Occasionally I’ll download an MKV file that I want to watch on my Xbox 360. Unfortunately the Xbox 360 doesn’t support the MKV format natively. I tried a few conversion programs but they either took hours to run or just didn’t work. I finally found a simple and quick way to play these files which I describe below. This has been tested on the Xbox 360, but you should be able to play these files on the PS3 too.

1. Obtain a large USB memory stick
2. Download and install Rebox.NET.
3. Run Rebox.NET
4. Click the “Matroska” button and select your MKV file.
5. Click the “MP4″ button and select the drive letter for your USB stick.
6. Click the green button in the lower left corner. This will start the conversion process.
7. Once the conversion process is complete then insert the USB stick into your Xbox 360 or PS3.
8. Play the file on your console like usual, it should play perfectly.

Rebox.NET runs very fast because it doesn’t re-encode the video like some other programs. All it does is repackage the audio and video into the MP4 format so that consoles can play the file.

I recently installed the Windows Phone 7 Development Tools on my Acer AspireOne netbook. Visual Studio works pretty well on this machine. But unfortunately when running my app for the first time the emulator started up and then just sat there with a message that said, “Windows Phone Emulator Is Doing A Complete OS Boot”.

After reading some discussion about the problem online it seems that the emulator doesn’t work with some types of hardware virtualization. Apparently the AMD cpu in my netbook isn’t supported and there is no way to turn off the virtualization enhancements in the BIOS.

So I looked around and found the emulator config file. In the file is a setting to turn Hardware Assist off. I set the value to false, started up the emulator and now it works perfectly. It may not work too well if your app is CPU intensive like a game, but for my use it works fine.

Here is how to configure it:

1. Open a command window and go to %LOCALAPPDATA%\microsoft\xde
2. There will be a file similar to config_*.decfg
3. Open the file in notepad and look for a line that looks like this:

           <EnableHWAssist Reconfigurable="static" Type="bool">true</EnableHWAssist>

4. Change “true” to “false”
5. Save the file and start the emulator.

Summary: Here is the link to the cheap Lapdawg Clone:

Lapdawg Clone

As of this writing the price is $49.99 with free shipping, no coupon required. This is less than half the price of the Lapdawg branded version when shipping is included.

I frequently use my laptop while lying down in bed. I’ve tried using assorted pillows to prop up the laptop but that never seemed to work, it was never in the right position.

So I started looking around and found out there is a company that makes a nice looking laptop bed stand called the Lapdawg. The Lapdawg X4 stand looks pretty good from their site, it is very adjustable and it looks high quality. I was interested in buying the Lapdawg X4 until I saw the price of $89 + $16 shipping ($105 total + possible tax), more than I wanted to spend on a laptop stand. They have a coupon field when you purchase, but I looked around and couldn’t find any Lapdawg coupon codes that would reduce the price to something I was willing to pay.

So I started looking around for a laptop stand for a more reasonable price. On Amazon I found a laptop stand that looks exactly like the Lapdawg and has decent reviews. The stand is a clones of the Lapdawg and exactly the same (find the link in the summary at the top of this page). In comparing the pictures from Lapdawg’s site with the pictures on Amazon you can see that it is likely the exact same stand. Look at the hinges on the legs, you can see it has white markings around them to measure the degrees, these are exactly the same on both. It looks like the Lapdawg company rebrands these laptop stands with the Lapdawg name and then they sell them on their own site.

I went ahead and ordered the laptop stand from Amazon since it was significantly less expensive than the Lapdawg and the shipping was free. The laptop stand that I received from Amazon looks exactly like the Lapdawg. It has all the same folding features and has the white degree dials around the hinges. The only difference I can see is that my stand comes with a a cooling fan powered by USB. Personally I don’t bother to use the fans, my laptop stays cool enough, but in case you want them they are there. Luckily I never notice the fans, they are small so they don’t take up any extra space and the cord is detachable so it doesn’t get in the way.

I’ve been using the laptop stand for a month now and it is great (I’m actually using it to type this blog post). The hinge adjustments are kind of a pain because there are six of them. I just leave it in the configuration that I like because it is a hassle to reset all six hinges everytime you want to put it way.

Amazon is a great online store and I order from them all the time. I really like the Free Super Saver Shipping. The problem is that sometimes I’m not buying $25 worth of items to get the free shipping. I searched through Amazon and found some cheap items to add as filler. These items will add filler to your purchase to “fill” it up to the minimum $25 to get free shipping.

These filler items are cheap enough that you can just add multiples of them to get your price above $25. So if you need an extra dollar, just add in 2 58 cent filler items. As soon as you add enough filler items you will get the Amazon free super saver shipping.

Here are the items I found:

$0.33:  Screws
$0.70: Paint Brush

If you use Amazon regularly you might want to check out my other page to find out how to install an Amazon search plugin that gives you real time suggestions as you type:

http://patricksheedy.net/blog/amazon-suggestions-search-box-opensearch-plugin/

I wanted to get started flying RC airplanes. I went down to the local RC club and flew a 3 channel plane. Even for a newbie like me it seemed a little too easy, I could fly and land it with no problem. So for my first plane I looked around for a plane with ailerons for a little more challenge. I found out about the AXN Floater jet which is available for purchase online at HobbyKing.com. As far as I’m aware the AXN is not available from any US or European retailers. HobbyKing orders take a couple of weeks to ship because they are located in Hong Kong, but they are a respected and reliable retailer in the RC community.

Once I got the plane setup it flies very nice and smooth. But as a newbie it took me a while to get it put together. I’m including some tips here to help other people get the AXN Floater built and flying.

Here are the items I bought from HobbyKing:

Plane

There are three different versions of the AXN Floater Jet:

1. AXN including motor, ESC, servos
2. AXN including motor
3. Airframe only

When I purchased my plane the only version that was available was the one that included everything. The ESC and motor that come with it aren’t the best and people say that they will break eventually. But so far mine have worked fine. It saves time to have everything installed so I recommend getting the version that includes servos, motor, and ESC.

Battery and Charger

The plane flies best with a 2200mah 3 cell battery. This is the battery that I have that works very well and is cheap: Zippy Flightmax

I recommend this charger: Accucell 6 . There are cheaper chargers, but this one is very good. It charges batteries very fast, has a nice readout, and will charge a lot of different battery types.

The charger doesn’t come with a power supply. If you have an old laptop computer you may be able to use that AC adapter with the charger. I didn’t have one so I just but this power supply that works very well: AC power supply

Radio

There are a couple of ways you can go on the radio. If you want to go as cheap as possible you can pick up a Hobby King radio that includes the transmitter and receiver here . Or the same radio from the USA warehouse . This radio will work fine for the AXN Floater.

But personally I wanted something a little nicer that can be used with multiple models that I might get in the future. So I went with the Spektrum DX6i. This is a very popular radio that is used by many people. Hobby King doesn’t sell it, you’ll have to buy it at another retailer or the local hobby store. Buy the version that is a transmitter only (no receiver). Then you can buy the Hobby King clone receivers that work with this radio but are a lot cheaper than the Spektrum receivers. Just get one of these receivers, they both work the same but come with a different case:

Receiver 1

Receiver 2

Spare Parts

The ESC and motor that come with the plane aren’t the best quality. I wanted to pick up spares just in case the originals broke. Or buy these if you bought the AXN without motor or ESC:

Motor

ESC

The servos that come with the plane are decent. But in case one of them breaks it is nice to have backups. Plus they are pretty cheap: Servos

Optional Items

The ESC might not come with the correct connector to work with the battery. You can buy extra connectors and solder it onto the wire yourself: XT60  Connectors . You could also go to the local hobby store and they can make an adapter for you.

This battery monitor is optional but nice to have. It tells you how much power is remaining in your battery. It comes with everything but you need to solder the connector yourself: Battery Monitor

If I left anything off please let me know in the comments. Thanks.

I created a plugin to add Amazon search suggestions to the browser search bar. This allows you to search Amazon directly from your browser and get suggestions in real time as you type. To install the plugin click the button below:

The plugin works in all modern browsers including Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 8, Safari, and Chrome. Once you click the plugin it will then show up in your search bar as “Amazon Suggestions”. Select it and then start typing your search.

The cool thing about this plugin is that newer browsers such as Firefox 3 and IE 8 support a suggestion feature that shows suggestions as you type. In Firefox a dropdown will suggest search terms that you might want to use. Internet Explorer 8 supports a cool feature called Visual Search Suggestions. The visual suggestions actually show the products you might be searching for along with a picture. It is like a real time mini-search in the dropdown.

The same plugin is compatible with all browsers using the OpenSearch specification. This makes it handy to add custom searches for frequently used sites such as Amazon.

To try out my Amazon search plugin just click the link below. A dialog will popup confirming that you want to add the “Amazon Suggestions” plugin. Once you do that you can now select the “Amazon Suggestions” icon from your search box and have suggestions appear while you type.

I wanted to buy a RC car for my son. After looking around it seemed like the Rockslide RS10 from Redcat Racing was a good choice. There are a lot of expensive rock crawlers out there, but I didn’t want to spend too much. There is no reason to spend a bunch of money on high performance competition parts when the crawler is just going to be used in the backyard.

This looked like a good RC car for my son because:

They go slow so he doesn’t need a lot of room.
They can drive in a lot of places that other RC cars can’t
Batteries last a long time per charge
We can build obstacles together that he can drive over

In looking around the Rockslide RS10 seemed to be a recommended crawler. It is relatively cheap and had decent performance. I couldn’t find any better ones so I went ahead and bought the RS10.

I received the rock crawler within the week. The crawler is very impressive out of the box. It is big and it looks very tough and well made. The crawler comes with almost everything you need. The only thing it doesn’t come with are 8 AA batteries for the transmitter.

After charging up the battery we took it out to try it out. The truck is very impressive. It can climb things that you would not be able to expect it to do. To give you an idea of what it can climb: A standard curb on a road is a little too high to climb if you drive straight on, but if you drive in at an angle you can climb the curb. The people who have seen the truck are very impressed at the ease that the truck can climb obstacles.

The transmitter that comes with the truck is nice for a bundled transmitter. It has an LCD screen on it where you can make adjustments. There is a button on it that allows you to control which steering mode the truck is in: front, rear, or two all wheel steering modes. The only thing I don’t like about the transmitter is the limited range, it only works to about 20 feet. With a rock crawler you’re usually going to be close to the truck anyway so it isn’t a big deal, but it would be nice to have a little more range sometime. I wish that Redcat could have included a 2.4ghz transmitter instead even if it cost a little more.

I had a few problems with the truck. The servos that control both the front and rear steering wore out. They started making a clicking sound when steering and eventually stopped working. Redcat Racing repaired the servos for free under warranty, but from what I have read the stock servos are of low quality so I’d expect the replacements to break too. So instead I replaced them with these metal gear servos that people online seem to like. The new servos were easy to replace and worked without any configuration. So far they have worked great with no evidence of them wearing out.

The screws that hold the struts onto the wing fell out after a few uses. I recommend using Loctite on these screws so they don’t come out. I wish Redcat would warn people about this in their manual because once the screws fall out they are impossible to find.

Overall I really like the Rockslide RS10. The performance is very impressive for a good price. It is one of those things that both the adults and the kids can have a lot of fun with. If you are looking for a good RC vehicle without spending too much I recommend getting the Rockslide RS10.

The Asus RT-N16 router is one of the most powerful routers currently available. The RT-N16 has 802.11n, gigabit network ports, a fast processor, lots of memory and flash, and two USB ports for running a printer and external hard drive at the same time.

The stock Asus firmware is not that great, people have reported a lot of problems with it. So a great way to improve this router is to install a third party firmware. The two most popular are Tomato and DD-WRT. Tomato seems to have all the advanced features plus it is easier to use than DD-WRT so I decided to install Tomato. The standard version of Tomato does not support USB. Luckily there is another project called TomatoUSB that allows the use of the USB ports on the RT-N16.

The only problem with the alternate firmwares is that the documentation is severely lacking. There doesn’t seem to be a single, easy to follow guide on how to install the firmware. You have to spend many hours reading forum posts that are sometimes contradictory.

In reality installing Tomato is actually pretty simple once you figure it out. There is a lot of confusing information online, but if you follow the steps below you will have a working Tomato install:

1. Download the latest version of TomatoUSB from here: http://tomatousb.org/download.  For the Asus RT-N16 you need to use the “Ext” build for Kernel 2.6 MIPSR2. The Ext build has the most features and it will fit in the RT-N16′s flash space. I used Build 47, but use whatever the latest version is.
2. Install the Firmware Restoration Utility from the CD that came with the router. Run \Utility\setup.exe from the CD to install it. If you no longer have the CD you can also download it from the Asus website.
3. Disable the firewall on your computer. This is required, the Restoration Utility refuses to run unless it is disabled. To disable it on Vista or Windows 7, hit the Start key then type firewall to get to the firewall control panel. On XP you should be able to go to the Control Panel and find the Firewall icon.
4. Using an ethernet cable plug your computer into one of the 4 LAN ports on the router.
5. Open a web browser and go to http://192.168.1.1. Verify that the router login page loads. If nothing loads then your computer is not able to reach the router. You’ll need to fix this problem before continuing.
6. Run the Asus Firmware Restoration Utility from the Start menu. If it gives you an error about the firewall then your firewall isn’t disabled. You need to disable it before continuing.
7. Click the Browse button and select the file that you downloaded in step #1. Don’t click the upload button yet.
8. Put the router in recovery mode: Unplug the router. Hold down the Reset button. Plug the router back in. Once the power light starts slowly flashing release the reset button. The power light should continue to flash. The flashing light means the router is ready to accept the new firmware.
9. Click the upload button in the Restoration utility. The firmware will now start uploading into the router. Don’t touch anything while the firmware is being uploaded. After the upload is complete wait five minutes or so just to be sure everything is done.
10. Now reset the settings to default: Unplug the router. Hold the WPS button on the back of the router. Plug the router back in. Hold the button for about 30 seconds and release it.
11. Open a browser and go to http://192.168.1.1. Login with user “admin” and password “admin”. You should be logged into Tomato. Now you can configure your router using the Tomato GUI.

I’ve used the above steps to successfully install Tomato on my Rt-N16. If you have any suggestions or improvements to this guide let me know by leaving a comment.

This page is ad free as a service for RT-N16 users. The only thing I ask is that if you found this page useful and happen to be ordering something from Amazon.com, that you click on this link before placing your order: Amazon Link. It doesn’t cost you anything, it is completely anonymous, and I get a small referral fee that pays for the hosting of this site. If you never order anything from Amazon then don’t worry about it, enjoy the site for free.

My electric water heater was very old so I decided to replace it with a new one. I had heard about tankless water heaters before and they sounded pretty good: unlimited hot water, no tank to break, energy efficient, space saving. With the recent tax credits I figured I’d try one out.

I ended up buying the Rinnai tankless water heater. The Rinnai is made in Japan and has a good reputation so I figured it would be a good choice. Brennan Heating had the best price of the companies that I contacted and seemed like a good company so I setup an install date with them.

The old electric heater was in the garage near the center of the house. Unfortunately Brennan said that the new Rinnai couldn’t be installed there because the vent to the outside was right next to the front door. So instead they installed the water heater on the other side of the garage to vent it and then ran water pipes back to the other side.

Unfortunately this extra pipe makes it take longer to get hot water to the faucets because the water has to travel through the longer pipe. I didn’t think it would add all that much time but it added a significant amount of time.

The second problem is that if you turn the hot water on and off frequently the water does not heat up consistently. Once the water starts flowing the burners cannot fire up fast enough, so cold water gets into the pipe. So for example, if you’re washing dishes and turn the hot water on for a few seconds at a time then the water will never get really hot. So you have to learn to wash dishes in a different manner by combining all your hot water in larger batches.

For things like showers the Rinnai has no problems. Since the hot water is used consistently during a shower the heater has no problem keeping the shower nice and warm. Plus since all the heating is done on demand it is handy when you have guests staying over. People can take showers back to back all day long and nobody has to worry about running out of hot water and being force to take a cold shower.

The Rinnai is a nice hot water heater, but there are some downsides to it. I’m not sure if the benefits outweight the drawbacks. If you are really into having the latest technology and energy efficiency then go ahead and get a tankless heater. If all you really want is just hot water then it might just make sense to stick with the old tank style.

My 35 year old Ruud furnace had been working ok, but it was getting pretty old and was really inefficient compared to newer models. So I decided to look into getting a new high efficiency furnace with the $1500 tax credit that is available. Here is my review:

I ended up getting a Coleman Echelon Furnace with a 97.5% efficiency rating. I was somewhat unsure about getting a Coleman at first since I was only aware of them making low end camping equipment and coolers. But after more research I found that Coleman is actually the same furnace as the York brand, just with the Coleman badge attached.

The Echelon is Coleman’s top model.  It has a fully modulating burner and blower which in theory should output the exact amount of heat required. Instead of being either off or 100% on, the Coleman can output only say 40% of the maximum heat if that is all that is needed. The Echelon costs more than their other models, but I plan on keeping it for 30 years like the old one so I may as well have a good one.

In theory Coleman’s modulation sounds great. Instead of a non-modulating furnace cycling on and off all the time, the Coleman is supposed to run more often at a lower setting. This should keep the temperature in the house at a more constant temperature. Unfortunately the furnace doesn’t really seem to do this. It might do it a little because I hear it come on at a lower speed and then ramp up after a few minutes. But it doesn’t really perform like their description says.

From what I have read the best furnace is the Rheem modulating furnace. The Rheem has a special thermostat which can tell the furnace the exact temperature of the house. If the house is at 65 degrees but the thermostat is set for 70 then the Rheem furnace knows that it will need to output a lot of heat so it outputs 100%. The Coleman only knows that it needs to be warmer so it doesn’t know how much heat to output. I probably would have gotten the Rheem, but the Rheem barely missed the efficiency cut off for the tax credit so I didn’t get it.

The Coleman furnace was installed by PPS Heating and Air Conditioning. Their install seems to be pretty good. But they couldn’t get a new thermostat wire run. They were supposed to go do some research and then call me back to get it fixed. But of course they never bothered to call back. I guess once they have their money they don’t care about doing the things that they said they would do.