Category: Technology

This is the good stuff that makes the world go round.

3 Drives Enter, One Drive Leaves

Post author By mstroud
Post date December 16, 2004

It was too good to be true. I had two drives that appeared to die so I pulled them out of where they were and added them to a new system. Everything seemed great, and they worked for 3 or 4 days. Yay for me.

The problem is that this morning I woke up, came down to work on the PC and found a “click of death” sound coming from my PC. It could only be one thing: a dead IBM hard drive, the Deskstar (affectionately know as the Death Star). Now I shouldn’t complain too much, as this drive is 4 years old. But is sucks that I just spent the better part of a week making it work the way I wanted (it was my new PC’s boot drive).

So while I didn’t lose any data I did just lose a ton of setup time. Time to order up some new drives, it appears.

BenQ 951 LCD monitor

Post author By mstroud
Post date December 2, 2004

I am in the process of assembling a completely new PC for a friend of mine and I just received the best part: a new BenQ 951 19″ LCD monitor. At 1280×1024 resolution it has a 700:1 contrast ratio and appears brighter than my laptop display. Digital photos, text, and web pages look great on it. I haven’t tried yet, but I’ll bet image editing works well too.

The only thing I know it won’t do well is play games, thanks to a slow 20ms response time. However, if you don’t play games this could well be the best 19″ display on the market today. And at only $419.00 its a steal. Go out and get one today… I know I would if I needed one.

Rants Review Technology

Roku Update

Post author By mstroud
Post date November 27, 2004

After about 12 hours of grinding away, my server finally finished its scan of all my music and made itself ready for streaming. For about 5 hours yesterday I had everything working great, searching and streaming songs, playlists, and the like. Great, this is just what I was looking for.

Then I noticed that my laptop couldn’t go to any web sites. And my router appeared to be dead. Hmm, that’s not right.

I discovered that at least twice an hour, for some reason, my router, a Linksys, goes all wonky and stops responding to anyone but the server and Roku client. No one can be pinged, tracerouted, or communicated to. Cycling power on the router brings it back to life, or I can sit around for 5 minutes or so until it clears itself.

It is truly baffling why this happens, but the music still runs. I suppose more diagnosis is in order, but I find that UPnP is neither truly universal nor plug-and-play. Figures.

General Review Technology

Roku SoundBridge 1000

Post author By mstroud
Post date November 25, 2004

I just picke up one of these Roku SoundBridge 1000 boxes to fiddle with. So far, I’ve found it to be pretty cool and relatively easy to setup. This version is WiFi (b) enabled, so I just find some speakers and a power plug and I’m up and running anywhere. It is reasonably easy to go, now with the Windows UPNP functions working.

The downside, as it always is for me, is that none of the server software that talks to the Roku can handle the volume of music I want to play. Simply put: they choke. Currently the Windows Media Connect service running on my home server is pegged at 100% CPU utilization and over 163MB of memory usage. This is after it has been trying to digest my music for the past 6 hours or so. Guess there is still room for improvement with these devices. On the other hand, iTunes and SlimServer do work with smaller quantities of music, so it isn’t all busted dreams.

General Technology

Podcast = Poor Man's Audible?

Post author By mstroud
Post date November 20, 2004

Because I have nothing better to do than poke around on the web during the mornings on weekends, I found this small but growing phenomenon: podcasting. For those who are uninformed (including me, evidently) this is the ability for the common man (and some more special folks) to create their own audio broadcasts to go along with their blog.

I have to say that its still pretty early days, but it seems to me that this is the poor mans solution to Audible, with more uneven talent. There is some interesting stuff out there to listen to, but if I need bite size nuggets of technology info, I will get my tech news from someone who has been doing it a long, long time and does it for a living (he is a friend and very funny).

Discuss amongst yourselves.

General Technology

Xbox Addiction

Post author By mstroud
Post date January 5, 2004

I’m the first to admit that I play a lot of video games. But now I have a new one that eats up every spare moment: Project Gotham Racing 2. Its not my style at all; driving virtual cars around a track, beating the clock, your own time, or one of several virtual drivers. But this game adds a twist: you can link up with other humans on Xbox Live! (internet gaming) and have a go.

I’ve never laughed so hard in my entire life. 8 people with Ferrari Enzo’s smashing into the same wall at 100+ MPH, screaming and cursing the whole way. It was just too good.

General Technology

TiVo Goodness

Post author By mstroud
Post date January 26, 2003

I have successfully bumped my DirecTiVo unit from 30 hours to 107 hours! It was a pain, but I finally got a PC that was stable long enough for this to happen. I only have to upgrade two more (!) and I’m done. I now have weeks worth of programming available at any time… and no fear of it getting deleted when I leave town.

Yay me!

General Technology

Ebay & TiVo Goodness

Post author By mstroud
Post date December 11, 2001

Well I finally won something on Ebay, but I had to snipe to get it. How you say? Using this nifty site. It seems to work most of the time if you know what the price range is for the item. Sneaky but effective.

Got home tonight only to find reruns. Some people have TiVos and it tells them when reruns happen so they don’t rush home to watch nothing on TV. And it records stuff so you don’t have to rush home. So, I guess I need a TiVo (and cable too)!