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Brilliantly Simplistic

a collection of the inessential to some, and indispensable to others.

Geek Tech

Programming the Volume Control on the Philips RC122 Remote

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I recently upgraded my Time Warner cable box and with it came the Philips RC122 remote. (I have to say this remote is a step backwards from my old remote in that it doesn’t have a ‘system’ on/off button. I need to individually turn on/off the TV, the cable box, and the Bose sound system. But I digress…)

I wrote an article many moons ago for the instructions to lock the volume control on my old Time Warner UR5U-8780L-TWP remote control so that even when in CBL mode the volume buttons will control the AUX device, in my case an old Bose sound system. Here’s what I found to do the same for the RC122:

  1. Press and hold the SELECT/OK and CBL buttons until all device buttons blink twice.
  2. Press 993. (The CBL button should blink twice.)
  3. Press the AUX button. (All device buttons should blink three times.)

Pretty simple! To set the volume control back to the TV, it’s default setting, follow the same process but press the TV button in step 3.

Enjoy!

Evernote Premium Saves The Day

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Today was the day I ordered Evernote Premium, and it saved my day.

I use Evernote for both personal notes and business notes. While I used to be a disciple of Microsoft’s OneNote, preaching it’s capabilities to everyone at work, it’s disappointing iPhone app left me looking for another tool that would sync my notes across all of my devices. If all I have with me in a meeting is my iPhone or iPad, I want all of my notes accessible, editable and searchable.  Evernote provided that solution.

I keep project documents, meeting agendas, meeting notes, conversation notes, copies of important emails, etc, in Evernote. It’s a critical tool for organizing my “business” life. So there I was, wanting to get information for a critical meeting today, staring at an emptiness in the middle of a note where the information used to be.  The rest of the note was intact, but I must had inadvertently deleted a few key lines in the middle of my note. What’s worse, I didn’t know if I just deleted them, or if I did it days ago.

Hoping I just did it, I turned off the laptop’s WiFi so it wouldn’t sync to the cloud and grabbed my iPhone. But I was out of luck. The note had already synced with the iPhone. My iPad was just as useless.

Enter Evernote Premium and it’s Note History feature. As mentioned on their website “Go back in time. View past versions of individual notes in your account.” My initial assumption was that it only began saving history when you purchased Premium, so to ensure that I would never be in this situation again I shelled out the $45. But to my amazement, like a kid on Christmas morning, Evernote has been saving my history all along!  Every time I change a note it keeps a copy.

Two versions back was the missing information. I mistakenly deleted the lines without even knowing.

THANK YOU Evernote!  You saved the day!

Programming the Volume control on the Time Warner UR5U-8780L-TWP

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By default, the Time Warner UR5U-8780L-TWP remote control when in CBL mode assumes the volume you want to control is the TV’s. That makes sense for most people who don’t have a separate surround sound system. But for those of us who do have a surround sound system it’s quite an annoyance. I have my Bose programmed to the AUX button of the remote so I have to press AUX every time I want to change the volume, and press the CBL button again to switch channels.

Re-reading the manual I noticed a section on how to program the volume. By following the directions below I was able to program the volume control to control the AUX device, not the TV. When in CBL mode, and I press the volume control, the AUX button will light up, but I will stay in CBL mode to continue changing channels. Perfection!

STEP 1. Press the [OK/SEL] button and [CBL] button simultaneously for three seconds. The device LED will turn on for 30 seconds. The next step must be performed while the LED is on.

STEP 2. Press the [VOL UP] button. The device LED will blink.

STEP 3. Press the [AUX] button. The device LED will blink twice to confirm the programming.