I am currently in the process of trying to build some shelving for our mud room. It has been unfinished for a couple of years now and we are needing some extra space to put the shows and stuff we have stored in there.
I am attempting to have it myself and have started doing some searching for cabinet hardware. I have went to my local Menards, Home Depot and Lowes to find what I am looking for but for cabinet hinges the cheapest I could find were $4 a piece. That seems like a tremendous amount of money.
I have done some searching to not find a whole lot. I check http://www.rockler.com as well http://www.woodcraft.com but they were similar in price and then $8 minimum to ship. ( I searched for a free shipping coupon for some time to no avail) I have had good luck over at the woodnet forums getting responses and they didn’t let me down in this instance either. I posted and got a number of responses and some of them were more in my price range.
Here is just a brief summary of the places recommended. I can’t endorse any of them yet but I am going to them a try in the future.
Wood Workers Hardware - http://wwhardware.com/index.cfm?pageid=0
Custom Service Hardware - http://www.cshardware.com/
I think my go around I am going to give custom service hardware a try and see how things go. The hinges I was looking for are a fraction of the cost at the big box stores including woodcraft and rockler. I will post again on my thoughts when I get them.
Gateway m275 Video Driver Install on Windows 7
The past week or two I have been trying to get an old Gateway m275 laptop to function. The issue is the machine is so old that there are not current drivers for the machine. Intel decided not to create Windows 7 drivers for the 85822GME chipset so people wanting to upgrade are stuck with only being able to use the standard vga drivers. These drivers don't offer screen rotation was my biggest gripe.
The reason I wanted screen rotation is I want to mount this older machine under a cabinet in my kitchen. The machine would then be upside down.
Here were the links I used to get this working.
This is a step by step guide that allowed me to get my driver working.
http://www.groundstate.net/855GMWin7.html
Prior to this I would get the yellow exclamation mark over the driver.
Follow them to the T and you and should be good to go.
The reason I wanted screen rotation is I want to mount this older machine under a cabinet in my kitchen. The machine would then be upside down.
Here were the links I used to get this working.
This is a step by step guide that allowed me to get my driver working.
http://www.groundstate.net/855GMWin7.html
Prior to this I would get the yellow exclamation mark over the driver.
Follow them to the T and you and should be good to go.
MCE setup on Gateway m275 TabletPC
I posted about being able to get the video driver to finally install. Here is the reason I needed it to work and how I am going to attempt to get MCE working with this machine.
Goal: Mount this old laptop under kitchen cabinet and use Windows 7 Media Center for interaction
1. Search the internet specifically www.allrecipes.com which my wife uses a lot for doing cooking
2. Listen to Music and possibly integrate with squeeze server already running on our Windows Home Server.
3. Watch TV
That is the minimum at this point. I don’t know if the machine has enough power for this functionality on first test. I own an HDHomeRun that has dual digital tuners and on first try this morning, the machine couldn’t hack it. It would try to fire up the TV and just spin. It may have been a couple of things, which I will need to experiment with further.
I am going to hopefully use Windows Media Center for the interface to all of these things. Music and TV are well suited for Media Center. The web on the other hand may be a little difficult and I don’t know if there is a plugin yet for this.
Interacting with the machine will be OK. Unfortunately it is not touch sensitive so it does require the stylus. Minor inconvenience at this time I believe.
Here are my findings thus far.
- Squeezebox Integration - does not exist that I can find
- Pandora - does not have a plugin at this time
- Web Browsing -I am going to try http://kylo.tv
Kylo.tv - This is a 10 foot web interface for use on your TV.
Integration of Kylo into Media Center http://www.hack7mc.com/2010/03/can-kylo-bring-browsing-to-the-big-screen.html
Here is my original post over at thegreenbutton: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/p/89078/451852.aspx#451852
EDIT: After some attempts to get windows 7 to work it is really pretty darn slow. I am going to try one further time and follow this post to try and strip Windows 7 down as much as possible. Also, i am going to run to best buy to see if i can buy a stick of 1gig memory as I only have 512 in this currently. (I know the minimum specs is 1gig but I didn't have any pc2700 laying around)
Here is what I am going to follow to try and get this working a bit better on this machine:
http://www.computingunleashed.com/2009/06/speed-up-windows-7-ultimate-guide-to.html
There are some good suggestions here that I did not do. We will see how this works when done.
Excel VBA Schema Definition File for CSV
I want to post an issue that took me some time to figure out. I don't know how to best describe it in the Title so it looks as though I entered like I would a google search so bear with me.
I am doing some work in Excel writing a custom macro for work. The intent of the macro is to reference a CSV file and fill an Excel sheet in a specified manor.
The CSV is my data source and it contains around 20 columns of data. That data is in differing formats. Some columns are of decimal type, some are of string type and some of date type. One column in particular was giving me a lot of issues which I will further explain below but was as follows:
1234567
8888999
1111222
2334344BBNN
255534ERERE
1223311
7634534
My issue is when I do a select on the CSV file it sees this column as a number and 7 characters in length. So what happens when I am feeding this data into my custom objects the fields that are not numbers 2334344BBNN for example come up blank. My belief is that the method I am calling is reading the first line and using that to build some sort of the schema definition for this file. Well that first line is not an accurate representation of the data.
Here is how I am doing the select:
Set oConn = CreateObject("ADODB.CONNECTION")
oConn.Open "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" & strFilePath & ";Extended Properties=""text;HDR=No;FMT=Delimited"""
Set oRS = CreateObject("ADODB.RECORDSET")
oRS.Open "SELECT * FROM " & strFileName, oConn, 3, 3
strFilePath and strFileName both come from an input box I open for the user to choose there CSV.
I did a lot of searching on this issue and ultimately posted in a form specific to Excel issues. I will see if I can find the post. Basically the gentleman who responded provided me with a solution that work well for me. http://forums.devx.com/showthread.php?t=173508
The file name is schema.ini that you would create and look like below for example:
[mydata.csv]
ColNameHeader=False
Format=Delimited(,)
MaxScanRows=0
CharacterSet=ANSI
col1=Field1 Text Width 10
col2=Field2 Text Width 10
col3=Field3 Text Width 10
col4=Field4 DateTime
col5=Field5 Text Width 10
col6=Field6 Long
col7=Field7 Text Width 3
col8=Field8 Long
col9=Field9 Long
col10=Field10 Long
col11=Field11 Long
col12=Field12 Long
col13=Field13 Text Width 10
col14=Field14 Long
col15=Field15 Long
col16=Field16 Text Width 10
col17=Field17 Text Width 10
col18=Field18 Text Width 10
col19=Field19 Long
What I did was build this schema file on the fly. I had the filename that I needed in strFileName. It was simply building the function to create this file. Here is the function I used. I should note that you need to add a reference to the following as well. VBE Tools > References Microsoft Scripting Runtime
Function CreateSchemaFile(ByVal strFileName As String, ByVal strFilePath As String) As Boolean
Dim FSO As FileSystemObject
Dim FSOFile As TextStream
Dim FilePath As String
Dim NoOfLoop As Integer
FilePath = strFilePath & "\Schema.ini" ' create a test.txt file or change this
Set FSO = New FileSystemObject
' opens file in write mode
Set FSOFile = FSO.OpenTextFile(FilePath, 2, True)
FSOFile.WriteLine ("[" & strFileName & "]")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("ColNameHeader=False")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("Format=Delimited(,)")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("MaxScanRows=0")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("CharacterSet=ANSI")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col1=Field1 Text Width 5")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col2=Field2 Text Width 8")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col3=Field2 Text Width 30")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col4=Field4 DateTime")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col5=Field5 Text Width 10")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col6=Field6 Long")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col7=Field7 Text Width 10")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col8=Field8 Long")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col9=Field9 Double")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col10=Field10 Long")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col11=Field11 Double")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col12=Field12 Long")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col13=Field13 Text Width 5")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col14=Field14 Text Width 6")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col15=Field15 Text Width 4")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col16=Field16 Double")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col17=Field17 Text Width 5")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col18=Field18 Text Width 1")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col19=Field19 Text Width 5")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col20=Field20 Text Width 5")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col21=Field21 Text Width 10")
FSOFile.Close
CreateSchemaFile = True
End Function
The only thing that I haven’t tested yet is what rights do users have to write out to the location where the CSV exists as this file has to exist in the same folder as the file it is referencing.
Anyway, I hope this helps someone else out and maybe me again in the future.
I am doing some work in Excel writing a custom macro for work. The intent of the macro is to reference a CSV file and fill an Excel sheet in a specified manor.
The CSV is my data source and it contains around 20 columns of data. That data is in differing formats. Some columns are of decimal type, some are of string type and some of date type. One column in particular was giving me a lot of issues which I will further explain below but was as follows:
1234567
8888999
1111222
2334344BBNN
255534ERERE
1223311
7634534
My issue is when I do a select on the CSV file it sees this column as a number and 7 characters in length. So what happens when I am feeding this data into my custom objects the fields that are not numbers 2334344BBNN for example come up blank. My belief is that the method I am calling is reading the first line and using that to build some sort of the schema definition for this file. Well that first line is not an accurate representation of the data.
Here is how I am doing the select:
Set oConn = CreateObject("ADODB.CONNECTION")
oConn.Open "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" & strFilePath & ";Extended Properties=""text;HDR=No;FMT=Delimited"""
Set oRS = CreateObject("ADODB.RECORDSET")
oRS.Open "SELECT * FROM " & strFileName, oConn, 3, 3
strFilePath and strFileName both come from an input box I open for the user to choose there CSV.
I did a lot of searching on this issue and ultimately posted in a form specific to Excel issues. I will see if I can find the post. Basically the gentleman who responded provided me with a solution that work well for me. http://forums.devx.com/showthread.php?t=173508
The file name is schema.ini that you would create and look like below for example:
[mydata.csv]
ColNameHeader=False
Format=Delimited(,)
MaxScanRows=0
CharacterSet=ANSI
col1=Field1 Text Width 10
col2=Field2 Text Width 10
col3=Field3 Text Width 10
col4=Field4 DateTime
col5=Field5 Text Width 10
col6=Field6 Long
col7=Field7 Text Width 3
col8=Field8 Long
col9=Field9 Long
col10=Field10 Long
col11=Field11 Long
col12=Field12 Long
col13=Field13 Text Width 10
col14=Field14 Long
col15=Field15 Long
col16=Field16 Text Width 10
col17=Field17 Text Width 10
col18=Field18 Text Width 10
col19=Field19 Long
What I did was build this schema file on the fly. I had the filename that I needed in strFileName. It was simply building the function to create this file. Here is the function I used. I should note that you need to add a reference to the following as well. VBE Tools > References Microsoft Scripting Runtime
Function CreateSchemaFile(ByVal strFileName As String, ByVal strFilePath As String) As Boolean
Dim FSO As FileSystemObject
Dim FSOFile As TextStream
Dim FilePath As String
Dim NoOfLoop As Integer
FilePath = strFilePath & "\Schema.ini" ' create a test.txt file or change this
Set FSO = New FileSystemObject
' opens file in write mode
Set FSOFile = FSO.OpenTextFile(FilePath, 2, True)
FSOFile.WriteLine ("[" & strFileName & "]")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("ColNameHeader=False")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("Format=Delimited(,)")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("MaxScanRows=0")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("CharacterSet=ANSI")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col1=Field1 Text Width 5")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col2=Field2 Text Width 8")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col3=Field2 Text Width 30")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col4=Field4 DateTime")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col5=Field5 Text Width 10")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col6=Field6 Long")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col7=Field7 Text Width 10")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col8=Field8 Long")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col9=Field9 Double")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col10=Field10 Long")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col11=Field11 Double")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col12=Field12 Long")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col13=Field13 Text Width 5")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col14=Field14 Text Width 6")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col15=Field15 Text Width 4")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col16=Field16 Double")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col17=Field17 Text Width 5")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col18=Field18 Text Width 1")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col19=Field19 Text Width 5")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col20=Field20 Text Width 5")
FSOFile.WriteLine ("col21=Field21 Text Width 10")
FSOFile.Close
CreateSchemaFile = True
End Function
The only thing that I haven’t tested yet is what rights do users have to write out to the location where the CSV exists as this file has to exist in the same folder as the file it is referencing.
Anyway, I hope this helps someone else out and maybe me again in the future.
Mediaportal TVServer on WHS
I am a tech geek at heart and love new tech and trying to get it integrated in my home, workplace, every day life.
One thing I purchased about 8 months ago was an HP Windows Home Server (WHS from now on) EX495. I know there is debate on this and someone may give me slack for getting the higher end model but I did it for two reasons. I wanted the extra CPU power for having the potential ability of being able to do some transcoding of videos without having to void the warranty and mod the system. Second, with the beta release of Vail (next version of Windows Home Server) recently released I thought I would gamble and hope that if there was a machine that may be able to upgrade this would be the machine.
Here is what I am attempting. Rid my house of having 2 machines on for most of the day.
How I am going to attempt to accomplish this:
Challenges:
I have been fighting this battle for some time as I tried installing the latest build of Mediaportal (1.1 RC2) but found the recording to be very inconsistent. It would record one scheduled show this week and the next it wouldn’t and record one that it missed the next or it wouldn’t record at all.
I found a post not that long ago of someone claiming a certain release of the TVServer worked well on WHS. I downloaded it, installed it.
NOTE: I had mediaportal 1.1 RC2 installed as I mentioned prior. That being the case I had MS SQL Express installed and the database already setup so I didn’t have to go through this and a lot of the settings I had were preserved. I am not going to go into the installation of the tool. This is simply to possibly remedy a few common issues on the WHS side people may see.
Once installed I tried opening up the config tool to receive the following error:
Error: 31456 Connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.
Couple of things I first tried was making sure the following ports were open 31456 (TCP) Remote Control 554 (TCP) RTSP Streaming. This did not seem to fix the issue. I did some further googling to find a post on some obscure site to simply rename the following files:
Both should be renamed to TvService.config and SetupTv.config. This allowed me to open the tool and was the fix I was looking for. At first test I tried scheduling a manual record, which did not work prior. Low and behold, it worked. I have a few scheduled programs to start in a few days and am going to see if I can get them to record.
The web interface seems to schedule stuff just fine and is what I used to start the one time recording I mentioned above. The install instructions worked and come with the installer so follow them and you will be on your way.
One thing I purchased about 8 months ago was an HP Windows Home Server (WHS from now on) EX495. I know there is debate on this and someone may give me slack for getting the higher end model but I did it for two reasons. I wanted the extra CPU power for having the potential ability of being able to do some transcoding of videos without having to void the warranty and mod the system. Second, with the beta release of Vail (next version of Windows Home Server) recently released I thought I would gamble and hope that if there was a machine that may be able to upgrade this would be the machine.
Here is what I am attempting. Rid my house of having 2 machines on for most of the day.
- Machine 1 is my WHS naturally
- Machine 2 is to record the little TV we watch
How I am going to attempt to accomplish this:
- Install Mediaportal – free TV Server application which allows for the watching and recording of shows in a client/server configuration. Here is the TV Engine I am using: http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=fa6ba91fd6b5d11a1bee9a6e9edd9c764fc3696e526346da4ca8d2a77d7aad89
- Install the Mediaportal web tool for being able to set up recordings where I have web connectivity. Here:
Challenges:
- 1. Mediaportal is not support on WHS but will install
I have been fighting this battle for some time as I tried installing the latest build of Mediaportal (1.1 RC2) but found the recording to be very inconsistent. It would record one scheduled show this week and the next it wouldn’t and record one that it missed the next or it wouldn’t record at all.
I found a post not that long ago of someone claiming a certain release of the TVServer worked well on WHS. I downloaded it, installed it.
NOTE: I had mediaportal 1.1 RC2 installed as I mentioned prior. That being the case I had MS SQL Express installed and the database already setup so I didn’t have to go through this and a lot of the settings I had were preserved. I am not going to go into the installation of the tool. This is simply to possibly remedy a few common issues on the WHS side people may see.
Once installed I tried opening up the config tool to receive the following error:
Error: 31456 Connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.
Couple of things I first tried was making sure the following ports were open 31456 (TCP) Remote Control 554 (TCP) RTSP Streaming. This did not seem to fix the issue. I did some further googling to find a post on some obscure site to simply rename the following files:
- 1. C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal TV Server\TvService.exe.config
- 2. C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal TV Server\SetupTv.exe.config
Both should be renamed to TvService.config and SetupTv.config. This allowed me to open the tool and was the fix I was looking for. At first test I tried scheduling a manual record, which did not work prior. Low and behold, it worked. I have a few scheduled programs to start in a few days and am going to see if I can get them to record.
The web interface seems to schedule stuff just fine and is what I used to start the one time recording I mentioned above. The install instructions worked and come with the installer so follow them and you will be on your way.
DIY Power Tools Mobile Base
I have a small shop. 14x10 at its widest. That doesn’t allow for much room to be using a table saw or joiner and to have some sort of dust collection. With the winters we have I have not wanted to heat my 3 stall garage and my shop is located towards the back of my 3 stall garage. Just big enough to still allow a car to pull in comfortably and the shop is big enough to basically store some tools and navigate a small project around in. It is not big enough for the tools I have and to safely cut stuff on the table saw.I have the above mentioned tools and part of the problem is that I cannot easily move the tools around to try and utilize the space that I have. I looked at different options from Rockler and Woodcraft but they were pretty expensive. I am a little handy and enjoy the feeling of accomplishment I get from building this stuff myself so I prefer this option if available and time permitting.
I first went and looked at http://www.rockler.com and http:\\www.woodcraft.com to see what a base cost and the most reasonable one I could find was the following: http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=2383&filter=mobile%20base Which was still too much for me.
I did some google searching and found a post by Joel Wires that interested me. He has a post over at http://lumberjocks.com/ and I am going to use this for the basis for what you will see below. Here is his post: http://lumberjocks.com/projects/30738
Beings this is my first post I should have taken more pictures along the way but since I did not I am going to try and explain through text so bear with me.
Materials List:
1 – 10ft 2x4
Scrap pieces of ¾ ply
4 inch bolt
4 casters
2 wall hocks
1 small spring
4 hinges
I really had this stuff just laying around and the cost for me was simply the casters,
the spring and the small hooks. It amounted to about $13 and works very well. The most expensive part for me was buying the casters. They are not cheap. I just wanted ones that would pivot and I did not require the locking mechanism. The cheapest ones I could find were at harbor freight. They had a sale going on for a moving base for $9.99 and that had the 4 casters on it that i simply took off and used as I wanted.
The longer 2x4 you see on the right has a routed slot out of the middle of it to allow it to sit over the top of the smaller 3/4x 1.5" board. There is a pretty good picture of this to the right. You will also see the spring mechanism. The next 2 pictures is how you could about activating the wheels. You simply push your foot down on the 2x4 and the wheels engage and once down far enough the triangular board you see engages over the top of the 2x4 holding it in place. It really works pretty well and was not tuff to build.The 3/4" ply was used below each leg. This took a little tweaking as you can see with my table saw that i have metal supports running vertical to the floor. This didn't give me much room to play with so it took a little tweaking of the pivot point. You can also see the hinges and where they were used. Our home has brushed nickel hinges so i have these gold hinges laying around. They worked perfectly here and I don't mind the gold in the shop at all.
I hope this works for you and some of the explanation i mention above helps you to build your own. It really works well and was reasonable to build.
Welcome
I have to say I got the inspiration to give this a whirl from my wife. She recently started her first blog.
My New Direction: http://mynewdirection.wordpress.com/
She finds it to be a nice outlet for her. She is a writer by trade and I am far from that. In thinking about her contributions to the web and the impact that it might have some day made me think a little bit. This could be something that someone else reads a thousand years from now or I may get bored of it and this is my first and last post. Time will tell.
My thoughts for this were to possibly track some of the paths I go down in life and maybe some day it will be something my kids come across and grand kids and see what I did. Who knows. For now, it might be a nice tool for me to briefly write some stuff out here for reference now, in the future, during some off the wall travels, whatever. Maybe others will also find some of the content helpful as well.
Anyway, welcome and if it is a thousand years from now and you are seeing this. Hi. Enjoy, and welcome to a snapshot of me in 2010.