Trying to conquer the stream!

After getting my music library all sorted out, I've now moved on to fixing my movies to have them all stream smoothly and of the best quality possible. I recently acquired some component cables for my X(bmc)box and the quality is AMAZING! So now, how to carry that HD-ish quality over the network without the choppy-ness I've been accustomed to dealing with so far?

Obviously I can accomplish this with the ever popular Handbrake. If you don't have this software installed you're missing out. So far, I've been a retard when it comes to encoding videos properly. I've never taken the time to sort it all out and put two and two together, until now.

Best forum post I could find was this: HandBrake • View topic - XBMC on Xbox: optimal HB settings to convert 720p x264 mkv?

Most of my HD quality videos start off as .mkv (Matroska) files. While it's a great format for high quality movies, it's a bitch for Xbmc to decode. Hell, anything besides an avi is chancy ;-) I've started to take notice of which encoding to use, and what seems to work best is Xvid/MPEG-4, with a slightly dialed down resolution from the 720p standard. Mix in the audio right (for those pesky DTS audio codecs, use the mp3 to at least salvage 2ch stereo, otherwise use AC3) and voila! In some cases, Xvid was still sloppy, so I tried FFmpeg. I'm giving the Xvid another shot with the dialed down resolution and see if there's still chop. I can't fast forward on the FFmpeg videos!

Your mileage may vary, but I am enjoying Transformers and other 720p/1080i movies on my Xbox currently :-D

Fixing the Notes app on the iPhone

When I upgraded my iPhone to 2.2.1, I did a full restore on my phone. I backed up everything and wiped the phone clean. Man, it was fast! Check out this link to keep your iPhone in top shape:

How to have a blazing fast jailbroken phone

Anyways.. after I did this, my phone was indeed fast. However, all my notes that I had in the Notes app was un-editable. In fact, I couldn't create any new notes, or delete the current notes. 2 weeks later, I finally get time to fix the issue. Here's how you fix it: (Thanks to the MMI forums)

SSH into your iphone go to /private/var/mobile/Library and change the owner to the Notes directory and it's files:

Open up terminal in WinSCP, and type:
chown -R mobile Notes

and test if you can save or modify any note.

PS2 Softmod.. Whew what a mindblower!

So 2 months ago roughly, I acuired an Xbox and a PS2 off my cousin-in-law Billy while my father and I were up in Detroit. Both were in decent shape, and the first thing was do XBMC with the Xbox. That has been a killer softmod, and the guys and I love it here at the apartment for movies.

http://ashholt.googlepages.com/ps2softmod

It's only been until recently that I went through with softmodding the PS2. I bought an 80GB Maxtor which is the recommended HD to use for the Network adapter. This weekend I did some research, and with limited places to look, I ended up with an OLD school Gameshark 2 to use as the swap disc initiator. After much researching, it seems that there was only certain USB drives that could work to swap data from the USB to Mem Card. Without the data on the Mem Card, nothing will work.

After much consultation with my work buddy Josh, we found a burnable install disc (Here:http://blog.e-tutorial.info/2008/10/how-to-install-ps2-memory-card-exploit.html) that would work with the Gameshark to get the data onto the Mem Card. Everything went through, and now we can harness the power of the 80GB HD and HDLoader!

Follow what both guides have done, the only variance is the cheat system you use (Codebreaker, Action Replay Max, Gameshark, etc)

Use a PS1 game that you never use! The game will have to stay in as the trigger if you run the PS2

Been a month or so, but I has updates!!

First bit of info is only this... It's amazing how much difference it makes when you un-kink a coaxial cable:
from 200KB/s to 1.1MB/s like it was when we first moved in. Can't belive I didn't notice it until now.

Second thing.. I recently started fresh on a new hard drive and found out that transferring all the program data over to the new HD isn't all that hard, but the trickiest thing was iTunes and my iPhone. Make sure you have program folders and your documents and settings folders backed up!! I never realized how many things are located in application data.. especially iTunes. Windows Address Book saved me after I realized my contacts were wiped from my phone. Location of your contacts from there are: C:/Documents and Settings/[username]/Application Data/Microsoft/Address Book. You'll see your .wab file there and all you need to do is import!

App Update Issues with iPhone (argh!!!)

So for the past month, I've been experiencing issues whenever I had an App update with certain apps on my iPhone. It would not update and give me an iTunes error code 0xE800002E and told me it could not update the app. After much digging and searching and finding numerous answers that DIDNT work, I stumbled upon 2 people's posts about the exact issue and here's a fix for everyone who has had this issue for a while:

The iPhone 2.1 does fix a few things that users have been asking about (except for copy and paste, of course), but one thing it does not fix is the annoying “0xE80002E” problem, where you cannot install an update of an application to your iPhone. This is getting fairly annoying as it now happens to me just about every time I download new updates. After searching other websites and playing around myself, I have come up with a “solution” that works for me. Your milage may vary.

1. Download updates
2. Sync iPhone
3. Dismiss error message
4. Click the “Applications” tab and choose “Selected Applications:”
5. Uncheck the apps that are giving you update problems. iTunes will confirm that you wish to delete these from your iPhone.
6. Resync your iPhone. The apps will have been deleted.
7. Re-check the apps in the “Applications” tab
8. Resync your iPhone yet again

Your apps (in their updated state) should now be once again on your iPhone, and all error messages should be gone. The only downsides to this method is that it takes a long time, and it deletes any saved settings and content from the app. But at least your app will be updated and there will be no error messages.

Thanks Derrick!! www.derrickgoodfriend.com

Lazyness part 2

I was able to finish up most of the big tasks at hand yesterday, and here's the results:
Did some machining of the plow's arm, took off some much needed ounces. The bolts on the plow will be replaced with some grade 8 bolts before the event starts. Also some last minute reinforcement will happen.

Here's a almost done look at the bot:

The quest for sheer laziness!

I knew for a while that the Franklin Institute event was coming up, but after the PN regional I kinda fell into that lazy slump that I always do before robot events.. So now here we are a week out from the event, and I'm NOW just starting to build for it. The original plan was to have a 12lb, 30lb, and my 1lb bots ready for the event, but like most of my plans, was overshot by a friggin mile. So here's my progress so far... ONE ROBOT

The 12lb bot is based off my really old 1lb robot Conceptual Chaos, aptly named SUPER Conceptual Chaos. Best part about this robot is the amount of stuff I am reusing. Total, I think I've spent $15 on actual materials from McMaster and that's about it. Yes, it's only a pushy bot, but the "Concept" is that it's a big wheeled robot with a tiny wedge/plow. It's at least not a box with a wedge.

To start off, this is the actual chassis. There really isn't much to it. It's probably 4"x7". I've gone with steel just cause it's faster to make a chassis, and there's no machining to be done (aka mill). I found what steel I had left, and found that the only 3/8" tubing I had was on a similar older 12lber of mine. (For those on the bot forums, it was Pitchfork) So that got hacked apart.
Here's a mock-up of the whole chassis assembly. Kiddie car GBs with some slightly older motors I bought from All Electronics eeons ago.
I ran into a snafu when putting the "bearing blocks" in place. I had some tack welds on the inside of the chassis that I couldn't remove, so parts had to be hacked out but it ended up fitting in. I still had a ton of thread inserts to use, so the bearing blocks got them to help keep the screws connected well.
Motor mounts installed.
Tires and ALF hubs installed, still need to do the outsides tomorrow.
Here's what's left to put on.. 1/2" bar of 6061 Alu (I probably will pocket it a little..) and a scrap piece of 1/8" Ti that wasn't used on a never finished 120lb bot from 3 years ago. Actually, funny side note, the whole plate that the piece was off of was from Jackrabbit (ya know, that speedy thing that fought at Battlebots?)

Okay okay, back on track.. I'll try to bend the sides tomorrow with a torch and a ton of prayers, but I doubt itl work. I'll put a little block of aluminum behind the wedge to keep others at bay too. Everything checks out to around 12lbs, so I should be okay!