Archive - Dec 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...