Long story short, Google purchased FeedBurner back in June of 2007. It seems that Google is just now wrapping up the process of fully migrating and integrating FeedBurner with other Google services. As such, I can now log in to FeedBurner with my Google account rather than using a separate user name and password (I hope you too use separate passwords for every site!).

As part of these changes, the web address for the MandLadventures.com RSS feed has changed a little. Both the old and new feed address should work for now but I would appreciate it if you would take a brief moment to update your feed reader with the new address: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MAndLAdventures. If you haven’t yet subscribed to this site’s feed, now’s the perfect opportunity.

Is all this talk about RSS feeds confusing you? If so, check out my RSS Education post.

Lastly, Yannick referenced an article by Chris Shifflet where he shares some concerns they may arise as a resulting of changing the RSS feed address.

This tutorial explains how I successfully re-flashed my Linksys WRT54GL version 1.1 to use the Tomato 1.22 firmware rather than dd-wrt version 23 SP2 VPN firmware (generic) I have been using for the past couple of years. I decided to write this tutorial because lots of sites have instructions on flashing from the default Linksys firmware to Tomato but far fewer sites offer lots of detail on how to flash from other firmware such as dd-wrt.

I have provided directions with enough detail for the non-technical user to feel comfortable with the procedure. To make things faster for the technical users, I have highlighted the major steps. At the bottom of the post, I’ve included links to related articles I’ve published if you’d like to learn more.

As a bit of background information, I’m used a fully patched (as of November, 2008) Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit with Service Pack 1 (SP1) Operating System and up-to-date Firefox 3 during the firmware upgrade process. The OS and web browser shouldn’t matter that much, but I thought I share in case you were worried about such things.

Before you begin, download the latest version of the Tomato firmware that is suited for most routers. This tutorial walks through flashing to version 1.22. The files are zipped in the great, but uncommon, 7zip format so you’ll need 7zip or another program that supports the 7zip format to unzip the files. The zip package contains several files, you will only need the “WRT54G_WRT54GL.bin” file but it is a good idea to checkout the “readme.”

I recommend verifying the MD5SUM hash of the “WRT54G_WRT54GL.bin” file to ensure the download wasn’t corrupt or hasn’t been comprised. If you don’t already have a tool to calculate MD5SUMs, I recommend using HashCalc although you must manually compare the sums with this tool unlike some other tools. Unfortunately, Polarcloud does not provide the MD5SUM of the download on their site but luckily for you, I calculated the hash of my download. The signature of the file should be 866251021d42608c69bff558115f95f8.

I recommend printing (or at least saving, not bookmarking, to your hard drive) the following web pages for reference since you will not have Internet access during this process:

• How to Change Your WRT54GL Firmware from DD-WRT to Tomato
• Tomato FAQ
• Tomato Firmware Wikibook
• Reset and Reboot
• Recover from a Bad Flash

It is best to turn off your firewall and anti-virus during this process to ensure that nothing interrupts the firmware flash. An interruption could cause the flash to fail and brick your router. If something does go wrong you may be able to recover from a bad flash.

You should ONLY perform the flash through an Ethernet cable using standard http (not https). Do not do this wirelessly (its best to temporarily disable the wireless adapter on your computer). If your super paranoid or live in an area with unreliable electricity, you should plug your router an PC into an uninterruptible power supply because a power failure during a firmware flash could brick your router. Plug the blue Ethernet (Cat5/RJ45) cable that came with your router into the Network Interface Card (NIC) on the back of your computer and into one of the ports labeled 1, 2, 3, or 4. The “Internet” port on your router should be connected to your broadband source (e.g., cable or DSL modem). Please ignore the extra cable in the picture. It is not needed for the flash to work.

I recommend reviewing all of your dd-wrt settings so you can quickly configure the Tomato firmware to offer similar functionality. I took screenshots of all of the pages where I had non-default settings. I also used the same security settings, including WPA2 password, after I loaded Tomato so that all of my wireless devices would not have to be updated. However, if you have poor wireless security, after flashing to Tomato is the perfect time to implement stronger security. You can reference my Securing Your Wireless Network article if you want to learn how to have a really secure wireless network.

In addition to the screenshots of your settings, it is also a good idea to perform a backup of your dd-wrt configuration. Please note you can only restore this backup on the same model router and firmware with which the backup was made. To perform a backup, go to the “Administration” tab and then the “Backup” sub-tab. Once there, just click the “Backup” button and save the file.

The last item that needs to be completed before uploading the new firmware is to reset your dd-wrt firmware to the default settings. A few ways to do this exist. I chose to use the standard web interface because it is easy and should always work. Nonetheless, pressing and holding the reset button on the back of your router for 30 seconds should also work (assuming you have not disabled that feature in your custom firmware).

To reset the router to firmware defaults, go to the internal IP address of your router (most likely 192.168.1.1) and login with the user name and password you setup when you first installed the router (if you have trouble with the login use the reset button method). Once logged in, go to “Administration” tab and the “Factory Defaults” sub-tab. I forgot to write down the exact buttons and also forgot to take a screenshot of this step but I think you just select the “Yes” radio button next to “Restore Factory Defaults” then select “Save Settings.” If that’s not it exactly, you shouldn’t have any trouble determining what to select. Be patient and don’t touch anything because the reset could take a couple of minutes.

The Tomato FAQ recommends that you Telnet into your router before performing the flash and type the “nvram get http_passwd” command to obtain the password that will be used by Tomato after the flash. You cannot just use the dd-wrt password because of a change in the way dd-wrt uses the standard http_passwd variable. I must admit that I did this step but the password I obtained during the Telnet session did not allow me to login. However, as I was writing this tutorial, it occurred to me that I may have obtained the password via Telnet before I reset dd-wrt to the default settings which may explain why the password I obtained did not work.

In order to Telnet into your dd-wrt router, open up the run box by hitting the “Window” key and “R”. Next type “cmd” and hit “Ok.” In the command window, type “telnet 192.168.1.1″ where 192.168.1.1 represents the IP address of your router. You will be prompted for a user name and password. The telnet user name is always root even if you login to the web interface with a different user name. The password should be the default dd-wrt password of “admin” since you just performed a reset. If not, try your old web login password.

Just so you know, Telnet is not enabled in Windows Vista by default but is in XP. To enable Telnet in Vista follow the instructions at Tech-Recipes site. Alternatively, you could use a tool like Putty.

The screenshot above shows the password command being typed into a Telnet session; it does not show the output of the command (i.e., my password).

Write down the password provided because you will need it later.

The next few steps is where the magic starts to happen. Go back to the dd-wrt web interface. You may have to renew the DHCP lease and login again. Since you have reset the firmware to default settings, the user name and password is now “root” and “admin”, respectively. Once logged in, navigate to the “Administration” tab and the “Firmware Upgrade” sub-tab.

Next, select the “Browse” button and select the “WRT54G_WRT54GL.bin” file you downloaded early. Once located, hit open (no brainer). Then hit the “Upgrade” button. Please wait patiently for the upload to complete. Whatever you do, don’t interrupt it. If you’re going to be tempted, walk away for a few minutes and come back.

After a couple of minutes, you should see a screen that says “Upgrade successful. Unit is rebooting now. Please wait a moment…”

Once the reboot completes, you will be prompted to login to the Tomato firmware. This is where you use the “root” user name and the password you obtained via Telnet. Don’t freak out if you can’t login…the same thing happened to me. The next paragraph has a solution for you.

Since the Tomato interface did not accept the password I obtained through the Telnet session before the flash, I had to perform a hard reset. To do this you need to hold the reset button on the back of the router while unplugging the router. Continue to hold the reset button as you re-plug in the router. Once the router is plugged in you should continue holding the reset button for 30 seconds to complete the hard reset.

After the hard reset is complete, go back to Firefox and navigate to http://192.168.1.1. At the prompt enter in “root” for the user name and “admin” as the password. The Tomato web interface should come up.

Once you’ve logged in, you should see the new Tomato firmware. Since you are upgrading from dd-wrt, the Tomato FAQ recommends performing a full reset by navigating to the “Administration” section and then the “Configuration” sub-section. From there, select “Erase all data in NVRAM memory (thorough)” from under the “Restore Default Configuration” menu and then hit “OK.” If you had to do a hard reset in order to get your login to work, you’re probably could skip this step but it won’t hurt to do an additional reset just to be safe.

After restoring the default configuration, you need to log back in using with the user name of “root” and password of “admin”. Once logged in, hit the “Renew” button that is on the “Overview” page.

After renewing you may need to reboot your computer to get Internet access. Alternatively, in Vista you may type “Network and Sharing Center” in the Start Search box. Within the Network and Sharing Center select the red “X” between the network on Internet on the map. The Windows Network Diagnostics menu should appear. On that menu select “Reset the network adapter…” option at the bottom. Windows will repair the network and you should see a message that says “the problem has been resolved.”

Now that everything is working, don’t forget to turn your anti-virus and firewall back on. Also, be sure to check out my Securing Your Wireless Network article if you want to learn how to have a really secure wireless network.

Congratulations, you’ve successfully flashed your router! Since you’ve successfully flashed your WRT54G, you should checkout the Linksys WRT54G Ultimate Hacking Guideto make the most out of your new found knowledge of router firmware.

Further Reading

• Tomato Firmware Option for WRT54GL
• Tomato Firmware Upgrade and Demo Video
• How to Flash the WRT54GL with DD-WRT Firmware
• Securing Your Wireless Network

If you liked this post, consider subscribing to my feed and/or sending me something from my wish list. Thanks in advance for your support of this guide & site!

One such challenge was getting my HD-TV to play sound while connected via a HDMI cable to my HIS HD 4850 IceQ4 Turbo. After a fair amount of searching and configuration changes, I got it to work.

Since the solution I found was spread across a couple of different forum posting that were not directly related to my problem, I thought I’d write a short tutorial for others who may run into the same situation as I did.

Install ATI HD 4850 Catalyst Drivers
Before I begin explaining the sound settings, I should also explain the process I used to install the ATI Catalyst drivers. I can’t remember all the pages I referenced to learn how to install the drivers, so I won’t be able to give credit to the websites that helped my like I’d like to.

To install the ATI HD 4850 Catalyst drivers, you need to go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Monitor and install the envyng-core package. EnvyNG is an application written in Python which will download the latest ATI or NVIDIA driver or the Legacy driver (for older cards) (according to the model of your card) from ATI or Nvidia’s website and set it up for you handling dependencies (compilers, OpenGL, etc.) which are required in order to build and use the driver. If you don’t find the envyng-core package when you search, check to make sure that “Proprietary drivers for devices (restricted) is checked on the software sources menu.

Once this package is installed, you should restart you computer. Once you’ve restarted, the Hardware Drivers application located under System > Administration should find the ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver. This driver should be installed and activated. The driver is required to fully utilize the 3D potential of some ATI graphics cards, as well as provide 2D acceleration of newer cards. Once installed, it’s probably a good idea to restart you PC once more.

With the ATI Catalyst driver installed, you should be able to fully enjoy the Compiz-Fusion effects in Ubuntu 8.10. The driver version I’m using is 8.54.3 with Catalyst Control Center Version 2.1.

Update System Sound Settings
For your system to play sounds through your graphics card’s HDMI port, you need to tell Ubuntu to use the graphics card sound system VS your motherboard’s. This is the intuitive change. Go to System > Preferences > Sound. On the Devices tab, change all of the options excluding sound capture (e.g., Sound Events, Music and Movies, Audio Conferencing, and Default Mixer Tracks) to HDA ATI HDMI ATI HDMI (ALSA).

The next sound change is less intuitive; it requires you to double click on the speaker icon in your top panel to bring up the Volume Control menu. On this menu, change the Device drop down list option to “HDA ATI HDMI (Alsa mixer) and then select the Preferences button near the bottom right. On the preferences menu, check the IEC958 Switches track to be visible and then close the preferences screen. Back on the Volume Control screen, you should now have an IEC958 option on a Switches tab. Check this option and close the Volume Control menu.

The sound tests available on the System > Preferences > Sound should now play sounds. If it works, you’ll be hearing the tests sounds on your TV using only the HDMI out cable on the HD 4850.

I owe a big thank you to the MediaBox Blog posting titled “HOWTO: Audio over HDMI with the HD3200 \ RS780 in Ubuntu” for these sound setting tips.

VLC Sound Settings
I prefer the VLC media player over Ibex’s default Totem movie player. However, in this particular case, Totem played the sounds through my video card without requiring any additional changes while VLC did not.

Finding the appropriate audio settings in VLC proved a bit more challenging than I expected. To save you the time, I’ll outline exactly what you need to change. Open up VLC preferences by selection preferences from the tools menu. Near the bottom left of the preferences screen, be sure to select all as the show settings option.

Expand the Audio menu and then the Output modules option. On the Output Modules option, select ALSA audio output form the drop down menu.

Then go to the ALSA option under the expanded Output modules section. Here you need to refresh the ALSA Device Name list. Once the list has refreshed, select HDA ATI HDMI: ATI HDMI (hw:1,3) and save all your settings.

VLC should now also play sounds through an HDMI cable.

For this VLC tip, I owe a big thank you to tie_dyed_sox on the Ubuntu forums.

With Comcast’s new 250 GB bandwidth limit and Tomato’s impressive bandwidth monitor, I’m getting even closer to taking the time to make the switch from dd-wrt to Tomato. I believe the v24 of dd-wrt does support bandwidth monitoring but I like the looks and basic features of Tomato.

The Systm episode 71 by Revision3 recently covered the process to flash a Linksys WRT54G with Tomato firmware and also showed off some of the application’s coolest features. If you’re debating on upgrading your very basic Linksys router to something much better for free, I highly recommend you watch this video. It’ll make you want to do it right away.

Now, if I can just determine the best process to switch from dd-wrt to Tomato, I’d be good…

Also should also mention that if you’re interested in hacking your Linksys router, you should checkout the Linksys WRT54G Ultimate Hackingbook.

The USOC is the first of three Olympic training centers in the United States. The complex is extremely nice and offers free admission and tours, making it a must-see attraction in Colorado Springs. Unfortunately, my wife arrived at the training complex a little late in the afternoon and missed the last free tour. We ended up walking around the facility, checking out the posters, statutes, gift shop, etc. and ended up catching up with the tour group.

We decided to join in with the group even though we had missed a good bit of the tour. Despite being late, I’m very glad we joined the group. Otherwise, we would not have been able to enter portion of the facilities where the athletes were training. We ended up seeing several athletes who are participating in the Beijing Olympics. We saw some of the girls on the trampoline team, the women’s volleyball team (not beach), weightlifters, a boxer, a cyclist, and a few others I’m sure I’m forgetting. All of the athletes were very nice and would actually stop and say something if the tour guide stopped them as they walked by.

One interesting fact I learned is that the athletes live at the complex for an average of 3-5 years. Hilton Hotels actually came in one year and asked the athletes what would make there stay better and implemented many of those changes for them. As you can imagine, they have a high rated cafeteria that caters to the US Olympic team’s special dietary requirement.

All-in-all I had a really great time touring the U.S. Olympic Complex and was half-tempted to return the next day to catch the full tour. I do regret not buying a t-shirt or something from the gift shop. I’ve embedded a short slideshow that displays a small selection of photos we took during our visit.

You’ll see a picture of some swimmers in the slideshow above. Although they have a giant indoor pool, the Olympic swimmers do not actually train in Colorado Springs so there is no sense looking for Michael Phelps in the picture.

This is a super easy and cool deal for you. Not only do you get the best web browser available for free but you also have the chance of taking part in setting a world record, how many of your friends can say that? For those of you who are already using Firefox and are apprehensive about the move from Firefox 2 to 3, don’t worry about it. I’ve been much happier with Firefox 3. It is faster, more stable, and just as easy to use and did I mention it uses less memory?

So go right now and pledge to download Firefox 3 on the release day. They haven’t released a definitive date yet but if you pledge you’ll receive a reminder email.