Author Archives: Jeff Pabian

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The amazing brain

As many of those close to me know, my Mom had a massive stroke back in November 06. The whole situation is really messed up since my Mom is pretty young at 59 years old. But in dealing with this and learning how the mind or brain works has been a very interesting ordeal. My Mom almost died and thankfully she is still around, but I never thought this would happen to her or I’d be in this situation where I have to be taking care of her.

During all of this, Time Magazine had an excellent issue that had a lot to do with the Mind;

  • A USER’S GUIDE TO THE BRAIN

Having dealing with someone who has “brain damage” and reading this article really makes a connection with my understanding of the whole situation. The Brain isn’t something that is hardwired or fixed, but a flexible, adaptable organ that can adapt to certain situations. For example, the neurosurgeon that saved my Mom’s life said that everything should regenerate within two years. That’s a pretty positive statement from a doctor.

This issue really made an impact on me.

I saw this tonight on Newsweek, but hadn’t had a chance to read it:

  • Unlocking Minds
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zyxel G-570S

I got a chance to evaluate a Zyxel G-570S Access Point. I guess I should say that I am still evaluating it. I usually doing something on my G4 Powerbook when putting our son to bed. I’ve been frustrated since I appear to sit in a dead spot and my wireless connection crawls along. Now, I am running an older WRT54G with dd-wrt on it. I love the firmware and the community around it so I’m an going to continue to use it. I thought it would be great if I could extend my wireless network in my house to cover the area where I sit when I put my son to bed. When I was using a NetGear router, I actually made a parabolic reflector out of cardboard and aluminum flashing tape to direct my signal to the second floor of our house; it worked as there was an increase in signal strength! But the reflector I made fit nicely on the Netgear but comes no where close on the WRT54G.

The G-570S looks sharp. I like the look and size of it. It is easy to set up as an AP or even as a bridge, but trying to grok the AP+Wireless Client seems a bit beyond the normal manual. The manual isn’t clear on this, but if you select the AP+Wireless Client option, it looks like it wants the MAC addresses for WDS. From what I understand about WDS, the wireless stations will only talk to each other; not accept any connections from clients. Here, the manual leaves a little to be desired. Of course, the manual seems to suggest that if you used only the G-570S in your wireless network, this would automagically work all seemlessly.

Here’s my beef. My wireless network is using WPK and both stations support that. But if I try using AP+Wireless client in the 570S, it only lets me choose between WEP and Disabled. It appears that a newer firmware released in March will let me select WPK for the wireless security, but I haven’t had much luck getting it installed.

As far as using this thing as a pure access point, it’s great; works well and the signal is strong. The menus are some of the easiest I have seen which means my parents could figure it out. I think it’s a nice device. I’m going to muck around with it and see what else I can do with it.

ZyXEL G-570S

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geocaching and the mio c310x

I said in an earlier post I would write about what I thought was the sweet spot for using the c310x for Geocaching. I can’t believe how much faster and accurate it is than my older eTrex. Around my office I have several geocaches I can walk to in a matter of minutes. I now realize that you can optimize your settings and have a pretty good success rate.

You should know this screen well:

First, I recommend you put your mio into “pedestrian” mode.

Notice that when you select Pedestrian, everything that you’d need in a car is disabled. This is under the Route Options from the main settings menu.

Next, check out your advanced settings:

Pick Route Options. This threw me big time when I first tried to Geocache with this unit. Uncheck “Keep Position on Road.”

This will show your real position. Now, I have been Geocaching in downtown Atlanta, so this has worked well for me.

EDIT 090407: I remembered that the Advanced menu you see “out of the box” is NOT the same as I posted above. I had forgotten that I had installed “MoonBear’s” skin to get a faster fly-over. However, the “Keep Position on Road” option should be on the main advanced menu on a unhacked c310x. His skin is number 8 on the folllowing page:

Since I took these screenshots, I’ve skinned my Mio so my menus now look really different. Good luck!

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The maps, man. it’s all about the maps

Okay, I’ve been reading up on this, so I think it will work. As you might have read, we went on a Florida vacation to Orlando. We are in Atlanta and drove our Eurovan down. I am also using my new Mio c310x and trying to put it through its paces. Yes, the maps are two years old, but come on… roads don’t change that often. Actually, the condo we rented was in a new neighborhood so it wasn’t on any maps, even Mapquest. However, Google! Earth did have an image of it. So I created two POI’s; one for the house itself and the intersection that was on the map. It worked well.

On the way down, we met up with my brother-in-law who we were sharing the rental with. So our caravan of, well.. vans, continued on down to Orlando. Traffic was really bad in Georgia due to the construction. It appeared they were repairing bridges but it took much longer than it should since it was stop and go for most of the ride in Georgia and traffic only reached the speed limit for a few minutes at a time. At one point, we put our faith in the GPS and took it off the highway. It was a nice diversion and we saw some of the small towns that are famous in Georgia. We got back on the highway near the Florida border and started making up for lost time.

 

Then, we saw some thick, black smoke up a ahead. The road was closed and we were about 3/4 of a mile from the actual closure. We could see firetrucks and other emergency vehicles. At one point, a flat-bed tow truck with sirens came racing up the side of the road with a back-hoe on it. The smoke died down and we were ready to get moving again. Then, more smoke on the other side of the road. The fire had jumped the highway somehow. We were parked on the highway for about 1.5 hours and everyone was walking around and talking. It was actually really nice. The weather was perfect in the mid 60’s and there was a pretty good breeze blowing. Plus, a fire always smells nice when there is just a little nip in the air. Someone said that they heard from their Mom that it was brush fire and an accident (unrelated apparently) that caused the road closure. Looking back, I wish I took more pictures since it was pretty cool. My brother-in-law took video.

In the second picture, you can see the blackened area that was burned. We drove by and could feel the heat from the fire. This was about one mile from the end of the Florida Turnpike; they waved us through and did not collect any toll. When all said and done, what should have been a seven hour trip took just a hair under 13.

The trip was great and we all had a wonderful time. We all enjoyed Disney and had a nice time puttering around the Orlando area.

While we were down there, I got the bright idea to start recording our tracks doing various things. This is the return trip from Orlando. Don’t worry, I edited the ending point so you couldn’t figure out where I live if you didn’t already know.

<br /> Sorry. If you’re seeing this, your browser doesn’t support IFRAMEs.<br /> You should upgrade to a more current browser.<br />

If this works, you should see Google! Map of our return trip above. I have a couple of other maps to add but it is late and I’ll just update this post probably tomorrow.

<br /> Sorry. If you’re seeing this, your browser doesn’t support IFRAMEs.<br /> You should upgrade to a more current browser.<br />

The above map is the very beginning and about the last 1/4 of our day there. We spent around 13 hours there and just the recorded tracks covered 6.5 miles. That’s a lot of walking. We estimate that we all walked over twelve miles over the course of the day with waiting in lines and what not. I think the line is broken up since I specified 300 data points in the route. By default, the Mio updates the route every one second and I think maybe for walking, it might make sense to change that to a higher number.

<br /> Sorry. If you’re seeing this, your browser doesn’t support IFRAMEs.<br /> You should upgrade to a more current browser.<br />

The above route is when we went to a place called the Mercado, which is now about to be demolished. It was a great place. In fact, it was one of the only places that I felt like no one was trying to get into my wallet. If you look at the northern end of the track, you can see where we went in and looked around only to find a ghost town. It was sad. This place was great. In the middle you can see where we played miniature golf. And near the bottom you can see where we had dinner and I walked around with the twins outside while the rest of the folks finished their meals. Again, the track must be broken up since the settings hit the 300 data point limit.

I really wanted to post these maps as a proof of concept. I think it worked okay. WordPress seems to have some indigestion around the iframes but that is something to tackle on another day.

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yawn

We got back from vacation late yesterday and I’ve been trying to noodle the best way to put some Google! Maps content in the blog.  I would have been all over it tonight, but I had to get ours and my mothers documents ready for 2006 taxes; I am visiting my CPA tomorrow.  If I may be so bold to give a plug for my accountant; he’s great:

  • Bennie King, CPA

It’s late and I am pretty wiped out, but we had a great vacation, and I’ve got a lot to share about my Mio.  So maybe I’ll get to it tomorrow.

Thanks, everyone!

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here comes the vacation

It is finally here.  We are leaving tomorrow to Florida to do Disney with the kids.  We’ve rented a condo with a pool and are going to share it with my brother and sister in law and their daughter.  It will be great.  As some of you know, my Mom had a massive stroke back in November.  She is doing much better but this will be the first time I’ve taken time off of work for more than a couple of days for our family.    Things are moving along for Mom and her recovery is certainly underway, but work and family life has also been stressful for both me and my wife.  So we really need this vacation.  We said goodbye to my Mom tonight and took her to Walmart one last time and we are just about ready to get the heck out of Dodge.

This has been on interesting week for me at work this week.  At the beginning of the week I was unsure and a little nerviuos, honestly.    But today, after a week of meetings and getting to know my new peers, I am totally jazzed.  I really feel like I belong and that I can really make a difference going forward.  I can’t really get into it just yet, but I think I am going to be very happy and productive.   I also see that I have a lot to learn but even so, that is very very exciting to me.  I love to learn and tinker, and I think I am in my zone.  Holy crap, that sounds pretty corny.  Whatever.

So, we will be using the Mio c310x I’ve been talking about.  One of the things I’ve been trying to get my noodle around is  with this nifty thing.  I tell you, the Mio is way more accurate and fast (getting a lock-on) then my older eTrex, and it just so happens that there are a dozen or so Geocaches within walking distance from my office.  But, even though the Mio has a “pedestrian” mode, there are additional tweaks I have found to make Geocaching easier or better or whatever you want to call it.    When I get back (or even when I am on vacation, Internet connection none withstanding),  I’ll post what I consider to be the optimized Geocaching mode for the Mio c310x.  Chat with you later.

Women Live Longer

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my mio c310x

I finally got a Mio c310x. Surely you’ve already heard about how hackable this GPS unit is and all the super slick things you can do with it. And hacking it was really easy.

I’ve had a hand-help GPS unit for a while now. I have a Garmin eTrex Venture. It’s okay and I sure used it a lot for Geocaching, but I’ve been really dying for a auto-based GPS unit. I had to travel to Dallas with a few people from work and a friend brought his Mio c310x he got on Black Friday 2006 for ~$150. I was so impressed with it. My sister-in-law had a Magellen c320 (I think) and I played with that a little when she first got it, but I liked the Mio and its internal, rechargeable battery.

Shortly after that, I heard Clark Howard talk about how useful a mobile auto-based GPS unit was and how cheaply they could be found for. He made a lot of sense! Taken from his website:

GPS units are cheap and easy to use

Do you remember when GPS units were something only the very wealthy could afford? A built-in unit was about $2,000 and a portable unit was about $800. Times have changed quite a bit. Clark recently bought a portable unit for less than $300 and it’s possible to find them for under $200. The more expensive units will tend to have the hard drive built-in to the unit, while the less expensive ones have an SD chip. And there are good and bad factors to both. But they are so simple to use and they have a memory of all of your addresses. These are hot gifts this holiday, so think about one for your loved one. Or wait even longer and they are sure to go down even more.

My wife finally gave me the go ahead to get it after I sold some old Directv receivers, so I went to Fry’s with the kids and picked one up. Of course they tried to sell me the 3-year extended warranty. When I stopped laughing I told them I wasn’t interested. I paid for it and got the kids in their seats and opened it up. It had a 75% charge out of the box and I used it to navigate me home.

I breifly took a look at the manual, but I’m a touchy-feely sort of guy so I’ve been playing with it six ways to Sunday. It isn’t perfect and now that I’ve played with it for some time, I am very happy with it. I don’t know if any other > $200 GPS units come close but I am very happy with it.

Out of the box, you can play MP3’s with it. Hoo-hum. The software that came with it reminds me of the old Sony software they had for mini-disks; not very useful. But there are hacks out there you can really have a lot of fun with.

The best way to move files back and forth is with Microsoft’s ActiveSync which is for PDA’s running Windows CE. This works flawlessly. Couple this with an external card reader, (the Mio is usb 1.1), and you can be rocking and rolling in no time.

One of the negatives you’ll hear about the Mio is that the maps are just over two years old. Still, I haven’t had any problems yet getting around Atlanta and North Georgia. The maps have been good without any real big noticeable problems.

I put the included suction-cup mount in our van and use the Mio on my lap or the passenger seat when I am in the other car. It picks up the GPS signals really good. I can even get a lock inside the house. I don’t quite understand it, but I like it. It makes it easy for planning routes beforehand.

An SD card is key for having any fun with this unit. You can put the unlocking script on the SD card and you can backup and export your track logs. I am able to import my track logs into Google Earth. That’s pretty cool if you ask me. I’ve always liked so see where I went overlayed on the Google! maps.

Once you hack your Mio c310x you can do any of the following:

  • Play movies
  • Add voices
  • Edit and plan POI’s on your PC
  • Play games
  • Install TomTom or other nav software
    • The general opinion is that MioMap is better than TomTom
  • Use ActiveSync
  • Access the Windows CE environment
  • Change skins

It is just a fun thing to tinker around with. My sister-in-law just ordered one from Frys.com for $189 plus tax (free shipping). I’ll help her get it all set up.

One of the coolest things that I like is that iG0 released a beta application that will allow you to edit/import/export/sync via ActiveSync POI’s (points-of-interest). My sister-in-law and I are both Realtors so this will be very handy when showing properties.

Here’s a list of the links I have used to make it this far:

I forgot one very important link:

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moment of truth for the cheap-o htpc

Well, I was going to my bro-in-laws house and I was going to bring the PC I was working on for him. I put a PCI video card in the PC that had, (what I thought), was RCA/Composite video out. When we hooked up the PC to his TV it was clear something wasn’t right. We could make out the boot up sequence on the TV but the sync was off. A quick web search suggested we needed an adapter of some sort.

Now, the video card in this PC has VGA, DVI, and Composite on it. I assumed that the composite connection was an output, but from what I read on the Internet, it might actually be video out. I didn’t buy this card. It was sent to me by my Dad who sent me his old computer. I assumed it would just work.

So, my brother-in-law ran out to Radio Shack and we talked with a guy there who really knew something. He was very helpful but they didn’t have what we needed. He understood our mission; watch a German soccer match on the TV via a PC using MythTv without our wives fully understanding how much time and money we put into this without spending any money. I was trying to finish the installation of MythTV on this PC while there were two 2 1/2 years olds, two six year olds, and one 10 year old running around. It was tough.

My brother-in-law is German and signed up for this new service he’s very happy about:

The $64,000,000 question is how to watch the recorded videos on his TV. I think with this old PC I am working on, we are probably 95% of the way there. Although, at this point, I think it might be easy/cheapest to get an xbox and put XBMC on it.

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the music all around us

As I mentioned before, I usually listen to my iPod while I put our son to sleep. Tonight, we have guests in from out of town so my son is sleeping with us in our bed. I had my iPod and he wanted to hear what I was listening to. He is six and in his kindergarten class, they were playing Bob Marley and he liked it a lot. We listened to a R.L. Burnside song, then a Midnight Oil song came on. He didn’t like it at first then he said he liked it a lot. Later, as I was skipping songs I thought he might not like, we hit another Midnight Oil song and he wanted to hear it. I told him the band was from Australia and it was a far away place. I also told him I saw them in concert once. That got me thinking about all the concerts I had gone to.

Laugh as you might, the first concert I had ever been to was Frankie Goes to Hollywood. I think I was in 8th grade or something. I had their LP and the concert was great. I remember I really enjoyed it. So, here’s a little list of concerts I had gone to. I might make this a little more prominent in the future. This is just a running list, so don’t expect to be in order.

  • Frankie Goes to Hollywood
  • 7 Seconds
  • Dag Nasty
  • Circle Jerks
  • Butthole Surfers
    • Multiple times
  • The Tombstones
  • Drivin’ & Crying
  • B.A.L.L.
  • Das Damen
  • Morrissey
  • 10,000 Maniacs
  • Dead Can Dance
  • Midnight Oil
  • Skinny Puppy
    • Backstage and met the band
  • Front 242
    • Backstage and met the band
  • The Fall
  • Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
  • The First and best Lollapalooza
    • Rollins Band
      • Saw them before
    • Nine Inch Nails
      • When they were still small
    • Butthole Surfers
      • Saw them before
    • Ice-T
      • somewhat entertaining
    • Living Color
      • I fell asleep after many beers
    • Siouxsie & the Banshees
      • The tour was good to her
    • Jane’s Addiction
      • OMFG!
  • Kiss
  • The Cult
  • Iggy Pop
  • My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult
    • Before they sold out
  • Depeche Mode
    • in 2006
  • The Rolling Stones
  • The Who
  • The Cure
  • Ween
    • Several times
  • The Pixies
  • Stereolab
  • The Wedding Present
    • Several Times
  • Robyn Hitchcock
  • The Cramps
    • Maybe three times
  • The Fleshtones
  • Stray Cats
  • Brian Setzer Orchestra
  • Flat Duo Jets
  • Gwar
  • Goober and Peas
  • Lime Spiders
  • Mojo Nixon
    • atleast twice
  • Southern Culture on the Skids
    • Countless times
  • Neil Young
  • Crowded House
    • Private Album release party with three open bars! Man oh man!
  • Madonna
    • A gift for my wife, but I had a great time, too!
  • Ministry

People I had a chance to see, but didn’t for some lame reason, and now regret it:

  • Lou Reed
  • The Pogues
    • yes, of course with Shane!
  • Sisters Of Mercy
  • The Smiths

People who I would have beaten up if I saw them back then:

  • Rick Astley

I am sure I’ll think of more as time goes on. And there were a slew of little bands in the various bars and clubs in Atlanta.

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i’m coming home, baby.

That last post about the Cisco 7960 wore me out. I needed a couple of days away from the blog. Whew!

Tonight as I was putting our son to bed, I was listening on to some music on my iPod. I’ve made some pretty extensive use of the Smartplaylists and have a list that rotates out 50 songs at a time of five stars. Lately, I’ve been enjoying the music I’ve been hearing, but it wasn’t grabbing me by my throat. But tonight, I was hearing some songs I hadn’t heard in a long time and it was good.

The first time I had ever heard of Mel Tormé was on Night Court. Harry Anderson had a thing for ol’ Mel and I remember that Mel had a few cameos on the show. I liked Harry Anderson and therefore I might like Mel Tormé. Or so the saying goes…

Mel Tormé

I heard a song Mel did at some point. It was unbelievable how good this song was. The title was “Coming Home, Baby” and was recorded in 1962. This was a great song and the complexity of it is amazing. Mel singing the narrative and the backup singers singing the second voice… hoo boy, it’s hot. I think I got this song on one of those “Cocktail Lounge” Cd’s. I love it. The song is basically Mel saying that he’ll be home soon, and the backup singers saying they/she want him home as soon as possible, but then Mel says that he’ll be home later than he planned. I had heard this song on a Herbie Mann record, (yes, record, I have have the vinyl LP), and I liked the song a lot when I first heard it, but as you may know… Herbie Mann plays the flute, so there is no vocals. When I first heard Mel’s version, I thought that this was one of the best songs I had ever heard. It is really quite good and I highly recommend it.

Next, a familiar artist came up, Nick Cave. When I was in college, one of my first jobs was in a record shop. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds was the first CD promo I got to take home. No one else knew who he was and since then I was hooked, (I think that must have been 1990). His songs have moved away from the dark and scary to the place where he’s speaking from the heart. The song was “What can I give you.” It is a very moving song and I think of my wife every time I hear it.

After that, I heard “The Wanderer” by Johnny Cash and U2. A great song. I’ve always like Johnny Cash and I think the Rick Rubin stuff in Johnny’s later years is outstanding. If memory serves me correctly, I think this song was in the Wim Wenders film, Far Away, So Close which was the sequel to Wings of Desire. Wings of Desire was a movie I saw a very long time ago when I was in college. I still love that movie and get irritable whenever anyone compares it to “City of Angels.”

Man, I’ve had Firefox crash twice while I was posting this, (granted, I was doing quite a bit of other stuff on my PC), so I think I might follow up to this post tomorrow. Good night!