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July 31, 2005

How to Receive Nasa TV in Canada

I am a great advocate of Nasa TV. Unfortunately, it's not available through any conventional means up here in Canada. I did some research and discovered that the Nasa TV signal is available in the Dish Networks satellite signal, even if you're not a subscriber. This is a Free To Air signal. This isn't stealing satellite service or anything like that. This is a legal way to receive the Nasa TV signal for us up here in Canada.


The first step is a satellite dish. I used a spare Bell Expressvu dish I had lying around. Bell used to have a cottage program whereby they would ship a free dish to your summer cottage so you could take your receiver on holiday with you - that's how I acquired a spare dish. The dish needs to be mounted and aligned to the 119 degree slot.


The next step is to get receiver working. I took a spare ex-subbed model 2700 Bell Expressvu receiver and card. Other models will probably work, but make sure that it's a model that both Bell and Dish use, otherwise it won't get the firmware update described below. I used a receiver that used to be subscribed to my Bell account. You will definitely need a card in the receiver for this hack to work, but I don't know if it has to have been subscribed or not. Use the receiver to align the dish to 119 degrees. It won't lock on (because it doesn't recognize 119 as a Bell satellite) but you will see the signal strength and satelllite name. Adjust the dish for maximum signal.


Once the receiver has been used to align the dish, we need to get Dish Network firmware into the receiver. To do this, build yourself a JTAG programmer for the 2700 receiver. It's a lot simpler than it sounds - a 25 pin connector and some resistors. Plans can be found here.


Once you have your JTAG interface built, you will need a software package called Jkeys. Use this program, together with your JTAG interface, to erase sector SA5. If you're not using a model 2700 receiver, the sector number will be different. Please check around the Internet to find the appropriate sector to erase for your model. Once you've erased this sector, power down the 2700 and leave it connected to the dish. After about 15 minutes, the receiver will have downloaded Dish firmware.


Congratulations. Your new Dish receiver will now receive Nasa TV (as well as a couple of promotional Dish channels).


I have had this set up and working for about a month without any problems. Your results may vary. Of course, any modifications you make to your hardware is at your own risk.

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Posted by Ian at 02:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 26, 2005

Vacation Time

I've finally done it. I've broken away from work for almost a whole week, and I'm going on vacation. There'll be no broadband, no TV, and plenty of mosquitoes. At least there's 1X coverage...

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Posted by Ian at 11:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 24, 2005

Telus Censors to Protect it's Subscribers

Telus, my ISP and one of my work's upstream providers, is currently in the middle of a bitter dispute with it's workers over a contract. Today, they decide that a website that is maintained by supporters of the union involved in the dispute is a security threat, and they block access to the site for all of the Telus network. This means all ADSL, dialup, and leased line customers can no longer access the website. The story is just starting to make the media. No doubt there'll be many more stories come Monday.

I'm not one to take sides in a union dispute like this, but it's my opinion that Telus has overstepped it's bounds by censoring this website for "security reasons". How about blocking sites like this for security reasons? Sounds a little more dangerous than a forum for disgruntled union members to voice off about their employer.

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Blogging on the Go

I recently upgraded my cell phone to the Audiovox PPC6600. What a nice piece of equipment. I can ssh, remote dektop and Citrix in to all my servers from just about anywhere.

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Posted by Ian at 05:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Lego Mouse

Everybody who knows me knows how much I love Lego. I found a mouse mod that is perfect for me. Check it out.

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Posted by Ian at 10:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 21, 2005

Some Movable Type Template Help

After discovering that the Movable Type templates from my older blog weren't 100% compatible with the new version, I started digging around to find out what I would need to modify in my old templates to keep the same look. It ended up being a bit more difficult than I had expected, so I just dropped in a default template for now. One interesting page I did find, however, was this one. It's a little older, but it gives a great description and visualization of the different areas of a Movable Type page.

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Posted by Ian at 09:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 20, 2005

Houston, we have a problem

No sooner did I blog my successful upgrade to Movable Type version 3.17, then I discovered a problem. MT would continually ask me to log in. I searched the MT forums, and eventually found that there was a known issue in 3.16 if the blog was in the root directory. The suggested workaround was to move the blog to a subdirectory on the web server. The forum went on to say that version 3.17 fixes the problem. Well, in my case, it didn't fix the problem. After spending a whole bunch of time trying to debug (and discovering that mt.cgi wasn't even sending me a cookie when I logged in), I decided to take the plunge and upgrade to the 3.2 beta. At least it's fixed my login problems...

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Posted by Ian at 07:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 17, 2005

New Version

I thought it was about time to upgrade my Movable Type software. It's been so long since I upgraded that Movable Type has gone through two ownership changes! We're now running version 3.17.

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Posted by Ian at 10:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack