That got me thinking: wouldn't an always on thin client be the perfect application for this? My Netvista 8364 NUS has been gathering dust waiting for a nice touchscreen monitor to mate with it, so it might serve a better purpose serving Skype calls than just looking cool. There is some question as to if it has enough horsepower to not only run Fedora, but to keep skype going, but tinkering is what has got me this far. So, soon I will purchase a 1gb compact flash card and reference this guide to install Fedora Core 3, which apparently is the only linux that skypemate will install and work on.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Cheap Peeps
It's been a while since I posted but wanted to write a bit about most recent forray into Internet Telephony. I bought a usb to rj11 adapter a few months ago to try fax or data over Skype with my Dish Network receiver. I figured it would be a fun experiment, and there seems to be so much debate about whether or not data over voip is possible. Some Google searches say so using VOIP providers, but Skype is a bit different as I understand. Regardless, it did take up an afternoon of fiddling, and satisfied my curiosity. I put the adapter back on the shelf thinking it might come in handy sometime (even though we didn't own a regular phone). Sure enough, Eva found a use for it. After a couple of $200+ cell phone bills calling friends back in the midwest, I rigged up an inexpensive 900mhz phone with one of our workstations and taught her to dial out. With Skypes free skypeOut for the US and Canada until the end of the year, she should be able to save at least minutes, if not money (I hardly use my cell phone at all). I expect to try some international dialing to keep her connected to Paraguay as well. Don't expect the same quality using phone>adapter>wi-fi>internet. It appears to be too latent for good quality. So it hangs off of my wired desktop for the time being.
Sunday, April 2, 2006
Damn Small Linux and the ThinClient
After finally locating a ps/2 keyboard in the dumpster (no, i wasn't specifically looking there, my neighbors were moving), I was able to try out my Netvista 8364. At first, the standard post screens looked quite normal: keyboard. check. Mouse. check. DHCP. check. But I soon got lost in what I can only describe as IBM menu hell. My only real aim was to try to boot from an external device, such as a cd rom drive or a compact flash drive, but it only wanted to boot to the network.
Finally, even after I scanned it before for pertinent info, i reread http://www.freegeekmichiana.org/netvista.html
and found the boot menu option I was looking for. Success! The boot from IDE option menu seemed hidden to me, but after I fiddled with it, I could now either boot from my attached desktop DVD-drive, or the CF adapter, which shows up as a hard drive.
A few hours later, it was up and running, with some caveats. As I learned later, the best instll method involves two partiions, one for the base install, and a backup partition for stuff you want to save across boots. Damn Small uses MyDSL, a nifty way to extend teh base install for users. It allows you to use and update the base install to boot, then add the components on the fly. So, to do a proper install, I will reformat and try again. The CF card does boot slower, truth be told, and I'm wondering if I couldn't try booting a bigger CF card. 128mb is tight when adding DSL extras.
For the most part, however, the only thing left in the hardware equation is a nice touchscreen LCD monitor.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Distro Decisions
Although I'm a big fan of various Linux distros, my Netvista 8364 NUS has sent me searching for the right one. Must work on older hardware, have some sort of desktop, and be able to boot from various media. I found it in Damn Small Linux, which has a number of extensions that allow you to modify what elsewise would be a standard LiveCD distrobution. Since I have no ps/2 input devices for the Netvista, i've been trying to create a frugal install on a new 128mb SimpleTech compact flash card via a Crucial Technology usb device, after booting off the live cd. It didn't take but one try for me to apparently "brick" the new CF card. Either the reader is not Linux friendly, or it was not done writing during install. Oops. I was confused to say the least, but now it doesn't show up in Windows, or when it does, it doesn't allow me to format it, giving "error in IOCTL call".
Although SimpleTech's tech support would not believe me that it was possible to put Linux on a CF card (?), the rep did say that they would RMA my product, just "Don't do it again". Not the type of geek advice I like. I'll try booting the netvista directly from CD-rom, and see if I can get it recognized there. Then maybe Linux will rescue me once again.
Friday, December 30, 2005
Thin Client
Well, the raid 5 will have to wait. Just too much money to spend before taking our trip to South America. That's not to say I haven't been keeping my geek interests piqued. I recently purchased an IBM Netvista 2800 NUS, or 8364, on eBay. Instead of the POS station idea i had for the kitchen, I'm going to try this first. I dont' know much about these things, but they sound fun. Pentium 266mhz, 128mb of ram, with a compact flash slot and ide port, support for pci, usb, and touch screens. Basically a silent pc.
I bought it thinking it might have the compact flash (the e in 2800e) with WinCE installed, but no dice. So besides netbooting, it needs some medium to store the boot part on. I bought a 128mb compact flash card to try linux. I'd like to get it to be used primarily as a remote desktop, but it has the stats for more than just that. With support for pci, a wireless pci adapter allows me to put it anymore.
Really, once it's booting, only an lcd touchscreen is needed.
Stay tuned.
I bought it thinking it might have the compact flash (the e in 2800e) with WinCE installed, but no dice. So besides netbooting, it needs some medium to store the boot part on. I bought a 128mb compact flash card to try linux. I'd like to get it to be used primarily as a remote desktop, but it has the stats for more than just that. With support for pci, a wireless pci adapter allows me to put it anymore.
Really, once it's booting, only an lcd touchscreen is needed.
Stay tuned.
Monday, November 21, 2005
POS POS
I've been trying unsuccessfully to bid on several used POS PC on eBay. Eva's passion for trying out new recipes printed off from the internet inspired me. Why not bring the internet to the kitchen, and along with it, access to email and our video and music collection? Unnecessary? Most assuredly, especially considering the size of our kitchen. But I have a rather expensive dream (both in terms of time I spend dreaming, and it's likely cost), that I will build a wired home someday. And this seems like a good place to start, because of its inspired utility. If this works, I may just try the bathroom next.
It has been harder than first thought, mostly because I'm cheap. POS systems start out cheap, but even old ones are sought after. I started out thinking I could get an old laptop, but even old laptops are still quite pricey. Also eBay laptops are really hard to find near complete at the basement price. Plus, who wants to use a mouse in the kitchen, whether it's a touchpad or not? No, it would make more sense to use a touchscreen, maybe even with a touchscreen keyboard. It would be nearly impossible to wire a touchscreen monitor any distance past 6 feet so I've settled on a sort of thin client. The POS systems inspired me because of their all-in-one designs, usually including a rugged touchscreen. Ideally this machine could boot off the network, wirelessly, or using a vnc client. Sound would be harder, but not impossible.
Would a 200mhz client do this. I'm guessing it would be close. But no matter, as long as it's somewhat affordable, it's a place to start living and building my dream.
It has been harder than first thought, mostly because I'm cheap. POS systems start out cheap, but even old ones are sought after. I started out thinking I could get an old laptop, but even old laptops are still quite pricey. Also eBay laptops are really hard to find near complete at the basement price. Plus, who wants to use a mouse in the kitchen, whether it's a touchpad or not? No, it would make more sense to use a touchscreen, maybe even with a touchscreen keyboard. It would be nearly impossible to wire a touchscreen monitor any distance past 6 feet so I've settled on a sort of thin client. The POS systems inspired me because of their all-in-one designs, usually including a rugged touchscreen. Ideally this machine could boot off the network, wirelessly, or using a vnc client. Sound would be harder, but not impossible.
Would a 200mhz client do this. I'm guessing it would be close. But no matter, as long as it's somewhat affordable, it's a place to start living and building my dream.
Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Mechanical Turk
Last week I read a piece on slashdot about amazon's Mechanical Turk. Since humans still can do even some trivial tasks, like photo recognition, better than computers, they pay you to do said trivial tasks. Of course it was slashdotted within minutes, so I've only recently been able to try it myself.
The easiest way to get started is to find a group of hits, typically from large city, and try to find a given business address in a series of photos. The photos appear to be captures from a DV video taken from a moving vehicle. In a couple of the photos you can actually see the vehicle used to record in the reflection of windows. Chicago has a white Chevy Blazer.
You either match or discard all of the photos. You can return the series or "hit" as well. You get 3 cents per photo "approved". Approved doesn't necessarily seem to mean that there was a good match, as you can discard all of them if they suck.
3 cents seems like easy money. You can look at photos pretty quick, right? Unfortunately, it takes alot longer than i first figured. The photos are quite large, and since they're captures from video, they're grainy as well. Not to mention every one is street level. Sometimes, and in some cities, it's easy to match the address number with the a street address in the photo. Other times, you get pictures of parking lots.
It's still quite a slow interface, regardless of the size of photos being displayed.
I've switched to Opera, which seems to display and cache better. But before you can work on a series, you have to accept it. Then, if no one else has worked on it, you wait for it to load, sometimes again, and select an option. So for about a 20 seconds, you possibly get 3 cents. woot. Your answer is either approved or rejected, or abandoned. Since each group of pictures in the city your working in has an expiration date, it seems that if you work on hundreds of photos and their not approved in time, nobody gets the money. good to know.
So at this point, i've stopped dreaming this is a quick way to get easy money. It has proved fun though. I've been working in Chicago mostly, and since I've been there several times, it's fun to find recognizable landmarks, like my friends backyard!
Lots of room for improvement though. Several times you can follow the logic of addresses. you're looking for 123 damen ave. and you're only shown 119, 121, and the side of a truck. You know it's that corner in the last photo, but there's a ups truck parked otu front. Also, sometimes the capture is only of half of the store front. It might work if they gave you crop tools, but there's no way to specify.
Many businesses appear vacant, so you can infer their address, but who's to say the admin will notice? There should be a highlight feature, or a reasoning field.
Also, there's some common sense reasons not to pick the best photo. Sure that showcases the beautiful script sign out front, but the next photo doesn't show the adult bookstore next door.
So it's fun for now. hope I get my money. My scrolling finger is worn out.
The easiest way to get started is to find a group of hits, typically from large city, and try to find a given business address in a series of photos. The photos appear to be captures from a DV video taken from a moving vehicle. In a couple of the photos you can actually see the vehicle used to record in the reflection of windows. Chicago has a white Chevy Blazer.
You either match or discard all of the photos. You can return the series or "hit" as well. You get 3 cents per photo "approved". Approved doesn't necessarily seem to mean that there was a good match, as you can discard all of them if they suck.
3 cents seems like easy money. You can look at photos pretty quick, right? Unfortunately, it takes alot longer than i first figured. The photos are quite large, and since they're captures from video, they're grainy as well. Not to mention every one is street level. Sometimes, and in some cities, it's easy to match the address number with the a street address in the photo. Other times, you get pictures of parking lots.
It's still quite a slow interface, regardless of the size of photos being displayed.
I've switched to Opera, which seems to display and cache better. But before you can work on a series, you have to accept it. Then, if no one else has worked on it, you wait for it to load, sometimes again, and select an option. So for about a 20 seconds, you possibly get 3 cents. woot. Your answer is either approved or rejected, or abandoned. Since each group of pictures in the city your working in has an expiration date, it seems that if you work on hundreds of photos and their not approved in time, nobody gets the money. good to know.
So at this point, i've stopped dreaming this is a quick way to get easy money. It has proved fun though. I've been working in Chicago mostly, and since I've been there several times, it's fun to find recognizable landmarks, like my friends backyard!
Lots of room for improvement though. Several times you can follow the logic of addresses. you're looking for 123 damen ave. and you're only shown 119, 121, and the side of a truck. You know it's that corner in the last photo, but there's a ups truck parked otu front. Also, sometimes the capture is only of half of the store front. It might work if they gave you crop tools, but there's no way to specify.
Many businesses appear vacant, so you can infer their address, but who's to say the admin will notice? There should be a highlight feature, or a reasoning field.
Also, there's some common sense reasons not to pick the best photo. Sure that showcases the beautiful script sign out front, but the next photo doesn't show the adult bookstore next door.
So it's fun for now. hope I get my money. My scrolling finger is worn out.
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