March 7th, 2010
Ever since switching from RoadRunner internet (8 / .3 Mbps) to ATT U-verse (12 / 1.5 Mbps) I have been getting some intermittent connection failures. I suspect that my 7 year old Linksys WRT54G used as my primary Internet QOS router may be at its limits under the bandwidth load.

Upon recommendation from several folks in the forums, I have purchased a Asus RT-N16 router which I intend to install Tomato on.
Ill update when it arrives.
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March 7th, 2010
Noticed a problem with the XBMC box I have in the family room that the audio / video appeared slightly too fast. I took out my watch and timed a minute of video and found it to off by almost 10 secs. Searching on the internet led me to find that the sample rate of the HDMI interface of 48000Khz was not being handled correctly by the default XBMC config.
Doing the following fixed the problem:
-Setup an ALSA plugin to resample the audio
- Create a file /etc/asound.conf file (make sure the card and device numbers are correct for your system.. Run aplay -l to find the right settings)
hdmi {
type hw
card 1
device 3
}
pcm.hdmiconv {
type plug
slave {
pcm "hw:1,3"
rate 48000
}
}
- In XBMC -> Settings -> System -> Audio -> Device -> Custom -> enter ‘hdmiconv’
- Reboot
- Fixed!
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January 31st, 2010
Not interested in certain topics on the Engadget Gadget blog? Simply append the tags you wish to exclude by appending onto the following url:
http://www.engadget.com/exclude/apple,ipad,iphone,imac,ipod,mac
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January 6th, 2010
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December 26th, 2009
Well, I have been boycotting BlueRay discs for some time now, however, I do get them as gifts from time-to-time and need to play them. Nowadays I will purchase HD movies streamed online from Amazon using their media library and my Roku, but I received a few more physical BD discs that I need to decrypt this Christmas…
At this point though it is more economicalfor me to re-purchase the titles on Amazon then to spend the time getting the discs decrypted, but for those looking for a challenge:
Here are a few links of interest in playing blue-ray discs from Ubuntu 9.10
The Main Ubuntu Blueray guide:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/BluRayAndHDDVD
BDRom decryption keys by Movie title:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1293367#post1293367
DumpHD ( Open source ripping program )
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=123111
MakeMKV ( Closed Source ripping program )
http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=224
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December 26th, 2009
Finally, the MPX subsystem is included in the alpha version of Ubuntu 10.04. I was able to create three separate mouse pointers on my TabletPC as a test following this guide: http://alec.mooo.com/mpx.php
Why? Because I can
and because this is hopefully the beginning of multi-touch support throughout the Gnome Desktop environment.
Last night my wife and I shared the laptop for a while using both the bluetooth mouse and the internal trackpoint.

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December 16th, 2009
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December 11th, 2009
Someone asked me for pictures of my arcade machine and here are a few.
Config:
- MAME 1.31
- 4 sets of controls (8 way joystick + 7 buttons)
- Trackball
- Light Gun
- Spinner
- 4 way joystick




Posted in Fun, Tech | No Comments »