So I’m working on a small digital signage project. One of the first challenges is getting a computer setup to run the display and the thought occurred what is the best way to do that. In the advent of low power CPUs I took the dive and purchase an OMAP3 based development board. One of the first goals is to build a digital display appliance.

Have a look at the setup.

I choose the ThunderPack from TechNexion because it included the LCD screen, Wifi, Ethernet, HDMI, and a basic build of the Angstrom Linux distribution.

Pros - So far …

• Easy to order, fast shipping, responsive to email support
• Good construction, feels solid when handling it
• Pretty good software builds to get you up and running
• Decent documentation, you will need to have moderate linux systems experience though
• It boots right up and you can start using Angstrom right on the LCD display

Cons - So far …

• The 1st SD card used had a lot of difficulties getting the file system built (start with one under 2GB)

Thats about it, trying to keep it short and simple. Next up is building Android and seeing how it does…

If there are any questions please let me know.

Here is a quick little snippet of TSQL; what is running and that percent complete.  This comes from using dm_exec_requests and the percent complete value there.


select T.text,
R.Status,
R.Command,
DatabaseName = db_name(R.database_id),
R.cpu_time,
R.total_elapsed_time,
R.percent_complete
from sys.dm_exec_requests R
cross apply sys.dm_exec_sql_text(R.sql_handle) T


Thats right …. http://facebook.com/jon.shoberg is all mine. Too bad I didn’t got for something like default.aspx (which I kind of like better…).

When you are having dinner in a tourist area (Miami Beach) … watch out …

Recently Google released a new service named Latitude. Very simly it takes your location from mobile device or online using iGoogle and Gears and plots it on a map.  From there you can share your current location with friends and contacts who also use google latitude.  There are a number of privacy options on the service; set who and how you want to share location or the option to set a specific location too.

Not sure how much I’ll be using this or a service like Latitude but its interesting to discover and see how it works.

A little non-multimedia post coming your way … a little bit of TSQL goodness for calculating the distance between two latitude and longitude coordinates.


SET ANSI_NULLS OFF
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER OFF
GO
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[HaversineDistanceMiles] (
@lat1 float,
@lon1 float,
@lat2 float,
@lon2 float
)
RETURNS float AS
BEGIN

declare @dlon float
declare @dlat float
declare @a float
declare @c float
declare @d float

select @dlon=radians(@lon2)-radians(@lon1)
select @dlat=radians(@lat2)-radians(@lat1)

END


I my current age of 31 I have successfully passed the teenage audio test.

This sound can generally only heard by people under the age of 25. It has been used as a deterrent device to keep teenagers from loitering in malls and shops, and sounds similar to a buzzing mosquito

To go with my current Facebook status … “Jon misses the sweet smells of VHT, leaded race fuel, smoked tires, and the 1320″

The rockband stage kit (smoke machine and lights) doesn’t exactly know when to stop. Its either on or off so be prepared to have a fan for ventilation.

Now …. LET THERE BE ROCK !!!

Recently I received an excellent recommendation that I should listen to a band called ‘Fleet Foxes’. As my tastes in music lean a little more towards the folk genre right now this is a very welcomed listening experience. Their Wikipedia page says the band describes their music as “baroque harmonic pop jams”. Being from Seattle I would expect Fleet Foxes to have a bit more ‘pop’ after listening to ‘Sun Giant’ yesterday. But rather than typing on and on you should scroll down a little further and press play.