15. July 2008 by admin.

A friend is remodeling his house, and will be wiring it for networking and setting up an extensive system. He asked for advice on hardware and configuration, and here it is…

First, start with a good router. I use the D-Link DIR-655 and am quite happy with it. In addition to the wireless N, it also extends the range of regular wireless G. It also handles wired gigabit speeds, which is useful as we’ll see momentarily.

My router is in the basement. There are users on the second floor of my house - my wife and daughter. Both had complained in the past (continuously, it seemed) of dropped wireless signals. Since I added wireless N cards to their PCs, there have been no further complaints. And since it makes the G signal stronger as well, I am now able to use it anywhere in the house (I have not tried going outside the house yet - the sunlight tends to wash out the LCD displays). Right now I have three continuous wireless users - two desktop N units and one laptop with G. Several other laptops occasionally use the wireless. I use the 128-bit WPA encryption.

The wired side is a little more complicated. I started with a bunch of gigabit-capable Cat-6 cables. I also bought two gigabit network switches (one 8-port for me, one 4-port for my son). The router has 4 wired ports, so one cable goes from the router to the 8-port switch in my office, and one cable goes from the router to the 4-port switch in my son’s area. His switch has just three things attached - the xBox 360, his new Vista PC, and his old XP PC. The Vista box is the only one with a gigabit network adapter.

The 8-port switch has several computers connected, most of which are gigabit-capable. The noteworthy ones include the Windows Home Server and my Vista Media Center - they’re the major bandwidth hogs that benefit from the gigabit speeds.

I also have a regular Cat-5 cable running from the router to the living room upstairs, where we have a Media Center extender. I could have used wireless for the extender, but it seemed easier to just run the cable and enjoy more consistent bandwidth.

Since the xBox and the Extender both show video from the Media Center, I try to keep all of those paths as fast as possible, but I think the Extenders themselves are the only limiting factor (I don’t think either supports gigabit speeds).

So that’s basically it - fairly simple, yet it supports 6 users, 12 computers, and 2 extenders and it does so under fairly heavy use at all hours of the day. I think it made sense to get the best router I could, as it has handled everything we’ve thrown at it without a hiccup.

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8. May 2008 by admin.

I love my Canon SD700 compact camera, even though it’s missing a few desirable features. However, as I discovered yesterday, there’s a way to add those features to my camera. No, it’s not a firmware upgrade, but rather an open-source add-in program called CHDK (Canon Hacker’s Development Kit).

This program is available for many of the existing Canon “point and shoot” cameras and even their DSLR’s. It adds several desirable features such as:

Raw mode
Real-time histograms
Battery charge indicator
Better compression
Zoom during video recording
Macros

What? Macros? Yes! CHDK contains a mini Basic interpreter that has special keywords for camera features. I’ve found a macro that adds a feature useful for HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography - the ability to take bracketed shots with different exposures.

HDR photos require you start with identical photos, with the only difference being the exposure level. Typically this includes one normal picture, one under-exposed, and one over-exposed (or even two on either side of normal for a total of five). This is difficult to do manually but not impossible, but with the macro all it takes is one shutter button press.

I’ve only just begun trying to figure this program out, but I’m very enthused. I’ll post more once I get the HDR photography working.

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2. April 2008 by admin.

For many years, I used a camcorder with the little Mini-DV tapes. It was nice because it had FireWire, and I could pull it into my laptop or desktop for editing. However, it was still tape-based.

In my quest for ever-higher resolution and better features, I ran across the Canon HG-10, a hard-disk based camcorder. Besides its small size, it can record in full HD resolution - 1920×1080. Canon’s MSRP is $999, with many places selling it for even more. However, my friends at B&H Photo Video have it for $749, with a full US warranty (no gray market stuff here). I couldn’t resist…

So, I’ve had this camera a few months now, and I still haven’t figured out all the features (it’s got that many of them). I did order a lens and filter set, with a zoom lens, wide angle lens, and three filters. It’s not from Canon, but rather an aftermarket set that was much cheaper than Canon’s offerings…we’ll see if they’re any good. I also added a 2Gb Mini-SD card to capture still photos.

I wish Canon made an underwater housing for this camera, but so far only Ikelite has produced one. At their price, I won’t be buying one, but I’d love to take this camera diving.

The Canon software isn’t great, but I’ve found other software that works with this video format. I’ll post on that solution next…

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31. March 2008 by admin.

I have found a perfect solution for the road warrior who wants the ability to watch or record television - the Pinnacle HD Pro tuner. This tuner is tiny, yet includes a collapsible antenna and a remote control. It takes up very little space in the laptop bag, so it’s always available. It can pull in both over-the-air HD channels and analog channels (until the end of 2008, at least).

The tuner comes with its own software, and it can also be used from Media Center. While my laptop is fairly powerful, I never had good luck with this tuner in Media Center. Media Center only saw two channels, and they never came in very good. The Pinnacle software sees all the channels, and delivers most of them glitch-free. The only issue I ran into was a permissions issue where I needed to mark the Pinnacle software as “Run as administrator” in the Properties dialog. This seems to work fine in regular Vista but in my case, I had turned off the User Account Control and this affected the Pinnacle software.

Pinnacle’s MSRP for this product is $99.99, but you can get it for $79.99 at Newegg.

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28. February 2008 by admin.

This category will be used to document all the hardware and software I use.

I’ll start with operating systems. All of my PCs run Windows - I occasionally foray into the Linux world within a virtual PC, but that’s rare. My laptop runs Vista Ultimate and has since I bought it in April 2007. I also have one Vista Ultimate desktop I’m using as a Media Center, and one Media Center 2005 desktop. Most of the other PCs in the house run XP Pro. I also have one PC running Windows Home Server.

My main laptop is an HP tx1119us. This laptop has a 12.1-inch screen at 1280×800, a dual-core AMD 64-bit CPU, 2Gb of RAM, and a 160Gb hard disk. I bought this machine for two reasons - its ability to run Vista, and its size. After carrying a 15-inch laptop around for years, I finally decided to go smaller and lighter. When I bought this laptop, I was looking at it and a similar-sized Toshiba unit. HP put this one on sale for several hundred dollars less than the Toshiba. I paid $1,150, but a nearly identical unit (with a touch screen) has been seen recently as low as $750.

This laptop came loaded with, well, crapware. I uninstalled everything I could, but it still wasn’t enough. I finally had to load Vista from scratch - fortunately HP’s web site included all the drivers I needed. So far, the laptop has had no problems and is very portable.

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20. February 2008 by admin.

Ever now and again, I spend far too much on geek toys. This could include simple things like CAT-6 cables or expensive things like a new Quad-core computer. In the old days, I’d visit sites like Microcenter or Newegg and browse around. Sometimes I’d even hit Froogle if I knew exactly what I wanted. Finding the best price was still a hit or miss thing.
Then I discovered TechBargains. Basically, they look far and wide for sales, and post the info so you can easily find it. Now, I look there sometimes twice a day, even when I don’t really need anything, because I never can tell what I might find there. Bargains abound, and sometimes they only last for mere hours (like that Dell quad-core PC for only $549). So far, using this site has literally saved me hundreds of dollars over the past year or so. Highly recommended.

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