Recently in Technical Non-Site Related Category

We had a power outage in North Sacramento and the servers for dhoytt.com were affected we are back up now with the power restored!

Installed Fedora 11 tonight on laptop I got as a shell last week got parts from Ebay and other spots. Added mp3 licensing from repository along with flash and its humming along nicely wired & wireless.

Had to install with CD's though, for some reason couldn't boot DVD from Fedora 11 but could boot other previous versions of Fedora DVD's on this laptop. DVD's boot fine on other systems didn't want to update bios.

I got great help on installing & getting flash working in Fedora at this web site:

http://www.fedorafaq.org/#flash

For mp3 support the commands at this site worked perfectly:

http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/25/add-mp3-support-in-fedora-10/

Well I must say that for the updates Packagekit seems an improvement so far. Packagekit seems like is silent as it’s supposed to and so far handles dependencies very well even though I have only had my first initial couple of updates.

When updating the Fedora 9 OS Packagekit has multiple updates selected for several software packages at one time I and would like to know how I can select multiple software packages when selecting new software .in “Add/Remove Software”.

I’m anxious to see this full package in place they are speaking of in such glowing turns all over the internet. I hope this isn’t premature hype like I’m starting to see too much of in this industry lately.

I thought I saw where the full package will be pushed out hopefully in a couple of weeks through the normal update path, I am anxious to see how it works fully!

I still feel they could have helped bridge the old with the new better until the new was ready to fully roll as the primary with both Pirut still as the primary with Packagekit available to get acquainted with in the wings.

Ok I love gadgets & technology so is it a big deal that I finally got me a PDA/phone? Well let me answer that for you the answer is yes to me it’s a big deal because for me to get some of this technology it has to have a practical application almost right away. The other criteria is it must be affordable

So what was my latest portable pickup? Actually in the last two weeks there have been two additions. About a week and a half back I took advantage of a sale and bought a “Creative Labs” “Nomad Zen Xtra” “40gb” mp3 player. Last week I purchased online an HP Ipaq HW6515 pocket PC which arrived today. Along with my HP R717 Digital camera and my CompaqNW800 laptop I appear to have all of my various portable electronic and computing needs covered.

For the NW8000 laptop I have my hard core computing or multi-media I may need taken care of and with the various peripherals I have for the NW8000 I can do quite a bit. Actually thinking about it I probably should include the laptop as items that make my portable electronics a complete package. I have the “Hercules DJ Console” which allows me to treat mp3’s as vinyl records. I also have an HP external DVD640 Lightscribe DVDRW and an 80 GB Western Digital USB drive. I can put together some serious music without lugging around a bunch of CD’s or records and still have the same affects and more!

Now it may seem like a duplication to have all of these devices but it really depends on what needs to be done and how long you may be on the road and for what purpose.

The digital camera just gives me the ability to have good resolution on picture I really care about and helps me since I’m not a very good photographer.

The laptop and all of those peripherals I have mainly for the musical purposes but also for those long trips when I may to do some PowerPoint or heavy computing at a hotel or resort.

The Zen mp3 player I couldn’t pass up since the price was so good at less than ½ price. With the mp3 player I can plug into my car stereo and not worry about switching from music to phone to handle a phone call. Plus at a small get together or in a resort I can easily setup a nice little mood and not have it interrupted by calls.

The HP IPAQ is first of all a phone and organizer always at hand but can also perform some very general low horse power computing chores. This will be very nice when I’m out looking at auctions liquidations etc where a laptop will be a hindrance. I can also use this as the one device I will not leave behind if I can only take one it can do everything in a limited way. Also the price was less than 1/3 of the normal cost with warranty still.

Anyway all these electronic items I have purchased help me expand the things I like to do already and enhance the experiences. I have been actually looking at these various devices over the past years as they developed and waited for my needs and cost to come together before purchasing them.

Now I have to look at a few accessories!! Well come on I have to have 1gb of flash RAM in my IPAQ if that’s what’s in my camera sine they are interchangeable! Plus I need a car kit and an underwater case for the camera.

I have been having issues of the Windows registry becoming corrupt with a friends system. I had isolated it down to all of the various components and then decided it’s either the motherboard or memory.

Well with the help of the "Memtest86" I isolated it down to memory errors that showed themselves right away.

I had already turned down the memory voltage from 3.4v to 3.3v suspecting that but still kept corrupting the registry.

Now I did not have another set of pc133 memory to test if it was the memory stick or the memory settings. I actually had to go and purchase another stick of pc133 memory to test if the memory module or the settings were the issue.

Well I ran the same "Memtest86” test with the new memory stick and presto memory issues show right away!

Well this is now obviously memory settings. I built this system a few years ago and it was hard jumpered. I'm thinking that maybe someone else poked their heads in there and replaced the memory or adjusted something.

Well I took the jumpered settings off and set the motherboard (ASUS a7v133-c) up for jumperless settings and set the memory and CPU in the bios. I then ran the “Memtest86 for several passes and it found no errors. I then reloaded the OS and some other software on the system without issue.

I then set the “Memtest86" to run and test the memory overnight. This morning I looked and after several hours of running test there are no more memory errors

I am now running a memory test I downloaded from Microsoft's site to see if it finds any errors and so far after 8 passes no issues!

Both memory tests run off of bootable CDROM or floppy without taking you into the OS of course.

Here are the URL's to the memory tests:

http://www.memtest.org/

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

Rechargeable Batteries

I’m going to take this necessary plunge into getting rechargeable batteries for all of these wireless devices I have that require batteries.

I have nine wireless keyboards and mice that I use all of the time to cut down on all of the wires I need in my computer room. You may say hey why not use a KVM but a KVM still requires wires from the system to the KVM.

I actually do use a KVM but strictly for the monitor out puts, plus if people want to come over and play multiplayer games using my systems or do something else that would require me to unhook them from the KVM if I wanted to access another system on the KVM switch without using remote desktop network access of some type.

Back to the rechargeable batteries I also will slowly work them into the mix for my remote control devices as well.

Supposedly with these NiMH (Nickel-Metal Hydride) batteries have 50% more power than NiCad batteries and do not suffer from memory effects. Also, Unlike NiCad batteries, NiMH batteries do not use heavy metals that may have toxic effects. (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/N/NiMH_battery_pack.html)

More information on rechargeable batteries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_metal_hydride

My system I built with the new AMD 64 bit 3200 processor is now my primary system after transferring all of the relevant gigs of data from my 3.2 Intel system. As I said before not only is the CPU fast but the 39160 Adaptec card with the 5 10k rpm SCSI drives this system really cooks! I also have over .5tb’s of capacity on this system, so that will hold for a bit.

Once again after a cold spell with my work outs I am trying to get back into it with the 100 degree weather we have been having this has not been great timing. I normally love the hot temperatures but when you are a bit out of shape and have to get some long runs in that means getting up in time and not going to bed late so you can get up and beat the heat.
I know I can get in shape really quickly which is probably a bad thing since I tend to let it go sometimes knowing I can take the slight pain and discomfort when I do my burn work outs for a few weeks. I never let myself get so far out of shape that I don’t know what it takes to get back on track but man when you are in the middle of only your second 6 mile run back to back days in months it still hurts!!
I have to qualify what I consider being in shape. Having the energy to get up do a minimum of stretching after work and hitting a six mile run at a pace where you are almost skipping is my version of being in shape! I’m far from that now, hell I can make six miles or even more but not with the pace I want. Being able to do it easily every day of the week easily is also a key.
On top endurance and stamina, flexibility and strength are the other keys to what I call being in shape. I rarely weigh myself but I know my body well enough to approximate my weight pretty well. The important thing about being in shape is the energy that’s how you should measure progress, everything else (weight loss, tone etc...) will fall in place. You will always have a fast weight loss when you start any regiment in the first week or two, that’s the easy part. What you do after that is where you earn it which is why weight loss is not the most important thing to gauge progress.
Time for me to start getting ready for bed after staying up so late the past few nights working on different items.