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Roku with Roksbox on a Synology box

2012-04-09 at 10:49

Entertainment Systems

8 Comments

The Roku is awesome but it’s missing a critical feature – it can’t play video from your local network. To solve this I’m using Roksbox which is a channel for Roku (like an app on an Apple or an Android device). I’ve got all my content visible on my network via UPnP/DLNA (Universal Plug-and-Play) shares on my NAS, a Synology DS209. This is great for most devices and I don’t want to change my current setup, but Roksbox needs the content to be on a web server as opposed to using UPnP.

Getting this to work is a pain and took a long time to figure out. I’m using this post to document what I had to do, partially for anyone else who needs it but to be honest its mostly for myself in case I need to rebuild any part in the future. I’m getting ready to update the firmware on my NAS so it’s important to make sure any custom configurations are documented.
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Pennies to Heaven

2012-04-06 at 00:53

Uncategorized

2 Comments

It’s time to kill the penny.

You used to hear people say “I remember when a loaf of bread was a nickle”. Today it’s 40x that. Once you hit an inflation point this high it’s time to make a change.

Lots of people are advocating for the demise of the penny, but I’m going much further in re-engineering the cash system. Its time for an overhaul starting with the dropping of a decimal point.
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Joojoo and Grid10 Final Post

2012-03-28 at 09:56

Tablets

4 Comments

Fusion Garage, the maker of my tablets, is no more. The CEO has fulfilled his destiny, taking the money, leaving the creditors with a $40 million bill, and disappearing from public life. The judge in the original lawsuit handed them a well deserved loss. Websites are down. The community is scattering. Its over. Time for the post-mortem.
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CAS Number Format and Check Digit Validation

2012-03-22 at 13:13

Day Job, Development

No Comments

CAS numbers are used to uniquely identify every chemical man can find or dream up. There are a staggering 60,000,000+ in the CAS number registry and 12,000 more are added daily. These numbers have a specific format mask with a check digit at the end. For a project I needed a simple client side CAS# format validation routine, where it checked that the format is legit and the check digit is correct, as opposed to looking up the CAS# in a 60-million row database.

Industry-specific shared code is difficult to find, most of the time it is trapped inside corporate walls. A while ago I searched for a validation routine for the format and checksum of CAS numbers, and although there is one out there now, at the time it had to be written from scratch by anyone who had the need.

I intend to put up more long tail code snipits over time, but to be honest I’m motivated at the moment more by wanting sample code to play with the Google Code Prettifier from my last post.
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Pretty Code in WordPress

2012-03-20 at 21:14

Development, Will never get done

No Comments

I’m impressed by the Google Code Javascript code prettifier. It isn’t too hard to embed into WordPress and makes a huge difference.
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How I Defeated Spam

2012-03-15 at 12:22

Will never get done

No Comments

A really stupid thing to do is brag about how you’ve beat the spammers at their game. It just encourages them to find a way and you get tons more spam than ever before. Well, here it goes: I have no SPAM on this site.

Although I’m using several tricks I want to share the easiest and most effective technique.

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Apple Predictions

2012-03-07 at 11:17

Current Events

No Comments

I need to get these up quick before the announcements begin.

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VC Dystopia

2012-03-06 at 23:43

Evil Business Plans, For Others

No Comments

Any start-up needs backers which almost always means venture capital investment. Sure you can start off in your garage and get the basics done on your own dime, but once you are on your way to becoming known to the public you need to grow fast. If you don’t take the money then someone else will clone your idea, team up with a VC firm, and beat you to market. There are lots of down sides to dealing with VC cash, but its the way the system works, and the VCs like it that way – a stable model capitalizing on the churn of innovations.

This entire model is about to change. Continue reading →

joojoo redux

2011-09-21 at 13:44

Tablets

6 Comments

The Grid10 tablet has been delayed for a few weeks. In the mean time Microsoft has released its developer’s preview of Windows 8. Since I’ve not been thrilled with the joojoo’s original OS, Ubuntu, Jolicloud, or Window 7 on the joojoo I decided to try out Windows 8.

In a word: Nirvana. Continue reading →

Free Your Mindset

2011-08-15 at 18:44

Tablets

No Comments

The iPad is 2 years ahead of the competition and seems to be holding that lead. Eventually the market will mature and I won’t care about the remaining little differences, but at the moment the 2-year gulf is huge.

I’m a fairly new Apple hater, due mostly to their anti open source stance, which I find quite ironic given OSX’s open source roots. I used to be an Apple fan before before they became dominant and started tightening their ecosystem, becoming more like a Walmart in their business practices. I’m resolutely not getting an iPad and despairing at my remaining options. I have a cheap 7″ Android 1.6 device and a joojoo which is browser-only device with a custom skin over Ubuntu. I had high hopes for the joojoo but there were too many issues for it compete with the iPad, let alone being a good mass market product. Continue reading →

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