Paul A. Luzzi

April 13, 2014

Setup a new Google Chromecast today.   Pretty neat device. Basically, this is the process :

• Insert the Chromecast device into HDMI4 on my TV
• The device needs “external” power. It can come from the included a/c adapter, or the included usb adapter. I needed the long USB extension AND the a/c power adapter as I didn’t have a free usb.
• Had to set my laptop network adapter settings from my normal static ip to dhcp.
• Switch the tv to input4, which sends a signal to the device – and it found chromecast.
• Navigated my laptop browser to http://www.google.com/chromecast/setup
• Downloaded the setup app.
• Run the setup app on the laptop
• Note : this process changed my wireless settings to “chromeast5128” sid (which is the default name of the device) – it then found the Chromecast, and connected to it.
• The setup app stepped me through setting up the device on my own network
• Note : the setup does not let me choose an IP.
• Name the device, and setup the houses own SSID – i named my simply “Chromecast”
• Note : had to rerun the step twice because it failed to connect the first time.
• After this, the device then downloaded an updated firmware which took a while, but there is a progress graph on screen. After it reaches 100%, it seems to power off.
• Switch the tv inputs away, and then back to input4, to “re-power” the device.
• Device then booted with the new firmware/update.
• I set my laptop back to static IP like I prefer.

Key information as the device went through its process :

• my network sidebar widget showed my network changing from my default network, to a network that shared the default name of my Chromecast device “chromecast5128”
• my network sidebar widget showed my ip changed from my normal network segment, to a 192.168.255.251 address, which leads me to believe that the device is on the 192.168.255.0 network and I may be able to do all this without the applet.
• The initial network sync process is validated when the app shows a code in the laptop, that matches a code on screen.

After all that, I pointed my laptop google chrome browser (must be greater than v27) to the same setup url above, and I obtained the chromecast browser extension. Then its as simple as just bringing something up in the browser, and clicking the chromecast button – and things appear on screen. Super cool.

Note : since this is a DHCP type appliance, it required me setting up a DHCP lease reservation, based on MAC address, in order to force the device to use the IP that I wanted.   Setting that up in a new pool on my /etc/dhcpd.conf file took care of that for me.

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January 28, 2014

After my tried and true, trusty MP3 tag editor would no longer function (due to new pc, new o/s, etc), I had to find a replacement.   I keep my music organized in folders, by artist, then by album, then by song – and I like the songs to have specific file name format.  With 104GB of music currently on file, this makes it much easier for me to manage my collection as needed.   Its also critical that the tags have proper genre coding and other tag specific info, for my audiotron devices, which I ‘randomize’ by genre quite often.  The other tags are useful for my Sockso music server.   The problem was that not many of the re-tagging tools can handle the directory creation properly.  I typically get a pile of music that has to be sorted, tagged, etc – and its not practical to do manually.   With all that in mind, I found “Tag and Rename” as my new product of choice : http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm – it totally does the job.

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December 30, 2013

I’ve been having trouble with my older HP dv9000 series laptops lately.   Many have been dying from bad video and other issues.  With the network issues appearing first, that was easily worked around with small usb wireless plug-in devices.  But when the video goes, not much can be done there.

So my latest death was my older 32bit hp-dv9207us model.  Its another of my dv9000 laptops, and is now serving a second life as an Ubuntu 13.10 host.  Simply put, it would no longer work with Windows.  It has a display issue, which is so common with these models, and NONE of the Windows drivers will work – all send the screen into nothing but black and white blocked mosaic, or complete death … unless I’m using the useless 640×480 mode.  Not even the external monitor will work, as its a chip/driver issue.  I tried Windows Vista – all editions.  I tried Windows 7 – all editions.  None would work in 1440×900 or even one step below that.  I tried NVidia drivers direct from NVidia, from Microsoft, from alternative parties, and everything in between.  I must have tried about 30+ driver releases all tolled.  They started back in 2008 or so, and go all the way up to the most current releases for the GE Force 7600 chip.  None good.

At that point, I went to trusty old Knoppix.  Started with 7.0 and tried with reduced color depth.  I actually had a fully working 1440×900 video at that point – but the screen never goes blank like i want – its always a blank but still back lit screen.  So it never truly powers off and continues to run hot.  I tried 7.0.2, 7.0.3, 7.0.4, and 7.2 – and some worked, some didn’t – but none like I wanted.  So the latest Ubuntu live dvd was my last chance before the scrapyard.  It’s been working pretty good now for a few days, so maybe this will become my server room Linux desktop, since I don’t have one since the IBM-R40, IBM-T21, and Sony Vaio have all died as well.

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June 28, 2011

Found a few good Google Chrome extensions and tricks to help me out today :

• In chrome, in address bar, type “about:flags”, search for print preview, and enable.
• Add “Service Pages” extension here : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fjmhjjohhiehaoljianalpmfcceojaff?hl=en-US# . What this does is to give nice buttons for all the trick features
• Add “Printly” extension here : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/joiehkpdmaemlmjkhedjojomlbhjimea?hl=en-US# . What this does is to put a nice print button in the toolbar.

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June 17, 2011

Work today around trying to get Firefox to work with SharePoint. Cant do WYSIWYG editing, so I’m trying to use the “write area” plugin for that, and its been mostly good. Also, a SharePoint designer bug fix, just in case it helps anything :

• Sharepoint Designer Fix — https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/microsoft-net-framework-assist/?collection_uuid=55afefb5-620d-ae0c-d5d1-b602b44e6428
• Write Area — https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/write-area/The big fix though, is allowing FireFox to seamlessly authenticate against domain signon’s like IE does. This is something I had never had a fix for, but now do. Here are the steps :
  • open up firefox
  • in the address bar put “about:config”
  • search for “NTLM”
  • set the value of “network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris” to your own domain, with a leading dot. So for pluzzi.com as an example, it would be “.pluzzi.com”
  • thats it!

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May 9, 2011

Well, my final verdict is in on the OpenNMS product I started testing back in late March. Its just too heavy, bogs down the server, and doesn’t offer enough value. I love the auto charting, but I cant combine charts the way I wanted, so I’m better off sticking with Big Brother plus LARRD. So that’s that. That OpenNMS vm is now shutdown.

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May 5, 2011

My new monster TV and blu-ray players were having trouble with NetFlix lately, but tonight I figured out what was wrong. It turns out that my Untangle device that is used for intrusion protection, anti-virus, web filtering, and other network appliance type features has a setting that was getting in the way. The fix is to go into the settings for the “Virus Blocker” application, “Web” tab, “Advanced” settings, and to disable the checkbox for “Disable HTTP Resume”. Now they stream just fine. I bet this fixes the issue with the TivoHD and NetFlix too – where it streamed, but pausing would reset it back to the start of the movie.

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April 27, 2011

First, an update to my July 31 2008 post about Firefox plugins, this really should be its own entry, but I’m so used to searching for this July 31 entry that I don’t want multi steps. But Firefox 4 has dropped the keyboard shortcut for F6 to take you to the address bar. This fixes that :

F6 Fix — https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/f6/

Another thing – recently, I’ve been having trouble with some of the HP DV series laptops. Specifically with the well known wireless issues. The first few of these that I had, I was getting motherboards from Alibaba at about 150-200 bucks, and swapping them out … which is no simple/quick effort. But now I’m finding that this little AirLink 150n USB ultra mini wireless adapter is all that is really needed! I fire up the laptop, connect it to the network via cable, plug this little guy in, let it download the drivers, shut it down, remove the internal, and fire up. Now laptops that wouldn’t go 24 hours are going 2 weeks and beyond. And its so small you can hardly even notice it. So so much easier. To make it even more attractive? Its always 100% signal where my built in was like 70-80%, and its not dropping persistent web sessions like the built in was. Should have done this long ago. Success so far on dv9008nr, dv9417cl, and tx1000z.

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March 29, 2011

Working on a newly updated monitoring suite – this time the OpenNMS package. I’ve been a user of BigBrother for many many years – I guess its 13 or 14 now, since I began in 1997 or so. Its been ultra solid, ultra reliable, but has a very dated look to it since I still run a combination of 1.5 and 1.2 releases. So the OpenNMS seemed modern, easy to configure, etc – so I’m giving it a try. Good links for that are here, here, and here. Basically, if you can live with remote monitoring only, and snmp polling – its really solid. But if you need host side monitoring (checking service status on windows, or process status on unix/linux) – then I still prefer BB.

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March 28, 2011

A very good article in Information Week at the end of February about the fact that everyone feels I.T. is too slow in delivery. Based on all the ITIL stuff, we were slowed to a crawl to meet regulations, and now we’re all being penalized for it. Its not exactly fair, but it is reality.

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