Sun, 08 Jan 2006 22:23:00 GMT
Remember Active Desktop? The world wasn't really ready for something like AD at the time. Since then we've embraced Apple's Dashboard and Yahoo!'s Widgets. I was reminded of one of the first HTML/Web Content Engines on a PC, Active Desktop, when I was attempting to create a dual screen wallpaper at work. I also found out recently about the XBox 360 Live Gamer Card that you can enable on your website. You can also add it to Active Desktop and get a good listing of all you friend's activities in once glance. Cut and paste this into an html file, edit with your friend's names and then use Active Desktop to display it.
<html>
<head>
<title>
My friends's XBox 360 Live Cards
</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#0077FF">
<iframe src="http://gamercard.xbox.com/sobokhan.card" scrolling="no" frameBorder="0" height="140" width="204">Sobokhan.</iframe>
<br />
<-- Add more cards here -->
<br />
<iframe src="http://gamercard.xbox.com/globalreset.card" scrolling="no" frameBorder="0" height="140" width="204">GlobalReset.</iframe>
</body>
</html>
Fri, 23 Dec 2005 12:45:00 GMT
If you're an SSH tunneler like myself, you know that you can't use RDP with a tunnel reflected off yourself (localhost). I just figured out how to do this. Though, it's rather simple and I'm somewhat ashamed that I didn't think of it before. Just add a line to your C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file.
127.0.0.1 me
I then used an SSH tunnel to redirect the port number as well.
ssh ... -L 3390:192.168.0.85:3389 ...
This will redirect port 3390 to the RDP port, 3389. Now connect to me:3390 for RDP.
Tue, 25 Oct 2005 23:36:00 GMT
Forwarding your iTunes library to your work computer is not as hard as one might think. All you need to do is follow these steps.
1.) Enable Library Sharing on home machine's iTunes.
2.) You have to be familiar with ssh tunneling (try here for a tutorial) or if you don't use a tunnel, add the port forwarders to your firewall. For ssh tunnels, you want something like this:
$ ssh -g -L 3689:192.168.0.86:3689 my.home.net
Where "192.168.0.86" is the local net IP of the home machine and "my.home.net" is the name of your computer on the internet. Of course, you'll have to be forwarding the ssh port to your home machine too.
3.) Get RendezvousProxy, which mimcs some of the UDP traffic that won't come through some firewalls. Add an entry for the tunneling machine if you are using that. Be sure to use the iTunes protocol (_daap._tcp.local.).
4.) iTunes should automatically detect your machine. You might want to add a password to your library so other people at work don't cruise your stuff.
Tue, 30 Aug 2005 02:13:00 GMT
...that flickr can blog your mobile phone pictures? This is a shot from the bridge to the entrance to the Benihana's near TI on Forest Lane. We went there for Keith's birthday which was a while ago. The landscaping at this place is really well done and must be very expensive. Plus they have real fish in their pond, possibly Coy but I can't identify fish species.
- Erik
Sat, 09 Apr 2005 06:58:00 GMT
Well I returned that expensive Terk HDTV antenna about 2 weeks ago. I just couldn't justify the price ($162 after taxes) for an antenna that could only pickup 2 or 3 stations of varyingly marginal signal strength which are only 20-30 miles away when a $20 antenna works just as well. Suprisingly the $20 dollar antenna is getting different channels, which I suppose may not suprise an Electrical Engineer with any antenna theory under their belt but it seemed odd to me that a standard rabbit ears and loop antenna could out-do a highly directional Terk HDTV antenna (which I assume has some sort of phased array configuration) on the second floor of an apartment 20-30 miles from the tower in an area which gets lots of ghosting and signal reflection. I guess the cheaper model can't pickup the lower power ghosts and as such has an effective "ghetto-filter" at work.
I managed to get ALSA working with the AC'97 chip and outputting over Tosklink SPD/IF on the motherboard after figdetting with the alsa-mixer and alsa config files. The ATI Remote works as well, though I don't like the feel of the buttons. The only remaining thing left is the LCDproc integrated VFD driver (I have the standalone working) and the IR remote that came with the case. Oh, and MythTV. That thing still doesn't work, though I haven't messed with it much since I only get 2 HD channels in my apartment right now; CBS and PBS.
I also haven't had success getting my brand new
HITACHI 42HDT51 Plasma 16:9 HDTV (which I got on a really good sale at Circuit City) to output over the IEEE1394 firewire port in order to get DTV recording on the Mac Mini I have. The manual is very terse and uninformative on the operation of the IEEE1394 port and it's intricacies. Quite disappointing.
Thu, 17 Mar 2005 01:22:00 GMT
After fixing a few issues with MySQL (I knew it was going to be a problem, which i solved by installing Webmin and letting it fuss with the command line crap of MySQL), I had a set of .deb's installing from the MythTV build (which used dpkg-buildpackage). Only one complained, mythtv-backend; but that's a rather important one to complain. It seems there's still something not right about MySQL. ...sigh...
On a better front, I've also tweaked the hd-3000 drivers a bit to fix some warnings in the files (missing return's, missing casts in printk) and some problems with the install script that I found answers for in the HD-3000 forums. It looks like it should be pretty straight forward to get things running from here once I have the modules installed correctly.
But I also have to fix sound too. I tried playing an mp3 on XMMS to see of my sound card had correctly detected, which it had, but the alias to /dev/dsp evidently had not been made and the module for ALSA was not trying to open the driver. In the end I couldn't hear anything.
I also fixed the firewire support in the kernel, removed floppy support, removed the hw_random driver that I thought I had and added RAID 0,1,0+1 and LVM to the kernel. I'll need that stuff to make a sufficiently large partition to save HD-Video on.
Once I did all that and compiled the kernel and rebooted I got runtime module link errors in the kernel bootup for a couple kernel symbols out of the hd3000 modules. I'll have to recompile again and be sure to remember to compile it along with the kernel.
I'm wondering now if I should try KnoppMyth to see if my Terk HDTV will work well for me and skip all this junk.
Tue, 15 Mar 2005 07:16:00 GMT
Since I'm not using Fedora Core 3 in this system (I'm starting to wish that I did), I have to modify things to run smoothly. Here's a few of them for the HD-3000 card:
- Compile Kernel to support HOTPLUG
- Install Firmware to /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware
- Manually install modprobe commands from scripts/patch_modprobe.sh to /etc/modules.conf
I'm sure this list will grow with time. But, heartache is unfortunately how one learns with Linux, especially Debian, it doesn't get much easier. I'll be posting and following
this thread to see what's up with the Debian port.
Sun, 13 Mar 2005 22:39:00 GMT
It seems the problem with the kernel was the RAM disk after all. The error certainly did not make it clear that the RAM disk had failed, which is irritating. So, as promised, here is a, hopefully, complete list of kernel features I added, most unneccessary to MythTV:
- IDE Chipset support for Intel PIIxn, Promise PDC20268. Lots of "Generic" support needed to get the kernel to actually boot.
- IEEE-1394, Raw, DV, and OHCI support
- I2C Support for Intel 82801EB/ER
- ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Driver (needed I2C support)
- Filesystem: EXT2, EXT3, REISERFS
- USB Support: Mass Storage, ATI RF Remote
- Ethernet: Realtek 8139
- Video for Linux Support
- DVB Support
I wasn't able to find a suitable driver for the HD-3000 (which reports as a Conexant Winfast TV2000 XP and Conexant Unknown Device 8802). However mythTV is supposed to have them available. Next, I'll have the steps I took to install MythTV from the debian sources. It's looking to be another big pain in the ass, mainly because of MySQL.
Sun, 13 Mar 2005 08:24:00 GMT
Well, I've been running "make menuconfig" on my kernel all night, adding one off things, trying to get my 2.6 Debian off the ground. The 2.6 kernel keeps reporting that it can't "mount the root fs, unknown-block(3,3)". So far I've had to add all the obvious things like:
- IDE/ATA Support
- EXT2 as a Compiled-in module, not a loadable module.
- MSDOS Partition Tables
- Intel PIIXn chipset support - just added this, and it's compiling, we'll see if it works.
Hopefully that will work. Once I've got the thing running I'll list out all the tweaks I put in.
Mon, 07 Mar 2005 01:29:00 GMT
I'm putting together an HD PVR based around
MythTV and the
HD-3000 card. It'll be able to do Off-Air ATSC recording and normal Cable Recording (if I had cable). I had to order the case, motherboard and a cooling fan for the CPU, but the rest are part from older machines. Here's the spec's:
- Pentium 4 2.4 GHz Northwood Socket 478 533MHz FSB
- 1 GB DDR 333, PC2700 RAM
- pcHDTV HD-3000
- ATI Radeon 9800 All In Wonder (DVI out)
- Abit IS7 Motherboard
- On-board IEEE 1394
- On-board Optical SPD/IF in/out
- Silverstone LC10B-M Case
- 700GB of Storage!
- 1 x 20GB Western Digital (WDC WD205AA) HDD
- 2 x 200GB Seagate (ST3200822A) HDD
- 1 x 160GB Maxtor (Maxtor 6Y160P0) HDD
- 1 x 120GB Western Digital (WDC WD1200JB-00EVA0) HDD
I plan on following
these instructions on assembling a MythTV. The parts should be in by friday. All I need to do now is to buy an Antenna that can get most of the off-air stations in Dallas.
I've been warned not to get the "StealthAntenna" as the design was misimplemented and is not able to get good reception in the suburbs.
