April 7th, 2011 / No Comments » / by admin
A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a fairly obvious benefit from the recent advances in compact fluorescent bulbs — the increased ease of starting seedlings indoors. Green thumbs have been kickstarting their grow seasons under fluorescents forever, but usually that meant buying large, cumbersome ballasts for relatively little money or paying too much for weak little tubes. But now that we have a bewildering array of choices in compact but powerful bulbs, building a mini greenhouse is much easier. A quick trip to Home Depot netted me four sockets for $2 a piece and a a 4-pack of 23w bulbs for $7. I also grabbed some 1/2″ insulation with reflective covering (a 4′ x 8′ sheet cost $9, but aluminum foils works just as well). I already had a wooden enclosure leftover from an abandoned DIY projector build, but a cheap rubbermaid tub with some air vents might have actually worked even better. Throw in some leftover wiring (you guys do cut off and keep the cords from every piece of electronics you ever throw out, right?) and Eureka! Instant grow house that burns less energy than one 100w incandescent.
As you can see, mine is still a little unfinished. I had planned to wire in some exhaust fans to keep air circulating and the plants cool, but these bulbs put out so little heat that I haven’t found it completely necessary yet (though it is recommended).
A couple of things to keep in mind:
1. Make sure you buy the “Daylight” bulbs, with an advertised Kelvin rating of at least 5000 (but preferably 6500k). That will insure your little babies get the proper spectrum of light.
2. Make sure you keep your wiring consistent. Like most, the lamp sockets I bought (Westinghouse 70430 Medium Screw Base Socket
) had different colored screws for the wiring and some good instructions: two-pronged lamp cord always has ribs or white tracers on one strand. Wire that strand to the silver terminal and the other to the brass one. You can daisy chain the wiring from one socket to another, but be careful (KEEP EVERYTHING UNPLUGGED UNTIL YOU ARE FINISHED AND DOUBLE CHECK YOUR WORK).
3. Get yourself a cheap lamp timer and keep the lights on for 16 hours a day.
4. It’s best to keep the bulbs as close to the growing plants as possible. I rigged up a little system with some s-hooks and a cheap chain to raise and lower the “light platform” as necessary but if you plan to use the same size pots and transplant the seedlings fairly soon after germination you can probably get away with a fixed height.
Posted in: Just Do It (Yourself)
Tags: compact flourescents, gardening, seedlings
March 31st, 2011 / No Comments » / by admin
If you’re like me, times are tight and there’s seldom enough scratch to justify concert tickets, parking, a babysitter, and a few beers. What’s the next best thing? Some homebrews and free feeds of Austin City Limits. My wife and I were lucky enough to catch The Monsters of Folk live at the National when they came through Richmond, but if you weren’t so fortunate, check out this set on ACL (“Soul Singer in a Session Band” is a personal fave; few contemporary lyricists can match the topical poetry of Conor Oberst).
Watch the full episode. See more Austin City Limits.
Posted in: In Case You Missed It
Tags: Austin City Limits, Monsters of Folk
March 31st, 2011 / No Comments » / by admin
In my last post I talked about how easy it is to get free HD over the air, assuming you have a computer running Windows Media Center (or some Mac/Linux alternative), an antenna, a tuner, and you live close enough to the broadcast towers to get reception. What I neglected to mention is that you only need the computer if you want to record or timeshift programming. By FCC mandate, all HDTVs over 25 inches must come equipped with a built-in ATSC (e.g. Over-the-Air) tuner. Even if all you have is an older TV, for about $40 you can pick up one of the tuners/converter boxes the govt. was giving away a few years ago. Now, the quality of tuners and their respective quality of reception may vary, but if you have a HDTV sold after 2006 and only care about live TV, it might be worth your time to experiment with what channels you can receive for free. You’ll still need an antenna. Places like Radioshack sell them for about $30 and up, but as mentioned in my last post, if you don’t care what it looks like (or can hide it in your attic) you can make your own for about $5. Basically it’s a simple as connecting the antenna to the TV with some coaxial cable
and using the TV’s setup menu to run a channel scan. Assuming you are within 20 miles or so of a major urban center you should be able to get a few networks and a PBS channel or two at the least.
But what if you don’t want to bother with broadcast television at all, and prefer to use the Internet to get all your programming? More and more websites are popping up all the time that deliver video feeds.
Here are just a few:
1. Hulu – the biggest source to date.
2. PBS – tons of quality content.
3. ABC- Featured full episodes.
4. CBS - Featured full episodes.
5. NBC – Featured full episodes.
6. ESPN – Live feeds of selected events.
7. Google Video – Do a search. Who knows what you’ll find?
8. Netflix – If you already have an account, try their online streaming for no extra charge. They are adding more and more programming all the time. If you don’t have an account, you have a number of options, including unlimited streaming for as little as $7.99 a month.
Posted in: Tech Checks
Tags: free TV, Hulu, Netflix, Online TV
March 23rd, 2011 / No Comments » / by admin
My relationship with cable TV wasn’t quite as long or as deeply entrenched as it is for some in our culture — my parents never had it until I was nearly grown and no longer living at home, and for most of my early adult years I was too poor to afford it — but it was fairly intense. For the last ten years or so, if I was in my house during the hours of 8-10 pm, you can be pretty certain I was sitting in front of a television. Usually I was just channel surfing–endlessly searching for something worth watching. Basically killing time. But there were just enough shows or programs on certain days at certain hours to keep me paying the cable man every month. Truth is, I didn’t have any great epiphany about how much time I was wasting, I just got completely fed up with Verizon’s crappy customer service and endless pricing shenanigans. So I set out to see whether the computers that were already serving up all my music and film could also handle television reception and DVR duties. For free. Well, in all honestly, I knew they could, but could I make it work. The answer is Yes. And more easily than I thought possible. I won’t belabor the process as there are plenty of sites out there devoted to the subject, but I will say that at least 5 criteria need to be met before you can think about cutting the cord (assuming you want to continue viewing any TV at all).
#1: You need a computer running Vista MCE or Windows 7
If you are a Linux or Mac whiz, this doesn’t apply. There are applications for both platforms that work just as well, if not better, than Windows Media Center, for handling television tuning and recording but WMC currently does it best for the average Joe. Now, when most people hear the word computer, they think of something that costs $500-$1000, if not more. That’s no longer true. Use the little orange ad on the right of this page to head over to Newegg and search for “Barebones / Mini Computers” under the Computer Hardware tab and you will find that an attractive (read: small) and capable PC can be purchased for less than $200. Given what most pay for cable, that pays for itself in 2-3 months.
#2: You need to be OK with getting only 5 or 6 channels.
Basically, this means the major networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and PBS (assuming those short-sighted Republicans don’t do away with it entirely). No ESPN, No MTV, No Spike or People with Strange Maladies Network. But it is High Definition, and it’s Free. My kids are just getting to an age of awareness that I was worried PBS wouldn’t cut it, but I was wrong. I record 2-3 PBS shows for them during the day, and that’s all they need. In a future post, I will outline a number of ways to fill in the gaps of your missing channels.
#3: You need to live within 20-30 miles of the broadcast towers of whatever stations you hope to receive.
Go to antennaweb.org and type in your home address. It will tell you what channels you are likely to receive, as well as what direction to point your antenna. Which brings me to number 4.
#4: You need an antenna.
But it certainly doesn’t have to be fancy or even store-bought. I made the one in the picture above with a piece of scrap wood, some old hangers, screws, and a 50 cent 75 to 300 Ohm Matching Transformer
. Google “make your own antenna” and you’ll get a dozen sites on how to do it, but here’s a good one to start with.
#5: You need a NTSC / OTA tuner four your PC.
One of the most popular and dependable external tuners is the HD HomeRun
, which allows up to 2 computers in your house to share the same tuner over your home network (or allows you to watch one show while recording another). Those run about $130, though. This USB tuner
will do the job just fine for $25.
Posted in: Just Do It (Yourself), Tech Checks
Tags: free TV, HDHomerun, OTA, Windows Media Center
March 22nd, 2011 / No Comments » / by admin
It has been nearly a year since I wrote something for this site, which says as much about my ever shifting interests and passions as it does about my shameful lack of self discipline. “Entertainment Technology” just isn’t a deep or varied enough topic to generate daily, or even weekly, posts. At least not for me. So, from here on out, Portecho will cover a much broader range of subjects: home brewing, woodworking, the writing life, gardening, film, music, graphic design, etc., etc., etc. If there’s to be a central theme at all, it will be how to use your brain and hands (the first, best, and cheapest form of technology) to make or grow or better things in your own life.
But, in the interests of continuity, I won’t completely abandon my old subject(s). One of the things I accomplished during the year that I wasn’t writing for Portecho was to finally cut the cord on cable TV. In my next post I’ll talk a little bit about how to get television for free, over the air, the way our grandparents did.
p.s. the picture above is one of my new hop plants poking through the soil. Lots of beer and gardening talk to come…
Posted in: Uncategorized
April 12th, 2010 / No Comments » / by admin
Dozens of software companies have developed applications to circumvent copy protection on DVDs. Most of those based in the U.S. have been sued out of existence by the MPAA. However, a few lone rebels positioned outside America continue to provide the tools necessary. Listed below are the best of the best.
AnyDVD (and AnyDVD HD) – Ask any hardcore (Windows-based) HTPC aficionado what software deserves their MVP award and nine out of ten will say AnyDVD. This venerable suite of applications is under constant development and until recently one could acquire a lifetime of updates for a very reasonable price. Not only will AnyDVD allow you to rip a DVD with one (right) click, it also works tirelessly to break copy protection on-the-fly, meaning you never have to worry about the HDCP gremlins that plague a lot of users. Another must-have features is AnyDVD’s ability to skip all adverts and FBI warnings and jump straight to the movie. It can also slow down your DVD drive to reduce noise and the HD version can even copy BluRay disks. Using a computer as your main video source can sometimes prove a minefield of configuration woes. AnyDVD stomps through that bomb zone with admirable aplomb.
DVDFab – One tricky thing about DVD ripping, especially for those who plan to make a hard-copy backup, is the fact that most DVDs are larger in size than the 4.7GB available on a standard, single-layer blank disc. No doubt this was a deliberate agreement between the MPAA and the manufacturers. For several years now, consumers have had the option to buy dual-layer burners and dual-layer blank discs that have the capacity to duplicate every DVD on the market, but the blanks are significantly more expensive and never really caught on like their single-layer counterparts. In steps DVDFab. Picking up where DVDShrink left off, DVDFab not only cracks the copy protection on most any DVD available, it can also compress the resultant files so that they fit on a standard blank. The relatively minor effect of this compression on overall video quality is a trade-off that most users will be willing to make. Recent versions of DVDFAb also offer the ability to rip DVDs to various handheld player formats, and DVDFab HD can also rip BluRays and HD DVDs. Just this week, a new but somewhat limited version of DVDFab HD is now available for free.
Handbrake – One of two open-source entries on this list (MactheRipper is the other), and the only cross-platform option, Handbrake is mainly a transcoder, meaning is specializes in ripping DVDs to another compression format, primarily x264. Like most open-source apps, Handbrake has a fairly active team of developers and an avid community of fans. Definitely worth the look for those who dig the open source scene.
MactheRipper – As its name implies, MtR is the only option on this list specifically for Apple-eaters. Also open source and much ballyhooed. Somewhat mysteriously, its main domain appears to be down, but pod people can still grab it at the provided link.
DVDShrink – Any survey of DVD rippers would be incomplete without mention of DVDShrink, one of the first and most popular free rippers ever coded. Unfortunately, development was halted when its makers received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice. As such, its official site no longer offers it for download, but follow the link above and you will fine that which you seek, grasshopper. Or just click here.
Posted in: Audio/Video Gear, Handy Little Apps, Tech Checks
Tags: anydvd, dvd ripping software, dvdfab, rippers
March 31st, 2010 / No Comments » / by admin
I guess the first question we need to ask when considering how to build a personal movie archive/server is whether the practice is even legal. Well, as with most things, it depends on what country you live in, but for the sake of argument let’s assume that you live in the U.S., like me.
Ripping DVDs in the U.S. is a tricky question, legally speaking. As with audio, judges have ruled it Fair Use to make a copy of a movie you own. However, in most cases the only way to do so is to break the copyright protection schemes implemented on the DVD or BluRay disc. There are a number of applications available to help you do just that (and we’ll be discussing them in a future post), but if you search for the software designer’s base of operations you will no doubt notice that they work out of some Caribbean island or Eastern bloc country. Why? Because Congress has ruled it illegal to circumvent copyright protection on video media. Hence the scary red FBI warnings that linger overlong on your screen like a scarlet indictment.
In practice, however, it’s more or less a matter of don’t ask, don’t tell. So long as you are not ripping the movie for duplication and sale in some Chinese flea market, or electronic distribution via bittorrent, you are not likely to run afoul of the law. If the FBI were to prosecute every individual who ripped one of their kids’ DVDs to watch on an iPod or to make a copy so that the original doesn’t get scratched up, the courts would be tied up for centuries. The truth is that not a single case has been filed against anyone for Fair Use practices.
Posted in: Tech Checks
Tags: DVD ripping, law
March 30th, 2010 / No Comments » / by admin
Recently, I’ve been writing mostly about music, and how to rip, format, and tag it in order to build a well-organized and flexible digital collection for playback on HTPCs, client boxes, or mp3 players. But what about movies? What if you want a video archive as well as an audio one? Six years ago, when my twins were born, I quickly discovered how useful it could be to have a Baby Einstein video ready to play at the press of a button, without any need to find the actual DVD or hope that it hadn’t been scratched or gunked up with rice cereal. Ever since I’ve been trying to keep abreast of the bewildering array of options for ripping, storing, and playing movies on a computer. Over the next few posts, I will try to cover the basics for those of you who have always coveted this feature of the modern PC but never quite known how to implement it.
Posted in: Tech Checks
Tags: movie collection, ripping DVDs
January 7th, 2010 / No Comments » / by admin
Time to pick up where I left off before the holidays… So, you’ve downloaded yourself a free ripper, decided on a format, and now you’re wondering how to go about adding those pesky file tags you keep hearing about. But wait, what are they and why are they needed? Simply put, tags (as they relate to music files) are extra bits of meta data that get added to music files so that playback or cataloging software can identify and display pertinent information about the file: artist, title, album, track number, genre, etc. Say your music file is a piece of candy — tags do not alter the taste of the candy, they just provide the packaging. Without the packaging, your brain (or your computer) has no idea what’s inside the wrapper. Nobody wants to pop an Eminem in their mouth thinking it’s an Ice Cube, do they?
Bad metaphors aside, tagging is absolutely critical for maintaining a tidy and smoothly running digital music archive. Not every music format includes tags, so make sure you choose one that does. MP3s have the most robust tagging support. If you go lossless, FLAC support tags, to a certain extent.
The best rippers rip and tag in one step. Programs like iTunes and Windows Media Player can do both and for most people, they will suffice. Problems can arise, however, when you don’t like the choices those programs have made. Sometimes a tagger is inconsistent: one album gets tagged by “Medeski, Martin, and Wood” and the next one is tagged by “Medeski Martin & Wood.” When you go to sort your music, those albums are not listed as by the same artist. It’s not always easy to figure out how to change the tags they have added and once you have, some apps (like iTunes) have a nasty habit of changing them back without your permission (* see below). That is why I recommend a dedicated tagging program. I use Tag & Rename — it has great features, is easy to use, and only costs $29.95. But if you want something free, go with Mp3tag, which offers 90% of the functionality of Tag & Rename. Despite its name, Mp3tag can handle a plethora of formats.
That’s probably enough about tags for now, but one last tip: one of the most important tags is often the least consistently implemented: and that’s the genre tag. Many tagging programs come with their own subset of genre tags and they don’t all match. The result is a scattered mish-mash of genres, so that (for example) when you go to make a cool mix of all your World Music artists, you have to search through multiple genres like World, World Beat, Latin, International, and Mongol Throat Singing. So just like you should choose a single file format, you should also create a set number of genres (the fewer the better) and consistently stick to them. Otherwise, you loose the very utility that tags were created to provide.
( * You can prevent this from happening by tagging the files properly and then changing their setting to “Read Only,” which prevents any further changes. In Windows you can do that by selecting the files in question, right-click, properties, and check the “Read Only” box. Just remember that you’ll need to uncheck it if you ever want to make any further changes yourself. )
Posted in: Handy Little Apps, Tech Checks
Tags: music file tags, taggers, tagging files
November 24th, 2009 / 1 Comment » / by admin
In my previous article I suggested three good CD rippers for digitizing your music collection. I used MP3 as the default format (and I’ll explain why) but there are actually a plethora of choices. Today I’ll be discussing which ones make the most sense and why.
There are literally dozens of digital music formats. This article could be ten thousand words long and still not cover all the options. I’m going to save everyone a lot of boring reading and cut to the chase. Only two formats make sense: FLAC and MP3. Choose the former if you are an audiophile purist and want a perfect duplicate of your CDs, utterly and objectively indistinguishable from the original. You’ll need more hard drive space, but space is cheap these days. Choose the latter if your hi-fi gear cost less than $2,000, you are humble enough to admit that you do not have golden ears, or are willing to take a simple test to tell whether you can hear the difference. You may also want to opt for mp3 if you have an mp3 player, as maintaining two separate music archives is a huge pain in the butt.
I can hear a lot of you Pod people screaming at me, but what about Apple Lossless? What about AAC? Sure, that’s what Apple wants you to use, but why? How many other pieces of gear can you name that support Apple Lossless? (And if you have an iPod Nano, even that won’t support it.) You think your next car will come with a built-in AAC player? FLAC and MP3 are open source, more or less (MP3-compression is a patented, technically speaking, but licensing is loosely policed). Which means manufacturers don’t have to pay anyone to build compatibility into their gear. Which means a heck of a lot more hardware on the market capable of handling those formats than the narrowly defined ones Apple promotes. With respect to all the hard work that went into developing Ogg-Vorbis, Monkey’s Audio, Real Audio, WMA, Musepack, and all the rest — the same Occam’s Razor applies. FLAC support is far from universal, but it’s a lot more common than any other open-source, lossless option, and FLAC supports tagging — a critical difference (see tomorrow’s article for why).
The truth is I used to be a lossless snob. I saved everything in FLAC and made the hardline decision that any compression was evil and mp3s were not sophisticated enough to feed my cultivated ear. It took me a few years before I realized the prejudice I had against mp3s was based on the few, low bitrate examples I had heard. By that time, I had also acquired an mp3 player and hated the inherent inefficiency of maintaining all my music in two different formats. So I took a simple A/B test, easily conducted with the excellent, free, and very low-overhead player Foobar2000. The results proved that I simply could not reliably hear the different between a lossless FLAC file and one encoded in VBR (variable bit-rate) mp3. To err on the side of caution, I opted to use a constant bitrate of 320 kpbs — the highest setting available. The end result? Over a thousand albums, comprising about 140GB of space, and an archive that is as easily accessible by my mp3 player(s) as it is by my whole house audio system.
Now, a few disclaimers: If your needs dictate a possible future conversion to another format, or are approaching CD ripping as an archiving process, and are saving this music for posterity, do not use mp3. There’s no going back without degradation. But for most of us, mp3 is the right choice.
Posted in: Tech Checks
Tags: bitrate, choosing an audio format, mp3
