I adore music and it is very rare to find an album where every song touches your soul.  I was having a drink with the old man downstairs and we were listening to some of his ancient records.  I love Blues and Jazz but good music is just good music so without further adieu I present this month’s recommended album:

 

This album takes you to a place you haven’t been in years, it is truly timeless and has something for everyone.  This masterpiece bears some of the most touching romantic and deeply moving melodies and lyrics I have ever heard – it is guaranteed to induce immense nostalgia.  Pour a sifter of Cognac, lay back in your leather recliner and drift away.

I bought a copy for my mom as a surprise - lets hope she doesn’t read this post.

See how the Cisco services menu interfaces with the web services panel – plus a factory reset for proof.

Read previous article here.

I have found some goodies online for those with the 79XX models, take a peek at the bottom of this post for ringtones, firmware and additional resources.

The guys at Cisco are good for one thing: making administration a nightmare.  A friend left me his Cisco 7940 last year and I was finally able to track down a cheap power adapter for it ($17 CDN w/shipping from Hong Kong).  So I get super excited to play with my now usable toy and it turns out the SIP IOS for this device does not include a web interface!

I have a some experience with TFTP from my Grandstream GXP2000 and Trixbox makes it easy with its endpoint manager however I prefer PiaF for faxing so I decided to configure TFTP on my NAS box.  I tried a few different TFTP daemons including tftpd-hpa and tftpd via xinetd though the easiest to use was atftpd.  The reason for this is (in Debian) you can just run dpkg-reconfigure atftpd and it gives you a nice “wizard” to configure the daemon, so no file editing.

Once I hunted down the latest IOS (no thanks to Cisco) I got the phone booted up with P0S3-08-8-00 and I was happy.  Next was configuring an extension, this part sucked ass.  I am not going to explain how to do it, if you can’t figure it out yourself just use the Trixbox Endpoint Manager, though I will give you a hint : disable nat for the extension in the FreePBX extension configuration.

On to the review

The phone is huge, nice big screen and the tilt is awesome.  The handset feels solid and rests on the shoulder quite nicely, by far my favourite handset.  Audio quality is no better than my Grandstream however surpasses my SPA2102 hands down.  The buttons are quite satisfying to the touch though the navigation button (up / down) feels cheap (it is a rocker type).  I absolutely love the Message / Ringing lamp built right into the handset and the extension selection is simple to use.

Geekery – Customization

Though the provisioning is stupid to set up, once it is done configuration is a breeze.  This phone supports XML menus using the little globe button, these services are super awesome to play with.  With a bit of PHP / XML knowledge it is easy to write a simple RSS feed reader (useless but fun) as well as email reader (using php-imap) and phone directory services.

There are a ton of good ringtones for this thing, I am currently using the infamous “24″ ringtone (the one mocked in South Park) and I smile every time I get a call.  The background is also customizable, I cureently am using the one below and I love it (supports BMP).

Overall I give this phone an 8 / 10, only because for the price I would expect either an LCD screen or at least better font selection.  If you are looking for a good enterprise ready IP Phone the Cisco 7940 is a great choice.

Here are your promised Links (I may mirror these, this stuff is precious)

Wicked firmware mirror – no stupid Cisco registration or $$$

Where I found my 24 ringtone (other great ringtones too!)

Out of the six (6) running PC’s within my household, 5 run either Cent OS or Ubuntu, and of course the sixth (my Powerbook) runs a purchased copy of Leopard.  I decided after a few beers that it would be nice to geek it up and relax – play some games on my laptop.  So I dig through my “100% SHIT” pile to locate my pirated Windows XP (with a bunch of stupid pre/post-fixes like : sp3 cracked, no wga, super awesome version — CORPORATE!) and begin a dual boot installation (with Ubuntu) on my Toshiba A200 Laptop.  Unfortunately the cards weren’t in my favor as Toshiba decided that the piece of shit speakers on my notebook required high definition audio… from M$.

It makes a lot of sense to me, adding high def audio support on 3/4″ *tin sounding* speakers, so I searched for the drivers everywhere – no support.  Then I remembered that the last time I got the audio working was from Windows Update.  Now this Super Awesome CORPORATE mother-of-all-xp-installation discs just happened to check on line for the audio driver and to my surprise I get a WGA validation fault, and even better – it can’t find the god damn driver.

I got pissed – I don’t need a hassle to be hassled with bad software, I just want to play Diablo II & Final Fantasy 9 in peace.  So I picked up the phone and with my handy dandy Asterisk server recorded a call (*1) with Windows Genuine Advantage to see what the problem was.

Listen to Windows Genuine Advantage Call

I have realized that every single time I use Windows I run into some kind of hassle.. So I have officially made the decision to boycott all Windows products and as many non-mandatory protocols as possible to eliminate the additional stress from my life.

I am not trying to start an OS flame war here, I just can not stand this garbage and thought the world should know….. again.