Bye File Server, hello NAS

Posted: November 20, 2006 in HDTV, IPTV
0

NAS, or Network Attached Storage is finally affordable to use at home. For a few weeks I have been running two $70 Coolmax
CN-550 devices:

This is an external USB drive with an RJ-45 ethernet
port. My devices both have 320GB hard discs and allowed me to dismantle a dedicate
file server PC :) Now we only have one desktop PC
in the house!!, which is a far-cry from the five PC two years ago!! Simplicity
means more time for other hobbies, and this device has a very simple to use web interface.

So what are the pros and cons of the CN-550 which right now is the pick of the affordable
NAS:

Good:

Works seamlessly with final build of XMBC v1.0
Works seamlessly with Windows 2000, XP, and Vista
Can access files via a windows ‘machine name’, e.g. \\MP3s\Radiohead\
Maintainable via a simple web interface
Simple to user Folder security (SMB username/ paswords)
Can easily become an FTP server
Stackable

Mild Annoyances:

XMBC 2.0 does not recognize these devices (yet)
Only uses IDE drives, not SATA
Discs must be formatted FAT32
Very slow for large data transfers over RJ45 (use USB 2.0 instead)
One of my 320GB Hard Discs does not work with power saving – I simply turned off sleep
for that NAS device

Bad:

Reported not to work with some very large hard discs (750GB)

Is blogging software a commodity?

Posted: November 20, 2006 in Other
2

You know the saying, concentrate on your core business and leverage commodity software wherever possible. Well 2007 is almost here, and it is probably time to stop maintaining my own blog software when there are so many easy to use services available. The first one I am trying is Google’s Blogger, about 10 minutes of effort produced this:

http://www.dotnetworkaholic.com/blogger/index.html

Time saved from the NAS v’s File Server prompted me to this. In 1999 I had my own home brew TV PC which required enormous amount ‘nursing’. Just ripping a CD took 8 hours in 1999! Then came better capture software like Virtual Dub and home brew scheduling software, then Snapstream, the PVR250 capture card, the set-top boxes (my 6412 was too buggy/complex) and finally we have media easily available on the internet – take video podcasts for example. Each step reduced the time required for the geek hobby as it progressively became mainstream. Blogging is now mainstream enough that 99.9% of us should be able to live with a commodity engine. It has to be said that .Text and the DasBlog have served me well – my flat cap (a Yorkshire thing) is tipped to all involved.

So where is my time being spent, it is obviously not in writing many blog posts. Generating more passive income, that’s what! It is tempting to blog in this area, I almost had a serious rant when several financial bloggers published their networth, only one was over $500K. In the USA is all about perception, and anyone can be a self appointed expert with no experience required… which leads me back to the Right to Hire, Right to Fire post.

The Right to Hire, Right to Fire entry was only posted temporarily but will return. In 2009 I’ll have 20 years IT experience and hope to collate wisdom gained as a set of posts… As mentioned in the (in)famous post, I have been fired from two of my ~fifteen contracts; both where I was fighting very hard to do the right thing and save failing projects. Time has now passed and everyone involved in firing me in 2003 have now been let go for incompetence + the company only kept the two strong developers I recommended!

Bye File Server, hello NAS

Posted: November 20, 2006 in Other
0

NAS, or Network Attached Storage is finally affordable to use at home. For a few weeks I have been running two $70 Coolmax CN-550 devices:

This is an external USB drive with an RJ-45 ethernet port. My devices both have 320GB hard discs and allowed me to dismantle a dedicate file server PC :) Now we only have one desktop PC in the house!!, which is a far-cry from the five PC two years ago!! Simplicity means more time for other hobbies, and this device has a very simple to use web interface.

So what are the pros and cons of the CN-550 which right now is the pick of the affordable NAS:

Good:
Works seamlessly with final build of XMBC v1.0
Works seamlessly with Windows 2000, XP, and Vista
Can access files via a windows ‘machine name’, e.g. \\MP3s\Radiohead\
Maintainable via a simple web interface
Simple to user Folder security (SMB username/ paswords)
Can easily become an FTP server
Stackable

Mild Annoyances:
XMBC 2.0 does not recognize these devices (yet)
Only uses IDE drives, not SATA
Discs must be formatted FAT32
Very slow for large data transfers over RJ45 (use USB 2.0 instead)
One of my 320GB Hard Discs does not work with power saving – I simply turned off sleep for that NAS device

Bad:
Reported not to work with some very large hard discs (750GB)

Plasma TVs do suffer from screen burn

Posted: October 6, 2006 in HDTV, IPTV
2

Just for the record: if anyone is considering a Plasma TV bear in mind that screen
burn does happen. When buying mine early this year almost all the press were
saying that it barely happened with old models, and is the same a CRT for the latest
generation of Plasmas. Well with pretty light use (we don’t even have cable!) my Plasma
is already showing a faint impression of the xbmc menu + pause/ progress box
during power-off.

This is no big deal for me it was caught in time and I set the xbmc screensaver
to stars with a one minute delay. The default is dim (to 20%) after
three minutes which obviously was not doing the trick.

Routers with Hard Drives? What a great idea

Posted: August 24, 2006 in IPTV
0

Asus are the first out of the gate with one:
http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=1&model=979&l1=12&l2=43&l3=0

A big sell to me is: Hide one in your attic or coal house and
you have a theft proof network drive.

This device also comes with Bitorrent, ftp etc capable client and servers, although no podcatcher support which
would make it a done deal for me. Bitorrent support may help marketing,
but I the main appeal for many is an always on Samba Share – right now I need
a (noisy) PC running to share media between my xbmcs (the xbox’s SMB server implementation
is single threaded and cannot run in parallel with xbmc). Podcast support + SMB
server would allow me to part another PC for eBay (I am down to three
today); but without both those options I am skipping the ~$270 device for now. By
Xmas I predict similar devices will also pull down podcasts and IPTV via RSS.

Before this router appeared I was close to buying another used xbox (~$90 on
Craig’s list [Aug 2006]) and running a SMB share via linux on one. In case you
have not heard; it is now child’s place to hack an (original) xbox without a chip/
special game/ memory card etc. A used xbox makes a very cheap linux server
or 1080i capable media center. That reminds me I have some used
xbox games to sell on eBay… who has time for games anyway?

Cat-5 Wiring for 1GB/s, the order matters – Doh!

Posted: August 21, 2006 in Other
0

None of my longish Cat5 cables would work at 1GB/s. Adhering to this image found on Wikipedia, cables that maxed at 100MB/s now dance at 1GB/s, wahoo!:

The order of the wires is very important. Of course I learned about twisted pairs in high-school. I just assumed that like colors go together in pairs, but it is not the case for Cat5 at least.

Hopefully this helps you peeps having the same frustration. It is also worth pointing out that Cat5e is fine for 1GB/s and is a documented IEEE standard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_5_cable Ignore those attention grabbing phonies who say you should have used Cat6

Google is in Atlanta (and hiring)

Posted: August 20, 2006 in Atlanta
0

It is interesting to learn that Google believes Atlanta important enough
to have a real office here now. Cool as Google is they are actually in the city too,
unlike Microsoft who recently moved to the SUV swamped suburbs of North
Atlanta. The Atlanta office seems mainly to be sales staff but they are also hiring
engineers:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-in-atl.html

I wonder how long until we meet an ATL Googler at our Architects meeting? If
they want to make real tech-connections in town, I imagine it will not be long.

IPTV: My OPML

Posted: July 2, 2006 in Other
0

Paul’s IPTV
OMPL.

IPTV is very much in its infancy; especially when looking for quality content that
is distributed via RSS. For those interested here
is my OPML, Juice Receiver works great
on my server machine. I watch using xbmc and an SMB share (very simple to set up).

Happy with the Hanselman Remote

Posted: July 2, 2006 in HDTV, Other
0

Last year Scott
Hanselman raved about the Harmony 880. I have been using one for three months, and have to say it tamed my fairly complex media set-up. The system was manageable before I cancelled Tivo + premium cable, instead switching to an xbox using xmbc. At this stage using the system effectively required juggling five remotes, and it was no suprise that my wife gave up on the main TV. She will not let me tell her how much the Harmony 880 cost, but can now watch IPTV streamed from a server PC (elsewhere in the house) to the xbox with video directed to a 480p Plasma with 5.1 audio via a fairly complex receiver. All that with one remote!

At a street price of $160->$200 this is by no means a cheap remote. Still, for $160 + two hours of my time (including teaching the remote xbox IR commands), we now have a state of the art media system that is simple to use. The only
glitches with the remote so far are that it rattles (weirdly almost every house guest to has the same urge to drop it on my hardwood floor!), it also can become a little confused when playing audio from the xbox, but programming a custom
key to resolved that.  It appears the only upgrade to the 880 is the 890 which also handles RF. The home theater buffs I asked I asked are unsure if this is just RF to a remote IR transmitter, or RF to device like an xbox wireless remote so I just bought the 880 + an xbox IR receiver.

As Scott said this thing is butter, and seeing that 480p Plasma’s are in Best Buy for ~$1000 I think everyone I know will soon be in need of a remote like this: 

Regarding the Plasma purchase; my 2 cents is just buy a 480p off-brand $1000 model today. $2500 for a semi HDTV plasma is waste IMO as they are not 1080p and little HD material is available anyway; in about two years buy a real 1080p Plasma for $1500 and give the 480p to your kids who will then love you for ever. Regualar DVDs look fantastic on my Maxent Plasma; black levels are a little annoying at times, but well worth the $1000+ saving.

IPTV: Democracy Player

Posted: June 18, 2006 in IPTV, Podcasts
0

Update (2nd July): Since this post I have reverted back to using Juice
Receiver which although not designed for video has fewer glitches. If anyone knows
of a more reliable solution please let me know.

IPTV is about where podcasting was when I started manually downloading podcasts in
the summer of 2004 [i.e. in its infancy]. Within only two years podcasting has made
a small dent in the nation’s listening habits, with high awareness in the high spending
demographics that advertisers salivate over. Will IPTV do the same?Already we have several aggregators; the one I recommend trying is Democracy Player.
It is open source and runs on all popular operating systems, but did not work with
on my install of Vista Beta 2.

Like iPodder Lemon before it Democracy Player installs
with several pre-selected channels, which just like iPodder downloaded large quantities
of utter garbage to my hard disk. I suggest deleting the pre-selected channels, clicking
on Channel Guide and using the iTunes like interface to select from popular listings.
As the following screenshot shows I am trying out ABC news, Ricky Gervis, and TWIT’s
h.264 feed:

This is early days for the software and this player does work perfectly as a media
server. I view the content from xbmc over a SMB share, which works fairly well but
all the media is deposited into one folder with often cryptic filenames. Hopefully
a future build will create a directory for each feed like Juice Receiver does for
podcasts. Finally it is worth noting that Democracy Player uses Bittorrent under the
hood so downloads should be fast – there are no custom port settings yet so I have
temporarily enabled UPnP on my NAT Router.

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