Author: deadprogrammer

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Tivo Tivo Tivo!

TurboNet card arrived yesterday. It’s an amazing feat of engineering – a tiny little custom-made ethernet card that fits into Tivo’s ISA slot and is powered by the motherboard. Install took 3 minutes (good hearted Tivo engineers included drivers for it with the latest version of software) + 5 minutes to staple cat5 to the wall. Well, and half an hour contemplating Tivo’s insides.

What am I gaining from having an ethernet card in Tivo?

Well, for one, it will not be phoning home every day. 30 calls per month at 5 cents each is not a huge saving, but I will not have to unplug the phone cord during thunderstorms.

I already had a burned out modem once. The nasty thing about it breaking was that it kept phone line “of the hook” so that nobody could call me. I had to send my Tivo to a Texan who goes by the handle Electriclegs. He figured out how to fix Tivo modems by replacing a few parts and even made a repair kit available, but I was not brave enough to solder surface mount components myself. The repair cost me $50 + shipping, but the worst thing was being without Tivo for a couple of weeks. Brrrr.

Things left to do:
1) Install bigger hard drive (not simple because I have a double drive model)
2) Mount the ethernet jack flush in Tivo’s case (cold not do it this time because my nibbling tool broke during cutting a hole for exhaust fan on my computer)
3) Install TivoWeb, other neato hacks
4) Learn to solder surface mount components, install memory kit from Electriclegs

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Subway Bench

Notice how the space for sitting is quantized. The ridges don’t really prevent homeless from sleeping there, but they make the whole experience unpleasant for them. Overall it’s a very well designed bench.

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Martha Stewart Eat Your Heart Out

I am a looser. I spent half a day today cleaning out “science experiments” from my fridge, washing the shelves and organizing its contents. In other words – “portrait of the hacker at home” (click the link, don’t be lazy) or Cowboy Bebop Session 11 (my favorite episode).

My fridge is pretty cool. It even looks like a mainframe or a supercomputer.

I am going to add blinkenlights some day.

Anyway, here is a tip for you. Supermarkets keep vegetables fresh longer by using this special lining material (pvc-coated filter). It allows better circulation of air or something. Supposedly it can prolong the life of fruit and vegetables by 50%. I bought mine from Amana for $8, but it can be had cheaper. The veggies do live longer it seems.

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Some quick nerdy news

Ethernet card for my TIVO is on it’s way. I wish it was available when my TIVO’s modem got killed by a surge from a lightning storm (I had to ship it to a guy who fixed it for $50). I’ll probably install TivoWeb because Yahoo! seems to be pretty slow in rolling out online TIVO programming that was promised.

Powershot G3 is available for preorder. I can’t believe they used the same moronic silver color for it. Again. Didn’t they get enough angry letters from photographers (so many that the actually made a black color version of G2).

By the way, it’s interesting to watch the progress of design of G1, G2 and G3. One thing that I noticed is that the grip handle gets progressively bigger and more comfortable.