Trey’s Blog|brain spillage!

The other day I thought it necessary to pack an extra CompactFlash card in the event my current one would fill up while on the road. I didn’t ever need the extra, so I left it tucked away in the pocket of my jeans. Today, I began to wonder what I ever did with that card because it was now needed. I searched high and low and then it occurred to me that it may be in the pocket of my pants, but which pants? I looked through all of the pairs I could find before my wife suggested looking in the clothes dryer. There was my CF Card right where I left it in its little plastic case in my jeans. By that time, it had gone through an entire wash and dry cycle. I had no faith in the card ever functioning at that point. I tested it and not only did it work, but it maintained the 2 photos I had stored on there already. I’m not sure it would have worked had it been completely submerged. My washer is a front loading Whirlpool which only fills about 1/3 of the way with water and tosses the clothing through the soapy water.

Lessons Learned:
- Empty pockets before removing pants
- CompactFlash cards are water-resistant

I recently found this guy who had issues with his GoGear unit decided to remove the covers to see what was underneath. Check out the details and pics here.

Thanks, A Day in the Life of Lynx.

I’ve had a horrible time of trial and error getting my NVidia drivers running under Ubuntu. I’ll start by explaining the original setup, the problem, then get to what I did to fix.

Original Setup:
Pentium 4 with the Riva TNT Pro64 32MB

The default install of Ubuntu detected my card and installed the nvidia-glx drivers which appeared to run as a legacy driver and didn’t perform well with the Compositing enabled. I decided to purchase a GeForce FX 5200 with 128MB assuming the extra horsepower would handle the Compositing without any issues.

The Problem:
Upon install, I noticed the card performed even worse than the old card with each window redrawing itself very slowly when minimizing and maximizing. I downloaded the NVidia drivers from their website and installed them. The only true indication I could get that I did something right here was the NVidia splash screen that displayed just before starting X Windows. The NVidia Settings tool I found doesn’t seem to have any helpful tools for setting up the card, rather is more for fine tuning little features like Cursor Shadow.

What I Did:
I searched the Internet (Google really) and found ways to check which driver was running and it showed AGPGART was running instead of the NVidia driver I had installed. I then added nvidia to the /etc/modules and blacklisted agpgart. I added modified my xorg.conf to have the following:

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "NV34 [GeForce FX 5200]"
    Driver         "nvidia"
        Option "NoLogo" "true"  # Disables nVidia's logo on start-up
        Option "NvAGP" "0"  # Tries internal nVidia AGP drivers first
        Option "RenderAccel" "true"  # Duh 
        Option "CursorShadow" "true"  # Adds an alpha-shadow to your cursor
        Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"  # Mostly used for cool effects
EndSection

When I had NvAGP set to 1, the gnome-panel (top and bottom bars) wouldn’t load, but setting it to 0 allowed them to load. I’m not completely sure the NVidia drivers loaded because the status I ran earlier only output AGP Disabled, but the screen rendering seems to be much better. I may post an update in the future once I have time to figure out what is happening here.

I finally brokedown and purchased my very first iPod. I decided against the currently overpriced video iPods as I have heard reports of poor battery life when watching movies on the device. I found Apple.com selling refurbished iPod Photo/Color models for about $200. I could resist and now I have it. I’ve never had a problem with Apple products and this time is no different. I only have a problem with them pricing themselves out of my market. Compared to the other two mp3 players I have owned, this one costs about twice as much and seems worth it for a few features alone. The first feature is the ability to pick up with the last point of listening without thinking twice. My other two always startup and play from the beginning of the playlist or even worse, the menu system. The second feature is not really a feature at all, but proof that iPods are huge. Everywhere you look, iPods and iPod accessories are available. I haven’t check yet, but I’m sure you can found iSomething for sale at the local Walgreens. If you haven’t seen or played with an iPod, find a friend and play with theirs.

I admit it. I’ve been slacking on keeping my first hobby site up to date with the latest models and drivers. I’ll be taking the next couple of days and seeing how much I can get updated, then perhaps I’ll create some new pages and dump some of the useless pages. Perhaps a new design is in order as well. Who knows.

CybershotCentral

For those millions of people like me that have several remotes and can’t seem to eliminate the need for all of your remotes leaving only one truely universal remote, it may be worth your time and money to invest in a Logitech Harmony Remote. I just found a middle-of-the-road model at NewEgg.com for $120 shipped!

To give you an idea what I’m dealing with at home, I have remotes for the following in my main room:
RCA TV (will control DVD player)
Philips DVD Player (single device remote)
OmniFi Media Player (single device remote)
JVC Surround Receiver (will control TV and DVD above)
Samsung Set-top box (single device remote)

Each has their own remote and none will control all of the rest. Enter the Logitech Harmony Remote. It can not only control each of the items above, but it will also handle Macros for specific tasks like ‘Watch TV’ or ‘Watch a DVD’ which handles any necessary component switching to get the job done.

Okay, so there is a trend to offer DivX support on some of the newer DVD Players. I found this list of officially certified DVD Players at DivX.com. Honestly, I’m surprised to see so many considering you don’t see that many in any one consumer electronics store. I’ll attribute that to the list containing some overseas models and some that may be listed, but not yet released to mainstream outlets.

Introducing the DVP-5900.

I just saw this online at CostCo.com and it is only $80. That is not bad for a DivX playing upconverting DVD Player. The manual, as well has a high res photo, can be found here. Buy it at CostCo.

I’m still contemplating getting one for the HD upconversion. I currently have three of the older DVP-642 units, so I would either sell one of those or move it to the last TV I have without one. $80 is not bad for the HDMI feature alone, much less a player that plays DivX videos. Oh… what to do… what to do?

For any Ubuntu lovers out there, I found this to be very cool. I friend of mine has got Ubuntu loaded and working on his Tablet PC (Compaq TC1000) including the ‘magic’ pen. Check it out over here with photos.

For those looking for a way to sync your music files with your Philips GoGear media player, you’ll likely find that MusicMatch is the officially supported tool. However, for those who wish to use this with Linux, MusicMatch is not an option. It only took me two minutes to find this set of tools available for the Linux community provided by the Linux community.

Linux Digital Media Manager (LDMM) has the ability to add and delete MP3s from the device, and manage the album and artist databases. It has a GUI front-end and a straightforward interface. It was written in Python specifically for the HDD060, but should work fine with the HDD070 as well.

openGogear is a suite of tools for working with Philips GoGear HDD0xx MP3 players. Though these devices can be mounted with the standard usb-storage module, these tools implement the file indexing required to hear MP3s. openGogear has a debian package available. JGoGear is the Java-based GUI front-end for openGogear.

PyGogear is obviously written in Python exchanges information about the tracks from a Sqlite database file, usually named MyDb. This program reads the ID3v1 tags from the MP3 files placed on the player and inserts the most important ones in the database. There is no GUI available yet, but it is in the works.

pymaj was rewritten from pyGogear 5.8.4 with some changes and folders support added. Program can read the ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags from the MP3 files placed on the player and inserts them in the database. M3U playlists are supported as well.

See my previous post regarding Philips GoGear here.

Update:
Ubuntu (Breezy Badger) mounted the HDD070 as ‘Philips MassStorage-Disc: 1.9GB Removable Volume’ available under ‘Computer’. Its actual location is /media/usbdisk/. Under this device, you’ll find the following structure:

/_system/
    /firmware/
        /FWimage.bak
        /FWimage.oke
    /media/
        /audio/
            all mp3 files here...
            MyDb (the file that contains the ID3 index information)
/drmv1pm.tmp

I purchased a Samsung SIR-T451 last week and it arrived today. Sadly, it’ll take some work to get the SR15 antenna I bought from AntennasDirect mounted and connected, so no HD for me tonight. I’m actually very busy with Core Web Technology stuff, so it may be a week or so before I can even consider getting on my roof (and holding on for dear life) to mount my antenna.

Philips has always been one of my favorite brands, but I don’t really care for the Philips/Magnavox branded products. I noticed this little camera (KEY010) about two months ago and I’ve found myself self tempted to buy one at least once per month. I think most of these things would be a ‘nice to have,’ but they might end up being more novelty than anything else. Philips’ GoGear line of consumer electronics has taken the bulky out of quality. They’ve taken products that we all know and love, and shrunk them into tiny devices that allow us to carry more of them around in one pocket. Most of these devices are the same size and shape as a pen drive. I’m impressed with the camcorder. More information About GoGear.

KEY010 : 2 Megapixel Digital Camera (Froogled at $69.96)

Ready to wear, Ready to go

• Fashionable neck-strap
• Ultra lightweight magnesium body
• Small and wearable – 45 grams

USB Plug & Play

• Direct USB for easy file transfers!
• Direct battery recharge via USB

Your pictures, your data on the go

• Store and carry your data files
• Snap up to 300 quality 2 Megapixel pictures
• 128MB internal flash memory

KEY014 : Up to 8 hours of music (Froogled at $89.55)

Ready to wear, Ready to go

• Small and wearable – 31 grams
• Ultra lightweight magnesium body
• External battery pack
• Intuitive neck-strap remote control

Easy, intuitive music experience

• SuperSkip™ navigation
• Direct USB for easy file transfer!
• Direct battery recharge via USB
• Backlit LCD display

Your music, your data – on the go

• 256MB: 8 hours of music
• MP3 WMA playback
• Store and carry your data files

KEY019 : MPEG4 Camcorder + photos + MP3 (Froogled at $149.99)

Ready to wear, Ready to go

• Small and wearable – 60 grams
• Ultra lightweight magnesium body
• External battery pack

Smart camcorder with direct USB

• Microdisplay Viewfinder
• Direct USB for easy file transfer!
• Direct battery recharge via USB
• 5-Key in-cord remote control to easily control your music

Multimedia anytime, anywhere

• Up to 25 minutes of MPEG4 video
• Snap up to 200 2 Megapixel pictures
• Enjoy MP3 playback
• 128MB internal flash memory
• Store and carry your data files

HDD077 : Up to 1000 songs and FM Radio (Froogled at $149.99)

Small and light makes it truly wearable

• Ultra lightweight and strong magnesium body
• Fashionable neck-strap – wear it everywhere!
• Dress up your player with colorful groovy stickers

Easy, intuitive music experience on the go

• Simple and easy-to-use interface menus
• SuperPlay™ provides hassle-free one-touch jukebox playback
• SuperScroll™ navigation finds songs in a simple, fast way

Your music, your data – on the go, everyday

• 2GB (up to 1,000 wma songs) capacity for music and data on the go
• More music built-in FM radio
• USB mass storage to store and carry your data files
• 10 hour battery life

HDD120 : Direct MP3 Recording (Froogled at $183.60)

Capture all your favorite music

• Record directly to MP3 via analog or digital line-inputs
• Make voice memos in MP3
• High-Speed USB2.0

Easy, intuitive music experience

• Simple and easy-to-use menus
• SuperScroll™ navigation

Your music, your data – on the go, everyday

• 20GB: up to 10,000 songs
• Store and carry your data files
• 10 hour battery life
• Super-slim design fits perfectly in your pocket