I liked the AppleTV when I first plugged it in with its Version 1.o software.  I liked it even more when they added YouTube in 1.1.   But it was Take 2 that really made it special.  Being able to find and stream Podcasts directly on AppleTV is my favourite addition.

However, the one niggle I’ve always had is the need to convert videos to MP4 then add them to iTunes before I could watch them.  Software like iPodifier made the process pretty simple, but on my old ‘always on’ server machine (a 1.4GHz Celeron) it would take a couple of hours to convert a typical half-hour show.

Fortunately, a group of like-minded individuals have now come up with the solution, and it works both on PC and Mac.  Basically, the key is to build a ‘patchstick’ — a bootable USB memory stick that you insert into the AppleTV which then enables SSH access into your set-top box!  There’s a fairly long-winded process available to Mac users, but if you’re on a PC you can now shortcut the whole process thanks to ATV4Windows.com.

Within an hour you can build a patchstick and patch your AppleTV.  From there its a fairly simple process to install whatever software you want.   Perian is a good place to start — it’ll give you support for Divx, WMV, etc.  You’ll also want ATVFiles, a useful tool that lets you browse the hard drive for video files so you don’t have to add them to iTunes first.

Another useful little program is CouchSurfer — a WebKit-based browser with support for Flash that you can control using your AppleTV remote.   It works surprisingly well.

There are other things I’d still like to get sorted.  For example, there’s a torrent client that would allow you to download torrents directly using AppleTV; there’s a few tools that you can combine to browse SMB network shares; and there’s even NES, SNES and Sega Megadrive emulators available — although I guess you’d need a USB joystick to get the most out of those.

If anyone gets any of the cooler features working, please feel free to give me some pointers!

The only thing that annoyed me about the Blaster as standard was its instrument panel.  The odometer is in kilometers, there’s no trip counter, the speedometer is pretty inaccurate and it doesn’t have a clock.  I decided the best way to solve all those problems at once was to fit a cycle computer.

I settled on the Specialized Speedzone wired cycle computer.  It has a fairly heavy duty cable and two well-spaced, hard plastic buttons — perfect for operating with thick motorcycle gloves.  It cost me £20 from Dales in Glasgow.

Details of how I fitted it are after the jump…

Step 1: Fitting the handlebar bracket

The Speedzone handlebar bracket curves round approx 1/4 of a standard cycle handlebar.  As I wanted to keep the plastic cover and visor on my handlebars, I had to mod the bracket to fit.  First I removed the soft rubber underside of the bracket.  Using a Dremel, I shaved off the curved plastic parts of the bracket.  I then refitted the rubber and drilled a hole through the bracket and rubber.  I attached the bracket to the handlebars using a small nut & bolt (see pic).

Step 2: Running the cable

I ran the cable down through the handlebar cover, again using the Dremel to make a small notch for the cable.  At first I tried to take the full front fairing off to run the rest of the cable, but I quickly realised that there were a lot more Torx screws involved than I could be bothered with.  Instead, I dropped the wheel sensor down through the plastic fairing, trying to follow the path of the front brake hose.  After a couple of attempts, the sensor dropped through the bottom of the fairing. 

 Step 3: Attaching the sensor

At first I considered following the route of the mechanical speedo cable and attaching the wheel sensor to the end of that.  However, I was concerned that the cable would move around too much, potentially causing the sensor to move too far away from the magnet.   After trying a few different positions I finally settled on the very bottom of the forks, just above the wheel nut.  In this position it gives about 3mm clearance between the sensor and the magnet.

Step 4: Attaching the magnet

The magnet that comes with the Speedzone is the usual screw-onto-a-spoke type which wasn’t really suitable for the scooter.  As the scooter was brand new, I didn’t fancy trying to drill a hole in the alloy wheel to screw the magent on, so I brought out the Dremel again…  

Using a cutting disc, I made several cuts into the magent housing, eventually getting it to the point where I could ‘peel away’ the metal housing in sections.  What I was left with was the magnet on its own.  It was a bit rough around the edges, but still did what magnets do best.  What really surprised me was how light the magnet was.  In its standard housing the whole thing is quite heavy, but the magent on its own was feather light.  I attached it to the wheel using some two-part Superglue.  The magnet and sensor are visible in the pic above.

Step 5: Calibrating the computer

Once everything was in place, all that was left to do was calibrate the wheel size on the cycle computer.  I measured a full revolution of the front wheel using the standard ‘roll out’ method.  I think it came out somewhere around 1460mm.   It’s good to get this measurement as accurate as possible, but don’t worry about it too much.  Even if you’re 5mm out, that still equates to an error of less than 0.4%.  Compare that to the standard speedo which is out by over 15%!

Step 6: Road test

Once the computer was calibrated I took it out for quick run.   The results were pretty surprising.  When the standard speedo read 30mph my real speed was more like 24mph.   In restricted form the scooter’s speedo claimed a max speed of about 36mph which in reality was more like 30.4mph.

Although the site is mostly static content, it still contains a number of innovations for s1.  Firstly, there’s a complete content CMS powered by Adobe Contribute that allows our SEO experts to tweak and add content whenever they like, without tech team intervention.  Secondly, there’s a new Flash-based carousel for employer logos that allows more logos to be displayed in a smaller space, and in a more interesting way.  Finally, there’s a host of server-side tweaks to make all of this possible — not least in the classification of all our exisiting Public Sector employers into their particular sector.

Hopefully the end result will prove popular with Public Sector workers, and with the search engines.

I’m sure you can expect to see more community sites launched across Scotland in the coming months, both Evening Times branded ones in Glasgow and s1 branded sites elsewhere.

Next Monday (10th March) I’ll be handing over ownership of the local sites to our newest Web Producer, Graeme Smith.  I’m sure his team will extend the s1local platform and provide a lot of exciting new features over the coming months. 

Please take a look at the new Evening Times sites, and if you live in one of these commuities, join in:  Shawlands; Hillhead; Maryhill; Gorbals; Cardonald; Easterhouse; Partick; Robroyston; Whiteinch; Springburn; Dennistoun; Tollcross.

The site got a lot of praise, in particular for the emerging technologies we use: “including RSS job feeds and a rather exciting new mobile phone application called txt2apply.”  It’s good to see txt2apply being acknowledged — I’ve always been proud of it as a piece of mobile innovation, and the fact that David McLaughin and I developed it from scratch in just a few days.

The Flash part is really my area of expertise, but I also had to hack together a PHP script to generate the puzzles.  I found a script that does the right sort of thing, and modified it to output in my required format.  However, over the years I’ve had a few people complain that it produces puzzles with multiple solutions (and then only accepts one of those solutions as the ‘correct’ answer).

I don’t know enough mathematics or PHP to correct the problem, so I’m putting out an appeal.  If anyone wants to have a go at correcting the problem — or rewriting the script — please do so.  You’ll be helping me and thousands of other Sudoku fans around the world.

Requirements

Input parameters (via GET URL):

• Difficulty [currently 1, 2 or 3, but can be tweaked if necessary]
• Random [currently a six digit integer, but can be tweaked if necessary]

Output format (plain text):

puzzle=<TITLE>
Daily Random Sudoku: Medium
<AUTHOR>
Your Name Here
<COPYRIGHT>
Your Name Here and Grant Gibson
<DIFFICULTY>
2
<GRID>
.ooo..o..
o.o..oooo
o.o…ooo
o.o..oooo
oo.ooo.oo
oooo..o.o
ooo…o.o
oooo..o.o
..o..ooo.
<ANSWER>
528631974
163974285
497285631
235716849
671849352
984352716
859123467
312467598
746598123

… where answer is the unique grid solution, and grid represents the intial state of the puzzle - dot for blank, o for a displayed number.

I’ve attached the Current Grid Script here.  If you’d like to suggest any revisions, or post up an alternative version of the code please do so — either as a comment here, or directly to me by email.  See my contact page for email details.

Thanks, and good luck!

We hope to offer these sites to many more communities in future, but for now we’re focussing our attention on Bo’ness, Craigmillar, Culross, Galashiels and Millport. 

We hope the sites will become a place for people to discuss issues important to them, to share their news, to upload their photos and video clips.  The sites are based on an innovative new platform, designed and built by our in-house team, which allows all types of content, whether text, photos, video or graphical ‘noticeboard’ items to be moderated before publication.  We’ll be extending the platform in future to bring new features, both planned and in response to user feedback.

I’ve been working on the concept since March, so it’s great to reach this point and be able to talk about what I’ve been working on all this time.  Take a look, and let me know what you think of them.

For the first week of ownership I put up with ridiculously loud fan speeds when the machine was under load.  I’m not just talking the occasional whir, I’m talking tornado force speeds off the CPU fan.  It was loud enough that I had to shout to other people in the room, and fast enough that the cables were visibly blowing around inside the case — this s*it was crazy! 

So I decided to call Dell today and get help.  The call started out well enough, going through a list of automated options with some cheery Irish computer voice.  Then I got transferred to an operator in India.  I explained the problem as clearly as I could:  “When the machine is idle, the CPU runs at about 45C.  When it’s under load those temperatures rise to 100C and the CPU fan goes to full speed.  Even at this high temperature, the heatsink remains completely cold to the touch.   I think the heatsink needs reseated.  Could you talk me through that please.”

Cue a full hour of pointless software debugging and debate with the technician.  During the call he asked me to start a remote desktop session for him, go through lots of Task Manager settings, restart the machine several times, etc, etc and in the end conclued that there is no problem.  

• Dell: “You have bought a server machine Sir, these machines are designed to run hot, your power supply fan may become hot”. 
• Me: “It’s not the power supply, it’s the CPU that’s hot.  And I don’t believe 100C is within spec.”
• Dell:  “Yes, your CPU is designed to run at 100% temperature, do not worry.”
• Me: “The temperature isn’t 100%, it’s 100 degrees centigrade.  Isn’t that hot?  Do you know what the maximum temperature is supposed to be.”
• Dell: “Yes, it’s supposed to be 100%.”

After another round of this debate, I asked to speak to the manager.  His answer was just as random: “Sir, you should allow your machine to run for at least another couple of weeks.  After this time the temperatures will start to come down.” 

Finally, I convinced him that some action was required now.  He demanded that we start with a full re-install of Vista because my machine was running “too many processes”.  I explained: “This is not a software issue, it’s a hardware problem.  Please let me speak to a hardware technician.”   After another 10 minutes of waffle I gave him an ultimatum: “Either let me speak to a hardware technician or end this call.” 

Five mins later I got a call back from a hardware tech.  He didn’t seem to have a clue about my machine configuration, giving me instructions for removing the heatsink from a non-Quad machine.  Once he finally got the right instructions in front of him, removal of the heatsink was relatively painless.  At this point the cause became quite clear… there was a plastic insulator trapped in the thermal grease between the CPU and cooler.

I told the tech what I had found.  He said: “Yes, this plastic is ok, all Dell plastics are engineered to the highest specifications and are completely safe.  Please do not remove it.”  I tried again to explain that this really shouldn’t be there, but he stuck to the party line.  I removed it anyway, reinstalled the heatsink, and the machine is now very quiet and relatively cool — 32C at idle and a max of 75C under full load.  I suspect replacing the thermal grease would reduce temperatures further, it had been applied quite badly.

Here’s the setup, quiet and cool…

The company I work for, s1, has been nominated as one of the Best Ever Brands in Scotland, alongside Tennent’s, Irn Bru and Glenmorangie.  It’s fairly exciting company to be in considering we have just 30 staff and have only been on the go for seven years.

The awards are on the 26th of October and, in the very unlikely event that we win, I’ll be sure to post up a pic of the award.  Voting in some categories is open to the public, so please vote for us (on pages 3 and 7) if you have a couple of minutes to spare.

Read more on All Media Scotland: Newcomer Nominated Among Best Scottish Brands or on OnRec: Internet business s1 nominated as Scotland’s Best Ever Brand

Applicants are invited to restyle the job ad on s1jobs.com using only a style sheet file — they have zero control over the HTML source or Javascript.  Take a look at the live job ad here:
http://www.s1jobs.com/job/205382458.html … or see it with a different style sheet here.

If you think you have the relevant skills and want to have a go, please take up the challenge — simply view source on the live job ad for more details.