BrandonB.ORG » linux

My Christmas Present: The Roku XR

Brandon — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 05:28:28 +0000

I have been a Netflix subscriber for some time now. I have the plan where I get 3 DVDs at a time, unlimited DVDs a month and unlimited Instant Play. I love the DVDs by mail but I was not taking advantage of the Instant Play. For those of you who don’t know Instant Play is a service Netflix offers that allows you to stream movies over the Internet instantly to your computer or a device that supports this service.

I could easily sit in my chair and watch the movies on our Macbook. The problem is what if I wanted to watch a movie with my family or friends? We couldn’t all huddle around the Macbook’s 15″ display. I wanted the movies streamed to the living room tv. Before some of you get ahead of me I know very well I could use a computer to stream these movies to my tv and I happen to have a late model dell that would do it well. But, I do not have a new tv with a PC/RGB input. Our tv is a 27″ CRT with composite and component inputs. We have bought our first house this year and have had our first child so more important things need to be purchased before a $500 televison.

However, I wanted to take advantage of the streaming movies so I put the Roku XR in my amazon.com wish-list. A $129.00 device that can save you money on entertainment is a justifiable purchase to us. More so than a $500 tv.

The Roku XR is small and has component, composite, s-video and HDMI outputs. So when we finally get that glorious HD TV the Roku will be ready for it. The XR has 802.11n networking so when the day comes that I can upgrade the trusty Linksys WRT54G to an N-router of some sort it will be ready for that as well. I have an 8Mb download speed from my Internet Service Provider so the movies are of quality resolution and play smoothly. I like the additional channels that are available through the device such as Revision3 and Twit. I am sure the few channels they have are just the beginning of what is to come.

I give the device two thumbs up. It works, gets the job done, low power consumption (6 watts) and it’s small form factor is a big plus. Need a Netflix device? Check out the Roku.

New Job In IT. (Finally!)

Brandon — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:52:32 +0000

I started my new job this week as a Technology Specialist at Northeast Arkansas Educational Coopertive. I am in charge of maintaining a new video website for EETT. EETT stands for Enhancing Education Through Technology. We are in the beginning stages of posting videos of our Power Point math lessons. The lessons are focused in Algebra and Geometry. We are hoping the site will be a great resource for teachers, students and parents to view and download our lessons. The videos will be streamed from the site in Adobe Flash format. Also, we will have down-loadable versions of each lesson in .wmv for Windows and .m4v for iPods. It is going to be a lot of work but I am very excited and motivated to make this a success!

Fellow friends of Linux.

Brandon — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:50:39 +0000

Thanks to a tweet by @linuxalert I have stumbled onto a blog by a person who is a great friend to Linux. He goes by Helios on the blog. It sounds like Heal the OS to me. Ok all joking aside, He has a nonprofit organization in Central Texas which gets Linux computers in the hands of children who can’t afford the technology. I support his efforts and I wanted to spread the word about what he is doing. His blog can be found here.

Pandora Adobe Air App: Dorame

Brandon — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 21:01:13 +0000

I use Ubuntu Linux as my main desktop OS. I wanted to get Pandora out of the browser into it’s own little window. In the past I used the Pandora Desktop Adobe Air Application. Pandora has took the desktop application and made it only available for their Pandora One package. In my search for an alternative I found Dorame.
It is an Adobe Air Application and so far has been a very stable app. Dorame has color schemes to choose from for window border and background colors. It is basically Pandora in a small window. You have all of Pandora’s controls such as thumbs up and switching stations. When you minimize Dorame an icon shows up on your Gnome top panel. However, there are no controls when you right click on the icon. The only choices you have are to exit the application or “Active” which maximizes Dorame. I have been using this application for a month the sound is of good quality and I have left it running for hours with no crashes. If you are looking for a simple Adobe Air App for Pandora check out Dorame.

Moblin 2.0

Brandon — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:01:39 +0000

I can’t wait to see what Ubuntu does with this. I would install it on my netbook…….if I had one anyway.

Microsoft’s New TV Ad.

Brandon — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:04:37 +0000

This is Microsoft’s latest TV commercial. It demonstrates that PCs are more friendly on the pocket book than Macs. Well it is true you can’t purchase a 17″ Mac for under 1000 dollars but for the $699 price lets talk about what she did get. She most likey does not have any anti-virus just a trial version. She most likely has a trial version of MS Office and trial versions of many other bloatware/crapware on the PC she purchased. And I wonder how much it will cost her to take it back to Geek Squad and have them revive it from the blue screen of death? If the PC was running Linux then it would have been a great commercial instead it is Microsoft FUD.

Richard Stallman on DRM.

Brandon — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:30:19 +0000

My sediments exactly Mr. Stallman.

(A segment of an interview done by Robin Good)
Master New Media