- Published:
- January 12, 2012 – 11:18 pm
- Author:
- By Dave
After I ditched cable TV, I used both Snapstream’s BeyondTV and SageTV to sate my and my family’s television needs. After almost 2 years we ended up turning cable back on. Win one for the cable company!
But that did not end my search for the perfect home television system. Our cable box, well, works; but the hard drive is limited and you have to pay 15.99/mo for it.
For the full video demo… continue to the full post!
Categories: Gaming,Other Technology,Software,Television
Tagged: demo, htpc, Windows Media Center, Windows Media Center Extender, xbox, xbox 360
- Published:
- February 21, 2011 – 10:35 pm
- Author:
- By Dave
I’ve been busy lately on a number of projects, one of which is a programming class I am currently taking. The class itself is interesting, we are learning about the different types of programming languages. For our latest project, we were tasked with writing a simple program in Pascal. Pascal isn’t used too much any more since it lacks some of the features that most modern languages have, but it is good to know at least a little bit about it in case you ever run across some old Pascal programs in the wild. The syntax for pascal is a bit verbose, that is the main complaint about it. There are a number of others, but that is beyond the scope of this howto. Installing The Pascal Compiler on Ubuntu Installing Pascal in modern Ubuntu is a cinch. The Free Pascal Compiler, or fpc, is all that you need to….
Categories: Code Samples,Other Code,Ubuntu
Tagged: pascal, programming, Ubuntu
- Published:
- September 22, 2010 – 10:28 pm
- Author:
- By Dave
It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Handbrake. After committing to copying my DVD collection to my storage array, I’ve tried and tested just about all software out there for converting video to H.264 with an emphasis on quality and speed. Many software packages have problems with quality or desynchronized audio, Handbrake is my hands-down favorite when it comes down to converting video — and that includes both free and commercial software.
One of the complaints I hear about Handbrake is that there are too many options. Well, the good news for someone looking for simplicity is that the built-in presets mostly take care of them for you. And for anyone who likes to dive into the nitty gritty of video compression, it also allows for a lot of tweaking to get the most out of your movie while maintaining small file sizes and high quality.
Read on for my full guide to Handbrake features.
Categories: Software,Windows
Tagged: dvd, encoding, video
- Published:
- September 20, 2010 – 12:21 pm
- Author:
- By Dave
I’m not trying to say I had anything to do with Google adding two-factor authentication to Google Apps. I’m really not. But on September 9th, MakeUseOf published an article named How To Secure Your Google Apps Account with Two Factor Authentication. In this article, I wrote: All of this brings up the question: why doesn’t Google enable a direct way to use two factor authentication with their Gmail, Calendar and other services? Many folks such as myself use Google services for all too many things in their lives, and that login is potentially the most important one of their online life. I would suggest that Google gets onto the security boat and enables this as an option for everyday folks. Today, 11 days later, Google released their own Two-Factor authentication scheme for Google Apps account (Premier, Education and Government). An example of accurate prognostication? Or just dumb luck? Either way,….
Categories: Google,Security,Software
Tagged: authentication, Google, Security
- Published:
- August 16, 2010 – 8:34 am
- Author:
- By Dave
A forum that I am an adminstrator for has been clamoring for an iPhone theme (style) for a long time now. In the past, I hadn’t seen any usable iPhone template for phpBB3, until now.
View this entire post to view my modifications to a theme switcher for mobile devices, so that the end user can disable a mobile theme for their login if they should choose to do so.
Categories: Code Samples,PHP,Software
Tagged: iphone, PHP, phpbb, theme
- Published:
- February 19, 2010 – 10:55 pm
- Author:
- By Dave
HBO GO has been in the works for a while now, and is an indication of what some networks are trying to do to add value to their subscription rate. Offering video for streaming online is definitely a benefit to a premium channel like HBO. And it is a glimpse as to what the future of online video will hold. I recently got rid of my cable box and implemented a do-it-yourself solution. Since HBO is a premium channel and encrypted, they force you to either buy a cable box via subscription or also a cable-card (which they also charge for). This actually gives me a unique perspective on the service: would I pay for HBO to receive the HBO GO online only offering?
Categories: Reviews,Software,Television
Tagged: newmedia, review, Television
- Published:
- February 8, 2010 – 9:05 pm
- Author:
- By Dave
This is my admittedly minor but I hope useful contribution to the TinyOS development community. TinyOS is an Operating System and development framework for Wireless Sensor Networks and other platforms which has a small footprint and is very energy conscious. The TinyOS source code is available for free online for many operating systems, however it takes a long time to get the environment set up and it is not portable at all. I came across XubunTOS but it did not seem to be in active development anymore, so I endeavored to install TinyOS 2.1 and 2.x from source into a regular Ubuntu image. The most help came from Matt Keally’s Blog. While doing this, I thought it might be useful to many others who wish to develop in the TinyOS framework but might not have the skills necessary to install it. Therefore, I developed this VirtualBox image so that you can….
Categories: Programs,Software,Ubuntu
Tagged: tinyos, ubuntos, Ubuntu, virtualbox
