Marcus Hamaker is The Sleepy Geek

So that’s it. Now that my family photo site and my blog have been moved over to the new servers, it’s time to decommission the old one. I have a Dell Poweredge 2500 running in my basement that hosted all my toys. This site being one of them. The system was a beast and so to alleviate the cost of running it (I am sure it was around $10 monthly) I have decided to move it all outside of my house.

Now the blog should be lightning fast. It’s nice to have a really quick server behind your work so you don’t have to worry about processor time. This was another reason why a replacement was needed.

Next steps before this weekends power down? I have to move my home automation server to another computer in my house. This will most likely be my media center PC as it’s always running and simply that alone makes it a logical choice.

Data has been copied off the machine. It was hosting my data backups but I now have NAS for that. Which I must say is an amazing thing. In reality it’s a hard disk in an enclosure that has support for network. Then a little web interface to setup the share.

Wish me luck with the decommissioning, I’ll keep you posted!

In the past few weeks Chris Pirillo has taken a beating over his need to revert back to Windows XP. I don’t understand why this seems to affect so many people’s lives with such intensity. When I first read the article he posted about his desire to move back to Windows XP, I was just more curious than anything.

I have had my fare share of frustrations with Windows Vista and hardware compatibility as well. I first installed Vista to test out the Media Center capabilities and was quite frustrated at the lack of driver support for my system. In the end I decided to revert back to XP MCE because it worked much better. I didn’t give this much thought however, MCE has always been a bit of a pain to setup when you do it on your own so I thought the same issues might be plaguing be even though I was up a version.

Since then I have decided to try installing it on desktops and laptops and have more recently been pleasantly surprised at how well it supports most hardware. I have installed it on IBM T43’s, Dell D420’s, Dell D620s and an HP d530. All have worked out of the box. The issues I now face are with the simplest of things. For instance my most recent frustration is with Windows Movie Maker in Vista. The simplest things seem to go wrong; when adding transitions to my films I am unable to play back the preview. No errors appear but I found a forum post stating that if you increase the amount of shared memory for video/RAM to 224 MB or more then it should work. To me this is a huge shortfall. I was excited to be able to use the new features of Vista MM (like DVD creation) and now I am stuck back with XP as it’s all that works.

This type of thing may sound trivial to some. But that’s simply because that feature or software is not something that you find important. In the end we all have things that we find are priorities and the fact that I don’t use it shouldn’t reflect the need to make it functional.

Another thing that I am upset about is the misnomer that you can run a software in Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode. It’s not true compatibility mode, it’s run it like the Windows XP kernel but if you need a feature that was changed in Vista (such as the aforementioned help section) then you are up a tree.

Not that I think MS or Vista are bad; however I think that there was a definite lack of communication between MS, the hardware manufacturers and software creators. This is something that MS seemed to manage with the release of Windows XP. At the time XP was released I was working for a hardware manufacturer, not one of the top echelon; irregardless because we were part of the MS Partner program they were in contact with us. We came out with product drivers before the release of XP because of that interaction.

Like Chris, I am a long time MS product user and even though I dabble in other operating systems (mainly Linux in the flavour of Ubuntu). I am more disappointed that I can’t use Vista the way it was designed because it looks exciting.

I guess more so why I am sleepy than a geek. My DW (dear wife) and I had a new baby on December 15th. It’s hard to think so geeky when you’re so sleepy but I try. It was a little easier when I was off as long as I was. In Canada (well in Quebec at least) the father gets to take 3-5 weeks off on top of what the mother takes. Nice little change since our son was born. Now I am back at work and time is limited. What with all the driving and family things I get done at around 9:00 at night and I just crash.

What’s my geeky thing today? I just need to say that wireless devices rock. WAIT… no… this is way more simple than you are thinking. I just bought my first wireless keyboard. I guess I am like the anti-geek when it comes to catching up in that category. The Logitech keyboards go on sale so often that I couldn’t help myself. I bought the LX300 with mouse and KB and then went and got another for my MCE machine. That’s cool – being able to reach behind me to grab the keyboard and mouse to check the web for something while a commercial is playing. My last post was about Ubuntu and the title reflected how far Linux has come in such a short time. The fact is the computers are starting to really turn that corner from appliance to an integrated daily tool. It’s not something that you use to complete a task per say; more of something that is integrated into your daily tasks.

This kind of thing is really cool. Must be like what they felt like when they were able to take a computer from a room and put it on someone’s desk. Now we are taking it from the desk and placing into a computer that is integrated with our home entertainment system.

My latest attempt to install Linux is with Ubuntu. It was so easy that I still have it installed on my laptop and I am adding this entry from Firefox on that machine. This is an amazing experience.

I remember my last attempt to install Linux was with Kubuntu and it was one of the 5.x versions. It took me a couple of days because I have run and worked with Windows my whole life. This installation took me a couple of hours. It looks like the Ubuntu group (when I say that I include Xubuntu, edubuntu and Kubuntu) put their emphasis on getting ubuntu up and running. It seems like it is more refined in some way. The installation process itself is really easy now. Ubuntu boots from CD to a live version of Linux. It is completely running from CD so you are able to look at what the final version might look like on your PC. Then if you like, you run the install from the desktop which gives you similar options that a Windows installation would. You choose language, keyboard settings, time zone and how to partition your drive. Very easy!

I remember my past experiences with Gnome were less than pleasing. It always looked too simple to me. They have since added (and since has to be at least 3 or 4 years ago) some really nice functionality and kept it relatively simple. It comes with a slew of programs that you might need out of the box. The most important one might be the OpenOffice.org suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation software. They will open MS Office files and allow you to edit them.

Another thing that I was surprised about was how easy it was to get WPA wireless working. I just downloaded network-manager-gnome and bing. No trouble at all.

There is so much to talk about with this distro, but all that to say if you want to try Linux, this is where I recommend you start.

Yesterday morning I was sitting at the table while reading through my regular blog subscriptions when I ran across an entry from Chris Pirillo about Outlook 2007. He is up in arms regarding the way Microsoft has screwed email and set it back 5 years. This is mostly due to the removal of CSS support and the way emails are displayed is horrible. I agree with him. MS has a weird way of messing with things they know is a problem, so instead of fixing it they remove support for it.

The interesting thing about all this is the alternative. Lotus Notes. If you want a corporate level email client (I know Notes does so a lot more), there is nothing less intuitive than Notes. It’s amazing how 90% of email clients out there use the same keyboard shortcuts to perform tasks within the UI. But for some reason Notes has to be different. The UI is like no other piece of software you’ll find in Windows and they almost seem to do this by intention. It’s just frustrating to have to use and support it when it’s such a poor email client.

I always am looking for new tools or utilities to help me with my day to day tasks; be it at work, or at home. I found one that was great for what I needed it for, but looks like it has a ton of information and this needed to be shared!

System Spec is a freeware program written by Alex Nolan. He has a could of other things at his site as well worth checking out I am sure.

I used the program simply to gather some system information quickly from my MCE machine for my last post. The information that was gathered was easy to extract. There are numerous export formats including HTML, CSV and a printout to name a few.

An excerpt from their website reads as follows:

“With System Spec you can see, save and print a complete spec of your PC. This no-install, system information utility can also perform various windows functions. Additional advanced info includes CPU, drives, applications, display, memory, networking, internet, CD / DVD drives and more.”

Read through their list of what the program can do, you will be pleasantly surprised.

After using it and poking around the other options after I had what I needed I started to think of what uses it might have. One of the things I like to do is keep track of all my hardware (I am currently running 7 computers at my house) for insurance purposes. This would be a quick way along with some photos to keep track of exactly what you have. Good for home use sort of the way a corporation would have an automated asset tracking software installed on their company PC’s.

Happy freeware hunting!

Some had asked me to post my MCE machine specs, so here they are. An insinuation was made that building your own MCE machine shouldn’t be to much of a problem. I have done quite a bit of research into what hardware I have in the machine because Microsoft’s requirements are a lot more stringent for MCE than for a regular OS. I assume their reason for this is to keep the user experience with the MCE interface a completely enjoyable one. If the requirements are not strict, then the usefulness of the interface would be compromised and lead to bad press. I believe this is why legally you are only allowed to buy a pre-built OEM MCE machine. Given the prices of computers these days, I recommend that you try buying a pre-built machine. This way you have support for the entire product. If you try to build a machine on your own you first run into the legal issue, but mostly you have no support. Problems do arise. I guarantee it!
Windows XP5.1 (Build 2600) Service Pack 2
ASUSTeK Computer INC. A7V600-X Motherboard
1024 MB RAM
AMD Athlon(TM) XP 3000+
Hercules Game Theatre XP Sound Card
ATI X3100 Video Card
Hauppague PVR-150MCE MPEG Encoder/Tuner Card
VIA Compatable Fast Ethernet Adapter – Packet Scheduler Miniport
SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-616E
Hard Disks: C: 189.9GB | E: 149.0GB
USB Controllers: 5 host controllers.
Firewire (1394): 1 host controllers.

For those of you who have never had a media PC connected to your main television; you’re missing out. It has been almost 2 years since I setup my first Media Center PC and if that thing were to die, so would I. Actually this was one of the harder things to convince my DW (dear wife) to get up and running in the house. Truth be told; if it were to die now SHE would kill me ;-)

I have done a few changes to the machine. I have updated the hardware on more than one occasion and it is currently running on an AMD 3000+. But that’s not the reason I bring up the subject of the MCE machine. This has totally changed the way we watch TV and even the way a normal day happens in our house. It is the rarest of times we sit to watch something that is live, other than hockey (go Habs go) of course! If there is an hour show that we like, we start watching it 15 minutes after it starts because then we can skip commercials. It’s a wonderful thing!

My most recent project was to take a second machine I have and install it on the bedroom TV. I have shared the Recorded TV from the main MCE machine which I now consider my media PC and am able to view it through MCE on the bedroom machine. This took a little work but I found a tool out there to help me through it. The tool is made by Doug Know and can be found here. So Recorded TV, plus I have taken all my CD’s and DVD’s and ripped them to MP3 and DIVx respectively. My wife is loving this. We have a 3 week old baby and my wife spends a lot of time in the bedroom feeding and sleeping at weird hours so this is great for her. I have to say, this is one of my favorite and most fun geek out projects I have done in a while.

If you don’t have an MCE machine, GET ONE :)

I needed to say this out loud somehow for everyone to read. The possibility of the TechTV alumni coming together on the web to fulfill our geek habit is phenomenally exciting. I along with so many other fans were so disappointed at the demise of our tech portal.
I have an account with UndoTV as I requested to be part of the pilot some time ago. Leo is already uploading a lot of his content. He works on so much… most people would think that a 1 hour daily show would be enough to keep a person busy, but in true geek style we have so many projects and such a wealth of information coming from him. So his job, plus all his projects and now he has teamed up with Chris Pirillo, interestingly enough both former hosts of Call for Help (even though we have you back in Canada on Call for Help) to bring the ‘others’ back.

Chris has also been working on a million things and has uploaded a lot of content to to site. I noticed that he is currently on his honeymoon after reading a few of his latest posts. Myself being a younger guy and married only 5 years in August still remember the cruise my wife and I took for our honeymoon. Congrads to Chris and Ponzi, I hope you have a great time and look forward to your return!

I see now that I as a new comer to the blogging world am able to add my content. I hope we as guests on the site do not shadow the real reason the site was created. I am somewhat torn. I want to be able to come to the UndoTV site and be able to quickly see all the new stuff that’s been put there by my favorite people of the TechTV era and yet I feel compelled to share my views and post my blog entries.

Wow. WordPress setup is very easy. There are so many tools out there to help you and the docs from WordPress are great. The database is mySQL and I set this up on a server at home so I used a tool called WAMP. This is pretty much install it and it will work. I did follow a guide similar to this one, however I can’t find the one I actually used.

The first thing you need to do is install WAMP. This will install all the servers you need on your computer to support WordPress. WordPress uses mySQL as a database backup as I said before. The only manual thing in my SQL you need to do is created an admin password and a database for WordPress to use.

WAMP also installs an Apache web server on your computer. This has to be one of the best webservers I know of. It’s not Microsoft’s IIS so there is no Windows server integration but it will work great for this (and most other applications as well). When WAMP installs Apache it also installs PHP support which is needed for WordPress.

That pretty much takes care of the pre-requisets for WordPress. Then if you follow the instructions on the WordPress website you are good to go.

I watched an episode of Call for Help last night on G4TechTV in which Leo was talking about his use of WordPress again. He was 100% right in saying that it has improved a lot. Like him I had not installed it in over a year and it is quite simple.

If you are thinking about blogging, check it out.
www.wordpress.org