Connecting Xbox 360 Wirelessly in Hospital

I am volunteering to build a few mobile gaming stations for the Mott Children and Women's Hospital, well, more for the Children's part, with Xbox 360 consoles. I am facing a dilemma of connecting the Xboxes to the network, preferably wirelessly. I've got a Microsoft USB 802.11g wireless adapter. The problems are on the network side.

At the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS), which the Mott hospital is part of, wireless networks are based on Cisco's Unified Wireless Network architecture. A segregated wireless LAN named guest is provided for patients and their families visiting the hospital, which so far has worked nicely for everyone.

Now, the problem. The guest WLAN requires authentication. The process is not complicated: You find the guest WLAN, connect to it, open a browser, enter your last name and a valid email address. That's it! Of course, in the unbounded wisdom of Microsoft product designers, they removed the browser from the game console, which means a user is able to connect to the guest wireless LAN, but has no way to go through that simple authentication process.

I have tried the MCEBrowser. The problem with that is that it requires Microsoft Windows Media Center to run, which is fine for home users but not in a hospital environment, not to mention the great pain that Windows Media Center is by itself.

One suggestion given to me is to use a Cisco wireless workgroup bridge to connect the Xbox 360, which is quite interesting and I will try that soon. However, I am not clear how that works around the authentication issue, yet.

VoIP, SIP, and Free Phone Calls

Now that I am switching to MagicJack, I got to try some SIP stuff.

This sounds very interesting: Connecting Google Voice directly via a SIP phone.

And so is this: MagicJack SIP info.

Drupal 6 + jQP + jQuery Plugins

I have been having some fun with jQuery lately and I truly love it. I write this article to log what I have put together for a project using Drupal and Ajax.

I work at MCIT of the University of Michigan Health System. I have been using Drupal as a platform for some in-house network management tools allowing our desktop support teams to help with supporting customers with some of their networking needs, such as moving a switch port to a different VLAN, changing the speed/duplex settings of a port, etc. Allowing direct customer facing support staff to perform those simple tasks simplifies the work flow and provides a better overall experience to the end user, yet enterprise network management tools such as Ciscoworks does not provide the level of granular control. By the way, is there anyone interested in a tool like this as a Drupal module? If so, I might get it cleaned up and open source it.

Anyway, the tool existed as a web application before I came along which was developed in PHP. I wanted to give it a more intuitive interface and better user experience. Drupal and Ajax are my choice of platform. As Drupal uses jQuery so naturally that becomes the choice of tool kit for building the user interface.

Drupal is a content management system (or CMS) with an active community around it. Documentation about installing and developing for Drupal can be found on their website and via Google. Everything else mentioned in this article needs a bit of work on your Drupal installation.

1. jQuery and jquery_update
   

   
   Drupal has had jQuery since version 5 something. However, the Drupal core does not come with the latest version of jQuery. That is where the jquery_update module comes in. Simply download the module for your version of Drupal. If you are using Drupal 6, all you need to do then is enable to module. With Drupal 5.x however, you would have to follow the instructions in a file in the module's directory to complete the jQuery update.



2. jQuery UI
   

   The jQuery UI plugin "provides abstractions for low-level interaction and animation, advanced effects and high-level, themeable widgets, built on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library, that you can use to build highly interactive web applications." More on the installation and use of jQuery UI later.



3. jQuery Grid
   

   The jQuery Grid plugin does exactly what the name says, but it does that really well! Again, more details later. But in the mean time, I strongly recommend the demos that the project author, Tony Tomov, has built on his site.



4. jquery-json

   "JSON plugin for jQuery, provides simple ways to convert to JSON and back again."



5. jQuery Plugin Handler (jQP)
   

   The jQP module is the glue that one can use to put the pieces listed above in 2, 3 and 4 into Drupal.

To allow a Drupal module to use jQuery plugins, the jQP module can help. Install the jQP module just like any other Drupal module, enable it, then add the jQuery plugins.

A jQuery plugin may be installed in a number of different locations. For simplicity sake, I install all my jQuery plugins in the .../sites/all/js_libraries/ folder. This folder is one of those the jQP module searches for JavaScript libraries.

For example, I download the jQuery Grid plugin and unpack it in the jqGrid subdirectory under the above mentioned .../js_libraries/ folder, each version in a different sub-folder. So version 3.4.4 is in .../js_libraries/jqGrid/3.4.4/, version 3.5 in .../js_libraries/jqGrid/3.5/, etc.

Then create a .../js_libraries/jqGrid/jquery.jqGrid.info file with the contents below:

name = jquery.jqGrid
description = Files from jQuery jqGrid plug-in.
project_url = http://www.trirand.com/blog

scripts[0][0] = 3.4.4/jquery.jqGrid.js
stylesheets[0][0] = 3.4.4/themes/basic/grid.css
stylesheets[0][1] = 3.4.4/themes/jqModal.css

scripts[3.4.4][0] = 3.4.4/jquery.jqGrid.js
stylesheets[3.4.4][0] = 3.4.4/themes/basic/grid.css
stylesheets[3.4.4][1] = 3.4.4/themes/jqModal.css

scripts[3.5][0] = 3.5/jquery.jqGrid.js
stylesheets[3.5][0] = 3.5/css/ui.jqgrid.css
stylesheets[3.5][1] = 3.5/css/jquery.searchFilter.css

The above .info file will show three entries in the Drupal Administer » Site building » Javascript libraries page:



Now, to use the default version of the jQuery Grid plug-in, add this line to the code:

 drupal_add_js_library('jquery.jqGrid');

Or add this line to use a particular version:

 drupal_add_js_library('jquery.jqGrid', '3.4.4');

谷歌 Chrome OS 和 Linux

我可能是少数中的少数：我一直对苹果的机器、操作系统不感兴趣。可能我这人也 cheap，首先苹果产品的价格我拒绝接受。其次 Linux 和开源软件世界给予我的个人自由是吸引我的最大因素，远远超过 Mac OS 美观的外表。

刚刚读了这篇文章《Will Linux Shine as Google Chrome OS?》，我同意作者 Christopher Smart 的观点，谷歌此举对 Linux 和开源软件有益。让用惯 Windows 的人去接受另外一种是用电脑的方法，是要花很大的功夫的。谷歌 Chrome OS 如果成功，她最直接的作用就是让用户亲身体验 Windows 之外的使用电脑的方法。尽管 Chrome OS 是针对 netbook（上网本）这个档次的机器，但是一个用户用过 Chrome OS 之后再延伸到 netbook 之外，相对就容易多了。

Deal of eeePC 900A on Buy.com

Buy.com is selling Asus eeePC 900A's for $179.

If they had put a 8GB SSD in it, instead of a measly 4GB, this would be a sweet deal. A webcam would be a plus.

低功耗家用服务器

家里现在有两台服务器，一台是用一个很老的奔腾3（Pentium-III）改装的，换过电源，目前应该说还不错。只是主板只能用 PC133 内存，目前装到 512MB 已经到极限，没法再扩展。另外一台是自己组装的，用的一个 NewEgg 买来的组件，目前也还不错。问题是现在硬盘都已经基本上被我塞满了，所以必须想些办法了。

网上找到这个博客：Lower Power Computing，可以关注一下。