I was pleased at how easily Ubuntu 11.4 installed on my old Dell Latitude D600, but the wireless didn’t work immediately.

Thankfully, I just had to search for “firmware-b43-installer” in the Ubuntu Software Center, and that did it!  By the way, I had to reinstall it after letting the software upgrade tool upgrade me to 11.10.  The upgrade generated a bunch of errors, but it appears that they were all related to the wireless.

However, I couldn’t adjust the screen brightness with the special keys.  I tried looking for Dell Quickset for this hardware and OS combo, but no luck.

It turns out that installing the Vista video driver from Dell did the trick.  Now the screen brightness keys work!

I was about to start timing the calls and packet sniffing when I found this thread that suggests the command

no ip nat service sip udp port 5060

which apparently turns off some of the special NAT treatment for SIP traffic.  No more dropped calls!

I tried the Group Policy and registry solutions that I found online, but with no success.

Here’s how I finally fixed it:

1. Run a Command Prompt as administrator, then “sfc /scannow”
2. Find the sfc log file at C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log and search it for “cannot repair”.

I discovered that 6 .dll files from C:\Windows\system32 were messed up.  I found a nice explanation here as to how to extract the files from the Windows 7 installation DVD using 7-Zip, which I already like for other zipping and unzipping tasks.

Unfortunately, you can’t just copy the files into C:\Windows\system32.  Here’s what I had to do to replace the .dll files:

1. Extract the files from the installation DVD into a local folder, such as c:\extracted-files
2. Boot the installation DVD, choose to repair Windows, and get to a Command Prompt
3. Use the command line to copy the .dll files from c:\extracted-files to c:\windows\system32
4. Reboot

That did it!  I don’t know how the files were corrupted, but replacing them got the system icons back.

Long a fan of AutoHotkey, I found that it comes with a compiler that can take any AutoHotkey script and turn it into an exe!  It was easy to create a script to send a backspace character (“Send {BS}”) and then compile that into this executable.

Then I used the streamzap application to assign one of the remote’s colored buttons to the backspace.exe program, and I can navigate Boxee!

facebook error

I was creating a facebook app and trying to host the canvas URL on my 1and1 hosting account.  Even though I could browse directly to the index.html and it would render fine, I would get an error when trying to browse to it via apps.facebook.com.

“Method Not Allowed.  The requested method POST is not allowed for the URL …”

Although I have not encountered this problem on other web hosts, it appears that 1and1′s web server is set up a little differently.  When you browse to the canvas page via apps.facebook.com, facebook sends some POST variables to your site.  1and1 doesn’t allow an html file to render when POST variables are sent.

A simple workaround is to rename your index.html to index.php. That makes 1and1 think that the POST variables are expected.

I’ve been frustrated by Windows 7 Media Center not finding listings for the broadcast stations in my zip code.  I have an antenna and Comcast cable, and would like to be able to record from both.  When I program Media Center with my zip code, the broadcast listings show 3 channels (out of approximately 40).

A friend told me that he switched over to Indianapolis’ zip code and was able to get broadcast listings.  I tried that, but then my cable company wasn’t offered.  And it takes at least 10 minutes to switch zip codes and see what happens.

I finally realized that I could go to zap2it.com (the provider of TV listings to Microsoft), try different zip codes, and try to find one that has broadcast and Comcast listings.  I found the zip code map at maps.huge.info/zip.htm and tried 46060 first.  It works!  I finally have listings for all of the channels that I care about.

The situation was confusing, because some people could log in with their Windows credentials, but others couldn’t.

Either ask your user to change their password to something at least 7 characters long (which is obviously the right way to go), or change the default minimum password length in web.config.  The parameter there is “minRequiredPasswordLength”.

CloudBerry S3 Explorer is a free tool that lets you transfer files to and from S3, and it works for much larger files, too!

The default login page is shown at left.  I don’t like how the buttons are stacked, I’d like to add some hints for users about how to use the Windows Login, and I’d ideally like people to be able to hit <enter> when they’re using Windows Login.  I doubt I’ll figure that last one out before publishing this post.  Right now, you can hit <enter> when using the Standard login, but hitting <enter> with Windows Login causes a “Login failed” message.  I’m guessing that the <enter> is triggering a hidden Standard login button instead of the visible Windows login button.

Step 1: Create a new login page so that other content can be added more easily

Following the tips at dnngallery.net, I created a new page, added the Account Login module, and changed the Site Settings so that this page is the Login Page for the site.

Step 2: Reformat the login module

Since we’re allowing Standard and Windows logins, we need to edit two different Login.ascx files: one in DesktopModules\AuthenticationServices\DNN, and one in AuthenticationServices\ActiveDirectory.  I changed the table width to 240, aligned the Windows login parts to the left to match the Standard login, and added helptext = “” to the labels to get rid of the little help icons (I found that tip here).

I also wanted it to be more obvious when someone clicked on Windows Login, so I edited AuthenticationServices\ActiveDirectory\App_LocalResources\Login.ascx.resx to change the label on the User Name box to “Keynote User Name” and the label on the button to “Windows Login”.

Step 3: Add other content to the page

I added a text/html module to the page with some login tips.

Here’s the final result:

The latest issue is that it appeared that my Recorded TV was gone.  I could see the files through Windows Explorer and even double-click on them to play them, but when I would choose “Recorded TV” in Media Center, it would look like there wasn’t anything there.  The error message said “Windows Media Center could not find any shared libraries on your network or there is no content in those libraries …”

I finally realized that the “Sort by” tool at the top had gotten moved to “Shared”.  Of course, I don’t have any recorded TV shared from other machines, so the list is blank:

All we had to do was change that indicator at the top to any other sort method, and the programs appeared.  Duh!

I have some flv videos that I need to make available to our staff, and I don’t want to put them on a public site like YouTube.  I’m new at hosting streaming videos, and didn’t realize that people won’t be able to skip around in the video unless the server supports RTMP streaming or you figure out “PHP fake streaming”.

Then I found that Amazon CloudFront supports RTMP.  It’s pretty easy to set it up, until I started working with playlists.  I wanted people to be able to choose between four different videos in a single player.  It took quite a bit of experimentation to get the configuration parameters correct.  Here are the steps:

1. Sign up for Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), create a “bucket”, and upload your flv videos.  Set the permissions on the files to allow everyone to open/download.  I also created a folder called “videos” to keep things organized.  Let’s assume that we have “video1.flv” and “video2.flv” in the folder “videos”.  These files can be accessed with links like

   http://s3.amazonaws.com/bucketname/videos/video1.flv

2. Get the JW Player and upload the files to your S3 bucket.  I put them in a folder called “player”.
3. Sign up for Amazon Cloudfront from the AWS console and create a Distribution, Delivery Method = Streaming, that points to your S3 bucket.  Your distribution will have a domain name like s1234567890123.cloudfront.net.
4. At this point you can test everything by using the JW Player Setup Wizard.  Change height and width in “Embed parameters” to match your video.  Change file in “File properties” to “videos/video1.flv”.  Change streamer in “External Communication” to “rtmp://s1234567890123.cloudfront.net/cfx/st” (note the added “cfx/st”.  Now you should be able to click the Update/Preview link and try out your settings.  The code can be copied into an html file (like “cloudtest.html”), the html uploaded into the player folder, and then you can browse to

   http://s3.amazonaws.com/bucketname/player/cloudtest.html

   for the next test.

The next step is to build a playlist file that will let people choose from several videos.  The JW Player documentation here shows that you can choose from several XML feed formats.  I threw a dart at the wall and chose ATOM.  The only information that I wanted to include was the video title and the URL to the flv file.  The trick is figuring out what pieces of the RTMP path, file path, and file name go in what places.

Here’s what worked for me.  The folder and file name go into the playlist file, along with the “provider” type of rtmp:

The Amazon CloudFront RTMP path goes into the player configuration in your html file:

Note some other aspects of the html:  the height needs to be increased to make room for the playlist.  Also, the full path to the playlist needs to be specified.

Hopefully this will help you work through the process faster than I did!

And check out the rest of the 8BIT Network.

That machine was too slow to deal with HDTV, so we just bought a Dell Outlet XPS desktop with more/faster/better everything (if you haven’t checked out the Dell Outlet, I recommend it).

So, it should have been as easy as this:

1. Install the WinTV-HVR-1600 card (analog and digital tuners) and load the drivers
2. Plug the Comcast cable box into the analog tuner and the antenna into the digital tuner
3. Plug in the Streamzap remote receiver and load the drivers
4. Power it all up, configure the guide in Media Center, and record some TV!

Hah!

The first “gotcha” was the capacitors on the motherboard between the PCI slot and the side of the case.  There is so much squeezed onto the WinTV-HVR-1600 card that the caps kept the card from being able to seat in the PCI slot.  Hopefully I won’t need the RCA audio in, since I pulled out my soldering iron and removed an audio in jack from the WinTV-HVR-1600.  It fit!

The second “gotcha” was the apparent lack of 64-bit drivers for the Streamzap remote that I love (I actually just use the receiver with a Logitech Harmony remote).  I emailed Streamzap and started Googling.  I was impressed by how quickly they got back to me with these instructions, which I had just found with Google.  I knew that 64-bit Windows would be an issue, but so far so good.

The biggest (and not completely solved) frustrations came with the configuration of Windows 7 Media Center.  When I told Media Center (MC) that I had an external cable box, it said “I don’t see an IR blaster” and didn’t let me proceed.  I don’t care if I have to tune the cable box manually — I just want to record from it once in a while.  Why can’t I just tell MC what listings to pull it, and tell it that they’re all on channel 3 on the analog tuner?  So I’ve ordered an IR blaster.  There is a virtual IR blaster driver out there, but not apparently for 64-bit.

I was able to tell MC that I want to configure the tuners manually and just set up the antenna, but that wasn’t the end of my frustration.  Apparently, the “digital terrestrial” lineup just contains one of the channels in the Indianapolis area.  How is this possible?  To get anything in the guide besides that one channel (which I don’t watch), I had to use the wonderful Guide Tool application from 1geek1tool.  This tool let me load the local cable lineup and match the stations to my antenna channels to get at least some listings.  Unfortunately, there are quite a few antenna stations available here that the local cable company doesn’t rebroadcast, so I’m still missing a lot of listings.  What gives with the lame terrestrial listings in Media Center?

I love the look of Windows 7 Media Center.  I love the Internet TV plugin.  I love that I can now record and play back HDTV (on the channels that I have listings for).  Now I need to wait for the IR blaster to show up, and see if I can find a solution for the over-the-air listing problem.

Many thanks to the people who run Hacking Windows 7 Media Center for all the great tips and utilities, especially the info on Media Center Studio, which lets us tweak the default menus.

Other great resources and answers can be found at The Green Button.

Stay tuned for part 2…

Everything was working fine until I had an html form with some multiline textarea input fields.  I wanted multiple lines of user input to go into a single cell in the Google spreadsheet.  When you’re manually entering data into a Google spreadsheet, you just use ctrl-enter to move to the next line inside a cell.

Some documentation said to put a linefeed (ascii 10, or “\n” in perl) between the lines, and it really is that simple.  Where I got hung up was in thinking that I already had a linefeed in the form field.  It turns out that I had carriage return + linefeed, which the Google spreadsheet API doesn’t like.  All you have to do is strip out the carriage return (“\r” in perl) and it will work fine.

I might not have had this problem with browsers running on Mac or linux, but I’m primarily dealing with browsers on Windows.

The fix is pretty simple.  Just edit the .htaccess file in the blog’s root directory and add the line Options +FollowSymlinks. I put it after <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> because that was suggested by the article that I found on the interwebs.

I don’t know why I’ve only had to do this with Bluehost, but their tech support told me that they don’t have any plans to fix whatever the underlying issue is.

A little research revealed that you sometimes get this error when unpacking to a hosting account’s root folder.  You can get past this by unpacking to a subdirectory and then moving the files to the root.  It looks to me like my host, 1and1, wasn’t allowing the kickstart scripts to write to the logs folder.  I couldn’t figure out how to fix the permissions, so I used the subdirectory workaround.  After unpacking everything to a subfolder and then moving it to the root, I just needed to change two paths in configuration.php and the site was working.  I never was able to move logs/index.html to the main logs folder, but the site is working fine without it.

I did need to follow one important tip in the Akeeba Backup manual and force “binary mode” when transferring the site’s .jpa archive file down from the original host and up to the new site.

I think I’ve narrowed the issue down to the fact that we used to have a proxy server.? Even though I removed the group policy that configured Internet settings to look for the proxy, and IE and Firefox can reach the Internet just fine, the “.DEFAULT” user section of the registry is still pointing to the proxy server, and Comodo won’t update.? Nothing that I’ve found will change the .DEFAULT user Internet settings — I edit the registry, and then it reverts back.

I found a registry hack to turn on per-machine proxy settings for XP.? That did the trick!? Here’s what goes in a .reg file that you can double-click to import:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]
"ProxySettingsPerUser"=dword:00000000

Now I just need to see if a similar fix is available for Vista…

It seems to work for Vista, too!

It turns out that DNN uses a “fileticket” parameter in the file link URLs, and mod_auth_cas uses a “ticket” parameter.? But mod_auth_cas was mistakenly stripping out DNN’s fileticket parameters.? A DNN URL would look like this: “/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=DBDQlsksjlefwgb&tabid=70″.? After going through the reverse proxy, mod_auth_cas had mangled it to “/LinkClick.aspx?filetabid=70″.

Someone involved with mod_auth_cas pointed me to the bug tracker, and there was a fix for the URL mangling.? You need to get the latest source files, compile them, and the issue is gone!