MythTV Media Center

I finally put a box with MythTV installed next to my TV. It has been a long time coming, but I managed to cobble enough spare time and spare parts together to get something somewhat functioning. I ended up building the box in the spare room upstairs, while running a wired ethernet connection from the loft computer area, and hooking it up to VGA monitor.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a network connection downstairs with the TV working, and sound doesn't come out of the rear audio jack... so, I won't get guide updates, and I have a audio cable coming out of the front... but, it works... it officially works, and my son and I watched part of an episode of Zula Patrol and Marvin the Tap Dancing Horse. Zula Patrol even got commercial flagged, so I could skip with a button.

Here's the particulars:
AMD Athlon BE-2300 CPU
1 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS
120 GB SATA hard drive
2 Hauppauge HVR-120 tuners
DVD+/-RW drive
SilverStone LC03 ATX case

Stuff that I need to fix:

• I need to get a wired connection downstairs, or get a wireless adapter of sufficient speed hooked up to the box. The PCI 802.11G card wasn't detected, and the USB g adapter works, but the root user has to run the Wireless Assistant. Garbage... maybe MythDora will rebuild on Fedora 10 and get some better networking options.


• I need to set up sound to come out of the back. Probably just a setting on the sound. I did notice that the task bar applet said "front". Maybe I'll just stick that Audigy 2 ZS I have in. It is quite ugly at the moment.


• I need to fill the open 5.25 bay with something. When I got the case, there werent' face plates, but hey... it doesn't look too bad, especially since there's a door that covers up the drives when closed.


• Right now, I'm using an Apple Airport Extreme to serve printers, provide wireless, and run Internet to other comptuers. I'd really like to move some or all of that to ClarkConnect, and then get remote access working. Oh, and gigabit ethernet switch... I'll need that too. it might just be time to give up and go with the Apple Time Capsule.


• I'd love to get some more tuners in the box. Two is good, but if I ever connect another frontend-only box running on the HDTV upstairs, or run a frontend on my Linux Desktop machine, I'll want to watch some more stuff. I've got some ideas, but I'd like to see how my OTA situation works out with the set-top amplified rabbit ears. I've got a 4-way splitter attatched now.


• I really am not getting WISH-DT at all. Everything else I care about comes in fine, after positioning the antenna, but that whole UHF/VHF deal pisses me off. Could everyone in town go the same way, please?


• The machine is a bit loud. I have an 80mm fan in the front that just really needs to be replaced. Surprisingly, the two 60mm fans in the back work fine. I might have to replace the fan on the video card too. It could probably go heatsink only. XvMC doesn't work on Linux for 8-series NVIDIA cards anyway, maybe I'll just get a 6-series PCIe card with passive cooling.


• There's a bunch of buttons on my Windows Media Center remote that don't do anything. Programming them is going to be a real pain... Maybe the LIRC improvements in Fedora 10 will make this better. Then again, I imagine upgrading my machine to Fedora 10 instead of using MythDora would be very painful as well.

Right now, this sucks. I'm not opposed to getting windows back on the box, or even dropping the money on a "real" Tivo. It'd be worth it if I had it. For right now though, I'm going to try and ride this out. The seperate backend and multiple front-end functionality, not paying per machine Windows License fees, and more than two tuners and getting sub-channel guide info out weigs convenience right now.

But, hey, other than it being ugly, inconvenient, and loud, it works great! LOL.

FAIL

Geez, I'm failing at computers this week:

• I finally get a new computer at work. The old one was slow, and the support staff were even slower at getting me one that was up to the task for my new work. I manage to get it and start installing the software I need, and my machine won't take the install... Apparently my box needs to be "re-imaged. FAIL.


• I get around to the weekend, and start working on my media center... having missed the first two episodes of Smallville already. Previously, I suspsected that the box I had built with Windows Vista Media Center didn't start up because my daughter thought it would be cool to turn it on and off repeatedly. A bit of diagnostics and grumbling and attempted installations of MythDora and Mythbuntu reveal... my largest 250 GB drive isn't working. I hadn't really prepared a backup strategy. FAIL.


• I replaced it with a 160 GB drive in my "quad box" that I'm not even using. The machine was suspended not off. FAIL. (You should turn your computer off before removing hardware from the insdide.)


• I decided to give Mythbuntu a go ahead of Mythdora, since it has a LiveCD, and I won't need to do anything with a hard drive. But I test it out on a machine with VIA Unichrome graphics... the boot splash works fine, but when it's time to get down to business, the screens all wavy and I can barely make out the icons and text... Sigh. I put it back in the "real" media center box that has an nVidia 8400 GS in it... but the CD I burned it on is from a "flaky" stack of printable CDs. Boot just keeps choking on the media... FAIL


• So, I get Mythdora installed on the VIA Unichrome box... because I don't know if the DVD drive I had in my "main" media center is broken or not. And I can't seem to get it working. Channel Lineup is all FUBAR. I go back to the "quad box" to figure out what's up, and it turns out I have *no* lineups added to my SchedulesDirect account. The webpage kindly tells me that I probably want at least one, and I can only have 4. I've had the account for a month and didn't know. FAIL.


• I finally get around to trying to do my rebate for T-Mobile, since I got those Shadow phones. I needed to have mailed it in by August 31. FAIL.


• Oh, and Mythdora is based on Fedora 8. 10 is a week from beta, and there's no Live CD, so I go post a blog note while this thing is installing, on a machine that has no video output other than VGA. FAIL. At least I can use the monitors I have laying around as a TV.


• Oh, and I finally get around to cleaning up my file space on FastMail... I'm downloading stuff, zipping it up, and putting it on a flash drive. But, the only important thing... I delete it... "employment" folder... resumes, work history, etc... Sigh. I e-mail support for a backup... $25 for a restore per folder.... 7 days.... I want a file... Can't restore... I'm now a "guest" not enough space. FAIL. New resume and dropbox FTW. Then, the genius move... I formatted the flash drive that had the files that I did manage to download... to install World of Warcraft on my PowerBook. EPIC FAIL.


• Wonder what happened to my flash drive... here's my son. LOLCat style:
  
  [caption id="attachment_146" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="All your flash drive are belong to me!"][/caption]

Even more Facebook, switching Mom from Mac, Warhammer Online

Wow, an action-packed weekend, and a quick start to what will probably be a super busy week...

I connected to a lot of old acquaintences on Facebook this past weekend. Awesome. I guess I'm officially out of hiding. I have quite a few responses that I need to get to, but it also probably means that I have many more readers of my blog. (The content of my blog gets syndicated on Facebook.) Thanks everyone!

My mom uses an older Mac that I had. I have a PowerBook G4, and if I ever come into some extra money, I might upgrade to a 17-inch MacBook Pro. I still keep my desktop PC for games, and I don't see that changing at the moment. Anyway, the reason I gave my mom the Mac was because the accessibility features were top notch, compared to Windows XP anyway. However, My mom might be able to benefit from having a PC and I wanted to investigate how screen magnification works in Vista. My mom's vision isn't great, and the zoom feature in Mac OS really helps her out. I'd like to upgrade her to Mac OS X Leopard so that I can do remote desktop assisance more easily. Options? If you're reading this, and you care, hit me up.

I hit the doctor's office for a 3-month checkin. Hemoglobin A1C is rock bottom 6.0 so, apparently, this working out and eating better has done a little somethin' something. Weight is down to 293 (officially) a little higher than what I've seen on the scale, but hey, it's about 45 pounds from what the doctor observed by browsing through my chart. We'll be cutting one of my meds down to half, and I'll have to watch my sugar when I exercise to make sure that I don't go hypoglycemic.

Oh, and my wife's sister had a little baby shower this weekend. We also finally got a few of the baby things that we were saving from our two kids over to Amy and Paul's house. They're getting the baby's room together, and I think we might have to spend some time helping them prepare their home for the arrival. We'll see.

We took the kids to a fire truck showing at the library branch this weekend. I took a few pictures, but I don't know how many of them turned out well. I'll try to put some up on my blog for everyone, but no promises. Scott pooped his diaper, so we cut the visit short. They had fun.

Since my kids were up in Fort Wayne Sunday Afternoon with Holly and her Dad, I got some personal time this weekend. After a long struggle and much internal debate, I decided to return the set-top antenna I purchased and empty the coin savings jar and pick up Warhammer Online. I only got a quick spin in, but I'd say I'd rather play that than World of Warcraft right now. I don't know if WotLK will change that, because I *still* haven't gotten any end-game content, so they're just adding more stuff I'll probably never see.

Wow... Facebook.

Wow, I'm really, really missing out on Facebook. As slow as work has been the past couple of weeks, you'd think I'd catch up on it. However, I've showed *some* restraint. I just told one of my colleagues to change her profile because she got married, and I did it via my phone. Crud, I might have to get a new phone just to keep up with FaceBook... Nah...

Dropbox FTW

Dropbox came out of closed status on Sept 11. Nice. Now after dropping FastMail, I can use online filestorage. They even have a Linux client. Too bad it isn't just straight WebDAV, but I guess the interface is super meaningful to many.

Superbly, they have RPMs for Fedora and Ubuntu and in 64-bit flavors... works for me.

RSS FAIL

Ugh... I hate using an RSS reader. The whole reason I use RSS is so that I can passively get content. I don't want to go to a website just to look at your content, or see if there is any.

Fine, I solve that problem by using some kind of RSS to e-mail gateway. Short of running my own, I've used the one on a mail service that doesn't come to mind at the moment. I used what is now SendMeRSS. I've used Google Reader.

I had settled on RSSFWD, but dammit, they've tanked or something. What's worse, I can't unsubscribe anything, because the management interface is borked. I'd *pay* to get a real RSS to e-mail service that isn't all cluttered up with advertisements (other than those in the feeds, obviously... though stripping those out would be cool too...). I'm back on Bloglines, and I'm actually thinking about going back to Google Reader.

So, I've got a filter in my mail that takes my RSS mail from RSSFWD and puts it in a folder. I'd love to delete that folder and rule, but I can't stop the onslaught of messages. I guess I could modify the rule to just delete the messages outright, but I really just want to wait and see what happens. I've been waiting a few weeks though, and the trend isn't encouraging.

Bluetooth Mouse

I left work a little early yesterday to go get a haircut, it went quick, so I stopped at Best Buy. After discovering that I needed stereo sound and that I'd have to hack my Tiger 10.4 installation to get A2DP support for my MotoROKR S9 headphones, I thought I'd browse around and see if I could save a trip up "north" to the Apple store on a future journey to upgrade to Leopard 10.5.

I ended up looking for a bluetooth mouse as well as other things... Time Vault, Airport Extreme, external hard drive enclosure with card reader, etc... and found them all. I also found a couple of sticks of DDR 2700 SODIMM for $55... a significant discount from the usual rapage that Best Buy provides on memory. I didn't have money for that, but I'd like to upgrade my PowerBook.

Anyway, I bought a Microsoft Notebook Mouse for Mac, since my old "notebook" mouse got destroyed by my kids. It is essentially the same as the Microsoft Notebook Mouse 5000, but packaged differently so that Mac users think it is special. I'd have normally just gotten which ever I saw first, but the one I saw was discounted for being open. Normally the mice are $50, but this one was $37-something, a weak discount, except that the last sale price was $39.99, so it was more like a $12 discount. I decided that had real value and that I'd go with that. It comes with a nice little pouch too.

Fortunately the AAA batteries hadn't been run down completely, since they were already in the mouse. I will need to download some software from Microsoft to get the "superior" functionality. Too bad I can't hook my laptop to the Internet at work. Also too bad I didn't pick up Leopard... Bah.

Bluetooth Headphones

So, I'm thinking of a way to blow a few dollars... I mean enhance my productivity at work. I also wanted to get headphones that don't make me look like a martian, and will make me able to listen to music at work and walk away from my desk without a big disconnection exercise. Monday, I picked up the browser and searched up the Motorola ROKR S9. Normally a $150 and up purchase, I find them for $37.

Sold... but $17 for shipping? Oh well... might as well bump it up to Next Day Air, and get a day of working out with them. Oh... I forgot my phone at *work*! So, I get home, open the box... the packaging looked like OEM knockoffs, but they seem to work okay. I was solo on Tuesday night, so I didn't get a chance to test them out with anything.

Wednesday morning, I throw them on my wife's head, and explain that there are no wires... but I get them all tangled in her hair... nice. I don't know if she understood that they'd work with her *phone* because she asked me about having a "burner" for getting music off of some CDs.

Anyway, I wore my set to the gym, not listening to anything but the music that was already playing, but getting a feel for comfort. They're great. I love them. I got to work, and hooked them up to my phone... after discovering how to choose between, being a crappy phone headset and stereo headphones, they worked great... on the sample songs that I had on the phone.

Next step, since I haven't ripped any tunes to put on my phone with Windows Media Player is to try using my PowerBook. I chose a headset profile, but they aren't supported. Short story... after several tries, I couldn't get them working. So, I turned to the Internet, and came across this article: Get a Bluetooth Headset Working with a PowerBook.

Goodness, I need a firmware update? Oh, and the update from Apple apparently doesn't actually install anything, it just puts the files on your system for you to run later. Sigh... I'd download the file, but I don't have my PowerBook hooked up to the Internet at work. I guess if I had a flash drive, I could move it from my work machine... jeez, this is hard.

And so ends a blog post at work, when I should actually be working... Thanks for listening.

Moving my FastMail Photo Gallery to Flickr

I took some pictures on a weekend trip to Ohio to see my Mom. I had them stored on my file space on FastMail, but that account is expiring, and I wanted to move them to Flickr. The e-mail upload function works really well so far, let's see how it handles 50 pictures.

If this works out, I might have to just change back to FastMail... and move my domain name
back... and pay... Ugh... who knows. For now, this will work. 

Heh, they all got returned... because the attatchment size limit at *Yahoo!* is 20 MB... Sigh.

Oh well, someone marked a picture of my sister-in-law as a favorite, according to the little Yahoo! Go applet on my phone. I don't know who it is, but I'll try to look up their Yahoo! ID when I get a chance. I did link Flickr to my Facebook account, so maybe it is someone I know.

Jaunty Jackalope

WTF? Ubuntu's new code name for the next release is Jaunty Jackalope. I thought a Jackalope was when you carved a face into a cantaloupe, like, on Halloween. Oh well. These guys continue to push hard, but still replicate effort done by others already. Hopefully the pragmatic approach will at least get Linux out of that 1% domain into mainstream use.

Catching up... some more.

Facebook is awesome, if only a reminder that I need to blog more... I keep getting little reminders of my past with people that sign on. We're really social creatures...

Anyway, it's 4:00 AM, and Holly is going to go to the gym early, since she's got a full day, and needs to be up north by 8:00 AM. I'd really love to ditch, but I'm going to just wait for the 5:30 arrival of the baby sitter and then go catch up.

I'm using my PowerBook, and I really have to comment on the keyboard. It is very nice to type on, and the backlit keys are awesome. I recently moved the "computer table" back in to the "loft" area, from being in the spare bedroom. The kids were always going in there and wrecking stuff, so I figured I might as well leave it out in the open. I've had my traditional folding table back for a while, but I finally got around to setting that up. I'll probably just use the spare bedroom for sensitive hardware tinkering and storage. We'll see.

I pulled the Airport Extreme back out. Mine is the teardrop model with wireless G and a modem. Seems to be working fine. I was going to ditch my Mac stuff (again) and send the Powerbook and Airport base station to my Mom in Ohio. She has a PowerMac G4 400 MHz box that seems to work fine. However, I'm really wanting to give Leopard and Time Vault a go, so maybe I'll just stick this out and then keep the hardware as a machine for my wife/kids... again, we'll just have to see.

Man, I'm really writing a lot. I need to just do it more often instead of writing huge blog posts. It'd probably involve writing on lunch breaks at work... speaking of which. I've officially transitioned into an Application Support role at my current client. It's a good move for me, since I hated doing document control so much. But, I've got a meeting with someone about doing some "old" work today. Bleh. Supposedly it is just perodic metrics, but I have a feeling I won't be happy about it... real... positive... attitude.

Speaking of positive attitude, the Linux Haters Blog is really sucking these days. It used to have really insightful posts about things that suck in Linux, but really could be improved if someone got overthemselves and stepped up to the plate and fixed it. Now it's just random stuff that sucks, and not nearly frequently enough. Eh, well, I got my Mac back out, and I'm happy, LOL.

My 2.5 year-old son is ready for potty training. He identifies when he has gone, and he's used the potty once a while back to pee. I think I blogged about that, so I can't hide how lazy we've been as parents. Our M-W sitter keeps asking when we're going to start. This weekend, we bought a seat cover that attaches to the hinges and tried it out... didn't fit. Grr... after a modification and some finagling I got it on upstairs, and I think we'll be able to repeat the affair for a second round with the downstairs toilet. Yesterday, he watched me go, and I think he may be tallk enough to stand on the floor and use the standard toilet. That'd be nice. He'll still need a stool to wash his hands though.

Speaking of hand washing... (boy these cheesy transitions are getting... well... cheesy) I nearly washed my hands of Linux, twice. My media center got a wipe of MythDora and an install of Vista Media Center again, but before I could finish, Julie got a hold of the power button and power cycled the installation into oblivion. Nice. I don't know... I might just buy a freaking TiVo upgrade. Our series 1 won't get an upgrade to support the 2009 digital transition, and the "offer" of transferring our lifetime subscription for the standard price of $299 and a refurbished unit for $99 bucks is pretty easy to reject, but I'm missing shows now. It might just be time to bite the bullet and put the media center project on hiatus.

So, this linux abandonment thing. I had Vista installed, I wiped for Linux... then reinstalled Vista, then reinstalled Fedora again. Fedora installs are quick, since I have a Live USB key. The updates take a long time though, and I really should invest in a local repository that rsyncs to get the installs from a mirror and serves them up over PXE. I did get ClarkConnect up and running though (and then went back to the Airport, so that tells you something right there) and got a PXE boot and remote installation going. It was cool, but pointless, I like burning media, and I like doing installs off of flash media.

Well, that's all for now, more to write, but Holly says I need to vacuum up the cereal her son spilled on her watch before the sitter gets here. Scott is up. Life is grand. Happy Monday.