100% Free Digital Converter Boxes at Amazon

5 Jun 2009 · Technology One comment

I just bought two Zinwell ZAT-970A Digital to Analog TV Converter Boxes at Amazon.com and I didn’t have to pay shipping or tax! They didn’t even ask for a credit card. I used my two TV Converter Box coupons for $40 each off the purchase of qualifying boxes. Since the price of the box on Amazon is exactly $40 and it qualifies for free shipping and no tax for Arizona residents the grand total was $0.00.

Now all I have to do is wait, and when they finally get here that old TV I’ve had since I was a kid will work like a charm! These are great to have on hand in case of an emergency if all you can find is an analog TV and you need to get TV reception.

Consumer Reports has excellent Digital to Analog TV Converter Box ratings.

Ghostbusters MAME Arcade Cabinet Complete

5 May 2009 · Pictures, Projects One comment

The t-molding came in on Friday and I had some time on Saturday, so I installed the t-molding and finished up the project. I took some pictures of the control panel on the finished arcade.

I don’t have a router, but a coworker’s father was in town with all of his tools and he finally give me the means to finish the project. When I tried to install the t-molding at first there were some areas that weren’t deep enough. I used my dremel to make the slot deeper all the way around. I wouldn’t have been able to do that with the dremel alone, but since there was already a slot it helped. I have a depth guide that I attached to the dremel to make it work. I didn’t even need any glue! I just put the t-molding around the outside. Using a towel as a cushion I tapped the molding in place. The hardest part was cutting the v-shaped notches in the “t” part of the molding so it would go around the corners. Since this t-molding also had a lip I had to cut that, too. The lip was necessary to keep the vinyl down around the edges. For some reason the adhesive didn’t work very well around the edges and it wanted to come up.

I attached the top piece with the controls to the bottom piece with two hinges on the front side and a catch on the other so I can flip it up from the back to work on the wiring underneath. You can see the control panel wiring in the Unfinished section of the gallery page.

The Arcade cabinet came with a control panel, but it only allowed 2 buttons per player and the joysticks weren’t very good. The new configuration is also somewhat narrower so the machine can now fit through most doorways without taking off the control panel and the box it is on. Now that it’s done I’ve got exactly what I had envisioned!

Now, to work on that Donkey Kong high score…

Arcade Control Panel

LinkedIn Updates

22 Feb 2009 · Goals, Technology, Work No comments

I have been working on getting my LinkedIn profile up to date so I can feel comfortable inviting more people to link to me. I have included new functionality to have relevant blog posts included on my LinkedIn profile. I was struggling with how to enter my freelance web design and Linux consulting while I was a student, but I think I came up with a solution, so the gaps in my employment history are gone. Excellent!

Backporting D2K Driver from Misfit MAME to AdvanceMAME

19 Feb 2009 · Technology No comments

I have an arcade cabinet that runs AdvanceMAME 0.106. My arcade cabinet has an arcade monitor in it and AdvanceMAME is the only software I have found that can recreate the arcade games with pixel-perfect accuracy on my monitor. Unfortunately, AdvanceMAME is no longer in active development, although there was a recent bugfix release.

I am trying to use the source from Misfit MAME 0.127e which supports Donkey Kong II: Jumpan Returns (or d2k for short) but the changes in MAME are somewhat drastic and I’m having trouble coming up with the appropriate code to make the new dkong.c work in the old MAME environment. I will keep trying, though, because it would be amazing to get it running on my arcade cab until I can afford a real Donkey Kong machine to run D2K on.

Who knows, maybe once I understand the code a little bit better, I might be able to make some real contributions to MAME or possibly fix some buggy drivers in AdvanceMAME 0.106.

Relation Browser and the UN

17 Feb 2009 · Technical Communication, Work No comments

I am looking for a good way to be able to map multiple IT governance and compliance frameworks (like COBIT, SOX, TOGAF, ISO 20000, etc.) to one another and be able to interactively browse through them. A week ago I came across Moritz Stefaner and his Relation Browser indirectly through an article called A Cosmological Approach to IT Governance about how the UN put together some software called 6 Degrees to do something similar. Mr. Stefaner responded to my email within a few hours while the author of the article working at the UN hasn’t responded yet.

The only real problem is that the software is written using Flash and Actionscript. I know nothing about either so I’m working from the ground floor trying to get a grasp on what’s going on. Both Relation Browser and 6 Degrees are reportedly open source, but I can’t find 6 Degrees anywhere and the source for Relation Browser is not directly linked to anywhere that I could find (I had to ask Mr. Stefaner for the link).

Moritz Stefaner is a master of visual representation of data using newer technologies. I hold him in high regard and consult his work for inspiration much as I do Edward Tufte and his work.

Reading Group at Work Gets Political

17 Feb 2009 · Work No comments

A group of not so like-minded individuals at work have decided to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and then go out to lunch to discuss it. I really wish I were a faster reader because one month is just not enough time for me to make it through a tome of that magnitude. Next on the list looks to be Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky. I guess we wanted to get polar opposites and see how much they overlap.

New Site Migration Successful

17 Jan 2009 · Technology No comments

As Godaddy economy hosting was rather slow, albeit inexpensive at only $3.95/month, I was eager to find a faster service, if it were economical. Alex called me up near the beginning of the year with news that DreamHost was doing a major deal on 2 years of hosting. For about $20 I got two years unlimited everything! One of the biggest advantages other than speed on DreamHost is that I have SSH access to my site. Another great addition is that I can now use scripting languages other than PHP.

There may still be some rough edges on the blog now that I’ve got it moved. Please let me know if you find any broken links or other problems.

Ten Cents in One Day

6 Jun 2008 · Annoyances 4 comments

When I hopped in the truck this morning to drive to work I saw the amber low fuel light staring me in the face. I keep hoping the gas will get cheaper before I have to fill up again, so I tend to wait until the light comes on recently. On my way to work I stopped to fill the tank at $4.059 per gallon. I was just staring at the numbers that seemed to go faster and faster as I watched. For the first time ever I spent over $70 for a single tank of gas.

I thought this was amazing until, on my way home I drove past the same gas station and the gas was now $4.159, a full ten cents more than this morning! I guess I should be happy that I bought gas this morning saving over $1.70, but I can’t bring myself to be happy about 4-dollar/gallon gasoline.

On the way home the news report indicated that crude oil had reached a new high today jumping $11/barrel in only one day! That breaks two records: the highest crude oil price in dollars and the largest increase in oil prices in a single day. At lunch with a coworker I was just saying that I thought the price of gas was contingent not on the current price of crude oil, but rather on the price of crude oil at the time the gasoline refinery bought it. That may still be the case, but now I’m not so sure. My coworker suggested that the price goes up when oil prices rise, but doesn’t fall when the oil prices fall. All I know is that I never really believed that the gasoline would reach $4/gallon this year, but it’s not even summer yet and we’re shattering that. Now I’m afraid to believe that $5/gallon is not going to happen.

MonkeyGTD For The Win!

18 May 2008 · Links No comments

Michael NesmithSo I never really updated as promised with how the integration of the FranklinCovey planner and Toodledo went because I never really came to terms with them together. Toodledo was too cumbersome and most importantly doesn’t allow dependency-tracking for next actions. I’ve been playing with the 3.0 alpha version of MonkeyGTD, though, and must say that I’m impressed. MonkeyGTD is a lot more flexible than Toodledo. That flexibility is a blessing and a curse. It takes a bit more fiddling and playing around to get into using MonkeyGTD, but it will not force you into a mold the way Toodledo does. It’s a nice bonus that MonkeyGTD is completely free and can be backed up by copying a single file, too.

FranklinCovey v. GTD

16 Mar 2008 · Annoyances, Links, Work 3 comments

A week ago I got a FranklinCovey planner as part of a course I attended on time management. A week before that I found Toodledo (a friend of mine showed it to me). Now I’ve got this dilemma. I find that Toodledo does a great job of managing my tasks for me. At work we use Outlook for email and meeting planning. I am not terribly mobile. I spend most of the day sitting at my own desk at work. I’m struggling to find a use for the FranklinCovey planner. I tried to use it, but so far it just feels redundant. It duplicates all my electronic planning and to-do lists, but it doesn’t update automatically. I feel like it’s doubled the work it takes for me to stay up to date and on top of my projects.

GTD says I’m supposed to have one bucket, one place to collect my stuff that comes in. I have found that there are way too many buckets as it stands now, and FranklinCovey isn’t making things easier.

If there’s a good way to integrate GTD with FranklinCovey, I’d sure like to find it. For now, I’ll just have to stick with what I’ve got, I suppose.

UPDATE: I took the second half of the FranklinCovey class today, so now I know how I’m supposed to use the planner. I’ll report on my progress integrating this with Toodledo and Outlook.

UPDATE 2: The paper planner just isn’t my thing. I found a coworker to donate my planner to. Now I’m using Remember The Milk and App for the milk with great success.