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Or lack of it. My car didn't start yesterday morning. It's got a great reliability track so far, yet it's 12-years old so OK such things happen.
Anyway I thought maybe it could be the battery and a quick trip to Kragen to get a new one didn't solve it. Same symptoms. Crank but not fire.
The bottom line is that I called AAA to get it towed to the Nissan service center today. Never mind that AAA said the tow truck would be there within the hour yet it is only an hour and a half later the tow truck company called to confirm they were coming.
I'm not too found of Nissan's service fees yet I somehow trust them better than a random garage. It's not like a know of any other great one so this will have to do. I'll give them another chance.
Although it's far from being complete, I've put up a page with MythTV Tips here.
What's missing is the almost full day I spent yesterday fixing "minor" issues like configuring the wifi PCI card under Linux and fixing the compatibility issue between the two conflicting version of the nVidia drivers. None of these are MythTV-related issues per se yet they clearly show me why Linux won't be the "mainstream desktop" OS some want it to be.
Also missing is my "semi-initial" thoughts on MythTV as a PVR. So far I have mixed feelings about it. It suffers the usual open-source syndrome: powerful with a poor interface usability and needs too many tweaks to be usable out-of-the-box.
When it comes to being "mainstream", less is sometimes better (i.e. less features but more integrated) and both the Linux and open source models fail to deliver.
Earlier this week I ordered some parts to build a MythTV box. My original intent was to recycle my current desktop PC as a MythTV box and get new parts to build a new desktop. There were two issues for this: the current GeForce 6600 I use doesn't have a TV out, and now is not the time for me to update this box. I have an Ahtlon 64 3000+ that delivers just fine. I don't play much so I don't need more power. If I were to update, I would need something more powerful so that it stays current for a while, yet I wouldn't really use this power. Instead let's leave the current desktop box as-is and get new parts to build a MythTV PC.
One of the good things is that by today's standards I do not need anything powerful for MythTV. I already have an Hauppauge Win-TV PVR 150, all I need is a PSU, a CPU, a mobo, some RAM and a video card. I have all the rest, including a 300 GB SATA Drive. I want this PC to be silent so the main goal is to get an XClio 450 BL for the PSU (I have one in the linux server and its nearly silent and cheaper than a SeaSonic.) For the CPU, I'm in luck, the minimum these days is an Ahtlon 64 3200+ which comes in 90 nm and I don't want to overclock it so it shouldn't be too hot. For the video I selected a GeForce 6200 TC with 128 MB -- first because I like the fact it doesn't have a fan, and to display 1024x768 it's just fine. Also I read lots of good comments in MythTV forums (people use it to display HDTV, heck I just need NSTC on my old 19' RCA!) and finally it's the cheapest stuff you can find in PCI-E. Add an ASUS A8V-E SE and 512 MB of Corsair DDR 400 and we're done.
Amusingly this is dirt cheap -- half what I paid for my 3000+ config two years ago yet a tad more powerful and the CPU is a 90 nm instead of 165 nm so it should dissipate less. I just finished installing all that yesterday and I'm really satisfied. If it were not for the front led I'd hardly know the PC is turned on -- The ASUS A8V-E has a Q-Fan thingy that automatically reduces the CPU fan speed. And contrary to the Epox crap I got last time, this works right out of the box with no pesky fan on the southbridge nor dying onboard LAN (note that I am equally satisfied with the ABIT NF8-V2 I got for the server.)
Now back to the MythTV side. The install of KnoppMyth on the HD was still good so I didn't touch that. Sound worked directly, no issues there.
Next issue was that live TV was not working. After a while I realized that by
default myth-setup had recognized an anonymous V4L card. I reran the setup
but this time I selected the correct Hauppauge Win-TV PVR x50 setting, since
I have a PVR 150 and that worked instantly much better.
Now getting the TV output working was a bit harder. For starters, I had the SVideo cable connected on the PVR 150 (which is an input!) instead of the GeForce 6200. Double doh :-) After using the right output, I was able to see the TV in text mode but not when running X11.
There's an nvidia-settings application that was installed yet I couldn't
find anything related to TV out in there. There's also a binary called nvtv
which would persit in giving me an error:
# nvtv Fatal: No supported video card found.I read a lot of stuff online about using the proprietary nVidia driver and configuring different screens/monitors in
/etc/X11/xorg.com but none of that
stuff worked.
Eventually I downloaded the latest proprietary nVidia Linux driver but then I had another issue: first it would refuse to do anything when X11 was running and second even when I managed to kill X11 it complained about a missing ''precompiled kernel interface" for my kernel.
OK failing to be able to stop X11 sounds really lame. How hard can it be to kill
the damn process once root? Well hard when it auto-respawns like crazy :-)
I couldn't find anything to stop in /etc/init.d/, for example no gdm and
although there's an xsession in there it changed nothing.
After discussing with MM, I found out that the trick is that KnoppMyth does it
in /etc/inittab. They have this line at the very end:
c7:2345:respawn:/usr/bin/openvt -fwc 6 -- /bin/su - mythtv -c /usr/bin/startx >& /dev/null
Even going single-user mode with telinit 1 didn't stop X. Pretty peculiar,
which sounds like a bug since it's not targetted to run level 1.
Anyhow the simple solution, if not brutal, is to comment out the line and restart. Voila, no X11 auto-starting when you don't want to.
Now the trick to get the nVidia driver to install is actually finely described in the KnoppMythWiki on the nVidiaSetup page. Heck I wasted many hours on that one when the solution was written right there. I'll summarise it here for me, I recommend you go read the wiki and get all the glory details:
mkdir /t ; cd /t wget ftp://knoppmyth.net/R5/linux-source-2.6.18-chw-13_2.6.18-chw-13-10.00.Custom_all.deb dpkg -i linux-source-2.6.18-chw-13_2.6.18-chw-13-10.00.Custom_all.deb cd /usr/src tar xjvf linux-source<tab> cd /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.18-chw-13 cp -r . ../linux-source-2.6.18-chw-13 cd /usr/src rm linux ln -s /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.18-chw-13 linux cd /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.18-chw-13 make # <--- Ctrl-C it after a few seconds cd /t sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9746-pkg1.run --expert --kernel-source-path=/usr/src/linux
So the summary is that you need the kernel source, which this ISO of KnoppMyth
doesn't provide by default. The kernel is a 2.6.18-chw-13 and the
corresponding source is not in APT (it's only up to chw-11 at the time I
write this.) However ftp://knoppmyth.net/R5 has the correct linux-source DEB
and it just needs to be installed. Once that is done you need to
"patch" it to match the existing linux-headers that are in /usr/src (thus
the recursive copy.) Then you want to start a make of the kernel source just
so that it creates some local config files, so let it run for a few second and
abort it. The only difference with the wiki page is that I like to recreate a
/usr/src/linux link onto the source tree. Finally I like to run the nVidia
script in --expert mode so I can see all what it is doing.
OK not exactly obvious but it only takes a few minutes to do.
Finally I just started X using
su - mythtv -c /usr/bin/startxand found out that the
nvidia-settings application in the X menu had been
updated. Now it had all the options for my card, including full configuration of
the TV out feature and voila :-)
So to recap I now have a good MythTV install. LiveTV works, recording and watching recordings works, the remote works I have about 120 hours worth of HD space at good quality. The music collection works and watching divx also works (or more exactly ms-mpeg4-v2 AVIs of the Teletubbies in French that I have encoded for the babies from French TV, yeah no kidding.)
Now I only have a few minor things to sort out namely configuring the WEP for my Linksys WMP11 and explore using ACPI to suspend/resume the PC automatically.
On the way to MM's party, I was enumerating the various things I may or may not want to do at home -- I mean pending personal projects. Most of these have been on a freeze in January because I was busy focusing on work. I need to change that.
One thing I realized is that I need to clean my pending todo list items for RIG 1 in PHP. I have a couple of things pending and they are not sexy but I want them and at least Sum wants them too. So I think I'll just go ahead and do this and then call it quits.
During the party, MM mentionned there's a Knoppix-based distro that contains everything for MythTV. On the way back from the party, this got me thinking. I have a lot of work to do at home for a little while.
I had been thinking about building my own PVR at home using MythTV for a while but the MythTV install didn't sound that exciting. OTOH having a distro with everything all setup sounds like the way to go.
The idea if it works would be to use my desktop PC has a MythTV box, which would also replace the laptop that I currently use as a music server. Later I'll transform this laptop in a DSL router and firewall.
So I looked around a bit and found KnoppMyth. Reading the pamphlet was all I needed to get started. I burned the ISO on a CD and performed the manual installation steps on a SATA drive I had lying around. At first it didn't work, but I eventually realized the CD-RW didn't burn clean so after burning it a second time on another CD-RW, this time it installed just fine and I was contemplating a fresh install of MythTV in minutes. After toying with it for most of the day I still had some issues, namely no TV output and nothing happened when trying to watch live TV but overall I was pleased with the software and decided it was the way to go.
Not much here, eh? As if I had been living under a rock or something. Maybe. I spent the past few weeks working a lot. Stuff for work, but outside of my planning, learning new and exiting stuff. Obviously monitoring Borg stuff on my favorite web app at work kept me busy many nights and week-ends (sorry for the lame inside joke -- well actually no I'm not sorry about it :-p.)
So anyway, beside the fun work, there's the non-fun at work too. I'm fighting to keep my little project going. There's still tons of stuff to do and few help to get. Besides help doesn't always come in the way I want -- meaning the web app is non standard in its architecture and the way it operates and I want to keep that intact.
Outside of work, babies are being fantastic, with even a couple of cry-free nights, and definitely I'm having a blast playing with them.
Yesterday I recently realized there was a tech talk about Second Life a while ago and the video is actually available here: The Virtual World of Second Life. My opinion of Second Life was rather low (i.e. pointless and graphics suck) and since the creators of course say it doesn't suck and I thought, hey let's try. Accounts are free so trying it out is just a download away.
For some reason trying to connect to their web site, create an account and download the client took forever. I mean literally web pages would take dozens of minutes to load. I finally found a mention in their blog that they had a server maintenance going on. I tried again the next morning and it was all fast again.
So after trying it, I'd say it confirms my opinion, and least it's not for me. As far as I am concerned it is pointless. However the client is nice and the whole thing is rather responsive for something that happens all server-side.
One thing I immediately liked compared to Wow is that I'm not "stuck" in the game. Wow is designed to extend game play and things take time to accomplish. It takes time to travel anywhere in the world and it takes time to complete quests. Login out has a timeout and you have to wait a bit and your character can get killed if it's not in an inn (meaning generally you plan for your time play because you'll want to go back to the inn before leaving.) It's by design, and although some people complain it gets nerfed all the time it's still the main design strategy. So yes Wow literally sucks time out of the player. I guess you can spend timeless hours exploring SL too but you don't have too. Login in is pretty fast and login out is almost instantaneous.
But SL is not a game in the sense that no quests are offered to you with in-game rewards (although I'm sure that happens somewhere in the world.) You just go there and it's up to you to find what you want to be doing.
It's also obvious there's an emphasis on the monetary side of it.
When I was playing I was thinking of my old Netdroids idea and that where I realized such a thing could not work on such a scale. I bet SL main motivation is monetary. It's not the same public.
Jumping subjects, the week-ends ended up at MM's place to "help" him with all the food he came back with. And as always that was a nice evening, even nicer because I hadn't done this in a while.
Got quotes?
"Because the mail never stops. It just keeps coming and coming and coming. There's never a letup, It's relentless. Every day it piles up more and more, but the more you get out, the more it keeps coming. And then the bar code reader breaks. And then it's Publisher's Clearinghouse day." -- Newman in Seinfield.
I miss playing Wow from time to time. Yet at the same time I don't want to play. That's really odd.
From time to time I day dream of areas or events that I experienced in Wow. That did happen a bit more frequently over the last past week. Interestingly enough that's about the same time when I started to play Wow again last year. Maybe it's a cycle -- like the mind focuses on one theme and extract old images from this theme for a while then moves on to another theme.
Other the last year I got out my old versions of Duke Nukem 3D and StarCraft for about the same reasons. These are all games that I played quite extensively for weeks (months in the case of Wow) for long periods of time (sometimes night & day) and with no little effort I can picture myself playing extensive portions of the games.
Thinking again on Wow, the last thing I want right now is to play it again. Yes I loved the game very much, I still think it's a great game and I'm definitely glad I got to play it. But on the other hand in the long term it's irritating to go through the same quests over and over again to level different characters, it takes way too much time to play and finally I played too much solo and not enough in meaningful groups to have a good group experience -- which is also part my fault, I just can't focus 4-5 hours on an instance without being interrupted every 5 or 10 minutes by babies or other household activities. In the end I choose to favor quality of (family) life instead of quality of game. YMMV ;-)
However I can realize how dangerous Wow can be. I realize that if I had started to play Wow when I was a teenager, in high school or at the university, that would have been terrible. The sense of real-life obligations is much lower at that age, and even the thought of being kicked out of school is not enough to compensate for the addiction that something like Wow can generate. But then maybe I would have been OK too. I generally have a pretty good sense of where my obligations belong and even though I can be lazy and procrastinate a lot I tend to counter-balance impulsions with the needs of real-life. So as a teenager I think I would have had about the same whole-immersion period where Wow would have been the sole focus on my personal time and then my other hobbies would have resurfaced slowly. However teenagers that are correctly supervised by their parents should have no trouble as eventually someone has to pay that monthly fee so they can work a good deal -- as in "I'll pay for your fr34k1n' game if you keep showing me good grades" also called "La carotte et le baton". That kind of deal has always worked and it will always work.
Yes, I know I have this complicated love-hate relationship with MacOS X.
However it can be made a decent OS if only one gets rid of a number of annoyances:
clear Mod1 clear Mod2 keycode 63 = Mode_switch keycode 66 = Meta_L add Mod1 = Meta_L add Mod2 = Mode_switch
Terminal xterm -fg green -bg black -fn -misc-fixed-*-*-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-*-*
$ sudo port -d sync $ sudo port -d selfupdate $ port search emacs $ sudo port install emacs
And when you need to refresh your system a bit later:
$ sudo port -d sync $ sudo port -d selfupdate $ port outdated # lists packages that can be upgraded $ sudo port upgrade xemacs
Apparently I'm an infinite looper. Now there's a term for it, so let's use it. I'm probably even worse since I'm like an infinite looper stuck in a locked mutex:
Oh well that's only going to reenforce MM's teasing. And your point would be? :-p
On a side note since I started using my old small laptop as a music server for the babies play area they have been listening to some good music too. In the morning I generally play them Oakenfold's Resident or After Trance's Techno Morning Mix Party. Later during the day I generally switch to more various mixes, like my own remix of Cream Future Trance, Oakenfold's Another World, PvD's, New York Underground or I switch to Magik and my collection of ASOT.
I used to play them also a selection of Jazz (mostly Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton) and classical (Beethoven and Mozart) but that got boring after a few weeks. Good trance on the other hand never gets boring. And babies love it as much: they actually dance on it :-)
Happy New Year!
Bonnee année et bonne santé pour 2007 :-)
Babies are dancing and it's a bright sunny morning...
It's as simple as that :-)
No lame resolutions that nobody's going to follow here. Keep it simple and let the source err the force be with you!
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