Access was all that I had access (heh) to, and it had a “music collection” database template, so with slight modification to the template that’s what I used.

Well now, I no longer have access (heh) to Access, Access is a PITA, and I already have MySQL available on my home server, so I figured it was time to finally migrate.

I found a handy application called Navicat (fully functional trial), that will import directly from the Access .MDB file to a MySQL database.

While Navicat mostly worked, I was not quite done. The import did not properly get the auto_increment attribute on the tables’ ‘id’ column. Also, the Access database tables had spaces in their names which is kind of a drag. Fortunately both were easily solved by exporting from MySQL to text using mysqldump, editing the .sql file that resulted, and then reimporting to MySQL from the .sql file.

Sure it’s a ridiculous thing nobody in their right mind will ever have to do, but I’m not in my right mind.

My new Pike’s steerer tube has a cap in the bottom with a threaded hole the same size as a standard headset bolt (M6). Instead of pounding a star nut into the steerer, it’s exteremely easy use this cap as the bottom of a headset locker like the Azonic Headlock or USE Safe-T.

Required parts (in addition to headset, stem, spacers, etc.):
M6 threaded rod (shortest I could buy was 3 feet)
M6 coupler nut
Total cost about $5.

Insert the rod to measure the correct length. I threaded the rod through the bottom of the steerer tube until half an inch or so was protruding out the top of the tube. This took some time to thread the 10″ of rod through; I could have done an initial cut to an estimation of length to save myself some time, I suppose.

Add coupler nut, headset cap and original stem bolt. Thread the nut on the rod first, headset cap on original stem bolt, and then stem bolt into the coupler nut as well.

Tighten down the headset cap so there is no play or extra space in the steerer stack. Mark the point where the rod emerges from the bottom of the steerer tube. Take it all apart again, and cut the rod at the mark with a hacksaw.

Put it all together with the headset cap back on original bolt, coupler to original bolt, then threaded rod into coupler. You may want to use some removable threadlocker on the coupler to make it behave more like a single bolt when it’s in the steerer. Tighten the original stem bolt tightly into the coupler; it’ll butt up against the threaded rod.

Drop the whole thing into the steerer tube, thread it into the bottom cap, then tighten the bolt to the torque specs of your headset.

Naturally I had to see if it really was trivial, which in fact it turned out to be. @mrbalkytivo is busier than I am.

Put tweetTivo.php someplace to be called by cron.

class_tivo_xml.php is not written by me and is required. Google it up. Figuring out how to get the XML info from the TiVo is left as an exercise for the reader.

The script will tweet about any new recording that starts, including TiVo suggestions, which are not always reflective of my taste, but then again, neither are many of MrsBalky’s choices. I thought about enhancing the script to skip suggestions, but grew bored and drifted away.

TwitPic has an API, so I rolled my own simple uploader with cygwin and curl. There’s no doubt in my mind that I’ve reinvented the wheel here…

Standard disclaimer applies: this is quick n’ dirty(tm):

#!/bin/bash

# curl executable.  I'm a PC.
CURL=C:/cygwin/bin/curl

# The upload script that will accept the data
UPLOAD_URL=http://twitpic.com/api/uploadAndPost

# Snag stuff off the command line
TWITTER_USER=$1
TWITTER_PW=$2
PHOTO=`cygpath -m "$3"`
TWEET_MSG=$4

# Prompt for message if it's not given
if [ "$TWEET_MSG" = "" ]; then
   read -p "Tweet msg: " TWEET_MSG
fi

# Go
echo Uploading...
$CURL \
  --form username=$TWITTER_USER \
  --form password=$TWITTER_PW \
  --form media=@"$PHOTO" \
  --form message="$TWEET_MSG" $UPLOAD_URL

# Wait for user to read result message
echo
read -p "Press <enter> to continue" bogus

Create a desktop shortcut with uid and password:

C:\cygwin\bin\sh.exe ~/twitpic.sh --userid-- --password--

Now just drag and drop the photo onto the desktop shortcut.

Check out all that unused grey space:

The last straw for me today was to discover that they put chat in the navigation bar, and it was impossible to turn off. I found a groups forum thread where I could actually register my discontent, and found this little gem:

http://www.google.com/ig?hl=all

Add that “?hl=all” to the end of the URL, and hooray! Tabs on top again!

Hack together openlink, perl, sonosweb and iphone sonos:

I had to go through Perl dependency hell (Perl really is an abomination) to get sonosweb working on the linkstation, but it works pretty well now.

Throw in a little DD-WRT and ssh and you can really mess with your S.O. by changing the music at home from the office.

Now I need to write up how I got through the seven circles of dependency hell before I forget. It took more than a quarter to Charon.

Rebooting the computer fixes it, but this happens with such regularity I’d be rebooting several times a day.

But I discovered that if you disable the USB port/device, and then enable it again, the problem is also fixed. Going through the device management dialogs is incredibly cumbersome, so I wrote a script.

fixusb.bat:

@echo off
echo "disabling usb device..."
devcon disable "@USB\VID_0424&PID_2504\5&18F4DAC0&0&5"
echo.
echo "enabling usb device..."
devcon enable "@USB\VID_0424&PID_2504\5&18F4DAC0&0&5"
echo.
pause

The @USB\VID_... bit is the USB device ID. To get the device ID, you’ll have to go to the Device Manager dialog. Figure out which device the iPod is attached to (I don’t remember exactly how I did this; sorry). Then on the “Details” tab of the device “Properties” dialog you can get the “Device Instance Id”.

I have to use this all the time, so put a shortcut to it on the desktop.

So most bike tires these days have presta valves, which are not nearly so easy to deal with as schraeder valves like those on cars. There are adapters that sort of convert presta to schraeder, but they’re kind of a cumbersome, and I wanted something more convenient. Surfing around, I found a tool that does it commercially available for $50.

But since I already have a blower tool, and I’m terminally cheap, I decided to try build one for less.

Voila:

And just screwing around a little, I turned it into an Instructable.

Of course, everyone is doing it.

Todd has been admiring it for his blog for some time, but the poor fellow only had Series 3 TiVos, which had networking features turned off so he couldn’t do the same. Now that TiVo has seen fit to turn that feature on in the S3s, I found I had to clean up the code so he could use it over on his blog.

As Todd says, sometimes you have to build things just because you can.