Archive - 2006

I finally did it! It took me a while, but I finally got my MG-35 working with my iMac. I just did a quick scan back through my 'computer' posts and it turns out I never posted about this particular toy that I bought. Well the MediaGate MG-35 is a product that will stream music / pictures / video to your TV from a computer on your network. Here is a link to the product page on the company's website that makes it. I picked it up from PC Cyber here in Stittsville a while ago (probably 7 or 8 months ago) and paid something like $200 for it. You can get it now for $170 I think. But I digress...

When I first got the thing, it said that it worked with Windows machines as well as Macs. The instruction book that came with the thing was brutal - some really bad translation from Korean I suppose. A quick search of the interweb didn't really turn up anything helpful either. I did find a site, Otherworld Computing, that sells the things and they had a handy video showing how they got it working with a mac, but sadly, after contacting their tech support - they refused to help me out since I didn't buy from them. Note to self - NEVER buy anything from Otherworld Computing.

Well since I had a windows box in the basement which wasn't doing much, I have been using it to host my movies so that I can stream them to my TV using the MG-35. It was a bit of a PITA since I had to copy the movies from my mac to the windows box first, but it worked. Off and on I searched around seeing if I could figure out how to get the thing working with my mac so I could eliminate the windows box and save myself some time. I learned a bit about samba in the process. And tonight - I got the MG-35 working with my iMac! Sweet!

Turns out OS X is running version 3 of samba so I searched for 'samba 3 anonymous share' on google. The first link that showed up was the one that got me going. Many thanks to Michel. Here is the short form:

• edit the /etc/smb.conf file
• under [global] add 'map to guest = bad user'

Then for each share you want to create for the MG-35, add it into the smb.conf file and use the options in the following example:

[Share]
comment = Share
browseable = yes
path = /Users/haggaret/Movies
public = yes
writable = no
guest ok = yes


Then enable Windows Sharing on the mac (system pref / sharing) and you should be good to go.

Oh yeah, one last thing you need to do is to make sure that the directory you've listed under path has permissions set to read and execute for everyone, I just used 755 for the above share and it worked great. I tried just read permissions, but that didn't seem to work. Oh and for the actual movie files, I only used read permissions for everyone.

You could use the same principle to share your music / pictures I suppose, but I only ever use the MG-35 to watch movies / downloaded TV shows so...

Hopefully this helps out somebody out there who was having the same troubles I was.

This is the first year that I've ever bothered to get a flu shot. Why? Convenience mostly. Nortel holds clinics where employees (and employees only - don't get me started on that) can get free flu shots. I've never been able to take advantage of this in the past due to the fact that I was not an actual employee, and it never mattered enough to me to actually seek out a free flu shot clinic outside of work, so this year I figured "what the hell," and went for it. Easy, painless and supposed to provide some sort of protection against the flu right? I'm not convinced.

I'm just now getting over what I'm quite sure was a bout of the flu. I was pretty much out of commission for 3 or 4 days and it certainly wasn't pleasant. Would this have happened if I hadn't got the flu shot? Probably. Did getting the flu shot help me out? Doesn't seem like it. Oh well, didn't cost me anything I guess. I don't think I'll waste my time in the future though.

Amy and Liam have been gone (visiting family back east) since the 28th of November. I am missing them like crazy! If you're reading this Amy - can't wait for you to get back home! I'm hoping that Liam remembers me...

I was talking with Grant about running the other day, asking him if he had been doing any training and he asked me if I was going to do the Hypothermic Half in January. After that, I saw the race listed in Steve's Upcoming Events sections of his site and figured he was already registered. So - after visiting the race website and finding out that there are only 300 spots available, I decided that I had better hurry up and register.

Well we finally went to a photographer to get some photos taken of Liam. Amy found out about Jen Howard from a friend of hers who was very happy with the photos Jen did for her. We were there for about an hour and got a ton of pictures taken. We're very happy with the photos and would recommend Jen Howard if you are looking to get pregnancy or baby pictures taken.

Jen provided us with a CD with all the photos on it, both in colour and black and white. I've only uploaded the colour ones to Flickr and you can see them all by clicking on the photo to the right. Please note that if you're not marked as either my 'friend' or 'family' in Flickr, you wont be able to see any of the photos.

My first attempt at posting a video here on my blog. Hopefully it works.

EDIT (Apr 11, 2008): I've uploaded the video to Flickr and am embedding it here instead of hosting it directly.

While I was at a Rogers Video store today receiving really crappy service (more on that in a minute), I picked up a piece of valuable information. Apparently LNP will finally be a reality starting March 1, 2007.

Now, about the crappy service. I am trying to switch my cell phone plan to a Nortel corporate plan because Nortel is picking up the tab anyways so I figured I'd try to save them some money. I was told by one Rogers employee (by email) that I needed to call a 800 number and give them a few pieces of info and then I could be switched over. When I called, I was told that I'd have to go into a store so that they could verify that I actually worked for Nortel.

Wow - nearly two weeks since my last post and I'm following up with another story about baby poo?! There's got to be more going on with the newest member of the Haggerty family you say? Of course there is, but it's the stories about baby poo that make me laugh.

Poor Liam got himself into a state of semi-constipation I'm afraid. I'm not sure if this is his body's way of trying to regulate and get down to 2 or 3 poos a day or what but regardless, the poor guy went more than a day without letting anything go - and he was none too happy about it either! Well last night he rectified the situation, and with some gusto! Happy Halloween to me. :(

Well not quite - but pretty funny nonetheless. Grant and Bonnie got this "iPood" diaper shirt for Liam just after he was born. You probably can't read it on the small photo to the left, but at the top of the 'click wheel' it says "change me". Pretty clever if you ask me. Let me tell you, I was pretty happy to be able to put this on him, and so begins my first story about baby poo...

While chatting with Steve the other day about him purchasing a domain name for himself (which he did by the way - activesteve.com), he told me that he found a site that would sell you a domain name for $9.95 (Canadian no less!) and that included registration! The beauty part was that you could even get a .ca domain for the same price. For some reason, I've always found that .ca domain are more expensive...

Anyways, I decided that I could spare $10 and picked up haggerty.ca on a lark. I've pointed it here for now and am debating on whether or not I want to actually use it. What do you think - stick with haggaret.com or switch to haggerty.ca?

Update: Chris pointed out that I didn't mention the name of the company I talked about above. It was Netfirms. While they are cheap, they don't seem to offer the same level of features and service that I get from EasyDNS. If I do end up keeping haggerty.ca, I'll likely switch it over to EasyDNS, even though it'll cost me more.