Our 2nd Roomba 535 started spinning in circles a couple of months ago. After a little research, and a copy of the service manual, it seemed the left IR bumper sensor had failed.

The Roomba thought something was always in it's way on the left. I found a replacement board on-line for $15 (that tiny green thing a little bigger than my index finger's nail.)

After a lot of disassembly, I got to the old one and desoldered the very small wires attached. I have never soldered something this tiny before, but got the four wires in place and soldered on the new board. Reassembled, held my breath, and tested. Our Roomba is resurrected!

It amazes me that a multi-million dollar cable company can't provide a customer a cable modem that won't be overwhelmed because of "too much traffic." At one time or another you've all had to physically power off and on your cable modem to reset your internet connection. I probably have more traffic than most and many a morning I've woken up to a dead internet connection, or worse, it goes out during the day when I'm away. When your home phone depends on your internet connection, this is no longer amusing.

I've been a fan of X10 home control units for awhile, I've also had two of their "Firecracker" computer serial interface modules sitting in a box for at least 10 years. What does this have to do with the above?

I now have an X10 control unit in between the outlet and my cable modem, a USB to Serial interface connecting my Firecracker to my server, and found this python script that easily controls the Firecracker. I put these together with a script on my server that pings a host of my choosing on the internet at regular intervals, and if the host cannot be reached, the script tells the X10 unit to turn off the modem and turn it back on via the Firecracker module and notifies me.

This completely automates the modem reset and keeps things running.

"You no help me now...I say screw you Jobu. I do it myself." That is one of my favorite quotes from the movie Major League. Pedro Cerrano, having stuck up for, prayed to, and even made offerings of rum to his deity in an effort to hit the baseballs pitched to him, finally gives up and does it himself.

In much the same way I've reached the same realization with little widgets I enjoy on my computers and webpages.

First, it started with something called Konfabulator, later purchased by Yahoo! and rechristened Yahoo! Widgets. It would put, well, widgets on your desktop and blend them in with your background. Working in an office without windows, I would constantly be looking at my weather widget to see what the current weather was and what the forecast was so I could plan my day/evening/weekends. Yahoo! abandoned it and the application became fairly broken in the last Windows/Mac OS release. Yes, I'm aware of the Weather Dashboard Widget in OS X, I hate it and truthfully, I really can't be bothered to enter Dashboard and wait for it to refresh.

Next came something called Recent Tunes. Those that have visited this page, my Signat-url page, or have me on your instant messenger list know that I'm a big music fan and like to post what I'm currently listening to. It adds a small amount of flair to these pages/software that I like. Recent Tunes monitors iTunes while it is playing and will send data about the current item to your webserver in various ways and with various options so that you can, in turn, add what you're listening to on your website. Very nice, I think. Naturally something so useful was abandoned years ago, but it still worked with the latest Mac OS, albeit in PowerPC code using OS X's Rosetta. That legacy code is gone in the next version of Mac OS X and Recent Tunes will finally be laid to rest by me.

I'm no master programmer by any strech of the imagination, but I know enough about scripting languages to be clever, even dangerous. So I wrote my own replacements for these. And they have more functionality, too.

My weather widget lives on my desktops, updates automatically, has a day and night mode that activates at the daily sunrise/sunset times throughout the year, it is complete with accurate representations of current moon phases. It has full graphic representation of the current weather and forecasted weather, additional data like humidity, wind speed and direction, UV index (day mode only, obviously), severe weather warnings (in bright red text to get noticed), and forecasts. Plus, my data source of weather data has even more information that I'm not currently using but can add if I wish. In addition, a smaller, more limited version is in use on my websites now too.

My iTunes continues to publish its data to my pages, but with a script I wrote myself that polls iTunes. For now, it mimicks what Recent Tunes did for me, but my options are now limitless since I can really script it any way I want. I can control the data that gets uploaded to my server in virtually any way I want... pure text, html, or graphic images for album covers. I can even have different sets of data to use on different pages to create different looks. If that still isn't enough, I can tweak it even more.

I'm tired of wondering if some coder out there is just going to get bored with the software he or she shared with the world and just walk away. I'm now looking at what other little utilities, widgets, or gizmos I have in my computing life that I can recreate and, most importantly, recreate better for me. Not only that, it's mine and I don't have to be subject to someone's whims about its future. I wrote it, I understand how it works, and I can fix it if it breaks. Like anything else I put my mind to, I'm only going to get better and better at this the more I work with it.

Cerrano had it right, I say to those abandonware programmers, "screw you. I'll do it myself."

The Christmas 2010 Photos are up for display.  This year featuring photos from Rachel & Samantha who got a couple of simple digital cameras from Santa.  It's interesting to see things from their prespective...

All of the holiday photos from 2009 are in the Photo Albums. Have a look! I've also updated several other sections while I was at it.

Household Ideas:

• Good Coffee Beans

Steve's List:

• Mac mini (4GB RAM Version)
  

Nicole's List:

• iPod Touch
• Pajamas

Rachel & Smantha's List

• Any Size Balls To Play With
• Pool Toys
• Sandbox Toys (non-plastic trucks, etc.)

Here are some quick ways to add some color to BASH and VI in OS X. The below will edit the global files for all users and use just some quick color options. If you want to do this, you can probably figure out how to do this on a per-account basis and do some custom colors too. This has only been tested (so far) with Mac OS X 10.6, but it likely works with 10.5 and even 10.4.

Why do this? If you've ever used virtually any Linux distribution on the planet, you'll see these options are enabled by default. I find colorized directory listings helpful. Seeing code colorized in VI is extremely helpful because you can spot simple typos quickly. I have no idea why after six generations of OS X (I don't count 10.0 as an OS, yuk!) Apple never made this default.

BASH

1. Edit your /etc/bashrc file.
2. Add these two lines to the end:
   export CLICOLOR=1
   export TERM=xterm-color
3. Save.

The default settings are: exfxcxdxbxegedabagacad

Color options are:

a     black 
b     red 
c     green 
d     brown 
e     blue 
f     magenta 
g     cyan 
h     light grey 
A     bold black, usually shows up as dark grey 
B     bold red 
C     bold green 
D     bold brown, usually shows up as yellow 
E     bold blue 
F     bold magenta 
G     bold cyan 
H     bold light grey; looks like bright white 
x     default foreground or background 

The directory color order is:

1. directory
2. symbolic link
3. socket
4. pipe
5. executable
6. block special
7. character special
8. executable with setuid bit set
9. executable with setgid bit set
10. directory writable to others, with sticky bit
11. directory writable to others, without sticky bit

VI

1. Edit your /usr/share/vim/vimrc file.
2. Add these two lines to the end:
   :set term=builtin_xterm
   :syntax on
3. Save

Unlike my Time Warner experience, my communication with Master Lock was outstanding to the point they have a lifelong customer for any lock needs I will ever have.

In June '09 I purchased a set of three vinyl-coated weatherproof locks for our pool gates, we only needed two however the convenience of the same key set plus a spare lock was a bonus.

About 30 days later the first lock failed with all loss of the ability to turn the key. Last week, the other two followed suit. This lock set was only about $20, but darn it, I expect things to last.

I called Master Lock to see if something could be done and explain the situation. I was on hold for less than 30 seconds, and the lady the answered knew the model number of my lock by description only. Further, I learned that all their locks carry a lifetime warranty. Without skipping a beat she took my name, address, phone number and informed me three new locks are on the way.

All of this with no questions asked. I didn't need a receipt and I didn't need to send the locks in as "proof" they were broken. Thank you Master Lock.

In a new tab, browse to about:config. Locate that change the following:

browser.link.open_external -> 3
browser.link.open_newwindow -> 3
browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction -> 0

One or more of the above may not be in your particular configuration. Just change the ones that are available.

Birthday party pictures are up in the photo albums for anyone interested!