Pano of Buckhead, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Made from 10 separate images taken with the iPhone.

The ViewSonic WAPBR-100 - Revisited.

This post is a response to a post I put up a year and some months ago about the The ViewSonic WAPBR-100 along with the discussion that has occurred over time in the post's comments. I think it is interesting as to the Google juice and the conversation this little lark has created. And if it were not for the conversation, I would not have instantly had a solution to... oh, first a story.

I have a server. Not the most powerful, but it has real RAID and a 64 bit Linux and heaps of memory and half a terabyte of storage. My baby is strong and has good bones. My baby is also loud and hot - so much for 24/7 operation. Then it hit me, I could plug my baby monster into a wi-fi access point and run it in the basement where it is cool and dry and I would not have to worry about the noise. So I did. And in doing so I brought my ViewSonic WAPBR-100 out of mothballs to hook the server into the network remotely.

But WPA2 encryption did not work in bridge mode with the replacement Linksys firmware. This was an odd little quirk because it had WPA2 available in other modes. Time to pull the trigger on the discussion about DD-WRT that was happening on my old post.

My friends, lets not quibble here anymore - just load DD-WRT. It works. It works well. It is beautiful. And adds yet more functionality to the once annoying paper weight that Viewsonic brought to the world.

Get it here (I'm using the "dd-wrt.v24_micro_generic.bin") - http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv3/dd-wrt/downloads.html

Good Day, Sir. Harrumph.

Are we done being called "idiots" and "dummies" yet?

North Miami Autostitch Panoramic

One cheapskate's stupid guide to getting programs off your Tivo (Macintosh)

Too often the world just passes me by while my head is somewhere in the sand. I did not know until recently that there exists two programs for the Macintosh that stuffs all the brilliance of $26 Tivo-To-Go program into two programs that, to my mind, are more stable and MORE feature rich than Tivo's own product.

You have held you breath long enough, iTivo and Pytovox are just two of the most beautiful free apps I have seen - simple, kind of pretty, and self explanatory. Both programs were wonderfly cobbled together by Yoav Yerushalmi and, frankly, I love this guy!

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iTivo is THE app for getting programs off your Tivo Series 2, Series 3 or Tivo HD and re-encoding them for another device or backup. Amazingly, the list of the types of re-encoding it will do is long and comprehensive. And, as a bonus, this program has some commercial skip smarts that will remove the ads during the re-encode.

The only bits of information you need for this is the ip address of your Tivo and your MAK number - both of which I tell you how to get to easily.

The only weirdness I found with this program is on OS X, version 10.4.11, the program complained that it needed Growl but besides that - runs like a champ.

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PyTivoX is ultimately a simple way to serve up video files to your Tivo. And it just plain works. Though it did not work on OS X 10.4.11 for me, it is still quite a brilliant little program for the latest OS X version. All you do is pick your video directories to share and hit apply. Then, on your Tivo, go to the 'Now playing' menu and pull in the video. There is also a 'StreamBaby' streaming function that works well for 4:3 content on Series 3 or HD Tivos, just browse 'Music, Photos, Showcases.'

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One cheapskate's stupid guide to getting programs off your Tivo (Windows)

One cheapskate's stupid guide to getting programs off your Tivo (Macintosh)

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Shots of Spring.

No heavy content here... just pretty pictures.

One cheapskate's stupid guide to getting programs off your Tivo (Windows)

I have never been satisfied with the quality of video that $26 and the hours of re-compression that TiVo Desktop brings to me. The video is small, crunchy, and frankly, the automation features have not worked very well, at least for me, since version 2.7 came out.

Can one just pull the programs off the box on to a computer and watch it? For free? Without the crunchiness - just dot for dot what is on the damn box. And simply? Yes.

Here is the list of things that you are going to need for the task:

• A network connected Tivo and a Windows computer connected to the same network;
• The ip number of your box (write it down) - in your Tivo menu Messages & Settings -> Settings -> Phone & Network -> IP addr: < your ip address>;
• Your media access key (write it down) - Messages & Settings -> Account & System Information -> Media Access Key ;
• A copy of Tivo Decoder GUI ;
• A copy of VLC for playback.

Ready? Good. In a browser, type in the address box 'https://<yourip address> . You are going to have to manually add the security certificate to your browser. Don't worry, it is OK.

The page will ask you for a user name and password -
User Name: tivo
Password: <your media access key>

If your browser asks you to remember the login say "yes" - it will make life easier.

You should now see a neat little list of all the programs currently on your Tivo - on the right are the download links - click on the program you want to download. Downloading will take a while because you are tying to move a few or more gigs of data - be patient.

After it is downloaded you have an encrypted '.tivo' file that is mostly unplayable on your computer unless you paid the bucks for TiVo Desktop. And that is why you downloaded Tivo Decoder GUI.

Tivo Decoder GUI has a pretty simple interface. To add files click "Add Files." To set your Output path, where the decoded files will be written, click "Locate" and choose a directory. Simple so far.



And the key to all this working for you is, well, the Media Access Key. Click on 'Preferences' and put your Media Access Key in the field. You will only have to do this the first time you use the program. I also select "Delete Original Tivo Files After Converting" because I have no use for the file after the process is finished.



Click 'OK' - then click 'Decode.'

There you have it - you now have every last drop of program data that was on your Tivo and these files can be easily played in VLC.

Addendum: These files can be easily further processed with HandBrake - the most easy to use, free transcoder. In HandBrake, Click 'Source' and select the file you just created, select your paropriate preset in the right pane, select a destination then click 'Start.' Wait awhile for the video to process. Simple, eh?

This is the beginning of a series of articles I am planning for aprigliano.org, because you can do 'stuff' with these files. I will be keep this article up to date with links to forthcoming articles on converting video, using virtualization to make this easier on a Macintosh and making DVDs. I promise to keep it all cheap and simple.

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One cheapskate's stupid guide to getting programs off your Tivo (Windows)

One cheapskate's stupid guide to getting programs off your Tivo (Macintosh)

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YouTube Geniuses

I realize that I have already started out with an unlikely title. "YouTube Geniuses? Really?" you ask. As the last 4 or so years have droned on along with acquisition by Google, YouTube has slowly become the place to find low quality video of teenagers staring into a camera, teenage boys being kicked in the privates, and a great place for teenagers to pirate commercial video clips. And then I saw the following videos and the YouTube world suddenly became a place where young and upcoming talent put forth some interesting ideas and hard work. I mean really hard work. You don't just wake up one day and decide "I am going to be an animator." What I am seeing in these videos is years of honing skills - I hope you do as well.

The following two videos are from YouTube user HarryPartridge. Considering that the following were made for fun by and individual and you clearly see a love and understanding of the content (Watchmen) as well as the work involved in bringing something like this to life, I am, and you should be, in awe.




I have had my own copy of Akira for about 15 years now in one form or another, so the idea of an Americanized live action version coming in 2011 bothers me. The following is in HarryPartridge's response to this notion - absolute genius.



This last video is from OtaKing77077. I have been watching Doctor Who in one form or another for the last 25 years or so, so, when I see something like this and realize that it was made by an individual with extreme levels of talent and skill, I want to spend the hard cash to buy this video - only the video does not exist. Just beautiful work.



If you have some notions of some other works of genius, pass them along in the comments and I will update the article - but you have to make a good case because, after all we are talking about "genius" here.