Parker Tech Shop

Speaker Repair

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Do you have some speakers that you just can’t get rid of…even though the foam around the woofers is ruined?  I have a set of Infinity RS 1001 bookshelf speakers that I bought at the Navy Exchange in Iceland in 1989 that no longer work due to the foam suspension on the woofers disintegrating.  I ordered a repair kit from Orange County Speaker to fix these speakers so I can enjoy them again.  I will post a video of the process soon.

ParkerTechGuy

Easy Credit Card Payment System

Monday, January 24th, 2011 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Would you like to be able to take credit card payments?  SquareUp has made it easy.  Sign up for a free account and they will send you a free card reader.  It plugs into the audio jack of your iPhone, iPad, or supported Android device.

Check it out at SquareUp.

ParkerTechGuy

Website Development

Wednesday, December 29th, 2010 | Uncategorized | 3 Comments

We are happy to announce a new service here at ParkerTechShop:  Website Development.  Check out Concrete Painters©.  We created this basic site for a local small business using Joomla.  See the services page for more information.

ParkerTechGuy

Photo Restoration

Saturday, December 18th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Here is an 80 year old picture I recently restored.  This picture was printed on thick stock…about 1/8″.  Apparently it was “folded” at some point, many years ago.  Folding this picture actually resulted in it being physically broken in two pieces.  I first tried joining the two pieces before scanning, but was not happy with the results.  I ended up joining the pieces digitally after scanning them separately.  The upper-left and lower-right corners of the picture were missing and had to be recreated.  The photo was also badly yellowed as you can see by the partial right-side scan below.  I spent about 15 hours cleaning up the picture.  The original picture was about 12 x 10.

Photo Restoration

Saturday, April 10th, 2010 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

We now do photo restoration.  See the ’services’ page for more information and an example of our work.

ParkerTechGuy

Tech Shop Tips Episode 2 Laptop Memory Upgrade

Sunday, January 10th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments

In this episode, I show you how easy it is to upgrade the system RAM in a laptop computer. I bought a 4 Gig kit (2-2 Gig sticks of DDR2-800 RAM) at MicroCenter for $89.99. The laptop is running VISTA Home Premium 32 bit, so upgrading from 2 to 4 Gig of memory provides a noticeable performance bump.

When booting the system after the upgrade, you may get a ‘Memory Mismatch’ error. If you do, just enter BIOS Setup (F2 on a DELL) and verify that the correct amount of RAM is displayed. The correct amount should be automatically detected. Then save/exit out of BIOS and the system will boot and recognize the new memory amount.

This is an easy upgrade that everyone with a laptop should consider.

ParkerTechGuy

God Mode in Windows 7

Monday, January 4th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments

To get access to all Windows 7 settings in one place, create a folder anywhere (I made mine on the desktop) then rename the folder to this:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

You will find Windows settings you never knew existed.

ParkerTechGuy

Tech Shop Tips Episode 1 iPod Battery Replacement

Saturday, August 29th, 2009 | Tech Shop Tips | 1 Comment

This is the first episode of my new series, Tech Shop Tips.  In this episode, I show you how to replace the battery in a 5th generation, 30 Gig iPod.  I ordered the battery from Milliamp LTD (in the video I call the site Juice Your iPod…its actually Milliamp LTD) on Saturday afternoon and the new battery was in my mailbox on Monday…great service.  I did find cheaper batteries, but I think Milliamp LTD has the best instructions and tools.

In future episodes, I plan to help you not only understand your technology, but also get more use out of your older tech gadgets.

ParkerTechGuy

Tags: iPod battery tech

Computer Upgrade Part 1

Friday, January 23rd, 2009 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

This all started when I decided to upgrade my ATI X1650 video card.  I was about to order a Radeon 4850 when I thought I should check my power supply (since the 4850 requires one 6-pin PCIE power connector).  My Mad Dog 600 did not have any PCIE connectors.

So, I did some shopping for a new power supply.  I found many that would work, but after giving it some thought, I decided to replace my case as well.  My current case is quite old, does not offer easy access to components, and has become somewhat cramped.

So, yesterday I went to Micro Center after work and bought a ThermalTake M9 case and an Antec 650 watt power supply.

I will be getting started on the upgrade in the morning and will have my video camera running.  I will post upgrades as I go.

Pinnacle Studio MovieBoard Plus Review

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 | Reviews | 4 Comments

For many years I used an ATI All-in-Wonder to digitize my analog video.  Mainly for gaming performance, I decided to move to a dedicated video card.  I looked for some time, for a hardware solution to digitize video, and finally decided to try the Pinnacle Studio MovieBoard Plus.

One of the reasons I chose this solution was my plan to someday try Podcasting.  This product comes with a decent microphone and a green screen.  So, apart from being a solid solution for digitizing analog video, it has other features that may appeal to aspiring podcasters.

I have been using this for several months, and was hoping to have a chance to try the microphone and green screen before I did my review, but, I have been so impressed with this product, I decided to do the review now.

I have many video tapes that contain precious content, as most of you also do.  What you may not know is that those tapes are degrading.  In fact, at some point, they will no longer play.  You need to get those video tapes converted to digital.  Studio MovieBoard Plus digitizes video with a dedicated hardware encoder (external solutions use sortware to convert the video).  This ensures you will get the best quality video from you source.

I have been using this to digitize old video tapes.  The oldest tape I have worked with was a video I made in 1983.  This tape was recorded with my first video camera.  You can see a picture of it on my Flickr page.

Here is a sample of a video I took in 1983 and digitized using the MovieBoard Plus.  Of course take into account that this video was re-compressed as a DivX file, so the quality is worse than the original digitized file.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uemEZD7NuGM[/youtube]

Here is another sample of a video I took in 1992, with a VHS-C camcorder.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdk8Qo1DtKI[/youtube]

Software

The software that ships with MovieBoard Plus is Pinnacle Studio Plus Version 11.  This is a full-featured product that performs great. The interface is fairly simple, with only 3 tabs; 1 Capture, 2 Edit, and 3 Make Movie.

In Capture mode, there are three preset quality settings and one user-defined setting, although it seems like you are able to customize any of the presets also.  In this tab, you also have the ability to adjust the input video and audio.

In the Edit tab, you can choose clips and display them in Storyboard, Timeline, or Text view.  You can add transitions, titles, menus, sound effects, and music.  Double-clicking a clip lets you trim start and stop points.  It is very simple to create professional-looking movies.

In the Make Movie tab, you have the option of creating a movie for Disc, File, or for the Web.  There is also a Tape choice, although I have no idea why they included that option.  When creating a file, you have many choices, from uncompressed AVI to iPod and PSP compatible, to MPEG 1,2,4.  In addition to the presets, you are able to fully customize the video/audio settings.

Hardware

The hardware consists of a PCI card and a break-out box.  The card has a connector for the break-out box, as well as two FireWire ports.  The break-out box has inputs and outputs for S-video, composite video, and left and right audio.  Also included is a microphone w/stand and a green screen.

Conclusion

While there are a variety of solutions for digitizing video, ranging from external, USB products to hardware solutions, I think the Pinnacle Studio MovieBoard Plus provides great performance for the price.  I bought mine on ZipZoomFly.com, but it seems they no longer offer it.  I did find it on TigerDirect for $139.99.  I think this is a great solution for anyone needing to get their analog video into their computer.