finally made the leap to HD.  I decided it was time when the component cable ports on my non-HD TV that I’ve had since 2001 started acting up and I had to start plugging my XBOX 360 into the regular composite port on the TV.  Also, I’d tried to download Mad Men Season 3 and the only rips I could find on isohunt.com were in 720p and thus unwatcheable on my regular XBMC setup.

First, I upgraded the bedroom with a Vizio 26″ 720p TV and Samsung BD-P3600 Blu-Ray player.  The viewing angles on this TV are pretty shitty so I had to bungee-cord it onto the riser so I could safely stick a pice of wood underneath it to tilt the whole thing forward so you can see a decent picture while you’re lying in bed.  So, for $280, I’m not really that happy with the TV.  The Blu-Ray player I also have mixed feelings about.  It came with a wireless dongle so it can hook up to my network and play videos off my Iomega NAS drive, which is pretty cool.  However, the interface for this is a little clunky.  Hopefully, they’ll fix this in a future firmware upgrade.  Also, it won’t save your position in a DivX or XVid file if you stop playback and want to restart from the same spot later.

Now, for the living room.  I read a whole bunch of reviews and decided to get a 46″ Sony LCD from Best Buy.  They were having a promotion where you’d save money if you buy a Sony TV with a PlayStation3.  I did some math and figured out that if I went for that promotion and sold the PS3 on eBay for $250 or so, it would work out to a great price on the TV.  The funny thing is that I was confused by the Sony model numbers and ended up buying the wrong one.  The one I originally intended to buy was the Sony XBR8 which has an LED backlight and supposedly one of the best pictures around.  Instead, I got the XBR9 which has a standard, non-LED backlight, but displays at 240hz.  I got thrown off because the XBR8 is a 2008 model whereas the XBR9 is newer and the exact same price.  If I could go back, I’d definitely get the XBR8 but once I realized my mistake, I had the TV all set up and was pretty happy with it, so it’s not a huge deal.  I’ll just have to make sure I don’t make the same mistake when I get my new virtual-reality, 3-dimensional hologram TV in 2017.

When deciding on the Sony over a Samsung, one of the things I discounted was the Samsung TVs’ inclusion of DivX functionality in the TV itself.  This is inarguably pretty cool, but at the end of the day, I was more concerned about straight-up picture quality, since you can always get DivX playback elsewhere.  Speaking of which…

Now that I had my kick-ass TV, I needed to figure out how I could play HD DivX files.  For non-HD content, I’d always used XBMC on my first-gen Xbox, which is in my opinion, the best media player ever available for non-HD content.  Sadly, the first-gen Xbox CPU is too slow to handle decoding 720p or 1080p content, so it looks like it’s end may be drawing near.

At first, I considered the PlayStation 3.  After all, I already had one that came bundled with my TV.  But, the PS3 doesn’t play mkv files and unless Sony decides to support this in a future upgrade (and I’d say it’s 50/50 as to whether they ever will), the PS3’s usefullness as a media player is limited.  There’s also the limitation that the PS3 uses Bluetooth and not infrared for its remote control, which prevents you using it with a universal remote unless you purchase an additional pricey adapter.  So, I determined that I’ll end up selling the PS3 on ebay and look at other media players instead.

Which brings us to the Samsung BD-P3600.  I went ahead and bought a second one for the living room because I figured if nothing else, I’d want a Blu-Ray player.  But as I mentioned before, even though it is very capable as a HD DivX player (and can play mkv files), the interface is clunky.  I need my media player to connect to both my iomega NAS drive and a Samba share running on my Ubuntu desktop.  The BD-P3600 doesn’t save a list of your network locations, so you need to click “Search network” each time.  And in my case, it won’t find either device!  I need to go into Manual Search Mode and type the IP address of which of the two I want in order to access it.  Way too much of a pain,

So I figured I’d continue using XBMC for playing standard-def content and when I had a high-def movie, I’d burn it to disc or thumb drive and play it on the BD-P3600.  Then my friend Eric from work turned me on to the Western Digital WD TV Live.  This thing is pretty sweet.  It’s a tiny box (only 5″ x 4″ x 1.5″) and all it does is play HD Divx, Xvid and mpeg movies (and mp3s and photos).  I bought one online from bestbuy.com and arranged for store pickup.  Initially they gave me the WD TV instead of the WD TV Live.  The former has no ethernet port and is intended to be plugged directly into a USB harddrive.  After returning to the store to pick up the correct unit, I hooked it up and was playing my first video within 5 minutes.

The WD TV Live is not without its flaws.  There is no “manual search” mode for finding a computer or harddrive on your network, so if it isn’t discovered automatically, you’re out of luck.  In my case, it found my Iomega NAS drive right away.  My Samba desktop share over my wireless did not show up, but after tweaking some Samba configs (listed at the end of this post), I got it to come up. When held up against the gold standard that is XBMC, the WD TV Live’s interface is simplistic and navigating around it with the included midget-sized remote feels chintzy and unfulfilling.  However, once you actually start playing a video, who cares about how you got there.  The video quality in standard def and in HD is great.  It supports subtitle files as well, so I’ll be able to watch all the weird japanese movies and anime that I’ll periodically download.

One annoying thing is that before I realized that the WD TV Live is actually a viable replacement for XBMC on the first-gen Xbox I bought some new component cables for the Xbox (now that I can use it in 720p mode) and also bought an Xbox XIR kit.  The XIR kit lets you install a small circuit board in your xbox (no soldering needed) that will let you turn the Xbox on with your remote control.  I’m pretty psyched to get both of these, but literally, had I known about the WD TV Live two days earlier, I probably wouldn’t have bought either.

With my new HD setup, I decided I also needed a new stereo receiver that would support HDMI video switching.  One of my complaints with my existing Sony receiver is that although it has inputs for s-video and composite, it won’t upconvert the composite signal to go over the s-video cable.  So this was definitely my main concern when buying a new receiver.  I evenutally settled on the Denon AVR-2310CI.  This receiver will upconvert any component, composite or s-video signal to HDMI so that you only need a single cable going to your TV.  It will also overlay a GUI overtop the video signal to let you more easily manage the receiver’s settings.  It supports 7.1 surround sound, but I’m sticking with my existing 5.1 speakers for now.  How many speakers does one person really need?

Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten to try out the Denon yet.  I’m waiting on a batch of 6 HDMI cables that I ordered before hooking it up.  Maybe I’ll post a review later.

One other gadget that I couldn’t resist buying was the Logitech Harmony One remote control. I figured that with all these new gadgets, it was finally the time for me to step up and get a nifty universal remote.  For me, the kicker was that someone had posted detailed instructions on programming the Harmony One with the codes to control XBMC.  I haven’t gotten it yet, but I can’t wait for it to arrive so I can start tinkering with it.

After buying all this crap, I started to feel pretty guilty and decided that enough was enough.  I was not going to buy anything more.  So imagine my annoyance when I realized that after all this, I still won’t be able to stream HD Divx movies from my desktop Samba share.  For those who don’t know, Wireless G routers are just barely too slow to stream HD content.  I think it’s really close, like if they were 64mb/s instead of 54 then it would work (for 720p anyway).  Playback may work fine for the first half of a 720p movie, but eventually you’ll want popcorn and use the microwave or you’ll get some interference or whatever and the bit rate will drop to less than what’s needed, you’ll chew through the buffer and you’ll started getting choppy playback.  My wireless card and my router are both Wireless G, so to be able to stream HD over that connection, they will both need to be upgraded to Wireless N — maybe another $200.  At this point, I can’t justify that.  On the plus side, my living room setup is connected to my Iomega NAS drive via a wired, not wireless, connection.  So if I have an HD file on my desktop that I want to watch downstairs, I simply need to copy it over the wireless to the iomega first.   This takes a couple hours, so it’s annoying, but at least it’ll work.  Alternately, I ordered a 16gig thumb drive off ebay for $20 that I can also use to transfer the files downstairs via sneakernet.

On a final technical, nerdy note, here’s the samba configs (these go in /etc/samba/smb.conf) that I needed to change to get my share to be recognized by the WD TV Live:

[global]
; General server settings
; For netbios name, keep this short and sweet to avoid any issues
; all lower case and no special chars
netbios name = dand
; I opened it up for all hosts on my network
hosts allow = ALL
; I think setting security to “share” is key and what finally made it work
security = share
; for good measure
null passwords = true

; My original path to the shared directory was /media/disk/Azureus_Downloads,
but you want to keep the directory name at 8 chars or less, all lowercase, with
only alphabetic characters for max compatibility
path = /media/disk/download

; Again, keep the name of the share simple. No underscores and under 8 chars
[MyFiles]
path = /media/disk/download
; Pretty sure it needs to be browseable
browseable = yes
; Read-only for security
read only = yes
; I think guest mode must be enabled
guest ok = yes
; And force the user/group of your main user on the desktop
force user = dan
force group = dan

I just completed a redesign of the validanguage portion of this website.  Moving forward, new versions of Validanguage will be announced here:

http://www.drlongghost.com/validanguage/news

This blog probably won’t be updated for awhile and when it is, it won’t have anything validanguage-related.  Click on the Validanguage link above to check out the new site design.

-Dan

I just added some nice Scriptaculous effects to the Blog page. You can now drag and drop to move President Kruger’s head around. Go ahead and try it….

You could do that on the rest of the site for the past week, but the Blog page was a little harder to get it working on. To avoid screwing with the blog page layout I had to put the image all the way at the bottom of the page and then move it to the upper right corner of the screen.

Anyway, I’ve been pretty busy all around. On the music front, I’m almost finished with the first new Dr. Long Ghost song in years. An mp3 will be forthcoming. My friend Steve has been helping me to finish my basement . We got a lot of dry-walling done yesterday. Once all the drywall is finished, Steve’s gonna help me build a bar, which will be pretty sweet.

For those who don’t know, I am now engaged to my wonderful fiance Nicole. The wedding is gonna be next summer, so we have plenty of time to get ready.

And, I am hard at work on the next Validanguage release , of course. I’m gonna be adding a bunch of new features and fixing one of the more confusing parts of the API. The overall reaction to Validanguage has been pretty gratifying. A fair number of people have downloaded it thus far (thanks in no small part to the links on ajaxian and webresourcesdepot).  I now have 2 people on the Validanguage mailing list.

I’ve also been playing Jade Empire for the original Xbox.  It’s pretty cool.  In fact, I think I’m gonna get a beer and play right now.

I cannot live without copy and paste buttons on my mouse.

When I’m working on Web Development, I find myself constantly copying and pasting text and being able to do it from my mouse is a convenience I have grown to depend on. Copy and Paste are also useful in general computing terms, when moving files around in a window manager. The mouse I use at home and at work is the Intellimouse Optical.

Intellimouse Optical:
Featuring five buttons,
including a mouse wheel button

I have had this mouse for about 5 years now and it is very solid and dependable. Microsoft may not even make it anymore, but I have one for home and one for work, and judging by the past 5 years, they aren’t going to break anytime soon.

I have the left-side button mapped to paste (which I can trigger with my thumb) and the mouse wheel button mapped to paste. Since it is all too easy to accidentally trigger the mouse wheel button, I opted to map it to paste, which is non-destructive. I keep the right-side button mapped to delete, which is also extremely useful.

In Windows, the driver CD that came with the mouse makes it a snap to bind copy, paste and delete to the mouse buttons. In Linux, the task is a little more difficult, but after several hours of mucking around, I have it down to a science. Here’s how I got it working, documented for posterity:

1. Replace the code referencing your mouse in /etc/X11/xorg.conf with the following definition for the MS Intellimouse:

   Section "InputDevice"
           Identifier "Configured Mouse"
           Driver "mouse"
           Option "CorePointer"
           Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
           Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
           Option "Buttons" "7"
           Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
           Option "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 6 7"
           Option "Resolution" "100"
   EndSection

2. Install the program xvkbd, which is needed by xbindkeys
3. Install the program xbindkeys and place the following in a file named .xbindkeysrc in your home directory:

   
   "xbindkeys_show"
   control+shift + q
   /usr/X11R6/bin/xvkbd -xsendevent -text "\[Control]c""
   b:2
   /usr/X11R6/bin/xvkbd -xsendevent -text "\[Control]v""
   b:6
   /usr/X11R6/bin/xvkbd -xsendevent -text "\[Delete]""
   b:7

4. Reboot your computer or restart X windows to load the new xorg.conf file. Then run xbindkeys in the background (xbindkeys &) and you should be all set!

Happy copying and pasting!

I spent last weekend tagging my mp3s so I could set up some custom playlists in Xbox Media Center. We have 2 Xboxes in the house (one in the living room and one in the exercise room in the basement), both of which are connected wirelessly to my Windows PC in the office where I have about 80 gigs of mp3s on a shared harddrive.

XBMC has quite a number of kick-ass features, one of which is the ability to set up smart playlists using the id3 tags on your mp3s. My plan was to tag my mp3s by genre and include a “party” genre so I could setup a playlist of all party-friendly, danceable stuff.

I ran into some issues when I was trying to get all my party songs to show up in the playlist, so I posted to the XBMC Forum asking for help. Within an hour, one of the XBMC developers had replied to my post. After a little digging, he verified that I had located a bug with XBMC’s support for multiple genres in smart playlists and he was able to commit a patch to the SVN trunk and offer me a couple suggestions for a temporary workaround.

Needless to say, I was pretty damn impressed with the response I’d gotten to my forum post. Xbox Media Center is the reason why I’d never trade my Xbox for an Xbox 360 and with the project still under active development, it’s only gonna keep getting better. I’m seriously considering buying a third Xbox for the bedroom, so I can watch my downloaded Alf xvids while laying in bed.

I’m just kidding about Alf.

Or am I?

I had a bit of a scare these past 24 hours when I thought that I had fucked up my newly installed and configured Windows XP PC, which for the purposes of this blog I will refer to as Lester. Lester has a 500gig SATA harddrive, as well as an older 250 gig drive, which was a holdover from my prior computer. As a result, the smaller, secondary harddrive had 3 partitions on it: an XP system partition, an Ubuntu partition and an NTFS partition with a buttload of mp3s on it.

Last night, I decided to delete the 3 separate partitions on my secondary drive and reformat the whole thing as a single NTFS partition for mp3s. I used Partition Magic and some other partition program I had snagged off BitTorrent. I was very cautious while formatting and succeeded in deleting the partitions and wiping the drive. However, when I rebooted, Lester would not start up and displayed an ominous message about no bootable media being found.

This was pretty damn confusing, since I knew that I had formatted the correct drive and was pretty sure that all my windows files were still present on the main drive. What the fuck had happened? Was it a virus?

Well, to make a long story short, I eventually was able to restore the MBR (Master Boot Record) and boot.ini on the main drive and get it to boot into Windows again (although I ended up installing Windows on the mp3 drive just so I’d have something to boot into so I could muck around with the main drive). After I had fixed Lester, I realized what had happened. When I had originally installed XP, for some bizarre reason, the boot.ini file for XP was installed, not on the hard drive containing my Windows system, but on the hard drive containing my mp3s and the other 2 unused partitions. Thus, when I wiped this drive, it blew out my boot.ini file and Lester was dead in the water.

Even odder, when I installed the temporary version of XP on the newly wiped mp3 drive to give myself access to the files on the main drive, it put the new boot.ini file on the main drive! So, at that point, boot.ini was where I wanted it and I only had to go in and edit it to tell it to load the windows install on drive 0 instead of drive 1.

In case anyone ever has a similar issue, here are the instructions I finally found on editing the MBR and boot.ini:

1. You can try restoring the MBR in MSDOS with either the FIXMBR command or with fdisk \mbr. In my case, this didn’twork, since I was still missing boot.ini.
2. I was able to edit the new boot.ini file with the following commands, run from the commandline (I don’t think boot.ini is visible within Windows Explorer, even with Show Hidden Files enabled):
   1. attrib -H -S -A -R boot.ini — This sets the boot.ini file as editable
   2. notepad boot.ini — Pops it open in Notepad so you can edit it.
   3. attrib +H +S +A +R boot.ini — Restores boot.ini as a hidden, system file, after you have made your edits and saved.
3. Reboot and all is well. You can add multiple entries in boot.ini under the [operating systems] section. For me, the operative thing to change was the rdisk option. You’d think the disk option would control which harddrive is being described, but actually the physical drive is referenced by the rdisk option. Thus, I had to change:
   multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\Windows
   to
   multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows

I must confess that despite the stress of thinking I had lost all my files, it was pretty damn gratifying to actually fix this myself by getting down and dirty with the MBR. Nevermind that I wouldn’t have ever had this problem if I hadn’t fucked up in the first place…

Nicole and I had a wonderful walk this afternoon that took us down our street to the CVS and then to the local Genuardi’s, via the cemetery behind our house. During the walk, it occurred to me that although we had replaced our smoke detector batteries the prior Daylight Savings Day, our Zombie Evacuation Plan had not been updated since we had moved into our new house, almost a year earlier.

As those of you who live near cemeteries know, a good Zombie Evacuation Plan can mean the difference between life and death — saving one from an awful brain-eating fate. Unlike some of our wealthier neighbors, we are unable to afford the high premiums charged for zombie insurance in a residential zone within a half mile of a cemetery. Thus, in the event of an outbreak, our house will be a total loss and we will be entirely on our own to make it to the nearest Army evacuation point — Abington Hospital, or City Hall in Philly, in the event that the hospital is overrun.

Since our evacuation plan is of paramount importance, I welcome your criticism and suggestions. It is very much a work in progress which I strive to continually improve.

1. Weaponry. Although Nicole has made it clear that the cats should be our primary concern, I feel that if we cannot defend ourselves, then we will be of no help to the cats. Also, prior attacks have shown that domestic pets are generally left unmolested by zombies, particularly when human prey is readily available. Thus, our first action will be to secure the knives from the kitchen. Time permitting, we will also retrieve the gasoline from the shed and the propane tank from the deck, which can be used as a makeshift bomb.
2. Blank and Nudge. Next, we will get the cats in their carriers.
3. Shelter. If we’re able, we will board up the windows and doors with the extra wood from the shed and seal up the basement door to limit the amount of space we will need to defend. If the house itself is breached, we will retreat to the upper floor. If the upper floor is then breached, we can always exit the window in the office, clamber down the roof and onto the deck, and from there jump down to the backyard.
4. Evacuation. As soon as there is an appreciable lull in the fighting, we will evacuate, preferably by car, down Susquehanna toward the hospital. Hopefully, we can make it to the hospital and be evacuated via helicopter. If the hospital is no longer safe, we will need to fight our way down 611 all the way to City Hall.

I only hope that if we ever have cause to put our evacuation plan into effect that we are able to escape with our lives. A house and possessions can always be replaced, but a brain can never be un-eaten.

It’s been a rough month for my cats. Blank broke a couple of his toes last month and then this month, we had to have my cat Xena put to sleep. Nicole had noticed that she had stopped eating and kept herself hidden away for most of the day. An X-Ray and blood tests showed only an increased white blood cell count, but a later ultrasound showed fairly extensive cancer in Xena’s kidneys, liver, intestines and lymph nodes.

I received the diagnosis on a Friday and the following Thursday, we had to let her go. I am thankful that Xena was not in any pain and that we had the better part of a week to say our goodbyes.

Xena was my first cat and will always be the best there ever was. When I think of all the things I will miss about her, it breaks my heart. She used to shed so much that I joked I could take all the hair which came off of her and in a matter of weeks, I’d have enough to make another cat. Xena was a sloppy eater and the kitchen floor was constantly covered in food, thanks to her. It was pretty funny to watch her eat — with half the food falling out of her mouth and onto the floor as she chewed.

Xena was one of my best friends and she will not soon be forgotten. Rest in peace, Princess…

I added a Javascript regex tester to my homepage. It’s pretty bare bones right now, but I eventually want it to select the text it matches inside the textarea, instead of just printing the match below. I used scriptaculous tabs for the tabs at the bottom, which seemed to work out well.

I have some ideas for additional form widgets I’d like to add to my homepage. I think a timestamp converter could be helpful.

Well, here’s my first blog post and it’s about my cat Blank’s paw. Dumb-ass that my cat is, he somehow managed to break 2 fingers on his paw while playing in the basement. I was outside doing some work in the shed and I hear a crash. I come inside and this picnic table/card table that Nicole and I have is overturned. No cats were around.

Later, I noticed Blank was limping. Long story short, we took him to the vet and discovered he’d broken 2 toes on his paw. Check out the x-rays:

That’s the full x-ray without any magnification. And here’s the close-up on his right paw:

Blank cost us $300 on the initial visit to the vet, for xrays and a cast. *Sigh* If only he weren’t suck a klutze… I got some measure of satisfaction when we took him back later and the doctor gave him a pink cast. Here’s 2 photos of him — in the original green cast and in the new pink cast which he pulled off after 1 day. He’s so insecure…

Anyway, Blank’s doing well and I think he should be back to jumping on picnic tables in another couple weeks.