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Devolo Powerline AV500+ network problems

I recently moved my buro up one level to the first floor, next to our bedroom. As I don’t want our bedrooms to be bathed in wifi radiation all the time, I’ve bought and installed 3 develo powerlines AV500+.

Devolo DLAN 500 AVplus
Devolo DLAN 500 AVplus

You connect one of these devices to your router via a network cable, and plug it in a socket. Then you connect up the others. Your network data is passed along via the powerlines, without needing to put wifi everywhere (plus it’s a hell of lot faster – these ones can go to up to 500Mbit per seconds, fast enough to stream movies to your ps3 !).

I used to have 2 older Devolo devices, but those were manual setups – you needed to connect them to your computer, and run a config program to set the network ip address and other settings. It worked, but it was a nerd tool.

These AV500 ones are much more sophisticated and just work out of the box. Plug them in, hook up the network cables, and they just work. Excellent !

Additionally, if you want to, you just press a button on each and they set up an encryption between the devices. This is a way to prevent your neighbour – who may be on the same power network as you – from plugging in a similar device and getting access to your computers and NAS (Network Attached Storage).

You can also configure them via the DLAN cockpit program, which scans for them and shows them in a graphical way letting you change settings, etc.

The one I bought have integrated plugs that have an integrated filter that filters out the oscillations of the computers / networked devices that they work for.

The problem

The problem I had was that upstairs I was constantly loosing my network connection. It worked for a time, and then suddenly would shut down again. The other devolo in the living room worked just fine.

After some trial and error (involving a switch, a router and some reboots) I noticed that I had to unplug the devolo downstairs connected to the router, and then it would work again when I reconnected it.

Further investigation via the DLAN cockpit program showed that there was one thing different – the version number of the upstairs devolo was lower than the others.

So I upgraded this one to the same version as the other Devolo’s and hey presto the problem seems to be solved – my network connection has been consistently up for the last 48 hours !

So, the conclusion is that all Devolo’s need to be at the same firmware level.  Thought I would share it with you for those who might have similar problems.

[Please note that this did *not* solve all my problems completely, please read the followup if you are still having problems]

 

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Bootstrap from twitter is very cool

A few months ago I mentioned Foundation from ZURB which to me was a pretty neat way to write some functional html and css code for a quick setup of a website or setting up a basic layout.

These last few days I’ve been busy with learning Bootstrap, which is made by the guys from Twitter, and while Foundation was definitely cool, I must admit that Bootstrap just fits me better and offers me more possibilities. YMMV ofcourse.

It may be because I had Foundation as a basis, and thus was already accustomed to the way things worked, but I learned the methods used much quicker than with Foundation.

I’ve made a decent, good-looking one-page landingpage website with a image Carousel in less than a day, and as a test I’ve reworked an existing website to see what it could do.

In less than a day I had a fully navigational website : full navbar, with menu, fluid rows that resized in most browsers on the fly with buttons and a good layout.

I am really impressed with the speed I’ve managed to make these websites, and I can see myself using bootstrap to built other sites in the future.

 

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Boxee, Plex, Majestic, XMBC on your mac mini for streaming to your TV or ps3 ?

I just spent the past few days installing and playing around with a few media center softwares that you can install on your mac mini.

The aim : streaming my media directly from the mac mini to either my Samsung SmartTV or to the PS3 connected through it. The mac mini is installed in another location, so streaming is either wireless to the PS3 or via a UTP-cable to the TV (although I can switch them easily enough, this is the current setup).

Anything else (streaming to iOS, for example) is a bonus. But my main itch to scratch was that I wanted to stop running around with portable disks and usb keys, and just centralize everything in one location, and my mac mini seemed the ideal place for that.

I’ve tried the following software so you don’t need to :

  • XMBC : I was very impressed with it finding the media quickly and the indexing done on it, retrieving additional information from online internet databases as well as with the local “front end” experience. However, I was disappointed in it’s streaming capabilities : it did not appear on either my TV or my PS3. Although it advertises that you should just activate ‘media sharing’ and that’s all, it just didn’t work for me – some forum browsing shows that others have had similar experiences, depending on what type of router, etc, though for many it works just fine. I would have stopped here if the streaming worked as this seems to be an excellent open-source package. Certainly if your mac mini is sitting right next to your telly this seems to be a good solution.
  • Boxee : while Boxee now sells it own hardware, the software available as-is has been discontinued. The software is still available on google code though (last update was jan 2012 as of this writing). The boxee software is not installed through drag’ndrop, so not sure how this uninstalls. It worked, but after seeing XMBC I was slightly less impressed. Integration with the web works fine though. The interface consists of only icons instead of text, making it slightly harder for a first-timer to muddle through although this is only a slight problem.
  • Majestic Media Server : I found a reference to this on one or other forum, but couldn’t seem to find a download link on their website. Seems that is for sale (trial version), so not free to download. It’s only for streaming, nothing fancy. In the end I found a version on CNET. Very simple interface, just a small window. This didn’t work at all, complaining of a port that was occupied by another process.
  • Plex : This was the final media center solution I tried, mainly because it is not open-sourced and is a spin-off from XMBC. It is however, free to download, and it works just beautifully.  It does come in two parts : the media server which does just what it says, serving your media to whatever device, and the media center which is the front-end to play the stream. If you are only interested in streaming to your PS3 just get the media server, which provides everything you need to add your media to the plex database. It also provides a basic webpage that shows you an overview of all your media and allows you to change your metadata. On your PS3 the Plex server immediately shows up and you can browse your media and start playing it. The accompanying front-end can be installed on another mac for example. You can also buy an iOS app that allows you to stream from the Plex media server to your iPhone or iPad.

The result : in short, only Plex fulfilled my needs. All the others gave either errors or did not show up on either the Samsung TV or on the PS3. Only Plex showed up in both, immediately, and while the Samsung crashed when I selected “Movies” in the interface, on the PS3 it works perfectly and streaming even over wireless worked perfectly.

I’ll probably buy the iOS app as well, and start consolidating all my media on my mac mini.

The verdict : while not open-sourced, and while some component are to be purchased (e.g. the iOS app) Plex is well worth the install.

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44

44 years old
44 years old

 

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Woes in Python 2.x : UnicodeEncodeError : ‘ascii’ codec can’t encode

Phew ! This is a reminder to myself…

I’ve wrapped my head once already around unicode, but it was so long ago that I had to do it all over again when the error suddenly came up again.

The error I had was the dreaded “UnicodeEncodeError: ‘ascii’ codec can’t encode character u’\xa1′ in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)” error which does not really explain what you are doing wrong but leaves you scratching your head wondering where in heaven’s name you should start looking.

I read the following articles :

But what really solved the problem for me was this StackOverflow answer by Alex Martelli (Bless You Joel Spolsky for this idea and Bless all the people answering there!)

I was in a similar position code-wise : I had a unicode object that I wanted to convert tot utf-8, but I was using the “decode” function.

I actually should have been using the “encode to <codec>” function !

Duh ! Once you have a unicode object, you need to encode it into utf-8 or whatever encoding you need. I was using decode !!!

Oh. Well, perhaps my unicode fu is still not as good as it should be…

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Proof of concept for a simple webserver running python code

Here is a small code example using CherryPy to run a very simple webserver that

  • generates a simple math question
  • compares the answer to the solution.

It’s meant as a proof of concept, so there is no security built in. It’s running on localhost on port 8888 (modifiable in the main part of the code).
It allows you to play around and test out your ideas.

Do not use this code on an outside network !

It’s simply an example showing how easy it is to set up a web server and how you can create pages for it using python and CherryPy. It’s been cobbled together in an evening from previous programming so there’s some cruft left in. I’ve also extensively commented the code.

Requirements:

  • python 2.7 ( 2.5 will work as well is my guess )
  • cherrypy 3.2.2 ( use easy_install or pip to download and install the latest version)
  • site.py ( the file containing the python code )

You start the server in a command prompt using : python site.py which will start the server. Leave the command prompt open.

You can then visit the webserver by opening a browser and going to http://localhost:8888 to see the index page and play around with it.

#
# MathPoc : Proof of concept of a simple math problem, bringing it to the browser
#
# Alex Boschmans
#
# Version 0.2, February 2011
#
# 0.2 Added some error checks and expanded math to not just adding but also 
# subtraction and multiplication and divisions. Extensively commented code.

header = """<HTML>
            <HEAD>
                <title>MATH Proof of Concept</title>
            </HEAD>
            <BODY>
        """
footer = "</BODY></HTML>"

indexhtml = """
        <H1>Math Proof of Concept</H1>
        <p>Please answer the following question</p>
                <p>How much is %d %s %d ? </p>
                
                <form action="/response" method="post">
                Answer: <input type="text" name="answer" />
                <input type="hidden" name="number1" value="%d">
                <input type="hidden" name="number2" value="%d">
                <input type="hidden" name="operation" value="%s">
                <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
                </form>
                
        """

def generatequestion():
    # This generates the question that we will pose using the random function
    # Generate a random question using 2 random numbers between 1 and 10
    number1 = random.randint(1,10) 
    number2 = random.randint(1,10)
    # Now we choose an operatioin
    ops = ["+", "-", "x", "/"]
    operation = random.choice(ops)
    # Let's check the division
    if operation == "/":
        # Prevent divisions with remainders using the modulo operator
        # Using module on the two numbers evaluates to 0 when no remainder is present
        # While the modulo remainder is not equal to 0, generate two new numbers
        while number1 % number2 <> 0:
                number1 = random.randint(1,10) 
                number2 = random.randint(1,10)
    # Assemble the html, inputting the numbers in the foreseen places in the html
    # In a more extensive project, you would keep this html in a template file and 
    # call it with a dictionary of items that need to be filled in the template
    question = indexhtml % (number1, operation, number2, number1, number2, operation)
    # Add common html like header and footer - these are defined just once and reused
    # for each page
    html = header + question + footer
    # Return the completed html to the calling function (in this case index)
    return html

# This is the class that the cherrypy server uses and where you create the views that the 
# webuser sees. After each definition there is a <function>.exposed=True that indicates if the 
# webuser can see this page or not. 
class MathPoc:
    def index(self):
        # This is the main index page that is shown to the user when he first visits the site.
        # We create the page by calling the function generatequestion (which is outside the class
        # MathPoc but accessible and we show it to the user by 'return'ing the page 
        page = generatequestion()
        return page
        # The webuser will now see the page and will have a chance to enter an answer.
        # In the html form I've specified that the submitted result will go to the url "response"
        # I've added all the values I want to receive either as hidden values (eg the 
        # original numbers, the operation) or as part of the form (eg the answer)
    index.exposed = True
    
    def response(self, answer, number1, number2, operation):
        # First check if we received an answer or if the user submitted without an answer
        if answer:
            # Calculate our own answer ourselves and generate a response to the user
            # We receive strings, so convert them to integers using int()
            number1 = int(number1)
            number2 = int(number2)
            answer = int(answer)
            # Answer is dependent on operation
            if operation == "+":
                solution = number1 + number2
            elif operation == "-":
                solution = number1 - number2
            elif operation == "x":
                solution = number1 * number2
            else:
                solution = number1 / number2
            # See if the answer is correct and display according the result
            # Using templates, you could put all this in one template and 
            # call the template with options so it knows what to show
            if solution <> answer:
                html = """
                <H1>Sorry.</H1>
                <p>The question was : %s %s %s = ?</p>
                <p>Your answer %s is wrong. The correct answer is %d.</p>
                <p><a href = "/">Try Again.</a></p>
                """ % (number1, operation, number2, answer, solution)
            else:
                html = """
                <H1>Correct !</H1>
                <p>The question was : %s %s %s = %s</p>
                <p>Your answer is correct !</p>
                <p><a href = "/">Try Again.</a></p>
                """ % (number1, operation, number2, answer)
        else:
            # We did not receive an answer
            html = """
            <h1>Sorry ?</h1>
            <p>You need to fill in an answer !</p>
            <p><a href = "/">Try Again.</a></p>
            """
        # Return the page to the user, adding the common html
        return header + html + footer
    response.exposed = True

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import random
    import cherrypy
    import os, sys
    # Set the current directory - this is probably not needed for this example, cruft.
    try:
        current_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
    except:
        # probably running inside py2exe which doesn't set __file__
        current_dir = os.path.dirname(unicode(sys.executable, sys.getfilesystemencoding( )))

    # Set up site-wide config first so we get a log if errors occur.
    # Adding the setting 'environment': 'production' to the below turns off auto-reload.
    # Otherwise CherryPy monitors the code and any change to code reloads the server - handy for development !
    cherrypy.config.update({'server.socket_port':8888,
                            'server.socket_host':'127.0.0.1',
                            'log.error_file': 'site.log',
                            'log.screen': True})
    # CherryPy will complain of an empty config but will continue
    conf = {}
    cherrypy.tree.mount(MathPoc())
    #cherrypy.config.update({'server.socket_port':8888})
    cherrypy.quickstart(MathPoc(),'/', config=conf)
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Small review of Zurb Foundation

It sounds more like a rock band, but it’s actually a tool for rapid prototyping in html and css, and a fairly easy way for a css-vapid guy like me to give my websites a basic ‘good look’ in about 5 minutes and still have some control over the design. Plus it’s very flexible, they aim to make it so that you can show your website on multiple different devices.

Foundation is a complete framework, and includes both the javascript, the css files and some instructions to get you going. And if you drop a mail, they are quick to respond, even if it is a stupid question like I asked.

I’ve been playing around with their open-source foundation download code, and I must admit their examples ‘click’ for me. For example to add a button, you specify a css class like this class=”nice blue radius button” which is almost human english ! This way I can focus on my python skills and still produce some nice-looking pages !

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Finland’s Porrka Playboys doing Bohemian Rapsody.

If I played in a band, I would have liked to play in a band like this this one:

They totally make it work !

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Getting XCode from the AppStore ? Don’t forget to install.

Yes, really, I totally missed this one. I was sure that I had XCode, that I had installed it from the AppStore.

Several frustrating moments finally led (via StackOverflow!) to the realisation that XCode is only downloaded, and still needs to be installed afterwards. So just go to your application folder and find the “install xcode” app and double-click it.

Duh (slaps forehead) !

Oh well, onwards with the show of getting mysql-python to install on 10.7.

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Facebook-like buttons for Magento

I know that most technical people can do this themselves, but in case you need something a bit more worked out and documented, here is a link to a great facebook-like button (+free analytics if you buy it at the same time) for facebook. 39 dollars if you use the coupon code he mentions in the video.

There’s another plugin out there that costs only 5 dollars, and it includes Google+ and Twitter, but I felt uneasy on buying it because it seemed unfinished + seems to be based on copying shareit code from the shareit website (where you have to agree to basically letting them piggyback your traffic for their purposes). No thank you.

Installation of the basic functionality is a piece of cake or as they state in my part of the country : 2 fingers up the nose easy. Upload the code you purchased and downloaded from the retailevolved website and upload it to your magento directory. Plus the documentation is included and is very clear on what you can do and any variations.

Done !

Plus you can go a step further, and get more functionality like the “send” button if you setup a facebook dev account and get an application id for your website.

Recommended !