Fruddled Gruntbugglies

Enthralling readers since 2005

Author: lpaulriddle

  • Poor Man’s Screen Protectors

    Palm (among others) sells these screen protectors for use with their PDAs. Currently, their web site lists them at $19.99 for some unspecified quantity of them. One came packaged with my E2. It’s essentially a disposable piece of plastic with an adhesive backing. You’re supposed to trim it to fit the PDA’s display, and stick it on. The claim is that it protects the display from scratches and “improves handwriting recognition.”

    At first I wrote these off as totally worthless, but then I tried the included one, and I was surprised to find that it actually does help with Graffiti. I can’t see using it with one of Palm’s older B&W LCD screens, but with the color screens it does seem to make a difference.

    What is a rip-off, is what Palm is charging for what is essentially adhesive-backed sheets of plastic. Always the cheapskate, I went poking around the house, and found a roll of medium-grade sheet plastic that my wife and I bought a few years ago at Jo-Ann. No adhesive backing, but I decided to try it anyhow, hoping that static cling would hold it on the display. I trimmed it to fit, wiped it clean with a damp rag, and tried it out. So far so good. It clings to the display just fine, and seems to work just as well as the real thing. And, I can buy several yards of the stuff (enough to make hundreds, if not thousands, of screen protectors) for less than what Palm is asking for a single pack of theirs.

    Do I rule, or what? I’d better go now, I need to go look for my life.

  • Softick Card Export II vs. Missing Sync Desktop Mount app

    Now that I have an SD card for my Palm, I decided to try out a couple of apps that allow me to mount the card on my desktop computer. I’d like to be able to copy files (mp3s, documents, etc) directly to the card from my Linux box(es). Then, I can write a script to copy mp3 playlists to the device, etc.

    First up: The desktop mounting app that came with Missing Sync. This works as advertised on the Mac, but unfortunately, when I plug into my Linux box it’s not recognized as a USB mass storage device. It might just be a matter of updating the Linux hotplug subsystem to assign the usb-storage driver to the device. But the fact remains that it didn’t work out of the box. I’m not sure if it’ll work at all actually.. the documentation isn’t really clear on how the app works. I’m assuming that somewhere it’s emulating a USB mass storage device, but I’m not sure if the emulation is being done by the Palm app, or the Missing Sync app on the desktop. Next time I’m in the office, I’ll try this out on my Mac there, where Missing Sync is not installed. If it works, then that tells me the Palm app is doing the emulation, and I should be able to make this work under Linux. Stay tuned.

    The next app I tried was Softick Card Export II, which costs $15, but provides a 21 day evaluation. On the Mac, it worked identically to the Missing Sync app. When I tried it on the Linux box, it immediately recognized it as a USB mass storage device, and I was able to mount and browse the card. So if I can’t make the Missing Sync app do what I need, it looks like I can use this.

    The “dark horse” option here is to not use the Palm at all, and just get a USB SD card reader. I’m sure this would work great, but it’s one more gadget I’d need to carry around. If I’m already carrying the Palm around anyhow, I might as well use that. Still, if I’m going to consider shelling out $15 for Card Export II, I might as well price the USB readers as well.

    Update 12/29/05: I tried the Missing Sync desktop mount app on the Mac in my office (where I have not installed Missing Sync) and it didn’t work. So, it looks like I can rule this out as a general desktop mounting solution. I think for now, I’ll go ahead and buy Card Export II (which did work on the office Mac, BTW). I think it’ll always have some utility for me, even if I do eventually pick up a standalone USB card reader (which, BTW, can be had for less than the $15 that Card Export II costs).

  • The Latest on the Calendar Project

    I haven’t had much time to work on the calendar thing lately due to the holidays. That will probably continue into the early part of January, with work shaping up to be pretty busy during this time. However, a week or so ago I went ahead and sync’d my published Oracle Calendar data to my Palm. I encountered two issues: #1, The times displayed on the Palm are kinda wonky due to the iCalendar file having times specified in UTC instead of US/Eastern. iCal shows the events OK. The Palm shows the events at the correct times, but the events are displayed with the UTC times appended. Example: “Big meeting (2:30pm GMT)”. This isn’t the end of the world, but I guess if I want to fix it I’ll need to add timezone data to the iCalendar file. I was hoping to avoid this step as it entails computing start and end times for Standard and Daylight time. Oh well.

    The second problem is a bit more troubling, and I’ve actually contacted Mark/Space support about it. When I delete an event from the published calendar and then re-sync, the event is not deleted from the Palm. I can duplicate the problem with a very simple published calendar with only a couple events, so this is not a problem with the specific calendar I’m using.. it appears to be more general. I tried hard-resetting the Palm and starting over, thinking maybe it had gotten confused after all my previous mucking, but that didn’t accomplish anything (well, OK, it did accomplish something… it happily blew away my address book and all of my TODO events on both the Palm and the Mac. Joy).

    I did hear back from Mark/Space regarding this issue. They suggested trying the latest beta release, and if that didn’t work they gave me a list of steps to follow that will hopefully fix it. I went to download the beta, and unfortunately, it looks like it does not work on my Tungsten E2 (there’s a message there to that effect). I haven’t yet gotten around to trying their other suggested fix. I plan on trying that within the next couple of days, so we’ll see how it goes.

    Update 29 Dec 2005: I went back to the Mark/Space testing site today and found that they had posted a new beta, 5.0.3b6. I downloaded and installed it, and it seems to fix the problem. I haven’t pounded on it yet, but it worked for my simple test calendar. I’m optimistic that it’ll work with my Oracle Calendar data. Will test that out shortly.

  • The TracFone Activation Saga

    My family bought a TracFone prepaid phone as a Christmas gift for my Grandmother. I got the fun job of activating it. Most of these prepaid phones are self-activated using the carrier’s web site, and TracFone is no exception.

    Christmas Day, around 1:00pm: Installed the SIM card and battery into the phone, a Nokia 1100. TracFone must be using a GSM network. Maybe Cingular’s? Anyhow… Went upstairs to the parents’ computer, and went to the TracFone web site to attempt to activate the phone. Nope… TracFone has every URL within their entire web site redirected to a message to the effect of “Sorry you schmuck, we’re too busy to even serve your HTTP request right now, let alone activate your phone.” Tried again around 4:30…. same deal.

    Christmas Night, around 10:15pm: Decided to try again. Now, the phone won’t power up. It seems to be completely dead. Removed SIM card, tried again. This time it powered up and asked for a SIM card. Reinstalled SIM card, and it seemed happy at that point. Hmmm, not too sure about this phone now. Oh well, let’s try activating. Hey! The TracFone site seems to be working now. It prompted me for a couple of long numbers (SIM, ESN, whatever) and a zip code. Then it prompted me for an airtime PIN, which I dutifully entered. Then I get “Sorry, we’re unable to process your request at this time.” Mouthed a few expletives and gave up for the night. Not terribly impressed with the TracFone activation process at this point.

    Day after Christmas, around 6:45am: Phone is dead again. Didn’t initially respond to last night’s trick of removing and reinstalling SIM card. Wondering if the phone is defective. Eventually it decided to power up. Great! Nothing like reliable technology. Tried to activate it again. This time it worked! I was able to program the phone using the instructions on the web site, and it assigned me a phone number. Ten minutes later or so, the phone power-cycled, and immediately thereafter I received a text message confirming the activation. I’m assuming the power cycle was a result of the activation process, and not the phone being flaky.

    Anyhow, I haven’t tried placing a call yet, but it appears to be working now. Jury is still out on the phone itself, though. I think we’ll hang onto it for a few days to make sure it continues working. The powerup issues could have been a result of the phone not being programmed/activated. I guess we’ll see.

    Followup – well, immediately after writing the above, I went upstairs to find that the phone had switched itself off and would not power back up. I’m officially calling it defective. Moral of the story: Don’t buy “reconditioned” mobile phones. I’ll let someone else handle the fun job of calling tech support and spending eternity on hold. My job here is done 🙂

  • Leaf Patrol

    Yesterday, I finally finished up this year’s round of fall leaf removal. After 5 go-arounds with leaf removal on this property, I’m getting better at it, but the process could still stand some improvement.

    The bulk of the leaves fall in back of the house, with the Tulip Poplars starting earliest, and the Oaks finishing up last. The Tulip Poplars start dropping leaves in mid to late August, creating an ongoing chore of clearing leaves from the pool, pool area and deck. The rest of the trees are better behaved, and drop their leaves in November.

    Up to now, my leaf removal equipment has consisted of: Toro electric blower/vac mulcher, push broom, rake, and an old chipper/shredder (rescued from my parents’ garage).

    Now, the Toro actually does a really nice job. I use it in vac mode in the summer, to clean up around the pool area without blowing debris into the pool. The blower does a good job clearing off the deck and other paved surfaces. Its only problem? The cord. It’s a pain maneuvering the cord around the pool fencing and trying to keep it from falling in the pool. This past fall, I tried using the blower to clear some grassy areas, but my extension cord was too short. My solution for next season: I’m going to upgrade to a gas powered blower/vac, probably an Echo ES-230. I’m hoping it’ll work as well as the Toro, without the cord.

    The next big issue is removing the piles of leaves from the property. This year, I mulch/composted a bunch with the chipper/shredder, and put a bunch more out for yard waste pickup. I’m really looking for ways to make this process more efficient, because it’s long, hard work. The chipper/shredder has a ramp that you can lower to the ground, and rake leaves right up into the unit. I used to use this, but this year I found it was faster to just grab a big armload of leaves, and slowly drop it into the hopper. After a few tries, I got it so that I could do this without clogging up the intake. Still, this takes a long time. A bigger chipper/shredder might help. I’ve seen yard sweepers (Agri-Fab seems to be a popular brand) selling for $200 or so at Sears and Lowes. Still, with the amount of leaves we get here, mulching them down is pretty much a necessity, or I’d be putting out hundreds of bags a year for pickup. I’d love it if Howard County would start doing a service where you rake all your leaves to the curbside, and they pick them up without you having to bag them. That would eliminate the need for mulching, but they’d probably use it as an excuse to jack up our property taxes again.

  • Do-it-yourself DVDs: If at first you don’t succeed…

    When I got my Powerbook, it came with software for creating/editing movies (iMovie) and burning them to DVD (iDVD). I already have a Sony MiniDV video camera, and several hours of footage of my now-3-year-old son. With this gear, all I needed to make DVDs, was a FireWire cable and some blank DVD media. So I figured, what the heck, I’ll give it a shot. I bought a cable for $10 and a spindle of DVD-R media for $12 (after rebates of course), and today I gave it a shot. It took two tries, but the end result was success.

    First step was to copy the video onto the computer. This was straightforward. Connect the camera, start iMovie, and tell it to import from the camera. I imported two 1-hour tapes, which took up around 26 gigs total (13 per tape). Then, I used iMovie to add DVD chapter titles to the movie, and told it to create a project in iDVD.

    In iDVD, I was able to build menus for the soon-to-be DVD using several different built-in themes. It’s actually pretty cool. I went through this process, got everything looking good, and attempted to burn a disc. Nope. The project was too big for the single-layer disc I inserted. It asked for dual layer media. I don’t have any. So instead, I created a new iDVD project with only half the footage from my imported video (one tape, or one hour’s worth). Then, I went into iDVD’s Project menu and told it I was using single-layer media. That seemed to make it happy. I redid the menus and went to burn again.

    Dang, this takes a long time! The encoding process seems very CPU intensive. Encoding the video is the most time consuming part. After it does the video, it encodes the audio. This takes longer than you would think by looking at the progress meter, but it eventually completes after 10 minutes or so. Then it goes to actually burn the disc.

    The disc seems to burn OK, but at the end I get some sort of happy-fun-ball encoding error at the end. The resulting disc plays in the Mac, but my 1-year-old Sony DVD player refuses to recognize it. Bummer.

    I try to quit out of iDVD. It seems wonky. I have to CMD-Q to quit it and I get a “terminated unexpectedly” dialog. Now, the odd part. I start it back up, open my project, and this time, it tells me the “project is too large for my encoding scheme” or somesuch. I wonder if that was the problem. If it was, why didn’t it tell me that in the first place? OK, so the software’s not perfect I guess. I’ve got a nice shiny round coaster to show for it.

    Not to be discouraged, I try again. This time, I change the encoding scheme to “maximize quality” (it was previously set to “maximize performance”). I go to burn again. One bit of weirdness this time: During encoding, the progress bar got to 100% when the encoding was only half done. That didn’t give me warm fuzzies, but I let it keep going anyhow. It finished this time, with no errors. Seemed to play OK on the Mac, too. Cool.

    Moment of truth: I popped it into my Sony again, and this time it worked! Great.

    Moral(s) of the story:

    1. Use “maximize quality” setting
    2. Ignore the progress meter during encoding
    3. Keep videos to around one hour for single-layer media (this works well when using tapes recorded in SP mode; 1 tape == 1 DVD).

    It seems to have used most of the available space on the media, just from looking at the disc. The “maximize quality” setting must use minimal compression. I’ve got no problems with that, the media is cheap.

    Just for yuks, I’ll try it out in my 1997-vintage Toshiba 3006. I really don’t expect that it’ll play DVD-R media, but if it does, I’ll be really impressed.

  • Wiring’s done!

    Subject says it all! I finished the wiring up today, installed the fan control, and replaced an outlet while I was at it. All my extra wiring turned out to be worth the effort — there’s absolutely no way I would have gotten the fan control in the wall box with all the extra wires there. It’s enough of a challenge just getting these controls in the box with only one wire. Which brings me to my obligatory gripe of the day. These fan controls (Lutron Skylark model) are great. They seem well-made and reliable. But I hate installing them. They’re so deep that they barely fit in a standard-depth wall box. And on top of that, they have pigtails, and you have to fit three wirenuts (four if you’re attaching the ground) in the box, in addition to the control. This makes them very bad for retrofit work, particularly in older houses where the boxes tend to be smaller. If there’s more than one cable going into your wall box, you can pretty much forget it. It’d be much nicer if these controls could be backwired (stick wire in hole, tighten screw), to eliminate the need for wirenut splices. Maybe Lutron will eventually figure this out. Unfortunately it’ll be too late to help me out.

    Anyhow, the only thing left now is to remount the fan and clean up all the plaster chunks, insulation and other crap that fell out of the hole in the ceiling. I’d say we can pretty much stick a fork in this project.

  • Quality time in the attic

    I spent the afternoon in the attic today, and got the lion’s share of the wiring done for the fan project. Last week I fished the wire from the basement to the attic. It was pretty straightforward. Some medium-duty nylon rope was the ticket. I dropped it down into the stud cavity from the attic, went into the basement, poked up a hooked piece of stiff wire, snagged the rope, and pulled it through. Then I used the rope to pull the romex up from the basement into the attic. The two keys to doing this successfully are:

    1. Electrical tape; and
    2. A helper.

    Just tape the romex to the end of the rope with plenty of electrical tape, go up to the attic, and have your helper feed the cable up from the basement while you pull it up. This can be done by yourself, but you’ll get lots of exercise running upstairs and downstairs to unkink the romex.

    The first job today was to get the old box and brace out of the ceiling to make room for the new fan-approved brace and box. Every time I do this, I’m reminded of how much I hate those metal ceiling box braces that nail to the underside of the joists. There’s no way to get them all the way out without tearing up the ceiling. Plus, the weight of the fixture tends to pull the nails loose over time, which is not good news for the ceiling, or for the person standing under the fixture when it eventually comes crashing down.

    The trick to getting these out is to cut them, removing the center part and leaving the ends nailed to the joists. I’ve found that the best tool for this is a Dremel rotary tool with a cutoff wheel. I’ve used a hacksaw, and it’s laborious (the bars are actually pretty thick metal) and the sawing action can damage the ceiling (and your knuckles). The Dremel is not perfect (if you breathe wrong on the cutoff wheels, they break), but believe me, it is far superior to sawing.

    This bar came out easier than others I’ve done. Once I cut one side, the other side just swung out of the way (because, of course, the nails had pulled loose).

    The actual wiring was complicated but straightforward. There were a lot of wires in the old box (it fed two different downstream branches). Rather than put everything back into the fixture box, I mounted a second junction box, wired everything up to that, and ran a single 12/3 cable to the fixture box carrying two switched hots (lights and fan) and neutral. This makes for a neater job and lets me use a larger box for all of my splices.

    Just a couple parting tips for doing this kind of work:

    1. Invest in a pair of knee pads (or “kneelers”). Your knees will thank you for it.
    2. If your house has lots of BX wiring like mine, invest $25 or so for a good quality rotary BX cutter. It’s absolutely worth its weight in gold, which you’ll appreciate if you’ve ever tried to cut BX with a hacksaw.

    Almost done now, just need to wire up the fan control, route the wire in the basement, and remount the fan.

  • Fixing Daily Notes

    It turns out that Daily Notes, Day Events, and Holidays all get the same treatment from the CAPI export process, so I need to rewrite the iCalendar output for all of them. Instead of using a DURATION to these events, I ended up just removing DTEND. Thus we end up with an event with DTSTART but no DTEND, which iCalendar defines as an event that takes up no time. That’s pretty much accurate, except in the case of Day Events, which technically take up all day. Unfortunately, in Oracle Calendar, some people put entries in as Day Events when they really should be Daily Notes. For that reason I’m not quite decided yet as to whether I should put DURATION in for Day Events. In any case, I’ve fixed the problem, and everything shows up in PHP iCalendar. For now I’ll just leave DURATION out, until I change my mind.

    One thing I might consider, is splitting the four Oracle Calendar categories (appointment, daily note, day event, holiday) into separate calendars, so I can differentiate the various events more easily in iCal and on the Palm. It seems like a good idea, but will require some extra work.

  • First wrench in the works…

    Well, I found the first problem with my exported iCalendar data. In iCal, I turned off everything except my two exported Oracle Calendar views (one done via export/import, the other extracted and published), so I could compare the two. I noticed that my published calendar was not showing recurring events properly. Only one instance of each event was showing up.

    Now, I already knew that the CAPI is supposed to export multiple VEVENT records for recurring events, instead of adding RRULE attributes. But I didn’t expect this to be a problem, as I just need the stuff to show up, and I’m not worried about editing the exported data, adding new recurrences, etc. I’m doing all that kind of manipulation via the Oracle Calendar client.

    So, why am I only seeing one event? First thing I checked was the .ics file. Maybe the docs are wrong, and it’s exporting RRULEs after all, and I’m ignoring them? Nope… each recurrence does have a separate VEVENT in the iCalendar file. So why aren’t they all showing up? Because they all have the same UID.

    So, CAPI does export separate VEVENTs, but it doesn’t make each one a “real” separate event by assigning it a new UID. Kind of annoying. It’s one thing to cheap out and not support RRULE, but it’s entirely another thing when the result doesn’t comply with the iCalendar spec.

    Interestingly, the vCalendar export does assign unique IDs to the recurrences. Too bad they couldn’t do it with the iCalendar export. Looks like I’m going to have to do it myself. For my first stab, I’ll just build a hash of UIDs as I’m reading the iCalendar file, and if I find a duplicate, I’ll append an ascending number to the end. Hopefully that’ll work OK. It’s dependent on Oracle Calendar exporting its data in the same order each time. Dunno if it does or not. If not, it means that the recurring events’ UIDs may not be consistent across multiple exports. That may or may not present a problem with the Palm export. I guess time will tell.

    Well, off I go to make this happen.