Category Archives: DIY

aka doing it yourself

Well, it happens every four or five years and it’s happening again. Firaxis is about to release a new version of the extremely fun and highly addictive computer game Civilization (Civ V, if you must know) and so we need to build a new Windows PC. It could be months or even years before the powers that be get around to issuing a Mac port of the game and we just don’t want to wait around. As I blogged about the last few times, here are few key choices I made in building the PC and why I made them.

1. I bought a Shuttle mini PC case

We had gone away from Shuttle the past few iterations, using MSI and Acer ASUS bare bones boxes. But the Shuttle is considerably smaller and more elegant. There is no need for extra hard drives or other bulky components that would not fit in the compact Shuttle case. And Shuttle has expanded interior room available for the graphics card. So I spent a little extra and got an SH55-J2-BK-V1. Now how about improving those model names?

2. I picked an Intel i5 CPU running at 3.33 GHz with dual cores

This is not a cheap chip but has a fast clock speed and 4 MB of speedy cache memory as well (more detail). I could have spent more for more cores but we’re not going to be using a lot of software built to take advantage of multi-cores. In some recent computer reviews, chips with higher clock speeds and fewer cores actually outperformed much more expensive chips with lots of cores and slower clock speeds.

3. I spent more than usual on the graphics card

I bought a Powercolor AX5770 running a Radeon HD5770 chip with 512 MB of RAM, which the Tomshardware site recently picked as one of the best video card under $200. In the past, assuming graphics weren’t that important to a game of Civ, I have cheaped out on video cards. But the folks over at Firaxis seem determined to add as much eye candy as possible. Thay left our system crawling a bit sometimes with Civ IV, so I’ve spent a little more (about $150) this time around.

4. I went a little crazy and decided to try an SSD hard drive

There are a gazillion spinning platters covered with bits of data around our house but the latest fashion in computer storage is a disk that doesn’t spin. So-called solid-state drives are pretty much just like the flash memory drives you use in your digital camera to store pictures. They’re a lot faster and quieter than ordinary hard drives though a lot more expensive per gigabyte. I could only afford an 80 GB model in this PC’s budget and it was still the most expensive single component. We’ll see…

5. I bought a copy of Windows 7 Home premium

Past gaming boxes made due with really old versions of Windows until I picked up some copies of Windows Vista at a CompUSA going out of business sale. But now XP is just too ancient and copies of the well-reviewed latest OS from Redmond are running at less than $99.

More as we play it out.

Using a new HDMI Mac Mini with my TV: Early days

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This will be the first in a continuing series of posts about using a brand new Mac Mini with an HDMI port (purchased in June 2010) connected to a high-definition television. To read all of our adventures jumping through hoops, losing remotes and forgetting the password to bypass parental controls, see this page with all my DIY home theater posts.

Searching along with my fellow TV and movie junkies for the home theater holy grail, I’ve wandered in the wilderness for many years. We have a pretty typical 21st century entertainment consuming household with adults and kids watching cable TV, DVD movies and stuff from the Internets including Youtube videos, purchased movies, shows and music videos and, increasingly, rented movies. Hardware-wise, we’ve been hooked on Tivo for a few years now, we obviously have many iPods, the occasional iPad and, though our music collection is entirely digital at this point, a gazillion DVDs. For purchased downloadable content, iTunes is our go-to choice though increasingly we rent from Amazon Unbox which can send flicks straight to our Tivo.

When Apple TV hit the scene in 2007, I took a long, hard look. In many ways, it seemed like just what I wanted: an easy to set-up, easy-to-use digital storage box for all our digital photos, videos and music that could be played back via HDTV or stereo. But the limitations were much too limiting — only compatible with a few video formats, — and the tiny storage capacity was even more ridiculous. So I passed.

I also began avidly followed the niche crowd that was trying to use Mac Minis as souped up Apple TVs. The challenges involved get clean digital signals with sound to the TV screen as well as finding a good software interface to manage a multimedia library. It never quite seemed simple enough to be worth all the trouble.

Until now…

When Apple recently unveiled a new, souped-up Mac Mini with an HDMI connection — the exact port needed to send both sound and video to an HDTV set — I jumped. It was time to get off the sidelines and join the experimenters.

The first choice was which Mac Mini to buy. I opted for the server version which has two speedy 500 GB 7200 RPM hard drives (totaling 1 TB) and no DVD drive. Since the plan was to rip all our DVDs to the hard drive, the only physical disks I’d be wanting to play would be Blu-Ray and Apple’s drives aren’t compatible with that higher definition format. The server Mac Mini’s double the storage and faster drives made it the more logical choice.

Once the little guy — and I do mean little — arrived, I hit the next challenge. The server operating system had no iLife programs — no iTunes or iPhoto. Luckily, iTunes is a free download and I own a “family pack” of iLife 2009, so it was easy to load up the new server with those two critical programs. The server mini did come with Apple’s limited if serviceable front-end for playing media on big television sets known as Front Row.

After installing the software, I copied all the media files from my laptop where they currently live to one of the server’s drives and imported them into a brand new iTunes library. That went pretty smoothly, though some audiobooks purchased long ago wanted to be authorized by Audible.com and my account had apparently used up its allotment of authorized computers. A quick email customer service sorted that out.

Then I brought the mini into the family room and connected via an HDMI cable to our Samsung HDTV. The display automatically configured itself to the proper 1080P output although the edges of the screen, including the critical top menu bar, were out of view. But there’s now a simple setting to fix that problem in System Preferences > Displays called Overscan. There’s a slider control you adjust until the invisible outside edges become visible. I believe that was one of the issues that drove folks crazy a few years ago trying to get minis and HDTVs connected. I also had at the ready a Logitech diNovo Edge bluetooth keyboard (Mac edition). This guy has a touchpad built-in so you can sit on the couch and wirelessly operate your TV-connected Mac without a mouse. Very handy. It also has dedicated buttons to bring up Front Row, control the iTunes player etc. (You have to install Logitech’s control center program to get the special buttons working properly).

I called up Front Row and it played everything just fine. Sound initially emanated from the mini’s own tiny speaker until I went to System Preferences > Sound > Output and selected the TV.

I had an old Apple infrared remote, the one that looks like a pack of gum, lying around but it seems unable to make a connection to the 2010 Mac Mini. I verified that the Mini does indeed have an infrared receiver, so that’s just a matter of grabbing the newer Apple remote that’s more tubular in shape at some point. UPDATE: No — as commenter Mikeo below points out, the server mini just has communication with the remote turned off by default. To turn it back on, head to System Preferences > Security and unclick the check next to “Disable remote control infrared receiver.”

Alright — well, that’s as far as I’ve gotten in the first couple of days. Future plans include ripping a whole bunch of DVDs, experimenting with other user interfaces like Plex, seeking out some streaming web video and using an iPhone or ipad as a remote control. Check back later…

Using Applescript to send articles to my Kindle

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I’m constantly finding new ways to use my Kindle e-book reader. Lately, I’ve found a way to save eye strain and trees when reading long magazine articles posted online. Instead of reading them on my laptop, and making my eyes watery and tired, or printing them out on a zillion pieces of paper, wasting all that tree pulp, I send them to my Kindle and get the best of all possible worlds.

Initially, I’d copy the text of each article, open a blank file in TextEdit, paste in the article, attach that file to an email, and send the email to my unique Kindle address. Amazon converts the file to a Kindle-readable format and sends it to my Kindle. Score.

But Apple includes a free scripting program with OS X called, logically enough, AppleScript. After a lot — way too much in fact — of grunt work figuring out the correct scripting vocabulary and so on, I wrote a script that works. Basically, it’s an adaptation of this sample from MacOSXHints for saving web text with Apple’s own create email message script.

Now all I do is highlight the text of an article and click on the script. It does all the rest of the work, creating a file and emailing it to my Kindle. Here’s the script:

tell application “Safari”

set selecTxt to (do JavaScript “(getSelection())” in document 1)

set theurl to (get URL of document 1)

set pgTitl to (do JavaScript “document.title” in document 1)

end tell

set dat to (current date) as text

set clipFil to (path to desktop folder as text) & “ToKindle.txt”

try

close access file clipFil

end try

set filRef to open for access file clipFil with write permission

write (dat & return & (theurl) & return & (pgTitl) & return & “——————-” & return & selecTxt & return & “~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~” & ¬

return & return) to filRef starting at eof

close access filRef

tell application “Mail”

set newMessage to make new outgoing message with properties {subject:”Convert”, content:”Please convert and send” & return & return}

tell newMessage

set visible to true

set sender to “you@youremail.com”

make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {address:”yourkindle@kindle.com”}

make new attachment with properties {file name:alias “LunarMod:Users:gravitate:Desktop:ToKindle.txt”} at after the last paragraph

end tell

end tell

One bit you will need to customize is the location of the file ToKindle.txt. As you can see, that’s listed in my script as “LunarMod:Users:gravitate:Desktop:ToKindle.txt”. You’ll need to change “LunarMod” to the name of your hard drive and “gravitate” to your logon name. And, of course, fill in the proper the email address you’re sending from and your Kindle’s special email address (which you can find on Amazon’s web site under the account settings of your Kindle if you don’t know it).

There are a couple of annoying limitations. I haven’t figured out a way to give the created file a unique name each time I run the script. So after the script runs, you have to delete the ToKindle.txt file from your desktop. If you don’t Applescript will append the article you want to read onto the article you read last time you ran the script.

Also, there’s little info about running Applescript with Firefox 3.0 so the script only runs with Safari. As always, I’m happy to hear suggested improvements or criticism in the comments.

Damp, drizzly November in my computer-acquiring soul

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Last year was quite a year — maybe the best year ever — for acquiring computers around these parts. In January, bulking up my new home office, I bought a 24″ iMac. Best desktop computer I’ve owned, by far. In April, my mom needed a Windows Pc to do her taxes so I sent over my self-assembled Shuttle box and built a super-cheap replacement using an Asus T3 barebones system. A few months later, I upgraded my 17″ Powerbook to a 15″ Macbook Pro. And in November, I bought a Kindle. I sold the old Powerbook on eBay but for those keeping track at home that’s a net gain of two systems. My wife likes to joke about how many CPUs live in our house but she’s got a point. If you count work laptops and everything sitting around (some old and decrepit), you easily get into double-digits.

This year has been much quieter and thriftier, perhaps appropriate given the economic times we live in, on the Pc acquisition front. The old mac mini went off to my nephews and no new systems have entered the premises.

Then into these quiet times comes news of others out there on the hunt for new gear. Former Yahooligan Jeremy Zawodny started it with his post about building a cheap ass linux PC. Then mobile entrepreneur Russell Beattie went laptop hunting.

And so I find myself, in a strained geek metaphor sort of way, involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet. Or, to be less obstuse, trolling Newegg and DealMac and all sorts of other bargain bins wondering if there isn’t an insanely cheap system to be assembled this summer. Maybe just some upgrades?

Easy BIOS upgrades? Who wudda thunk

Reclaiming an ancient PocketPC as a web browser

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Cleaning out the attic closet recently, I came across an ancient Casio PocketPC that I must have bought six or seven years ago, the Cassiopeia E-115. It’s a cute little device featuring a smallish, color touch-screen and compact flash card slot. My son was immediately interested in reclaiming it but we couldn’t get it to boot up or hold a charge.

A quick Google search landed a replacement battery (fully removable!) for about $20. That arrived in a few days and worked great. Next, we couldn’t help but notice that even though the Cassiopeia has a version of Internet Explorer, it had no way to get online. So another couple of Google and Amazon searches later, we located a compact flash slot-compatible wifi card by D-link, the DCF-650w, with drivers for Windows CE 3.0 still available for download. That came after a few days but how to get the wifi driver software onto Cassiopeia?

I tried loading them on a compact flash card but they wouldn’t install. A closer look at the driver software instructions suggested using Microsoft’s Active Sync program. I’m thinking at this point, too bad we threw away all the disks that came with Cassiopeia. Then again, exactly which computer in our house could still run Active Sync circa year 2000 even if I had the disks?

On a lark, I downloaded the current version of Active Sync from Microsoft onto one of our PCs, plugged in the Cassiopeia’s serial-port dock and plunked the little sucker down. Surprise, surprise, the 2007 Active Sync running on a Windows XP system recognized the Cassiopeia and installed the D-link drivers. Seconds later we were cruising the web, as the picture above demonstrates. Sweet.

Blaspheming in the temple of the Mac: Boot Camp

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Ah, the crazy things we do to play a silly computer game known as Civilization, or in this case Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword expansion. Each and every version of Civ comes out first for Windows and some months later for Macs. And so, each and every time, I have to obtain, borrow or build a Windows PC with sufficient hardware to get on board as soon as possible. Actually, having an excuse to build a Windows PC out of cheapie hardware and spare parts lying around the house is fine. I learn a lot in the process and improve my familiarity with Windows at a gut level. And that makes me a better family IT director.

But this year, just days after Civ’s BTS add-on pack arrived I was scheduled to go on vacation. No lugging the PC along. Hmm. I run VMWare’s excellent Fusion but Civ’s hardware requirements are pretty steep and the game relies on one of the very latest versions of Microsoft’s multimedia environment known as DirectX. So what to do? Apple’s Boot Camp program allows you to create a wholly separate Windows machine on your Mac. It’s not running in a virtual machine inside of OS X. It’s actually using your beloved Apple hardware to run Windows with no Mac software in sight. Look ma, no hands. It’s well reviewed and doesn’t hamper your ability to run OS X most of the time so I decided to give it a spin. And I have a bunch of copies of different versions of Windows Vista lying around that I picked up at a CompUSA store closing sale some months back for pennies on the dollar.

Following Jason O’Grady’s excellent advice on buying a new MacBook Pro, I was ready. Instead of paying through the nose and suffering lengthy shipping delays by ordering a customized MBP, I bought the bottom-of-the-line, plain vanilla guy at a nearby Apple Store. Then I saved big time by upgrading the memory myself. And I went with the good folks at Techrestore for a hard drive upgrade because I’m just not that good with an infinite number of little screws and they offer overnight service. This was my second Techrestore upgrade and I give them a high marks all around. Downloading Boot Camp from Apple is easy and the install took less than an hour. With a 250 GB hard drive in the house, I was able to allocate a comfortable 50 gigs to my new Vista partition.

Boot Camp is yet another piece of Apple’s well thought out software additions to OS X. It installs a control panel in Windows and a system preference item on the Mac to set the default operating system when you turn on the computer. To boot instead into the minority choice, you don’t have to reset the default. Just hold down the option key and a pre-boot screen comes up letting you select which OS to start up. Once in Windows, everything is pretty Microsoftisized. You can’t read stuff on your Mac partition unless you install a program like Mediafour’s MacDrive. On the flip side, right from OS X, you have read-only access to your Windows partition from OS X, at least in the case of Vista.

Vista is still Vista, as I whined and complained the other day. It asks for permission before doing things like renaming an icon or starting up a common program. But it is what’s for dinner on the majority of the world’s computers and game publishers gotta go where they gotta go. Now I can play Civ glitch-free on my Macbook Pro. And at least there’s still Firefox and WordPress. I’m finishing this entry from Billg’s world. See you back in Jobs’ world soon.

Imperfectly building my imperfect PC

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Had a couple of free hours last night after the kids went to bed so I went up to the attic to sling together my latest and greatest cheapie Windows box. This one, based on an ASUS T3-M2NC51PV all-in-one, barebones case and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Brisbane processor (actually running at 1.9GHz ), replaces my Shuttle/Intel Celeron D box that went over to mom’s house for tax duty and other chores that required something more than Windows 98.

As I mentioned the other day, I decided to go for the ASUS box over Shuttle because in the sub-$200 price range, Shuttle’s competing box was missing some features like gigabit ethernet. In retrospect, I might have been better off waiting for a Shuttle sale. I had some problems reaching screw holes, the hard drive cage wasn’t as carefully crafted and things didn’t quite ease into place as easily as when I built that prior Shuttle. But the ASUS, while looking a bit homely, is quiet and operating just fine now that I’ve got it built. I also picked up a super-bargain copy of Windows Vista Home Premium edition as CompUSA’s local store closing sale. It’s proven fun to experiment with, to say the least. The new kid on the block also took in an ASUS EN7600GS video card and 2 GB of RAM. The “silent” model video card has no fan but fit easily in the case’s single PCI-Express slot despite its giant heat sinks.

Getting some of the screws in to hold the Sony DVD writer was hellish. Ever drop a tiny screw inside a computer case, in a crevice between several sheets of soldered metal? No fun. Eventually, I recovered all the screws and got them in but only with the DVD player sticking its nose out a bit, ruining the pretty but otherwise superfluous door and spring contraption that is meant to hide the front of your DVD player. Oh well. I removed that door sucker until someone invents a DVD player miniaturizer.

I encountered the only slightly dreaded “processor not recognized” warning on startup, as customers predicted on Newegg’s review board, since the current ASUS BIOS predates AMD’s latest line of 65-nanometer, lower power chips. There’s a beta BIOS out but I’ll have to find that in my next late night session. Installing Windows Vista was pretty dreamy versus installing older Windows versions. It immediately recognized all of my Maxtor 160 GB SATA hard drive, completely installed itself in under 20 minutes and got everything running without needing any of the drivers provided by ASUS on a separate CD. In fact, after I activated Vista, it went off and found updates not just for Windows but also for several of the Nvidia components on the ASUS motherboard.

I must say that my first impression of Vista is that it’s awful. I was perpetually assaulted by the UAC, or “User Account Control,” which grays out the whole screen, freezes everything and asks for permission before such high-risk operations as changing the monitor resolution. Also, the gadgets on the gadget bar can’t be resized. Want to keep a list of more than three stock prices visible all the time? Out of luck unless you install a second incarnation of the stock gadget. Many of the icons around the edges of the screen are too tiny to be believed and the Start menu seems more confusing than ever. Maybe I’ll get used to it?

Gravitational Pull

A blog about technology and other things I'm interested in