wordpress upgrade and other things

So, with the release of WordPress 2.2, I took the leap and updated tonight. It went really smooth and I seem to think there might be a performance gain, but it could be the vodka. You might have noticed that I am using the K2 theme, which has a slight issue with WP 2.2. You can get the fix here. It worked as advertised. If you are using WP-Cache you probably need to delete your root out of the cache to see the change.

Today, I was really glad I had my GPS unit, the Mio c310x. Twice today, I had to get somewhere fast and having the GPS let me bypass traffic and cut through other neighborhoods. It was cool saying, “hey, this is a load of crap… I’ll turn here…” and get me around the BS. Today in Atlanta, there was really heavy rain around the very beginning of rush hour and that set traffic home off to a terrible start. If only we had TMC like Europe has then is would trump Google! Maps on my Treo. I don’t think the c310x has the support for TMC, but that might be something to consider in my next GPS purchase.

BTW- I’ve done a considerable amount of stuff to my Mio over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, I don’t feel comfortable talking about them here. Let’s just say I am ready for a trip to Europe…

With regards to the Cheap-o HTPC, I’ve come to the conclusion and recommended to my brother-in-law, that an original XBOX is the way to go. For roughly under $100US you can find one on Craigslist, Ebay, or at a local pawn shop and easily hack it and put XBMC on it. He’s not a big game player, so he’s really only interested in the media capabilities. I’ve suggested a couple of places for him to find one and offered to hack it for him, so I’ll update as time goes on.

I also noticed that Trixbox 2.2 is out now. My Trixbox server is 2.1. I honestly don’t know if I’ll upgrade since it’s one of those things; if it ain’t broke… don’t fix it! If you read the thread over in the Trixbox forums, there is a way to upgrade despite what the first post says. We’ll see.

I’ve also been learning a lot about the business side of this. More on that, too.

Finally, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about innovation and technology and how it affects my and my family’s life. I’ve started writing up a doc highlighting some of the key points, but I am not sure what I plan to do with it when I’m done. Maybe I’ll post it here… but I wouldn’t count on it.

a lot of things going on

This is the second time my draft got wiped out. If it doesn’t work this time, I am going to go to bed and try again tomorrow. Anyways, I got some cool things I am working on so here’s a quick update. Expect some updates over the next couple of weeks.

  • Trixbox and ViaTalk
  • Zero-Cost HTPC

My VoIP provider is ViaTalk. I’ve been with them since 6/06 and they have been great. I’ve been using an unlocked PAP2 ATA adapter. Recently, my Dad sent me a wonderful PC case he no longer needed and I installed Trixbox. I’ve played around with Asterisk on FreeBSD but the whole Trixbox suite is pretty neat. So now I have several softphones and my PAP2 all talking to the Trixbox box. The whole things works so well, I am used to tweaking something until it is perfect and this exceeded my expectation since it works so well. Once I understood everything, it is a snap to set up and adminstrate. A UNIX/LINUX background will give you a leg up on understanding the internals and help you debug all that much more effectively.

Now, my brother-in-law wanted to find a way to display German videos on his TV. In my case, I have an xbox with XMBC and it is a no brainer for me. But he has some intersting limitations, like he doesn’t want to spend any money on it, he might not be able to easily wire his connection, and it has to pass the spousal approval factor. Luckily, he’s got an old AMD PC laying around so we are going to install, (at least the plan is at this point), Ubuntu and MythTV on it and hook it up to his receiver. He doesn’t have an HDTV so RCA or S-Video will probably be okay. This is a learning experience for both of us, so I’ll be posting some updates on this effort over time.

More as time permits. I’ve kept some of the person updates out of this post. Those will come at a later point.