Samsung DVD-R Sucks

So in my previous post I talked about my new Samsung DVD Recorder. What a piece of junk it turned out to be. The thing broke after just 6 weeks of use. I had to fight with Makro for almost 2 months to get my money back I paid for this piece of junk.

Makro's policy on electronic replacements are horrible to say the least, but I suspect all the retailers in South Africa has the same type of return policy, so I am between a rock and a hard place with this.

I took my money and went to HiFi Corp and bought myself a standard cheap Philips DVD player that support DivX playback.

Searching for comics online

This Tech Recipe shows how to search for electronic versions of comics using Google.

Video streaming wirelessly

I previously contemplated using VLC to stream video wirelessly around my house, but I recently discovered that Ellies already has the hardware available at a very affordable price.

The AV sender / receiver combo uses standard WiFi to transmit incoming audio and video. All I need to do is just hookup the sender to my PVR and the receiver to my monitor and magic starts.

I am also considering the USB2800 or the Pinnacle Studio 500 video capture devices. So in conjuction with the Ellies AV sender, I can play videos on my PVR / Camcorder / VCR and record it on my PC using the USB video capture devices.

Windows Vista

I decided to format my laptop's hard disk and install Windows Vista. Gone was my Windows XP and Ubuntu dual boot setup. The reason? I gave up the fight with my tech. department regarding their network which is very unfriendly to any OS except Windows. I could not VPN into work from my home using standard VPN protocols, I needed to boot Windows XP to enable the use of some Microsoft propriety software just to get into the VPN.

So I decided it is too much hassle to get it working, so I installed Vista and now everything should go smoothly and if it doesn't at least I can log a call at the tech. dept. to fix the problem.

PowerToys

My company bought me a 22" Acer LCD monitor the other day. Unfortunately my fonts didn't seem quite right with the new monitor. I forgot about the PowerToys utility from Microsoft and my boss mentioned to me that PowerToys has some ClearType tweaking tool. I downloaded it and now my fonts are all clear and smooth again, definitely recommended for any LCD monitor user.

Comic book subscription

My Spider-Man subscription with Sci-Fi Genre was less than ideal. I subscribed with the understanding that my comics will only be shipped once my basket was worth $20, what I did not know was that the will ship my comics every two months regardless, so now my first shipment is on its way but the comics are worth $6 and my shipping costs are $13, so my shipping is double what my comics are worth. So I unsubscribed from the service.

What I will test next is the possibility of using the back issue order feature to order my comics in bulk but in arrears, basically I will order 12 issues at the end of the year and it will be shipped to me in one shipment.

My DC and Marvel subscription has been going strong so far without any hiccups, so I am considering just using the direct subscriptions again and just backorder the issues I am missing.

GSpace

A colleague I work with mentioned the GSpace service to me a while back but I never thought it will be of any benefit to me. The idea behind GSpace is simple, it allows you to upload files to your GMail account as if it was just another off site storage medium.

I have my own always online off site server so I never saw the need for yet another. What I did not know was that GSpace not only uploads the files to GMail but it simulates standard email, thus I can use the standard GMail features to manipulate these files.

The benefit only came to full realization when I used GSpace to backup my Excel and Word documents from my new Palm Treo 750 to GMail. I can now access any of my Word or Excel documents anywhere plus I can edit them using the standard Google documents feature, so updating my documents via the web is easy and when I sync with my Palm I just download the latest versions of the documents from GMail onto the Palm again.

It is a bit manual at this point in time but it works surprisingly well.

Spb Software

I have been using my new Palm Treo 750v for a while now and I bought a few applications already. I will not be able to use my Treo without these applications anymore.

Most of my applications were developed by Spb Software but I did buy a simple list manager from PDA House. My current list of must have software is

• Spb Diary
• Spb GPRS Monitor
• Spb Mobile Shell
• My Checklist

I am investigating Spb Phone Suite but my Palm Treo 750v has most of the functionality it offers so $20 just for the profile management is a bit steep. I mailed Spb Software to find out if they could re-package Spb Phone Suite into a Spb Phone Suite Lite version for $10.

MMS support on the Treo 750v

So I received an MMS but my phone refused to download the MMS from the server. My MMS settings was not setup out of the box. Very disappointing for a Vodafone branded phone, I am definitely not impressed.

I phoned Vodacom SA to try and get the correct settings from them but they failed to give me the correct information to setup my MMS.

Luckily a friend of mine had the same problem with his HP PDA Phone so I mailed him and he pointed me to this forum post.

Unfortunately it still did not work but luckily I only needed to make one small change, the gateway server IP and port needs to be supplied for the Treo 750v to work. Thus 196.6.x.x became 196.6.x.x:9201.

A bit of a headache just to send and receive MMS messages.

MIDP 2.0 Support on my Treo 750v

The first thing I noticed of my new phone was that it is missing J2ME support. Luckily other people had the same problem than me and I quickly found the solution in Intent Midlet Manager for Windows Mobile.

So now I can use my standard GMail client as well as Opera Mini.

My baby is 12 weeks in the making

Images of the latest sonar scan is available.

Palm Treo 750v

It seems Vodacom SA is Vodafone obsessed lately. I asked Vodacom SA to supply me with a Palm Treo 750 and they insist on giving me the Palm Treo 750v. Unfortunately for me the only way to get the Palm Treo 750 is to switch service providers, so I took the Treo 750v.

Lucky according to the comparison between the two Treos the only lacking thing on the 750v is HSDPA. That and the fact that my default theme is red and gray.

Treo 750

It is cell phone contract upgrade time again and this time I am getting the Palm Treo 750. It has Windows Mobile 5.0 as OS and not the standard PalmOS, which in my opinion is dying and needs a major rework. To me Windows Mobile is the only mobile OS that is still evolving and growing. Symbian and PalmOS are both not really growing and as with anything if it is not growing it is dying.

I still do prefer the Palm devices over the other devices from other manufacturers because of the design principles followed by the Palm company and the Palm Treo 750 seems to be the perfect device for me. The small thumb keyboard to me is better than the HTC TyTN's keyboard because it allows me to type SMS messages with just one hand without the need to flip the phone sideways to get access to the keyboard.

For larger documents etc. I am investigating a way of hacking my iPAQ bluetooth keyboard to work with my Treo 750, so meeting notes etc. will not be a big problem.

Some missing functionality I would have liked on this device is

• WiFi
• 3" LCD screen instead of 2.5"
• 320x240 resolution instead of 240x240
• 2MP camera instead of 1.3MP
• 400MHz CPU instead of 300MHz
• Have a docking station included as part of the package

Unfortunately the Treo 750 is on back order, so I might get the phone on the 12th of June.

Star Trek Voyager Season 1-7 DVD set

I received my Star Trek Voyager DVD collection yesterday and it all seems original and all but since I ordered it directly from China I do have my doubts. The video quality seems to be standard SDTV quality which would make sense since HDTV was not really that big when the series was aired. The soundtrack is also Dolby Digital 5.1, so it seems to checkout.

Video Streaming Hardware

I am very interested in the idea of streaming all my content via Wi-Fi at my house. The software seems to be available and ready. VideoLAN will take care of the streaming for me.

My problem is the hardware. If I want to be able to watch the streams anywhere in the house, I would need some portable media device which will be able to connect to the wireless network as well as output the stream via composite to some display device, either a TV or projector. It seems Gigabyte might have a solution in the form of a new motherboard. All I need then is a very small case that will allow me to carry the solution around the house.

Student Urinates on PS2

I found this interesting article on Kotaku today. Apparently some student decided it will be a good idea to urinate on his PS2. It seems the student was not part of the engineering faculty otherwise he would have known to unplug the PS2 from the wall socket first.

Baby Progress

My new baby is 9 weeks in development now. According to the manual he / she is now as big as a jelly baby. So just to put everything into context I bought a packet of jelly babies just to see how big my baby is now.

Notebook Suspend

Something I have noticed using Ubuntu 7.04 is that the suspend function works much better than Ubuntu 6.10. My notebook has been put into suspend mode and brought out of suspend mode frequently over the past weekend and Ubuntu 7.04 did it flawlessly every time. Ubuntu 6.10 would always fail to come out of suspend mode after a few suspends.

Program my DSTV PVR over the Internet

I was curious whether I could schedule recording times over the Internet. Basically I would use the DSTV website to set my recording times and then Multichoice would send the information to my PVR via the satellite connection.

Apparently a few other people also had the same idea as can be deducted from this forum post of mine. So hopefully by 2009 I will have this functionality.

Another instance where DRM causes more distress for the paying customer than the actual pirate they want to get rid of. If it was not for tight DRM policies DSTV could have opened their PVR for homebrew development which would have allowed this functionality to be developed by hobbyists like MythTV currently is.

I got DSTV

Since my wife fell pregnant we decided to get DSTV for the home. I had DSTV a few years back but I could not justify the cost of the subscription compared to the amount of TV I watched anymore. The problem usually was that the shows I wanted to see was screened at times I could not watch them and the amount of hassle involved in setting the VCR to record the shows every time was not worth it, not to even mention the amount of VHS tapes I required.

DSTV in their wisdom decided to release the PVR decoder and that put the whole subscription fee issue in a whole new light. The PVR allows me to set recording times for all my favorite shows thus insuring that I do not miss any of my shows, which means I finally get what I pay for, well almost.

I am a bit disappointed that DSTV decided to cancel the Sci-Fi channel, but I do like the extra nature shows and the new Disney channel. My frame of reference for old and new is 2002 vs. 2007, so the Disney channel might have been created a long time ago, but to me it is new.

I also bought myself a new Samsung DVD recorder. My LG DVD player packed up so I needed to replace it so I bought the DVD recorder instead of just a player. The upside is I can now play my recorded shows through my DVD recorder and record the shows I want to keep onto DVD-R. Shows like Nigella Feasts and Jamie's Kitchen are really shows I want to keep on DVD-R instead of on the PVR's hard drive.