First, I confirmed for myself that when I tried to change the Music Player options on my TiVo (by pressing the Enter key in one of the music apps like the Music Organizer), the changes wouldn’t take.

And I saw this error in the log:

ERROR [Acceptor] MusicOptionsScreen - java.lang.NullPointerException: Could not configure music player

If I tried changing the Music Player options through the Galleon GUI, a similar problem occured.

Again, the changes were not saved, and I saw this error in the log:

ERROR [AWT-EventQueue-0] MainFrame - java.lang.NullPointerException: Could not configure server

I suspected something was going wrong when the app was trying to write the settings back to Galleon’s configure.xml file (which contains all the server settings). For example, the line in my configure.xml file related to the Music Player options looked like this:

<musicPlayerConfiguration player="classic" randomPlayFolders="true" screensaver="false"
 showImages="false" skin="/usr/share/galleon/media/winamp/metrix.wsz" useAmazon="false"
 useFile="false" id="1"/>

I could see the date/time stamp on the file was not changing, nor were any of the changed options appearing on that line in the file. One way around this was to manually edit the settings in configure.xml and restart the Galleon service, but I wanted to find out what was actually going on …

I turned on debug mode, triggered the bug again and now saw this in the log:

ERROR [Acceptor] MusicOptionsScreen - java.lang.NullPointerException: Could not configure music player
DEBUG [Acceptor] MusicOptionsScreen - java.lang.NullPointerException
  at org.lnicholls.galleon.widget.MusicOptionsScreen.handleExit(MusicOptionsScreen.java:158)
  ...

Moving deeper, line 158 in MusicOptionsScreen.java:

musicPlayerConfiguration.setSkin(mSkinButton.getValue());

Ah, it had something to do with trying to save the skin option specifically. Looking again at my configure.xml file, I saw it referencing the following skin:

skin="/usr/share/galleon/media/winamp/metrix.wsz"

The problem was I had no such winamp folder under /usr/share/galleon/media! Now notice in the screenshots above that the skin option doesn’t even appear on the TiVo screen and is blank on the GUI dialog. I knew at some point in the past I had seen skins available in this option. Digging some more, I found the following in the ReleaseNotes.txt file:

The project has permission from the author of the Metrix Winamp classic skins (Sven Kistner) to distribute the skins with the Galleon project. However, for copyright reasons, the skins are not checked into the project CVS. The Galleon build script will add any *.wsz Winamp skin files that are in the media/winamp directory to a package build. The Galleon GUI will detect any *.wsz files that are in the media/winamp directory and will allow the user to pick a skin in the music app configuration screen.

So it looked like when the Galleon 2.5.5 release was built, those default WinAmp skins were missing from the media/winamp folder and thus not included in the distribution.

Now to fix this problem, simply download the Galleon 2.5.4 archive from Sourceforge (the Linux one is fine even for you Windows or Mac users), copy the media/winamp folder containing the metrix*.wsz files into your existing media folder where you have Galleon installed and then restart the service. You should now be able to save your settings (notice the skin option is present again on the TiVo screen and populated in the GUI dropdown list).

I’ve logged this in the project bugtracker on Sourceforge here. Hopefully this can be corrected in a future release, assuming there is one. In the meantime, I hope this helps someone fix their Music Player options!

Gaming genius Matthew Sobol, the 34-year-old head of CyberStorm Entertainment, has just died of brain cancer, but death doesn’t stop him from initiating an all-out Internet war against humanity. When the authorities investigate Sobol’s mansion in Thousand Oaks, Calif., they find themselves under attack from his empty house, aided by an unmanned Hummer that tears into the cops with staggering ferocity. Sobol’s weapon is a daemon, a kind of computer process that not only has taken over many of the world’s computer systems but also enlists the help of super-intelligent human henchmen willing to carry out his diabolical plan.

The hosts on just about every tech podcast I listen to (Leo Laporte, Tom Merrit, Paul Thurrott, and others) have mentioned “Daemon” by Daniel Suarez at one time or another, so it’s been on my to-read list for a while. I just finished reading this techno-thriller after starting it last month (as I headed to New York on business).

The premise is relatively simple: triggered by the death of its creator, software genius Matthew Sobol, a widely distributed, autonomous daemon starts wreaking havoc on the global economy as it carrys out Sobol’s final diabolical plan for humankind.

The main cast of characters consists of people on both sides of the daemon’s war: local police detectives, government agencies, and white hat hackers trying to stop the daemon (if it can be stopped) vs. recruited daemon operatives, hackers, and computer-controlled machines likes killer Hummers, cars, and motorcycles who carry out the daemon’s tasks. The plot is fast-paced and contains a healthy dose of gaming, MMORPGs, GPS tracking, darknets, the global internet and, of course, explosions and mayhem (in other words, it will probably be made into a movie at some point) but unfortunately just as things are really moving the book ends. I guess this was intentional, paving the way for the sequel “FreedomTM” (also on my to-read list).

If you want to learn more about “Daemon” there’s the (rather sparse) Daemon Wiki and of course Daniel Suarez’s own thedaemon.com, which made me think twice before enabling scripts (via NoScript) on that site. You never know where pieces of the daemon may be lurking. Also check out the author’s About page to see if you notice anything interesting about his photograph.

Ideally I wanted the (supposedly) cheaper FI8903W (which is the same camera as the FI8904W except it has fewer IR emitters for a shorter night-vision range) but was unable to find it anywhere domestically. Apparently purchasing Foscam cameras is fraught with peril due to the high occurrence of unauthorized clones. The firmwares aren’t compatible, the interfaces are different, and Foscam won’t support any hardware not purchased from them. So I ended up getting a 2-pack of the FI8904W cameras from one of their authorized resellers (Foscam.us).

The camera is very well-constructed and seems pretty sturdy thanks to its metal body and glass enclosed lens and IR emitters. The rear of the unit has the brass connector for the rubberized WiFi antenna and a single cable (also rubberized) that splits into three ends: a wired network jack, a connector for the power supply, and a reset button. A metal mounting bracket and arm are also included. Here’s a good post about the FI8904W that has some photos of the internals (and tips on replacing the lens with a wide-angle version if you prefer).

Setup is straightforward: connect the camera to your wired network, power it up, then use the included utility to “find” the camera’s DHCP address so you can connect to it via your browser. The web interface, however, leaves a lot to be desired. Like my TrendNet cameras, some of the features require you to use Internet Explorer and ActiveX controls, but other browsers like Firefox, Chrome, or even Safari (including the iPhone) will work via a separate login link (called, inexplicably, Server Push Mode). The basic options are all present: e-mail alerts, FTP storage of images, multiple user security setups, etc.

Configuring the schedule for motion detection is tedious! Rather than typing in to/from times, you have to click 672 individual boxes that represent 15 minute intervals. You can’t shift-click to enable a whole range at once, you have to click each one individually! I accidentally stumbled on the fact that if you double-click, a whole hour is selected. Still, to enable motion detection 24/7, I had to double-click 168 times!! This is a terrible user-interface design and not described with any detail in the user manual (which, incidentally, is sparse and filled with bad English due to poor translation). Missing from motion detection is the ability to only watch certain areas of the image for motion (so you can exclude, for example, an outdoor ceiling fan) and also the function to record video to a network share when an alert is triggered (you can’t record the video at all, actually, since the camera uses only MJPEG compression). Yes, I could use the FTP function but a) that would require me to set up FTP on my Linux server and b) would only get me still images, which I can get via the e-mail alerts anyway.

Other missing features: the camera has no microphone, so you can’t listen to any audio in the vicinity and there’s also no date/time stamp added to the video stream (unless you’re viewing it through IE with the ActiveX control). Thus, the overlay doesn’t appear when viewing the camera through eyeCam on my iPhone or on the custom web page I wrote that shows me just the video window. Other settings you think would be on the administration pages, like video resolution, color balance, framerate, etc. are all on the “live video” page where an “operator” can change them (there are three user access levels: Administrator, Operator, and Visitor).

Ok, so the interface and setup options are lacking, but how does the camera itself perform? The video is decent (30fps at QVGA or 15fps at VGA), although like my TrendNet cameras, the lack of an infrared filter means some colors are off, especially in bright daylight. The night-vision is pretty good, though, due to all of those IR emitters. The IR LEDs do glow red at night, though, so the camera looks a little like the eye of Sauron. The wireless link seems pretty stable even though it has to go through several concrete block walls (since it’s outside) to connect to my wireless router.

Physical installation is a bit more involved. The camera is obviously meant to be used outdoors which means you need a nearby power outlet. Ideally you don’t want the outlet to be easily accessible otherwise someone could just unplug it. Also, since the factory reset button is on the split cable end, you’ll want to make sure that is hidden away as well. The camera is supposedly waterproof, but my selected placement areas are under cover so the unit won’t be exposed to full-on Florida rainstorms. For my front porch installation, I drilled a hole in the ceiling above where I mounted the camera up into the roof/attic area and then used fish tape to run a heavy-duty extension cord from the outlet in my garage ceiling (for the garage door opener) to the camera. Not exactly the most professional installation, but the best I could come up with for now (and all of the connections are up in the ceiling where nobody can mess with them). I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to wire up the second camera out on the lanai in the backyard.

Bottom line: the camera seems to be well-constructed and up to the task of withstanding the elements (although only time will tell that for sure). The video (both daytime and nighttime) is decent enough for basic surveillance, but the lack of audio/video recording is an unfortunate oversight. The firmware and web-based interface can be frustrating and annoying to use but do get the basic job done. If you’re looking for an outdoor webcam, the Foscam FI8904W is worth considering.

I really enjoyed it! It was like the mind/memory games of “Total Recall” combined with a heist film like “The Usual Suspects” with a healthy dose of special effects from “The Matrix.” The result is Christopher Nolan’s well-paced, action-packed, brain-bending thriller played out by a pretty good cast (although I still think of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the little kid from “Third Rock from the Sun” ).

The way they explained the physics and design (with paradoxes!) and flow of time in the dream world was pretty cool, all without really getting into any heavy details of how the dream-sharing technology worked (which would have been unnecessary anyway). Without spoiling anything, the final sequence, which involves four dream layers (a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream) with different time flows was amazing.

Unrelated side note: I did see the “Tron: Legacy” trailer on the big screen before the film, which wasn’t as exciting as it could have been since I had already seen it on the internet.

I picked up a pair of Netgear’s MCA1001 MoCA adapters (they come in a set) from Amazon. The setup is supposed to be relatively straight forward: connect one of the adapters to your cable connection (before your cable modem: the cable from the wall goes into the adapter, and then out to your modem) and your router. Then connect the other adapter to the cable line elsewhere in the house and plug the network cable from the MoCA adapter into the device you want to add to the network (in my case the TiVo, but it could be an XBox, PS3, HTPC, etc.). Your network traffic now goes from the router, out over the coax wires already in your walls to the other adapter, then over the CAT5 cable to the target device at speeds up to 270Mpbs.

My setup, unfortunately, was not that straightforward. I wired up both adapters but could not get them to “see” each other (the coax LED wasn’t lighting up). After doing a little more reading, I discovered that the MoCA adapters use the spectrum on the coax lines above the 1GHz range. Most basic cable splitters only pass the 5Mhz – 900MHz range, effectively filtering out the MoCA signal. I picked up some new satellite splitters at Lowe’s, which pass the 5MHz – 2.4GHz range and work just fine for cable TV. After some quick (but hot!) re-wiring work in the attic, I had the old splitters swapped out for the new and eureka! the adapters were working! My TiVo Premiere now had a nice, fast, wired network connection in the media cabinet instead of wireless.

One nice touch is another button that turns off all the bright blue LEDs … every piece of equipment with bright LEDs should have this option!! I left the LEDs enabled on the adapter in the network closet, but there’s no need for them on the one connected to the TiVo so I simply pushed the button to turn them off. This will be handy if I end up adding an addition adapter in say, a bedroom (as it is I have to put small pieces of black electrical tape over all the various electronic LEDs that just tell me a device is “off”).

The MCA1001 does have a configuration interface, but you can’t access it remotely over the network which is a bit annoying. You have to disconnect the adapter, wire it directly to your PC with a hard-wired IP address in the 192.168.0.x range, press a button to put the device into setup mode, and then use Netgear’s setup utility to access it. The configuration options are slim. Basically you can change the password for the configuration interface (which I did), set an encryption key for the MoCA traffic (which I also did since apparently it’s possible for some of the traffic to “bleed” out of your house over the coax), and see some basic statistics (which aren’t “live” since you’ve had to disconnect the adapter from your multimedia device). If you’re seeing interference on your television there are some options for changing the frequency band which luckily I did not have to mess with. You can also update the firmware, if necessary, from this interface. Don’t forget to turn off the setup mode button before reconnecting it to your network (there’s another handy blue LED showing if the unit is in setup mode).

It would also be nice if you could purchase these adapters singly, instead of just in pairs. Obviously your initial setup requires two, but after that I guess you’ll have a spare if you don’t need more than two at a time.

Since I don’t have another MCA1001 on another TiVo, I haven’t been able to test the MRV transfer speeds, but streaming video via streambaby or transferring shows via pyTivo over the new coax network seems fast. My wireless router also only has a 10/100 switch in it (no gigabit) so that’s a bottleneck to the theoretical 270Mbps maximum these MoCA adapters can pump out. At any rate, I’m pretty satisfied with them so far! Now that I have wired ethernet available in the media cabinet, it should be easy to add a Blu-ray DVD player or other network-enabled media device like a Slingbox in the future without having to worry about wireless range or speeds.

I already had the 1TB WD Expander drive from the Series3, so rather than spend the extra cash on the Premiere XL, I went with the base 320gb model and then connected the Expander giving me 190 hours of HD recording capacity.

The new box is the smallest TiVo yet, measuring just 16″ wide,  10″ deep and 3″ high. Like the older HD TiVo models, you’ll need a CableCARD from your cable provider to receive your encrypted digital cable channels, and possibly a tuning adapter if any channels are SDV. Unlike the prior models, however, the Premiere only has a single CableCARD slot (which has been moved to the rear again, like the Series3) and only accepts a multi-stream card (MCard). The Premiere has HDMI, component, composite, and optical jacks for video and audio (but no more S-Video); USB ports for your wireless network (including TiVo’s new N adapter) or tuning adapter; eSATA for drive expansion, and a network jack for wired connectivity. Coax connectors for cable and antenna round out the jack pack. The Premiere is also the fastest (and greenest) TiVo yet, using a dual-core 400MHz MIPS processor (although currently only one core is enabled) with 512mb of RAM (double that of previous models) while consuming only about 26 watts. The included peanut remote is just about the same except for the addition of new A, B, C, and D buttons that are used for shortcuts in the interface. The Premiere XL comes with the backlit learning version of the peanut remote, and TiVo will soon be releasing a remote with a Bluetooth slide-out QWERTY keyboard that looks pretty slick.

The Premiere is billed as the “one box” meant to replace your cable set-top box, Roku, HTPC, etc. The new HD interface (more on that later) integrates searching across video sources like your cable television channels, NetFlix, Blockbuster, Amazon OnDemand, and even YouTube. There’s now a video window (think picture-in-picture) in the HD menus so you can keep an eye on Live TV (or a recording you’re playing back) while navigating the menus. Another new feature I like is the episode guide: pick a show and then you can browse the different seasons and episodes for that show, making it easy to create an auto-record WishList for a specific episode if you so desire. Also new (for those people who have been asking for it for years) is a capacity meter in My Shows so you can see how full your disk is. Of course you also get all the regular TiVo functionality like controlling Live TV, Season Passes, WishLists, viewing your photo library or playing your music collection (using TiVo Desktop). My favorite apps like Galleon, pyTivo, and streambaby all work with the Premiere as well.

Sounds great so far, right? Unfortunately, right now the new HDUI is very sluggish. Navigating between screens (like from TiVo Central to My Shows) can take several seconds. While watching Live TV, if I press the TiVo button on my remote to go into TiVo Central, I’ll see a black screen for a few seconds, then the video window will appear, and finally the rest of the menu. Definitely not the TiVo experience I’ve come to expect. Performance is supposed to improve with the new 14.5 software update that is slowly rolling out, but I haven’t received it yet. It is also generally assumed performance will increase once the second CPU core is enabled (but there has been no announcement on the timeframe for that). The HDUI is also incomplete: screens like the To Do List, Season Pass Manager, and all of the settings are still in the old-style standard definition layout. Some features, like Parental Controls, are only available by switching to the SDUI entirely. It can be a bit jarring going back and forth between interfaces as you navigate the menus. Hopefully these other screens will be added to the HDUI in future updates. If you do switch the classic menus, though, performance is extremely snappy! Right now I’m sticking with the HDUI so I can learn the ins-and-outs of the new interface.

Another “feature” of the HDUI is the Discovery Bar, that scrolling bar of pictures across the top of every screen. The Discovery Bar contains suggestions for shows you might like, tips/tricks, and (ugh!) advertising. I don’t like it. I dislike the Gold Stars and other advertising items that appear on TiVo Central on my other TiVos, now the Discovery Bar is present on every HD menu screen. It’s supposed to customize itself using your preferences (like Thumbs ratings) and the screen you are currently on, and you can tweak the settings for the Bar itself, but you can’t turn it off completely! I don’t like the cluttered look this brings to the TiVo menus. Plus, I suspect the Discovery Bar is contributing to the slow performance of the new interface since as I navigate to each screen I can watch as each block of the Discovery Bar fills in, presumably with content being pulled over my internet connection. If you disconnect your TiVo from the network, the Discovery Bar goes away, but it’s replaced with a big warning message about certain content/features not working without an internet connection. Disappointing, but I’m sure I’ll learn to live with it just like Gold Stars and the Pause menu “more information” ads.

One other drawback to the Premiere is that the current user-developed hard drive upgrade tools, like MFSLive, won’t work due to changes in the file system and partition structure. It’s being worked on, but for now if you want to increase your internal capacity you’ll need to buy a pre-imaged drive from a third-party like Weaknees (the other option being an external eSATA expander like I have).

I’ve only had the Premiere for a few days and other than the slow performance and incomplete HD interface (both of which I’m sure will be addressed in future software updates), I’m happy with it. For more facts (and pictures) about the TiVo Premiere, be sure to check out bkdtv’s excellent FAQ on the TiVo Community Forum.

A simple slide of my finger, and it was done:

As you can see from the screenshots, it only took 3 minutes to complete the entire process. I now had the Cydia app store on my device, which opens up a whole new world of applications for the iPhone. These apps aren’t approved by Apple, so they don’t have to follow Apple’s design guidelines and limits on functionality/features.  Just like the App Store, there are free and paid apps in the Cydia store.

One of the first apps I installed was SBSettings, which gives you shortcut access to some common settings. This is a much faster way to turn on/off the different radios rather than having to navigate through the normal Settings app. You can assign different actions (via another cool app, Activator) to bring up SBSettings like swiping the status bar, or doing a short press of the Home button (which is what I use). Also notice in the screenshot to the left that I’ve got 5 icons in my dock! Currently, SBSettings (plus Activator) is the single-most useful thing I’ve installed on my iPhone since jailbreaking.

Another reason people jailbreak is for theming, they want the phone’s interface to look the way they want it, not the way Steve Jobs wants it. For this, you can use Winterboard (which is the newer replacement for Summerboard, which was a play on the Apple’s springboard (the main pages containing the icons of your apps)). Once you have Winterboard installed, you have the daunting task of searching though thousands of user-created themes for your iPhone. Winterboard lets you mix-and-match themes via a priority screen where you order which parts of a theme should override another. It’s a bit confusing at first, and every change requires a quick “respring” (basically a restart of the springboard) which makes it time consuming, but eventually you can get the phone to look just the way you want. After experimenting with different themes, I decided I like the original, uniform look. Plus, with iOS4 you can set your separate lock screen and springboard wallpapers anyway. I did use it to “hide” the text beneath them (it’s supposed to be hidden but apparently the text is just changed to black so it still appears in the dock reflection, which could be turned off as well), change my icon text from gray to white, and also changed my e-mail and SMS notification sounds. To further customize my springboard, I installed Rename II so I could actually change the text of my icons. No more long name icons with the annoying “…” in the middle!

Something else you can do once your iPhone is jailbroken is tether it to your laptop using apps like PDANet or MyWi. This is sort of a gray area since even though you may have the grandfathered unlimited data plan with AT&T, the carrier currently charges extra for the tethering “service.” I gave PDANet a quick try and was able to surf the internet on my EeePC using my iPhone’s 3G data connection. Speedtest.net clocked my connection at about 1.3Mbps, which isn’t too bad.

Ramping up the nerd factor to 11, why not have command-line access to your iPhone? Installing OpenSSH gives you the ability to copy files to and from the phone and connect to it like any other Linux-based device. If you do this, be sure to change the root password! You might also want to use the SBSettings plugin to quickly switch OpenSSH on and off when you need it. I had to use this because while playing with Cydia I accidentally misspelled a package source address which was causing errors. I was able to connect to my phone with WinSCP, download the files I needed to change, edited them on my PC (there isn’t a text editor available via the iPhone’s command-line), and then copied them back onto the phone.

I was apprehensive at first about jailbreaking my phone, but I have to admit that after just a few days I am already pretty happy that I did so, if only just to play around with some of the cool apps people have developed. I’ve only had one strange crash that occurred while I was removing an app, but other than that I haven’t noticed any performance or stability issues. At first I thought my battery was draining faster, but I think that was just because I was using the phone more than usual as I played around with apps and themes. I’ll have to keep an eye on that once I’m back in my normal usage cycle. Finally, I’ve had no problem continuing to use my iPhone with iTunes for syncing, backups, using the App Store, etc. All-in-all, it’s been a pretty satisfying experience. It’s definitely not for everyone, but if you’re a tinkerer like me, it can be fun.

One final note: jailbreakme.com is taking advantage of a PDF security exploit in Safari in order to gain root access to the phone for the jailbreak process. Apple says they will fix this hole soon. In the meantime, if you want to protect your (jailbroken) phone from potentially malicious PDF attacks, you can install the PDF Loading Warner from Cydia.

Other than moving my sidebar to the left, and a few other minor customizations, the look-and-feel is basically the same. I also took this opportunity to learn how to use theme inheritance so my customizations aren’t lost when the original theme is updated by the author.

Everything should be working but if you come across something that’s broken or looks strange, please let me know!

She’s using  a pretty standard 3-column template with a simple-but-elegant theme. Notice she’s even copyrighted the term “nonline.”

Pretty creative. I might need to discuss content management and security with her though. Right now anyone with physical access to her room can modify the blog with a simple swipe of their finger (or by using one of the handy dry-erase markers nearby).

Let’s face it, System Administrators get no respect 364 days a year. This is the day that all fellow System Administrators across the globe, will be showered with expensive sports cars and large piles of cash in appreciation of their diligent work. But seriously, we are asking for a nice token gift and some public acknowledgement. It’s the least you could do.

Consider all the daunting tasks and long hours (weekends too.) Let’s be honest, sometimes we don’t know our System Administrators as well as they know us. Remember this is one day to recognize your System Administrator for their workplace contributions and to promote professional excellence. Thank them for all the things they do for you and your business.

It’s July 30th again, so Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day! I guess if I used Twitter I would tweet this, but I don’t, so I won’t. I’m sure someone else did anyway …