Denver CO Blog

KeyWords: wrangler, wal-mart, good, style, hard, great, pair, jeans, excellent, strong, sturdy, cheap, affordable, cost, effective

For me, finding a decent pair of jeans at a reasonable price is hard to come by. While I was at my parents house this past winter I decided I would take a trip to Wal-Mart as my recent pair of jeans wore a hole in the knee. I really just needed something for the stay, as I have other jeans (Levi's) at home. I was looking for a pair of jeans $20 or less that would just get me through the week. Well I found a hidden gem at Wal-Mart, which were a pair of Wrangler Jeans. The jeans cost me $14.99 + Tax and have been worth every penny.



The Fit
I am not much for tight fitting jeans, so the pair or wranglers I bought were Boot Cut, Relaxed Fit. They fit great, from the moment I tried them on and even today, they fit great. For the price I could not pass up a pair of jeans that fit that well. I never really considered Wal-Mart to buy my jeans, as I have had other clothing (and shoe) related items I bought from Wal-Mart that just wore out within a week. But I am glad I did not hesitate to buy these Wrangler Jeans.

The Style
Not being a stylish guy, I just like jeans that fit and do not have the "pre holed" designer holes in them (why would I want holes already in my jeans when I wear holes in them myself?). I am more of a simple man who likes a lighter color jean with no fancy design. Wal-mart had a few varieties for me to choose a darker color or a lighter. Although, I really liked both designs, in the end I decided to stick with the lighter color, as it seemed to suit me more.

The Wear and Tear
Well 9 months or so later, I am proud to say that my Wrangler jeans from Wal-Mart are still in tact, holeless and going strong. I tend to wear my clothes into the ground and can be very hard. However, these Wrangler Jeans that I bought from Wal-Mart have lived up to the challenge and still holding up. So the next time you are in the market for a new pair of Jeans, and do not want to spend an arm and a leg on a pair that will only last maybe a year of normal usage, I would suggest going and checking out Wal-Mart's Wrangler jeans, who knows, you may find that you been over spending on Jeans this whole time!

KeyWords: hp, touchpad, ubuntu, debian, network, media, stream, streaming, chroot, how to, setup, linux, web os, touchplayer, preware, precentral, tutorial, samba, share

Ever since I got my HP Touchpad I have been trying to find different uses for it. Today I successfully set up my HP Touchpad to stream Movies, Shows and Audio over my SAMBA share. This is thanks to the guys over at Pre-Central who figured out the Ubuntu Chroot environment. As the first step, you should head over there and work on installing the Chroot environment (I setup the Debian because I prefer that, but either or works).



Mounting the SAMBA Share
After the Chroot environment has been installed, go ahead and load it up in Xectuah. Once in you should be in the root directory by default. I made a directory called "Media". Notice the captiol M, since Linux is case sensitive, this will create that directory. There is already a "media" directory, but that tends to be used for other items. I find it best to just do the capital M instead of messing with that directory.

After you have the directory created, you will need to map your SAMBA share. (Note: Windows 7 Shares are different and may not work / need tweaking. I do not have a Windows box, so I will not be posting the directions on doing that). To map the samba share it is a simple command:
mount -t cifs //SERVERIPORHOSTNAME/Share /Media -o username=user,password=pass

Make sure to replace the "Share" with the actual name of the share and set the username/password if you need to. Once that is done, pop out of the card (do not close it). Go into Preware and install TouchPlayer. Open up TouchPlayer and Browse for Media. By default it should open under /media/internals we need to go up one directory and enter into ext3fs. Once in there enter the debian or ubuntu chroot folder (whichever you setup). And then enter the "Media" directory, and as long as the share connected you should be able to stream any file on your server just fine! I have not tried any 720p or 1080p content but it works great for my 480p videos and shows.

And there you have it. You can now easily stream your network media to your Touchpad. I have not tried this from a remote location yet, but I plan to setup an SSHFS or OpenVPN and try to connect to my home network and see how that streams. I figure it will be fine as long as the network can handle it. As always I will report my findings.

Update:
I tried a 720p Video I had, and it is streaming, it is a little choppy, but it does stream. If I come across a 1080p file and try it, I will report how that runs.

Update 2:
I have also found that using SSHFS yields a lot better performance over Samba. So if you have a linux File Server setup with SSH, this is deinfately the way to go. Even better, using the SSHFS remotely over a 1Mbit connection streams the 480p content perfectly. So it has the upside of being able to stream from almost anywhere!

KeyWords: connect, connecting, connection, ipad, tablet, touchpad, hp, 32gb, pairing, bluetooth, keyboard, pairing, howto, cheap, price, apple, dell, microsoft, work, specific, tip

During the HP Touchpad firesale, I was one of the lucky people to pick up a 32GB HP Touchpad for $149. For the price you really cannot beat it, especially since the estimated cost of just the Touchpad hardware is $300. Now that I have my Touchpad, I really am not into paying an insane price for an HP specific case / keyboard. So I ventured over to Amazon.com to see what other items were being sold for the iPad 1 (since the iPad 1 has comparable dimensions). I came across a case / bluetooth keyboard set that was $38 shipped and it finally came!



Getting the Keyboard to Work
The real point of this blog is to help others pair a Bluetooth Keyboard (of any time whether it be from Dell, Microsoft or Apple) to the HP Touchpad. The process threw me off guard because most Bluetooth keyboards pairs ask you to type a key on the keyboard itself instead of asking for a pair key. This threw me through a loop. I searched all I could to figure out how I could get the keyboard to pair, fearing that I would have to bog down and return this nice case and buy an HP specific setup, until I decided to try something that I did not even think would work and to my surprise it worked.

The Process
Edit: Thanks to anonymous comment, it was found that a 1 numerical code is all you need.

The process is simple. When you pair the Bluetooth Keyboard to the touchpad it will ask for a passkey, enter any 1 numerical code (I just used 1). After you do that, and the icons are spinning and it says, "Pairing" enter the same passcode used on the Bluetooth keyboard Edit: and then press the enter key on the keyboard (thanks to anonymous for correcting that). Voila, you now have your Apple, Microsoft or Dell type Bluetooth keyboard working with the HP Touchpad. Now you can use your Touchpad for other items much easier!

Yay, it worked!
I was so excited to get this working, and relieved that I did not have to go through an RMA process and spend more money for an HP Specific Bluetooth keyboard. Hopefully you find this entry useful and easy to follow. If you have any other tips, please let me know.

EDIT: For those wondering about how the HP Touchpad fits into this iPad case, the fit is nearly perfect. Nothing is blocked all buttons and ports are available and the screen fits everything. It is a little tight at first, but either or it works great!