Category: Tech Stuff

A while after installing Window’s “One Care Live” on my personal laptop I tried using Synergy to control it from my desktop. I started encountering the following errors in the dos window that pops up when Synergy encounters problems: “requested address is a broadcast address, but the appropriate flag was not set”.

I already had the synergyc.exe executable listed under programs in One Care Live’s firewall. But, silly me, I had restricted it to connecting “To computers on my network (subnet) only”.

The solution is to elect instead to allow connection “To any computer (including those on the Internet)”.

Not really ideal but I don’t think too many folks will be trying to move my mouse for me in the near future…

I wanted to grab some clips of some larger videos that I could put onto my iPOD to show some friends. I first tried to use XP’s own “Windows Movie Maker” but found that it only saves clips in WMV format which my converter for my iPOD chokes on.

In searching I found this article from USATODAY.COM that pointed me to exactly what I was looking for. I ended up downloading and using “VirtualDub” which lets me simply and easily pick a start and end point (use the cursor keys to find these points and use the “Home” and “End” keys to choose which is which) and then I save the clip as AVI.

Be warned that the output file is HUGE but as I’m only using it as an intermediate file to get to my iPOD this is livable. In one case about a 20 minute clip from a 500 Mbyte AVI clip yielded about a 9 Gbyte AVI file. But after processing with 3GP_Converter I ended up with a more reasonable 135 MByte MP4 file and then deleted the intermediate file.

I can’t remember now where I found out about this great tool but I use the 3GP_Converter to convert just about any file format that I can play on my PC on my iPOD. All I need to do is drag and drop the videos onto the converter and, when it’s done, they are waiting for me on my iPOD.

It’s a good idea to pick a storage folder for the output videos in advance (I just called my “My iPOD videos” in my “My Documents” folder).

Remember to delete the videos from the folder after you’ve removed them from your iPOD. If you delete something from iTunes and you *don’t* get that warning dialog asking if you want to send the file to the recycle bin then you’ve either disabled that dialog (re-enable it now!) or the file is still on your system.

I do a small amount of Bittorrenting and find that it quickly overwhelms my WRT54G router. If I want to get proper performance from the router after any amount of time running Azureus (my bittorrent client) I need to reboot the router by pulling the plug for about 15 seconds and then plugging it back in again.

Apparently this is a known issue with the WRT54G using Linksys’ native firmware and they have simply never bothered to correct it.

I was also having ongoing issues with my home computers being unable to resolve each other’s DNS names and, not being an expert on network items, I wasn’t having much luck resolving this no matter how I configured my router. I’m an application guy really. I understand enough about networking to help me interface with it programatically but I certainly don’t know this stuff frontwards and backwards.

Anyway, bring in DD-WRT. I found this through Wikipedia’s WRT54G entry pointing to Third-party firmware projects. After installing the firmware (you want to be REALLY careful if you do this. Follow the directions closely) I am now able to assign “Static” DHCP addresses to my computers based on their MAC addresses. Basically this just means that they always have the same IP address but everything else is still treated as if they used dynamic addressing. So I don’t have to monkey around with manually setting DNS servers or any of that kind of thing.
This allows me to resolve my communication issue on my internal network via host files. Not my favorite choice but it sure beats my nightly backups failing because my desktop machines can’t find the server.

Also, the slowdown issue with my bittorrent client has been resolved. Here is what is needed. Essentially, the original Linksys firmware keeps track of your old connection for 5 days, you can now adjust that down to something much more reasonable as the nature of P2P traffic, especially a swarm technology like bittorrent, is to engage in a LOT of connections and this will quickly overwhelm your unaltered WRT54G Linksys router.

As a side benefit, the DD-WRT firmware also allows me to schedule regular reboots of the router which I’m now playing with as well. This means, even if there are any creeping buffer overflow or other cumulative issues they can at least be masked by these refreshes. And that is sufficient for my purposes in my home environment.

I’ll post again if there are any issues but so far things have been going very well. I installed the new firmware on this past Friday and have had no issues and excellent performance.

** Update 6/18/2007 11:30 pm**

Just got off the phone with RIM. According to the rep I worked with I will need to send any suggestions for my new Blackberry (they’re not really issues since it *is* operating as designed – at least as far as the brightness of the “pearl” is concerned) to bbsuggestions@blackberry.com.

1 – the “Pearl” (little control ball) is kept in lockstep with the screen and there is currently no way to disable the pearl lighting – I find this makes it difficult to see the screen unless I keep my thumb over it. I’ll be sending a note to bbsuggestions on this.

2 – The red LED indicator will flash for 15 minutes after it has been triggered. So if you are expecting your repeat notification to let you know you received a message while in the shower, just make it a short shower 🙂  I’ll be sending a note to bbsuggestions on this.

3 – I originally forgot to mention this issue below but the GPS doesn’t seem to work. Apparently RIM has an internal memo that discusses the fact that Verizon, by design, has not enabled the GPS in their devices for 3rd party apps (in particular I want to use Google Maps with this).

** End Update **

I am using a new Blackberry 8830 handled device so that I can offer backup support at work should there be issues with them.

Overall I’ve got a good handle on the device, nice screen and a lot of intelligent features. But one thing is just not working the way I think it should.

I have my profiles generally set so that only level 1 messages notify me when they come in. I allow all other messages to flow into the device but I check those when I have a free moment. I really do want to know about the level 1 messages as they arrive.
Sometimes I’m away from my phone (shower, workout, whatever) and, by default, the screen is off (new feature with this model that’s different from my old 7250). So in my profiles I have set it such that the LED will flash for these messages. But the LED seems never to be on even though I could have a dozen level 1 messages in my inbox. I assume that there is a finite amount of time for which the LED will flash but I have yet to find it, either by searching the web or in the Blackberry knowledge base. I suppose I’ll have to give RIM support a call tomorrow…

BTW, so far,
Pros:

• REALLY nice screen, automatically changes brightness based on ambient lighting
• Slim
• I like the “Pearl” control – still trying to find a way to turn of it’s light. It’s a little distracting in low light.
• The option key on the left side – was annoying when it activated voice dialing but after I swapped it to take me to my inbox I like it just fine.
• Faster processor than my old 7250

Cons:

• That silly LED issue
• The keyboard is very awkward to use. I presume I’ll get used to it. But I pretty much have to stare at it, rather than the screen, when I’m typing.
• Another ding against the keyboard is that, in low lighting, the keys are lit such that the letters are a very dark blue (keys are opaque metal). I honestly cannot read them at all. I type using my memory of where the keys *should* be, the only help from the lighting is to let me know that there is *some* key located there, not *which* key.

**Update 4:00 pm**  Shut down my soundbridge and doppler and then restarted iTunes. Then I attached my iPod and *presto* my audio files reappeared. Of course the “Sync movies” option was unchecked as usual so I checked it, hit the “Apply” button and now I’m synching my 17+ Gbytes of video content… again.

**End Update**

**Update 8:30 am** When I got to my car I realized that, even though iTunes was showing all of my songs/podcasts as loaded on my iPod. Nothing was accessible to be played. Of course I always keep a backup audiobook in the car for such “emergencies” 🙂 but it is annoying nonetheless. This is telling me that I need to disable Apple’s auto updater so that I can run it only when I have time to fix any mess that it may create.

**end update**

My iTunes updated itself overnight. For some reason, every once in a while (I’m pretty sure it’s after an update) iTunes stops synching my video content. It’s *really* annoying since it dumps it all and then I have to re-select the video content in iTunes and it needs to copy all of the files back over again.

This morning iTunes is at 7.2.0.34 and I see that the video tab is simply gone. After synching I get the dreaded “Some of your content was not synced because your software is too old” garbage message and all video content is gone. I don’t even have the option to correct this and now I’ve got to get to work. 🙁

If you use the apple auto updater, beware!

If you use the Internet, you’re using DNS (Domain Name System).

I heard about this listening to the Slashdotreview podcast a couple of days ago. OpenDNS claims that they can perform faster DNS lookups than can your ISP. They further claim they can correct typos (i.e. you type wikipedia.og instead of wikipedia.org) as well as protect you from known Phishing pages.

So I’m giving them a whirl. I’ve added the OpenDNS IP addresses to the formerly empty static DNS IP address section in my WRT54G router and am using it now.

Given the vagaries of the Internet, it’s not really possible to say immediately whether DNS resolution is faster than it used to be. I suppose that will end up being a qualitative judgment on my part after a few more days of use.

However I *can* say that the “type correction” feature is pretty slick. If you get the URL hopelessly wrong (i.e. leave off the extension entirely), rather than getting a “cannot be found” kind of error, you are directed to a search page that usually has the correct option very near the top.

I’ve played a little bit with the shortcut ability (i.e. I type “mb” on the address bar and it figures it out and sends me to http://marc-bourassa.com) although I *am* somewhat sketchy on how it know it’s *me* typing that shortcut. Dynamic IP addresses for home users is the norm. The FAQ doesn’t address this item.

Going to my other computers yields different results, my old Win2K laptop, when I type “mb” on Firefox’s address bar brings up wikipedia’s definition for “Megabyte”. On Mich’s laptop doing the same thing brings up the OpenDNS search results page.

Solution: It turns out that I need to be logged into OpenDNS. You have the option of remaining logged in until you explicitly log out, so that little mystery is solved.

I’ll play with this a little more and see if I have any issues.

*Update 5/30/2007* Got home this evening and all appears to be well again…

I keep all of my systems up to date. This morning I noticed my One Care Live icon (in the system tray) was red and, on clicking it, I saw that I have an “urgent” warning that my virus and spyware definition files are out-of-date.

Clicking the “Update Now” button did nothing, nor did clicking the “Check for updates” hotlink to the right of the “Protection Plus” section.

Checking Microsoft’s web site (oncare.live.com) I see they have a community section where folks are discussing this issue . The last entry at the moment is the stalwart soul who has been on hold for over 104 minutes with MS’ tech support.

Interestingly, the laptop what was in standby overnight *seems* OK. I just brought it out of standby and explicitly checked for updates and it’s claiming that all is well. Maybe the issue is to do with the automated update (bad def file??)

I expect it’s a Microsoft glitch but I’ll be a little happier once the issue has been resolved…