Clik here to view.
TechNazgul – The Beginning
After several years of thinking to myself that I should start a blog, I’ve taken the leap. I’m an avid computer and home theater enthusiast (read: geek) who works in the IT industry and gets to work...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ideas for Future Posts
Here are some items I intend to cover in future posts. Since it’s just me here talking to myself, I figure I’ll just publish them here as a reminder to myself for the future. Online backup review –...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Helicopter for a Subwoofer? You Bet.
Check out the world’s most amazing subwoofer...sans woofer. Despite looking more like a helicopter than a speaker, this oddity can produce bass relatively flat down to ONE Hz. It looks like it drops...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tightening the LCD screws on a Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop
I received a "tech support call" today asking me to tighten the screws on the LCD of a Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop in our house. The lid was so loose that when you opened it and tried to keep it in one...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gmail: The conversation that you requested could not be loaded…
Gmail has been doing a lot more of this lately. I’m not sure if it’s load-related or if they’ve got buggy code, but something has caused it to pop up a lot more frequently in the last 1-2 weeks.The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Installing XBMC Dharma Beta on the Acer Aspire Revo
XBMC recently unveiled the first official Beta of their “Dharma” release. It includes numerous enhancements from the last complete version. Note: original post updated with general links to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Add custom remote control commands to XBMC Dharma
If you need to setup custom remote commands, i.e. mapping non- standard keys like “LiveTV” on your Windows MCE remote to a new function in XBMC, one method of doing so is using irxevent. To be clear,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Making sense of XBMC remote mapping
Understanding lircmap.xml, remote.xml, and keyboard.xmlI’ve written in the past about using irxevent to set up custom remote commands in XBMC on Linux. That was the way I originally set up my remote...
View ArticleClik here to view.
AT&T uVerse Residential Gateway Timeout with DD-WRT
This week I upgraded to a new DD-WRT install on my Asus RT-N16 router. What I found was that EXACTLY every 10 minutes, the router would drop all connections momentarily and then reconnect. I drove...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Solved: Kindle for PC won’t download books
A few weeks ago, Kindle for PC on my Windows 7 Ultimate x64 computer suddenly refused to download books to my computer. I could open the Kindle for PC App and see them all in the 'archive’ section, but...
View ArticleWindows – How to restore windows that appear off screen
This falls into the category of frequent and annoying problems! I end up Googling this every time it happens, and here is how you fix it. This works even if you use a multi-monitor task bar like...
View ArticleUsing and autostarting irexec & irxevent with XBMC
The irexec application allows for customized scripts to be run based on input received from a remote control. When using XBMC running on Linux, this program can be very useful to do things like force a...
View ArticleAutostarting irexec & irxevent with XBMC, part two
Now that we’ve set up our scripts for restarting XBMC and irexec/irxeevnt, we need to go about ensuring that irexec is running at all times so that the scripts work when executed via remote. There are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Enable Windows Snipping Tool in Server 2008 R2
Strangely, attempts to Google this solution led to many convoluted results that involved copying files from a Vista install to the Server 2008 directory or hacking the registry to make this work. As it...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Advanced network configuration using vmware Player
In the past, the advanced network configuration utility for vmware was installed automatically with vmware player, but at some point they started making it more difficult to find. As it turns out,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
CrashPlan Online Backup: Maximizing Upload Speeds
Note that the problems related to dedupe/compression observed in this post were fixed by CrashPlan in the 3.03 software release in March of 2011. As of March, 2011, the problems with CogentCo remain...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Configuring DD-WRT VPN client with HideIP VPN
HideIP VPN is a simple, fast VPN provider that I’ve used in the past to help navigate around poor BGP routing issues that were slowing down my backups to CrashPlan’s online backup service....
View ArticleClik here to view.
HDTV OTA Antennas: Terk HDTVa vs. Antennas Direct DB2
I’ve recently decided to cancel our $85 / month DirecTV subscription and will instead be utilizing a combination of MythTV (open-source DVR software ) for managing over the air (OTA) broadcasts and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Customized XBMC Transparency Skin for MythBox
I’ve been a long-time XBMC user and recently started using MythTV as well after dumping my satellite subscription. The MythBox integration with XBMC is awesome, but one thing I felt was lacking was an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NFS vs. SMB throughput for HD media streaming using the NETGEAR XAVB5001 500...
NETGEAR XAVB5001 500 Mbps Powerline Adapter Review:After recently dropping my satellite subscription and moving to MythTV, I needed to find a way to get HD video streams from my antenna and HD Homerun...
View Article
