Thursday, October 24, 2013

Hydroflush HYF450 Dual Flush Converter By MJSI - update

As predicted in my earlier post the converter did not hold up for long. It did not break but started leaking at the lower seal that seats on the hole originally closed by the flapper. The converter slid up slightly on the overflow tube and seal was broken.

This converter is a bad idea for installation by the third party or in relative's home. You will install it and it will leak causing higher water bill and waste of water. The design should have had a tighter clamp around the tube and not a flimsy tie which is hard to make tight.

Avoid this converter!

Saturday, October 5, 2013

How to glue lexan - food processor bowl fix

Small tab from our old food processor lid broke off. The tab is pressing on the button which prevents food processor from running if the lid is not latched. Without this tab the unit would not turn on. We have this unit for many years (more than 10, I think) and definitely got our money worth, but I felt like it was a waste to throw away working unit because of the small plastic tab.
I started looking for suitable way to put this tab back. My first attempt was epoxy glue which turned out does not work on food processor plastic. It does not adhere to the plastic itself and breaks off easy and cleanly.
My research turned to figuring out what type of plastic this was and it appears to be Lexan or polycarbonate plastic.  After researching various glues for plastics I found that PCV pipe glue works by dissolving plastic at the point of contact and making a kind of weld. I did not know if the glue would work on the Lexan plastic but as I got nothing to loose I decided to try it. The glue was readily available to me at home so it was an easy choice. If you do not have it handy it is available at any hardware store in the plumbing section.
To glue it I followed the recommended process - primer goes first then glue and finally parts are connected and held together. The primer makes everything purple so be careful and use small amount with the small brush or Q-tip. To make sure that tab went on correctly I attached food processor lid to the container with the painter's tape and masked off under the tab with the same tape to protect the bowl from the primer and the glue.
To my surprise it worked very well. The glue took a few hours to dry and while drying the whole thing should be left alone. Until the glue is completely dry the tab was flexing but after drying out it appears to be one solid piece. I did not try to break off the tab to test the strength of the bond but it holds well enough for food processor to work as before.
When using the glue do this outside as the primer and the glue stink and most likely vapors are not good for you. When dry it should be harmless as this glue is used to bond PVC pipes with drinking water. In my case the connection point does not come in contact with the food so I am not worried.
If you know what glue will work best on Lexan or you can confirm that the plastic is indeed Lexan please leave a comment. After more searching online I found that some people used PVC cement to bind Lexan parts successfully. I am still interested in the glue that creates the strongest bond.
I also discovered that you can not buy the new bowl 10 years after the food processor manufacturing date. If you like your machine buy the spare parts while it is still in production.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Hydroflush HYF450 Dual Flush Converter By MJSI - waste of time

I got this kit at Costco while it was on sale for $15. I was planning to replace the fill valve anyway and this kit contains a fill valve together with "water saving" dual flush contraption. After installing it and using it for a few days I found that this is a waste of time as this device does not save any water when used with 1.6GPF toilets.

Design problems

This device has multiple design issues that would prevent it from working correctly in 1.6GPF toilet. Some of the issues would cause long term operational problems.
This device sits on top of a drain hole normally closed by the flapper. Due to this it raises the flush hole and minimum water level in the tank about 2 inches. This effectively reduces amount of water that can be used at the highest setting. If you watch animation on the MJSI website here, it shows that during full flush the water level drops to the bottom of the tank. This is wrong. The water level drops to the top of a blue cup covering the flush hole. 
The "liquids" setting is controlled by the blue float. Manual instructs to allow about 2 inches of water above the blue float. This setting is impossible to achieve at least in my tank because the overflow tube top is about 1 inch higher than the lowest position of the blue float. So the low setting is impossible to to get to work in my tank.
The flush mechanism itself has many parts with relatively tight clearance. Although made of plastic, these parts are bound to accumulate the same deposits that are accumulated on a normal flapper and a fill valve. These deposits are likely to prevent this mechanism from operating correctly over a long term due to tight clearances between moving parts.
The flush is triggered by the steel wire moving in the sleeve, mechanism similar to a bicycle break. Although on a bicycle this mechanism is not submerged and has little contact with water, it is still recommended to lubricate it frequently. In the toilet tank this mechanism is unlikely to last any reasonable period of time without rusting and locking up. This in fact confirmed by multiple reviewers on Amazon.com.

Installation

It is stated on the box that no tools are required to install this contraption. If you watch installation videos on the manufacturers website, the first thing they do is list tools which you will need. This is NOT an install without tools.
The installation is pretty simple, although all pieces are large and somewhat of a tight fit in to my tank. After installation you need to adjust the device flow. The procedure to do this is not clearly described and some reviewers on Amazon describe it much better. Over all installation is simple but adjustment is not possible, at least with my tank.

Use

The buttons are rather hard to press so if you have a small child it would be a problem. The "low" button does not release enough water even after setting it to maximum, so it is effectively useless. You can hold the button until you see the complete flush but this defeats the purpose of the device. The "high" button works OK, but the total volume of released water is less than with a regular flapper because of the device design. The 'high" flush is adequate even with reduced amount of water.

Good news

Not all is bad with this converter. Valve appears to be very quiet as the name implies. The flapper replacement does not leak water and closes securely at least while it is new. The "high" button works well as I already mentioned and it may even save you some water.

Conclusion

I think this device is a waste of time and money vs regular flapper when used with 1.6GPF toilet. The device is not likely to hold up as long as the simple flapper would, due to its complexity. The rubber gaskets are not replaceable and the company does not sell replacement parts.  If the device breaks it is simple to replace but pricy comparing with a regular flapper. If this converter is to leak due to mechanical failure it will waste much more water than it will save. If you want to reduce water use it would be more effective to place few plastic bottles filled with water in to your tank to reduce amount of water used. To prevent leaks you can change flapper every few years. It is inexpensive and only takes a few minutes to replace. Valve included with the converter kit works well but similar valves are on the market fore less money.

Saturday, August 3, 2013

HuluPlus vs Netflix on Roku

HuluPlus advertizements recently got out of hand completely. When I first subscribed to HuluPlus there was one ad per break and it was 15 to 30 seconds. Now there are two to tree ads 30 seconds each. This is completely unacceptable for the paid service that shows mostly major networks content which is available for free over the air or online.
So I ditched Hulu and went with Netflix. I found Netflix to have better selection of streaming content although a lot of content only available on DVD.

Hulu has custom interface that became horrible after upgrade. It is extremely slow, unintuitive and often causes Roku to reboot. Netflix on the other hand has interface built using Roku widgets and while it looks outdated, it is very functional and fast. For example fast forwarding on Hulu only shows one thumbnail and it is hard to estimate where in the movie you are because the thumbnail does not update adequately. On Neflix several thumbnails are shown and navigating works very well.

Hulu seems to be pedaling some specific content with large banners. I wish they put as much effort in to making interface functional as they put in to preventing users to skip their ads. For the type content that I watch, I found Netflix to have better selection, more modern movies, more BBC shows, more and better kids programming. Netflix has a lot of Disney programming which Hulu lacks. Hulu instead has some Nicolodeon shows which are completely stupid. My kid seems to like Netflix selection much better.

If you put off by ads and do not care for current reality shows, Netflix is the way to go.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Hands on Hisense Sero 7 Pro tablet review

This tablet is available at Wallmart for $150 and it is a very nice tablet. The reviews are starting to hit the web and every review that I have encountered is positive.
The tablet comes in a simple box, with charger, usb cable and a simple manual included. Nothing else is in the box, which is to be expected at this price point. The tablet itself is very well made. I had access to Nexus 7 for a few days and I can tell that the Sero 7 Pro is built just as well. The case has a rubbery feel to it with textured back and it does not feel slippery at all. The case does not have any give or does not creak as some people say. It feels very solid and well made.  The tablet has a 5MP camera with flash on the back and 2MP front facing camera on the front. On the back in the bottom part of the tablet there are 2 speakers. All connectors are concentrated on top and the buttons are on the right side. I personally like connectors being on top since it is more comfortable to read and listen to the music although any tablet can be rotated this way.

The screen quality is excellent. Pictures are vibrant and videos are very nice. The screen is a bit too bright on minimum setting when reading in total darkness even in the night mode. Maybe I should find a reader that can adjust brightness lower than FBReader by putting overlay over the text. Reading experience is very pleasant, similar to my Galaxy Player 4.2 but better because pages do not have to be turned as often. The tablet is not too heavy especially comparing to iPad and it is comfortable to hold over long periods of time. Overall this makes an excellent reading tablet.

Camera quality is reasonable. Better that the one on the Galaxy player. LED flash is OK and the whole setup works in a pinch. I would not use it for anything important since any $100 camera would blow this tablet away. Any dedicated camera would blow away iPad or iPhone as well so this is not surprising. Front camera is good enough as well, for a tablet that is. Camera app has a stock panorama feature which may be useful for a realtor or someone who wants to make a quick panorama in good light.

Battery life is amazing to say the least. I am not sure if this is new Android or processor or anything else. My Galaxy player is loosing about 6% of charge a day even if not used. It can go about week and a half with about 30 minutes of reading every day with the screen at the minimum brightness and all communications off. The Visio 8 inch tablet performed the same way. The Sero tablet only looses about 1% of charge a day when not in use. I have not had long enough usage to estimate how long I can read on a single charge but initial numbers are very good. I will update this post when I get firm numbers. Please note that most of my battery measurement are done with display brightness at the minimum. I read in the low light environment and minimum brightness is all I need.

Internet browsing is very good - pages load fast and render correctly. It is OK to use for browsing but I still prefer my PC. For quick stock check, traffic check or weather forecast it is fine. WiFi signal strength is shown to be less than the Galaxy player in the same location but the network works fine. I have tried few simple games and they work well. Other people report that 3d games run OK. My main interest was in reading books and playing videos for which it works really well.

There are no accessories designed specifically for this tablet but I am sure that this should be forthcoming. Over all I am very pleased with this tablet and would recommend it for any use. I would especially recommend it if you want a good quality tablet on the cheap.

 Battery Life Update

After 5 days of standby with 40 minutes of reading the battery is down to 87%. This is much better than Galaxy Player 4.2. The player shows 77% of battery after 2 hours of reading and 2 days since the last charge. The standby consumption of the Sero 7 appears to be very good.

 Battery Life Update 2

After 19 days of standby battery level is at 43%. The conclusion is that standby time is excellent. I expect it to last a month on standby. My next tests are to use it for reading.

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Roku new interface review

I received Roku interface update about a week ago. Before the update I was looking for reviews of the new interface but aside from paid "technology writers" I could not find any unbiased reviews. There are voices of criticism on Roku forums but they are quickly drowned out by the "you have no rights to criticize" crowd.

Here is my review in a few words - the new interface SUCKS! It has a few differences from the old one, mainly that is is now grid of icons versus strip of icons in the old one. The icons are much smaller and the text is smaller and harder to read. The ad on the other hand is much bigger. Ad takes up more than a third of the screen and so annoying that it prompted me to find a blocking solution.

This new interface was designed by a marketing person who has no idea about usability of interfaces on TV. Previous interface was not a usability example but it was tolerable. The font was readable, the icons were large. The new one goes against all good design guidelines, except if your guidelines are to show giant ads and piss off all users of the device.
Navigation to a given icon is now faster since one can navigate in two directions instead of one but the interface startup is slower. It also takes more memory or maybe the new software is slower over all. It affects other apps and they are slower to start and have to fetch images more often. Home button now brings you in to the menu instead of the application icon as it used to do. To navigate back to the app screen you need an extra press.
Roku tried to better integrate the app store but I think they failed. Roku store is still as ugly as ever and loads very slowly. The settings now a menu item on the left instead of an icon and has greater chance to be selected by mistake. Search is also a menu item which is an improvement as it can be reached faster.

The video, when streamed from the local server, starts faster. Positioning within the video is also seems faster. New software fixed crashes when navigating within MKV files. I only tried with one file so this conclusion may be a bit premature. When position is changed within MKV file that is streamed over HTTP, most of the time first few seconds of video is broken but audio is OK. After few seconds video recovers. Previous version locked up the box, which rebooted after watchdog is expired. The new version seems to hold up.

The new Roku interface is definitely worse than the old one. It is slower to start, icons are smaller and ad is much larger and obtrusive. The software over all seems to slow down old apps. On the other hand video navigation is faster and MKV files  play better when streamed. I am disappointed with this update and will try to figure out how to prevent Roku from auto updating in the future.

Blocking ads in Roku launcher

New Roku interface sucks! I will talk about it in my later post in details. The size of ad is increased probably 8x. Before I did not think  it would be worth blocking Roku ad servers because ads were not in your face and not intrusive. Now ad occupies almost half of the screen and is very annoying.

After some research online I found the servers that Roku uses to host its ads. Below is the list of servers that should be blocked to stop Roku from serving ads:
  • api.roku.com
  • cloudservices.roku.com
  • channles.roku.com/images
Most modern routers have some sort of URL filtering abilities. Adding these URLs to the filtering list solves ad problem nicely. So far the only downside that I found is that Hulu Plus starts a bit slower. It maybe trying to hit the server for updates. Another side effect of blocking these links is that the Roku channel store is no longer works. Your loaded channels work OK but you can not get the new channels. This works for me, in fact it is an additional benefit as you child will not be able to browse the channel store and to download any unwanted apps. If you start the app store when these URLs are blocked, upon returning in to the main menu you will not be able to see your apps for a few minutes. This most likely caused by the network timeout and check for application updates.

If you have older Roku software you can block zedo.com domain and that would block all ads in the older Roku software.

I can not take credit for discovering these URLs, I just looked them up on the Internet. I hope this post will save you some time.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Watching America's Test Kitchen on Roku

Recently PBS and PBS KIDS channels were made available on Roku. Unfortunately America's Test Kitchen is not a part of PBS shows offered on Roku and it is one of our favorite shows. I this post I will explain how you can watch this show on Roku.

More than one year of episodes is available to watch in your browser for free on the show website. If you subscribe, you can watch all seasons of the show. The trick is to use Roku to do this. I have to warn you that the process is somewhat time consuming and not everyone would want to do this.

You will need software listed below and you can use google to find it. All software is free.
  • rtmpdump - this is the tool used to download the episodes
  • RTMPDumpHelper - this tool is used to make downloading process very simple
  • ffmpeg - this tool is used to convert downloaded video to the format understood by Roku
  • MyMedia - this software is used to play videos on Roku. This can be substituted by any software capable of doing the same thing or by playing videos from the USB media if your Roku is capable of doing so.
First you need to download episodes that you want to watch. Unfortunately downloading must happen in real time  so you have to be patient here. You also can not download multiple shows at the same time. Install rtmpdump and RTMPDumpHelper you your computer. Open RTMPDumpHelper and navigate to America's Test Kitchen website. Select episode that you want to download. You will see that rtmpsuck.exe will save advertisement first and then will start saving the episode. You can ether watch the episode or can go and do something else for 20 odd minutes. After episode is finished playing in your browser you will have a copy on your hard drive. You can repeat this process for any episode that you want.

Next step is to convert the video in to format that Roku will recognize. The original video is encoded correctly but it is multiplexed in to flash video format. All you need to do is re-multiplex this video in to the mp4 container. Use following ffmpeg command line to it:

ffmpeg -i input-file.mp4 -acodec copy -vcodec copy output-directory/output-file.mp4

Replace your input and output file names with correct episode names.This command will very quickly re-multiplex video. It only takes few seconds per episode on any modern computer.

Now you can play your downloaded videos on Roku using MyMedia (my favorite), Plex or any one of many local playback apps. You can also put episodes on USB drive and play them directly on your Roku if your device supports it. As a bonus after you downloaded the show you can store it on DVD and watch it any time you want to in the future. The show is streamed in 640x352 resolution and looks very good on our CRT TV.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Logitech G400s mouse

In my previous post I complimented Logitech customer service and now I wanted to give my opinion on the new mouse they sent me.

My old mouse is G400 as far as I can tell. It is dark grey with black bottom and has a Logitech logo on top. The new mouse is G400s and has a large G in place of Logitech logo. It is also different color - dark blue with the black stripes and silver markings. The buttons are same size and in the same positions. The weight of the new mouse is the same as the old one although I did not measure it precisely.
One thing that did change is the mouse cable. Old mouse had thin and very hard cable. There was no issues with it, it just was different from the older mice that I had. The new mouse has same thin cable but it is not as hard. It is more pliable and softer on touch. They also added grommet on the mouse end of the cable which should help this cable to last longer.

Sensitivity and button presses feel exactly the same. Wheel rotation feels "clicker" on the new mouse. In use this mouse feels identical to my original G400 and performs identically.

I still like G400 a lot and would recommend it for gaming and everyday use. I really like sensitivity adjustment buttons which do not require any special drivers. The mouse performs flawlessly on my cheap mouse pad and does not jerk or skip. No matter how fast I move it, it tracks really well.

Excellent customer service from Logitech

My older Logitech MX300 mouse finally gave up to ghost and after some research I purchased Logitech G400 to replace it. I like G400 a lot. It has a nice weight and comfortable to use. The only downside of this mouse in my case that it is right handed and I prefer ambidextrous mice. This mouse served me for over a year really well but developed very annoying squeak when pressing the wheel down.  Ordinary mouse can be opened and cleaned but G400 is sealed. The screws are located under the gliding pads, which are glued shut to the body. In theory the pads can be pried away to access the screws but I did not want to ruin the mouse.

I contacted Logitech tech support in hopes of getting some tips on cleaning this mouse. Few emails later they send me a brand new G400. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least. It is unusual to see a company being so forthcoming in replacing their products. I used Logitech products before as their mice are very good and reliable. Now they got a devoted customer. Knowing that they stand behind their products makes me confident that they are interested in maintaining quality. I can not imaging that their business model would be selling a bad product and then replacing it for free.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Don't want refrigerator to break? Read this post!

You refrigerator needs regular cleaning. I think at least once a year is recommended. A lot of modern refrigerators have their heat exchanger on the bottom or in another not easily accessible place. I had a hard time cleaning it with the vacuum as the vacuum would not collect any dust and dirt accumulated in farther rows of the heat exchanger.
After trying different things, I stumbled upon the solution - the garden leaf blower! I have an electric blower which somewhat simplifies operating it indoors. Air compressor would also provide adequate replacement but I do not own one.
My first experience with this was not a very good one as we attempted to clean refrigerator without moving it from its usual place. The dust that was in the refrigerator, settled on every surface in our kitchen. We had to completely wash and clean the kitchen after that as well as vacuum adjacent rooms.
Second time I moved refrigerator to the open garage door and blew from inside of the house into the garage. This turned out much better. All I had to do after is to use garden blower inside of the garage to blow out all the dust.
It is OK to use garden blower to clean your refrigerator coils, just make sure to blow towards the outside. Move your appliance to the patio door or garage door so the dust does not fly around the house.
I also found that garden blower can be used to clean out dryer exhaust path from the lint. It works well for this. Disconnect your dryer blow in to the exhaust path. If possible clean outall the lint manually before using your blower.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

DYI mistake that I make again and again

If you like to do some light maintenance around the house I hope that you don't make the same mistake I do. Buying appliance on sale or as an impulse buy is a bad idea no matter how much you save! But I am done making this mistake.
Few months ago we bought new Titan 1¼ HP Premium Food Waste Disposer at Costco. It was on sale. It looked like a nice disposer, much more powerful than we had. It is cheaper than the low end Badger in Home Depot and looks like better featured. The only problem with it is that it does not fit in place of our old one.
After almost installing it I realized that it would not attach to our plumbing without some significant rework of the plumbing. Lucky for us Home Depot was stocking a Badger unit that fit perfectly so my removal of the old disposer was not a total waste.


The Titan disposer from Costco has a lot of plastic parts. Sink mounting sleeve, ring that pushes against the sink from the bottom, two tiny dimples by which disposer hangs under the sink. All these parts do not inspire any confidence. I was able to make this plastic ring skip threads by simply screwing it in by hand. I am not a large or strong person by any stretch of imagination. I am not sure if that ring would have held up for any period of time. The unit is encased in foam, which I am not sure is a great idea. The purpose of the foam is to reduce the noise. Unless you are running disposer at night, the noise is hardly a problem. The foam will absorb the water and the odors if the sink ever leaks. The unit is much larger than Badger and therefore occupied much more room under the sink. The opening is small and if something falls in the disposer you will need a small hand to get it out. It comes with the magnet to prevent silverware from falling in. In many years of using disposers I had this happen maybe two times. Again solution for imagined problem. I read reviews on Amazon for this unit and they are not promising. I am actually glad it did not fit.
Note to the makers of Titan garbage disposer - if you want for people to use your product make plumbing connections in exactly the same place as all other disposers. Then your unit will be a drop in replacement. For now it is going back to Costco.

Our previous Badger unit lasted since 1997 and aside from complete disintegration of rubber parts, it still works. The new Badger works great and all mounting hardware is made of metal, just like before.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Update on RT-N12B1 router - still recommended

We have had this router for about a month now and so far I am very happy with it. Original .38 firmware was relatively stable but it rebooted for some reason about every 3 to 5 days. I have not noticed the reboots and only knew about them from the router logs. I upgraded firmware to the 2.1.1.46 and will report on stability later in the month.
Other than the unnoticed reboots, the router is great. I handles all the traffic splendidly without a hitch. There are no issues with VPN or tunneling or anything else for that matter. Router can handle two Roku boxes streaming at the same time - one locally and one from Hulu. There is really nothing bad I can say about this router and would recommend it to anyone.

Update

After 11+ days there is no reboots with the firmware version 2.1.1.1.46. So far this update working out nicely. Before reboot write down router settings and after reset the router to default settings and restore the settings you have written down. Without that I had trouble reconnecting with my wireless devices.

Update #2

After 12 days router finally rebooted. I think from now on I will reboot it after 10 or so days if I remember.

Update #3

It appears that the router does not reboot as I previously thought. The uptime in the interface changes to indicate the router is rebooted but the system log has no indication of reboot. That would explain why I have not observed service disruption upon reboot. I will try to contact support and see what they say.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Another rant on Accurev

Today I had to perform a merge across two unrelated streams in Accurev. One stream was the root stream which contained the changes I wanted to merge. The other stream was created off a snapshot about 6 months old. The idea was to merge the fixes in the latest code in to an older branch. The fixes affected maybe 100 files across 30 or so issues. This took me whole day. None of the merges were particularly complex but yet here we are. So if you value your productivity do not use Accurev.

It was easy to find related issues. I did a diff by issues between the respective streams. From the diff it was easy to find the issues and each issue contained changed files. So far so good. Now the question is how to send these particular file versions in to the relevant workspace? The manual recommends to use change palette, which is conveniently greyed out and not accessible. I had to involve two of our support engineers, nether of them knew why the button was disabled.

Finally I figured out a way to look at the same issues from the stream history and there change palette was available. This is the most idiotic thing - one dialog has a button disabled, another similar dialog has it enabled. Now I would expect a merge function of some sort to be available in the change palette so I could selectively pick the changes that I want to merge with the version in the workspace. No such luck! You have to send your file in to the workspace overwriting the version with irrelevant changes, then you have to diff the version with the predecessor and revert most of the changes except for the ones you want. Instead of one simple operation it becomes two non intuitive ones. Although if the file did not need merging, it could be simply promoted if the promote button was not disabled. When it was disabled another merge was required.

After having the pleasure to use merge function of Mercurial, Accurev is terrible in comparison. As I described in my previous post, things get disabled and enabled using some arbitrary rules. The dialogs, described in the manual ether look different or dont exist or not accessible in a way presented in the manual. Somebody told me that I need to upgrade to the latest version and it is way better. Somehow I doubt this. If I am to go through the pain of upgrade, it would be to something like Git or Mercurial.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Why Samsung Galaxy Player is better than iPod

I have been using my Galaxy Player 4.2 for a while now and definitely find it much better than iPod touch in many areas. In fact I did not find one area in which Galaxy would be equal or worse. I speak from experience of owning iPod touch for number of years. So here is why Galaxy Player is better.

Absence of iTunes! iTunes is a useless monstrosity which installs useless QuickTime and other Apple crap which makes your computer slow. I was told that on Mac iTunes work better. I do not have a Mac but on Windows iTunes is an abomination. Yet you must have it if you are going to backup your device and your content. With Galaxy you can just plug it in and use mass storage driver to access all of the content and apps. You can copy to and from the device just like you would with a flash drive.

With Google Play you can download apps from the store and save them on your PC. Later you can install these apps from SD card. There are also apps on the Android itself that would allow you to backup and restore your applications and data. With iPod and without iTunes you are toasted if Apple overwrites your app with non working version and you did not make a backup.

You can add Micro SD card to your player and expand its capacity cheaply. With iPod you can only go with what you originally purchased. I currently have 8GB card in the player making total memory to be 16GB. The card is used to store movies and larger games. If I run out of space, I can upgrade it easy. And it only cost me $6.

Larger screen is a big improvement over iPod. Although latest iPod has higher resolution screen than my Galaxy, the size of Galaxy screen is much larger. I can not see the individual pixels on ether device and both look similar. I compared this player with iPhone 4S and 5 and I have not found one person who could point out any difference. The Samsung phones with larger and higher resolution screens beat iPhone's screen to the punch.

Replaceable battery is a big thing for me. I replaced my iPod battery one time and it is not an easy task even for a DIY person like me. To replace battery in the Galaxy, you just open the back, replace battery and close the back. That is it. You can do it within 5 minutes.

There is NO good book reading application on iPod. Probably the best that I found was Megareader. But even this app does not render some epub files correctly. All other readers do not work well at all on the small screen. FBReader on Android is much better application and there are several just as good - Aldiko or Cool Reader for example.

Standard USB connector is a plus for me. Now I only need to take one charger for the phone and the player. I do not use a smart phone since I value the two weeks battery life that my regular phone provides. I had to carry a separate cable for iPod and a charger for the phone. Not anymore.

I do not have to convert videos to mp4 to play on the Galaxy. It plays pretty much any format that is popular with resolution up to 1080p. iPod only supports mp4 files and resolutions are limited.

The only thing where iPod is better than the Galaxy player is the amount of accessories available. But the Player is by far less popular that iPod. If you compare more popular Samsung smart phone against Apple iPhone the shortage of cases is not a problem at all.

In the end I am very happy with the Galaxy Player and I hope this post will help someone to choose a better device.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Asus RT-N12B1 router review, initial impression

I was looking to replace my home router for a while now. I was still using Netgear MR-814 which is a 802.11b router and was getting slow. I was looking for a router capable of running DD-WRT or any other open firmware in case original firmware proves to be inadequate.

After some research I picked Asus RT-N12B1. This router is priced reasonably (around $40), capable of running OSS firmware and supports 802.11N single band. It comes with dual 5db antennas and provides good coverage for our house. Asus backs this router with 2 year warranty which should be sufficient since electronics in my experience ether fail shortly or run for a long time. This router equipped with 8MB flash and 32 MB ram and uses Broadcom BCM5357B0 chipset. It looks nice in white and has cool blue LEDs.

I did not update or change stock firmware and performance and stability so far are pretty good. The router came with 2.1.1.1.38 firmware which is not available as download from the Asus site. I have not encountered any problems configuring it or connecting devices to it. After connecting router to my cable modem and rebooting the modem, my connection came up and tested at over 50Mb/s. My old router was able to only achieve about 19Mb/s (which was plenty for my purposes). The weak point of models sold many years ago was stability under BitTorrent download. This router does not have any issues and I downloaded different Ubuntu iso files just to test it. Port forwarding, which I use for VPN connection, is also works without a hitch. I probably need to note that the router runs without encryption and with open authentication so the described performance may change if encryption is turned on. I have no plans to do this however.

My goal was to run 2 Roku boxes at the same time, which was not possible with the old router. This seems to be possible with the new Asus router and it performs well. I have no video drops or buffering with both Roku devices playing at the same time.
Firmware on Asus site is updated regularly and was updated as recently as Dec 2012. Hopefully the Asus keeps up the good work and there is always DD-WRT for backup.
I wanted to mention that there is no temperature problems. The unit is cool to the touch from the top and the bottom. There is slight warm spot right above the main chip but only few degrees warmer than any other place. It is cooler than my cable modem or even my Pogoplug. I do not anticipate any issues in this area.
My first impression is favorable and I would recommend this router if one needs a simple N router without fancy options.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

My opinion about AccuRev

I have been using AccuRev SCM for about 4 years and every year my impression of this system gets worse and worse.
The AccuRev bills itself as a better replacement for ClearCase. I can surely tell you that it is not better and there is no love lost between me and ClearCase. I hate ClearCase with passion for its slowness and complexity. ClearCase however has two big advantages over AccuRev - it is reliable and it is documented well.
AccuRev is simple as long as you only have to check-in files and make them visible to everyone else. As soon as your workflow deviates from the one above, AccuRev becomes a time sink with countless hours wasted. You know what I am talking about if you ever used AccuRev. Try for example rolling back to any previous checked-in and promoted version. Simple solution would be to get the old version and check it in on top of the latest one. That does not work in accurev - file becomes "underlapped". Revert command is disabled for unknown reason. Every time I have to do this I run in to a new problem of some sort.
The documentation is terrible, covering only the basic use. The UI is terrible with menus greyed out and disabled in seemingly random fashion. Command line is somewhat usable but occasionally commands fail with cryptic messages and you can not understand why.
The actual source control database can die on you at any moment and you will need contact their support to fix it. This sometimes turns in to days of downtime. Their replication model is a joke and the replication itself can stop working without any warning or error.
I also help to administer AccuRev and intimately familiar with all of its problems. I would strongly discourage anyone from even considering using it, especially when such wonderful and reliable OSS SCMs are available for FREE.
Very few people will probably read this post but if you do, avoid AccuRev like a plague