Miscellaneous

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7
Jan 10

Using the Streamzap IR remote in Boxee on Ubuntu

As I mentioned last post, I am setting up a Linux multimedia system. This system will be running Boxee, a wonderful media center program that went into beta today. Though I will be able to use a laptop’s mouse and keyboard on it, I still wanted to be able to use a regular remote control. Though the computer is taking forever to ship, the remote came in today. After doing some research and asking around, I went with the Streamzap IR remote.

Getting this remote to work with Boxee was rather simple. First step, use a package manager to install the package lirc. During the package configuration, you will be prompted to select an IR device to use. Select Streamzap PC Remote. After the device has been selected, package configuration will ask about a transmitter device. Just select None. To test that the package is configured correctly, run the command irw in a terminal, then press buttons on the remote. If everything worked, you should see output consisting of a bunch of numbers, the button pressed on the remote, and the name of the remote.

Next Boxee needs a config file for the remote. Copy /opt/boxee/system/Lircmap.xml to $HOME/.boxee/Lircmap.xml. Now open the Lircmap.xml copy that is in the UserData folder, and add the code from this forum post just before the ending </lircmap> tag.

Save the file and open Boxee, and the Streamzap remote should now work.

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29
Jun 09

Bing’s Ballmer Bias (in search of monkey boy)

Searching for Monkey BoyMuch has already been said about the fact that Microsoft’s shiny “new” search engine, Bing.com, happens to have a little bias. I think I just discovered a new example of this bias. Try finding the Monkey Boy video on both Google and Bing, and see which one’s auto-complete is the most helpful.

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3
Mar 09

Simple email encryption with FireGPG

Privacy was once the default for most conversations between individuals. While the Internet has become an extremely useful tool for facilitating conversation, it has also done away with almost all of the privacy that was once inherent in communication. This has profound societal consequences that few have even begun to contemplate. Furthermore, the spread of unencrypted email means that it is nearly trivial for various repressive governments to spy on those who differ from the government sanctioned political and religious norms.

Though the technology was once closely guarded by the United States government as a form of export controlled munitions, encryption is now freely available to the masses. However, much of the technology is not easily understandable by the masses. With this in mind, I wrote Simple email encryption with FireGPG as a cross platform guide for email encryption, with a target audience of ordinary, non-technical Internet users.

Simple email encryption with FireGPG is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license, meaning you are free to copy it, share it, modify and translate it, as long as you do so under the terms of the license. If you do make a derivative or translation, please tell me about it so that I can link to it from the project page.

I plan on periodically updating the guide as changes are made in the FireGPG extension. If you have suggestions for improvement, please leave a comment on this page or contact me. You can subscribe to this RSS feed for updates.

Download Version 1.0

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15
Aug 08

Finding Myself In Strange Places

The Internet is a strange place, the web of interlinking and copying that is constantly happening. My previous blog post was probably my most widely read post to date, not that this means much. However, I find it entertaining to occasionally to search for crashsystems.net in Google, to see what comes up.

Something that surprised me is that I made it on both Digg and Reddit, with 12 and 26 hits respectively thus far. I must admit, as of the time of this writing, I caused the most recent dig on Digg.com, but the point is that I was not the one to submit it! This gives me warm, fuzzy feelings all over.

Though being on Digg and Reddit is amazing, showing up on the following site is certainly the most perplexing. Click here to go to that page, or just look at the picture below.

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14
Jul 08

Douglass Clem for President 2008

Anyone who has read my blog before, or has talked with me about politics, knows that I think the current political system is broken. Therefore, I’ve decided to announce my bid for the 2008 presidentual elections. It started underground, but we’re taking over!

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