That’s right boys and girls. We’ve got video features coming so we thought “hey, let’s create a youtube channel!” And we did.
This first video is just a test. BUT WHAT AN ADORABLE TEST!!! JUST LOOK AT THOSE BIG BLUE EYES!!!!
[Dan out.]
Yep. Now that I can control my Samsung TV with my Nexus S, I can confirm that we are totally living in the future now.
All you need (If you have an android phone that is, so suck it iPhone people) is the Samsung Remote app. And that’s pretty much it. It’s like I spent my entire life up to now not buying a TV just so that I could finally buy a TV that I could control from my phone. And it all works via my LAN through my wireless router.
I won’t bore you with the features. You know what a regular TV remote looks like, right? Well it’s that. On a phone.
Technology!
But I found a fix for it.
I just got back from New York City weighing 20 pounds more (huge portions!), and I figured that I needed a new lighter phone. That Sony Ericsson of mine just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. So I got an Android (2.3.4) Samsung Nexus S. Which is bigger and heavier. But fuck it. It has WiFi (why five!).
I like the phone a lot but seeing as the Nexus S is my first smart phone, I’m playing technological catchup once again. I know, I’m like 4 years late, so just shut up about it already.
After the initial setup, I installed a few basic apps which have proved helpful:
OI File Manager: This lets you browse the entire file system. Makes it easy to manage and create folders wherever you want to. Pretty much a must have. Just don’t delete /etc.
Droid Comic Viewer (aka ACV, aka Android Comic Viewer): What else do you need to know? Read all your favorite comics with cbr and cbz extensions. Maybe more. Haven’t checked.
ConnectBot: If you need to do ssh and command line crap, ConnectBot is pretty good for all that. Reboot servers remotely at will. For no good reason. Do it for the fuck of it because you can. Fuck it.
Now about the Wifi. Only after receiving the phone did I start to read and learn about all kinds of wifi issues (with the Nexus S and generally a lot of Android phones. You might see messages/errors like, “not in range” or “disabled, secured with wep“. You should probably be using WPA. Long story short, FXR Wifi fixer fixed the problem with my wifi connection dropping and basically not staying connected for more than 3 seconds. Or maybe I had the wrong password.
One issue that is not resolved is that many Android phones cannot connect to a hidden wireless network. So I had to turn on visibility on my router in order to connect from my Nexus S to the wireless network and obtain an ip address. Also, wireless strength is ok at best, but usable.
That’s it. Here’s a picture of a Nexus S with porn on it. That is if multicolored lines get you off. Hey, to each their own, you sick perv.
Well it took a day, but I fixed the monitor problems on Ubuntu 11.04!
After experiencing THE most unstable Ubuntu upgrade yet, my external display resolution was basically a sea of Technicolor vomit. The display on my Dell 1564 i3 was fine, but attaching an external VGA monitor resulted in an unusable display of flickering madness. I also figured out why they called the distro Natty Narwhal: because it acts like a beached whale with a spike in its brain! Fucking Natty.
Anyway, this is how I fixed the garbled external display problem:
1) The Easy Way
a – Open System > Administration > System Testing
b – After entering your admin password, click next. You’ll have a list of many items to test.
c – Chose Monitor Tests and Video Tests
Run the tests with your external monitor detached.
When the tests are complete, run them again with the external monitor attached. You may have to position your mouse on the ‘Test” button before you attach the monitor, since the display resolution will still be garbled once the monitor is attached. When you’re ready, click “Test”. When the tests complete, you should have your external display back. If all looks good, you’ll just have to configure your display settings. And that’s it!
2) The Hard Way
a – Open a terminal and type xrandr
b – You’ll see something similar to this:
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1680 x 1050, maximum 8192 x 8192
LVDS1 connected 640×480+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm
1366×768 59.6 +
1360×768 59.8 60.0
1024×768 60.0
800×600 60.3 56.2
640×480 59.9*
VGA1 connected 1680×1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 434mm x 270mm
1680×1050 59.9*+ 60.0
1280×1024 75.0 60.0
1440×900 75.0 59.9
1280×960 60.0
1152×864 75.0
1024×768 75.1 60.0
832×624 74.6
800×600 75.0 60.3 56.2
640×480 75.0 60.0
720×400 70.1
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
Choose which display you want to be your primary and form your command like so: xrandr –output VGA1 –primary
Honestly, this isn’t the best method if you want to fix it visually. Running the Monitor Tests from the System Testing menu uses xrandr anyway and should get your second external monitor up and running. Hopefully things will run better in 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot which will be out in October 2011.
Next up: How to Uninstal Unity
I picked up a 40″ Samsung 550 Series LCD the other day. Initially, my plan was to stream digital video from USB storage through a media streamer like Apple TV, Boxee, or the Seagate Free agent GoFlex. Turns out this TV is pretty well equipped to just play video streamed from my Debian server, so it pretty much cuts out the middle man.
Samsung has an application called Allshare which you can install on Windows. Mediatomb is an alternative to Allshare if you’re running Linux.
It depends what you want, so if you want a real media center like Boxee or XBMC, use your PS3 or Xbox or something like that. I didn’t feel like buying yet another box/appliance so I installed Mediatomb on my Debian machine and was watching my shows in about an hour. It’s programmed in C++ and has a simple xml control file. It’s really easy to install, so here’s how.
Step1: Install Mediatomb:
sudo apt-get install mediatomb
Step 2: Configure Mediatomb:
Add the following to the server section of config.xml. The following DLNA code is the key:
<custom-http-headers>
<add header=”transferMode.dlna.org: Streaming” />
<add header=”contentFeatures.dlna.org: DLNA.ORG_OP=01;DLNA.ORG_CI=0;DLNA.ORG_FLAGS=01700000000000000000000000000000″ />
</custom-http-headers>
You’ll probably also want to configure your mime types like this in import/mappings/extension-mimetype
<map from=”avi” to=”video/x-msvideo”/>
<map from=”ts” to=”video/mpeg”/>
<map from=”divx” to=”video/mpeg”/>
<map from=”mp4″ to=”video/MP4V-ES”/>
<map from=”mkv” to=”video/x-msvideo”/>
Lastly, under section <server> change the following to ‘yes’:
<protocolInfo extend="yes"/>
And that’s pretty much it. You’ll probably want to turn on the GUI initially and you can do that in /etc/mediatomb/config.xml under section <server>:
<ui enabled=”yes”
Now you can configure which folders you’ll want to share to your Samsung 550 series LCD TV by going to the following address. If you have usernames set to ‘on’, the default username/password is mediatomb/mediatomb.
http://localhost:49152/
Enjoy. I’ll be back with some cool mediatomb hacks.
Yuri Gagarin, man! Has it been 50 years already since he orbited the earth in his Vostok spacecraft cannonball? Yes it has.
And speaking of sausages, just before Yuri Gagarin blasted off on his historic flight he had this conversation with the chief rocket designer:
“There in the flap you have dinner, supper and breakfast,” he said.
“Got it,” said Gagarin.
“You’ve got sausage, candy and jam to go with the tea,” Korolyov said. “Sixty-three pieces – you’ll get fat! When you get back today, eat everything right away.”
Gagarin replied: ‘The main thing is that there is sausage – to go with the moonshine.”
See, even then it was all about sausages. You just don’t get more hardcore than those 1960′s Soviet era space missions. Except maybe for 1960′s Soviet era open casket funerals for cosmonauts who didn’t make it back alive, namely Vladimir Komorov. But I digress.
So I guess this can be used as a 50th anniversary birthday tribute for Yuri’s earth orbit, even though it’s mostly about PJ Harvey’s infatuation with the moon.
You’re probably wondering: why transfer your domain from Godaddy when they’re the biggest and still relatively cheapest? One good reason is their convoluted and confusing interface. Once you’ve got your domain, you don’t have to look at their site very often, but every time I do, it feels like such a chore. Wading through options upon options along with all of the extra services they’re constantly trying to sell you. It always feels like they want you to click on something by mistake just so they can make a few extra bucks off of you.
So I transferred one of our domains to Namecheap.com, which was not hard to do, but not intuitive. Godaddy’s cluttered website doesn’t make it very easy for you.
Here’s how to transfer your domain.
Preliminaries
Before you initiate the transfer, prepare your domain on the Godaddy side:
1. Make sure you do this at LEAST 2 weeks before your domain is set to expire.
2. If your domain is set to Private with Godaddy, change it to Public.
3. If your domain is Locked, Unlock it.
If you don’t do this, Godaddy will deny the transfer.
Transferring Your Domain
1. Head on over to Namecheap and initiate the Transfer Request and follow the instructions. Don’t worry if you don’t have an account with them. You’ll be asked to create an account during the process.
2. Namecheap will ask you for your EPP (Extensible Provisioning Protocol). You need to log into your Godaddy account to get it.
a. In your Godaddy account, click on Domain Management and look for Authorization Code. Then click on Send By Email. This will send the code to the technical contact registered for your site.
b. Once you’ve received your Authorization code (it took a couple of minutes), you can enter it in at Namecheap under EPP.
3. After you submit the EPP/ Authorization code to Namecheap, you should get an email asking you to click a link to confirm the transfer. It took about an hour before I got that email.
a. You should then be getting an email from Godaddy after you confirm the transfer to Namecheap.
And that should be it!
Also, I don’t know if this is a coincidence or not, but the day after I went through this process, Godaddy totally redesigned their web site, and it’s worse than ever. It’s extra confusing and not only have the previous options been moved around, the entire site looks like a clown party, or a gaudy jacket. Sounds like this is the right time to bail from Godaddy. Hopefully, Namecheap maintains their interface the way it is.
Fido. They called me today to see if I was interested in spending my well earned Fido Dollars (240$) on one of their overstocked crappy phones.
“You have enough Fido Dollars to get yourself one our Nokia handsets!”
A Crappy Nokia 2720
“But I have a phone.”
“You can use it as a spare or hold onto it for when you replace your current phone!”
“Yeah, but it’ll be outdated by then!”
“Did I mention that this phone has FM radio?”
“…” Wow.”Well no thanks.”
“Well have a nice day.”
“Oh wait, oh hey! Does Fido have any Android phones?”
“Uh…what’s that?”
“Android. You know. Google’s OS?”
“Haven’t heard of it.”
“Ok, well, good luck pushing those Nokia 2720′s”
So yeah Fido, stop trying to offload your shitty phones on me! I know you have a LOT of them due to people not buying them the first time around. Note that in Canada we regularly get raped by our cellular companies. Fido Solutions is no different, but is particularly nasty. Their money-grab 25$ “hardware upgrade administration fee” is complete bullshit and makes upgrading your phone for “free” using Fido Dollars completely moot. I don’t know what other companies are doing, but the audacity of the 25 dollar hardware upgrade fee is nothing short of stealing. A class action suit should be filed because they are clearly taking advantage of their clients. I’m taking my money elsewhere. Fuck you, Fido.
