There’s Wisdom in Knowing Nothing

Posted on by

I post this as the truth I have discovered in the IT industry, and I’m pretty sure it carries over to all people over all careers. We start out in the “I know nothing” (discovery) phase, followed by the “I’m an expert” (cocky) phase, followed once again by the “I know nothing” (only scratched the surface) phase. While we all gain more expertise over time, the more important thing we gain is wisdom. We begin to realize as we get older how much more there really is to know, and how little we actually know in comparison. One of life’s lessons put very easily on a graph.

Canal Park

Posted on by

Proof that even the junkiest areas can be rehabilitated and turned into HUGE tourist attractions!

MisterHouse control for a Samsung Smart TV

Posted on by

UntitledAnother piece of my home, now automated. With assistance from a thread on the Samygo forum, I created a module for the MisterHouse Home Automation System which allows it to control a network-connected Samsung Smart TV. For instance, when you leave the house for more than 10 minutes, it could turn the TV off for you. It could also switch the TV automatically to match your favorite show schedule, or switch to an HDMI input to monitor a surveillance camera if motion is detected on your property. It’s available right here for free:  https://gist.github.com/hollie/ed1fa39871e93e36e24e. It’s written in Perl so it’s cross-platform or can be adapted for other uses.

I’ve tested this with my Samsung UN40EH5300 and it works well. It should work on pretty much any Samsung TV that has an open port 55000. The code is based off of another Perl/HTML program from http://forum.samygo.tv/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1792 created from some Wireshark traces.

To use this code, you’ll have to modify a few things:

– Change the IP 192.168.2.155 below to your own TV’s IP Address.
– Change $myip to your MisterHouse server’s IP Address.
– Change $mymac to your MisterHouse server’s MAC Address.

The 9-year-old Programmer

Posted on by

In response to the ZDNet article that Chad Elstad posted (you can read “The Mac’s 30th: What’s Your Story?” here: http://www.zdnet.com/the-macs-30th-whats-your-story…/ ). When I was 5 years old, I remember printing out computer programs on our Apple ][+ (Remember PR#1, LIST ?), and then trying to type them in to my Commodore PET computer. My first lesson in incompatibility! When I was 9 years old, I created a Baseball game in BASIC using lo-res Apple graphics (pictured below). I’m still a huge fan of the Apple ][ platform and I still have a working Apple ][gs that gets use from time to time…