So I've managed to be distracted by mutliple things today and yesterday. Yesterday I went down to my Aunt and Uncle's house to help them with their computer. I decided they needed a router so I went to Fry's which was pretty much on the other side of the whole city. I got the router as well as a new DVD-RW drive and an HDMI cable for the Asus O!Play. By that time it was 4:00 on a Friday so it took a while getting all the way back to my Aunt's. I set up the router for them and then went back home.

The O!Play actually does look a lot better with the addition of an HDMI cable versus composite video. That's the other thing I was distracted by: first I just wanted to figure out if I could issue a command in the telnet session to make a particular video start playing on the TV. That would be sweet because I could write a script and set up a CRON job to start something playing. That synced with my TV power itself on would make a good alarm clock. Right?

My other bright idea which I have yet to take any action on at all would be to convert my teeny little O!play box into more of a "clam-shell" form factor kind of like those portable DVD players they still sell or a net book for that matter.

I've seen an image of the circuit board inside and it looks like that biggest thing it has on it is the fairly large heat sync. Of course there's a lot more than that I'd have to worry about in converting the device to a clamshell. I mean I'd have to make it a battery-powered device, figure out some input for it besides the remote (but still leave the remote as an option), maintain the normal outputs for HDMI/composite/SPDIF but add a built-in screen for it, and perhaps some kind of mini-keyboard if I wanted to interact with the underlying linux shell and a telnet connection isn't immediately convenient.

I know it's theoretically possible as there's a whole website dedicated to taking about game consoles, both new and old, and making them battery powered/built-in screen/pass-through outputs and either continued interaction with wireless game pads or a built-in gamepad/input device.

Well I haven't done this yet with a game console I think starting with this wouldn't be very wise and also on the expensive side. The O!Play does have the added benefit of standard output connections so at least I wouldn't have to do a LOT of soldering. Not on that part anyway. I don't know that it would really work however. I can dream though, right?

Also, I put a bunch of those iPKGs or whatever on there and filled up the internal storage. Well two things about: first I need to see if it's possible to "uninstall" or the rough ipkg/linux equivelent therein to free up lots of space then I need to see if the latest firmware, just made available on the 17th, will install. The firmware should be much improved. Or lets hope so.

This also let me to wonder if there wasn't some way of getting a third USB port soldered off of the circuit board so I could just mount a USB flash drive inside the thing, still leaving the two USB ports working and accessible on the outside. Also an apparently optimistic dream.

The other thing I started thiking about was exporting the data from my original question/answer site into a spreadsheet for convenient sorting and filtering of the data. I had already requested some ideas for this from the people who had qualified for the "Programming" section of the site but got absolutely ZERO response from them.

But since I noticed when you right-click on the table that makes up the "Question List" the context menu has an "Export to Excel" option as a choice I decided to try that. Turns out this does in fact work (and unlike the original time I tried this excel didn't crash this time).

So I had the data imported into excel. But I couldn't do the formating and filtering like I was used to via the selection of an area and "create list" feature.

I did some experimenting with pivot tables for a while but nothing I did seemed to give me the results. Then just noticed the Data menu's Filter->AutoFilter which provides the very menus I was seeking via the list feature, although apparently when the data refreshes the convenient auto filter menus are gone once more.

So right now it's kind of useless since I have to keep setting it over and over. I'm making progress though. Ironically I think I've spent more time try to manipulate the question data than actually answering questions for the site.

The other thing I did yesterday and today was start looking at some freelance writing sites. I don't how many if any I will join but it certainly is tempting, isn't it? I have so far looked at suite101.com, Associated Content, and possibly Demand Studios.

I think I'm possibly most impressed with Associated content followed closely by suite101, based purely on page layout and the completeness of their FAQ and general "have their shit together" first impressions. Which isn't to say suite101 is much worse, of course. Just hard to live up to suite101.

I was also looking at eHow at one point. I probably will go back to that one as well. I need to just spend four or whatever hours dedicated just to answer a bunch of questions on that site. Trying to decide if I can actually work with it or not.

Actually I found Suite101 while searching for advise on the life of the self-employed. Keeping track of expenses, filing taxes, etc and there was an article on suite101. I read the article then realized I could probably sign up for that site as well.

On another site, possibly AC, I also found an article about the "search engine optimization" of articles, or SEO for short. It was a very interesting read and it itself was very "SEO"ed.

I think it's time for bed. Midnight, again.  ¶ 11:25 PM