Author Archives: Sharky

Getting Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP remote RM-0010 to work on kernel 2.6.39

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Well, it is always tricky to upgrade the kernel on our TV machine, and this time it was even trickier.
like always, had to modify /usr/src/linux/drivers/media/video/bt8xx/bttv-input.c and change the ir->mask_keycode from 0x1f8 to 0x8f8

case BTTV_BOARD_WINFAST2000:
ir_codes = RC_MAP_WINFAST;
ir->mask_keycode = 0x8f8;
break;

Failing to do this results in a remote that has a few duplicate keys, I don’t know why this was never patched upstream, but that’s life.

The second part involved testing with IRW, which surprisingly failed this time to detect a few important keys such as POWER, CH+, CH- and more. Turns out I had to update the lircd.conf manually this time, as a few event codes has changed. This was done with the help of a small program called evtest.c (compiling with gcc was really straight forward). Hitting the missing keys on the remote resulted in the event codes showing up which I had to replace in the file. (the right and left keys are switched for some reason between their description in the event and their real placement).

I really hope this information will help someone lose a bit less hair on this.

De-bugging

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It has been over 10 years since we moved to our home, and although I strongly beleived that we will be living somewhere else by now, we are still here. The problem with being in a place for such a long time is the roaches. Roaches are everywhere, and you can’t avoid the occasional one, but if you live in the same place for a long while they do tend to dig harder and create their own families.
We have decided that the new decade is a good time to clean up and yes, after 4:30 hours I have cleaned the kitchen and sprayed an entire bottle of roach spray on almost every location possible. The question is, will this last? I surely hope so, or its time to call the exterminator (or move to a new place).

The other trip

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This time my wife’s company shipped us all to Eilat. Again – too much food was involved, but I really can’t complain. Kids have grown quite a bit since last time and the vacation was much more enjoyable.

We went to the beach, which was fantastic. We saw the wow show (with a kid under 4 years old which was fascinated). Overall – very nice vacation – Eilat is hot and sunny, but at least not moist…

Skype Spammers

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Long time no blogging, but as I am back maybe I would write about a recently new annoyance (at least for me) which is skype spammers.

First type is just an annoying message – normally from a “female” in the lines of – you have a great profile (I have a profile which is extremely interesting, like watching paint dry), would you like to see my pictures? If you’ll say yes, you get a link – normally to a fake social network nobody has heard of. What’s the point? maybe advertising, maybe get you infected with Trojans, dunno.

Second type is people which are bored and have too much free time on their hands, a guy from Algeria approached me and wrote to me (in Hebrew!) something like “die today or tomorrow”, after fully thanking him I asked him about his reasoning, and I got something like – you kill children, all Jews are to be hated as Kuran is telling us etc. I did toy with him a bit, testing my extremely weak knowledge of Arabic. And at the end he told me goodbye ;)

Maybe I should just block incoming messages from people I don’t know :)

All included

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Last weekend me and my wife went for a weekend with the kids. The hotel was a 7 stars all included everything you wished for kind of hotel (Sungate Port Royal if anyone cares).

What did this hotel have? It would be probably much shorter to list what it didn’t have – that would be the feeling of being abroad. However it did have a private beach, more pools than one could count, a water park with slides of all kinds (no elevator though ;) ), water sports, outdoor and indoor activities and all the food one might want (but the fact is that the kids lived off the potato french fries).

So – was it that much fun? The short answer would be yes, basically it was fun, and this is probably a top of the line place for such a vacation. However for me personally it was not the kind of vacation I would take – nor do I like keeping my kids from drowning 24/7.

It was nice – maybe again in a few more years.

Food poisoning

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Well, last Wednesday I went and got me some pasta with meat.

Apparently – this didn’t go too well as I have ended up sick for two days trying to get this out of my system. This is happening too much recently – too many sick days and too much down time, both for me and my wife.

On other health news – I am using by bicycle to get to my office, and now there are pros and cons:
pros: good exercise
cons: sun exposure

Did some reading on electric bicycle and bikes in Israel – seems like this is too far from prime time, just waiting and hoping because this could have been very helpful.

TikFish is becoming Transposh

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When one starts a new company there is always a small issue – the name of the company. I choose TikFish for this new project because I though it had a nice ring and it symbolized something I intended to do. However – TikFish had a major problem – Tik sounds too much like Tick – nobody likes ticks and a company should probably not be connected to them…

Well, when I got to my first investor I requested that the cheque should be written to transpose but that guy made a mistake and wrote transposh instead, so now I am stuck with this new name (not really – this story is too familiar… :) )

Actually – transposh is a great name which my wife suggested and I think it’ll stick, it does symbolize what I want to acheive – how I am going to get there and also has something personal embedded into it. Googling for it returns an empty set and the .com is still open so this will work out.

Wish me luck

Working again – something new

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Things didn’t turn out quite well with colnect.com (atleast not for me, the project is doing great) and I need to go forward, this time for the TikFish project (temporary name, but it might stick).

This project – if I am successful, will be a great hit – otherwise – I’ll have to go back to the drawing board.

I have set myself up with a deadline of june ending for a prototype, quite challanging but doable.

I am quite ambigious regarding partners for this project due to my past experiences, I hope I’ll find the drive alone this time.

Startup Weekend

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Well, I took my lazy behind and decided to try and do something useful on the weekend.

Saw an Israel Startup Weekend a few weeks ago, registered and here I am.

As things are looking at the start of day 2, the old saying about 9 pregnant women will be proved. Guess I won’t be here for too long as platform selection is against what I like (M$ instead of FOSS)

At least I am tagging this, as requested :-)