It finally happened: I setup a Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/stephen.sekula Don’t get excited. My primary means of communication, listed in order of their important to me, are still: face-to-face, phone, IM, e-mail, and social networking. That means that I won’t be spending every waking hour on Facebook, so please don’t get […]
Computing
72 posts
Over Christmas break, I started tinkering with virtual machines. At the time, I was using VMWare, which is free but not open-source. Since then, I’ve been falling in love with VirtualBox from Sun, which is both free and open-source and multi-platform [1]. Over break, I realized that I had a […]
Now that digital cable seems well under the control of sTeVo, my MythTV box [1], I thought it would be helpful to post some of my lessons learned in this process. Lesson 1: MythTV is robust and flexible. The dedicated team of MythTV developers have made an adaptable product. The […]
Tonight on NPR was a timely story about why we can’t get the internet on our TV [1]. Most of the blame gets put on Cable companies and content producers in Hollywood (and other places). For me, the bottom line is: I DO have the internet on my TV – […]
Today, it became clear to me that the CommandIR was not going to cut the mustard. I aimed my webcam at the emitter, and could clearly see the emitter lighting up when it was instructed to send commands to the Comcast box. That meant the emitter was transmitting, but it […]
Yesterday, my IR blaster from CommandIR arrived. After going to see the movie “Watchmen”, I spent the evening setting up the new IR receiver and emitter. Step one: plug in and verify linux saw it. Step one was completed in less than 10 seconds. Step two: add the existence of […]
I reported last night the trouble we’ve been having getting sTeVo ready for the Comcast transition to digital cable. I realized today that the date is even sooner than I thought – March 15 instead of April 15. Silly me. Pressure! After learning that all but local channels will be […]
A few weeks ago, we received notice that Comcast would be transitioning channels above 30 to digital, away from analog. This transition is to happen on April 15. We were told we could get either a converter and a set-top box, or a pair of converters. Jodi and I opted […]
Back in the beginning of 2006, I constructed my own Mythtv-based digital personal video recorder, or PVR, which Jodi nicknamed “sTeVo”. Many people found this amusing, and some people found it down right cool. Everybody asked me the same question: how much did it cost? It was a $500 up-front […]
Last month, just a few days after Microsoft made the beta of Windows 7 available [1], I downloaded and installed it on a virtual machine in my Ubuntu installation. I don’t need all those stupid fancy graphics (Aero) or to play video games, so this was to me an acceptable […]
I came to Wisconsin to escape the annoyances of daily life and enjoy an actual Christmas break, something that the Federal government robbed me of last year. I’ve been having a great time. But today, some of the old humdrum kicked me in the teeth. One of my aunts (in-law) […]
As I go into the holidays, with lots of traveling and interrupted internet and phone service, I wanted to reward my faithful readers with my tech pick favorites for 2008. I think these are the things that you should check out in the new year. These are not things that […]