I have an HTPC running BeyondTV. I purchased it as part of a package which included a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 PCI Analog/Digital tuner and a Snapstream Firefly Mini remote control. The system works great, though I’d like to see more features such as DVD playback. My other gripe in the remote: it’s not very useful outside of BeyondTV. Sure, I’ve seen plenty of hacks on the Internet to make it work with other HTPC applications, but I’m not interesting in jumping through a lot of hoops to make it work. So I was kind of excited today when I learned that it works with the Hulu Desktop application, something which is officially recognized on Snapstream’s webpage for the remote. I haven’t used Hulu before, so it was a good excuse to do so. I’ve been using the desktop application all night with the Firefly Mini, and it works great. It would be nice if it used the same exact buttons as in BeyondTV, but I got used to how it works pretty quickly. Hulu is great. I’ve watched several shows tonight with it. It’s nice to get some additional value out of my Firefly Mini remote.
At the company where I work we run three shifts which run in the order 3,1,2. This is common at a lot of companies since 3rd shift usually starts somewhere around midnight, which marks the beginning of the day. On many of the reports we produce from Microsoft Access it is required that we sort the shifts in that order. For awhile I used an If…Then…Else statement which would return shift 3 as shift 0, which would place it in the correct order. I would call the resulting field ‘ShiftSort’ and sort on that field in ascending order while using the original shift field for display purposes on the report.
Later on I was thinking about the problem and whether or not there might be a more elegant way of dealing with it. I realized there was - the same result could be had by inserting the following into a field in my query:
SortShift: [Shift] MOD 3
This assumes the shift field is named Shift. The Modulus (MOD) operator in VBA is used to find the remainder of a division operation. 1 and 2 cannot be divided by 3, so they are returned unchanged. 3 is divisible by 3, and the remainder of course is 0. Thus, this simple one line of code produces the exact result I need to sort the shifts properly.
I also considered how to handle a company that starts with 2nd shift, for which the following would do the job:
SortShift: [Shift] + [Shift] MOD 3
The results for shifts 2,3 and 1 are 4, 3 and 2, respectively. In this case, you would sort the resulting ShiftSort field in descending order. It’s a little messier, but I haven’t worked out a more elegant way to accomplish this, and I don’t think it’s very common to start with 2nd shift anyways.
Photo: Time Card by flickr user TheGoogly, used under CC license.
I ran into a peculiar problem at work recently: one of our Linksys WAP54G access points was resetting its SSID and passphrase for no apparent reason. It’s configured for Wireless Bridge mode, which means that it connects exclusively to another WAP54G in order to bridge two wired networks. We use this setup to provide network connectivity to a mobile industrial printer on the shop floor. The printer’s access point was the one that kept acting up, and every time it did it would no longer be able to connect to the AP mounted on the wall. This was causing a lot of headaches for the people who upload programs to the printer, and for the IT department who had to keep fixing it! I decided to start researching the issue and see if I couldn’t find a reason for the SSID and passphrase constantly changing on the printer’s AP.
I have to admit that before this problem started, I didn’t know much about the WAP54G as the system had been setup by a consultant. I found out the glowing Linksys logo on the front panel is also a button, which is used to enter SecureEasySetup mode, or SES. According to the user guide, pressing it will cause the AP to generate an SSID and WPA-Personal (WPA-PSK) passphrase. I knew the SSIDs being generated were in the format of linksys_SES_#####, so right away I figured this was the problem. But why was it happening?
It’s possible that somebody was pushing the button. I wouldn’t think that anybody would touch the AP, but I’ve worked in IT long enough to know that there are plenty of people who will randomly push buttons and flip switches for no reason whatsoever. They are the ones who will always push The Big Red Button regardless of any and all warnings not to. Still, I found it hard to believe that somebody was doing this constantly. It might explain one or two occurrences, but this was happening at least once a week. I tried to see if I could disable the button somewhere in the AP’s settings, but it appeared I couldn’t. I then decided to search the Linksys forums to see if anybody was having similar trouble, and what they were doing about it.
Continue reading 'Disabling SES on the Linksys WAP54G… permanently!'»
While searching for information on the infamous Alfa Network AWUS036H USB Wi-Fi adapter, I came across some generic adapters on Ebay that look like exact clones of the Alfa unit. They are also based on the Realtek RTL8187L chip, and except for the color they look exactly the same on the outside. The circuit boards look exactly the same as well. Here’s one of them:
And for comparison, the “real thing”:
I also came across a thread on a forum where someone was attempting to sell some similar adapters. He described them as bulk “OEM” Alfa adapters. Yeah, right. The Ebay units are shipping from Hong Kong, and anybody who uses Ebay long enough knows about all of the inexpensive products for sale on there from Asia. More often than not, they’re counterfeits. I highly doubt these units for sale are approved by or made by Alfa.
With that said, I wonder if anybody has had any experience with them… I haven’t found anything. I’m curious to know if anybody has tried them and compared them with the official AWUS036H. I have to think it’s probably worth spending the extra $15-20 to get the real thing, and that’s what I ended up doing. I’m looking forward to receive my 500mw adapter soon!
Comments (0) 
Technology
| 
BeyondTV, HTPC, Hulu, remote, Snapstream