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I took my first real vacation day of the entire year today. I used up the rest of my vacation during a school-related trip to China this summer and it sure was nice to have a 3-day weekend. Nicole was off from work as well and we got started early on house-related projects. I worked on the platform again and though I would get the whole thing finished, but then realized that it would take more work than I expected with the rope lighting and tactile transducers. I decided to vibration isolate the top of the platfrom from the base so that the tactile transducersRead More →

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Kyle and Nicole worked on the soffit most of the evening. This was my last night on campus for my MBA! So I went out with some classmates and had a couple of beers to celebrate. I wa surprised how much work they accomplished — they were still working when I got home at 10:45!Read More →

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Kyle got to the house about the same time I did. He started working on the soffit around the back half of the room and I worked some on the platform. He and I removed the mirrors from the side wall without too much trouble – except for the one that scared us when it popped off all at once. We were expecting it to slowy peel-off the way the other 5 did and thought we were going to have 4′ x 6′ of broken glass on and around us.Read More →

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In: Home Theater
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After of several weeks of planning for components and room deisng, I’m actually starting the project. I’ve been wanting to convert the exercise room in our basement to a home theater since the first time I walked through the house 6 months ago. Nicole is in full support, although she initially wanted it to be her art studio. She likes home theater quite a bit and will be helping with the construction. Our frined Kyle is helping out is well. His real job is a home builder so his insight and assistance will be invaluable. I went to Home Depot and purchased the lumber neededRead More →

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I’ve written about Linksys WRT54G / WRT54GS firmware in the past so I feel obligated to post an update. I can’t believe how big of a deal James Ewing of Sveasoft has made of this. To give a brief summary, he appears to basically be following the GPL with his firmware development and using a loophole to charge people for early access to the latest version. Fine, whatever, I don’t care. I’m patient. What bothers me is how he seems to keep finding ways to keep people from distributing the firmware, which appears to me to be in clear violation of GPL. At first IRead More →

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In: Automotive, Home Theater
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I’ve been wanting to purchase a PhatNoise digital music player for a long time. I like that how well it can integrate with an OEM headunit and I really want to be able to listen to my entire music collection during my 45-minute commute to work without messing with Discs. However, I’ve held off purchasing one because they have yet to add the ability to play WMA protected songs; I saw no hope of them every playing iTunes FairPlay protected songs. However, I’ve changed my mind. Goodbye PhatNoise, I never really knew ya. I’ve read of multiple companies (Blitz Safe, Soundgate, Precision Interface Electronics (PIE)Read More →

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I’ve been following the debate regarding Real Networks releasing their new Harmony software. This software allows users to purchase songs from Real and copy them to an Apple iPod as well as any device capable of playing protected WMA files. I think it is great that Real is givin Apple iPod owners an alternative to iTunes Music Store because choice is always a good thing. What I can’t believe is how upset iPod users and Apple loyalists are about this. Real hasn’t done anything wrong; I’ve studied the DMCA and read several articles and Real has is in the clear. Real isn’t causing the iPodRead More →

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In: Reviews
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I’m now using the Sveasoft firmware in my Linksys wireless router. The firmware is definitely an improvement over the standard feature set. The ability to boost the transmit power is a nice added feature, but I’ve read of many people boosting the transmit power to 200, which will probably fry their router and doens’t produce any better performance than a setting of 50-60 (which is ideal). I hope Linksys dosen’t have a warranty problem because of the ignorant over-boosters causing failures because I really support Linksys releasing their firmware — so many other manufacturers have not. I am very disappointed with the Sveasoft website. FirstRead More →

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Speaking of network equipment, I just found out about the Linksys WRT54GS router and the open source, Linux-based firmware from Sveasoft.com. It does everything I wanted my SnapGear router to do at 1/3 the price, plus wireless. I’ll probably be getting rid of the SnapGear due to missing features and slow updates. The SnapGear was the best router from a feature standpoint when it was released, but the price was too high and no one developed any third-party firmware for it as far as I could tell.Read More →