When to get a Nikon D90?

There are currently lots of rumors floating around about an upcoming digital SLR from Nikon, the D90. The camera will most likely have:

• 12 MP resolution on a DX sensor
• Active D-Lighting
• Live View
• 3" LCD
• 4,5 fps burst mode
• 1080i and/or 1080p video recording
• HDMI and GPS port

I want one. But when should I get it? I looked at historical price data for Nikon cameras and kits sold in Sweden (data from prisjakt.nu) and ended up with the following chart:



There is quite good correlation between different models (possibly excluding the D300) and the price drop, so a curve like this can probably be assumed for the D90 as well.

The introductory price for the D90 will probably be $1,000 and $1,300 with a 18-105 VR lens. I'm guessing this will translate to 10.000 SEK and 13.000 SEK. Now you only need to decide how much you want to pay and how long you are willing to wait.

I'm leaning towards getting the kit when the price drops to 10kSEK and I'm guessing this will happen around May 2009.

Streaming music to an AirPort Express

I have a SqueezeBox 3 in my living room that I'm really pleased with. But when the time came to add another set of connected speakers I decided to go with an AirPort Express (APE) instead and then stream to this from my MacBook.

The main reason for this was Apple's Remote application for the iPod Touch. With this I can control music playback from my iPod. The two drawbacks are that I can't listen to music locally on the MacBook while streaming to the speakers and I can't sync music between the APE and SqueezeBox. Since the APE was the cheapest alternative (900 SEK compared to 1.400 SEK for a headless SqueezeBox receiver or 2.000 SEK for the SqueezeBox 3) I went with that.

The APE can also function as a wireless router so I went to work and reinstalled my local network, putting my Netgear router out to pasture. Unfortunately the 802.11G performance was worse than with my old router. This was apparent when running VNC to my HTPC where I had to enable the lowest quality setting. Not a big problem, but a nuisance nonetheless.

Then I started to stream music to the APE. Thirty seconds went by and then the sound dropped out for a couple of seconds. Then it came back on. And dropped off again. Now it is a big problem. The SqueezeBox has a nice big buffer and decodes MP3 locally, the APE works by decoding the audio on the computer and then streaming uncompressed audio over the network. Combine this with a small buffer in the APE and you get a problem when you add other network traffic.

Other people had reported issues and if I shut down network intensive applications I could get streaming to work properly. A solution, but not very satisfying.

I then started thinking (I probably should have started with this before redoing my network). The APE can also use 802.11n - which is in the 5GHz spectrum. Why not use that? I went and got the Netgear and set up two networks; one 802.11g and one 802.11n. But now I couldn't access my MacBook (running 11n) from my Touch (running 11g) which was the main point of getting the APE to begin with.

More thinking and then I put the APE in bridge mode. Problem solved. I now use 11n for the MacBook and APE and 11g and Netgear for the rest of the network (HTPC, Touch, Wii, SqueezeBox, Kid's computer).

Wordle is kinda neat

I just found out about Wordle through Thomas Hawk's blog. Of course tag clouds is nothing new, but wordle does it with style and you can pour any kind of text content into it. The image shows my tag cloud at del.icio.us.

I've pretty much stopped using del.icio.us by the way. I'm now using Foxmarks for synching bookmarks between computers and that has been working out fine for me so far.

Switching sound device with your remote

Welcome to more autohotkey (AHK) goodness. Building on my previous post about switching audio streams with your remote we now add switching the default audio device.

You could use any remote button you want for this, I used the hash key (#) which I don't use for anything else. I assume you already have AHK setup properly and a script for your remote. Before we continue we need to install two things for AHK:

1. COM standard library
2. Vista Audio/Volume Control Functions
   

Download both packages and extract them in the folder "My Documents\AutoHotkey\Lib\" (create it if you don't have it already).

Now you need to modify your remote script and add the following code:

;---------------------------------------------------------------------------
; When pressing #:
; Close Media Center, change default audio device and restart Media Center
;---------------------------------------------------------------------------

#IfWinActive ahk_class eHome Render Window
#::
; Close application with Alt-F4
Send !{F4}

; Change default audio
COM_Init()
device := VA_GetDevice()
device_name := VA_GetDeviceName(device)
COM_Release(device)
COM_Term()

Run, mmsys.cpl

WinWait, Ljud ahk_class #32770

if InStr(device_name, "HDMI-enhet")
ControlSend, SysListView321, {Down 2} ; second device
else
ControlSend, SysListView321, {Down 4} ; fourth device

ControlClick, Button2, Ljud ahk_class #32770 ; set default
ControlClick, Button4, Ljud ahk_class #32770 ; OK

; It might happen that clicking 'OK' doesn't work
IfWinExist, Ljud ahk_class #32770
{
WinClose, Ljud ahk_class #32770 ; close window
}

; Start Windows Media Center
Run, C:\Windows\ehome\ehshell.exe, , max

Return
#IfWinActive

Note that you need to replace all occurences of "Ljud" with your local translation of "Sound" (i.e. the name of the windows with sound properties). You might need to change the path to your ehshell as well. Restart the script and presto, you can now switch the default audio device with your remote too.

Main source of information: Lexikos work as detailed in select sound source thread on AHK forums.

New graphics driver installed on the HTPC

With the stubborness of a donkey I went and installed updated graphics driver for my HTPC. I've tried this before without much success. Why update then? I figured SP1 for Vista is probably not too shabby, and that installation can be blocked if you have old drivers.

Windows update suggested drivers for my 82G965 Graphics and Memory Controller Hub (GMCH) from April 2008, so I went with those. Installed. Rebooted. No sound over HDMI.

But at Intel's page I found version 7.15.10.1472 from May 28 which were somewhat newer (Intel's page incorrectly says that the version number for these drivers are 7.14.10.1472). So the donkey went to work and downloaded that instead. Install. Reboot. Success!

I'm as surprised as you are.

Switching audio streams and subtitles with the MS remote

For some reason it is not possible to switch audio streams or subtitles in Vista Media Center with your remote. You can use the keyboard combinations Ctrl+Shift+A for Audio and Ctrl+U (for sUbtitles?), but I don't want to drag out my keyboard when watching a movie. Not to mention it's difficult for the rest of the family to remember the correct key combination (Ctrl+A activates the radio by the way, so you need to remember to press that Shift key too...).

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. It's called Autohotkey (AHK for short) and it allows you to trigger actions based on keypresses. And you have a couple of unused buttons on your MS remote control anyway (the colored ones at the bottom). It is not for the faint of heart, but it is possible. And here's how to do it:

1. Download the latest version of Autohotkey and install it
2. Download Micha's Human Interface Device support for AHK here
3. Unpack Micha's rar file in a new directory of your choice
   
4. Run the vcredist_x86.exe to install necessary DLL:s (I forgot this first and couldn't grok the error messages I got)
5. Download my remote control script and save it in the same directory. Name it e.g. MyRemote.ahk (or whatever you want - it needs to end with .ahk though)
6. Create a shortcut to the MyRemote.ahk script in your Autostart folder (optional, but nice)

You should now be able to use the red button to switch audio tracks and the green button to switch subtitles!

But if you're out of luck you might run into problems. E.g. your remote might send different codes. In that case you need to find out the remote control codes your remote sends. Uncomment the line MsgBox Received code: %Vals% in the script to find out your specific codes and change the values in your script correspondingly.

Sources of information and credit to:

• Micha for the work on HID device support
• boulder2 at The Green Button for posting info in this thread(script does not work as is, though)
• yotz for improving readability of Micha's original remote control script
  
• TRHR for showing that you need to have {Enter} after ^+a
• Look here if you want to hide the taskbar icon for AHK
  
• And finally this thread on the Autohotkey forums on Micha's work
  

Getting a better keyboard for my HTPC for free

The keyboard and built in keypad that comes with the Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo EV 2535 is less than optimal. It misses characters and it's difficult to navigate the mouse pointer precisely. (You kinda think this would be a standard feature on a wireless keyboard.) After having read Johannes's recommendations (post in Swedish) I wanted to buy a better keyboard+mouse combination.

But why? I have several alternative input devices laying around already (iPod touch and two laptops). Why not remote control the computer with those instead?

Reading up on different solutions VNC seems the way to go. It's open and cross-platform and you can get clients for OS X, Windows, and even iPod touch. But the server doesn't seem to work on Vista. Then I found TouchPad Pro, which seems like an excellent application for the touch and their installation instructions did mention Vista.

So I installed it. And it did work.

All that remained was to get a good VNC client for the Macbook and here Jolly's Fast VNC fit the bill. Now I can remote control my HTPC from my laptop and I don't have to rely on the finicky keyboard that came with the HTPC. Instead I use the excellent MacBook keyboard and trackpad. I think I need to configure the keyboard layout since accented characters are not where you expect them.

To sum it up: don't believe everything you read on the web. You can use TightVNC in Vista.

Next step will probably be to get the TouchPad pro application once it hits the AppStore (I haven't bothered to jailbreak my 2.0 iPod Touch) and use the iPod as a remote.