Technology

The following Url provides a bunch of details on a specific recording:

https://<TIVO-IP-ADDR>/TiVoVideoDetails?id=xxxxxx

xxxxxx is the id of the recording you want information on.

Here are some of the known Url's for accessing content on your TiVo. (This only applies to TiVo's with the TiVoToGo update.):

• https://<TIVO-IP-ADDR>/nowplaying/index.html (username:tivo password:<your media access key>)
• http://<TIVO-IP-ADDR>/TiVoConnect?Command=QueryContainer
• https://<TIVO-IP-ADDR>/TiVoConnect?Command=QueryContainer&Container=%2FNowPlaying

Well it's about damn time! Last night, both of my TiVos finally got the service update for TiVoToGo. Let's see, I only signed up on the priority list 4 weeks ago.

So now that I have it, what should I do with it? The obvious answer is transfer some shows from TiVo to my computer, which I started doing last night (Texas vs. Michigan in the Rose Bowl, if you must know). However, I hear that this update added a web server to TiVo, and that there are Urls to get at Xml feeds of the data. I say that it's time to start playing around with that. How about an RSS feed of what's on my TiVo? Ok, so maybe you don't care about what's on mine...

I'll let you know what I come up with.

Well, the install didn't exactly go smoothly, but I now have fiber installed all the way to the house. Fiber for my internet connection and fiber for the phone line (note: not VoIP).

I won't go into details on the difficulties during the install, I leave it at Verizon messed up, and it took an additional two days to make it right. To their credit, I will be getting a generous bill credit, and like the rental car commercial, they try harder.

My last speed test showed that I am getting the bandwidth that I am paying for, so that is good. Now I just need to see about getting the dynamic DNS functionality in the router they provide to work with my EasyDNS account.

I placed my order yesterday for the FIOS service from Verizon (and for their phone service). For those of you not familiar with this service, it is fiber to the premises -- that means the connection from my house to the outside world is fiber. That's right, fiber all the way to my house. My internet connection will be over the fiber, as will my phone service. Sometime by mid-next year, I should be able to cancel my cable service, as Verizon will be offering TV over the fiber.

Needless to say, I am very excited about this! Once the install happens, I'll post again about the overall experience.

By the way, I ordered 15 MB down/2 MB up.

I'm preparing to migrate my webserver to Windows Server 2003. Seen as how I am going to do a clean install, I needed an easy way to move all the various websites off of the server and over onto a temporary sever. At first, this seemed like a daunting task, but I remembered bookmarking Tools and Documentation for Upgrading to Windows Server 2003. I wish I could remember where I first saw a link to this, so that I could give proper credit, but it escapes me at the moment. Anyway, included in the tools is the very handy IIS 6.0 Migration Tool. This tool automates many of the steps required in moving web sites from IIS 4, IIS 5, or IIS 6 to a clean installation of IIS 6 running on Windows Server 2003.

So far, so good. The only downside that I have seen so far, is that you must run this tool once for each site that you want to migrate. Naturally, I retrieved a list of the sites to migrate from IIS 5 and have now put together a nice little batch files to take care of all of the sites.

Let's see...mail server has been migrated, so all that's left is the database. Fun.

In case I haven't mentioned this before, if you work with technology for a living, take a look at O'Reilly's Safari Bookshelf. At a minimum, sign up for a free 30-day trial. If you can swing it, buy a subscription, or get your company to buy one for you. It is well worth it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Safari, it is an online library of more than 1,400 (currently -- they add more all the time) of the best technology books. The books are from familiar publishers like Addison Wesley, SAMS, QUE, New Riders, Microsoft Press, O'Reilly, and several others. The features include advanced search capabilities, a list of recent searches, recent pages views, notes, and bookmarks. There is a search to locate specific titles (by Author, ISBN, TItle, or Publisher, as well as a tree view for drilling down by category and for browsing the contents of a title itself.

My company bought subscriptions for us over a year ago. I didn't use it for the first couple of months, but it has become an indispensable resource since then. Sure, the content isn't quite as portable as a real book, but you can print out individual pages. Besides, when you are sitting at your desk, it probably doesn't matter if you physically have the book in hand or not -- the most important thing for me is to be able to find what I need quickly. Oh, it's also allowed me to stop lugging so many books back and forth between work and home.

To give you an idea of the quality of titles available, here is what is currently on my Safari Bookshelf:

• .NET Web Services: Architecture and Implementation
• C# and VB .NET Conversion Pocket Reference
• Content Syndication with RSS
• Essential .NET, Volume 1: The Common Language Runtime
• Essential ASP.NET with Examples in Visual Basic .NET
• Developing Microsoft ASP.NET Server Controls and Components
• Programming Visual Basic .NET, 2nd Edition
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
• XML Schema
• XSLT Cookbook

I've been running Windows Server 2003 RC2 on a dev server for some time, and have been eagerly awaiting RTM. After hearing yesterday that Windows 2003 Server had gone gold, I started keeping my eye out on the MSDN Subscriber downloads page for it. About mid-afternoon today, I logged on to see if the final version was there yet, and what do you know, it was!

I've pulled down the Standard Edition and the Web Edition. I'll probably pull down the Enterprise Edition tomorrow.

Thank goodness my MSDN Universal Subscription was just renewed.

After reading Brad's post on working with a dual monitor setup, and after hearing good things about it from my friend Zach (no site at the moment), I decided to give it a whirl. Fortunately I had an extra monitor and video card, so I was able to try out the dual monitor setup without laying out any cash.

I don't have the two monitors situated ideally at the moment, but even so, I don't see how I will be able to not utilize this setup going forward. It just makes sense. So now I am going to look for a new monitor, most likely an LCD. Brad likes his new ViewSonic, and I've heard good things about the Samsung models.

For those of you who have made the switch from CRT to LCD, did you move down in viewable area, stay the same, or go up? If you moved down, are you happy with that decision, or do you wish that you'd have gone with a larger LCD? Are you using a dual monitor setup?

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