I then hooked up the Magnavox Digital to Analog converter box between the antenna and the TV because it had a signal strength indicator. I then rotated the antenna for each channel that I was interested in in 20 degree increments and tested signal strengths. I then went back and tested the “strong ranges” of the antenna direction and fine tuned them.

I know what you are saying in that AtenntaWeb.org or TVFool.com has the information on direction of the broadcast stations, but surprisingly some of the directions were off a small bit, and for channel 46, it was way off.

CHANNEL / COMPASS DIRECTION / SIGNAL STRENGTH
———————————————————————-
– 2 / 220 / 20
– 5 / 240 / 30
– 8 / It doesn’t matter the direction because it’s always strong
– 11 / It doesn’t matter the direction because it’s always strong w signals in the 70s
– 46 / 340 / 19

I need to go back through some of the other channels and get signal strengths but I’m fairly pleased to get the major channels.

I needed to do a channel scan on my TV to have it pick up these “best” signal strengths. Unfortunately, you can’t “Add” a digital channel to my TV one at a time. I’d like to point the antenna and then add “46-1″. Nope. You can only Activate and deactivate the channels it has found. I’m not sure if this is because it is a “cheap” digital TV, or whether this is common.

To do the channel scan, I took the Magnavox converter out of the loop. I pointed my antenna rotor to the strongest position for Channel 2. Luckily Channel 5 is pointed in roughly the same direction as Channel 2. I then started the channel scan. Another unfortunate fact is that during the channel scan the TV is not telling me which channels it is scanning. It only tells me the percentage that it is complete. When I *guessed* it was about to scan Channel 46, I turned my rotator to point to 340 degrees and hoped for the best.

Sure enough, when I checked the channel listings, it had picked up Channel 2, Channel 5, and it got Channel 46 too! Success. I now need to go back and turn off the analog channels for the channels that I have HD signal for.

We were watching some sports on Channel 11 and the picture was amazing. I’m liking this over the air HD broadcast!

I have Comcast Internet which has blocked port 25 in sending email, and now allows port 50. That port can change any day now, and without warning, no thanks to spammers. I upgraded my MEPIS Linux to version 8 last night and it went without a hitch. I was configuring Thunderbird for email and I could receive email, but not send. I knew that I needed to add a TCP port of 50 to Guarddog as you can see in this picture.

The second part I had forgotten. You have to go back to the PROTOCOL tab of Guarddog and go into the “User Defined” section to enable that protocol. Click the “Apply” button and all of a sudden Thunderbird is as happy as a clam.

I hope this helps someone else out on the Intertubes. That someone might be me, after I’ve forgotten this in a couple of months.

- rmmod tulip
- rmmod dmfe
- modprobe dmfe

“Are you sure you want me to open that?” I say in a playful voice.
“Yes, just open the box Dad!” says he.
“I’m not sure I should open that box.” I say purposefully being annoying.

My son sighs and rolls his eyes. My annoying behavior is having the desired effect!

And then my 9 year old son says this:
“sudo Open My Lego box”

I was powerless. I had to obey his command. I was laughing full out while I did it, but I opened his Lego box.

I’m a proud dad.

I must say that I haven’t ever seen this one before. I’m transitioning from an XP Pro machine to a new Vista machine. I’m now trying to debug through a VCX and … this. What gives?!?!

SW Fox Conference

The Linux Action Show

Along with the name change  issue, the road signs are miniscule and far off the road.  Forget it if it is night time, and you’re looking for a particular turn.  Add to that that the road signs have often been mangled by trucks taking too sharp of a corner, and you might as well give up.

My friend suggested that I check with Garmin to see if I get a free update to the maps, and I did!  Yeah Garmin!

I had to update my GPS software however and it only has software for Windows and Mac.  Small boo for Garmin.

They allow for the download of an EXE that is 2G in size and allow that to happen through the Firefox browser.  Yeah Garmin!

They require a downloader piece of software that wouldn’t work with Firefox, but did work through Internet Explorer.  Boo Garmin.

After downloading the software, I can run it from my network server, but it takes forever to extract.  Hmmm.

After validating my software with my Nuvi 350 GPS, it then says that I need more space on my C:\ drive and it doesn’t allow me to specify a different drive.  Boo Garmin.

It says that I need about 6G of space on my C:\ drive.  I clean and clean and risk instability, but I couldn’t get enough space.  My F:\ partition has enough space but that’s not an option for the software.  Boo Garmin.

My son’s computer normally boots to MEPIS Linux, but he’s also got the remnants of Windows and he’s got just enough space for this process; 9G free.  Whew.  Lucky!

After about 30 minutes of extracting the file over the network, and an hour of updates, I’ve got my new maps.  Yeah Garmin!

Dang, that was a long hard road to travel to get me to travel our long hard roads.  I’ll let you know if the maps are any better.  My old Nuvi thinks the road in front of my neighborhood is one way and likes to send me a crazy path.  I hope it’s better now.

However, I’ve taken to adding borders to the images. Typically I’m adding a white inner border, with a colored border that matches the web site color scheme. Thumbnailer doesn’t have this capability however. At least not the version that I’ve purchased.

After having enough, I finally stumbled upon the solution: MOGRIFY which is part of the ImageMagick suite of tools.

Here are some examples. To add a white border to the images:mogrify -border 10x10 -bordercolor '#FFFFFF' *.jpg
I will then add a thin yello border:mogrify -border 2x2 -bordercolor '#FFCC33' *.jpg

Here are some other variations that I haven’t tried just yet, but I found it on some other sites. What could go wrong?

To convert a set of images from PNG to JPG:mogrify -format jpeg -quality 85 *.png

To resize a set of images: mogrify -resize 500x375 -quality 80 +profile *.jpg

To force your image to a certain size with resizing:mogrify -geometry 400x200 *.jpg

I hope this post helps someone out. Let me know if you found it useful.

Kevin Ragsdale, FoxForward “Best Presenter” winner, is running for congress.  His top priority just happens to be my top priority for this election: our budget crisis.

I’ll be keeping my eye out to see what Kevin’s stance is on the Fair Tax legislation.  There’s nothing like bringing Trillions of dollars back into the US economy and giving power back to the people, like the Fair Tax.

Good luck Kevin!!!  Give ‘em heck!