Background: I picked up a Series 2 80 hour from a friend shortly after they announced TiVoToGo at CES. I wanted a media PC with the ability to play MP3’s off my server in the living room. Pause and record shows, etc. Transfer shows to server and backup to DVD later. The hassle of setting up my own Linux PC with MPEG card was too much to worry about.

Problem: Initial setup without a phone line. No land line for me. No Vonage. Nothing. You need a phone line to make the initial setup call. I feel this is total bullshit and a lot of others agree. There are a few workarounds however – besides “Going over to a friends house with your [god-damn] TiVo.”

Geek Solution One: Apparently the older style Belkin USB Ethernet adapter works with a dialing prefix of ( ,#411 ). This is also TiVo software version dependant. I scoured a CompUSA, found one, hooked it up – and got nothing. I was going to need one of these anyway for connection to my LAN, but it didn’t help that I still couldn’t connect through the initial setup.

Geek Solution Two: Make or adapt the serial cable with a null modem cable to connect to a PPP server on your XP box. If I didn’t know how to solder, never ran my own BBS, or know how to network Windows, I would never have figured this out. So beware of these directions for making a PPP serial connection with your Tivo. My pitfalls were: 1. Null modem cable into adapter into TiVo serial cable. When Christine and I were trying to figure out the wiring we didn’t wire TX to RX and RX to TX. (This document helped) 2. No matter what connection speed I used, I never got the words “User Request” to show up in Hyperterminal. 3. Assign a range of IPs to the direct connection. This was the last thing preventing the machine from talking to the net. Read the directions several times… slowly.

So now I have my TiVo setup. I thought that Christine might not use it and she took off making wishlists and recordings. It’s downstairs on the network with the PS2. I have access to my pictures and mp3s over the LAN and can’t wait for the Tivo ToGo upgrade.

Top five reasons to get a TiVo:
1. Record shows.
2. Pause and skip commercials.
3. Watch shows on any PC in the house. Burn shows to DVD. (TiVoToGo)
4. Play MP3s in the living room.
5. Viewing guide – find and record searches.

I went into a local market today and they had two different brands of milk. Both were labeled 1%, yet one was a purple cap and one had a green cap. I have purchased a bottle of milk with a yellow cap (expecting 1%) and received whole milk.

There. It’s done. I have ended the confusion. I have set forth this image into the public domain for the creation of a milk color standard. We will no longer be confused when inside the market or store. No more puzzlement as to the contents of a container of milk. Nor will we be forced to drink what we didn’t intend to buy. If your grocers milk cap colors vary from this document, please ask them why their milk and dairy distributor is not NSIM (National Standard for Identifying Milk) compliant.

A hi-res .png copy of the NSIM reference is available here.

The National Standard for Identifying Milk is dedicated to the Public Domain. Some keywords for consideration: red whole, blue 2%, green 1%, yellow skim, milk cap color national standard.

This has to be the feel good link of the month. Want some happiness? Check out this search I did under technorati for “first post”. It gives you an idea of just how many people are trying out this blog thing. You capture people at their innocent, sometimes awkward, first moments. Other possible titles: “A blog is born.” ; “Somewhere, someone right now is opening up their heart.” ; “Is there anybody out there?” For extra karma points: Leave some comments. You never know who you might be inspiring.

I finally picked up the Linksys WRT54G Wireless Router. Before I even got it out of the box I was thinking up ways to connect it to my network. I’ll be talking about basic networking and configuring 2 routers to talk to each other, creating two separate networks both with internet access. You should be comfortable with router settings, giving your machines static IPs, CAT5, and other basic networking concepts.

A not so unique situation: You have the ability to get multiple IPs from your ISP over the same connection. For example: At my brother’s house they have broadband cable split with a switch into two routers. They want to have 2 internet IPs for several different reasons:
1. They want two servers on the web with different IPs. Both can dish out websites at the same time and still co-exist on the same network.
2. PS2s and other game systems get wonky when they are more then one of them on the LAN. It won’t work correctly if they both are trying to play the same online game as they have “technically” the same IP. Network address translation does a good job, but the online game server still can’t deal with 2 game systems on the same IP.

At my house I have the unique situation – off a college campus network. This means that I have several drops (ethernet jacks) around the house at my disposal. I also believe that they throttle the connection according to “drop” not according to “house” or “account”. Not only do I get the benefits of two separate IP addresses, but I get an added performance benefit as well.*
1. Network upstairs has three computers using file sharing, etc.
2. Network downstairs has a networked PS2 and soon to have some sort of PVR like Tivo.

Now you kids at home can duplicate this setup by splitting your cable connection with a switch or adding a second cable modem (for an additional fee from your cable provider) to your house. You won’t have one huge fat pipe, like multi-home or connection teaming. *The performance will come from the fact that being online with your PS2 won’t tank your music downloads going on upstairs.

The main problem: You have two routers, two separate subnets. How can I send movies to my PC from my PVR if I can’t see it on the LAN. How can I backup my PS2 games (There’s a way you can do that?!) onto my server if I can’t ping my PS2 from my PC.

The answer is static routing and a crossover cable or uplink port. Here is what my network looks like:

Continue reading Fun with home networking. Two WAN IPs, one LAN. →

Some of you may remember the “planetkris comics.” These were retired to a far off place. Unfortunately never to return. In the past few months I’ve been playing with Flash again and started to come up with some new ideas. Not new characters per se’, but funny ideas, designs and situations.

One thing I enjoy is riding coasters. There is a lot of humor that can be found dealing with amusement parks and coasters, etc. Waiting in line, bad park food, cranky attendants and other satire. I have brought out this passion with a new site called popCoaster.com

Hey there Trogdor kiddies! Having problems with the Kerrek? Don’t know what to do with the baby? We’re here to help. With info and tips for the homestarrunner.com ‘Peasant’s Quest Game’. First get your ‘Planetkris.com Unofficial Peasant’s Quest Map’ here. There are a lot of items in Peasantry, and I’m sure we haven’t found them all. At least not all the easter eggs. If you find one that’s not listed – please contact us!

Click here for the entire walk through.
Continue reading Peasant’s Quest Unofficial Guide! →