Quick guide to antenna wiring using existing cables

This guide primarily assumes two things.

• You have/had cable TV
• You want to keep your cable internet

The general way to switch from cable to antenna are as follows.

• Find what your antenna choices are from entering your address in TVFool
• Buy or make the antenna and put it in your attic or outside pointed toward your stations
• Run the antenna to a near by amplifier
• Run the amplifier to the input of the closest splitter
• Change the direction of your other splitters
• Directly wire your modem to your incoming cable provider
• Scan for channels on your TVs

There is not much else to this. I have provided pictures of a typical setup and how it will look after it is rewired. I have also provided a picture including an unbalanced splitter for improved signals.

Some things to note:

• Most antennas will work for signals that appear green on TVFool, don't buy magic antennas
• An antenna is an antenna. There is no such thing as a HD or digital antenna. All that matters is VHF-hi and UHF
• Don't forget the elevation of your antenna as it can drastically change results on TVFool
• If you have stations in multiple directions you may have better luck pointing the antenna toward the weaker stations and see if it still grabs the strong stations
• A preamp (one input/one output) offers the best flexibility. Distribution amplifiers are amplifiers and splitters combined. You can't change the splitter later.
• You can make your own unbalanced splitter by using two 2-way splitters. Its the same result.

The solution below is ideal. The unbalanced splitter reduces the over amplification to the near by TVs while preserving the signal to the far TVs.

The solution below is ok. The near by TVs get over amplified by the balanced splitter but the far TVs suffer a 30% power loss. The unbalanced splitter is a much more ideal solution. Tip: You can make your own 3-way unbalanced splitter by chaining two 2-way splitters. The second splitter in the chain is the weakest and should go to the near TV. The first splitter has the stronger signal for reaching the basement splitter.

A novel way of managing multiple emails/accounts in one for gaming

I became addicted to a mobile game. The game allowed one account per email address but it was common practice for players to have 5-20 accounts. This can quickly become a pain to deal with if the player creates a separate email for every account. There are two potential solutions by using GMail. Plus addressing and dots. Both have their downsides but I believe I found a workable and reliable solution.


Plus Adressing


Plus addressing is a GMail feature where you can add a + (plus) after the account name and any tag you wish. For example if I have a game account which specializes in food I could use the following: myemail+food@gmail.com. The benefit is it creates an infinite amount of email aliases each one with a meaningful tag. There are two downsides though. Some systems do not accept the plus sign in an email address. Worse yet, some systems partially support the plus sign or stop supporting the plus sign after you own the account. For example, I gave Best Buy myemail+bb@gmail.com. This allows me to identify email from Best Buy. However Best Buy has been spamming me too much. I went to unsubscribe and the mailing list will not accept my email address as an input. So the registration page has different email checks than the mailing list. One day Best Buy may make their login page address check match the mailing list address check and I would be locked out completely. That is a huge risk. Lastly there is a risk that you forget which tag you used for an account.... maybe I used myemail+farm@gmail.com instead of +food?


Dot Addressing


Dot addressing is a GMail feature where dots or periods are completely ignored in the account name. This means if your email is first.last@gmail.com, its the same as firstlast@gmail.com and fi.rstlas.t@gmail.com. Dots do not have the acceptance problem with other email systems like Plus addressing has. It is more universal. However, remembering where you placed the dot is hard. And remembering which dot placements you have already used is hard too.


The Novel Solution


The down side to dot addressing was discussed above. The solution I created helps solve the problem and makes it somewhat easier. It is very common in the games I play to use names like Farm 1, Farm 2, Farm 3, etc for the extra accounts. So the solution is to use binary dot addressing to handle accounts. In binary there are Ones, Twos, Fours, Eights, Sixteens, Thirty Twos, etc places. We shall also assume that we will never start or end an email address with a dot. So what email shall we use? How about our initials and a representation for the binary places O,T,F,E,S,T. I actually decided to drop thirty twos place so I don't have any repetition. Perhaps this is an email I would use flotfes@gmail.com. Placing a dot before the proper character would tell me to add that number (1). No dot would mean don't add the number (0). My main game account would be the original address, but I would use fl.otfes@gmail.com for Farm 1. The dot before the 'O' means 1. flo.tfes@gmail.com for Farm 2, fl.o.tfes@gmail.com for Farm 3. The dot before the 'O' means 1 and the dot before 'T' means 2, 1+2 =3. The system isn't perfect but I can always figure out which email address went to which account and I can easily handle over 30 dummy game accounts with only a 6 letter email address.


Good luck and enjoy!

Where are we going with TV? Part 1 - Pioneers

I wrote the post below over a year ago. It really shows as we have seen some changes to the landscape. Yes our internet bills are rising to $100+ a month, HBO is now available without a cable subscription and we can search across many services at once on some devices and services. Sadly while everything advanced, sports remains behind. Old post below for your viewing....


I'll tell you the answer upfront, its a race to online viewing for everything. But its not as nice of a future as it may seem to be.

The pioneers of this movement are the cord cutters and the online TV service providers. Some of the big choices right now are Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Apple, Vudu, and Aereo. Some charge recurring monthly fees, others charge per show or movie. Then there are services which support online viewing but have a requirement for existing TV packages like HBOGo, Showtime Anytime, WatchESPN. Finally we have the big sports franchises which offer online viewing for a $100-200 per season fee with a myriad of restrictions and blackouts. Finally we get down to watching these services on a TV. This is accomplished with a box like Roku or AppleTV. There are hundreds of boxes to choose from but not any single device supports every option.

The result of this is the cord cutters have multiple devices or they forego certain services, all the while having to click dozens of buttons to switch from one type of service to another. They also have to check specialized websites to find where they can watch their shows, or flip from service to service and perform a dozen searches to find what they want to watch. And there are still certain shows they can't watch, even if they want to pay for them. This leads to some turning to piracy, 'borrowing' cable passwords from friends, or paying for questionable services which bypass regional black outs.

Why are they cutting the cord with all these hurdles? Some can't afford to pay for cable, others have reached a point where their cable bills are unjustifiably high, and others like the flexibility with cord cutting. If you aren't hooked on a particular show but just want TV to watch when you have time, you can get a $50 Roku box and a $9/mo netflix subscription and have thousands of TV shows, movies, kids shows all commercial free at the press of a button. Add an antenna for $20-40 and also get major networks for no monthly fee. If you don't have a good antenna signal and live in one of the 22 markets coming this year, for $8/mo you could subscribe to Aereo and get all the major networks, free DVR service, and no antenna needed.

It use to be internet was a $10 - $15.00 add on to cable or phone packages. Now internet is a $50-80 add on. Soon internet service will be $100/mo and cable companies will be in a position to offer TV in any market for $30 as an add on to internet service. To get here cable companies need to also reduce what they are paying for TV. One interesting aspect is for cable companies to get behind Aereo (yes the company that threatens a portion of their business).

AT&T Mobile Share - Cost Effective Phone Upgrades

With the Apple iPhone 6 coming out tomorrow, many people are looking at upgrading. Most people would believe that getting the iPhone 6 for $199 is a good deal. It usually is not because of the hidden costs.

This post mostly applies to those who have switched to the Mobile Share plan which has a shared data cost and seperate per device costs. Voice and Texts are usually unlimited on these plans. This post still applies if you are buying an iPhone 6, iPhone 5c, or even a Samsung Galaxy.

Homemade $20 super antenna out of paper and tape!

First Attempts
I decided to cut the cord earlier this year once my cable bill started peaking at $220 and Verizon would not work with me. One of the first steps for me was to ensure I could get the important channels (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX). First I tried the Mohu Leaf, but it was not working out well for me. The Mohu is somewhat of a gimmick in that, yes it is a functioning antenna but no its not magic. Its just another antenna.

Super Antennas
A coworker suggested to me the Gray-Hoverman super antenna. What makes it super? Well it was originally designed in 1959 and it has held two patents which have expired. Since the expiration of the patents and with advances in computers the old hoverman design was modelled and improved with computer software. After years of work and real world testing the antenna design had an extraordinary gain in performance which rivals all of today's commercially available TV antennas. The improved design is available for free under the GPLv3 license.

From Ubuntu to Mac

For approximately 5 years I used Ubuntu as my base system with windows inside of virtualbox for those rare occasions. I absolutely loved the freedom of Ubuntu and knowing that whatever I wanted to change was simply a textedit away. However, while I managed to solve every problem I ran into with Ubuntu, I got tired of solving problems. Don't misunderstand. If someone asks me to fix their old Windows machine, they are most likely going to get back an Ubuntu machine. But if someone asks me what to buy, my answer these days is Mac.

About 3 years ago this is where I would have stopped reading. I'm not going to change your mind either. But here is my 20 years of technical experience.

Windows is more work than Ubuntu. Not upfront, but later when the system slows down or gets some nasty malware. Windows is also very hard to maintain. Users usually don't maintain it. They let all their software go out of date and eventually have problems or get hacked. Finding new software is risky too. Users become accustomed to downloading and running files off the internet. No matter how many 'Are you really sure?' prompts windows displays, once the user is used to clicking yes, they will continue.

Ubuntu has many improvements in this regard. The system doesn't slow down like Windows. It's interface is easy to use. Finding new software is easy and safer because it comes from one place. This is the hardest part for a Windows user trying Ubuntu. They are used to finding software on the internet and installing it. They try the same thing with Ubuntu and they get confused why nothing works. The same software is usually 1 click away in the 'FREE App Store'. And updating and maintaining the software is all done from one place too. Every little piece of installed software is monitored and maintained with 1 or 2 clicks.

Mac offers many of the features of Ubuntu with regard to the 'App Store'. However with the Mac you usually have to pay for the software. This is the biggest hurdle for Ubuntu users. They want everything for free, and never truly understand the value open source. The Mac hardware and ecosystem has a value on its own. You cannot usually find a better piece of equipment for less. You can get a cheaper laptop, but it will be a cheap laptop with lots of missing bits. I have a Dell laptop which was about half the cost of a MacBook. It has not held up well over the last 2 years. I have re-soldered the power button twice, and the case is separating. The power port is also going out, which is the biggest problem with dell laptops. Windows runs quite slow on it and the thing feels like it was out of date in 6 months. I also have a 2-3 year old MacBook Pro. It cost twice as much but the laptop looks like the day I got it. I've never had to repair it, and nothing has even given me the slightest headache. It was also forward thinking on many areas to a point where it is still a very relavent laptop today. Loaded with the Mac OS, it runs very quickly, opens as many windows and apps as I throw at it, and has features which are still not standard on other laptops, such as a lighted keyboard and aluminum body.

For those of you working with people in the Windows world, Mac again has Ubuntu beat. I was forced to do all my Office work in a Windows VM on Ubuntu. Office for Mac has been flawless and the only thing I use a virtual machine for these days is Visual Studio. The same work in Ubuntu and I had 3 virtual windows machines running at once.

Ubuntu or Linux in general still has them all beat for servers. But in the case of getting work done Mac is the better choice for me.

Inaccuracies above are mostly just omissions for the point of brevity.

AirPrint Server with Ubuntu - The easy way

With an AirPrint enabled printer, you can easily print over wifi from your Iphone, Ipad, and Ipod Touch.

If you don't have a printer, or your printer is on its last leg, the easy way is to buy a $69 HP Wifi Printer, Scanner, and Fax.


However, many of us like our printers and don't want to buy another. So here is the real easy way to make your old printer AirPrint compatible.

You need to have:

• Ubuntu installed (10.10 was tested)
• The printer working in ubuntu. Usually not difficult, but it is beyond the scope of this blog post.

Steps:

Copy and paste this line into the terminal. You can find the terminal by clicking applications, accessories, terminal.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hughescih/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install airprint-daemon

This will ask for your password to continue. After entering the password, you will see hundreds of lines fly by.
Finally open your printing manager by clicking System, Administration, Printing
Open the printer server settings by clicking Server, Settings
Check the box for 'Publish shared printers connected to this system'
Check the box for 'Allow printing from the Internet'
Click Ok.

Thats it. You can now print from your iphone, etc.

This is based on the blog post here: http://gtk-apps.org/content/show.php/Apple+AirPrint+Support+for+Ubuntu?content=136756

Fuji FinePix x100 - The perfect walk-around camera?

The new (not yet in the US) Fuji x100 camera has enthusiast and professional photographers chomping at the bit. I preordered mine from B&H Photo and I'm dying in anticipation of its arrival. This camera will provide high end SLR quality and control, in a light weight all in one package. There are a few similar options out there, but not one with all these features, such as the hybrid viewfinder, dials for all the manual controls, APS-C (large) sensor, and a classic look which is just gorgeous!

This camera will cost as much as an SLR with similar lens, or even a micro 4/3 with similar lens and viewfinder, so it's no break in price. But if you know what you are doing with a camera, the Fuji x100 is the camera to have when you don't want to look like a pro, or carry the weight of a full SLR kit.

My next best choice is the Olympus E-PL1 or 2 with a Panasonic 20mm 1.7 lens.

I'll post more about it once I get it. My wife took over the E-PL1 I had, but I'm not letting her take this one!

Finally, Block sites in Google search!

Goodbye Experts Exchange!

I hate experts exchange. When looking for an answer to a technical question, I think I finally found a result in google. I click and wham, I didn't bother to see the link was for experts exchange. An annoying search result which wants you to pay to see answers. I have 2 problems with it. 1. I'm finding answers for my job, I'm not going to pay experts exchange for my employer's benefit. 2. I get paid no matter how long it takes me to find an answer.

Now, with google you can click on a search result you don't like, then click the back button and A new link will appear asking if you want to block the site from ALL future results!


BYE BYE Experts Exchange!

2D Light Depth Calculator

Last time I talked about light depth and calculating it in one dimension, now I will add another dimension. The 2d depth calculator I have created lets you handle more complex scenarios and is more visual. The drawing is to scale, but the scale is whatever you want it to be. If you want to use centimeters, then each square represents a centimeter. If you want feet, then each square is a foot (a square foot more accurately). Each solid cintrifical line represents a full stop of light difference from the previous solid line. Dashed lines, available at greater distances represent 1/3 stops. The amount of light loss you are willing to accept from the front of the subject to the back of the subject is up to you.

To use the tool:
Determine an appropriate scale for your subject. ie. Shooting a car or group of people you may want to use feet. Shooting a lego design, you may want to use a lego standard, 1 stud. etc.
Measure your subject in the scale you have chosen. (A lego figure is about 1 stud deep, and 2.5 studs wide)
Using another piece of paper with the same grid on it, cut out your subject based on your measurements.
Place the cutout on top of the lighting calculator and move your subject around to find the perfect distance for your effect.

So if you move your subject real close to the light source, you will notice the front of the subject will be 1 stop brighter than the back. Move your subject back and now your subject bay only have 1/3 stop difference from front to back. But this is a 2D calculator, so you also see where the edges and corners start to drop in light.

Attached is a low res version. It will still work fine. So go ahead and print it full page.

Handling Y-Cam Security Camera files on my FTP server

The y-cam is generating hundreds of files a day. The files are very small (about 65K) but they become a mess to keep organized. To handle this I have developed a solution. It's still a work in progress and is not fully implemented, but here is what it does:

Every night at midnight my Ubuntu server will:

• Clear a temp folder
• Move all the pictures to the temp folder
• Renumber the pictures in sequential order
• Convert the pictures to an MP4 time lapse video
• Email the video to my gmail account

I have two cameras so this process will happen for each camera. It takes less than a minute to complete the process. This gets the videos off site (gmail), and keeps the surveillance organized.

As I said, this is a work in progress. I don't actually have the script running automatically. Right now it does everything from end to end, except renumber the pictures. The Y-Cam has an option to automatically number the images sequentially, but it doesn't start over. I had hoped that the y-cam would start over once the folder was cleared.

Security Camera Follow-up

I purchased a y-cam knight. It's just like the y-cam black except it is white. The knight offers Wifi and Cat5 connectivity, night vision with IR leds, web based interface and management, motion detection, automatic sending of pictures to email, ftp, etc, and more. The Y-cam costs about $260 and has an optional outdoor enclosure for $100 more. You can not simply aim this through a window because once the night vision turns on, the camera is blinded by glare.

I created an account on my FTP server which the knight logs into to upload pictures any time it detects movement. This has been working well and it gives me something to look back on.

I also purchased the Axis M101 to do a comparison. In general the axis cameras are more expensive, but they are supposed to be good cameras. However after some testing I have determined the axis is harder to tune as far as motion detection goes and has a worse picture. For the most part, it sends to the FTP server just the same.

Y-cam has also released a new Y-Cam bullet model which is supposedly even better at night, and comes in an outdoor weather proof enclosure. The bullet itself is smaller than the y-cam knight in the outdoor enclosure, but it has a rather thick bundle of cables which you will have a hard time getting through a wall. I have installed one of these at my parents house and it is working well.

What I like most about having cameras is I can check the status of my house at a moments notice via my iphone. I can see if my wife is home, or if the handy man has arrived. I can also sleep easier knowing that if anything happens I have a picture of it.

Next time I will discuss some of the home grown solutions I am putting in place on my FTP server to handle the hundreds of files I am generating daily.

Schlage Link iphone controlled door locks with z-wave

I purchased the Schlage Link locks from Amazon so I can have better control of people with access to the house. Normally I would give the neighbor a key, my sister a key, my mom a key, the repairman, etc. All of these keys and no control of who copies them, who looses them, etc. In addition, even with all of these keys floating around, I still lock myself out.

Schlage makes a few doorlocks with number pads. I originally bought the model from home depot which handles all the situations above. It costs about $100 and you can assign up to 19 four digit codes. Thats about all it will do. The other benefit of this type of lock is once the door is shut, it's locked. There is no forgetting to lock the door or risk of someone trying to follow you in the house.

However I decided if I'm going to spend $100, I may as well go all the way and get better features. Schlage Link Locks operate identically to the lock above. However, the added feature is the locks can join a home automation network using Z-Wave. Schlage trys to sell you their automation solution but it has a $12 monthly cost and it's actually not compatable with all the neat z-wave products available. The product I have found is called Vera by Mi Casa Verde. It's more of an open solution which promises to not force a vendor lock in. You can use the locks without the Vera. Schlage doesn't include the stand-alone programming instructions, but I had a copy of them from the original locks. All the manual programming worked just fine. Then when you get the Vera you can use the automation.

Some of the great features which are possible:

• Adding and removing codes remotely
• Unlocking, locking, and checking the status of the doors remotely (The Schlage deadbolt isn't motorized)
• Getting (email, sms) alerts when certain codes are used.
• Seeing a history of lock usage (who came in and when)

The Vera supports macros so I have the Vera turn on lights when the code is entered and turn off the lights when I leave or go to bed.

Professional Photogaphy Lighting Depth

I have recently been thinking of lighting depth for use in photographing anything from a group of 40 to a shot of a toddler. When shooting an older child, adult, or small group you can get away with just placing the light and exposing. However when shooting a toddler, the risk is the little one will move closer and farther from the light as they squirm and do anything they can to not cooperate. When shooting a large group the issue becomes getting the people in the front and the back exposed the same.

Lighting depth works just like lens apertures, using the inverse square law. Because we are already used to aperture numbers (2,2.8,4,5.6,8,11,16), we can apply the same numbers to our distance calculation. For example. If our light is 4 feet away from the subject and our background is 8 feet away from the light, the background will be 2 stops darker. This is the same as the brightness difference between f4 and f8. If the background was 5.6 feet away it would only be 1 stop darker. Knowing this you realize you can do a bit of calculation in your head.

Something else to consider. Just to point out the relationship here, you can make your background darker by moving the light closer to the subject or by moving your subject closer to the light. If you move the light closer to the subject, it will also get closer to the background, but the background will actually get darker when you've properly exposed the subject.

This can be a bit to think about, so I will leave this here and follow up with my 2D Lighting depth calculator next time. I am going to try to make this available as a download for you to use.

Verizon FIOS default keys are terribly unsecure.

I've suspected for a while that the Verizon FIOS WEP keys and SSID were correlated. The SSID is the ID your wireless router broadcasts out to any device with a Wifi chip. WEP itself is not very secure and can be cracked faster than I can write this, but it does keep the neighbors out and it's something you're not going to typically do on an Iphone.

However, Kyle Anderson took the time to publish the solution to figuring out the default WEP password on every Verizon FIOS router. WhatIsMyIP.org provides a free tool to automatically do the calculation too. However after reading Kyle's blog about it, the scary thing about the password is it's not some weak cryptography or scrambling which hides this key, its just in another base. So with a base converter app on your Iphone, you can get access to any FIOS internet your Iphone can see.

I tried Base Converter and Calculator Pro for just 99 cents and it worked like a champ. I can convert the SSID into a WEP key in seconds without any specialized tools and access a FIOS default WIFI.

Here is how: (Note, the steps I'm showing are simply a clarification on the sites referenced above. This should only be used to test or demonstrate the weakness in the default configuration of FIOS routers to encourage users to change their security)

1. Run Base Pro on your iPhone (Click the link above with your iPhone)
2. Change Base Pro to Base 36 by dragging the slider to the right.
3. Type in the SSID backwards. ex. “E3X12″ gets typed in as "21X3E"
4. Click the button at the top that says Hex (Don't drag the slider to Base 16, there is a small bug) ex. 21X3E becomes 349FCA
5. Append one of these two prefixes to the result: 1801 or 1F90. ex Try 1801349FCA or 1F90349FCA.
6. Try both keys to see which one works. (You can determine which key to use with more work, but its easier to just try them.)

That's it. A few easy steps with nothing more than a Base Calculator and you can determine the default FIOS WEP key with your phone.

Gaga for AppleGirl

Ok. This video has a slow setup. But you have to watch this.

Amazing Startup and Shutdown Speeds of Ubuntu 10.04

The following are videos showcasing the startup and shutdown speeds of Ubuntu 10.04 RC.  What makes these videos even more impressive is that the computer used to demonstrate this test was a netbook pc.


Startup



Shutdown

Major surgery! My hack job on my network switch to make my life better

My switch has always been noisy. However starting yesterday it has been ridiculously loud thanks to an aging fan.

I pulled the switch off the wall and tore it apart to dig out the fan and dust everything off. Turns out I only had one fan the right size but it was obviously not powerful enough for the job. My other choice was to step up to a fan I keep stocked... the standard 80mm case fan.

I grabbed my trusty drill bit from back in the days where I would put 80mm and 120mm fans on the side of my case (they didn't come on the side back in those days.) and got to work.

I made sure I found a spot on the switch cover where I would have enough clearance with the internal components to fit the new fan. Then I got a punch and hammer to make an indent for my drill bit.

Ouch. As soon as the inner drill bit made it through the amazingly thick sheet metal, the bit grabbed and spun it right out of my hand cutting me in the process. I'll live, thanks for the concern.

Well it took a few minutes of drilling to get the bit all the way though, then I took fan grill (I stock them too) and used that to mark the location of the screw holes. Using the punch once more I made my indents, then drilled all the holes. The holes can be bigger than the screws if desired because the fan grill will actually be there to hold the screw.

Finally I put the fan and grill in place, had to adjust the wiring order on the fan plug (the old plug was reversed in polarity) hooked it all back up and tried it out. Now the switch is quieter than ever before!

I know a few potential issues with what I did. 

• The airflow will not be identical to the old fan but I did close off the old fan hole with clear tape to try to keep it close to original. A baffle inside the switch could be easily constructed with duct tape to direct the air in the exact same path it had before but I think this is close enough.

• The old fan was 5 volts and the case fan is 12 volts. From what little I understand this is not an issue, the fan will just turn slower than if it had all 12 volts.

• The old fan was .24a @ 5 volts. The new fan is .13a @ 12 volts. I'm not sure what the final draw is though since the new fan isn't actually running at 12 volts. I'm more concerned about startup current.

• Finally I know a larger fan moves more air at less rotations but I have no way of knowing if I am moving more or less air than before. I don't want to over heat.

That's all folks. And yes my network is a mess. I sure don't have time to clean that up.

DIY Personalized Email Marketing with OpenOffice.org for Free

The Problem and a Marketing Tip:
When I photograph a wedding, I will place cards on the tables for guests to write in their name and email address. I tell the guests that I will notify them as soon as the pictures are online. So far, guests are happy about it and they actually thank me for the doing this for them. I make a point to only mail once to avoid being spam-y. Well, I like the messages to list their name in the salutation. 'Hi Joe' just works better for me than something less personable. Tools and online services for this are expensive. So digging around I figured out how to do it with OpenOffice.org for FREE.

Keep reading if you want the techie details. If not, Follow Me, to get more photography and tech tips. This will be a long one. EDIT: These instructions are made for Ubuntu / Linux. You may need to adjust for windows.






Setup:

• Ensure your default mail client is configured to handle mail. If you use webmail, configure your email client to be able to send to the web account before continuing.
• Setup Your Mail Merge Email account in OpenOffice Writer by choosing Tools, Options. 
• Then expand the OpenOffice.org Writer settings. 
• Finally click Mail Merge E-mail and fill in your values.

Create SpreadSheet:
Create spreadsheet with Row1 having column titles. Two columns you will likely need are Name and Email but feel free to have others.

Create Message Template:

• Create a letter you would like to send without names or other merged values.
• Put the mouse in the location you would like the first field.
• Goto Insert, fields, Other or press Ctrl-F2
• On the Database tab, select mail merge fields in the Type Box

• Click Browse and locate your spreadsheet.
• After choosing your spreadsheet, it should now appear in the list of databases.
• Expand the database and sheet1.
• 

• Click on the field you want to use and click insert. the field should now appear in your document.

• Without closing the Fields window you can click in other areas of your document and insert other fields.
• You probably don't want to insert the email address into the message body. That will come later.

MailMerge Wizard:
Once you are done you can open the mail merge wizard. Tools, MailMerge Wizard. The wizard divides the task into 8 steps. Most of which you will skip.

• Step 1. Leave as Current Document.

• Step 2. Choose Email Message
• Step 3. Select your database for the address list.

• Step 4. Skip. You have already completed this by inserting fields. This part of the wizard is clumsy so we did it a better way.
• Step 5. Nothing to do here. It should be grayed out.
• Step 6. Nothing to do here, but you can click the arrows and actually see your data in your message template.

• Step 7. Nothing to do here, but at this point OpenOffice will create a new document with all your merged data. If you cancel now, it will close this temporary document, and take you back to your template.
• Step 8. Select the last option, Send merged document as E-Mail.
• For To: Select your email address field.
• For Subject: Type any Subject
• Send As: I leave as HTML, choose what you need.
• Click Send Documents

If all goes well you will see a progress bar complete the sending. You should be able to check your Sent Items folder and see all the messages. If you mistyped any email addresses, you will probably get a failure notification by email just for the bad addressess.

Cleaning Up:
If you use this email marketing a lot, you may start to build a lot of databases. To remove databases from the OpenOffice list (this doesn't delete the database file):

• Click on View, Datasources (or press F4). 
• Right-Click in the database box and click Registered Databases. 

• In the new window select the databases you created and delete them. Do not delete the databases the system created, such as Bibliography.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully it all went smooth for you. I wish I could have found instructions like these when I started... Enjoy!

Don't spam anyone and before sending a large list of emails ensure you follow the rules of your email provider or they may drop your account. For example, Gmail limits you to 500 emails per day. And if you get a large number of failed deliveries they may temporarily disable your account.

Ps. I've tried to include a small graphics in my emails, but they don't make it to the email system. If you are handy with HTML, it may be better to link to an internet hosted graphic.

Change Default Operating System at Boot for Ubuntu

Suprisingly the solutions to this problem vary wildly. Ubuntu is using the new Grub2 for booting and not too many users know the proper way to change the boot order. However after digging through all the answers I have what I believe is the best solution.

My particular problem is because I just built a new i7 920 system for my grandfather. He paid for Windows 7, but at the last minute I talked him into trying an ubuntu dual boot. Part of this, however is I need windows 7 to be the default choice or he will get frustrated.

Well, here is the adventure. First, the old way to update the boot is by simply modifying menu.lst. This file no longer exists. Then the people who are used to this try updating grub.cfg, because it seems similar to menu.lst. However the system will build a new grub.cfg when it needs to and overwrite any changes.

The closest correct answer is modifying /etc/default/grub and changing GRUB_DEFAULT=0 to the correct number. However this will present problems if the grub list ever grows or shrinks, such as when a new kernel is installed.

I've seen a few other complicated, but unreliable options too. But I'm not going into all the the wrong ways. Lets look at the correct way to change the default boot item.

Step 1, Figure out the exact name of the OS you want to boot. Either write it down when you reboot or type this in a terminal

cat /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Scroll up to find the name. Mine is 'Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)'

Copy and paste it or just write it down. Just make sure you get it exact, even the capitalization.

Step 2, open the /etc/default/grub file for editing, here is my favorite command:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

If you are more of a point and click person try this:

gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

Step 3, find the line with GRUB_DEFAULT=0 and change the 0 to your OS. Be sure to use double quotes around your OS because it has spaces in the name.
Here is my GRUB_DEFAULT line for my grandfather's computer:

GRUB_DEFAULT="Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)"

If you are trying to do this for windows 7, chances are your line will match mine exactly. Be sure to save your file and exit your editor.

Last step! You need to update your grub menu (process the changes we made). Just type into a terminal:

sudo update-grub

That is it. Only 4 steps and a headache saver.

FYI, most of the wrong ways to update grub came from here: http://www.linux.com/community/blogs/changing-the-default-boot-with-ubuntu-910-grub-2.html, though this eventually led me to the right answer.