My Blog

My WordPress Blog

Category: Life Page 5 of 6

MythTV easy … Comcast HD over Basic Cable not so.

By

On August 27, 2008

In Blog, Life, Linux

HDTV

HDTV


So, I’ve been configuring my Mythbox as I have time.  Some of my hardware arrived late, but I put together the basic PC the first weekend, installed Ubuntu and did a burn-in (I am very happy with how quiet it runs).  My HDHomerun arrived a few days later and decided to interrupt my burn-in. I installed Mythbuntu and attempted to configure it. I hooked up my coax cable to the HDHomerun and ran a Cat5 to my switch and I was able to see it immediately in the MythTV configuration utility. I did a channel scan and was surprised to have 80 unencrypted hits. My jaw dropped, I had 80 HD channels over basic (analog) cable?
I need to backup here a bit and explain what I had learned through the internet and from a flier that I picked up at the local Comcast office, but even with the flier in my hand, I could not get a Comcast salesperson to give me a straight answer. It clearly states in the brochure that:

HDTV broadcast signals are included with subscription to Limited Basic Service. To receive other HDTV signals provided by the Company, an HDTV capable television set (not provided by the Company), Standard Service and an HDTV digital converter and remote are required. In addition to receive Expanded Service, Digital Starter, Digital Classic, Digital Preferred, Sports Enterntainment, Package or premium (i.e., HBO, Showtime) HDTV signals, a subscritpion to that service is required. (sic)

Read More

Mythical TV … can Open Source tinkering be any cooler?

By

On August 20, 2008

In Blog, Life, Linux

Mythbuntu

Mythbuntu


My DVD player, which is a Sony and only about 5 years old, is on the fritz.  My Tivo, likewise 5 years old, is showing heavy pixilation which I’m going to assume is related to it’s hard drive being 5 years old and having run 24×365 and starting to go (over 43,000 hours).  My (current) TV is standard definition, but I plan on upgrading to HDTV this Christmas (or sooner if my plans pan out). I wasn’t looking forward to the price of a set-top Blu-Ray player nor an HD Tivo, both of which would be limited to playing content only on the TV they were attached to, so I decided to go it alone and build a media center computer.
I poked around a lot and have setteled on an Ubuntu implmentation of MythTV called Mythbuntu. I seriously considered adding some stuff (a video capture card, larger hard drive, HDMI output, etc) to an older PC which I had just decomissioned and was planning on donating (wiped the hard drive and installed Ubuntu Hardy). However, after doing some research I decided to build a decently powered frontend/backend combination which will later be the hub of my content.  I’m going to be assembling the system this weekend and plan on tinkering a few days with it before moving it into the living room. I did my research and setteled on the following hardware:

Read More

Is Comcast blocking large HTTP POST transactions?

By

On August 18, 2008

In Blog, Life, Linux

Comcast

Comcast


I’m not sure when this started happening, but I can’t seem to isolate the problem and I’m assuming that Comcast is to blame. I’m running this blog on a PC in my house connected to the interWeb via Comcast residential high speed Internet. I’m keeping DNS humming along using DynDNS even though my “dynamic” IP address (via DHCP) has not changed since the Adelphia to Comcast migration (and hadn’t changed on Adelphia prior to that migration). Even before I was running this blog, I had a wiki using MediaWiki running (it still is).
Here’s what’s happening….I can add a comment or a new wiki page (which is an HTTP POST transaction) from home or remotely (outside of my LAN). However, I’m limited to the size of my comments (or wiki pages) when I’m remote (outside of my LAN).  Once I get more than a paragraph or so in a comment (or a wiki page) and hit “send” my browser just hangs.  Incidentally, this also happens when creating a blog post while logged in to WordPress.

Read More

Internet radio rocks (or rolls, or raps, jazzes, or even countrys for that matter…)

By

On August 15, 2008

In Blog, Life

Internet radio

Internet radio


Internet radio has come of age. For my birthday this year I asked for a slacker radio and got one from my parents. I have to admit that it’s a pretty cool toy. I haven’t bothered to subscribe as the advertisements aren’t too burdensome. We just leave the slacker player attached to my stereo and sync it every day (or so). It’s nice to have music playing all the time. It’s usually playing jazz or blues on the weekends and something livelier on weekday afternoons and evenings. Every once in a while Stacie or I run into the room where the stereo is and nix a song (Colby Caillet anyone?). It’s that  interactive feature which is what’s improving Internet radio beyond the broadcast model which I’ve been listening to for years on iTunes or WinAmp (or even FM in my car….imagine that).
Slacker allows you to “favorite” a song or ban it with the touch of a button on the player or on the web player. A favorite will play more often and a banned song will no longer play on that station (like Colby Caillet). Slacker has over 10,000 stations and the possibilities are endless.  Slacker has a good selection of indie stations.  The drawback of Slacker is that it contains audio advertisements inserted into the stations, which you can do away with if you buy a subscription.

Read More

Apple, MobileMe, and the eeePC (and all other Linux distros too)

By

On August 4, 2008

In Blog, Life, Linux

MobileWho?It seems that Apple’s cloud computing push teknology for some reason decided that only Mac OS X and Windoze would be able to use their nifty cloud computing push iPhone teknology.  In other words, they have either left the open source community hanging or they intentionally pulled the plug on compatibility across platforms.  Try to browse to the www.me.com from any Linux PC (unless you are running something under WINE) and you’ll get a big fat, “it ain’t like that.”  This includes eeePCs, the $199 gOS netbooks sold at GoodEmployeeBenefitsmart and anybody who decides not to back down to the evil empire or use an iPhone.  For all their embracing of open source, Apple seems to have left the open source community hanging.
What I’m getting at is that MobileMe does not support Linux.  I’m pretty sure it isn’t a compatibility or a features issue as if you spoof your browser using a well known FireFox extension (user agent switcher) you can get it to work, but why bother?  What is Apple saying to the non-Apple Hardware, non-Microsoft crowd out there?
I have an iPhone and a MacBookPro for work, but I’m pissed that I can’t have access to my address book from my eeePC or from any of my other Linux boxes.

Oops…my pictures are gone.

By

On July 22, 2008

In Blog, Life

Pictures

Pictures


I just happened to notice that all the photographs on my website were missing.
Apparently this is a known bug in Firefox 3.0+. I don’t advocate it, but use IE or Safari (or Opera or something other than firefox) if you want to see the photos.

Bookstores

By

On June 29, 2008

In Blog, Life

Bookstore

Bookstore


Over the past few years I’ve been buying a lot of my books online at amazon.com or even on eBay. I’ve also been going to the public library here in Blacksburg which as public libraries go is a pretty decent library. However, when shopping online or even at the library, I tend to pick up books that are challenging reads, and many of them take me a long time to get through. If I bought them, that’s not a problem, however I’ve racked up a few late fees at the library (no more than what it would have cost me to purchase the book outright). I’ve also tended to pick up books that spend a long time on my bedside table as I have been known to start reading something else and at times have had as many as four or five books ongoing at once. An example of these are (all of which I’ve started and will eventually finish):

  • The Baroque Cycle by Neal Steaphenfon of which I’m about half way through The System of the World
  • Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
  • The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
  • April 1865 by Jay Winik

Read More

Just blogging around….

By

On April 12, 2008

In Blog, Life, Linux

Parent's pond in Brunswick

Parent's pond in Brunswick


So, I haven’t blogged in a long time. Since the family vacation in Maine I got a job, but that’s probably not the only or even the main reason. I just haven’t thought about it much and never made the time. I’m doing it now as I’m setting up a new server to replace my old Pentium HT that I bought in 2001.
Elvis has been up and running for almost a year and a half and I started thinking about all the energy it has been burning just sitting there responding to the occasional HTTP request. I also happened to have the need for a laptop on a temporary basis so I figured the two would dovetail nicely.
The laptop is a Dell Inspiron D410 subnotebook (Blackcow) that I bought used for a few hundred duckets. It’s more than capable of hosting this site as well as about a half dozen other sites that Elvis has been hosting. Some do get quite a few visits, but not enough to tax the Apache2 webserver nor the MySQL database on which most of the sites (this one not included as it’s an output of Mac OS X iWeb) use.

Read More

Family Vacation in Maine

By

On August 22, 2007

In Blog, Life

Big house

Big house


Finally getting around to updating the site. I’ve installed iLife’08 so there may be some different behaviors and I’m getting around to figuring all of those out. I think overall iLife’08 is a nice improvement. iMovie seems a major improvement, but it did take me a bit to get used to the new features and I am a little annoyed at so many missing features that may still be present, but are much harder to find. With that said, I did create a nice youtube video of me cooking a brisket on my new Big Green Egg and it didn’t even take me that long to break down an hour or so of video into a 3 minute youtube. Likewise iPhoto has some major improvements, but I’m still using Aperture for most of my photography. This is my first foray into iWeb and I haven’t noticed too many differences, with the exception to the photo albums, and I’m not sure how they will export to my site (as opposed to .mac, more on that later).

Read More

Lazy, good for nothing, beach bum…..

By

On June 11, 2007

In Blog, Life

Surfer

Surfer


No, that picture isn’t me nor anyone I know nor is it where I went to the beach. It’s the default picture for this blog template so I figured I’d leave it as it fits with the topic at hand. Sadly, I did take three cameras with me, yet didn’t take a single picture nor video. I was too busy laying on the beach soaking up the sun to be bothered with any other hobbies of mine.
Stacie and I recently spent a week and a half on St. Simons Island for out annual Beachweek. We invited friends (as per usual) and had some show up. We stayed in my extended families’ “historic” beach cottage on St. Simons and we try to make it down every year around Memorial Day (a “historic” beach cottage is a quaint name for an old beach cottage on an island that is rapidly losing it’s character to $M condos). Sadly, this may have been the last of the Boz Beachweeks as the cottage is on the market. However, I said the same thing last year when it was listed then too. Personally, I’d like to have more Boz Beachweeks in the future. If the cottage sells, we may be forced to rent a condo for a week or just quit with the Beachweeks and do a Boz Maineweek up in Boothbay, Maine.

Read More

Page 5 of 6

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén

Header photograph: Bridger Range from the Gallatin Valley by Tim Evanson, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped. Via Wikimedia Commons.