March 3rd, 2009 by brent

I’m testing to see if Microsoft’s Live Writer can hook up to WordPress and to see what it will look like.  This tool has been getting some good press lately.

Hello World.

January 20th, 2009 by brent

Still here.  No news.  Stay tuned.

November 7th, 2008 by brent

I think it may be the latter.  I am departing from my usual technophile view of sorts and taking a introspective look at some things that have been on my mind.  A lot has changed over the past few years, frankly, over last six months or so.  It has been a rapid fire of change and I guess that is what life is all about: CHANGE.

Home ownership, bills, working a lot, puppy, more bills, working around the house…  It feels like I barely have time to breathe most of the time.  I guess that is what life is about, the next phase in a way.  Less time for friends, less time for family, building my own family, my own life.  Not being in college anymore is a total departure from what I have been come accustomed to.  It is nice on one hand.. no homework or projects sucking the life out of me..  Now it is just house projects and work projects doing that.  It was a trade of sorts.  I am happy with my job and it is a lot less time consuming than school was.

I was on a walk with the dog last night and I was remembering back when I was in High School; it seems like a lifetime ago.  A different town a different day.  I remember lifting weights in my parents basement at 1:00am listening to the radio.  It was just a neat time in my life.  I didn’t have many worries or concerns; I was young.

I have seen 1:00am only a couple times since I have been out on my “own”.  I think that is good having a schedule and such.

This post has nothing and everything to do with technology.  Technology is a passion in my life and it has taken me to where I am today, but technology is playing a different role in my life recently.  Since I have less time to see people that I have seen for years technology is a great way to keep in touch and see what people are up to.  Actually a friend I had in High School contacted me on Facebook yesterday, which was pretty cool.  I haven’t seen her in years.  She has a cute kid.

I have been on Facebook, Myspace, and other social networks for many years, but I think their role has changed.  I think when I was younger they were an addition to face to face encounters and now they take that place.  It is good, I think, because otherwise I would not no communication with my hectic schedule and life.

I don’t know if I am growing up or growing old.  Maybe neither.  I am changing because life is change.  It’s definitely not easy.  There are so many sacrifices that I am not used to.  With responsibility comes sacrifice to a degree.  I gain so much from my sacrifice though.  It’s a good trade.

October 14th, 2008 by brent

I found it quite difficult to find information on how to convert basic cable (plain old cable) into composite.  This is for the folks who have cable, but don’t want to pay for extended services and cable boxes.  There are two verbiages that you will find on your web searches:

1)  Just use an old VCR!
2)  Just use an old computer!

End of thread…  End of post… That is where the story ends and it leaves a lot to be desired.  I have problems with both of these solutions.

1)  The VCR is archaic
2)  I don’t want to leave a computer running in a room that will be used sparingly
3)  I don’t want to wait for a computer to boot up

This can be negated if you have a cable box that already does that.  But there are still people out there without cable boxes.  Or don’t want a cable box in every room or on every device; I’m sure the cable companies want you to.  I can’t seem to justify the extra $30 + fees for the box to move away from basic cable.  Renting a cable box seems like a dirty tactic to me; in the long run they have to make a killing.

I have NetFlix so if I want to watch a movie I can just get it off of there.  Also, there is NetFlix streaming which is awesome.  I do not want to give the cable companies more money – it’s already highway robbery.

The problem with this is that projectors do not have a TV tuner.  It doesn’t know what to do with the coax connection.  Projectors cannot tune (most of them that are out there anyway).  But I believe there is a happy medium… a product by Ambery.com -> Super Video to WXGA Converter.  This device works much like a cable box expect that you can buy it and use it how you like.

It takes a coax connection (Clear QAM), it won’t decrypt any of the pay channels like a real cable box, and converts it to composite, VGA, or S-Video.  Composite will most likely be your best choice for a projector.  I believe they also have one with component connections.  If you are looking for HDMI I’m not sure what will be needed – I’m guessing an upconverter of some sort.

Clear QAM is important.  If the device is not Clear QAM then it will not be able to tune to the cable frequencies.  If you have been looking at the Analog-to-Digital most of the ones that I have found do not have clear QAM meaning they will not work with cable; you will need an antenna to retrieve the signals.

Read the rest of this entry »

October 8th, 2008 by brent

I absolutely love the plug-in FLVPlayer for FCKEditor.  Inserting FLV into page or posts with the standard FCKEditor just doesn’t work.  This nice little plug-in is a champ.  Unfortunately, it has compatiblity issues with the new FCKEditor 2.6.3, so here is how to make this little plug-in work on FCKEditor 2.6.3

The problem I ran into was going to browse for media it would display a Page Not Found.  I’m guessing the method it was previously calling got depreciated.

Here’s where the error occurs:

flvplayer.js

function BrowseServer()
{
OpenServerBrowser(
‘flv’,
oEditor.FCKConfig.MediaBrowserURL,
oEditor.FCKConfig.MediaBrowserWindowWidth,
oEditor.FCKConfig.MediaBrowserWindowHeight ) ;
}

Replace that with the following:

flvplayer.js

function BrowseServer()
{
OpenServerBrowser(
‘flv’,
oEditor.FCKConfig.FlashBrowserURL,
oEditor.FCKConfig.FlashBrowserWindowWidth,
oEditor.FCKConfig.FlashBrowserWindowHeight ) ;
}

Voila!  This cleared everything up for me and I was off and running…

—update—

I see this update has already been add to the comments of the project on sourceforge, but it has not made it into the source code.  I wonder if the developer has abandoned it.

—end—

Another change that isn’t a bug that I made was automatically setting the width/height of the videos instead of having to enter that with every FLV file. Read the rest of this entry »