LittleJoe

Replaced my iPod battery for $25

My 30GB video iPod has been a trusty device ...until the past month or so. The HOLD button stopped working. OK. I can deal with that. But the battery life had also started tanking. I could charge the iPod and after an hour or so it would still show as full or nearly so and then suddenly drop to the red zone and then die. I could have sent the iPod to Apple, but they charge $59 or more, it would be a couple of weeks before I'd have an iPod back, and it wouldn't be the same iPod --  Apple returns a different iPod of the same model. Not acceptable.

So after a little research, I ordered a battery replacement kit for $25 (including shipping) from Milliamp. The kit shipped within a day and was here one or two days later. A pic of the kit appears at the left (click to see full size). The kit includes a tool to open the iPod, very detailed instructions with pictures, the new battery, and a small screwdriver (which I didn't need).

I admit it was a little spooky to split my iPod open and perform the surgery. But the entire process only took about 10 minutes, and I had my iPod back together with a new battery. Did I mention that it is my iPod? All my files are intact, my custom engraving and skin is still there, and I did not have to go for days/weeks without the device. The ribbon cables are quite delicate, and one does need to be careful, but it is definitely a very doable task ...and much cheaper vs sending off to Apple.

Oh, and if you buy a kit from Milliamp, they allow you to send them your old battery and they'll recycle it. Nice!

Updating podcasts to iPod using Ubuntu

I've been running various versions of Ubuntu on my home machines (a desktop, a laptop, and a netbook) for some time now. But in the past, I'd had a devil of a time managing my iPod from Ubuntu. OK, it wasn't horrible, but I had to use a couple of applications: Rhythmbox, which seems to always be included with the default install of Ubuntu; and Amarok, which has to be added separately, but which I used to really like.

Well, Amarok was recently upgraded, and I truly hate the new interface. Especially on the netbook - which has become my main machine:) - the new Amarok interface with its clunky graphics and (to me) harder-to-use interface was just no longer an option. So I decided to see if the latest versions of Ubuntu and Rhythmbox could work alone.

Amarok had never seemed to be able to see the iPod on its own. I'd connect the iPod, Rhythmbox would open, then I could shut Rhythmbox and use Amarok from that point on.

Well a week or so ago, I upgraded the netbook to Ubuntu 9.04 (aka, the Jaunty Jackalope :) ...What I actually installed was an Ubuntu 9.04 remix from Dell. I'll do a separate post about the problems I had with the (non-Dell) 9.04 Ubuntu Netbook Remix; that's a separate story.

Hoping to be able to just use Rhythmbox, I did a very little bit of fumbling and happily discovered that it.just.works! So...I've posted a Flickr stream (7 screen shots) showing the very easy steps. Trust me, this used to be harder...honest!

In case you don't want or need to look at screen shots, here's the instructions:

Copy the desired podcast link to your clipboard. Then...

1. Select Applications > Sound & Video > Rhythmbox Music Player
2. Select Podcasts. Any feeds that you already have will display in the right-hand pane. Rightclick in the Feed pane and select New Podcast Feed.
3. Paste in the link to your new podcast, and click Add.
4. Right-click on the podcast name and select Update Podcast Feed. This will populate a summary line for each podcast episode, but this does not yet download the actual podcast.
5. Right-click on the desired episode and select Download Episode. Now the actual sound file will download.
6. Grab your iPod and USB cable. Plug the USB cable into the iPod and turn on the iPod. Once the iPod comes on, plug the other end of the cable into an open port on your computer. Rhythmbox will recognize the device and you'll see the name of your iPod appear in the Devices category. Click on the Podcasts category and drag the desired podcast episode(s) onto the name of your iPod.
7. Once your iPod is updated, locate the iPod icon on your desktop. Right-click on the icon and select Eject Volume. Once your iPod screen displays its normal menu, you can disconnect the USB cable from the computer and from the iPod.

Sweet :)

Dell Mini 9 - my new netbook /main machine

I've put a couple of posts (1, 2) about this over on my tech blog. And I've tossed some pics up on this Flickr stream. My Dell Mini 9 arrived last week, and I am digging it!

Before ordering the machine, I was chatting online with Dell Support. At work and at home I use an HP L2045w 20-inch monitor running a 1680x1050 resolution. The Dell Mini 9 displays 1024x600 on its little screen. I wanted to know if the Mini could display 1680x1050 on the external monitor. The person with whom I was chatting went off to ask someone else and came back with the answer: no. Well, guess what? I'm blogging this using a wireless keyboard / mouse patched in to one of the 3 USB ports on the Mini, and viewing the blog post in 1680x1050 resolution on the HP monitor. The Mini is doing the computing and communications, but it is sitting closed on the desk.

So that was one discovery: the Dell Mini 9 does handle higher-resolution when hooked up to an external monitor. At least in my particular setup.

My Mini is running Ubuntu 8.04. I paid extra upfront for 2GB of RAM and a 60GB solid state hard drive (you can do this cheaper after the fact, but I just wanted it to be done and working). I added a 16GB SD card to hold my tunes. I use Amarok to download podcasts and manage the tunes (now on the SD card) that used to be my iTunes library on a hard disk. And I use Amarok to update my iPod.

For word processing, spreadsheet, I use OpenOffice, which I've been using on Windows and Ubuntu systems for at least a couple of years now. Graphics is via GIMP. Twitter is TweetDeck (runs on top of Adobe Air). Skype recognized the built-in webcam and mic right away. Pidgin is what I use for IM, just as with other Ubuntu and Windows systems at home and work.

Web browsing is done with Firefox (with a number of extensions). Because I make my living developing in the IBM Lotus Notes/Domino arena, I've loaded Notes 8.5 on (running natively on my Ubuntu linux).

I cabled my old HP Scanjet 3970 to the Mini, and XSane recognized it and did my test scan with no issues. Likewise, I popped the USB cable from the Canon PIXMA iP4000r printer into the Mini, and printed a perfect test page.

Our home network is wireless, and the Mini was configured for our WPA2 setup in about 2 minutes (just provided the SSID and password if I recall correctly).

So the point is that (with the exception of Notes), I'm using free open source software for all my computing needs, the Dell Mini 9 running Ubuntu has connected with no worries to our network and peripherals, and I now have a very small and lightweight machine to replace my aging laptop ...with a 4.5 hour battery life and a 20-second boot up :)

Cool.

SkiniZi: cool iPod skins

I've had my video iPod protected with a skin for a while now. My wife has just selected the skin shown in the pic here to protect her iPod nano. Aside from protecting the device from scratches, they just look cool :)

Skinizi is a venture from a gent I've met through my tech work, none other than Lotus Notes wizard and blogger, Mr Julien "domlike" Bottemanne. I've just placed the order for the skin Shirley selected, and it was quite easy. Julien uses PayPal to handle the checkout (and you do not need to have nor create a PayPal account to use the site) ...and that means that the charges are converted from Euros to US dollars (if you're in the United States), so you can easily see what you'll be charged before finalizing the order.

Check out Skinizi. They've hooked up with some great artists for some very unique and fun designs.

Verizon FiOS: great connection- TERRIBLE cust service

A couple of months ago we signed up with Verizon FiOS for our Internet service. BrightHouse (local cable provider) had been OK, but could not match the speed/price of Verizon. I've had to power-cycle (turn it off, wait 30 seconds or so, and turn it back on) the router several times a week, but that's no big deal.

Until today.

I don't know what time our service cut out. I work a lot in the Lotus Notes/Domino arena, and part of the beauty of that is that I can do a lot of work without being connected to the 'net. But when I did try to replicate some work with the server, I noticed the connection was gone. I tried rebooting the router a few times, but knew after the first try that it would not work. So I called Verizon 'support' (for FiOS that number is 888-553-1555).

Can you say, "painful"? A recorded voice asked me several questions and then attempted to fix the problem from their end ...which of course didn't work. After 45 more minutes on hold waiting for a human, listening to the same fractured fragment of a horrible song, ...I noticed the green light on the router pop on, indicating a connection. I never did get connected to anyone. I've been warned by others about how horrible the customer support is. Now I know.

Brighthouse can't match the speed and price of Verizon FiOS. But they answer their phones.

We've switched to Verizon FiOS

After plenty of debate (all inside my bald little head), I finally signed up for Verizon FiOS on Wednesday the week before last. David from Verizon came out on Friday of that week and got us up and running. Here are a few pics showing (from left to right - click a thumbnail to see larger image) the line to the house (it was buried on the following Monday), the box on outside of the house, additions inside the garage, and the modem/router (an Actiontec MI424-WR).

Being a control freak, I asked David to just get the connection working (he was able to use our existing internal coax, and our BrightHouse connection for TV still works fine, since it's different bandwidths). I was then able to turn off broadcast of the SSID, enable MAC address filtering, and turn off WEP and turn on WPA encryption. On the PC side, the speed initially was rather poor (better than it had been before, but not by much - except on upload which was now 4Mbps+). But after downloading and running TCPOptimizer, I am now seeing between 14Mbps and 18Mbps download ...from Verizon's test site. Here's the result from Verizon's speedtest:

Suh-weet!

Cable modem vs Verizon FIOS?

We're currently using a BrightHouse cable modem to connect to the Internet. The connection has been getting rather unreliable, and I'm considering switching to Verizon FIOS.  So I'm looking for any feedback anyone has about experiences pro or con with these services.

With our BrightHouse connection, I've swapped out the modem a couple of times (by schlepping it to the local BrightHouse office and exchanging it). There's no cost involved, but it's a hassle and should not be necessary. I've also changed coax cables a couple of times. What's odd to me is that our cable television feed seems to work almost 100% of the time (we typically will have some minor outages during the hurrican storm season). So I now (again) have a BrightHouse technician scheduled to come to the house and see if they can figure this out.

The fiber connection from Verizon is enticing. For US$50 a month, we can get 20 Mbps down/ 5 Mbps up ...which is about double what we currently have for throughput. I'm trying to verify with Verizon that the wireless router that they say I would have to use will allow me to disable SSID broadcast, use MAC address filtering, and use WPA encryption. The sales folks are quite friendly, but know very little of the technical details ...which is a whole 'nother issue that I'll choose to ignore at the moment :)

So... anyone have any feedback?

I'll continue researching and will post findings and whatever we decide to do. Cheers :)

Xanga does RSS ...who knew?

My good friend and flaming liberal (which is a very good thing!), Dr Lavine (listed among the Links over on the right-hand side of this page), has his blog hosted by Xanga. Well, I do the vast majority of my blog reading (and reading of news, for that matter) via an RSS reader (most of the time I use SharpReader, but there are many; my wife uses BottomFeeder on her iBook). And usually, when I want to configure my RSS Reader to pull in the updates from someone's web site, I look for the XML icon or RSS icon or other link on their site indicating the URL for that feed. Or I'll open their site, use the View Source feature to see the HTML behind the scenes, and look for a line containing something like: <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://littlejoe.typepad.com/blog/index.rdf" />

The LINK tag with rel="alternate" is what I look for to spot the URL that will point me to the XML feed for a given site, and I then enter that URL into my feed reader so that the site is added to the many sites that I already read from one single aggregator.

But Xanga doesn't make it as obvious, and all this time (years) I've thought that Xanga sites just didn't have RSS or Atom or other XML feeds. Without an RSS feed, I would sometimes go for days without checking the blogs of my Xanga friends. But that has now changed.

Dr Lavine's RSS feed is at http://www.xanga.com/rss.aspx?user=blavine ...and the RSS feed for any Xanga site is found at http://www.xanga.com/rss.aspx?user=username

So how did I discover this? I finally simply Googled on "Xanga rss" :)

Microsoft releases official patch to WMF flaw

Microsoft has released the official patch for the Windows Media File exploit (the link I included here is for the patch for XP systems; go to the update page for this patch if you need a different version). If you did the smart thing and installed the hotfix from Ilfak Guilfanov earlier, you need to uninstall that before installing the official patch. So:

1. Download the patch from Microsoft, saving the file to your desktop or any location you can easily find
2. Click Start > Settings > Control Panel
3. Double-click Add or Remove Programs
4. Scroll down until you find "Windows WMF Metafile Vulnerability Hotfix 1.2"
5. Click once to highlight "Windows WMF Metafile Vulnerability Hotfix 1.2" and click Remove
6. At this point you'll probably have to reboot your machine
7. After rebooting, locate the downloaded patch and double-click to run it
8. After the patch installs, you'll need to reboot once more

Microsoft hemmed and hawed about releasing this patch before next Tuesday (when they'd normally be releasing patches anyway). Fortunately, there was enough outcry that Microsoft decided to release the patch as soon as they finished testing.

SERIOUS Windows flaw - patch is posted

There is an extremely serious security flaw recently discovered in Windows - ALL versions of Windows are affected (Win95, Win98, WindowsME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and server versions). There is no patch available yet for Win95, 98, ME. But if you are running Windows 2000 or newer, a patch has kindly been provided by Ilfak Guilfanov.

A link to the fix is posted by Steve Gibson, a very well-known and long-respected expert on Windows Security. I'm not familiar with Ilfak Guilfanov, but I am familiar with Steve Gibson, and I definitely trust his recommendations. Steve Gibson has examined the source code to the patch provided by Ilfak Guilfanov, and has recommended this approach for ALL Windows users.

If you'd like to stay current with security news, I highly recommend the Security Now! audio report (a podcast, Mp3 file, whatever you like to call it - just an audio file), produced every Thursday, featuring Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson.