I was setting my computer up and realized my Microsoft remote was pretty useless. It’s one of the ones destined for Media Center Edition, the version 2. It says Microsoft Model 1039 on the back. It kind of works in XP, volume seems to work and some keys work in Windows Media Player, but not a lot. I found a program called HIP that allows mapping between remotes and keys for different programs. There’s a pretty good faq for using this with the mce remote available here. Most important step is to use the driver in C:\Program Files\HIP\MCEIR after the hip install (be sure it installs the mce plugin) to replace windows driver. This shows up under “ehome” in the usb section of device manager. Once this is all set, you can using the configuration wizard in HIP to setup the input configuration.

Then comes the programming. I realize you use one hip config for multiple programs. You select the executable and hip detects which program is running and uses the different key mappings for each program. At first I had thought that these were some sort of interface program as the defaults pointed to ehshell.exe, which I couldn’t find.

Once you get all this figured out, it’s not really that tough to stumble through. Just remember to save your configs as it takes some time getting the keys set up for each program.

On the cool side of things you can make keys load other programs, do things with the mouse, etc, so you can really do almost anything with HIP, even blast IR to control other devices.

I haven’t caught up with Chris from Cascade Link to finish up the wireless mount on the TP 600X yet, but when I was moving today I ran into Rob and he said he knew someone from Seattle Mind Camp who had a couple dozen friends on this side of the hill that might be coaxed into participating in Seattle Wireless. I talked about the idea of SWN a little with a couple house mates tonight, so I’m excited to see if we can make a nice little mesg over here. I’m close to a couple nodes, so I’ll go scouting soon to see if they’re really there. I just need to finalize the connector on that laptop. There are a lot of access points in the area though. DD-WRT picked up a couple dozen.

I’m getting settled into my new room in my new house tonight. I’m living with four other people and a couple house guests. It’s like learning names in class, there’s so many new ones! But it’s cool, they seem to endorse dork, so maybe that will fuel some projects.

I finallly got the /lib/modules/*/build link onto the ubuntu machine. linux-source wouldn’t do it and I had to install linux-headers. I’m not sure exactly what the deal is here yet, as everything linux-headers has should be in linux-source. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. I hate this problem though.

I discovered at the last hack night that Joe has a novatel and sierra wireless card from cingular that he picked up for testing that nobody has really played with. Figuring on this being a good reason for being at hack night he let me borrow the sierra wireless card for a bit and I played with it in linux. it appear that card services was detecting it as a serial device but I couldn’t figure out what terminal it was going to. I look in sysfs and threw at commands at some ttys to no avail. I tried modifying the pcmcia config per a knowledge base article. But it didn’t appear to be using the line I added. I saw some notes about having to load usbserial, but didn’t get a chance to try it as Joe had to go. Hopefully I’ll get more time to play with these cards, but I’m getting together with Morgan next wednesday around the time for hack night so I’m not sure what time I’ll be there.

Matt n00bed me at the last hack night about using blogger, so finding where I left the blog software on this unixshell box is on the list of priorities. Since I’ve moved, I’ll probably have more time for projects again so I should reasonably be able to get this done, although I have to do some VoIP testing for work and Matthew.