Joey Adams Dot Net

Southern Fried Programming

Linksys DMA-2100 and Home PVR Initial Review

February 15th, 2008 by Joey in Electronics, Media, Projects | 1 Comment →

Today I received the Linksys DMA-2100. I already had my Vista PC setup with a tuner card and media center, so I was ready to get the DMA2100, which I’ll call the extender for the rest of this article, hooked up to the plasma in the living room.

Setup was very easy, just connect power and A/V cables, then go through on-screen GUI on the extender and media PC and you’re done.

Here is my review, which I’ll explain:

Pros:

  1. Easy Installation
  2. Does what it says it does
  3. No Monthly fees
  4. Stunning interface
  5. Connections for all devices.

Cons:

  1. Wireless Network graph is horrible, when PC and Extender are but 10 ft apart, room to room.
  2. Wide-screen, but does not fill the 46″ Plasma.
  3. Composite on my unit does not work.
  4. The network issue makes the unit unusable.
  5. Some buttons on remote do not work.

WAIT! Some of these issues are addressed farther down, do not stop reading if you are considering this product. Read the rest of this entry »

2 Step Views in Zend Framework With SiteTemplate Part 1

February 13th, 2008 by Joey in Zend Framework, development, php | 6 Comments →

I am a complete advocate of the Zend Framework, it is nothing but good. I will probably post sometime in the near future why I believe it is the best development option out there, but for now we are going to be talking about views.

Views coincide with the framework’s MVC architecture. The view is the presentation, or basically the templates that display the dynamic data manipulated by PHP.

For each Action you have in a controller, you have a view script, which is a phtml file. One solution to creating a uniform site, was on each phtml file, to include header and footers, like this:

<?php echo $this->render('header.phtml'); ?>
<h1><?php echo $this->title; ?></h1>
<?php echo $this->content; ?>
<?php echo $this->render('footer.phtml'); ?>

The problem with this is obvious, redundancy. In case you don’t know, programmers hate redundancy. Once you find yourself repeating code over and over again, in this case, rendering the header and footer, then it is time to create an automated solution. Read the rest of this entry »

LousVoice.com Launched!

February 12th, 2008 by Joey in Affiliate, Flex, Projects, Zend Framework, development | No Comments →

In my last project I had the pleasure of working with a very experienced voice talent. His name is Lou Christian, and he has had almost 40 years in broadcast media. He does professional voice overs for radio and television. I created a web presence for him, as well as a back-end application for him to edit pages with a Rich Text Editor, with preview, as well as manage other functions of the site.

This was done on top of the Zend Framework 1.5, and the media player was created with Adobe Flex.

I have listened to his work, both dry and post production, and I was just blown away. The sound is very crisp, and is extremely good quality. His prices are also very reasonable, and to top it off, he is one class act. Lou is a really energetic and crazy guy who loves what he does.

So if you are looking for some voice over or voice tracking, please check out his web site at LousVoice.com

Home PVR Linux Vs. Windows

February 11th, 2008 by Joey in Electronics, Media, Projects | No Comments →

Here is my problem. I work overnights, and go to the gym in the evenings so there are shows that I’d like to watch, but I have to always miss. It would be nice to watch them in the morning or the next day when I’m off work, when there is nothing good on anyway.

I’ve always liked the idea of a TiVo, but just one of my beliefs is right of ownership, and the distinction between a product and service. I believe after the initial price of the TiVo box, you should only have to pay service fees if you intend to use an “exclusive” set of features of the TiVo. Things like downloading online movies, access to internet tv or stations, or some of their other online features. However the guide, and recording features should be available without service charges, less you just have an expensive paperweight.

Enter PVR’s, or Personal Video Recorders. Read the rest of this entry »

Blog Up

February 10th, 2008 by Joey in Uncategorized | No Comments →

JoeyAdams.net is now home to my blog. I am in the midst of finishing a couple of web applications and getting them marketed, after that I will be working on the startup of a consulting company specializing in Internet Security and Web Development.

Time to time I will post about happenings in the security and web world as well as post articles about security and development related topics.

Check back regulary or syndicate to gain more information.

Next Entries →