It’s a brand new era at JayDreyer.com. The days of Blogger are over, replaced by Textpattern. So far, so good. I was able to import all of my posts from Blogger using these instructions without any trouble. After that, I found a template, made some tweaks and now I’m on my way.
Comments are enabled now, so chip in if you want. I’ll be curious to see if I’ll be a victim of comment spam or not. I still have some work to do here but it already looks better than the old site.
Along with ditching Blogger, I also ditched my home-brewed hosting system in favor of signing up with a real host provider. After a lot of research, I decided to go with site5.com. Last night was the first time I was able to log in so I’m still getting a feel for how everything works. Now I don’t have to worry about the power going out, my son pressing the glowing blue power button, or my lack of skills as a server admin as reasons for my various sites not being available.
Also new, along the lines of changing hosting providers, is my choice of operating system. I’ve made the switch from Windows 2000/2003 servers for my web stuff to Linux. I set up a test server at home and was amazed at the things I could do, although most of it is pretty basic to seasoned Linux pros. I’m now on the LAMP stack and so far it has been painless. The big plus is the amazing assortment of open source software that is available.
That’s it for now…I’ve got more sites to migrate.
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posted 07/22/2005 03:06 PM
I went to hop on my PC the other day and my monitor was severely messed up. Extreme horizontal ghosting made the screen close to unviewable. I haven’t had my Dell 19” flat screen for very long so I didn’t think that could be the problem. I played around with my KVM switch, swapped some cables, tried it on another pc, etc. The monitor was fine, the KVM cables weren’t causing the problem. It had to be my nVidia GForce2 Pro card that I’ve had since 2 computers ago.
So, it was off to the store to find a new one. Problem is, I haven’t thought about video cards for years. I basically stopped playing games when I went back to school. Then, with the addition of Jack, there just wasn’t any time. My knowledge of video cards, therefore, is extremely limited. My requirements were pretty simple – something decent but not on the cutting edge. As I said, I don’t play games so framerates at insane resolutions won’t help me much. About the biggest things I get into are playing around with SketchUp (which is an amazing program, by the way) or using Macromedia Fireworks. I was pretty sure I wanted the nVidia Geforce 6600 GT (I think that’s it) but that ended up being a little too much. The guy at the store ended up talking me into an ATI Radeon x700 something or other. So far, it’s working great. I fired up SketchUp and was amazed at how smoothly things worked and how adding back layers had no effect on speed.
I have no idea if this is a great card of not. I looked around on Cnet a little bit last week but don’t remember anything about the one I ended up getting. Most of the reviews seemed to be written for serious gamers, anyway. Whatever. So far, so good.
| posted 07/09/2005 11:01 PM
If you’re one of my regular 3 readers, you’ve noticed that the formatting looks horrible…at least a little worse than normal. It looks like Blogger is inserting this goofy <style="clear: both> tag in there that is messing up my formatting. It’s not just me, it appears that a lot of people have been affected by this.
It looks like Blogger is finally recognizing the problem and is attributing it to a side-effect of the new Blogger images upgrade. You can read more at Blogger’s status page.
Update
Blogger has finally fixed the formatting problem they caused when they added support for images. Now the problems with my site (and there are many…) are solely my own!
| posted 06/27/2005 04:57 PM
After purchasing a new TV a couple weeks ago, my wife started complaining about the number of remotes we were accumulating. There is a remote for the TV, the Tivo, the A/V Receiver, the DVD player and the cable box. All of them were used in one way or another, and my wife could not figure out which one to use when. Combine the remote quandary with the hassle of switching inputs, modes, resolutions, etc., and I knew I had to find a better way to do all of this.
Enter the Harmony 676 universal remote. 
This thing is sweet on so many levels. First of all, you connect it to your computer via a USB connection. Then you log on to the Harmony web site where you answer some questions about your components and how they are selected. You select the brands, then enter the model numbers. The next step of the process allows you to set up “activities”. There are three buttons near the top of the remote that correspond to these activities. One is for watching a movie, another is listening to music and the third is watching TV. So, for example, the “watch a movie” activity for me consists of: turning on the TV, setting the TV input to component 1, turning on the A/V receiver and setting it to ‘DVD’, and then turning on the DVD player. All of those steps are taken care of by one push of a button. Could this be done on another universal remote? Sure, but I don’t think it would be as simple as it was with the Harmony.
Now, I can control all of the devices mentioned above with one single remote. My wife tried it last night and was able to switch between watching a DVD and Tivo by pressing one button. She was impressed and pleased she doesn’t have to remember all of the steps to get this to work.
What else is cool about the remote? Well, for one, Harmony’s customer support is fantastic. I had some trouble getting my inputs to select properly. One 10 minute call to their 866 number and the problem was solved. I didn’t have to do anything except explain my problem. The tech was able to access my settings on-line and make the changes. All I had to do was click the synch button and I was in business.
Also, because your settings are stored on-line, you don’t have to worry about the batteries dying and losing your codes. Just synch it up and you are back to normal. This also comes in handy if you choose to upgrade to a newer model. You don’t have to re-program the remote, just synch it up.
I still have some fine-tuning to do – not all of the buttons I used on the various remotes are currently represented in my configuration. Making these changes is pretty easy using the web site, however. All in all, this is one of the best purchases I have made. Not having to create step by step instructions on how to watch a movie or use the Tivo, or spend 15 minutes teaching the babysitter which buttons to push and not to push makes this a fantastic investment. The family room is a lot less cluttered, too.
| posted 06/02/2005 05:08 PM
Ack! ABC is killing me with their HD choices.
The Indianapolis 500, the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing”, was obviously not a big enough spectacle to warrant coverage in HD. Why??? Let’s review what could be seen on Sunday in HD: Pistons vs Heat on TNT, Red Sox vs Yankees on ESPN and the neverending Coca Cola 600 on Fox. (I think that race is still going on, and it looks like there’s another yellow flag out…) The day’s biggest event, however, was not in HD. I just don’t understand what is going on over there at ABC sports. If you don’t broadcast the Indy 500 in HD, then what on Earth will get the HD treatment? According to ABC, “My Wife and Kids”, “George Lopez”, and the classic “According to Jim” all get HD broadcasts, but not major sporting events like the 2nd round of the NBA playoffs or the Indy 500. I just don’t get it.
| posted 05/31/2005 11:24 AM
I don’t know when Google/Blogger released Blogger Mobile, but it is pretty neat. The idea is that you can take a picture on your cell phone, send it in a sms message to go@blogger.com, and then have it automatically posted to your blog. It works well, but I’m having a problem with the uploaded image path. When I send a picture, it gets posted to the blog here, but the path in the img tag is incorrect. If I update the post to fix the path, the image appears, as seen below. But, I can’t find a way to do this automatically. If blogger would use a relative path instead of a fully qualified one, this wouldn’t be an issue for me. I’ve sent blogger an email so we’ll see what they have to say. I hope we find a solution because this is pretty cool.
| posted 05/24/2005 05:13 PM
We finally decided to ditch the phone company and go with a voip solution at our home. After doing some research, I decided to give Vonage a shot. I went to Best Buy and picked up one of the Linksys/Vonage routers with 2 phone ports on the back and sent in my rebate forms which pretty much covered the cost of the router. After connecting the Vonage router to my Linksys wireless router, I plugged a phone in and was in business.
Or so I thought. One of the neat things about Vonage is that you can keep your current phone number and transfer it to Vonage. This was a big selling point to me because I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of telling everyone our new number. Vonage has a fairly simple form you fill out and fax in to them to initiate the process. This is where I ran into trouble, however. The process is supposed to take about 20 business days, but it ended up taking me about 3 months to complete the changeover. One time they said they didn’t receive my fax. Another time they said the account names didn’t match. The third time I think they just plain forgot about it. So I faxed it in a fourth time and things finally went through. I plugged a phone cable from the router into an open phone jack I had near my setup and all of my phones were working.
Discounting the nightmare I encountered in transferring my number, we’re really happy with the service so far. First off, it sounds great. I was hesitant about sound quality but it sounds as good or better than the previous land line. Second of all, it’s cheap. We’re doing the $15/mo. plan that gives us 500 minutes per month. Finally, you get a lot of features – call waiting, call forwarding, voice mail, you name it, all for $15. You can go unlimited for $25, I think, but we haven’t talked enough on it to warrant the switch. All in all, it’s a great service as long as you don’t have to deal with customer service too often.
| posted 05/20/2005 11:32 AM
OK. So let’s say you get a new HD TV. You have Comcast cable, which provides HD feeds from a number of stations. Life is good.
Now, let’s say your favorite basketball team, maybe the Detroit Pistons, is playing its rival from Indiana in a big game 6 matchup that might also be the final game for Reggie Miller. Life is very good.
Next, you know that the NBA playoffs are being broadcast on three different stations – ABC, ESPN and TNT. You also know that all three of these stations have the capability to broadcast in HD. This is fantastic! So, if you were a betting man, which station would you place the highest odds on broadcasting NBA playoff games in HD? Being the HD rookie that I am, I would bet the order would be ABC, ESPN then TNT. Since ABC owns ESPN (actually, Disney owns both), and ESPN broadcasts all sorts of things in HD (even the deuce is HD!) I thought it would be safe to assume that the game on ABC would be HD. No problem. “Lost” was in HD on Wednesday night, as was “Alias”. Playoff basketball games would have to be, right?
Wrong. I was shocked when I put my son to bed, sat down on the couch and fired up ABC and the Pistons-Pacers playoff game. No HD. None. Why is this? As I said before, if ABC and ESPN are owned by the same company, and they both produce HD content, why would you not broadcast a playoff game in HD? Is it because Al Michaels is afraid his wrinkles and dyed hair would appear in greater clarity? Reggie Miller’s ears might frighten small children? Maybe we might be able to read all of the various tattoos on the players. I can’t figure it out.
After the Pistons game ended (a big Detroit win, btw, and a great final performance by Miller) I switched over to ESPN where the Spurs and Sonics were playing. Of course, it was in HD, and it looked beautiful. Why ABC doesn’t broadcast these playoff games in HD is a mystery to me. Maybe they’ll do it for the conference finals.
| posted 05/20/2005 08:41 AM
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