Cutting the Cable

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We have been subscribers to Shaw Direct (it was Star Choice) for years and the service was ok. Back when we lived in Rosthern there was not much choice you either got satellite tv or you have crappy cable tv from the local cable company. Since we moved to Regina a few years ago things have changed considerably. We tried Zip.ca for awhile, but the fact that they were slow to bring in streaming was (I still don’t think they have it) was killer. When Netflix opened up here I jumped on it the first day it was available and we have never looked back.

Once we joined Netflix out watching satellite tv started to drop of. The kids never turned the satellite on any more and the only person that watched it occasionally was myself to watch the Rider games. Considering how bad their season was in 2011 it was even hard to sit and watch them for a whole game. By the end of October it was obvious that we really did not need Shaw Direct any more, no one was watching it so we decided to cancel. We went from paying $50/month for satellite tv that no one was watching to using only Netflix for $7.99/month! The kids don’t care, and I can usually find something to watch that I enjoy. I recently went through the entire 10 seasons of Stargate SG1.

Netflix still might have the best selection here in Canada yet but it is getting better. We don’t feel like we are missing anything without having Shaw Direct. If you do feel a need to catch the latest episode of some newer show you from the US or UK (I like Doctor Who, are you surprised) you can easily use a VPN service to stream those. I guess it is either that or do a torrent search, not that I recommend either. :)

Lots of people talk about getting rid of their cable or satellite tv but it does not seem like a lot of people actually do it. They have one reason or another why they hold onto their cable packages and pay the cable companies outrageous sums of money each month to watch whatever is on at the moment. If you have not stopped paying for cable of satellite tv why not?

Can’t Play DVD on Ubuntu

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Not long ago I had to re-install Ubuntu on my laptop and that went smoothly and I was back up and running in no time but I did not try to play a DVD on the system until recently and I was faced with

Could not read DVD. This may be because the DVD is encrypted and a DVD decryption library is not installed.

Thankfully a quick Google search turned up a post on the Ubuntu forums with my fix.

I am going to post it here for my own reference just in case I need to re-install Ubuntu again.

32bit

wget -c http://packages.medibuntu.org/pool/free/libd/libdvdcss/libdvdcss2_1.2.9-2medibuntu4_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i libdvdcss2_1.2.9-2medibuntu4_i386.deb

64bit

wget -c http://packages.medibuntu.org/pool/free/libd/libdvdcss/libdvdcss2_1.2.9-2medibuntu4_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i libdvdcss2_1.2.9-2medibuntu4_amd64.deb

Hopefully this can help someone else. I am now happily watching DVD’s on my laptop again. Thanks to the help on the Ubuntu forums.

Link2SD Android App

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I have a Motorola Milestone Android phone that I bought almost two years ago. I know that it is already out of date, but it is a good phone and I like it. I thought about getting in one the new Galaxy Nexus phone that is coming out soon, but I have other things I need to spend money on besides a new phone. The one problem I have had on my Milestone though is a lack of memory for apps. It had gotten to the point that I could not add anything new without getting out of space errors.

I have a 16GB SD card in my Milestone but I was not using all of it so I thought if I could move apps to my SD card that would sure help in making the phone useful again. I looked at upgrading to Froyo but my phone is rooted and besides the move to SD card feature the downgrade in performance that might come with the upgrade was not something I wanted. So I went looking for an app that could help me move apps to my SD card and free up some space.

After searching and trying a few apps I came across the Link2SD app. It required taking my 16GB SD card out and re-partitioning it with an extra partition for Link2SD to use but that seemed like a minor inconvenience so I took the card out, made a backup copy of everything on the card and proceeded to re-partition my SD card with two primary partitions. One 15GB for my information and a 1GB primary partition for Link2SD to use. After the partitions were formatted (I used FAT32 if you want to know), I copied all my data back to the 15GB partition and inserted my SD card back in my Milestone and booted it up.

Once my phone booted up I installed Link2SD from the Market and grated it root permissions. It was a pretty simple to start moving the apps to my new SD card partition. I did only a few apps to see how well it worked. It has been over week now and I have been happily adding apps back to my phone that I had removed, like Angry Birds, Google SkyMap and a few others. It has been great to be able to have some room to install new apps on my phone again.

If you don’t have Froyo on your Android phone but are rooted you might want to take a look at Link2SD. It has been a great app to add to my Milestone and has given me a reason to not upgrade quite yet to the next Nexus phone (even if I really want one). I am sure if I hold out long enough the next Nexus phone will be even better. :)

Robertson 2011 Halloween Pumpkins

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I was never into carving Halloween pumpkins like this until I  had kids. Now it has become our family tradition to carve two pumpkins, one for each kid.

For our 2011 Halloween pumpkins Erica wanted a Barbie Kitty, and Matthew wanted an axe man. Thank goodness for those pumpkin stencil books that you can buy. Otherwise it would just be the plain old pumpkins.

Here is a short video I took of the finished product. Think they turned out alright. Lots of little lines on the Barbie Kitty. I was surprised it turned out as nice as it did.

If you want to see some of our past years pumpkins here are the links. Thought I had posted more than this but could only find the two.

Hope you have a Happy Halloween!

Stupid Zombies

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I admit I like to play games on my Galaxy Tab more than on my desktop. I often have time while I am sitting and waiting for my kids, as most parents do.

I enjoy a good round of Angry Birds, but since it is close to Halloween I thought I would share a game I have been enjoying called Stupid Zombies. Nothing like shooting some zombies to help waste some time and clear ones mind.

If you are looking for a new game to try out after you finish getting all those green pigs try out Stupid Zombies. It can be a lot of fun.

It is available in the Android Market here.

Some screenshots

The promo video from YouTube.

Surprise Bag of Updates

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Hard to believe it has been almost two months since I have written anything here. It has been a busy two months and I thought I would give a surprise bag of updates on a lot of different things. So here are a few of the things that have been keeping me busy since I posted last.

I have a huge website redevelopment project going on for a client. It has consumed a considerable amount of time and energy. I can’t say who it is right now but will talk about it once it is launched.

My daughter started Kindergarten! She now attends school for full days because she goes to Kindergarten and her communication class as well. It has made more time available for me to work. That has been great considering the project I am working on.

I have been hanging out at Google+ a lot more. I still use Twitter but find the Google+ is really convenient to use. I can see Google+ becoming more and more important in SEO, but that is another post.

I have been trying to post more at the LGR Internet Solutions blog, but that has been hit and miss as well.

I have decided to attend the Affiliate Summit conference in Las Vegas in January. This was a big step for me, since I don’t usually find conferences very enjoyable. I thought I would give this conference a try and see if it will help me improve my affiliate websites. More and more my affiliate work has been out performing my web development work and has been more consistent for income. Thought it was time I focused a little more attention on it.

Our car that had the huge spruce tree on it at our cabin is finally settled. Insurance has decided it is not a right off and will fix it. This is good news mostly because I had no desire to find a new vehicle. It is going to leave me carless for 10 or more days. Still not sure how we are going to handle that. Apparently the insurance company will not cover a rental because somehow it was my fault a huge f****** spruce tree fell on my car. Anyway I guess I will have to rent a car out of my own pocket for that time.

I have been trying to exercise more. Not something that has always been a priority but I have been doing my best to get some exercise in every week.  So far so good, hoping to get in better shape for another trip to Disney World!

Life overall has been good. It is nice to be busy and having some more time to work has been great. It is early to start wrapping up 2011 but so far it has been a bit of a rebuilding year. 2012 is starting to look like it will be better. I have some big ideas that I do hope to get off the ground in 2012, but talking about that will be another day.

Blue Man Group in Regina

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Went to see Blue Man Group last night here in Regina. Had a great time out with my wife. It was her birthday a little while ago and then our anniversary so the concert was celebrating a bit of both of those occassions.

I have to say they really put on a show. I have seen many clips on YouTube of them but it is much more enjoyable to see them live. You do not get a sense of the spectacle watching a little video on YouTube. If I ever go to Las Vegas I think I would want to try and get tickets to see them again.

All that being said here is one of the many Blue Man Group videos you can find on YouTube.

Enjoy!

Apraxia Joys and Frustrations

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It is strange to put joy and apraxia in the same sentence in the title of this post. One would think that there could be no joy in the fact that your daughter cannot talk very well and that she has to work so hard to communicate. With all the struggles that come with apraxia there are some moments of total joy.

Seeing and hearing her slowly but surely master new sounds is a joy. Spending time together practicing sounds while playing a game and enjoying a good laugh together is a joy. Being totally surprised when she says a new word or sound like “quack” is a joy. There are joys, joys that need to be celebrated. I certainly would wish that my daughter would not have to go through this, but at least we can have some joy.

Apraxia does come with its share of frustrations as well. In the beginning many of the frustrations were from problems communicating with her, but as time has gone by those frustrations become less. It is unfortunate that the biggest frustrations become with the institutions and people that are suppose to help your daughter learn to talk.

Speech language therapists I am sure all mean well, but they are not all created equal. School speech therapists that refuse to use PROMPT even though you you know your daughter responds best to it is frustrating. Private speech therapists who quit out of no where and blame us for substituting private speech therapy for daily practice is extremely frustrating.  School systems that do not want teachers to attend apraxia conferences because it is not a priority for the school board makes you want to scream.

Thankfully many of those frustrations are in the past. We have an excellent private speech therapist that our daughter works well with. The new school speech therapist will use PROMPT to help our daughter. In the meantime I celebrate that my daughter has somehow “found her quack” along with “yes” and a list of other new sounds.  She will talk and someday maybe, just maybe we can celebrate no more speech therapy.

For those that are wondering about the quack reference, at a recent kindergarten meeting the teacher read “The Duck that Lost It’s Quack”. My daughter surprised me by saying quack along with all the other kids. Ever since then she has been quacking, and trying out a number of other q words. Just in case you were wondering.

Samsung Galaxy Tab and Bluetooth Keyboard

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It as roughly a year ago that I bought a Motorola Milestone Android Smartphone. Since then I have also bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab and have become a bit of an Android geek. This is not much a surprise really considering my love for Apple products. There are some things I really like about the Galaaxy Tab that make it better than some other tablets out there right now.

Size – It is bigger than my phone but not as big as the iPad. Sure the larger screen on the iPad looks nice but I can hold the Galaxy Tab easily in one hand and not worry about dropping it.

Wifi – I do not understand why Apple insists that you copy data onto their devices by connecting them to a computer. Honestly, it is stupid. Thanks to ES File Manager I can easily copy content from my computers over wifi.

Google – I use GMail, Calendar, Contacts, GTalk, Maps from Google and the tight integration of Google  products and services on Android really makes this a no brainer. It all just works together.

Flash – Like it or not Flash is a part of a lot of websites and with the Galaxy Tab I do not miss anything. I would not be sad if Flash died on the web but the reality is for now it is apart of it.

Bluetooth Keyboard – I recently picked up a Bluetooth Keyboard and Leather case and it has been a great addition with my Tab. It essentially turns my tablet into a netbook so I can write longer emails, blog posts etc. It has been great.

While the Samsung Galaxy Tab might already be out of date compared to some of the new tablets coming out it is an excellent device.