coretron.org

How to use newsgroups to safely stream and download

Coretron — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 00:05:21 +0000

So there are a few things you have to do to download stuff off the newsgroups. It’s a little more advanced than downloading torrents but once you get the hang of it its better. Newgroups can max out your download speeds, I get 2 MB/s so I can download blurays faster than we can watch them.
First you’ll need to sign up for a service provider. The best unlimited for your money is http://www.news.astraweb.com/index.html at $15/mo or $40 for 3. If you want a 14 day free trial you can go to giganews.com instead of astraweb. Giganews is $25/mo after the trial so cancel before the end if you decide you want to do this.
Next you’ll need to install two free applications. One is found here http://www.nzbplayer.com/ and the other is called GrabIt at http://www.shemes.com/. NZBPlayer will stream, download, and extract videos and GrabIt will just download and extract. Both applications will need your username and password from astraweb as well as the server address which I believe is news.astraweb.com , for Giganews its news.giganews.com . The programs may also need something other than the default port, if it does astraweb will tell you what it is in their member only faq. You also need to install VLC player if you don’t already have it.
Just as programs like Bittorrent and uTorrent open a .torrent file to download, NZBPlayer and GrabIt require .NZB files. The website Newzbin.com is the easiest way to browse and search for NZB files. Piratebay.org:torrent files::newzbin.com:nzb files. Newzbin is free for 1 day and $2 a month after that. Theres a free alternative called binsearch.info, but theres more garbage to dig through there.
So here are the steps to download something: search or browse on newzbin.com. Click on the one you want. You’ll see a list of files all with similar names, we are going to create an nzb file containing all these pieces by clicking “Create NZB” near the top of the list. Once the .nzb file is downloaded you can choose to open it with NZBPlayer to download it and watch as it downloads, or GrabIt to download the whole thing. After downloading it grabit should automatically extract all the files in a separate folder. Sometimes grabit can’t extract the files and youll have to go to the download folder and use a program like 7zip or winrar to extract the file. NZBPlayer generally fails on about 5-10% of videos, so youll have to wait and use grabit for those. Keep in mind that only powerful of computers can play 1080p or bluray videos. We use a box called a popcorn hour on our tv to watch 1080 videos. 720p looks just as good and plays much easier to run on computers. After watching something using NZBPlayer the file is saved in a folder somewhere called “avis” make sure to empty that folder if you start to run low on hard drive space or want to watch something again. Once you find the folder make a shortcut to it on the desktop for future reference.

Let me know how it works out, or if you have any questions.

Turning the cellphone into a black box recorder

Coretron — Tue, 11 May 2010 23:53:44 +0000

As our cellphones make the move to being our dashboard mounted GPS I had a thought. Why not have the phone record your drive and save the recording if asked to or if the accelerometer detects a crash. It would start and stop entirely on its own and the user wouldn’t even notice it until they needed it. I would wager insurance companies would offer a discount to people who use this as it could often prove who was at fault in an accident. It could know to start recording when the phone is being held at the angle the mount holds it at and when moving over a certain speed. This seems like an easy enough application to make, perhaps it will be my first.

What programs I install on a fresh install of Windows.

Coretron — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:53:30 +0000

uTorrent
Chrome
Firefox
Gtalk
7-zip x64 or x86(32bit) (file extractor)
Foxit (PDF reader)
HandBrake (Rips DVDs to MPEG4)
MS Office (.torrent) or OpenOffice
Quicktime alternative
Real Alternative
Virtual CloneDrive (Used to mount iso files)
Flash
Shockwave
Picasa (Google’s photo viewer/manager/editor/backup/share)
VLC media player (plays many codecs and is a good overall player)
Free Download Manager (Useful to limit download speeds of large files as to not tie up network, also lets you download flash video from sites like youtube or google video)
FileZilla (Ftp client)
Winamp (tried and true audio player)
Google Earth
Classic MS Paint (Windows 7 has a new paint program which is better overall, but different. Some hardcore paint users will want their classic paint. Warning: its quite a chore)
AVG (Antivirus, I personally don’t use an antivirus, but some people should)

I’m sure I’ve forgotten some, but there they are.

Get in line for Google Voice.

Coretron — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:42:29 +0000

Google has started accpeting requests for invites to Google Voice. Id post a link but I’ve already typed out the rest of this post and on the g1 if I leave the browser once I come back it refreshes the page and I lose evereything I’ve written. I’ve alredy informed Google of this.
For those who don’t know, Google voice gives you a new phone number which, when called, connects to the phone numbers you have now. This has a few advantages. First Google can handle your voicemail much better than your carrier. You can personalize greetings for contacts or groups of people. It can transcribe your voicemails and send them to you as either an email or SMS. You can easily access your voicemail online.
You have one number for the rest of your life, for all your home, work, and cell phones. You tell Google Voice which callers are routed to which phone or phones. By pressing # or something on your cell phone you can ring your home phone, answer, hang up the cell phone and continue your conversation on the home phone. Fucking magic.
Google voice also let’s you record calls by pressing 4. Those recordings can be accessed online as well.
But wait there’s more. Say you make a craigslist posting and want to have prospective buyers call you. Normally you’d have to throw your phone number out to the world. Now you can easily place a “call me” button which asks for their number then connects him to you.
There’s more and there will be more in the future to talk about Google Voice.

Oh, there’s a Google Maps application. Also, we should replace the forums.

Coretron — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:20:45 +0000

I heard that there were supposed to be all these new features in the latest version of google maps for Anrdoid but couldn’t find any of them. On a recent search of the marketplaces top applications I saw googe maps. The thing is I never even knew there was a map app, I had just always used the one that came installed.
The app version of google maps includes voice search, business reviews, and updates? Looks like google is taking on twitter and facebook’s similar feature.

On a similar note I think we should try to find some way of communicating as a group besides the forum. I’m not sure but I think twitter is a little too much of a public place. I just got a facebook account a few weeks ago. I havnt really messed around with it yet so I don’t know if we could use it to replace the forums. Seems to me like we could. The main problems with the forum is that it doesn’t push the posts out. Well it does through an rss feed, but finding an rss reader that can handle the login is a pain. The forum server is super slow. The forums have been a fun place and we might as well keep it up cause its free, but I think we should move to facebook or something else if there are any suggestions.

Watch the live stream of the hubble telescope repair

Coretron — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:30:25 +0000

It might get boring after 10 minutes but its awesome to watch a live stream of the men working in space. http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html And while I’m at it you should follow NASA on twitter for live updates on the mission and future mission. Also, follow me, I’m coretron.

I

Coretron — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:30:09 +0000

I have no mp3s on my computer. I haven’t for years. I get all my music from imeem.com. You can search an artist and instantly get a playlist of their songs. You can give it one song you have on your mind and from there it will take you on a musical journey of songs based on the one you gave it. Any time you find a song you love you can favorite it and it’ll be remembered till the day you die. You can also share the song with your friends and if they are also hip to the imeem you can both see what the other has been listening to lately. Between every 20th song they have a 4 second promo for a new band, but other than that there are no ads. I love letting it take me on a journey of songs and along the way i can mark the best as favorites. On my G1 I can load the imeem app which can play a playlist of random songs i’ve favorited (spellchecker doesn’t know “favorited”). As I’m writing this the imeem.com player chose a variation of a song on my favorite playlist, which is infinitely excellent. (here’s the song it chose, here’s the version on my list, heres a third verion it threw my way, it’s kinda a gay song but its catchy). Imeem is close to perfecting the art of new song selection based on your past listening. There’s really no reason to download music when there’s imeem.com. My only beef with them is that the g1 application doesn’t play any song you tell it to, it only randomly plays an artist and similar artists, your favorited songs, or mp3’s you uploaded. It also has the bizarre feature of finding popular songs based on your GPS location. Anyways, check out imeem.com. Here’s my profile.

Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 is available.

Coretron — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:34:18 +0000

Get it now legally and free from Microsoft. It’s good till July 2010, but you’ll probably want to upgrade to a pirated version of the final version. It boots and installs in record times. It took about 30 min to install and about 30-40 sec to boot. I haven’t done much yet, perhaps I should compile a full review… That sounds like actual blog work.

Here’s a little of what I know for now. To get Chrome working you have to get the latest beta build. Windows 7 comes with a full copy of Windows XP which uses virtualization to run in Windows 7. In about 10 seconds you can have XP running a program in window in Win 7. One of the things that’s held Windows back is that they have to maintain compatibility for all the old software and hardware. Even if you don’t need it, which most modern people don’t, it’s there slowing down your OS. This new way of having XP boot within Win 7 for legacy programs allows Win 7 to be faster and more lightweight. Here’s the kicker, your CPU has to support virtualization. Apperently even some lower end modern CPUs don’t even have this, but some from as far back as 2006 do. Here’s a good blog post about more on the issue.

I highly recommend using Windows 7 RC1.

QR Codes quickly and easily send links to cellphones

Coretron — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:33:32 +0000

I was at a web page explaining how to install the wake on lan application for the g1 when I saw something claiming to be a QR link to the application. I googled it and found that the Barcode Scanner app can read QR codes. The g1 scanned the image then gave me the link to the page. They can also link to numbers for sms or call. Apparently these are popular in Japan, especially on ads. Here’s the link to the wake on lan app which, when properly configured and supported, lets you remotly boot your computer. It’s the fastest way to get a webpage or phone number onto your phone. QR code generators are freely available on the internet. I also find it handy to install a QR code extension on your browser so you can easily send a link to your phone to be viewed or shared.

Turns out my headphones are also a microphone at the same time

Coretron — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:37:24 +0000

Microphones and speakers are really the same thing, they are just a diaphragm a magnet and a coil used to convert an analog electric signal into sound or vice versa. In a pinch you can plug your headphones into your mic jack and talk into your headphones. I wouldn’t recommend trying to hear music through your mic as you’d overload it.

My speakers and headphones use a simple splitter to share my PC line out. Just today I dropped my headphones and heard it in the speakers. Sure enough I could talk into the headphones and hear it amplified in the speakers. The headphones could play the PC sound while also recieving audio which was then amplified by the speakers, which also play the PC sound. Its a very unexpected consequence of my setup but makes sense when you think about it. The speakers are receiving not only the PC sound but also the current induced by the headphones. Anyone have a solution? I might get an external card, mines reaching retirement age anyways.