Technology at a glance!

I have had my Windows XP Media Center running for months now without any kind of problems.

Normally Windows XP does a good job even when never/almost never restarted.

My developer machine can run for serval weeks, even so that I am programming resource hogs.

But when it comes to my Media Center running as a settop box, it somtimes just dies or do other kind of nasty stuff such as not being able to fetch the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) and its like.

This is very annoying as it misses TV recordings

I usually restart the Media Center PC once a day to solve this.

And because I am lazy I had been looking for a way to do this automatically.

The buildin windows commandline SHUTDOWN.EXE program isn’t just enough so I found :

NirCmd v1.85 - Freeware command-line tool
Copyright (c) 2003 - 2006 Nir Sofer

You can find it here: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html

The program can do anything well almost anything, from a command line.

Including “standby”, which was what I was looking for.

So the only thing to automate the restart & standby process is to use:

SHUTDOWN.EXE -r

at 4:00 am and

NIRCMD.EXE standby

at 4:05 am.

I have added the two commands to the Windows XP scheduler found in the Control Panel.

The Media Center now behaves alot better, but unfortunately it is still far from perfect.

Benjamin Sølberg Microsoft

For router netgear wgt624

http://kbserver.netgear.com/products/WGT624.asp

use the following JTAG tool to bring it back from the dead

http://openwince.sourceforge.net/jtag/

and here is the serial and JTAG pinout on the main board of the router

http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Hardware/Netgear/WGT624

you should also be able to use a cell phone data cable to make a serial connection to the router(internal console port) or

use a max232 chip your self.

Benjamin Sølberg Network

I have recently bought a x-one (AOpen) media center with great success……

Actually not really. But it worked great the first couple of days but when I tried to add a old VCR to the channel list, it went bad. I did many channels rescans but I ended with a bad list of non-functional TV channels.

I gave up and went to google for help..

As usually it (google) didn’t let me down and I found the utility I was looking for:

I am happy to present “The MCE Reset Utility” (among others, take a look yourself)

http://www.salloway.org.uk/MediaCenter/util/index.htm#config2

You can choose between Full, Application or TV reset.

And I did TV reset with limited success but when I did a Full reset every thing started to work again.

Success!

Benjamin Sølberg Google, Microsoft

If, you like me, has an ipod with a cap limit (=all iPods sold in the EU) then you can remove it by using the following program:

http://www.randgruppe.info/ipod/iMod_new_12-05.rar

Note: Cap limit is a function that limits the amount of sound that you ipod can send to your earphones. This is done to protect your ears. But in my case, while driving my car I have to turn my car stereo up to where it starts to chop the sound, especially while hearing podcasts.

W A R N I N G !

In any case, cap limit or not, you should be aware of ear-damage.

Remember: you only got this two ones.

If you can’t heare with them anymore - the ipod is worthless!

Do not turn the ipod louder than needed!

More info @ http://www.randgruppe.info/ipod/

Benjamin Sølberg ipod / iPhone

If you are

• on a budget
• new to java or any other programming language
• just want a book in a electronic form
• wants to explorer EJB 3.0
• thinking in Java

then boy do I have good news for you!

Many tech books can be found free of charge at http://www.techbooksforfree.com/

If you are into Java or just wants to take a glance at it,
I suggest the following eBooks:

The Java Language Specification, Third Edition
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/download/langspec-3.0.pdf
Thinking in Java, 3rd Edition
http://www.mindviewinc.com/downloads/TIJ-3rd-edition4.0.zip
Thinking in Java, 4th Edition (only first 7 chapters are free)
http://www.mindviewinc.com/TIJ4/BookSampleDownload.php

Happy reading.

Benjamin Sølberg Java

If you are in the need of free mp3 files they can be found many places on the net.

You can find tons of original Commodore 64 SID tunes, but more importantly you can find your favourite game or demo music in modern remixed versions. This is what http://remix.kwed.org is all about.
 

• http://remix.kwed.org/index.php?search=Alibi+of+Laxity
  
• http://remix.kwed.org/index.php?search=Strike+Force+Intromu
  
• http://remix.kwed.org/index.php?search=StayAwhileForever
  
• http://remix.kwed.org/index.php?search=Orchestral+Sequence
  
• http://remix.kwed.org/index.php?search=Hiyyyah
  

Have fun !!

Benjamin Sølberg Commodore 64, Retro

I have been looking for a good and cheap hard disk recorder for home use for a while now and I finally found one that I liked.

If you want to see the Media Center I just bought then click below.
http://www.xone.dk/
I am in no way affiliated with X-One or intentionally any other company regarding the x-one media center PC.
Price tag: 5500 DKK including 250GB HD, 1 GB RAM, 3GHz Dual Core, 1 TV Tuner, 7.1Ch Audio, DVD+-R dual layer and so on.
All in all I will give it 8 out of 10 stars at a first glance. 

Benjamin Sølberg Microsoft

I have, like many others used the Singleton pattern many times. Each time, again like many others, I have been annoyed of the synchronized getInstance() method when using lazy instantiation. I then came across the Double Checked Locking (short: DCL) method that handles exactly that by amazing simplicity. It worked! But it is broken. To really understand why, you should take a look at the Java Memory Model (short: JMM) and the JSR133 that fixes it. The problem is basically caused by the JVM being able to do byte reordering as I understand it. This changes the execution flow of instructions. Many people has written about the DCL problem but few using the DCL code has encountered a real problem, never the less you shouldn’t use it prior to version 5 of Java. This is because the JSR 133 wasn’t part of the JVM until then.

Now to the good news: DCL does work in Java 5.

Yes, from version 5 it can work. The only thing you have to do is to make the instance field volatile. Unofficially this should also work in Java 1.4 but I haven’t found any real evidence.

Should I use DCL ?

In my opinion no, and I’ll tell you why
DCL will still be questioned by many
Synchronization has gotten a lot cheaper.
You can’t be sure your JVM is Java 5 (forget class versions)

Of cause, all this isn’t a issue if you didn’t do lazy instantiation.

JSR133
http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=133

Fixing the Java Memory Model, Part 1
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-jtp02244.html

Fixing the Java Memory Model, Part 2
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-jtp03304/

JSR 133 (Java Memory Model) FAQ

http://www.cs.umd.edu/~pugh/java/memoryModel/jsr-133-faq.html

The JSR-133 Cookbook for Compiler Writers
http://gee.cs.oswego.edu/dl/jmm/cookbook.html

Double-checked locking and the Singleton pattern
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-dcl.html

The (old) Java Memory Model is Fatally Flawed
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~pugh/java/broken.pdf

Benjamin Sølberg Java

As you might know, having a column with NULL values degrades your chances on a well performing oracle database when using the “IS NULL” in the WHERE clause of your SQL. This is because “IS NULL” isn’t a value but actually just “undefined”, and thereby you can’t create a database index on that value. 

But no more!

The solution is to use FBI or Function Based Indexes. This can be archived using the NVL function in both the WHERE clause and in the index creation. 

See more here:

http://www.dba-oracle.com/oracle_tips_null_idx.htm

Benjamin Sølberg Oracle

I recently found my 25 years old and “very original” Christmas present in an old drawer in the basement. I embarrassing remembered that I only learnt to do the two first layers on the cube and never the last, and far more difficult. And as a respect to my now dead and dear grandpa, which originally gave me the cube and spend hours with me trying solving it, I decided to pick up the long and forgotten cube and solve it once for all. I did a quick survey on the net and found literally tons of websites devoted to Rubik’s cube. I even found a guy who build them him self! Now after just one night, picking up from where I left, I got the last layer done. And no I didn’t cheat. But the “turning corner” thing really gave me a hard time. But take a look for your self at the links below and go and twist that cube!

Official Web site:
http://www.rubiks.com/

Speed cubing (do it in less than 20 sec):
http://www.ws.binghamton.edu/fridrich/cube.html
http://www.rubiks.dk/

You Cube (Or solve it yourself)
http://jeays.net/rubiks.htm
http://www.rubiks.dk/terning.doc (Danish version)
http://lar5.com/cube/

New stickers for your waren out cube:
http://www.lubethecube.net/index.htm

Google Videos on Speed Cubing:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=speed+cubing

Homebuild cubes:
http://www.speedcubing.com/ton/

Have fun (as you might had those many years ago)!

Benjamin Sølberg Retro, Toys