by R.I. Pienaar | May 14, 2005 | Usefull Things
I bought a One For All Mosaic aka URC-9990 universal remote control to try and make sense of the mess of remote controls on my table.
Primary concern was compatibility with the xbox specifically to use with XBox Media Center (XBMC). The remote itself is nice enough, UI leaves a bit to be desired during the setup stage but I guess you can’t have it all in a ยฃ40 remote.
Getting stuff going in the XBox though was another story, the Mosaic has a internet download function that plays a WAV file through your speaker into its microphone, bit like a 300 baud modem without any handshaking or carrier. I downloaded their XBOX profile this got the basics going but since the actual XBox remote control lacks volume, mute etc these were not added.
The Mosaic has a learn function like most of these remote controls I guess but I am sure there is a limited capacity for learned codes so I wanted to not use these if at all possible. It also has a Key Magic system that lets you enter codes manually, the hassle though is that they have obfuscated the codes and what actually gets sent. They say the Key Magic thing is patented etc and you need to speak to their customer support to get the right Magic key to your remote codes. Well thats just b/s all it is is a lookup against one set of numbers that will output the real number out via IR. IR only has 255 valid signals so its not that difficult.
I set the XBMC into debug mode where it shows the IR signals it receives and so made a table of Key Magic codes to actual codes, I also put in what default codes are in use on the XBox remote controller. View the full entry for the table of codes. It was actually very easy there are easily detectible patterns in their mapping from Magic codes to actual codes.
XBMC has in its latest version a global volume control that can be activated in all screens, it also has short cuts for accessing Videos, Movies, Weather and so forth, all accessible by the remote if you know the codes and can program it correctly. The keymap.xml defines what happens when keys or IR signals gets sent. The definition for the global volume up is:
<action>
<description>volumeup</description>
<id>88</id>
<gamepad>rightthumbstickup</gamepad>
<remote>volumeplus</remote>
<keyboard>+</keyboard>
</action>
Simple stuff, so to activate the volume button on the Mosaic I simply assigned a Magic Key using the table below and put the actual value that the Magic Key sends in the keymap.xml like this:
<action>
<description>volumeup</description>
<id>88</id>
<gamepad>rightthumbstickup</gamepad>
<remote></remote>
<remotecode>129</remotecode>
<keyboard>+</keyboard>
</action>
Notice that I cleared out the <remote></remote> blocks and added the <remotecode></remotecode> ones. Actual code 129 maps to Magic Key 262. Using the same simple procedure I also added quick access keys for movies and music and activate the mute button.
I am not sure why One For All feel they need to obfuscate something so fundamental to the operation of the remote control, but I hope this helps you use the device you paid good money for without having to waste additional money and time by having to call or mail them.
(more…)
by R.I. Pienaar | Apr 20, 2005 | Usefull Things
Tonight I noticed that OpenVPN 2 has finally been released on the 17th of April 2005, it has been a long time coming but finally it’s out, I’ll be upgrading my servers soon ๐
by R.I. Pienaar | Apr 9, 2005 | Usefull Things
I have been trying out the Blockbuster Unlimited DVD Rental system for a few months, it is basically a DVD rental by post system, no return-by dates, 3 DVD’s at a time as many as you can fit in for GBP13 a month.
The service it self is great, very few scratched disks, disks always arrive promptly, packaging is well done etc. The problem comes with their web interface though, it really leaves much to be desired.
Rather than go into a list of issues that I have with it, I’ll mention some of the good things about Screen Select who I will be using from now on.
I thought I’d stick with Blockbuster out of loyalty, they are good as I said, they gave me a month free trial and they deserve my business. However over time I realized that a major part of this business is the user experience, and that isn’t just about the movies, it’s about managing your account as well.
So I have tonight manually moved the 60 odd movies I had on my wish list at Blockbuster over to Screen Select and in the process I got the hang of their user interface and so forth. It really is great, I think the biggest testament to how good is the fact that I have grown my list to 180 during the night where with Blockbuster I was running out of stuff to add! The systems both work by browsing categories and making recommendations, so clearly actually finding stuff to watch is much easier with Screen Select for me.
So the list of good things about Screen Select:
- Lots of Customer Reviews, reviewers are also rated and you can pull out all reviews by someone you notice who has a similar taste as you.
- While browsing the various categories and search results, movies already on your list are easily identifiable. You still see the movies in the search results, but instead of a ‘Add’ option you have a ‘Remove’ option for those on your list.
- Movies that you are not interested in or have seen before can easily be hidden from recommended listings, you can however still search for them by name/actor/director etc.
- The quality of the recommendations sections are top notch, and according to them it improves as you rate movies you have seen.
- Good quality monthly newsletters, with archives available including things like Actor Of The Month etc.
- Shows upcoming releases clearly, even shows movies currently on the movie circuit, so you can easily mark those things you do not want to waste money on at the cinema but still wish to see – those ‘DVD Movies’.
- It seems Screen Select has a much bigger selection, good Anime etc.
- They carry adult titles, not only porn but other stuff that’s rated R18 that was hard to find on Blockbuster, turns out quite a few of the movies I wanted to see fell in the adult category but not Porn and Blockbuster just didn’t bother stocking those. Screen Select limits access to those items with a PIN, good if you have kids around.
- The interface has no bugs, even in Firefox. Blockbuster has all sorts of annoying ‘features’ to get used too.
- The interface works intuitively, if you add a movie it brings you right back to your search results to the next movie, removing the one you added from the search results. Other things like the rating system works easily and has quite a bit of Javascript to make things go smoothly. A nice and modern interface.
So think of the above list, and then think of a online DVD store without any of them, thats Blockbuster. I cannot list the shortcomings of their interface, they simply have to start fresh and do a good job of it.
I will stick to Screen Select, and I hope the actual DVD delivery aspect of their service live up to what I got used to at Blockbuster.
by R.I. Pienaar | Apr 7, 2005 | Usefull Things
Having bought a second hand iBook I was a bit worried about upgrading to Tiger, it would seriously dampen my resell value etc if it could not upgrade but based on this article I am just about in luck.
It seems the big hurdle is that you must have a DVD Reader in your Mac, its presumed this is only for installation time, but thats quite a big deal for many many people who do not have DVD drives in their machines, and as the article states upgrading a iBook is nearly impossible.
by R.I. Pienaar | Apr 4, 2005 | Photography, Usefull Things
Via Geek News Central comes a link to a great list of sites that offers free Royalty Free Images.
These are images that you can use in your own projects, commercial or not, without paying for them.
Where To Find Great Free Photographs And Visuals For Your Own Online Articles
by R.I. Pienaar | Mar 11, 2005 | Usefull Things
I’ve been trying to think of a good way to start the exim greylistd which does not by default run in the background.
I remember reading about daemonize long ago and found it again via Google. I checked if my FreeBSD machines has this command and stumbled on daemon(8).
It was introduced around FreeBSD 4.7 and supports running any command in the background complete with pid file support.
I put the following command in a simple rc script so now I have a full start, stop, restart style command for greylistd.
/usr/sbin/daemon -cf -p /var/run/greylistd.pid /usr/local/sbin/greylistd
