The Lance J. Technoweb

802.11b WIFI is DEAD

2011-08-31T18:19:00.004-04:00

802.11b is now utterly obsolete and must now be disabled by all access points, routers, and clients.

802.11b first emerged in 1999 - a hot new standard that provided inexpensive networking over the air. But by January 2003, a newer, even faster standard became commonplace - 802.11g. And since then, an even faster and more efficient standard - 802.11n has been on the scene.

802.11b is inefficient, and it slows down 802.11g and 802.11n networking due to protocol limitations. And therefore, I proclaim that 802.11b must be immediately banned from the world. Doing so will speed access for everyone.

So log into your access points and disable the mixed modes that support 802.11b. Throw out your old 802.11b-only interface cards and routers. You, and 99.99% of the rest of the world will see much better performance, and you'll be convincing the 0.01% of the world - those with 802.11b clients - to upgrade.

Upgrades are very inexpensive: 802.11n USB client interfaces are available for under $15, and 802.11n routers can be had for less than $25. At this point, there is simply no reason to have 802.11b around.

Fixing Wifi Problems: MacBook wireless card replacement

2011-01-16T12:45:00.004-05:00

For years my cousin was suffering with the WIFI of his 2008-vintage MacBook. His MacBook would drop its WIFI connection every few hours (or minutes), and he'd have to manually stop and start the WIFI on his MacBook to fix it. The bad behavior made web surfing, Netflix, and anything else on-line quite unpleasant.

The Bad WIFI card, as pulled from my cousin's MacBook.

I tried everything to try to fix the problem. I replaced his router, tweaked OS settings, and even re-installed the OS. The on-line forums weren't particularly helpful - a lot of people had a lot of ideas how to fix it with software, but ultimately none of their suggestions worked.

So I concluded that the problem was with the MacBook's WIFI card.

Some of you might think that the MacBook has its WIFI chip soldered onto the MacBook's main board, but that's not the case - the classic MacBook uses a fairly common WIFI card. Getting access to that card isn't trivial, but if you're able to drive a dozen or so screws with care, it can be done.

I bought the replacement WIFI card on eBay. It was a standard Broadcom Mini PCI express 802.11a/b/g/n card... and it was under $20.

I took the MacBook apart, based on the an on-line guide, removed the old WIFI card and put in the new one. I reassembled the MacBook.

We booted the MacBook, and everything came up fine. The new WIFI operates perfectly, and there were zero software changes that had to take place. No special drivers required, and performance and reliability has been better than ever. Interestingly, going into "About This Mac" feature of the Finder shows that the WIFI card type was a "Third Party" card instead of an "Airport Extreme".

If your MacBook's WIFI is persistently problematic, I suggest you think about having your WIFI card replaced.

Dell X200 Keyboard Replacement

2010-12-07T15:26:00.002-05:00

Well, the old Dell X200's keyboard gave up the ghost. Not entirely, but the good old backspace key stopped working, and it's really hard to use a keyboard without a backspace key.

Happily, it was easy to fix, as follows:

Buy a replacement keyboard (I bought my "like new" replacement keyboard through eBay for about $20)
Remove the battery
Unscrew the six screws from the bottom of the Dell marked with a (K)
Lever out the old keyboard from the bottom left. There is a little latch there.
Before fully removing the keyboard, un-snap the ZIF ribbon connector
Remove the keyboard completely
Slide the new keyboard into place
Push the keyboard cable into the ZIF connector; lock the ZIF connector
Screw the keyboard back in place with the six screws
Reinstall the battery

The end result? My 8 year old Dell X200 laptop is still running strong! It'd be awesome to get 3 more years out of it. Its only real limitation is it's limited RAM.

MacBook Keyboard & Trackpad Replacement Fix

2010-11-05T07:01:00.001-04:00

My MacBook keyboard and trackpad has worn out to the point where it was hard to use. The trackpad and its button was behaving poorly, and the keys were less than perfect. Furthermore, the "palm rest" was stained and developed a crack.

Figure 1: The Yukky old keyboard/trackpad. Cracked, stained, and worn out.

But excitingly, there is a simple fix! I've replaced the keyboard and trackpad with new ones - and it was easy to do and inexpensive! It was the best thing I've done to my MacBook ever. This article covers what I did.

Figure 2: My clean new keyboard & trackpad! Awesome!

Background: The MacBook Top Case design

The MacBook keyboard and trackpad are integrated into a single part called the "MacBook Top Case". Due to the MacBook's design, you just can't replace the keyboard or the trackpad - you have to replace the entire "Top Case".

That sounds bad, but it really isn't, because the "Top Case" part is relatively inexpensive and readily available.

MacBook Top Case Variations

There are a few different Top Case variations. First, there is the choice of "Black" or "White". Either will do, but some people might have a cosmetic reasons for choosing black versus white. White top cases are generally less expensive, and I have a white MacBook, so I decided to go with white.

The other variation is the keyboard layout. My 2008-vintage MacBook had the "Volume Up" key on F12. Other vintages have the Volume Up on F5. And, of course, there are international keyboards.

Given price and availability, I decided to replace my "F12" MacBook keyboard with an "F5" version. Yes, some of the function keys have moved on me, but the different keyboard works 100% perfectly. (F5 is now my Volume-Up button, and I gained a numlock button on F6 to boot).

My procedure for installing a new MacBook Trackpad

I bought a MacBook Top Case. I bought the one through Amazon, here: Apple MacBook Top Case
Inspect the new purchase. Does it look like the right part? Be careful! The back is stamped aluminum and can be sharp!
Following these instructions to the point of fully removing the top case.
Compare the backside of both the old and new top case. Make sure the aluminum flanges on the new case are all straight. If they aren't, you'll have a hard time getting the new case to fit. (See Figure 3, below)
Plug the keyboard cable into its socket on the main board.
Slowly and carefully put the new top case into place. Don't force anything; You can get it all back perfectly if you are patient and careful. All the little flanges have a home; make sure they're going into them. Forcing things will just bend the flanges.
Reverse the disassembly instructions. All those little screws fit into or through the flanges and sockets and posts in the top case. Don't force anything and do not over-tighten any screws! When you're done, it should look beautiful and perfect! Again, take your time!

Figure 3: These little holed sheet metal flanges should be straight! There are nine of them: six threaded along the perimeter, three unthreaded in the center.

FIgure 4: The backside of the top case.

When I was all done, my MacBook looked and worked like new! I can no longer justify buying a MacBook Air, but I know I can get several more years out of this lovely MacBook!

Good luck!

Great gifts for the iPhone 4

2010-10-01T13:13:00.010-04:00

You've made a great decision to buy an iPhone 4. It has become the love of your life, and now you want to buy it gifts. What should you buy? Here are the things that I bought - and love.

1. Grantwood FM transmitter with integrated car charger.

Awesome iPhone 4 compatible Grantwood FM Transmitter

If you have a car, this is one of the best gifts you can buy for your iPhone 4: The awesome iPhone 4 compatible Grantwood FM transmitter that has a built-in car charger. So you can listen to Pandora and listen to GPS directions all through your car's FM stereo... and keep it charged while you're at it. And it works exclusively through the dock connector, so there is no fooling around with extra cables or fiddling with the volume control. It works great for me, and is a solid bargain. I know - I bought one and I love it. I use it almost every time I drive.

2. Spare Charger and cable.

Spare iPhone Charger

Spare aftermarket chargers are standards-based and inexpensive. And so I keep a spare charger at work so I can always plug in. And I keep one in my travel bag. And I bought a few spare iPhone USB cables too... for computer syncing, or in case I lose or damage one.

3. Top-Notch Bluetooth headset: The BlueAnt T.

I bought a BlueAnt T1 about two days after it was released. I loved (and lost) my BlueAnt Z9i; the T1 is even MORE awesome. Not only is the T1 great for talking on the phone, you can also pump music or podcasts through it.

The BlueAnt T1 is my favorite BlueTooth headset

And the noise cancellation is perfect for me ... I know. I own a convertible car. The only problem with these bluetooth headsets is that they're way too easy to misplace. I wish they had a homing beacon on them.

4. A case, of course, but for the style.

An inexpensive iPhone 4 case can be a lot of fun.

Everyone already owns an iPhone 4 case, right? They can provide excellent iPhone protection. Well, friends, one case isn't enough, because they're cheap enough that you can also buy them for style alone!

iPhone 4 cases are so cheap at Amazon, there isn't really a reason not to buy several. They can show others who you are - from the whimsical to the political, or even the bizarre. And they are so inexpensive that you can buy two (or maybe even five) at the same price as one at a retail store.

Anything else?
And that's my list! Any other ideas? Feel free to comment!

Fix a bad MacBook trackpad

2010-09-30T11:20:00.007-04:00

The Problem: A Poorly-Behaving Trackpad Button

MacBook trackpads buttons are going bad. Happily, there is a quick and technically-simple fix that may work for many MacBook owners with a misbehaving trackpad.

A few months ago I started to notice that my trackpad was operating in a funky manner. The trackpad button had lost its solid click and turned mushy. As I typed the trackpad button would mistakenly register clicks, and the cursor would jump all over the place; The cursor would jump around and my words would end up jumbled. Or a button press wouldn't register at all, and I'd end up trying to smash down of the button with no response. It was the worst experience I’ve ever had with a keyboard and mouse.

I tried every technique I could find on the web to try to fix my bad trackpad button – from sliding paper through the gap around button, to MacBook disassembly and vacuuming everything. Nothing made it better. My MacBook was fairly unusable, and getting worse.

After endless frustration, I prematurely started shopping for a replacement trackpad. If you need a new trackpad (or keyboard, for that matter), you need a new “MacBook top case” which includes both the trackpad and the keyboard. Happily, a top case can be purchased through Amazon for less than $100. But that wasn't actually necessary in the end! Read on...

Given that my Macbook was a bit useless, I decided to get an early start in disassembly. One of the first steps of disassembling a MacBook is to remove the battery. And almost immediately I discovered the real fix for the mushy MacBook trackpad button. Because immediately after I removed the battery, I noticed that the button’s action was much more normal.

I put the battery on a very flat surface and noticed that there was a slight but definite bulge in the top and bottom surfaces of the battery. The battery would slightly rock on a flat surface - proof of a bulge.

The Culprit: a very-slightly swollen battery pack

I decided to fire up the MacBook without the battery (careful with that MagSafe!)– and what do you know, all my mouse button issues were gone. The “solid click” returned and the bizarre mushy mouse behavior disappeared. In fact, I wrote most of this posting on my batteryless MacBook. And I didn’t have ONE weird trackpad-related behavior.

Then I compared my battery to a friend's MacBook battery. Her battery was as flat as could be. I stuck it in my MacBook. My trackpad button was resolved.

My permanent solution was to simply buy a replacement MacBook battery. And since then my trackpad has been perfect.

Mac Mini is a bargain.

2010-03-05T10:53:00.004-05:00

Recently, I was asked by a good friend to help her buy a new Windows Desktop PC.

I recommended that she buy a PC with something other then a near-obsolete processor - meaning a machine with an Intel Core2Duo or better, as I believe that a computer with a decent processor will have a good chance of not becoming obsolete as soon. Atom, Pentium, and Celeron are too close to being obsolete.

And I also recommended that she get a machine with Windows 7 instead of the now-deprecated Windows Vista.

And after I described what makes a decent desktop PC, I started to shop for one. And that's when I discovered that the Mac Mini is a bargain.

A bargain mid-ranged desktop computer

I went to the popular brand web sites: Dell, Compaq, HP, Gateway, ACER, etc. And I found that a machine of this class generally starts around $500+. And that for $500, you don't get wireless, bluetooth, or sometimes even speakers. WTF???

In contrast, the base model $599 Mac Mini is very well specified - it has a great processor and video card. It has Wifi, Bluetooth, TOSLink, DVI and DisplayPort. And it is compact, quiet and energy efficient, making it a great desktop machine.

My friend was still bent on getting a Windows PC, so I didn't fight her. But in short, the Mac Mini is simply less expensive to buy and own than a decent Windows PC.

Trendnet TEW-652BRP and DD-WRT Success!

2010-02-28T13:27:00.009-05:00

I recently visited my dad while on a business trip when I coincidentally discovered that DD-WRT is now available for his TEW-652. The TEW-652BRP has been a great router for my father, but it isn't what I'd call "feature rich". An upgrade to DD-WRT is a big bonus.

I live 2500 miles away from my non-technical father, and so a well-specified router that helps me manage his network remotely is important to both of us.

This article will explain what I did to finally get DD-WRT working on my TEW-652BRP v1.0R.

About the TEW-652brp

It's a nice looking little black 802.11n, 2.5 GHz router. It was amazingly inexpensive (around $30), and is available through Amazon. Mine is a version 1.0R, you'll likely want the same version. Out of the box, it works quite well - it has been pretty stable, and I was fairly happy with the stock firmware. But it was short on features - I like having VPN, SSH, and flexible DHCP services on the home networks I support. The stock firmware on the TEW-652BRP wasn't so good at that stuff.

An upgrade to DD-WRT gives me all these advanced features and much more. According to the label on the back of my TEW-652BRP, I have hardware version V1.0R.

Plan A: An easy upgrade to DD-WRT.

The on-line literature suggested that I might be able to simply install the DD-WRT firmware using the Trendnet's built-in firmware utility.

I downloaded the "factory to DD-WRT" .bin file for the TEW-652BRP, found here. Then I logged into the router via http://192.168.10.1/ and navigated to the router's firmware update page. From there, I tried to upgrade the device using the "factory to DD-WRT" .bin file.

The firmware upgrade failed - the Trendnet firmware reported an error. Happily, no destructive action was taken by the firmware updater - the router was not bricked.

I initially believed that the upgrade utility didn't like the signature of the firmware file found on the DD-WRT website.

Plan B - Recovery Mode firmware utility.

So went to "Plan B": I'd upgrade the router's firmware using the recovery mode.

I set a static address of 192.168.0.2 on my PC. Then I powered up the router while holding down the reset button. I held the reset button down until the "status" LED started to blink.

Then I plugged into Ethernet and went to http://192.168.0.1/ with Firefox. Tada! A firmware update page came up.

Trendnet Firmware Recovery Page

I then attempted to upload the DD-WRT .bin file. Crap, same thing - invalid firmware file. Even the recovery mode wasn't willing to install a renegade firmware file.

Plan C - The solution

After two failures taking several hours, I decided to get a little more serious. I went to the Trendnet web site and downloaded their latest firmware, seen here. Then I got out the trusty hex editor and looked at the end of the file. The signature at the end was

AP81-AR9130-RT-080609-05
... aka ...
41 50 38 31 2D 41 52 39 31 33 30 2D 52 54 2D 30 38 30 36 30 39 2D 30 35

I then looked at the DD-WRT firmware's signature at the end of its .bin file, and, sadly, it was identical. So it didn't seem like my installation problem was a simple "file signature" issue, but maybe a checksum or some other algorithmic issue within the Trendnet firmware.

So I decided to try to run around the apparent checksum issue by avoiding the Trendnet software altogether. Which worked.

The story I read on the web was that the D-Link 615 rev. C is the same hardware device as the '652, but with different (and better) firmware. I decided to try to install the D-Link firmware onto the router, and then install the DD-WRT firmware onto the "D-Linkified" Trendnet.

The short story is that this strategy worked like a charm. But it did require some hex editing. Here are the details.

(1) Download the D-Link 615 rev C firmware. I used an old version, Version 3.00.

(2) Use a hex editor to replace the D-Link signature string at the very end of the .bin file.

AP81-AR9130-RT-070614-02
(aka: 41 50 38 31 2D 41 52 39 31 33 30 2D 52 54 2D 30 37 30 36 31 34 2D 30 32)

... became ...

AP81-AR9130-RT-080609-05
(aka: 41 50 38 31 2D 41 52 39 31 33 30 2D 52 54 2D 30 38 30 36 30 39 2D 30 35)

(3) Using Trendnet's stock firmware, install the newly modified "DLink" .bin file.

(4) Wait patiently for the upgrade to complete

(5) Tada! The D-Link firmware login page appears! Yay!

From there, I performed a similar procedure with the DLink firmware update page:

(1) Download the DD-WRT firmware from the FTP site. I used the "factory to dd-wrt" firmware for the Trendnet, found here.

(2) Use a hex editor to replace the Trendnet signature string at the end of the .bin file with a signature that the D-Link firmware accepts. I changed the signiture as follows:

AP81-AR9130-RT-080609-05
(aka: 41 50 38 31 2D 41 52 39 31 33 30 2D 52 54 2D 30 38 30 36 30 39 2D 30 35)

... became ...

AP81-AR9130-RT-070614-02
(aka: 41 50 38 31 2D 41 52 39 31 33 30 2D 52 54 2D 30 37 30 36 31 34 2D 30 32)

(3) Log into the D-Link router (username admin, password admin).

(4) Using the router's D-Link firmware, I installed the modified DD-WRT .bin file.

(5) Wait patiently

(6) Tada! DD-WRT firmware page appears!

From this point on, I was able to use DD-WRT firmware. So far I've only fooled around with DD-WRT on the Trendnet for a week or so, but so far so good.

Living Next to a Freeway

2010-02-12T14:03:00.006-05:00

I've been living next to the interstate highway for the past couple years. And I mean right next to it. My house is less than 100 feet away from a major six lane freeway. I can see vehicles pass by from my living room.

Let me tell you what that's like to live next to the freeway, and what to look for if your considering moving near a major traffic artery. First of all, a little background.

Home Construction

The home I live in was designed and built in 2000 with the freeway in mind - the freeway was planned for in the 1950's and built in the early 1960s.

Therefore, most of the windows in my house face away from the highway, and the bedrooms are the rooms furthest away from the road. The side of the house closest to the road consists of bathrooms and a stairwell. These internal rooms help capture some of the noise that would otherwise enter the house.

Given the building's urban setting, there is little lawn, but there is a good sized outdoor patio.

Road Geography and Use

The road is a 6 lane stretch of a major Interstate freeway. There is a ravine nearby, and so therefore there is a large overpass structure 100 feet behind my house. This stretch of freeway is on a significant grade that occurs before some sharper 50 mph curves and a heavy traffic bottleneck.

The nearest off-ramp is roughly one half mile away.

The speed limit behind my house is 55 mph. Traffic can build up during rush hours of 7-10AM and 3-6 PM, but is usually free-flowing outside of rush hour.

There is no sound barrier along this stretch of freeway.

Living next to the Freeway

Here's what I've discovered about living so close to the freeway.

Indoors, the noise isn't bad
I can sometimes hear vehicles going by if I listen for them, but soon after moving in I stopped actively hearing them. If I listen now, I can hear the occasional vehicle go by, but it isn't loud or annoying.

I do keep an air purifier in my bedroom, which generates some white noise. I think this helps me ignore any sounds as I sleep.

Keeping the windows closed
I do find that I really do have to keep the windows that face the road closed to keep the noise out. This isn't so bad in the winter, but in the summer it is less than ideal. Air conditioning is a good idea.

The patio isn't used that much
Although I have a nice patio, I rarely use it. The roadway noises outdoors simply make having a outdoor summertime conversation less fun.

Large trucks in disrepair suck.
This is where stronger penalties for violating the law could come in handy. Since the roadway is on a hill before some curves, some truckers that ignore the clear signage find themselves needing to apply their engine brakes. Trucks with engine brakes in disrepair make the entire house shake. This can wake me.

Roadway construction can be painful.
Major construction on the roadway takes place at night and on the weekends in order to minimize traffic congestion. However, that means that me and my neighbors suffer though night work, as workers do things like grind off layers of old pavement. This can be annoying at best.

Overpass is not so good.
Living near an substantial overpass isn't so great, as heavy vehicles can "bounce" over the structure's expansion joints, leading to some excessive noise and building shaking.

Smell
I never smell anything bad from the freeway. Ever. And I feel I have a giant, super-sensitive nose.

A conclusion: What to look for.
I find it definitely reasonable to live very close to a major freeway. I think that large highway structures, a roadway with a grade, or an area near merging lanes should be avoided if possible, as they may result in more noise and more shaking than a flat road.

I would do the following if looking for a place near the freeway:

Understand the roadway. Drive on the freeway multiple times. Make sure the road is in good condition. A smooth, well-maintained road with smooth traffic patterns may be less noisy. Make sure the area isn't accident prone - more accidents could result in more noise from heavy braking.
Understand if there are any construction plans for that stretch of road. New roadway structures or road grinding can impact noise and vibrations.
Consider white noise generators to block out highway noises.
Beware that vibrations from the highway may be more of a problem than the noise.

Feel free to ask me any questions in the Comments section.

Repaired my speakers instead of buying new ones

2010-02-10T18:41:00.007-05:00

The bad news - a big hole in my woofer

I've had this nice pair of Advent two-way speakers for years. They sound great, they're compact, and the look great.

But they recently broke.

I was listening to some music (at low volume!) the other day, and suddenly a painfully annoying buzz started to emanate from the right speaker. I took off the grill covering and there I found a huge hole in the woofer. The flexible foam cone surround broke down over time and finally gave way. Bummer.

Then I checked out the left speaker - its woofer's foam surround developed a substantial crack too - it just wasn't buzzing yet.

I went online and looked for replacement speakers. After some search, I realized that I'd have to spend over $200 to get some half-way decent speakers - a fairly depressing amount of money. And they likely weren't as soulful or as attractive as my old Advents.

So instead of replacing them, I decided to repair them.

Ordering Replacement Woofers

Since the woofers were beyond hope, I decided to replace them- and hopefully without cutting new holes in the cabinet. To find a suitable parts, I had to remove the old woofer and measure it.

I put the speaker cabinet on its back and removed the four screws holding the woofer in place. Then I extracted the old woofer from the cabinet.

I measured the hole in the cabinet, which was 5 and 5/8" in diamater. With this information, I could locate similarly sized parts. And since this wasn't a car speaker, I knew that I wanted an 8Ω (8 ohm) woofer.

Measuring the cabinet's woofer cutout

After looking at the reviews and weighing price, performance, and the risk that I might screw things up, I decided to go with the 6.5 inch Goldwood GW-206/8. I ordered two: one for the left cabinet, one for the right.

I considered ordering replacement tweeters and dampening material for the inside of the cabinet, but since it all looked healthy and sounded fine to me, I elected to keep them as-is.

A few days later a large box arrived at my door with two new woofers. Yay! I immediately got down to business.

A replacement woofer

Replacing the woofers

Replacing the woofers was an amazingly easy process:

1. I powered down my amp and disconnected the right speaker.

2. I laid the speaker cabinet on its back and removed the cloth-covered grill.

3. I removed the 4 screws that were holding the woofer in place.

Unscrewing the old broken woofer

4. I disconnected the wires from the back of the woofer, noting which wire was connected to the "+" terminal.

5. I attached the wires to spade connectors on the new woofer, + to +, - to -.

Note the (faint) polarity indicators!

6. I screwed the new woofer in place - a perfect fit - but I was VERY careful not to let the screw driver slip and put a hole in it. That would have stunk. And I made sure I didn't flex or distort the new woofer's metal cage.

The newly installed woofer

Testing

After completing woofer replacement in one speaker cabinet, I decided to give it a listen. After all, why open up the second woofer from its box if the first one sounded crappy? I wired it to my amp and powered things up. It sounded great.

I then shut down the amp and performed the same procedure on the left speaker.

Conclusion

Newly repaired speakers being tested - a success!

In all, I spent under $40 for the parts I needed to repair the two speakers - about $160 less than I would have spent on new speakers. And they sound great. I have no doubt that they'll stay in good service for another 15 years.

Cheapest smartphone plans

2010-02-10T08:01:00.006-05:00

It used to be that all the cheapest smart phone plans had just about the same pricetag - about $70 a month and up. $70 a month adds up very quickly, especially when you have to do things like pay the mortgage or the rent.

I need a smartphone plan with internet access with a full browser, email, decent performance, plus roughly 400 minutes per month. I'm not a big text messager. And I want to pay as little as possible.

So I went to all the web sites of all the major American mobile service providers to check out their pricing. Since I originally wrote this article there have been changes in smartphone plans. There is a now difference - a huge difference in terms of pricing. Read on...

Here is a summary of what I've found in terms of the cheapest way to get a smart phone plan from the major American providers:

1. The T-Mobile plan comes with 500 minutes of prime-time talk. Data and texts are unlimited. Total price with a subsidized phone: $80/month... and that's with 4G service! However, you can manage to get this plan for $60 a month if you're willing to pay a substantial premium for a handset. The Vibrant looks like a great choice for a handset on T-Mobile.

2. The basic Sprint plan comes with 450 minutes, like all the others except T-Mobile. But Sprint's off-peak minutes start at 7 PM, which means two more waking hours of "free" talk time, as the other providers off=peak kicks in as late as 9 PM. In addition, Sprint doesn't deduct any prime time minutes for calls to any US mobile phone number, regardless of network. Plus, the Sprint plan comes with unlimited texting for no additional fee. And with the awesome Palm Pre Phone, it seems like a great option for a lot of people. $70/month.

3. AT&T's cheapest plan also has 450 minutes, but it has "roll-over", which effectively increases monthly minutes - as unused minutes in one month are still there to use later - an nice deal if one has exceptionally high usage in a month due to, say, illness in the family. "Visual Voicemail" is included. And with the 200 MB data plan, you can walk away for a low $55/month. Yeah, it's not unlimited data, but few people actually exceed 200 MB of data in a month. Text messages are extra. This is an awesome deal, but you might want to consider a text messaging plan if you send/receive more than 25 texts in a month on average. Check out this awesome Samsung Android phone for AT&T!

4. Verizon's plan is the most simple to understand. 450 minutes per month, nights at 9 PM. Visual Voicemail is a $3/month add-on. The entry level text messaging plan is $5/month. And the Incredible is a nice matching Android-based handset. $70/month.

In short, I sum up the low-end smart phone plans like this:

Sprint - $70/month - includes early 7 PM nights, and includes an unlimited texting package. Plus, calls to any US-based mobile phone number, regardless of carrier, doesn't use up minutes. And with a handset like the Palm Pre Phone, that's pretty amazing.
AT&T - $55/month - has rollover, which allows you to "bank" unused minutes for use in later months. 200 MB of 3G data - more than enough for most users. Includes Visual Voicemail. And the iPhone? This is a great deal for the typical smartphone user.
T-Mobile - $70/month - includes 50 more prime-time minutes than the other low-end plans. Includes Visual Voicemail. G1 Android Phone.
Verizon - $70/month. And the HTC DROID Eris is super swanky.

Of course, all these plans could be impacted by hidden fees, set-up charges, and so-forth. Always check the plan you're committing to - they change frequently.

[Updated - 1-Oct-2010]

Repair: Fixing a noisy fan in a Toshiba A15

2010-02-08T20:33:00.005-05:00

The patient: a Toshiba A15 with a noisy, bad fan.

I have a great Toshiba A15 that just keeps on humming along. Actually, humming and buzzing. It makes an awful racket, and so I decided to replace the aging internal fan.

Here's what I did to replace the fan. I suspect this basic technique will work with other similar Toshiba laptops.

Tools and Parts required

A small phillips head screwdriver
A replacement fan, such as this one
Some "canned air", to remove dust

Procedure

1. Shut Down the Laptop, unplug it, and remove the battery

2. Remove the fan cover

I flipped the laptop on its back. In the corner there is a covering with two bulges. I removed this cover by removing the three screws. I then gently unsnapped the cover to expose the fan.

The fan cover

With the cover removed, the fan is exposed

3. Remove Fan

Next, I removed the two screws holding the fan in place. Then I gently pulled off the tiny power cable.

The power cable connection

The fan

4. Clean the heat sink

I then cleaned off the very dusty and dirty heat sink. Evidently, the fan draws in a lot of dust over time. I removed this dust with some "canned air".

The dust-filled heat sink, ready for some de-dusting

5. Reassemble in reverse

Slip new fan in place
Screw in fan with two screws
Attach fan power connector, as shown
Snap on fan covering, making sure wires are not pinched under it
Screw on fan cover with three screws (long screw goes in the "middle")

6. Test

I started up the laptop, and it has been working wonderfully ever since. It is as quiet as new!

Using a Garmin eTrex with a Macintosh

2010-02-08T11:59:00.003-05:00

Summary: Got my Garmin GPSs to work with both Linux and my Mac

The Garmin eTrex series consists of decent, full featured handheld GPS units. The cheaper monochrome eTrex models have a basic RS-232 serial interface, and the color eTrex models sport USB connectivity.

In this article I'll talk about my experience with connecting both USB and serial port versions of the eTrex series to my Mac and to my Linux-based PC.

I personally use the Garmin Vista HCx GPS now, but the other Garmins in the eTrex series, including the inexpensive but well specified Garmin eTrex Venture should work the same way.

Dealing with the eTrex Series with USB:

Most of the eTrex units with a color screen have a USB port on the back. Happily, this USB port uses a common USB connector, so it is easy to physically connect a USB eTrex to a Mac or a PC running Linux.

The USB Port on an eTrex

I have found two pieces of software perfect for use with a USB eTrex, without the need for special drivers: GPSBabel+ and Google Earth.

The Mac version of the freeware program "GPSBabel+" can natively read and write waypoint, track, and route data directly from the eTrex. I simply connect my GPS to my Mac via the standard USB cable. Once connected, I start up GPSBabel+.

GPSBabel+ can then be used to easily import and export waypoint and track data from the GPS. Simply choose "Use GPS receiver for input" or "output", choose "Convert", and then select the "Garmin USB" port. No special drivers or software beyond GPSBabel+ required.

Google Earth can communicate with the eTrex in real time, plotting your location on the fancy Google Earth map. In addition, like GPSBabel+, Google Earth can download routes, tracks, and waypoints from the eTrex and plot them on the Google Earth map.

Google Earth loading data from my eTrex

I have had good luck with Linux too. I'm running Fedora Core with the latest updates, and find that it too can communicate with the USB eTrex series without issue. No kernel recompiles were required. Yay! I simply plug the thing into a USB port and then execute this command:

gpspoint -p /dev/ttyUSB0 -da -dt -dr -dw > gpsdata.gpd

With this command, all of the routes, tracks and waypoints are sucked down from the Garmin into a text file. From there, I can convert the file into any form I wish. I particularly like the open-source program Viking.

non-USB eTrex GPS on my Mac or Linux

I found that I could easily hook up the dirt cheap eTrex models, like the Garmin eTrex H and the other eTrex models that sport a serial interface.

My classic eTrex Legend is such a device. It's a nice GPS, but modern Macs and most modern PCs don't include near-obsolete serial ports. Happily, there is a simple and inexpensive solution - an eTrex serial cable with a reasonably good, low-cost USB to Serial Adapter.

My USB to Serial Adapter

I had to install the drivers for the USB converter onto the Mac. Once I did, good old GPSBabel+ was able to read and write to the GPS. Under Fedora Core Linux, the OS already had the driver for the USB converter. I just had to change my device settings and I was good to go!

[Note: updated on 8-Feb-2010 with more recent information]

The Asus WL500W and DD-WRT

2010-02-07T16:59:00.007-05:00

I've been running my ASUS WL-500W Wireless N Router with DD-WRT for a good two months now.

Here's what I've found:

It works great for me!

I hated my WL-500W with the stock firmware. It seemed clunky and didn't behave all that well, despite updated firmware and a plethora of promising features. But since I had this device at my Dad's house, its original shortcomings didn't mean much to me - it worked adequately for him, so I was fine with it.

But a few months ago my Dad received a "free" wireless access point from his new internet service provider, so I ended up with the WL500W. I decided that DD-WRT was the only way to go.

Installation

I installed the Mega Generic, v24 preSP2 (Build13064), available from the DD-WRT web site. I followed these TFTP instructions. Installation was a breeze using TFTP. I was stoked to see it boot.

Issue #1 - making a brick.

I was busily reconfiguring the WL500W soon after it booted: make a config change, save, make another change, save, etc. And then it turned into a brick.

The LEDs on the WL-500W started to flash as if it was in a constant reboot cycle. I became sad; despondent almost. I struggled to use any software technique I could find to unbrick it. After several painstaking hours, I gave up on a "soft solution" to unbricking it.

Unbricking.

After so many wasted hours, I concluded that the only way to unbrick it was with a hardware technique. I went after the brick using the pin 9 grounding unbrick method. I've heard mixed reviews on this technique - some have claimed that this method will permanently damage the device. But since I otherwise had a brick, I decided to take the risk.

In my case, the unbrick method seemed to work wonderfully. Phew! The brick was no more. I reinstalled DD-WRT and did my best to...

...Avoiding Bricking.

I think my mistake was saving configuration changes too quickly. Now, when I make a change to the configuration, I give the WL500W a good long while (like a couple minutes) to commit the change to flash memory. I wait until the load average goes down to near zero before saving another configuration change.

I'm not sure if it really helps, but I haven't bricked the router since I instituted my new "slow save" procedure.

Other issues.

I mistakenly tripped power to the WL500W last week, and it didn't come back up: The "AIR" lamp stayed off, and the device wasn't accessible via ethernet. After experimentation, I found that the device would start up normally if I unplugged my laptop from the WL500W's ethernet port when powering up the WL500W. I didn't look into the "failed boot" condition any further.

The other issue is that I could never get the USB ports on the WL500W to do anything useful for me. Then again, the same was true when I used the stock ASUS firmware.

Performance.

I find that the WL500W performs quite well for a 2.5 GHz-only "N" router. It certainly beats the pants off of many other N-class home routers that I've used.

The WL500W with DD-WRT has been rock solid. I do have it automatically restart weekly, but I have never had any indication that it actually needs to be restarted on a schedule.

And it can easily run with that Mega build. I love having most all of the DD-WRT features on the box. Once you go Mega, it's hard to go back.

Well, I hope that helps!

Tips for a Healthy iPhone

2010-02-07T15:47:00.003-05:00

Here is my advice to new iPhone owners

1. Restart the iPhone periodically.

The iPhone is a phone with a computer in it. And as you likely know, computers simply work better if they're restarted occasionally. I'm in the habit of restarting my iPhone about once a week.

To restart your iPhone, hold down the top button for about 4 seconds. Then slide the on-screen indicator to turn it off. Note that it can take roughly 30 seconds for your iPhone to complete shut itself down.

To turn your iPhone back on, just hold down on the top button for about 1 second. The Apple logo will appear; after about 30 seconds your iPhone will be fully powered up and ready to go.

2. Sync your iPhone to iTunes at least once a week.

I sync my iPhone to iTunes periodically for two compelling reasons:

Syncing backs up all of my iPhone's contents. If I lose or damage my iPhone, I won't lose all my data.
iTunes keeps the software on my iPhone up to date. Apps and the system software are updated periodically with improvements; syncing my iPhone with iTunes helps me make sure that I'm always running the latest and greatest software for the iPhone. Note that a full system software update can take upwards of 15 minutes to install... during which time your iPhone may be inoperable.

3. Charge your iPhone overnight.

I find myself using my iPhone more than any other phone I've owned. And therefore I run down the battery faster. I'm in the habit of charging up my iPhone every night to make sure I have the juice when I need it. I also have a car charger, as I use the power-hungry Maps application quite a bit.

4. Quit Apps when your not using them

Most apps are designed to be gentle on the iPhone's battery. But some apps really suck down the juice, driving the speakers, wireless, the CPU, and the screen hard. For generally longer battery life, when you're done using an app, terminate it by pressing the "home" button.

5. Take reasonable care of your iPhone

I find that an inexpensive silicone case can protect the iPhone well, and a makes it less likely that I drop my iPhone.

I also suggest that you don't get the iPhone wet. I've known more than one person that has either gone swimming with the iPhone, or has put their iPhone through the wash. Don't do it - the results are never pretty.

6. More tips? Let me know and I'll consider adding them here!

See my article on Inexpensive iPhone Stuff To Consider for my thoughts on cheap but useful iPhone accessories.

Inexpensive Stuff for your New iPhone

2010-02-07T12:32:00.004-05:00

I bought an iPhone 3G soon after it's release, and it is still in pristine condition. And people frequently ask me "LanceJ, what should I buy for my new iPhone?"

This is my short list.

Silicone Case - under $5

A silicone case protects my iPhone from many hard drops and can keep my iPhone looking new for years. Note that not all silicone cases are created equal - some are flimsy and thin; others are bulky and thick. I like the ones that are just in the middle. I like, in particular, the Eforcity Silicone Skin Case Cover.

Car Charger - under $5

When I'm in the car, I use the Maps feature of the iPhone a lot. And the Maps feature really does chew down the battery life. An iPhone car charger is critical if I'm in the car a lot. I suggest that people buy the GTMax Black Rapid Car Charger.

Spare Charger with Charging Cable - under $15

I find it great to have a spare iPhone charger with a spare cable. I can leave one in my office in case I forget to charge at home. And if I lose or break the original charger or cord, I have a spare. I got a deal with this USB Power Adapter with Data Cable.

A Bluetooth Headset - $20 to $60

The iPhone comes with a decent wired headset, but I love my bluetooth headset. That way I can just leave my phone on my desk and walk around without carrying anything. I can even do the dishes or other things* while on the phone.

I use a BlueAnt Z9i headset with my iPhone. The Z9i fits my ears perfectly and it sounds great. Then again, almost any Bluetooth headset will do. I've also successfully used a Jabra BT125 and a Plantronics Voyager with my iPhone. They also work well, but they don't fit my ears as well.

Unfortunately, I think a Bluetooth headset is one of those things that is tough to buy. Since they fit in the ear, they're not all equally comfortable. That's why I like the Z9i so much - it fits my ears perfectly and it sounds great to me.

What I don't like

I don't like so-called "screen protectors".

These flimsy pieces of clear plastic that cover the screen just get in my way. I question their utility - I suppose it is possible to scratch an iPhone's screen without smashing it, but it seems to very rarely happen. My children have an iPod Touch, and even they haven't even managed to scratch their device's screen yet.

I don't have a screen protector, and I don't plan on getting one. But they're inexpensive enough that it is reasonable to buy one and try it out.

Next Up

Tips for using your iPhone.

Speeding Up your Computer

2010-02-06T14:37:00.005-05:00

I get a lot of people asking me to look at their computer because it has become "slow". Sometimes I find an old PC that can't keep up with these modern times, or a malware infested Windows box that needs a complete reimaging.

But often times I find that the performance problem isn't in the computer at all. Instead, the performance problem is in the home network. If your computer seems to be behaving slowly, you might want to try the following easy speed tips.

Do some initial network analysis

Before you being, test your Internet service's performance and compare it with what your provider promises. I use the performance tests at speedtest.net quite often. Keep a log of your typical performance.

If you can, try speed test both wirelessly, and wired via an Ethernet cable.

Compare the performance numbers you see with the speeds promised by your ISP.

Restart your Wireless Router.

A wireless router is actually a small, specialized computer with a bunch of networking software built into it. Like any computer, a router can start to respond slowly over time due to software bugs and memory management issues.

I've seen numerous name-brand home routers become painfully slow or even stop responding over time. An easy way around this issue is to restart your router periodically.

To restart your router, simply unplug it from the wall for 30 to 60 seconds, and then plug it back in again. After restarting, try a speed test to see if performance has improved.

Wireless Router: Reboot it and secure it.

Restart your modem.

Believe it or not, your cable or DSL modem is also a small but full-featured computer with some specialized network software and hardware. So it too can suffer from poor software and poor memory management.

Again, I have seen such modems slow or stop if they've been "on" for a long time. Just like with a wireless router, to restart your modem, simply unplug it from the wall for 30 to 60 seconds.

Restart your modem

Prohibit neighbors from slowing you down

Here are some other tips to keep network performance high:

Make sure your wireless router is locked down. If it isn't, your neighbors might be using up all your Internet bandwidth. Set a WEP or a (better) WPA password on the router.
Change your wireless channel, just in case the neighbors are filling up the airwaves with their wireless router. The "best" ones to use are 1,6 and 11.
Make sure that other wireless devices, such as landline wireless handsets and baby monitors, aren't disrupting your signal.

Check your router's manual for information on how to set a WEP or WPA password, and how to select an alternative wireless channel.

Conclusion

These tips won't address every poor performance situation, but I find they often help maximize network performance. I make it a practice to restart my network equipment roughly once a week. Doing so helps keep my network running as efficiently as it can.

Keep That Old Printer, or, New Printers Stink

2010-02-06T13:13:00.007-05:00

Old laser printers have some notable advantages over many newer printers.

An old laser can be found for little money. You can easily find great working printers on Craig's List for under $40.

My old-school HP LaserJet 5L - still works like a champ!

The inexpensive toner cartridges for these printers can often be found on Amazon for under $20 each. And each cartridge, typically rated for several thousand pages, can last five times longer than many more expensive inkjet cartridges.

And these old printers are solid. Many were designed last for years in high volume situations. And they were designed to be maintained, instead of thrown away. My laser is nearly 15 years old and it keeps on ticking.

Keeping it Modern

Buying a good old fashion laser jet for under $40 is easy. But it likely has an old-fashion Parallel interface on it - meaning that your computer can't even use it. What to do?

My answer was to buy an Epson Net C823781 Print Server. It isn't the latest device on the market, but it can be found for under $30, and has a lot of great features. The print server easily plugs into my printer, and then I simply connect the print server to my home wireless router.

Inexpensive ethernet print server on the LaserJet 5L

Configuring the print server

For the Epson C82378, I found printing success by using the "LPD" option. First, I found the address of my print server by going into my router's configuration screen. Then, on my Mac, I simply added a new LPD printer via the Print & Fax system preferences. I entered the IP address of my print server, used the "default queue", and chose the generic PCL print driver (as my HP, like many good lasers, supports PCL).

Configuring my Mac to use the Epson C82378 print server with my HP LaserJet 5L

Conclusion

I love the fact that I'm able to use my old laser printer from virtually any machine on my modern network. The cost-per-print is extremely competitive compared to all modern printers, and the total investment was extremely low.

MacBook to TV via HDMI for under $25.

2010-02-05T19:41:00.014-05:00

I recently bought a new, modern HDTV: a 42 inch, 1080p Panasonic LCD TV. And one of the first things I wanted to do with my new TV was to hook it up to my trusty MacBook. Like many modern TVs, my new TV has a VGA input, so I figured that'd be the right way to hook it up. I got the following stuff together:

I plugged the dongle into the MacBook, and I plugged the VGA cable between the dongle and the TV. Sure enough, my Mac's video image immediately appeared on my TV. I figured with a little fine tuning, I'd get a great 1080p image!

I was wrong.

Attempt #1: MacBook to HDTV via VGA dongle and cable

The major disappointment is that many new TVs, like mine, won't accept a high resolution 1080p-class signal over VGA. Although my MacBook's "Display Preferences" control panel displays a huge range of potential video resolutions, very few of them work adequately (or at all) with my TV.

I wound up setting the TV to 1280 x 768 ... quite a bit less quality than I hoped for.

Lots of resolutions, but only a few combinations work -
and none look as great as an HDTV should.
Only 1280 x 768 worked adequately.

There are some minor disappointments too. The VGA cable is big, bulky, and inflexible. It looks clunky. And the audio was noisy - evidently the VGA video signal "bleeds" into the audio signal, resulting in an annoying hum at low volumes.

The Better Solution: HDMI. But with a Mac?

I was happy enough with my VGA solution, but I was looking for something better.

The story on the street is that Macs don't do HDMI. That isn't exactly the full story. The truth is that Mac's "do" DVI and DisplayPort, and both can be converted into HDMI.

But Apple doesn't sell DVI to HDMI such converters. I figured the complexity of such a device would result in extremely high costs.

So I did some snooping around. I checked out Amazon and discovered this Mini-DVI to HDMI dongle for under $10! "Too low, it can't possibly work!," I exclaimed. But for such a low price, I figured I'd take a risk and buy one. (For those with a new Mac that uses DisplayPort: you'll likely want a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter instead.)

The Magic: Mini-DVI to HDMI dongle.

At the same time, I bought an inexpensive HDMI Cable and a 3.5mm Male to RCA audio cable.

MacBook to HDMI: Mini-DVI to HDMI, along with audio cable.

I hooked this stuff together with my MacBook, attaching the new dongle to my Mac, the HDMI cable between my Mac and my TV, and the audio cable between the headphone port on my Mac and my TV.

The result? Stunning!

In fact, with the HDMI converter, my Mac can recognize both my TV's manufacturer and its supported video modes. Recall that with the VGA solution, my Mac just showed me a heap of possible settings, some good, many not good.

With the inexpensive HDMI Adapter, my Mac detects
the TV and the mode it supports

I could have improved my audio by adding a TOSLink digital optical audio cable, but since I don't have a modern audio system (another story!), I decided to hold onto my money.

Final Notes

If you have a Mac that you want to connect to a modern TV, HDMI is a great way to go. The cabling is flexible and inexpensive, and the quality is high.

Who is at 617-588-0005?

2010-01-29T22:52:00.002-05:00

Today I got another call from 617-588-0005 today.

I seem to be getting a lot of them, but I finally tracked down who and why. You see I don't ordinarily pick up calls from people I don't know due to telemarketers. But whoever claimed to be calling from 6175880005 was persistant, and so I answered.

It turned out to be a friend who lives in Europe. Yep, it is a US phone number, but he was calling through Skype. It looks like Skype is using 6175880005 for calls from those that otherwise don't have a real phone number.

iPad Thoughts and Dreams

2010-01-27T13:13:00.002-05:00

Well we all just learned about the iPad. Here are my thoughts:

Clearly a Kindle killer, and a killer of many iPod Touch competitors such as the Zune.
A compelling alternative to NetBooks
All that's necessary for your typical home user.
Aggressive 3G capabilities and pricing.
Do I need another device? I already have a laptop and a smart phone. Really? A third device? Can I get rid of one, please?
What is going on with MacOS X? Three versions? Mac, Phone, Pad? How and when will these platforms converge? Is this Apple's way of transitioning off the Desktop paradigm and into a new one?

Backup Drives for your Mac

2010-01-22T16:33:00.006-05:00

The hard disk in your Mac can fail at any time. And they often do. I'd guess that the chance of any computer owner having a hard drive failure within the next year is 10%, regardless of the age or brand of the computer.

If your hard drive fails, the odds are very good that you will have NO HOPE FOR RECOVERY. All your photos, music and documents are likely to be GONE FOREVER.

Backup is key if you don't want to permanently lose all your photos and music and other important bits of data. Here's how to do it on the cheap.

Simple and Inexpensive Backup Devices For Your Mac

The easiest way to back up your Mac is via the built in TimeMachine backup program. But to use it, you need to buy an external backup drive first.

An external drive used to backup a MacBook

My recommendation is to buy a USB 2.0 backup drive with 1 TB of storage. They're inexpensive (under $100), they have substantial capacity, and they're very easy to use. Personally, I love the inexpensive but very good IOMega Prestige.

There are other options, but they generally cost more money:

An external drive with FireWire interface. Firewire drives are generally a bit faster than USB 2.0 drives. If your Mac has a Firewire interface, an enclosure with USB AND Firewire interfaces like the Buffalo DriveStation is a good choice. But drives that include Firewire can cost $15 - $50 or even more than a drive with USB 2.0. And Firewire doesn't provide all that more performance. In addition, with USB 3.0 coming around the bend, spending a premium for Firewire today seems questionable at best.
You can assemble your own external drive. You can buy an "internal" hard drive and an empty "hard drive enclosure". Then you mount the drive into the enclosure and you've got yourself an external drive. In theory, this can save you money. But I don't think it's worth the hassle - a pre-assembled external drive can actually cost less than buying the individual components, and problem diagnosis and warranty processing isn't nearly as easy when dealing with multiple sellers.

Using the External Drive for Backup
Once you have your external drive, power it up and plug it into your Mac's USB port.

Time Machine will automatically detect the drive and ask you if you want to use it as a backup device. If you say "yes", Time Machine will make a backup of your documents, photos and so-forth onto the external drive.

The first backup will take a while - but after that, subsequent backups are much faster.

Time Machine will only back up when you plug in your external disk... so make sure you do. I like to back up once per day, but it really depends on how much you can afford to lose. If you back up once per week, you could loose up to the last week's worth of data. Maybe that's OK, maybe it's not. It's up to you.

WIFI Security

2010-01-16T00:07:00.003-05:00

My neighbor was asking me yesterday what kind of security I thought he should set up on his home WIFI router.

My answer: it depends!

Best: WPA2 with AES
Good: WPA or WPA2 with TKIP or AES
Very Poor: WEP

Pretty simple, eh? No, not really.

Many old routers and laptops have a crusty old WIFI adapter that won't support the modern protocols. And therefore it is often necessary to use a lesser security protocol.

A lot of old wireless hardware only works with the WEP protocol. Some older 802.11g hardware can use WPA and WEP, but cannot use WPA2. Modern 802.11g and 802.11n hardware supports all protocols.

My general strategy is to do an on-site equipment survey to see what kind of wireless hardware is in use. If there are any devices that require a lesser protocol, I talk to the client to see if it is reasonable to replace or eliminate the old adapters.

My neighbor turned out to have two old laptops with 802.11b adapters that only supported WEP. Therefore, we configured his network for WEP. Once he replaces those old cards with modern 802.11g cards, he'll be able to upgrade his network to the recommend WPA2 w/AES.

As for my home network: I ended up retiring all my old wireless devices that didn't support WPA2. Wireless hardware is quite inexpensive, so it wasn't expensive to do so. Now I exclusively use WPA2 with AES, in conjunction with a long, sophisticated passwords.

Belkin F5D7230-4 v2000 and DD-WRT

2010-01-13T00:14:00.011-05:00

I recently upgraded my Belkin F5D7230-4 v2000 802.11g router with DD-WRT.

For those not familiar with DD-WRT: It's alternative software for a large number of routers. This replacement firmware provides a boatload of features and capabilities that let you maximize your router's potential. After all, the core of a router is a computer.

I didn't have much luck with it with the original Belkin-provided firmware. But with DD-WRT it has been fantastic: fast and stable, with a good range of features.

I was surprised that router is supported by DD-WRT - the v2000 has a limited amount of memory, but sure enough it was on the official support list. With only 2 MB of on-board flash storage, it can't do everything. But with DD-WRT it can do way more than many new, expensive routers.

Limitations of the V2000 with DD-WRT

You should know that there is a limitation with this particular router and DD-WRT. For technical reasons, the old "Cable Modem" port doesn't work. This implies a loss of functionality. But there is a work-around if you can do without wired clients like I can.

And, of course, messing with firmware isn't easy and can damage your router. So proceed with caution!

Steps

This is what I did to install and configure DD-WRT on this router:

I downloaded the DD-WRT firmware. I chose the biggest "Bv2000 Micro-Plus_SSH SF" version, as downloadable from here: dd-wrt.v24-13491_Bv2000_micro-plus_ssh.bin
Next I installed the firmware file using tftp, as described here: DD-WRT install

Enabling the Ethernet ports

At first DD-WRT thinks that your router is a v1444, which has slightly different ethernet hardware. But it isn't - it's a v2000. So to enable the ethernet ports, DD-WRT needs to know that you actually have a v2000.

From my computer, I wirelessly connected to the dd-wrt router SSID
With my browser, I went to http://192.168.0.1/ and set the username to "root" and the password to a good password.
From a terminal command line, telnet to 192.168.0.1
login with the username/password you set above
Run the following commands:

nvram set Belkin_ver=2000

nvram commit

reboot

After the reboot, the LAN ports will be enabled. You should be able to connect an ethernet cable to the router and get a DHCP address and administrate the device.

Enable the ports as WAN

Sadly, the "cable modem" ethernet port of the v2000 remains disabled due to that pesky DD-WRT limitation. What to do? Use the quad ethernet ports for WAN:

Go into the web administration interface.
Choose the "Setup" tab.
Choose the "Network" tab.
Set WAN port assignment to "eth0".

Now ethernet ports 1-4 are associated with the "WAN" side of the router. The original singleton "cable modem" port is useless. The WIFI is associated with the LAN side of the router.

These ports 1-4 operate as switched ports on the
WAN side. Don't use the "cable modem" port.

Now, plugging the cable modem into any of the ports 1..4 results in the router obtaining an address! Yay! It works!

Finally, after getting all this stuff working, I finished configuring the device:

Set up wireless security on the router
Configure SSH, DDNS, remote admin, etc.

Conclusion
I have to say that my Belkin is much more reliable now - in fact, I have yet to reboot it. Pretty awesome. I do miss having LAN ports available to me - hopefully someone with deeper knowledge of the device will provide the software necessary to control the ports in the way the device's creators intended!

Which is more secure?

2009-11-05T09:47:00.001-05:00

Which computer is more secure? "Mac!" says the dedicated Macintosh user. Or is it computers with the new Windows OS? Or are they both equally likely to have security problems?

There is a lot of debate in the security industry regarding which platform is more secure.

Many people assume that the Mac is so secure - perhaps because they have heard of people that have experienced security failures under Windows. Others say that the the Mac is just as insecure as Windows, if not more so.

The LanceJ Security Test

I propose the following simple test that can be used to measure which platform is more secure from the vantage point of the public.

Buy a quantity of new, stock Windows 7 and Macintosh computers from a retailer. For example, buy 5 new Mac Minis and 5 new Windows 7 HP desktops from BestBuy.
Distribute each of the sealed, boxed computers to a regular, randomly selected family. Give each of those families identical, stock internet access via, say, Comcast. Tell the families to set up the computers and use them in their homes.
Collect the computers after a set amount of time - perhaps 6 months.
Count the number of machines that have been compromised.

The platform with the fewer detected compromises was generally less likely to be a security problem to its user during the course of the study.

Limitations

Clearly such a study wouldn't measure all aspects of security. For example:

It doesn't count compromises that are not or cannot be detected.
It doesn't count potential OS vulnerabilities, phishing attack vulnerabilities, etc.
It doesn't measure security compromises of the future.

Perhaps a security researcher could devise a way to accurately count these other data.

Other Approaches

Another simple approach to measuring "platform security" could be pursued by the general purpose "computer repair shop". As new customers come in, measure the number of computers requiring repair due to security failures. However, it seems that a research project based on "repair shop" data would be complicated. Should the age of the computers be considered? And how does one consider the flawed machines with non-security related failures?

Next Steps?

I'd be surprise if there haven't been security researchers that have performed this exact kind of test. After all, researchers spend the bulk of their time doing research and publishing. If you are pursuing such a research study, or if know of a recent study that performed a similar test, please post a link in the comments section.

Voice w/ Tethering Plans: AT&T: $100/mo. Verizon: $85/mo?

2009-06-09T16:55:00.004-04:00

I commute via rail, and so I've always been interested in adding tethering to my cell phone plan. I figure it'd be a good way to spend my commute other than, um, reading literature.

And now that the iPhone has tethering capabilities, I figured its my perfect opportunity to get more by spending more. Sadly, AT&T hasn't announced its tethering plan yet, but I decided I can infer some information from their existing plans.

I did some research today on AT&T's website, looking into the tethering options for devices they sell now, such as the BlackBerry. I "made" a 450 minute voice plan and added tethering... and the total monthly fee came to $99.99 per month. Certainly more than the $69.99 plan, but clearly tethering will use lots more bandwidth. I also noted that AT&T has a 5 GB cap on their tethering plan.

As a cost comparison, I went to Verizon's online store. They didn't have a tethering option readily visible, so I just made a $450 smartphone plan, and it came to $69.98 per month. Then, I located the Broadband Connect page ... and it suggested that adding tethering to the $69.99 smartphone plan would cost an additional $15.00 per month.

So, if all my math is correct, it seems like for a 450 minute smartphone plan with 5 GB of tethering, the score is: Verizon: $85/mo. AT&T: $100/mo.

One reason why I've liked AT&T is that I knew they were a better deal for the money. Hopefully they'll address this major pricing discrepancy with their competitors. Otherwise, for $15 per month, I may as well go back to Verizon and use my jailbroken iPhone as a client ;-)

Upgrading from the iPhone 3G to the new iPhone 3GS

2009-06-05T07:19:00.002-04:00

I have been very interested in the new iPhone 3GS, and so I decided to take a look to see if it'd be possible to upgrade. I made a few phone calls and did some research.

I learned that AT&T will allow me to upgrade to the iPhone 3GS without special charges after 1 year and 8 months under contract... so, happily I don't have to wait the full 2 years to get my hands on the new iPhone. But since I somewhat recently bought my iPhone, I still have to wait another year before I can upgrade.

However, since I can't wait, I can upgrade to the new iPhone 3GS for a fee - they'll let me upgrade to the new phone if I pay a $200 premium. That means that I'd pay $399 for a phone that usually goes for $199. The $200 "surcharge" is a number that's comparable to the "contract early termination" fee.

I bought my 16 GB iPhone 3G for $299. If I sell it now, I'll have a newer battery and a newer warranty. I feel those improvements are worth $50 to me. And therefore, I feel that IF I can sell my used iPhone for $350, it'd be an easy decision.

The Next Great Thing: iPhone, Google, and VoIP

2009-05-17T13:23:00.002-04:00

This spring Google is transitioning its telecom service "Grand Central" to "Google Voice", a service that promises to tie together telephone, voicemail, email, video, and chat into a single service. It promises to be like Skype, GMail, Video Mail and traditional telecom all rolled into one.

It just also happens that Apple is working on iPhone OS v3.0. iPhone 3.0 offers a lot of new internals to the iPhone, but with no single "huge, new" feature. Rumor also has it that Apple is planning for the next generation of iPhones and perhaps new iPods.

So I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that these events are coupled. The seamless convergence of a modern, comprehensive telecom service coupled with an internationally available handset will be a killer app. And AT&T will be on board, as this will sell tons of service.

Imagine the features:

One device for all communications.
A single mailbox.
Voicemail is just another type of mail.
Videomail is just another type of mail.
SMS is just another type of mail.
Labeling rules, as seen on Gmail, organizes your mail, can trigger alerts, etc.
VoIP is on-par with traditional telecom voice services, with one difference: incredibly low price per call and no need for a traditional telephone number.
Location-awareness mail
Voice-to-text and text-to-voice services for all mail, as already seen in several Google services.

I don't see all these features coupled together in the iPhone 3.0 Beta. But I do see all the infrastructure to pull this off: Google Voice, iPhone 3.0 APIs, plus some new Apple, AT&T, or Google-provided apps are enough to get the job done. iPhone 3.1 will seal the deal.

So there you have it - convergence of telecom on a grand scale, and dragging the big telecom providers into the 21st century by level-setting voice with video and internet services.

Average iPhone user accesses web 40x more than BlackBerry

2009-04-29T19:42:00.004-04:00

I have heard that users of the iPhone aren't as happy with their battery life when compared with BlackBerry owner experiences. Since both devices use the same battery technology, it seems that either the devices have substantially different power efficiency numbers, or that iPhone owners make more use of their device.

So I've looked at some commonly available statistics to see if I can determine if people use the iPhone more than the BlackBerry. The results are astounding.

NetApps has recently published their "Mobile Web Browser" statistics, and it looks like the iPhone accounts for roughly 64% of all mobile web sessions (April 2009). In contrast, the BlackBerry accounts for 3.1% of mobile web sessions.

So we know out of the gate the people use their iPhones more than BlackBerry users. But this simple statistic doesn't show everything: According to ChangeWave Research's December 2008 market share numbers, the iPhone acounts for 23% of the smartphone marketplace, while the BlackBerry accounts for 41%. That means there are about 1.7 BlackBerrys in use for each iPhone in use.

So people use their iPhones much more than the NetApps statistics suggest!

Chugging through these two sets of numbers, it seems like the typical iPhone user accesses the web through their primary browser roughly 40 times more than the typical BlackBerry user. If a BlackBerry user accesses the web from their device for 5 minutes a week, the typical iPhone user accesses it for 200 minutes.

So when reading statistics that compare battery life between the BlackBerry and the iPhone from the user's perspective, remember: iPhone owners access the web 40 times more frequently than BlackBerry users. And accessing the web drives the screen, the CPU, and the radio circuitry more heavily than a simple voice call.

And I haven't even started to estimate how many optional "app store" applications are used on the iPhone versus the BlackBerry.

Oh, and for my iPhone's battery life? With 3G, Wifi, and Bluetooth all "on", I get about 5 ½ hours of activity. And I can charge it full, from empty, in under 90 minutes. That's better than any other cell phone I've ever owned.

Cable Box Electricity Consumption and Cost

2009-01-18T11:02:00.012-05:00

Today I got around to measuring the electricity consumption of the cable TV box that is in my home - a Comcast Motorola DCT-3412. It's an HDTV Cable TV box with DVR.

Is this "powered off" cable box costing American taxpayers hundreds of millions?

I measured the box's consumption by plugging it into my awesome Kill -A-Watt power meter and measuring the wattage.

Surprisingly, I found that my cable box consumes just about as much power when "off" than when "on".

Here's what I measured with my Kill-O-Watt meter:

"Power Off": 30 watts
Watching TV: 31 watts
Recording TV: 31 watts
Playing back a recorded program: 31 watts

Why provide a power button when it makes so little difference in power consumption? Who knows!

Electricity Cost

So I did some math to figure out how much 30 watts of consistent power use costs, using recent prices for electricity around here:

(17¢ per kwh x 30 watts x 8760 hours per year ) / 1000 = $44.67 per year

Amazing - think about it - according to my analysis, perhaps 5 million people pay $44 per year for the electricity for a cable TV box that's mostly powered off! That's approaching a quarter of a BILLION dollars in electricity every year, thrown away!

This isn't "green" - it's "stupid".

The new face of TV - DTV, that is.

2008-12-02T20:48:00.002-05:00

If cable TV customers experienced over-the-air digital TV, the cable industry might lose a good chunk of their customers.

Here's the story:

A few weeks ago I decided that I was going to convert some old home VHS videos to DVD, and so I went shopping for a simple DVD recorder. I figure a DVD recorder would be more useful, less frustrating, and more fun that some video gadget for my PC.

SoI logged onto Amazon and I bought myself a DVD recorder. And just for fun, I bought a model with a modern digital TV tuner inside. I've never played with over-the-air digital TV, so this was my chance.

Well, the DVD burner works pretty well (more on that in a subsequent post). But I really want to talk about the Digital TV tuner.

In short, over-the-air digital TV is something that the cable TV companies must have a lot of fear of. When I was a kid, we watched all 7 local channels - Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 25, 38 and 56. Yeah, there were other channels, but they were totally unwatchable. And even the "local" channels that looked good looked like crap, despite our enormous rooftop aerial antenna . But we were happy.

Now, with my digital TV tuner and simple set-top rabbit ear antenna, I get about 25 picture-perfect channels over the air. And thats with my crappy 15 year old, 20-inch tube TV.

No wonder the cable TV industry tells their customers that people don't need to worry about digital TV tuners - 25 channels of free digital TV is very compelling for me. I wouldn't be surprised if a significant portion of cable TV customers feel the same way.

Saks Fifth Avenue - Spam City

2008-09-26T15:43:00.003-04:00

I'm really quite tired of the Spam that looks a lot like advertisements from Saks Fifth Avenue.

Here's the story:

I have an email address that I only use with my friends. I don't hand it out to retailers, and I don't reply to anyone I don't know very well with my email address.

However, somehow I got on a mailing list that is sending out "Saks Fifth Avenue" related advertisements on an almost DAILY basis. I've never shopped or purchased anything from a Sak's store of any kind, yet someone has decided that I deserve an inordinate amount of information about stuff I'm not interested in.

Did someone steal my email address off of one of my friend's address book? Was my address published on-line and scraped from somewhere? Did someone somehow get ahold of my email address and sell it to some "bulk email" agency? I certainly don't know, and these spams don't even make a claim on where they got their list.

All I know is that I get a Saks-branded email almost once a DAY. Insane. Retailers don't cold-call people once a day. But that's what they're doing to me, just via email. So I find it incredulous that Saks would be behind this.

I think my best strategy is to mark this garbage as Spam/Junk, protecting me and countless others from this insane misuse of email. Evidently a LOT of other people mark these messages as junk, as they advise users to put their email address within their "address book". Ha! Good thing we're not all so stupid.

Let's Rock! The New iPod GPS.

2008-09-02T22:57:00.002-04:00

Yes, you read the headline. Apple's next big event, to be held on September 9th, is called
"Let's Rock". And the image included within their invite seems to show a silhouette of an iPod listener jumping off of a rock.

So what's this all about?

Clearly it is about an iPod with new GPS capabilities. Take an iPod, add a GPS receiver chip (like the iPhone), and install a few hundred megabytes of map data (like most handheld GPS units have) and you have a fully capable Apple-branded handheld GPS.

The GPS market has quickly turned into a HUGE market, and it would be silly for Apple to ignore this market. And there is no doubt that Jobs thinks that he can do a much better job than Garmin, Magellan, and TomTom.

Couple that with the fact that virtually all of the GPS devices out there leave much to be desired in terms of usability, extensibility, and update-ability. An iPod-style device will address all these issues, and can undoubtably be priced to radically change the GPS marketplace.

But wait. This looks like it is for road or outdoors. So! That seems to imply that Apple will make it a bit less fragile and more waterproof than the existing iPod line. That seems to be a natural extension to the iPod - there are over one hundred aftermarket waterproofing products available for the iPod.

So there you have it. Apple is going after the GPS market. My money is on Apple - the other players in this market are weak at best.

Crazy Mac story.

2008-08-30T18:35:00.005-04:00

I was overhearing a conversion on the train today, and it was so crazy that I feel the need to repeat it here.

The context: A middle-aged guy was advising a friend on buying a Mac:

They're working on creating an Office for the Mac, but its very hard because a program can't use files. The Mac doesn't have a file system - that's why it doesn't have a C: drive. A program can't store files.

Oh, it does have a file system, but its locked down, so each application has to use a special API to store files. They lock it down in order to protect the system from viruses - that's why it doesn't get them - but without a real C: drive, it's extremely difficult for programmers to write software for it.

I mean, hackers have found a way to get to the file system, but as soon as they access the file system it voids the warranty, because viruses could then multiply. Plus they want to protect the iTunes files from being stolen.

I found it odd that the advisor knew some technical terms (API, file system), but then went and described something that was completely, um, insane.

My only guess is that he works for Gartner.

Belkin Router Dropping Internet Connection

2008-08-20T11:52:00.002-04:00

My trusty Belkin 802.11g router started having problems the other day.

When surfing through Google Maps, the router would stop communicating with the Internet. Restarting the router was the only way to correct the problem. It would lock up, and no other computer would be able to reach the Internet. Internal LAN connectivity continued just fine.

I have the latest firmware updates, so that wasn't the problem.

So then I turned off the Router's "enerprise-class" Firewall, and that fixed it! The firewall was described to me to be a "stateful packet inspection" type of firewall. Turning it off address the reliability problems - now - no more crashes so far!

Getting out of your cell phone plan

2008-07-27T19:35:00.000-04:00

A friend recently told me that he wanted to buy an iPhone, but he was stuck in a wireless contract already. I provided him with some tips to help him get out of his contract. These may or may not work for you:

Transfer your account to someone who needs something like your contract. Perhaps someone in your family could use a cell phone. Talk to your provider and tell them that you'd like the billing to go to the new customer. Of course, your friend will have to agree. Doing so could release you from the financial obligations of the contract.
Cancel the contract. Yes, this can cost you $175 to $250 in many cases. But you also got a nice phone for a low price. So do you know what you can do? You could SELL that phone. Even a "free" seemingly low-end phone can be worth several HUNDRED dollars. Sell it on CL or eBay and recover the fees!
Wait it out! Come on, do you really need mobile internet in a phone?

Clean and Repair your Mac keyboard: How-To Guide

2008-04-24T15:55:00.012-04:00

Today I'll show you how I go about to repair and clean Mac keyboards. This procedure is particular to the Apple white USB and Bluetooth keyboards, but a similar procedure should work on most other standard PC keyboards.

My yukky keyboard being dismantled

Keyboards are generally highly reliable devices, but they do have the nasty habit of collecting gunk that can make keys stick, or worse, completely non-functional. This guide shows you how to fully clean your keyboard so that it can be as good as it can be.

My recently cleaned Apple Keyboard - like new again!

Remember, some great keyboards can be found for under $30, so if you don't want to risk surgery, consider buying something like the Macally Keyboard and give your crusty console to someone who is willing to clean it up and give it a new life.

What you will need:

A clean, uncluttered work surface
A one quart or one liter-sized plastic or glass container with a lid.
A ball point pen, for levering off keys
A small towel, for air-drying keys
A strainer, such as one used for draining cooked pasta.
Some dish washer detergent. A spoonful will do.
An old toothbrush
An old kitchen sponge
Warm tap water
Silicone grease

Getting Started

The first thing you want to do is find yourself a nice work surface. Make sure that you don't have any junk around - these keyboards have over 100 hundred parts, and you don't want to lose any.

Take a photograph of your keyboard. You'll want this picture so that you can easily restore the keys to their original location. Without a picture, you'll do a lot of guessing.

Removing the Small Keys

We're going to remove all the keys from the keyboard. This is easier than it sounds - the trick is to start with all the small keys. But for sanity's sake, we'll pop off each small key with a little upward pressure. Don't take off the larger keys, such as Shift, Delete, or the Space Bar! Stick with the smaller square shaped keys. Apply upward pressure to the left or right side of the key and lever it up gently. Don't apply too much pressure or else you'll break the key's stem. I usually start from the right side, as it is easier to get some purchase from that side. If you have trouble popping off the keys with your fingers, use a pen to help pop off the key.

Levering up a key.

As you remove keys, put them into your container.

Pulling off the tricky big keys

Once all the small keys are off, we're going to go after the bigger ones. Many of the large key have a metal bar underneath them. This bar keeps the large key's top surface parallel with the rest of the keyboard. Without the metal support bars, the keys would rock around, resulting in a lousy feel.

Pulling off a large key requires special care. Lever up the key gently from the center-rear of the key. Once the key is released, make sure that the support wire is released from the base of the keyboard. The goal is to remove the key with its support wire. Keep the support wire attached to the key. Do not bend the wire or break the hooks found on the base of the keyboard. Again, put all the large keys with their support wires into your container. Be particularly careful with the space bar.

Repeat this process until all of the keys are removed.

The Delete Key with support wire - a source of keyboard squeaks

The Keys

Cleaning the Keyboard Base

Next we're going to clean the keyboard base. Take a vacuum cleaner with an upholstery attachment and vacuum up all of the dirt, hair, food, and whatever else it there. Use an old tooth brush to knock off any really sticky stuff. Then use a damp (not wet!) kitchen sponge to clean off the rest of the crud on the base. Then set the keyboard base aside.

The yukky keyboard base... ready for cleaning.

My cleaned keyboard base.

Phew! That looks a lot better! Not perfect, but good enough for me!

Proper Washing of the Keys

Now it's time to clean the keys. Put a spoonful of dishwasher detergent into your plastic container and add plenty of warm water. Seal the container and shake as if you were on an entire episode of Soul Train Dance Party.

Keys, Dishwater Detergent, and Water all in a nice sealed container.

Now your keys will be as clean as can be. Drain the container into a strainer and rinse them well with plenty of warm water.

Keys being rinsed off in a colander.

Once rinsed, inspect the keys for cleanliness. If they're still dirty, repeat the washing exercise. If not, set them aside on a towel so that they can fully air dry.

Air drying all of the keys. Make sure they're fully dry before reinstalling them!

Re-Greasing and Reassembly

Now you have a clean keyboard base and clean keys. Now we'll put it all back together again. This time, we'll install the large keys first (the ones with the metal support wires), and secondly we'll install the small square-shaped keys. Orientation is important - I hope you have that photo handy!

Stopping the Squeak of your spacebar

Sometimes you'll find that your keys squeak a bit. This is due to the movement of the metal bars against the plastic of the keys and/or keyboard base. For the large keys, you may want to re-grease the metal bars with a TINY amount of silicone grease where the plastic touches the metal. There are four points on each metal bar to grease - two where the key grabs the bar, and two where the bar slides under the hooks on the keyboard's base. Do NOT over grease your keyboard - it'll just gum up your keyboard later as it collects dirt. If in doubt, forgo the grease.

To install a large key, set the pins of the bar under the the hooks on the keyboard base, and then pivot the keys so that they hover over their receptacle. Then press down on the center of the key until the key clicks in place. Only a little pressure is required - if it seems to hard to press, STOP and make sure that everything is lined up correctly.

Once all the large keys are in place, start installing the small keys. It's easier to start from the corners, but I manage to do it haphazardly. Just get the right keys in the right holes, and make sure the keys are oriented correctly. The hardest part for me was the number pad keys versus the number-row keys, but they are quite different if you look hard enough.

In the end, you should have a solid keyboard with all keys nicely in place. Give it one more physical inspection to make sure that everything looks right and that all the keys move smoothly.

Congratulations! You've refurbished your own keyboard, saving yourself $50 or so!

Canon SD890 Review

2008-03-26T17:14:00.010-04:00

My Canon PowerShot SD890IS Review

Wahoo! I just received my new Canon PowerShot SD890IS. Here's my review of the new SD890IS.

Updated! (20-April-2008)!

I like taking good photos. And I hate lugging around big cameras and equipment. And so I concluded that I needed to buy myself an awesome point-n-shoot camera.

I often take pictures in difficult conditions, such as a museum where a flash camera is prohibited. Or a concert, where I can't use a flash, the lighting is low, and the people on stage are in motion. Or with the zoom cranked up and focused on a distant subject. Taking good photos in these conditions, with a small lens camera and without a tripod is a challenge at best.

In comes the SD890. I was particularly excited about the SD890 because it is pocketable, yet it has awesome specifications: Image stabilization; a 5x zoom lens, and 10 megapixel resolution. When I bought the camera, I imagined that these features would help me take much better pictures in these less-than-ideal conditions.

My SD890, just out of the box - Lookin' great.

I bought my SD890 IS from NewEgg for about $350 (in April, 2008) [I have no affiliation with NewEgg]. If you poke around the web, you may be able to find it for less - but I'm not comfortable with some of the very low cost camera retailers out there - I've heard too many horror stories from my friends. Note that the SD890 IS is known as the IXUS970 IS in Europe and perhaps other places. [I don't know how Canon ended up with two names for many of their camera products - it is confusing and annoying.]

Why I purchased this camera

I recently had the opportunity to try out various compact point & shoot digital cameras in a low-light situation. I was taking snaps for various people who were on stage, and so I had about 12 cameras at my disposal and no ability to use a flash. Most of the cameras were fairly new.

The camera that I had the best experience with was the Canon SD800 IS - which took the best photos of all the point-and-shoots, despite the demanding situation. So I went online to buy one - and I discovered that it (and its predecessors) were mostly out of stock.

One day later, Canon announced the SD890 IS. I decided to buy it based on the specifications, as it seemed like a new and improved version of the SD800 that I loved so much.

The Basics

The SD890 is a comfortable, small point and shoot. It is a little bigger than the SD400 series, but is still conformable in a shirt or jacket pocket. In particular, it is a bit thicker between the LCD and the lens - likely due to the SD890's 5x zoom lens.

The SD890 has that 5x zoom and stabilization - features that I think are now required for a great point-and-shoot.

The SD890 also has a decent-sized LCD on the back panel, along with a small optical viewfinder (that I will almost never use).

The SD890 comes with all the basic components that are included with most digital cameras:

A small (32 MB) SD memory card. Out of the gate, my SD890 IS reports that it can store roughly 11 photos on the stock card or 18 seconds of video. Upping the resolution will merely reduce the number of photos you can store on the stock card. You WILL want a bigger memory card. If you shop around, you'll find that 2 GB and larger SD memory cards quite inexpensive these days.
A lithium-ion battery pack. This battery is a bit thicker than those of other Canon Elph's that I've owned. It took about two hours to charge the battery for the first time.
A battery charger. Of course, it can work with a range of voltages, from 100v to 240v.
A USB cable. Happily, of standard design. Replacements are readily available at very low cost.
An A/V cable, with (mono) audio and composite video RCA connectors. It is not a standard design - it plugs into the camera's USB port. But I'm unlikely to use the video cable - composite is so old-school. So no big deal to me, it'll stay in the box.
Canon's Digital Camera Solutions CD-ROM disk. Man, they're up to version 33.0! I didn't install this software yet - for now, I'm using iPhoto, which works automatically with this camera.
A user's guide and a software guide, in various languages.

Some important included stuff: cables, battery, and a dinky SD memory card.

I wish that all camera manufacturers would include some kind of felt sleeve for their new cameras - but the Canon doesn't include one. Nor does any other manufacturer that I know of.

Computer Compatibility

If you have a somewhat modern computer (less than 7 years old or so), you should have no problems. The stock software is compatible with Windows 2000 on forward, and Mac OS X from 10.3 (Panther) and beyond.

The camera is also very usable without using Canon's stock software. iPhoto and Picasa work great with the SD890.

The biggest problem you might run into is related to the picture size. 10 Megapixels is getting up there. I was quite happy with my 5 megapixel camera - a 10 megapixel camera suggests that I'll be using up twice as much disk storage with photos.

Out of the box, the SD890 is set on "Fine" mode, resulting in photos that are typically 2.5 MB in size. Of course, I prefer Superfine mode, which improves a photo's quality at the expense of disk size. In general, it seems like the Superfine mode results in photo that are, on average, 7 MB big.

If you have an older computer, you might want to either manage you photo collection a bit better, or get a larger hard disk. Very high capacity external drives are available for roughly $100. (And don't forget to back up your photo collection!)

Taking pictures

... but how does it do in practice? That's a great question. I have only taken a couple pictures so far, but I've been surprised by the quality of those pictures - they feel great. But I still need to do some side-by-side comparisons before I come to any firm conclusions. I will be updating this page frequently as I experiment with this new camera. Feel free to use the "comment" option (below) if you have any specific questions for me.

It can't sit down straight with the lens fully extended.

Next Steps
Now I'm off to a photo-taking session - I'll report back here in the next day or two to update you with how well the SD890 performs!

Update, 2-April-2008!

So far it's pretty awesome! I've gave the SD890 a 2GB SD card, and put the camera in "super-fine" mode. Resulting photos are roughtly 3-to-6 MB big, meaning that I can get about 454 photos per 2 GB card (that is according to the camera.)

I took some indoor shots (without flash). The camera did particularly well in these conditions. Although it told me that there was a call for the flash, I found that I could take great pictures with only a steady hand. Undoubtably the stabilization helped out. Of all the indoor shots I took, only one was truly bad... and that was because my subject was goofing around - certainly something that the camera cannot compensate around.

I also took some outdoor shots. Again, the camera performed well. I was in bright sun, but my subjects were in motion and I was using the 5x zoom - not always the easiest situation with a small camera. Again, the photos looked great.

Balloons, of course, taken with the SD890.

I also took some marco shots. There was a little distortion around the edges, but it was more than adequate for my basic needs. I could get the lens to focus at about 1.5 inches away from the subject (here, my SD400 rear panel)

Full frame macro shot example.

What I don't like (so far)

I don't like the rear LCD. It performs well, and it is a decent size with good brightness. But it almost stands out from the rear surface of the camera. That means when I lay the camera on a table, flat on it's back, it seems likely that the LCD will get scratched. YUK. I think I'll have to be very careful to avoid scratching up the rear LCD display. Perhaps a vinyl glass protector would work well here.

Verizon FiOS Electricity Use

2008-03-12T14:21:00.010-04:00

My house has Verizon FiOS. Part of the FiOS installation included the mounting of a Verizon network backup battery unit in the basement. I asked myself "how much electricity does this box use?"

Verizon FiOS: How much electricity does this cost me?

So I plugged in my awesome Kill-A-Watt electricity usage meter to find out.

My Kill-o-Watt watt meter reported that there was a 16 watt load on the circuit. And since Verizon's box is powered and plugged in 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, 16 watts would quickly add up to roughly 140 kilowatt hours per year:

calculation: 16 watts x 8760 hours per year ÷ 1000 = 140.16 KWH/Year

How much does 140 Kilowatt-hours cost in dollars and cents? Here's a table that shows how much that would cost per year based on recent residential electricity rates (source: DOE. State Electricity Profiles, 2006 Edition):

State	¢/KWH )	$/Year
Alabama	7.07	$9.91
Alaska	12.84	18.00
Arizona	8.24	11.55
Arkansas	6.99	9.80
California	12.82	17.97
Colorado	7.61	10.67
Connecticut	14.83	20.79
Delaware	10.13	14.20
Wash. DC	11.08	15.53
Florida	10.45	14.65
Georgia	7.63	10.69
Hawaii	20.72	29.04
Idaho	4.92	6.90
Illinois	7.07	9.91
Indiana	6.46	9.05
Iowa	7.01	9.83
Kansas	6.89	9.66
Kentucky	5.43	7.61
Louisiana	8.3	11.63
Maine	11.8	16.54
Maryland	9.95	13.95
Massachusetts	15.45	21.65
Michigan	8.14	11.41
Minnesota	6.98	9.78
Mississippi	8.33	11.68
Missouri	6.3	8.83
Montana	6.91	9.69
Nebraska	6.07	8.51
Nevada	9.63	13.50
New Hampshire	13.84	19.40
New Jersey	11.88	16.65
New Mexico	7.37	10.33
New York	15.27	21.40
North Carolina	7.53	10.55
North Dakota	6.21	8.70
Ohio	7.71	10.81
Oklahoma	7.3	10.23
Oregon	6.53	9.15
Pennsylvania	8.68	12.17
Rhode Island	13.98	19.59
South Carolina	6.98	9.78
South Dakota	6.7	9.39
Tennessee	6.97	9.77
Texas	10.34	14.49
Utah	5.99	8.40
Vermont	11.37	15.94
Virginia	6.86	9.61
Washington	6.14	8.61
West Virginia	5.04	7.06
Wisconsin	8.13	11.40
Wyoming	5.27	7.39

Remember it is possible that the load put on the battery box circuit changes over time, and that your battery box may be different than the one in my house. Also note that this analysis doesn't include a FiOS router or your TV converter boxes. I can imagine that they each consume similar amounts of electricity, but more analysis would be necessary to find out.

The MacBook Air, 3G and the Internet

2008-01-30T12:15:00.000-05:00

I've been reading a lot about how Apple "screwed up" the MacBook Air because it didn't include a "3G mobile phone modem".

The idea that Apple should have included a 3G chipset is, of course, stupid.

Just about every modern 3G handset out there can operate as a 3G modem for wireless internet. A handset can be connected to the MacBook Air via either USB or Bluetooth, automatically giving any Mac full wireless internet capabilities - over the cell phone network, without WiFi.

So what are the pundits talking about? They're talking about the purpose built modem plans and cards that are sold by the mobile service providers. Of course, these cards exist just because many older laptops didn't have bluetooth. These purpose-built 3G cards are effectively obsolete. These power-hungry, service-dependent cards are still being sold because they work adequately well with old computers. But given modern handsets and bluetooth, the old cards won't be around much longer.

So, why are the pundits still talking about baking a 3G interface into the MacBook Air? Because they either own one of these cards, or they think these cards are "cool". But what they don't realize is that they're obsolete technology.

MacBook Air features in the MacBook Pro?

2008-01-21T08:20:00.000-05:00

Now that the MacBook Air has been revealed, many are curious about what's next.

The MacBook and the Mac Mini continue to be lower-cost winners for Apple and their customers. It isn't costing Apple much to keep these designs around, and they continue to sell well. I don't suspect that Apple will substantially change these machines until Intel releases a compelling alternative to the Core 2 Duo platform.

The MacBook Pro is also a winner, but its basic design has been around since about 2003. I suspect that the MacBook Pro will have a substantial redesign in mid-to-late 2008.

Does the MacBook Air reveal the roadmap for the Pro?

It's time for an update, and Apple's recent products should give us a hint of where its going: Thin and Gorgeous.

Apple's most recent new products, the Nano, Touch, and Air, all follow that attractive theme. Products that don't fit that mold are clearly yesterday's designs. Apple's flagship notebook line no longer fits the future.

The MacBook Pro is a pretty device, but now it's boxy and dated. But it remains quite capable: a recent report concluded that the MacBook Pro runs Vista faster than any other notebook.

How Apple could update the MacBook Pro line is fairly clear: The new Core 2 chipset used in the Air requires less space, less power, and less cooling. Using this class of chipset in the Pro series will permit it to be substantially smaller. I expect a 15" and a 17" Pro that is substantially thinner and lighter than the current series. Being a "Pro", I expect Apple to retain all of the ports and features of the Pro series. Except one....

Internal optical drives: Deprecated, or obsolete?

The big question is: will Apple keep the optical drive in the Pro? An optical drive adds a lot of volume and weight. It reduces battery life. An optical drive reduces the overall reliability of the machine. And with BluRay, optical drive technology is in flux. Given all that, Apple may conclude that the lack of the internal optical drive will make the Pro an even better platform.

Other Air features for the entire Notebook line

The Air also points us to other new features. A new Magsafe connector and micro DVI connector are well suited to thin platforms. I suspect that Apple will commonize these interfaces on their product lines to simplify the customer experience, and to reduce the number of dongles and adapters they need to stock. And for the same space saving reasons, Apple may switch to the small 4-pin FireWire interface, as seen on numerous laptops, as it is both common and small.

Conclusion

The Nano and Air shows us that Apple is being aggressive in terms of design. The MBA is a compete rethink of notebook design. Many of these lessons learned should find their way into the MacBook Pro as Apple redefines the high-end notebook computer market.

Why the MacBook Air sucks

2008-01-17T17:14:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of PC Magazine, here are thirteen reasons why the MacBook Air sucks.

1. $999 SSD option.

Crazy-but-true, the 64 GB solid state "disk drive" option costs $999. I'm sure I could buy a 64+ GB solid state drive for much less. Although I haven't shopped for one, they should cost about $200, right? So Apple, why $999?

2. No Vista

That's right, you buy this thing for $1799 (or more), and it doesn't come with the ultimate Vista - a $600 afterthought? If I want to spend money on a laptop, PLEASE include the Ultimate!

3. No MS-Office

Again, you buy this thing, you can't even edit MS-Word documents - its an extra piece of software that wasn't included!!! This is getting painful!

4. No replaceable battery.

My Olympus digicam used readily-available AA batteries. This thing uses a built-in weirdo battery.... that can't be replaced by normal users! What's the deal??? I want to use AA batteries, so if my battery runs dead on the airplane, I can just pop in new ones from my camera!

5. Almost zero ports

Sure, it has USB2 port, but it only has one. And I hate hubs! Also, there is no Ethernet - what if I want to plug it into a Hotel network? And no FireWire! Totally lame!

6. Too thin.

It looks too thin. I want a little workout with a laptop. This thing will get lost or broken. Give me my IBM T21 any day.

7. Too expensive and attractive.

A Dell laptop can easily be found for under $1200. This one, the lowest end version, is $1799! Can you say "high profit"? And knowing Apple, they'll likely drop the price like a rock soon, just like they did with the iPhone. And it will be stolen or scratched. That'll really blow.

8. No OS9 support.

Everyone remembers how awesome OS9 was... but it won't run on this Mac! The only reason for a Mac is to run OS9 applications like Hypercard and IE5. Now it is an impossibility.

9. No audio in

This blows. There is no way to get audio into this thing. How am I going to rip LPs with this??? And Bluetooth? That'll never take off.

10. No 3G support

Yep, this one isn't compatible with Verizon. It doesn't even have analogue backup.

11. Not enough RAM

Everyone knows that 2 GB isn't enough these days. This is a huge limitation that will prevent work from being done. That's why business would never go with the Mac - 2 GB just isn't enough - a serious business always goes with at least 4 GB of RAM on desktops.

12. Not upgradeable

My desktop PC has 5 - count them - 5 PCI slots, plus a parallel port, floppy drive, and three DVD burners. This one has just one USB2 port. HA! It has zero memory slots, and no IDE ports. There isn't even a port for a Centronics printer! At least they finally unloaded Firewire.

13. Too big.

A 13-inch "small" notebook? PLEASE! I want a small laptop like the 10 inch Sony Vaio, not a huge ship anchor! Apple, PLEASE make a small laptop, under 2 pounds.

Conclusion
Clearly, as I and other industry experts have shown, the MacBook Air is fatally flawed. I'm sure other trade magazines will agree that the PC industry is going in the exact opposite direction, and for good reason - Vista deserves a Power Platform.

I'll let you know when my MacBook Air comes in.

MacBook Air Disassembled

2008-01-17T14:54:00.002-05:00

Now what we've all been waiting for is a full disassembly of the MacBook Air. How take-apart -able is the MacBook Air? Is there a good opportunity for Apple to upgrade the RAM to a full 4 GB? Is it possible to swap-out the HDD with a larger capacity model, or with a non-standard SSD? And how easy is it for a user to replace the battery?

Fixing my Bent and Warped PowerBook

2008-01-17T14:45:00.002-05:00

My 12" PowerBook G4 developed a little warp or bend so that it didn't sit flat any more. It would wobble on a desk as I typed - annoying! It all happened when I dropped it on the front corner, distorting the case.

A straight edge on the front palm rest clearly showed the bend.

To fix it, I removed the battery and put some slight pressure on the corner, reforming it into its original shape. Then I used a couple small vice grips, covered in cloth, to reform the case, trying to work out the dent "in reverse order in which it was created".

This process is much like how a body shop repairs a dented fender.

The repair looks great - it isn't 100% perfect, but close to it. Now it looks great AND it sits nice and flat on my desktop. And I didn't need to buy a whole new case.

A Free Internet Backup Service

2007-12-27T21:47:00.000-05:00

For years I've had an RSYNC backup solution for my immediate family's computers. Each computer would perform a remote RSYNC over SSH to my home Linux box on a daily basis. It worked great, but it was a pain in the butt for a few reasons:

Lots of parts to maintain.
A lack of on-disk encryption.
No easy restoration process.
Required me to have a server powered up all the time.

Recently, I stumbled upon a Mac and Windows internet backup solution for the grand price of Free. It's called Mozzy Home, and its pretty darn good for the following reasons:

It's free for the first 2 GB of storage
It supports encryption - Mozy can't even see your file content (but it does appear that they can see your filenames and directory structure)
It is super easy to set up
The client software is pretty good, and supports easy restores.

You can get a free Mozy Home account here (shameless referral code attached):

https://mozy.com/registration/free

The biggest limitation with the (free) Mozy Home is the 2 GB limit. But for about $5 a month, you can back up an unlimited amount of storage - that's a lot!

Now I was thinking "Cool, now I can back up the terabytes of storage of my work server for $60 bucks a year". Um, no. The license doesn't seem to allow for that kind of use... and for good reason - crazy customers would likely swamp them with "unlimited" data. For professional use, you have to go for their "Pro" plan, which, sadly, fails to support pro-class platforms such as Unix, Linux, or even Mac OS.

So although Mozy isn't my option for the corporate servers I'm responsible for, it is a fine solution for Windows and Macintosh home computers. It greatly simplifies my Family Technical Support responsibilities, and I won't have to discuss the difficultly of data recovery when a drive crashes.

Porsche Key Remote Battery Repair Video How-To

2007-12-27T17:56:00.003-05:00

We now live in the age where part of life is spending time and money maintaining and repairing things like your car keys.

My Porsche's remote key was getting weaker and weaker, until one day it stopped operating altogether. Keyless remote without the remoteness. Not so good.

I was a bit fearful spending a sizable chunk of my time at the dealership to have such a small problem addressed, and so I decided that I would try to replace the batterymyself.

The following video guide shows you how to successfully open up the key and replace the alarm remote battery.

Items required:

A clear work surface
A small blade-type screw driver
A quality CR-2032 Battery

Nothing feels better than a $5 Porsche repair.

CFL Globes: Good and Bad

2007-12-27T16:18:00.001-05:00

Some Globe-style CFLs are sucky.

As you know from reading my blog, I'm a fan of not throwing away my hard-earned cash. So it was obvious for me to replace my incandescent bulbs with much more efficient CFL bulbs. My conversion saved me quite a bit of money, but there was one trouble-spot: the CFL globes I installed in the bathroom.

I have one of those old-fashioned bar fixtures in the bathroom, designed for a set of three exposed globe-style bulbs, and so only globe style bulbs would look right in the fixture. I use my bathroom quite a bit, and the fixture with incandescent bulbs would normally require 180 watts to power (3 bulbs @ 60 watts each). Replacing them with CFLs seemed like an easy target for reducing electricity costs. "No problem!" I thought, since globe CFLs are readily available in retail stores.

My 1980's Style Bathroom Light Bar with Globe CFLs.
GE CFL in the center, Sylvanias on each side.

I bought a set of three 14 Watt "Commercial Electric" globe CFLs from Home Depot (I think). Sadly, they had a long startup time - much like the CFL bulbs of yesteryear. I would go into the bathroom, flip on the switch, and wait in the dim light for a minute or more. It all came to a head when guests arrived - they complained that the bathroom lights weren't working. I told them to "hold it" for another minute while the bulbs warmed up. Embarrassing. Soon after, one of those globes failed - my one and only CFL failure.

I considered swapping out the fixture for a more modern one (that doesn't use all the tacky globe bulbs), but since I live in an apartment and don't want to make investments on my landlord's behalf, I decided to stick with the old-fashioned fixture.

I went back to the store (Lowe's?) and bought a set of three 9 watt Sylvania globe CFLs. I figured that a brand like Sylvania would operate more to my satisfaction, but I was wrong. The Sylvania globes were even slower in terms of startup. As a fix, I ended up swapping out the center CFL with a 25-watt incandescent globe in order to provide enough light at startup, and then after a minute or so the Sylvania globes would catch up and surpass the brightness of the 25 watter. Finally, my bathroom lighting was adequate, with two crusty CFL globes and one incandescent globe.

It all came to an end this week, when the incandecent blew out after a pitiful 3 months of use. So I went back to the store to buy a replacement. I found a GE CFL globe at Target, rated at 15 watts. I decided to give it a try, and plunked down $6 for the bulb (versus $2 for a short-life incandecent globe).

I placed the GE globe in the middle position of the fixture, again to give suitable light while the slow Sylvanias warm up. And to my glee, the GE gets bright very quickly. It takes less than a second for it to fire up, and almost immediately delivers full brightness. And that will make my bathroom experience all that much better, with a total consumption of about 33 watts - a reduction of almost 150 watts.

I could replace the two remaining Sylvania globes with GE globes, but now that I have plenty of light, I'll keep my bathroom lighting in its current configuration.

Conclusion and Recommendation

If you're buying globe-style CFLs, I recommend that you try the GE globes. I haven't had good luck with the other globe-style CFLs I've tried.

Other than globes, I've had great luck with CFLs. I haven't had a single issue with a "twist" or capsule CFLs, regardless of brand.

If you have other experiences or helpful hints, feel free to comment.

Electricity Usage Update: 12% reduction

2007-10-26T21:30:00.000-04:00

I reduced my electricity consumption by 12% this year (2007) versus last year (2006). I consumed an average of 110 KWH of electricity per month during 2007, as shown on the chart below:

Now that I've done all the cheap and easy things to reduce consumption, and so I don't know if I can save so much more next year. I've done everything I could easily pursue, including:

replacing old fashioned light bulbs with CFLs
turning of my computer equipment, lights, and other stuff when it's not in active use
reducing equipment that consumes lots when doing nothing (such as my old VCR)
adjusting my fridge properly

So, any ideas of what else I can do? Since I live in an apartment, I can't readily upgrade my fridge (which averages around 50 watts). I could buy a new LCD TV, but I'm not much of a TV watcher so that doesn't seem like it'd be a good move.

Why do clock radios suck?

2007-09-29T07:27:00.000-04:00

Most people keep a clock radio within a few feet of their head for nearly a third of their life. A clock radio tells people when to wake up hundreds of time a year. So then why do most clock radios sold in the US suck?

They all seem to have crappy buttons, an even crappier tuner, and in short, have failed to go through any substantial technology update since the advent of the LED clock - over 25 years ago.

Why can't now be the dawning of the age of the modern clock radio?

Here's what I'm looking for in a clock radio:

Large, adjustable-brightness display.
Digital tuning, with presets.
Automatic clock setting.
RDS - Radio Data Service.
Very low power consumption.
Excellent battery backup.
Reasonable price.
Decent buttons and switches.

These "requirements" aren't some sort of crazy dream - many very small, low cost devices have some of these features.

The Yamaha DD-65 and YDD-60 Digital Drums

2007-08-10T21:37:00.001-04:00

Almost everyone I know who is into drums should get their hands on the Yamaha DD65. It's a low cost, fun little kit that you can throw in your car to jam with your buddies. It's a lot easier than throwing your gear in your Subaru.

The DD-65, also known as the YDD-60. Eight pads in a pretty package.

I've owned the older, venerable DD-55 for about five years. The DD-55 is the ancestor of the newer DD-65, and is an evolution of the DD-50, which was first released some time in the mid 1990s.

I just put my DD-55 on this light snare drum stand it's ready for some jamming.

The classic DD-55. Seven pads of rockin' fun, since about 2001.

Yes, everyone will tell you that the DD-55 isn't actually a real drum kit. No kidding. However, a skilled drummer can get some great sound out of this little box, and you can definitely keep the band together with it. Plus, it's perfect for apartment living.

The Mac Mini Discontinued?

2007-07-24T22:52:00.000-04:00

There are rumors that the Mac Mini is going to be discontinued. I disagree. Instead, I think it will evolve by being merged in with the Apple TV product. Of course, I don't work for Apple, so I have no idea if my plan is workable. But I do think that it is a possibility, as it considers:

Leveraging current engineering projects
Reducing manufacturing costs
Simplifying the product line
Staying reasonable in terms of product costs

Here's my thought of how I would converge the Apple TV and Mac Mini concept into one compelling product:

Stick the guts of a MacBook into an Apple TV sized case
Drop out the LCD, the battery, the keyboard, the DVD
Drop in a (cheaper, bigger) 3.5 inch HDD drive, in lieu of a 2.5" notebook drive.
Add various Video Out options
Provide a standard MacBook power brick

Now you've got a fully capable computer - a computer as powerful as a MacBook - that basically cost nothing to engineer (other than reboxing the thing). You still have a computer that is essentially a MacBook, but it just doesn't have all the expensive components of a notebook computer.

Of course, this computer has USB, Firewire, Bluetooth and 802.11. So there are no limitations in terms of adding peripherals or storage. Need a DVD? USB or Firewire is there. Plus, this device would have two video-outs. With suitable dongles, you can send video over HDMI, DVI, Component, VGA, and even S-Video and Composite.

Conclusion

I agree that both the Apple TV and the Mac Mini aren't going to be around for much longer - in their current form. But I think its because they are evolving back into a more capable computer that could leverage Apple's pre-existing efforts.

A tip of my hat for the new Roomba

2007-07-14T06:40:00.000-04:00

I really hate vacuuming, and so I vacuum as little as possible. However, in contrast to my hate of vacuuming, I love a clean house. And so I either find myself vacuuming (yuk), or living in a not-so-clean house (yuk).

So to reduce my emotional distress related to vacuuming, I recently bought a Roomba. Here are my impressions and some tips:

Efficacy of the Roomba

The Roomba certainly keeps my floors clean. I'll still have to get out the traditional vacuum to clean the moldings, window sills, and some tricky spots (like behind my desk), but the bulk of my vacuuming effort has gone away.

The Roomba is not nearly as fast as the local cleaning service - but it does do a good job of covering all accessible floor surfaces. My routine: I get up in the morning, and just before I leave for work, I ask the Roomba to vacuum a particular room in my house. By the time I get home, the room's floor has been cleaned and Roomba has recharged itself.

The Roomba can miss some pockets of dirt. But since I have the Roomba working just about every day, it eventually gets just about everything.

You and your dirty, dirty dustbin

If you have a dirty floor, the Roomba's dustbin can fill up quite rapidly. I recommend that you empty the dustbin after each run until you understand how quickly it fills.

Roomba Power Consumption and Considerations

My Roomba has the very neat-and-cool "Home Base" dock. When the Roomba is tired (low on battery power), it searches for the dock and plugs itself in.

I hooked my watt meter up to the Home Base. When the Roomba is charging (amber light pulsing), Roomba-in-dock consumes about 30 watts. Once the Roomba is fully charged (green light), Roomba-in-dock consumes about 5 watts. When the Roomba is out of the dock, and presumably vacuuming, the home base consumes about 3 watts.

My Roomba came with a metal nickel hydride battery - a battery type that is much more environmentally sound than the nickel cadmium batteries used in many other consumer electronics. It should still be properly recycled after it's exhausted (many years from now, I hope), but at least it has less toxic chemicals inside.

Roomba the Martyr

One of my sofas has just enough clearance for the Roomba to scoot under, which is nice because Roomba can vacuum under it. But, sadly, this sofa is quite old and not so plumb... and so Roomba can get wedged under it. Further compounding the situation, the sofa has very sharp staples sticking out of the bottom, resulting in a scarred up Roomba.

Roomba senses objects (like tables and walls) by bouncing into them. And so my Roomba quickly developed "bump marks" on it's front bumper - mostly white paint from my mouldings. I haven't noticed any Roomba-generated damage, but Roomba itself is quickly looking marred up.

Roomba has sacrificed its beauty for me. In return, I feed it dirt and electricity, and shovel out its dust bin.

Prius owners and Biofuel users beware!

2007-07-08T12:42:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry to say that driving a Prius or making your own biofuel doesn't make you "green". These things might make you feel good, and they might reduce the world's energy consumption by a few BTUs.

But you can be very "green" by spending NO money at all.

I'm not anti-Prius, and I'm not against biofuel. In fact, I think they're both cool. And I'm certainly not an environmental wacko. I'm just a pragmatist.

In the end, reducing your purchases, investing money wisely (say, in a new fridge or in CFL bulbs), and recouping money on your prior expenditures is, in the end, a very green strategy that can help minimize your negative impact on the environment.

And now, the six most important environmental tips you've been waiting for!...

Buy less new stuff. The stuff you buy requires substantial energy and materials to produce, package, and ship. The less crap you buy, the better for the environment. Remember that factories require a lot of energy and materials, and produce a lot of waste. Almost everything you buy comes from some sort of a factory.
Need something? Then buy used stuff on eBay or Craigslist or at the neighborhood tag sale. In a sense, used stuff costs nothing to produce. Sell or give away all of the stuff you don't use any more - the reuse of your old stuff slows down the amount of new stuff other people have to buy. Sell that old iPod that's in the drawer, make a kid happy, and make some money.
Share your stuff. Share gardening tools with neighbors. Give your magazines to your friends at work. Use the public library. Minimize the amount of idle stuff in "storage". Airlines are experts at making the most efficient use of the airplanes they have so that they can minimize the number of airplanes they need to buy. Imagine doing that with your stuff within your neighborhood.
Fix "broken" stuff. Fix it yourself, or give it to someone who can.
Live in a smaller building. Or, live in a multi-family building. If you have extra room in your house, think about renting it out for storage or whatever. If you have a spare garage bay, rent it to the neighbor for his MG (or whatever) - it's money in your pocket, and it means that your neighbor won't have to build a new garage bay that requires a lot of energy and materials to make.
Try not to throw out stuff. Donate away things you don't need. Everything that goes in the trash or down the drain is basically environmental waste. The easiest way to reduce your waste is to not buy junk, or to give the stuff you don't want to those who can use it. Goodwill, the Salvation Army, and other places that accept your used stuff.

Of course, I still consume energy and throw stuff out. But my goal is to minimize.

In the end, being green isn't always easy to see. A good kitchen dishwasher can be more green than washing dishes by hand. The purchase of a brand new fridge is more green than keeping a 15 year old fridge. 50 households hiring a lawn service can be more green than 50 households with 50 lawn mowers.

To the Prius owners and Biofuel fiends - you've made an investment in a great technology. Just remember that there is much more to being green than driving an efficient car or burning waste oil.

CFLs and outdoor timers

2007-06-20T15:57:00.001-04:00

For the longest time I used incandescent light bulbs on my outdoor light fixtures, primarily because I had a rather ugly looking timer that only supported incandescent bulbs. I'm totally dumbfounded why retailers and manufacturers seem to focus on electrical products that don't support fluorescent lighting, but that's another story.

So I have looked high and low for a timer that met my "simple" requirements:

wall-mountable, programmable timer
decent looking (or at least not butt-ugly)
compatible with CFLs
not insanely expensive

I went to Home Depot, Lowes, and the little neighborhood hardware store without finding anything that met my simple requirements.

Happily, I can announce that I found a decent programmable timer that met all my requirements: It's the Swylite LST100. They don't seem to be available in many traditional retail stores.

It works great, and it looks awesome. It was easy to install, and I've had no issues with it. Now I can save some major energy bucks by using CFLs in my outdoor sconces and lamppost.

The best part of all: its clock remembers the time after a power failure! No more clock resetting! Woohoo! In your face, my old Intermic timer!

My Swylite LT100 timer, as installed by LanceJ.

Ripping CDs Quickly

2007-06-13T13:27:00.000-04:00

My cheap-but-effective CD-ROM Unit

I decided to re-rip my CD collection in a lossless format. Happily, my new ripping experience was fast and reliable.

During my last ripping exercise, I used Linux as my OS of choice, and I ripped to MP3. The experience was mostly excellent. But due to a hard disk failure, I decided to re-rip one more time - this time, to a lossless format.

I chose the Apple Lossless format - a well-supported and efficient format. One beauty of a lossless format is that the data can be converted into another lossless format without any loss of quality - just in case audio file formats change in the future. I also considered using FLAC lossless, which I believe would have been another excellent choice.

My hardware: I used my Mac Mini, along with four inexpensive CD-ROM drives attached via IDE-to-USB adapters. This allowed me to rip four discs in parallel, greatly increasing my ripping performance. I suppose I could have hooked up more drives, but I only had four adapters readily available. USB to IDE adapters are very inexpensive, and can be easily found on services like eBay for under $10.

For software, I used "Max", an excellent, well-integrated audio conversion tool. Unlike iTunes, Max can rip several discs in parallel. In contrast, iTunes rips serially - only one disc at a time.

Now, my CDs are going back into the storage room, hopefully to never see the light of day.

Who is at phone number 10000123456?

2007-06-04T15:21:00.000-04:00

Today, while walking my dog, my telephone started to ring - but I hesitated answering, because I didn't recognize the weird phone number:

10000123456

Do you want to know who is at the strange phone number of 10000123456?

Well, it turned out to be my friend Milo, calling me through a computer via the pretty awesome Skype service! So remember, if you see the number 1-000-012-3456 or "1 000 012 3456" or similar, you might want to answer - it could be very important, and not a random sales pitch!

Putting photos on a map using GPS

2007-05-27T10:08:00.000-04:00

I was planning to go on vacation to Yosemite, and I got it in my head that I'd like to be able to build a map of where my photos were taken. It turns out to be shockingly easy.

Hardware Required

A digital camera. I have a Canon SD400. Almost any digital camera will do.
A handheld GPS. I have a Garmin eTrex Vista Cx, but almost any GPS with data export capabilities will suffice.

Figure 1: GPS data plus Digital Photos can produce JPEG photos with location data and KML files for Google Maps or Google Earth.

From the camera's vantage point: Photos with EXIF data

A digital camera often stores the date and time within the photo. The camera also stores tons of other chunks of data within the photo: the camera model, shutter speed, zoom settings, and numerous other parameters. This data is stored inside the JPEG file using a standard called EXIF, and just about every modern digital camera supports this format.

From the GPS angle: Track points

While your GPS is on, it is collecting data about where you are. Every few seconds your GPS notes its latitude, longitude, and altitude, and stores this data within memory along with the current time and perhaps some other data. Each position/time stamp record is called a "track point", and the collection of all track points is called the "track log".

Your GPS's track log can hold a finite number of track points. My Vista Cx can store us to 10,000 track points within its track log. Some GPS units record a point every 1 second, while other GPS units record a point every time you've moved away from your current location. Sometimes the GPS uses a hybrid strategy.

Using a computer, it is possible to pull the track data off of the GPS and store it in a file.

The Merge
The way to building Geolocated photos is to merge GPS track points with a photo's EXIF timestamp. If your photo is dated "January 15th, 2007 at 09:30 AM", all you have to do is look up that time within your track log to find out exactly where the picture was taken.

You can then modify the photo's EXIF data to including latitude/longitude data.

Figure 2: EXIF data, augmented with position data.

Doing this once by hand sounds fun, but it could become tedious if you had dozens (or hundreds) of photos. And so therefore, software has been created that easily does this match/merge process for you. This software will modify the EXIF data for all your photos, given a collection of GPX files.

Using geodata

OK, so now you have a wonderful collection of data: Photos with location data, and tracklogs of where you've been. How can you use it?

Some software
I used GPSBabel to extract the track data from my Garmin Vista Cx GPS into the standards GPX data format.

I used GPSPhotoLinker to merge the track data into my photos. The program loads track logs and photos, and then updates the EXIF data in the photos with the location data plucked out of the track log. It took about 20 minutes to process about 400 photos.

I discovered that JetPhoto Studio can be used to create KML and KMZ files from my collection of photos. JetPhoto Studio also appears to be able to merge GPX files with photos, but I haven't tried that feature yet.

I used Google Earth to view my GPX, KML, and KMZ files.

I also used Google Maps to allow others to easily view my GPX, KML, and KMZ files over the web.

Mac USB Parallel printer adapters

2007-05-17T07:21:00.002-04:00

Now I am able to use my old HP LaserJet printer like a champ with Mac OS X - by using a low cost USB parallel printer adapter and a little bit of magic software.

USB to Parallel adapters are inexpensive little adapters (generally under $20) that allow you to connect a printer using the old "parallel" connector standard over USB. There are generally two kinds of parallel interfaces on a printer: Either the 36-pin Centronics-style connector, or the 25-pin D-shaped printer connector. My HP used the bulkier 36-pin connector, so I bought an adapter with that style connector.

The low-cost USB-to-Parallel adapter I use with my Mac

But it all wasn't as easy as it should have been - even though I pluged it all together, my USB to Parallel adapter would either lock up after a single print job, or it wouldn't be detected by the Mac at all. I suffered with the situation for months, and even imagined purchasing a more modern printer. But perseverance paid off - I got it all to work by installing a simple printing package.

My solution to this problem was to install USBTB. This alternative printer backend for Mac OS X now lets me use my "USB to Parallel" adapter reliably, and with zero fuss. [And USBTB has worked wonderfully under many OS versions: Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard.]

USBTB detected my printer model right away. I just selected my
printer's driver and within 30 seconds I was printing my thesis!

Those old Centronics connectors are no longer a reason to throw out an otherwise reliable workhorse printer. Owners of those solid older laser printers now have a reason to rejoice!

Update: 6-Feb-2010

Another great option is to use a low-cost Parallel to Ethernet "print server", as noted here.

How much energy do YOU use?

2007-03-31T13:45:00.000-04:00

Ever since my electricity savings kick, which started in October 2003, I have saved in a big way. In fact, I once used 170% more electricity than I do now. Here's a plot of my actual consumption:

In 2001, the per-capita home electricity consumption rate for electricity in my state was 2,816 kWh per year - a number I managed to exceed by about 10% back then. This year I'm running at about 1,260 kWh per year - less than half of the average person. As always, there is room to improve.

Thermostat Installation

2006-11-12T13:33:00.000-05:00

My apartment isn't mine, but I pay for the heat... and heat has been getting expensive! So I decided I needed to do something to reduce my heating bills.

Many claim that the easiest way to save money on heat is to install a "set-back" thermostat. After confering with my landlord, I went on a mission to replace my apartment's thermostat.

The Original Honeywell Thermostat

The original thermostat was a basic round Honeywell unit found in about a zillion households. It worked, but it was completely manual. A timer-type thermostat is promised to save me lots of money on my heating bills. I went to the local hardware store and purchased a Ritetemp 8030c for about $50. It came with a rebate of $25, so in all it only cost me about $25. But installation of a thermostat is pretty pricey, so I decided to save some money and do it myself.

Removing the Original Thermostat

The first order of business was to remove the old thermostat. I turned off the power to the furnace and popped off old thermostat's bezel. Under the bezel were three small screws that I took out with a small screwdriver.

Removing the screws of the thermostat.

With the screws removed, the thermostat easily came off of it's backing plate. The thermostat control wires attach to the plate, and the plate is screwed to the wall. From there, I removed the plate from the wall, leaving the two wires still attached.

The backing plate has the two wires attached.

After detaching the plate from the wall, I tied a long string to the wire bundle to prevent the wires from slipping into the wall. This is pretty important - it stinks to have your wiring slipped into the wall, because it can be very tricky and complicated to get them back out.

The backing plate, with wire, detached from the wall.

The thermostat control wires were attached to two named screw terminals on the backing plate. One wire was attached to a screw terminal labelled "R", the other wire was attached to terminal "W". I detached the wires using my screwdriver, and labelling them with masking tape. Then I slipped the Ritetemp's backing plate over the wires, in preperation for attaching the wires.

Labelled wires passing through the Ritetemp backing plate

I attached the thermostat wires to the correct terminals of the backing plate. I made sure that the wires were firmly attached to their terminal. Finally, I screwed the Ritetemp's backing plate to the wall, and tested it all out. I set the heat up high and watched the thermostat in action.

Installed Thermostat

Next Time

Next time, I'll let you know how much energy, if anything, I've saved by installing the new thermostat.

Reducing Electric Bills revisited

2006-10-29T13:18:00.000-05:00

It's been more than a year since I've posted about techniques for reducing your electricity bill. At that time I promised that I'd let you know how much electricity I've saved.

My monthly average consumption has gone from a peak of 283 KWH/Month in 2003, down to 131 KWH/Month - a reduction of almost 55%!

The techniques I used for cutting my electric consumption by 55% are:

Replaced traditional lightbulbs with CFL bulbs.
Turn off lights, appliances, and equipment when not in active use.
Set my refrigerator to about 38 degrees F, and the freezer to 5 degrees F
Turned off the useless "anti-sweat" feature of my refrigerator
Run dish washer and wash clothes only when the load is full - and when they don't have to compete with the airconditioner (or can assist in heating)
Only run the air conditioner and fans when someone is home.

... and that's it! It was that easy - no pain, lots of gain. I notice that my consumption continues to fall - I'll provide another update at the end of 2007!

PC Electricity Consumption

2006-03-14T06:52:00.001-05:00

With electricity quickly approaching $2 per watt per year, leaving a computer powered is a very expensive proposition. I found that I could power down my PC and save over $100 per year.

Here's how to accurately estimate how much your computers cost to operate.

Calculating Costs

In order to calculate the cost, I first calculated my total cost per watt per year. With my recent electric bill in hand, I used the following formula:

$ per Watt-Year = (bill's $amount) ÷ (bill's KWH) × 8.766

Given the following calculation, my electricity rate is a staggering $1.51 per watt-year:

$30.29 ÷ 176 KWh × 8.766 = $1.51

With this watt-year value, it's easy to accurately estimate how much your computer (or clock radio or refrigerator) costs per year.

Computer Cost per Year of Operation

	Mac Mini	PowerBook	iMac G4	iMac G5	eMac 700	WinPC
On	19 [$25]	14 [$18]	38 [$50]	58 [$76]	91 [$120]	108 [$142]
Sleep mode	2	2	6	4	7	55
Off	1	1	2	1	3	4
DVD View	24	22	53	74	107	115
DVD Rip	37	32	64	72	127	128
Brick Only	0	0	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a

Impact on Air Conditioning
The above chart represents only the power that the PCs consume. But in the warmer months, the heat generated by a computer (or any other in-home electrical device) generates heat that needs to be removed by an air conditioner. This is simple thermodynamics.

An optimistic rule of thumb is that it takes 1/3rd of a watt of electricity for your new, very high efficiency air conditioner to cool (remove) the heat generated by a 1 watt device.

Additional AC watts = (watts consumed by device) ÷ 3

So, for example, let's say you're using a PC and a monitor that consume about 200 watts of electricity. Practically, all of those 200 watts are released as heat into the room. How many watts "harder" does your AC have to work to remove the heat released by the computer system?

66 watts = (200 watt PC w/ Monitor) ÷ 3

So that 200 watt computer/monitor combo releases enough heat so that your AC unit needs to consume an additional 66 watts of electricity to keep the room cool. This is starting to add up! Leaving your 200 watt computer on is actually costing you 266 watts in the summer months!

Impact on heating
There is some good news - the heat that your computer generates does help heat your home in the colder months, reducing the amount of heat that your heating system needs to generate. There is only one drawback - a computer is an inefficient heater compared to a typical home heating system - a heat pump or a fueled furnace is a much more cost effective way to produce heat. The savings related to "heating-by-computer" is highly variable, based on the type and efficiency of the heating system you have, plus the cost of the fuel you're using. Here are some estimated adjustments based on high efficiency heating systems of various types:

Natural Gas: adjusted watts = watts consumed × 0.65
Oil Furnace: adjusted watts = watts consumed × 0.54
Heat Pump..: adjusted watts = watts consumed × 0.50

So in those bitter cold months when your home heating system is running, and assuming you're using a high efficiency gas furnace, our example 200 watt computer system is only "costing you in dollars" the equivalent of 130 watts of electricity, because your saving 70 watts in "home heating value". These calculations are highly dependent on commodity energy prices and the efficiency of your home heating system.

[The above adjustment calculations are based on the cost of generating heat in a residential heating system as follows:

High efficincy gas furnace (97% efficient, $1.55 per therm)
High efficiency oil furnace (89% efficient, $2.50 per gallon)
Electric Heat Pump (effective 200% efficient, 15¢ per KWh)
Electricity: (100% efficient, 15¢ per KWh)

Your heating system may have different efficiency properties, and fuel rates can fluctuate wildly. Although electricity isn't really 100% efficient considering generation and transmission losses, for the purposes of these cost comparisons, 100% efficiency is correct. Similarly, there is energy expended to move gas and oil from their source, but again, we attempting an apples-to-apples comparison of home heating costs by focusing on the almighty dollar, not source-to-consumer energy efficiency.]

Computer Details for the above chart

Mini	An Intel-based Mac Mini, 1.66 GHz dual core CPU, wireless on, bluetooth on.
PowerBook	A 12" G4 PowerBook, 1.5 GHz CPU, wireless on, bluetooth on, screen fully dimmed, fully charged
iMac G4	A 17" iMac G4, 1.0 GHz CPU, no wireless or bluetooth, screen at normal brightness
iMac G5	A 17" iMac G5, first generation, 1.8 GHz CPU, wireless on, screen at normal brightness
eMac 700	A 700 MHz eMac with 640 MB RAM and 802.11b wireless on, including 17" CRT.
WinPC	An AMD Athlon XP home-built, 1.6 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, generic case, Windows XP. Display not measured.

I measured the computers doing a variety of tasks ... from nothing to "heavy usage". I started with just booting the computer, launching a few applications, and watching the meter. I call this the "on" state.

The above chart shows the power consumption numbers I got out of my watt meter. I used the handy and relatively inexpensive "kill-a-watt" power meter for all measurements. This handy device measures Watts, Volt-Amps, KWh, Frequency, and a bunch of other power attributes. Note that not all the numbers are "fair" - the eMac, iMac G4 and iMac G5 have a built in display which was on and measured, and the PowerBook does battery trickle charging, but it's screen was fully dimmed during measurement. (for full screen brightness on the powerbook, add 5 watts). The Mini and WinPC's monitors were not measured.

Operating State Description

On	Computer on, user logged in, apps up, CPU low.
Sleep	Computer in "sleep" or "standby" mode (windows)
Off	Computer powered down, but plugged into wall outlet
DVD view	Watching a video DVD using OS-provided tools
DVD rip	Ripping a video DVD to MPEG; consumed CPU(s).
Brick Only	Power brick consumption while detached from its computer (mini, PB only).

Next, I hope to upgrade my Mac Mini to a Core 2 Duo CPU - stay tuned for more details!

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Recommended Windows Software

2006-01-21T17:15:00.000-05:00

[Updated for 2008!]

With Windows, the stock OS software is far from having everything I need.

So you may ask me, "LanceJ, what is the best PC software you like to install?" Here's my list.

The following software products are not offered by me; I'm just telling you that I use these products often. I find some of these products very useful. I've published this list mostly for my own personal benefit, so I don't have to go scrounging the web each time I need to install these for someone.

Critical Software Packages for Windows

I like these installed on all Windows computers I have to deal with:

Avast! Anti-Virus (Home Edition). Free anti-virus software.
Spybot Search and Destroy. Detects and removes spyware.
CCleaner. Cleans junk off your PC.
FireFox, an awesome web browser for Windows.
Thunderbird, an awesome email client.
Mozy Home Backup. An Internet backup utility/service. Works with the Mozy Home service, which is free for the first 2 GB of storage.

Other packages people "want"

I find it helpful to install the following products too. People get upset if they aren't installed:

Macromedia Flash Player.
iTunes with Quicktime.
Adobe Acrobat Reader
Java.
Real Player (Basic). Yuk, this is barely on my list.

Other Programs

These are excellent programs that not everyone needs, but which are great if you need them:

Google Picasa2 - a great digital photo manager for Windows
Open Office, if you don't want to pay big $$$ for a Microsoft Office key code license, OpenOffice is a great alternative.
Trillian chat client, for AIM, Yahoo, and other IM services.

For W2K computers

Installing these four simple product puts Windows 2000 back on top:

7-Zip, an open source zip file manager
TclockEX - a great, simple toolbar clock.
Tardis 2000 - a network clock synchronizer. Shareware.
IntelliAdmin DST Patch - fixes the Windows 2000 clock for DST/Summer Time.

Other Software I often use

I use these quite a bit, and install them on most PCs, but most people won't miss them

DynDNS Updater. Dynamic DNS client software that works with the DynDNS.org service.
TightVNC. Remote desktop software.
Bonjour, for simple network printer configuration.
SSH Secure Shell
Cygwin.
AlternaTiff, a TIFF file reader (honestly, I very rarely install this one)

Your Comments

If you think other software should be included in this list, please let me know!

Macintosh: Upgrading an eMac

2006-01-04T20:27:00.004-05:00

The good old eMac can still be powerful and useful if you take the simple steps to keep it up-to-date. This article describes the procedure I used to upgrade an old eMac, including:

Replacing the internal hard disk with a large capacity drive.
Increasing the memory for performance
Upgrading the operating system

Here I'm upgrading a 700 MHz eMac, but the procedure and tasks for upgrading other eMac models should be almost identical.

Upgrading versus Replacing

My sister's eMac is of the 700 mhz variety, with 256 MB of memory. The machine seemed to be getting "slower", and the original 40 GB disk was becoming jammed packed with photos and iTunes, and within a few months she'd be out of disk space.

There were two options to address the problems: upgrade the eMac, or go out and buy a new Mac.

I decided to keep the eMac. It has been a rock solid machine, and it is only used for typical applications like NeoOffice, email, Safari, iTunes, and kids games. By upgrading the hard drive, the memory, and the OS, I could give it several more years of useful life.

Hard Drive Upgrade: the plan

My strategy to upgrade the hard drive was to

Clone the internal hard disk onto a new drive mounted in a firewire enclosure.
Test the clone by booting from the new drive mounted in the firewire enclosure.
Surgically replace the eMac's internal hard drive

The following sections describe my (successful) strategy in detail.

Buying a new drive & the need for a firewire enclosure

After research, it seems that all eMac models can use just about any large, modern 3.5" ATA (but not SATA) hard drive. I went with a Hitachi 3.5", 160 GB drive from Best Buy ($40 after rebate). A nice, even more impressive alternative is the inexpensive Western Digital 500 GB Caviar Blue.

My plan was to copy the entire content of the existing eMac onto the new drive. Such a copy can save a lot of time reinstalling and reconfiguring software. The fastest and easiest way to make the hard drive copy was to temporarily attach the new drive to the eMac with a Firewire enclosure.

A firewire enclosure is a small case built to house a single IDE drive. The case has an IDE-to-Firewire converter on board, as well as a small power supply to spin the drive. Therefore, this enclosure allows a computer to mount an IDE drive over firewire.

A $25 Firewire Enclosure (opened)

I can't say enough about the usefulness of a Firewire enclosure - it is a great tool for both Mac and PC upgrade and backup work, and the enclosures are very inexpensive (you can find them for under $50 from several vendors). I recommend getting an enclosure with the following attributes:

5.25" (large) drive support, so that you can throw anything into the enclosure, from a 2" IDE laptop hard drive to a DVD burner.
Dual Firewire & USB2 support, so you have the maximum amount of connectivity flexibility.

I would not recommend that you buy a USB-only enclosure. Although USB is a great technology, Firewire has some properties that USB doesn't - for one, many Macs cannot boot from a USB device. Secondly, Firewire adds flexibility if you ever plan to work with video. Having both interfaces only provides advantages, and costs almost nothing more than a USB-only device. Oh, and in practice, Firewire can be much faster than USB 2.0.

In particular, this Macally hard drive enclosure looks great, has excellent features, and is inexpensive too.

Installing an IDE drive into the firewire enclosure was simple: Attach the IDE ribbon cable hanging off of the enclosure to the drive, plug the power connector on the enclosure into the drive, and attach the enclose to the eMac via a Firewire cable.

Disk partitioning

Since the Hitachi drive was new, I needed to create a Mac-compatible partition on the drive. I ran the MacOS utility program "Disk Utility", which clearly listed the new disk on the left pane. I selected the new drive and clicked on the "Partition" tab. I formatted the 160 GB disk as a single partition of type "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". After partitioning, the new disk was visible on my desktop. Yay!

Hard Disk Cloning

I needed to copy everything on the internal eMac hard disk to the external drive. I used the free program "Carbon Copy Cloner" to make the copy. This little gem of a program smartly copies an entire drive's contents to another drive. I told CCC to clone the eMac's internal disk to the new drive over firewire. Without much fanfare, CCC did it's thing and copied the contents.

Now let me warn you - copying 38 GB of data from the eMac to the new drive took over 60 minutes.

Testing the Clone

After CCC was done with the cloning process, I wanted to test the clone. What if the clone didn't really work? Then I'd have to install all that software manually. Yuk!

Happily, I learned that I could coerce an eMac to boot from a firewire device (but not a USB drive).

With the firewire enclosure attached, I restarted the eMac and held down four keys during the startup process: "Command-Option-Shift-Delete". This sequence tells the Mac to boot from a device other than the standard start-up drive. Within 30 seconds the Mac successfully booted from the cloned drive. From there I was able to run the eMac off of the new (but externally-housed) drive, giving me a chance to make sure that the clone was 100% successful. Now I was ready to surgically swap the drives!

Installing the new Hard Disk
The final step - and the big one - was to remove the old 40 GB drive and replace it with my new 160 GB drive. I removed the new drive from the Firewire enclosure, took a deep breath, and commenced eMac disassembly.

Taking the eMac apart isn't difficult. I used Apple's eMac Take Apart manual as a reference.

Here's the order of events, with my additional suggestions in red:

Remove the Airport card if you have it. (I found after I started case disassembly that it is easier if you remove this card first.)
Disconnect the eMac from all cables. Place the eMac on it's "face"
Remove the memory access panel
Unscrew the case back, and lift it up only about an inch.
Unplug the wire from the power switch mounted on the case. This was tricky - I used small needle nosed pliers to disconnect (and reconnect) the wire from the switch.
Lift off the case once the power connector is detached from the power switch
Discharge the CRT. Some claim that this is an optional step, but I did it anyway, because I didn't want to get a shock. I built a discharge tool using a screw driver and a length of wire connected to the eMac's metal frame. Without touching anything other than the insulated screwdriver handle, I gently slid the screwdriver tip under the CRT's "suction cup" until I touched the metal conductor under the cap. Also see a very informative Mac CRT discharge diagram here.
Remove the fan (5 screws, two connectors, one ground wire)
Remove the speaker unit (one connector)
Remove the shielding (five screws)
Remove the logic board subsystem (9 screws, one video connector)
Remove the old drive
Remove the drive insulators/pads/bracket from the old drive. Unlike the photos in the take apart manual, my original drive only had a one pad, which was mounted on the edge of the drive.
Install drive insulator/pads/bracket onto new drive
Connect the ribbon cable and the 4-pin power cable to new drive. Lessons Learned: Make sure the IDE connector is properly seated on the motherboard! Make sure new drive is jumpered for "Cable Select" mode!
Attach the drive onto it's carrier
Install the logic board subsystem.
Lesson Learned: re-install the airport card now (I recommend re-installing it here to ensure that the logic board is properly aligned with the case)
Reinstall remaining components in opposite order of removal.

The first take apart took me about an hour. When I was done, I put it all back together and booted - and the new drive didn't work. Sadness! So I took it all apart again (in about 10 mintues), and realized that the hard drive's ribbon cable on the motherboard wasn't properly seated. A little press and then it was all back together in another 10 minutes or so. Phew!

After this process, I'm pretty comfortable working on the inside of an eMac. It isn't as easy as working on a motherboard in an ATX case, but it's much easier than working on the inside of any laptop.

Memory Upgrade

The easiest thing you can do with an eMac is upgrade it's memory. The 700 MHz eMac uses common "PC133" or "PC100" memory modules. I bought a 512 MB memory module for the eMac from MacSales.Com. The module cost about $75. Shop around - memory prices are always changing.

To install the memory, I opened up the eMac's memory access bay on the bottom of the machine by removing the single screw. I then removed the one of the two memory modules in the eMac and replaced it with the new 512 MB module.

I replaced one of these two 128MB modules with a 512 MB module

I wrapped things back up and booted the eMac. I went to "About This Mac", and saw that the Mac was happy with 640 MB (512 MB + 128 MB). [These days, I recommend you get two 512 MB modules, bringing the Mac up to a full 1 GB of memory]

In the past we had problems opening more than two applications at once - but with the new memory I was able to open 5 or 6 applications, all with great performance.

Upgrading to the OS

The eMac was running "Jaguar", OS X v10.2 - a reliable and well-supported version of Mac OS X. But Tiger (OS X v10.4) is a substantial improvement. Those with a faster eMac (>= 867 Mhz) may want to upgrade to Leopard.

It was a no-brainer to upgrade the OS, and upgrading is easy if your eMac has a DVD drive (and if you don't have a DVD drive, read my comments on Firewire enclosures, above).

The upgrade to Tiger was a simple exercise of inserting the Tiger DVD into the DVD drive and clicking through the menus. The upgrade process retained all of the eMac's user accounts, data, and applications, so I experienced no loss of any data or programs.

When the upgrade completed I rebooted the machine and performed a "software update" to patch Tiger from version 10.4 to the latest patch release [10.4.4 as of 12-Jan-06].

The entire Tiger upgrade took about 70 minutes to install, and had no negative consequences.

Leftover Parts

I'm happy to say that I didn't have any leftover screws. However, I did have some parts:

One 128 MB memory module. This is now installed in my father's clunker PC. Yep, this old eMac memory is 100% compatible with my Dad's Windows-based PC.
One 40 GB IDE drive. I'm going to keep this around for a while until the 160 GB drive has been running for a few months. After that, the 40 GB drive will land in my dad's PC.

Conclusions

In all, the eMac now rocks - although it still only runs at 700 MHz, the addition of 512 MB of memory, an upgraded OS, and a larger hard drive significantly improves performance.

Buying components for the eMac is very easy. Memory, hard drives, and Firewire enclosures are readily available from many vendors at low cost.

Ripping Vinyl LP Records

2006-01-03T20:46:00.001-05:00

If you're like me, you have a large collection of vinyl LP records that rarely get played because CDs and MP3 players are so much more convenient. And if you're like me, you want to move all of your audio assets into a more accessible format - your iPod - so that you can finally put that turntable away.

Ripping Vinyl to your iPod

The solution, of course, is to rip your LPs and cassettes. This entails playing each recording, digitizing the music as it plays, and then putting the digitized music into a form that any iPod can use.

My goal during this project was to develop an easy, repeatable, and very high quality process to digitize LPs. This article explains the process.

The Rules of High Quality Vinyl Ripping

Accuracy. On your home hifi system, you look to hear the best sound in your ears. The digitization process is fundamentally different. Digitization is all about capturing the source analog signal as accurately as possible. Do you have a fancy $5000 A/V receiver? Lose it! Such a component will give you no ripping advantage, and very likely will be a quality liability. Digitization is NOT about amplification, it's about accuracy. (after digitization we can put the signal though filters to improve the sound).

Symmetry. When you listening to music, you might like to tweak a couple of settings to suit the room, your listening preference, or to correct an imperfect recording. Don't do it! While digitizing, you want your analog signal to be completely consistent with the analog recording. While you're digitizing, don't move cables or adjust analog settings. Make sure the turntable is well isolated. And avoid power fluctuations that can noise up an otherwise stable analog signal. Don't cook that microwave pizza until you're done, because that noise will very possibly end up in your digitized signal.

Conversion Quality. You don't need the $100 cables, but the cheap bargain-bin cables won't do either. You don't need and shouldn't use speakers - speakers are for listening - and digitization is not listening. And you need a good sound card for quality analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) is critical.

Digitization Equipment and Tools

I started by placing a commodity home amplifier and turntable into the room where my computer resides. Now don't think I went to crazy rearranging all of my equipment - I didn't need speakers or other equipment.

I connected the turntable and receiver into a UPS unit, which also serves as an excellent power conditioner.

The amplifier's role in this project is not the same as it's role while listening to music. During the digitization process, the amp's role is only to act as a pre-amp, feeding the sound card with the milliwatt-level signal sourced from the turntable. Since there is no delivery of sound to the speakers, there is no benefit to using a high wattage amp. In fact, a larger unit will likely just introduce additional noise into the system.

Admittedly I'm a bit of a sound snob, so I did upgrade a few capacitors in the pre-amp section of the amp I used. But most people will get excellent results without getting funky with the circuitry.

Cables

I used generic cables for this set-up. Normally I'd use high quality cables, but given the rapid setup and tear-down of this setup, there was no chance for any oxidization to form between mating surfaces. I love high quality cables for a system that I configure once. But fancy cables are pointless for a one-shot analog digitization system used over the period of a few months.

The Ripping Process

Remove the disc from its dust jacket and check for physical defects. Avoid ripping a damaged disc that will ruin your cartridge.
Clean the record with a quality cleaning tool to minimize noise from dirt. I like the Stanton Record Cleaner Kit. I use a home-made cleaning solution.
Cue up the disc. Start the recording process in Audacity.
As the disc is played, verify the line-in level in Audacity. You want the level to be as high as possible without peaking at 100%. This is highly dependent on the recording and your equipment. In general, the longer the LP in play time, the higher you'll have to set the line-in level.
At the disc run-out, stop the recording process
Save the captured file as a WAV file
Repeat for Side 2.

The same process can work with all forms of audio tape. I have a lot of DBX tape. Same idea, similar process.

Encoding

After you rip, you should convert the files to a lossless compression format for archival. I find that FLAC reduces file size by about 33%. Once I have about 4 GB of FLAC files (about 18 LPs worth of music), I archive the "master" rips onto DVD-R.

My recording program, Audacity, generates WAV files. I then lossless-compress these files into flac form:

flac -V -8 my_album_side_1.wav

This will losslessly convert the WAV file into FLAC at it's best ("-8") compression rate. Flac will verify ("-V") that the resulting file can be converted back into the same exact WAV file. Cool! From there I burn the resulting FLAC files to DVD-R for archival purposes. I find I can put about 18 LPs worth of music on a DVD-R.

I usually don't listen to the FLAC files - they're my "master digitized copy" in case some new music encoding technology comes around the bend.

iPods and other MP3 players

I convert the FLAC files to MP3 format when I want to put them on my iPod. This saves even more space than FLAC, at the expense of sound quality. Since I do most of my iPod listening on the train or in the car, sound quality just isn't that import (too much ambient noise).

Converting the lossless files into MP3 is is also an easy process:
flac -sdc my_album_side_1.flac | lame - my_album_side_2.mp3

Conclusions and Further Thoughts

The digitization process is simple, and can be successfully accomplished using common hardware and freely available software. The important part is to have a consistant, quality digitization so that filters will work appropriately across an entire LP.

In conclusion, converting Vinyl (and other analog recordings) into MP3s should be performed in distinct steps. The distinct steps allow you to have a master lossless copy of the recording in digitized form. After the creation of the master digitized copy, you may apply countless filters and transformations to clean, break apart, or otherwise manipulate the sound. If you need to re-apply transformations, you won't have a need to re-digitize - you'll already have a lossless digital master on hand.

If you'd like more information on the particular hardware and software I use, please drop me a note.

Fujitsu S-Series Repair

2005-12-19T12:59:00.001-05:00

The Patient: Fujitsu S-Series Laptop

The power connector of my S-Series Fujitsu laptop failed (a Lifebook S6110), just like so many others out there. I called up Fujitsu for repair; their local service center wanted about $80 just to look at the laptop (which obviously only needed a new connector). I concluded that it was silly for me to throw $80 at an estimate for repairing the power connector, so instead I went after repairing it myself.

Researching the problem.

At first I looked on the web for the right connector. After searching high and low, I found that the Asia Industrial Company appears to sell a very similar part, the DS-208. Let me know if you contact them for this jack.

I also saw a part for sale by a laptop power jack "repair" web site, but it didn't look like it would be mountable on my laptop's motherboard - the pins are in a different location, and I think it'd be very difficult to properly mount this part inside of my laptop.

Going at it.

Pigtails off of the board

I decided to start by adding a few pigtails to the motherboard. I opened the laptop, with the helpful instructions found here. Then I soldered in a short length of wire.
From there, I added a simple connector on the end of the pigtail.

Phase 1 complete, Lifebook operational!

At least my laptop is now, um, laptop-able once again. It does look a bit silly with the pigtail, but is is fully functional. I hope to acquire the correct DC Jack for the laptop. Please contact me if you have any leads or advice.

Beyond the Fujitsu

My next step will to try to get that DS-208 part and give it a shot.

To be honest, my Fujitsu is getting a little old, so I might end up buying another new laptop. There are a lot good laptops out there... and that's why I didn't initially go for the "Fujitsu service center" repair.

Thanksgiving Centerpiece (or, fun with paper mache)

2005-11-20T19:04:00.000-05:00

Every year, one person in my family is assigned to make a special thanksgiving day centerpiece for the dinner table. This year I was assigned to make something.

Fulfilling my obligation, I have created a paper mache Turkey, the center of the American thanksgiving celebration. Read on to see how to make this Thanksgiving Centerpiece Turkey, the official Pilgrim Turkey of Thanksgiving.

Gobble Gobble! You can make me too!

Strangely, most people don't know the story of how Thanksgiving became synonymous with turkey. But first, maybe you'll want to know to build this handsome fellow...

Building the Turkey

I started with a couple small balloons, some coat hanger wire, and masking tape. I formed the body and head with the balloons and taped them together. I bent the coat hanger wire to form the beak and legs/feet. Some needle nose pliers helped me bend the wire.

Balloons, tape and wire. Note that I taped the feet to my work surface.

The beak frame. I drew a face on the "head" baloon so I could position the beak, then I taped the beak wire frame in place.

From there, I used standard papier mache techniques to coat my beast. I made a simple flour-and water paste (boil 1/4 cup flour in one quart of water for 5 minutes; let cool) and thinly coated newspaper strips with the stuff. Then I carefully coated the bird. It took a long time to coat him - several sessions over several days. I later added some plumage in the rear using inflated latex gloves :-). I also added some stubby wings, made out of cardboard from a Trader Joe's Pizza box and (of course) more masking tape.

With a coat of paper mache, the bird starts to take shape

I built a small hat out of a tube of cardboard and masking tape. I coated the tube with more paper mache in order to provide uniformity and to hide tape and gaps.

The Hat: papier mache coated cardboard

I took the whole project outside and sprayed it with a couple coats of brown spray paint. Being all brown, he looked like a giant chocolate turkey! Whoops! After the spray, I took him inside and gave it a final coat of brown with some brush-on paint, giving him a little more tecture than what the spray paint could provide.

Next, I painted the hat, and the details like the eyes (white paint with sharpie-black pupils).

Finally, I used a small, red deflated balloon to create his attractive wattle (a.k.a. "gobbler" or "flabby thing on his head")

The Pilgrim Turkey Project: Complete!

The Myth of the American Turkey

In the year 1584, Captain John Smith, a military officer and patriot, came to America in order to support the colonists with their admittedly poor farming skills. Times in America were tough - there wasn't much food, and many families were starving. But Smith was an avid amateur farmer, and before long he grew thousands of bushels of potatoes, cranberry, apples and corn for all of the people.

One of John Smith's duties was that of providing entertainment. He wasn't a particularly good at entertainment, and he decided that he'd have a big dinner party for "everee God-feering man and wo-man in thee towne". While walking to the feast, with his potatoes, cranberries and corn, Smith saw and captured a giant wild turkey, "so giantik and bulbous a beast that he shalt feed hundredsuch plainfolk".

Smith brought the huge turkey to the thanksgiving celebration where he met Pocahontas, the beautiful and petite Native American princess and avid gambler. On a wager with Smith, Pocahontas attempted to ride on the back of the giant bird, and found, in fact, that she could. Being a princess, she immediately exercised her pardoning privilege and pardoned the turkey from eating. She promptly left for home on the back of the turkey.

Pocahontas became the first domesticated turkey farmer in America - and in fact, every domestic American turkey is a decendant of the turkey that Pocahontas saved. Pocahontas later travelled to England to sell turkey meat, but that's another story.

Every thanksgiving, the President of the United States cerimonially pardons the thanksgiving turkey in memory of Pocahontas, John Smith, and their giant pilgrim turkey.

CFL Update - Save Electricity, Save Money.

2005-10-23T12:21:00.000-04:00

I've been receiving a lot of questions and comments on compact fluorescent light bulbs ("CFLs"). Why? Well, maybe because electricity rates are almost three times as much as they were only a few years ago!

I have replaced most of my traditional "incandescent" light bulbs with CFLs. Replacing old-fashioned bulbs with "fancy" CFL bulbs has reduced my electric bill by more than half - or hundreds of dollars per year - at very low cost.

I find that a GE 27 Watt CFL (on left) is substantially brighter than the 100 watt traditional bulb (right)

CFLs are more expensive than regular light bulbs, but they use much much less electricity and last much longer. I've paid between $0.99 and $3.50 per CFL bulb, depending on the type and style.

Bulb Recommendations

I have used CFLs from various manufacturers. I have been happy with modern bulbs from LightWiz, GE, and Phillips. I purchased some bulbs from Ikea a couple years ago, and they work well too. However, I imagine that Ikea buys their bulbs from various manufacturers, and so your mileage may vary.

Some readers say that they have had premature CFL bulb failure when mounted in some enclosed ceiling light fixtures. I have never had a CFL fail, and I have several enclosed light fixtures. In any case, note that some bulbs may be labeled as "inappropriate for enclosed fixture use". I recommend that you heed the manufacturer's label.
Readers report that some CFLs can fail prematurely in an enclosed light fixture like mine. After 3+ years, I haven't had a problem.
Dimmers and Timers

Most CFLs are incompatible with dimmers. If you plan to use a CFL in a dimming circuit, make sure you get a CFL that is designed and sold for use with dimmers. In my experience, a CFL on a dimming circuit wildly flickers, or doesn't work at all. I don't have any dimmers, and therefore I cannot comment on the quality of dimmable CFLs.

Many low-quality, over-priced wall timers don't work with CFLs due to their cheap design. The answer? Buy a Swylite LST100 wall timer - it looks great and is much more functional than the ones I've bought at the local home store. Oh, and they cost less too.

Swylite LST100 timer I bought new on eBay

Warm-Up Issues

Other readers have complained about CFL "warm up time" when a CFL takes several seconds or even minutes to get to full brightness, especially in cold temperatures. This seems to be an issue with some old-style CFLs and some lousy brands. I did have a problem with some cheapo off-brand bulbs I bought at the Home Depot in 2004. These lousy CFLs were always very slow to get to full brightness, so I put them in the basement fixtures where I don't mind the slow start time. I recommend that you stick with modern name-brand bulbs. Ask your local lighting store to show you the startup characteristics of the bulbs you're buying.

Saving Electricity and Reducing Costs

2005-10-11T22:08:00.000-04:00

Since everyone from the President on down is asking us to minimize our energy consumption, I took a look at my own electricity use. I didn't feel I was being wasteful, but I thought it would be interesting to just take a look and see. What I found surprised me - and helped me to save $300 per year at negligible cost.

My first step was to replace often-used lightbulbs with high-efficiency CFL-type bulbs. During the evening I often have my kitchen and living room lights on... in total, I use these lights maybe 2000 hours per year. I went down to the local home center and bought about a dozen discounted CFL bulbs of various wattages (from 13w to 27w). I replaced the bulbs in the kitchen, bathroom, living room, bedrooms, and office. In all, I figure I save about $150 per year in electricity alone, thanks to the CFL bulbs!

By the way, my new CFL bulbs aren't nearly as sucky as the old-fashioned ones I used five years ago. These new ones are at full brightness almost immediately after I switch them on, and and they seem to last forever (at least so far!). I did buy one lousy batch of CFLs - the lousy ones brighten slowly - but these few slow-start variants are the exception (and weren't much of a risk at only $0.99 each).

After addressing the lighting, I moved on to exploring how much electricity my appliances use. In order to easily and accurately measure my electricity consumption, I bought a simple watt meter called a kill-a-watt (about $30). I temporarily plugged appliances into this little meter in order to measure their consumption.

I found that my fridge consumes an average of 65 watts of electricity. My desktop computer system sucked down over 120 watts - with the monitor off! I also looked at a collection of appliances like clocks, the TV, the VCR, and so on.

My goal here was to simply minimize. There were some easy targets. Rarely used stuff was simply unplugged. But there were some really big money savers.

My fridge's "anti-sweat" option was turned on. This option is designed to keep the fridge from dripping water when it's extremely hot and humid. But do you know what? It's only like that a few days a year where I live. So for me this anti-sweat option does nothing but consume 16 watts for 8600 hours in a year. Keeping it on costs me $19+ per year and provides zero benefit. So turning the anti-sweat option off was a no-brainer.

Also, my fridge was running too cold. A thermometer showed that it was running at 32F (fridge) & 0F (freezer). I've seen suggestions that making your fridge too cool is of no benefit and can cost up to 20% of operational costs. So I adjusted my fridge to run at a recommended 40F, and 5F for the freezer, saving me perhaps another $25 per year.

The other thing I did was to turn off an infrequently used computer. Instead of a 120+ watt device running 8800 hours a year, now I run it for about 100 hours a year. That's a good $140 savings.

Seller Beware

2005-10-04T13:39:00.000-04:00

I was bored a one day and decided to put up some ads on Craig's List - you know, I wanted to sell some of my junk.

So I put up an ad a got a reply from a guy named Bobby. Bobby is overseas, and he is looking to buy a junky $100 bike from the good old U.S.A. He also owns a shipping company.

It also happened that Bobby needed a $2,500 check cashed, and evidently he couldn't do it in his own country. Therefore, he asked me to accept a check for $2,500. Then I would then send him $2,400 and the bike. It'd be a win-win for everyone! His shipping company would pick up the bike later, so there'd be no shipping expense to me.

It's great that the internet can bring the world together, and allow people to rip-off others across the globe.

So I received the check via FedEx. The envelope was sent from Nigeria. But what do you know, the check turned out to be a fake - drawn on some poor soul's account. Good thing I didn't cash it and send Bobby the money - if I did, I'd be out $2,400.

Since then I've noticed a shocking number of people trying to scam me on my on-line ads. I recently tried to sell a crappy computer for $15 on Craig's. I got a weird reply from a potential buyer, and so I responded stating that my crappy computer was worth my $1500 asking price. Of course, the buyer was STILL interested, despite a two order of magnitude price increase. It's rare that I go to buy a $15 item, and remain agreeable when it turns out to be a $1500 item. The buyer, of course, was "located in the UK" and had a "special shipping arrangement with FedEx". Bah! On-line Ads: it's not only buyer beware - it's also seller beware. Or, just beware.

The Bad Time Cell Phone

2004-11-06T09:27:00.000-05:00

The other day a friend told me the time based on her cell phone's clock.

She said "your clock is two minutes fast." "Bullshit," I exclaimed in a nice way, "my clock is correct because it's synched with the USN clock in Colorado."

"But my phone has to be correct," she replied, "as my phone's time is set by my cell phone service."

Well, it turns out that she was wrong. We verified the time by calling the USN clock service in Washington D.C., and in fact her clock was about 90 seconds slow.

Happily, most providers of time information are getting more accurate. Here's my latest "clock accuracy matrix", using the USN telephone clock (202-762-1401) service as "accuracte":

AT&T GSM service (via Nokia 6820): 5 seconds slow
AT&T TDMA service (via Nokia 3360): 8 seconds slow
Verizon Time Telephone Service, Boston (617-637-1234): 20 seconds fast
SBC Time Telephone Service, Hartford (860-524-8123): 5 seconds slow

NIST Time Telephone Service (303-499-7111): Accurate
Cheapo Radio Clock from Target: Accurate
Verizon CDMA service (via Qualcomm 860): Accurate
WENH-TV XDS time (via Panasonic 4522): 1 second slow
1-800-555-TELL service: Accurate
Verizon Time Telephone Service, Hawaii (808-565-9211): Accurate
Verizon Time Telephone Service, Washington D.C. (202-844-2525): Accurate
Unknown Telephone Service, Macdoel, CA (530-767-8500): Accurate

From a Rack in my Living Room to a Cardboard Box in my Basement

2004-10-17T22:41:00.000-04:00

The compact disc era is over.

Music CDs have been around for about 20 years, but now that I have an iPod I realize that the CD is dead. I moved my entire CD collection to my iPod and pushed my CDs into storage. There isn't a reason to keep a CD in my living room.

Now I can listen to all of my music in the car (thanks to my iTrip). I can listen to my music at home (thanks to the iPod's docking station). And I can listen to my music on the train (thanks to the earbuds).

My only wish is for a higher capacity iPod. I bought the 40 GB iPod- but that 40 GB doesn't seem like a lot if you have a large CD collection and you want to play your collection at a high bitrate. But in any case, my several hundred CDs fit on my 40 GB iPod with plenty of room to spare.

The cons of the iPod? Even though the iPod is one of the smallest large-capacity players on the market, I wish it was smaller. I would have gone with the iPod Mini, but the 4GB of storage wasn't enough for me. I'm glad I bought the largest capacity model available.

I still need to digitize some old LPs and cassettes. Once I digitize the rest of my music collection, I will be able to archive all of my obsolete media and associated equipment.

But will the cell phone replace the iPod?

Maybe in 10 years. The problem is that cell phones have a very low storage capacity, and are (for the most part) disposable. And cell phones will likely get more disposable. However, the music on my iPod is a long-term investment. So as of right now, my iPod and my cell phone have mutually exclusive qualities.

Current high-end cell phones have a maximum capacity of about 512 Megabytes. And not all of that memory is availble to music. Today's best cell phone may have the capacity to hold 50 to 100 songs - only enough to hold 5 or 10 CDs, and certainly not to store an entire CD collection. And that 512 Megabytes storage capacity might be available only if you buy added-cost memory cards.

State-of-the-art MP3 players, such as the iPod, can hold 40 Gigabytes or more - or about 10,000 songs. The difference in capacity is the difference between having a fancy rack in your living room to having another cardboard box in your basement.

MP3 players are also significantly better than cell phones at PC connectivity, user interface, and sound quality. Music-only devices focus on the entire music experience. In contrast, cell phones focus on fee-for-service voice communications and text messaging. Convergence will not be as easy as slipping an MP3 decoder into a cell phone. Perhaps it will be easier to slip a cell phone chipset into an MP3 player.

Some day the cell phone will converge with the MP3 player - but the stand-alone MP3 player isn't standing still. And before we get too excited about converging the MP3 player with the cell phone, remember that there are many other compelling but competing convergances:

The Camera (current cell phone cameras stink)
The PDA (ditto)
The GPS
The Radio
The TV
The Camcorder
The GPRS
The wallet, the brass key, the credit card
the watch (done, IMHO).

Let's see what happens!

Craig's List

2004-10-10T20:10:00.000-04:00

eBay is nice because it has a huge audience. But eBay costs the seller for the posting, commission, and the credit card (PayPal) fees. Craig's List has a much smaller audience, but it is totally free to both the poster and the buyer.

I listed my CD Changer (thank's iPod!) and some old cell phones on Craig's this weekend. And then I waited for replies. And do you know what? I got a LOT of replies - about 10 in one day.

To further ease the burden and cost, Craig's List is a "local thing" - no shipping required. The only trouble is connecting and exchanging the goods. And in the best case, the transactions are in cash.

The CD Player sold (yay!), and my cell phones grab tons of interest. [Note that all of my net reciepts from eBay and Craig's are slated to go to charity.]