home improvement?

[jrtom]

This past weekend, our living room couch--a collapsible wood futon frame with a full-sized futon on it--broke. As in, one of the side rails spontaneously came apart like a stewed chicken. (A nail-studded, hardwood stewed chicken, that is.) We've had perennial problems with it--the fittings whose purpose was to connect the flat part to the side rails have numerous charges of dereliction of duty on their records--but this was unexpectedly, and gratuitously, spectacular. Fortunately, it turns out that the flat part--the hinged piece on which the mattress rests--was unharmed, so we can still use it as a bed (when laid flat) or a minimalist sofa (when bent and laid against the wall). (Also fortunately, no one was hurt when this happened.) And I can't really complain that we didn't get our money's worth out of it . . . but it's still annoying.



On a more positive note, I recently discovered that Pacific Neotek makes software that allows Palm devices to learn how to be remote controls. At least two of our remotes are "Universal Remotes", which means that if you can find the appropriate code for your Yoyodyne remote, and if your soi-disant Universal Remote has the appropriate buttons, then you can convince them to talk to the Yoyodyne device. In practice this is a pain in the ass, although I've successfully done it a couple of times, and it often turns out that the UR doesn't have buttons for some of the functions of the original.

The PN software takes a different approach: you put the remote across from your Palm, in beaming position, tell the Palm software what button you want to train, and then hit that button on the remote. The default software templates for functions are decent, but you can add, remove, or edit the virtual buttons ad hoc, as well as create macros that emulate the successive pressing of different buttons on different remotes, and create an entirely new meta-remote interface that encompasses functions for several devices. Very geeky, and quite cool. You can purchase IR devices that supplement the IR port on your Palm, but we've found that the Palm's IR signal is plenty strong enough--at least for our living room. If it still works fine when the trial license runs out, we may well shell out the $25 to deal with our remote clutter.

Comments

[red-frog.livejournal.com]

The second part is very cool.