Author Archives: mstroud

The Tale of the Harmony 880 Remote

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I recently became the owner of a new smart remote control, the Logitech Harmony 880 via a friend of mine who will remain nameless (he knows who he is).  After months of pain with the previous remote, the Philips Pronto NG (I think the NG stood for “not good”) I was ready to switch to something better.  The Harmony 880 looked to be the ticket.

To be fair, I was warned that the setup process for the 880 would be a little, um, rough.  The warning was correct.  It was an unholy terror to setup the remote due to a few factors, which I will now dutifully list:

  • All of the software needed to program the remote is on the web, literally. There is no software on the PC, it is all run remotely from a browser.  This brings with it all the pain (timeouts, 404s, constant refreshes) of normal Web 1.0 browsing with none of the benefit.
  • You have to know exactly what the model name and number is of every component you own.  Simply knowing you have a Sony DVD player is not enough, and it leads you to hunt around for all of your manuals to be sure the name is correct.
  • The “activities” are fixed in function by the web site.  If you don’t like the order or devices the “activity wizard” decides to drop in each button, well tough.  That’s the way it works.
  • God forbid one of your devices doesn’t work properly, as then you’ll suffer through the pain of the “help wizard” on the remote control itself.  This hellish process involves the remote constantly asking “is product XYZ turned on now?  How about now?  Is it working now?” until you give up and go online to try it all again.

If you get lucky, like I did about the 99th time I tinkered with the web site settings (their “software” evidently hates my Sony AV receiver) when you detach the remote from your PC, things work and you are in happy, happy entertainment land.  If it doesn’t, be prepared to spend a long time on the web site changing settings.

Once this remote gets working its actually quite nice, with a large set of hard buttons and a fairly nice (though narrow viewing angle) screen.  The market that Logitech seems to be aiming this at is the do-it-yourself home theater owner who knows next to nothing about PCs and remote controls.  I’m not sure the overly simplistic approach they take with the on-the-web setup is the right one, but perhaps I’m just used to more control. 

When you think about it, that’s what remotes are all about: control.  And when it gets taken away from me for the purposes of ease-of-use I just cringe.  Perhaps as I spend more time with this remote I’ll grow to accept its “features” but for now I’m a bit grumpy over the whole experience.

Long Ride Up and Back, with Good Ski In-Between

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There was good skiing to be had last weekend, but a lot of pain on the ride to and from Tahoe made it bittersweet.  It was the first time I’ve ever seen snow in Placerville, a town located at 1800 feet above sea level.  It’s rare to find snow that low in California, so out came the Caltrans chain crews and down goes the speed limit.

It took just over 7 hours to get to Tahoe that Friday evening.

On Saturday and Sunday there was a bit over an inch of new snow, really cold weather, and very light crowds.  Slopes were groomed and generally people free, so it made for some nice high speed skiing.  Great stuff.

But then the ride home turned ugly.  There was a serious accident on highway 50 involving a fatality, and since its only a 2 lane road (one lane for each direction) the whole road was shut down for about 3 hours.  This made the ride home take about 8 hours.

This episode really makes me want to learn to fly a plane.

Multi-room audio coolness

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After a little searching around (OK, a lot of searching) I’ve found a solution to help kick music around throughout the homestead with only a little fussing.  The equation works like this:

Roku SoundBridge + SlimServer 6.2.1 + SoftSqueeze PC client + MP3s = whole house synchronized* audio

I have to put the * caveat in because the Roku really doesn’t handle sync terrifically.  But it does it well enough to walk around the house and hear the same song everywhere at nearly the same time.  Considering the extra cash outlay was zero, its not a bad solution.

Now, when am I going to get some more of these devices?

Old Dog, New Tricks, Sort of

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Today I took a lesson and attempted to snowboard for the first time. To be sure, I’m hurting as I sit here and type this, and it was a real chore to try to learn how to do something so unnatural as boarding.

To be fair, I’ve skied for longer than I can remember so I’m used to not falling down all the time. I’m also not accustomed to sitting in the middle of a trail, waiting to get hit, yet after my lesson and some further practice, this is something that boarders are taught to do.

I think I’ll keep to my skiing, thank you very much.  Oh, and traffic on the way home was the worst its been all year.  It took nearly 2 hours more to get home, thanks to the snow, rain, and my favorite, California’s best drivers.

The PSP is taking over

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I held off for a while, but I now own a PSP.  While this is not totally unexpected, given my employer, what is surprising is the speed at which it has consumed my personal time. 

This is due in large part to the PSP’s WiFi abilities.  You see, it can browse most web pages and stream music wirelessly.  This means I can listen to virtually any podcast anywhere I go, as well as any music I happen to find.  Combined with GTA I find less and less free time on my hands.

The next step for me, obviously, is to setup some PSP specific web pages to stream my own MP3 collection, as well as make it easier to get to the information I want. I hope I can do it soon, though, as I really don’t do well on less and less sleep.

One Step Closer to Wired Bliss

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Tonight (or this morning) I took one small step toward hardwired ethernet and phone line goodness in the house. I’ve now wired the spare bedroom directly into the downstairs office, eliminating what I hope will be the last of the connectivity problems with the remote PCs.

There is still stuff to do, like cleaning things up, painting and patching walls, and the like.  But with the connection now working up and downstairs, it seems like things are on the road to networked utopia.

Good Snow, Bad Snow

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Another weekend and another two days spent skiing in Tahoe. This time around there was a good day with plenty of sun, but some patches of dirt showing through the snow, and a second day with snow flurries but with howling wind and low visability.

Given the constant high temps and low precip, this ski season may be a short one in the Sierra’s this year. Luckily, I have only two more visits to Heavenly to go before the season pass pays for itself.  Here’s to hoping the snow holds out.

The Zen of Cable Pulling

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Some progress forward was made today in correcting a job around the home that I started a few weeks ago: putting a network and phone cable up to the room above my office.  Thanks to Don, Lisa and Natalie (but mostly Don and Lisa) I learned the fine art of tearing out a chunk of wall to drill down between floors, then pull cable, and then carefully put the wall back together again.

Things are pretty now, but I hope to have it all up and fixed soon.  I’ll post photos once I recover from all the drywall dust.

The Long, Dark Road

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I don’t normally write about work, but things have been getting a bit rough these days.  After spending some serious time over the last year getting a product built and shipped (even though I didn’t approve of shipping it) the public reception left a lot to be desired.  And that is putting it mildly.

Now there is a full-on, wholesale re-org coming and where things end up no one is quite sure yet.  The engineering team isn’t in the best of spirits, and I can’t say that I blame them, given this situation.  My only hope at this point is that we can salvage some learning out of the process and vow never to be pushed into doing what was done again.

Tahoe Skiing 2006, part 1

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On Saturday and Sunday, January 14 & 15, the California ski season began for me. It wasn’t the greatest skiing in the world, thanks to some high winds, wet snow, and really cut up trails at Heavenly, but it was skiing nonetheless.

I’m now at home and really tired, having realized that my legs are just not in the kind of shape they need to be in order to squeeze maximum vertical footage out of every day on the slopes. Guess its time to get on the treadmill and start eating my Wheaties.