Now once I play a game, I generally don't feel like playing it a second time. For the few titles that I like, cheat modes are what saves it.

A good example is Doom, be it 1, 2 or 3, or Duke Nukem. Completing the game once is ok, but what I really like is just having a fun relaxed time without too much hassle. In that case, enter

 *** curr_category=[[raw locals().get('curr_category', 'NOT-SET2')]] permalink_url=[[raw locals().get('permalink_url', 'NOT-SET')]] rel_permalink_url=[[raw locals().get('rel_permalink_url', 'NOT-SET')]] 

 *** curr_category=[[raw locals().get('curr_category', 'NOT-SET2')]] permalink_url=[[raw locals().get('permalink_url', 'NOT-SET')]] rel_permalink_url=[[raw locals().get('rel_permalink_url', 'NOT-SET')]] 

especially when you remove the building time constraint. Funny thing, it also speeds up the computer. Remove the fog of war and have fun looking at what the computer is doing. Then get infinite supplies and look at the computer exhausting its strategy. Fun times :-)

Similar is Warhammer 40k: Dark Crusade, which I picked up a few years ago (coincidently I'd never thought of ever getting a game with such a loosy name if it hadn't come bundled for free with a graphics card upgrade... and even like that the CD sat alone on a shelf for a while before I looked it up and realized I would actually like it.) Anyway, disable the construction times, infinite resources, is that it? No that one was a tad different as I had lots of fun looking at the lua code, modifying it and especially changing the stats of the players in the game files. Hey it's a game and I get to code something too, now that's what I call fun.

blah blah do you understand? blah blah". Just nod and something will happen. Figuring what do to later is left as an exercise to the reader (me) -- (and I'm still partly like that; the world lacks good man pages, vim for config files and a good backup tool.)

Anyway, sometimes mid-90's I was working for this startup in France and the whole point was to develop on BeOS. I was fresh from the university and happy like a puppy with a new toy. So here it goes again and "blah blah Be Headquarters blah blah one week". Next thing I know I'm landing in SFO and find my way to a hotel in Menlo Park, a block down on El Camino from Be's Headquarters. That's all cool with me. Oh and my English sucked so much that I had trouble ordering a freaking pizza on my own at night -- I tried a McDonald's next and resolved this by using my broken Spanish with better results, although I regretted the food later.

Anyway I report to Be's Headquarters in the morning, still wondering what I came in for. Somebody introduces me to the hobbit-based BeBox. That looks cool. Except the system is infantile so you program on this box next to it. Looks like a random beige PC. Guy boots it: "Hey it's SCO Linux, always heard of it, never seen it." "Have you ever used a Unix system before?" "Sure, I use Slackware Linux at home." "OK the goal of this week is to... err was to introduce you to Unix. Let's find something else to do now."

I do however learn that I'm "cross-compiling". vi, make, tar to flopyy, untar on the other side, printf debugging.

So anyway, I keep busy for the rest of the week, meeting BeOS team members. Cool bunch. Broken English and introvertism doesn't help for introduction though. Can't remember any of them. Bunch of ex-Apple guys. Someone is proud to have been part of the Newton team, I try not to laugh to loud. Highlight of the week is when David Ramsey, my host, takes me to Fry's and later to a shooting range.

Later on I'm back in France and they shipped me a hobbit BeBox, serial number 00001 or something, and the same SCO Linux PC. I am so eager to start the stuff that I dig under the desk to plug the PC, turn on the power button and... I'm blinded by a flash. Cough cough, bad smell. Well turns out the cheap power supply was still on 110V and it was not an auto-switch. We get a new power supply and luckily the board hadn't been damaged.

That made Droulers from BeEurope laugh out loud.

Later all the boxes I received had a post-it that said "220V" :-)

I don't quite remember kids shows that much. OK I remember watching stuff like Capitan Futuro (capitaine flamme), Candy, Calimero and japanese 4-force and mega-robots clones. It was already borderline when I was a kid, but those are painful to even try to watch today. Really painful.

Let's be honest: I love Amazon, first because they have a web site that does not suck and that is full of useful features. Once you've used them, all other e-commerce sites look disappointing.

The next best thing is when I became a prime customer. Sure, prime is not free, but if you factor the shipping price you'd pay, it all makes sense. Sometimes an item price will be a bit more expensive than elsewhere, but the resulting price after shipping and handling might be better on Amazon. And you get it in two days. No brainer.

There's something cool also about getting a UPS truck deliver stuff to you in the middle of a forest where there is no postal service delivery. It's faster than going to the nearest town -- although the DoItBest hardware store of Dallas, PA is nothing to be ashamed of and can be quite competitive.

So anyway, I thought for the fun I'd put here a selection of my reviews. It's quite a wide range.

KeyTronic 104 Key PS2 keyboard

This is a KeyTronic full-size PC keyboard. It's one of the best things you can attach to a computer.

If you do a lot of typing, that's the kind of keyboard you need: it has a nice feeling, the spacing and the layout is just fine, and contrary to laptop-like keyboards there's some real depth to the keys.

Contrary to some modern keyboards, like the Microsoft "ergonomic" one, all the keys work the same, even the space bar. You won't have a key that feels different or gets stuck because of bad plastic. They have all a similar pressure and feedback and all make a wonderful noise when pressed. You can type lightly or literally pound on it and it will work the same.

Note that this series of KeyTronic keyboards is a quite noisy. That's part of the product. If you want a silent keyboard, move along. It's not as noisy as the old IBM pounding-metal keyboards from the 80's or 90's, though.

It's durable too. My last KeyTronic lasted 10+ years before one of the keys started acting up from time to time. There's supposedly a lifetime warranty on it, but let's face it, after 10 years or so it's cheaper to get a brand new one than get the membrane replaced. It's also trivial to open it and service it yourself, if you're so inclined.

Tool House 770002 52 Piece Metric and Fractional Bit Tip and Socket Wrench Set

That's a nice thing to keep around for a great cheap price.

The case is convenient but it doesn't qualify of "durable". One of the closing tabs of the case broke when I tried to open it the very first time. It comes with a tiny piece of foam inside, which keeps everything in place, yet still when I hold the case vertically things tend to shift and move inside. Mere details -- you're not buying this for the case, are you? The case is just here to help put it away and avoid loosing all these pieces :-)

The two ratchets are nice and feel sturdy enough. The yellow screwdriver is quite narrow and lacks grip. There's a nice number of sockets, covering a whole lot of ranges. The sockets are good fits and I have yet to break or ruin one.

Overall it's nice to have this around, handy and at that price you don't have to be too careful.

Fiskars Chopping Axe 23.5-Inch #7857

This is a rather good axe and it's nice to use. I used it as a felling axe to clear some paths in the forest.

I used it to replace a very very old steel-head axe with a hickory handle (the head kept coming off and I don't have the tools to hang it again.) Being new it was nice and sharp, didn't get stuck too much. It was a bit shorter than I expected -- my old axe was a 25- or 26-inch, so 24 seemed a tad short whereas 28-inch seemed too long. Going from a hickory handle to synthetic, the feeling is not the same when it hits, it gave a much harsher feeling in my arms. It was also a tad lighter than my old axe. Fine, I had to adjust a bit, I got over it and the result is that I cut some hard old wood faster than before and it was a lot of fun.

Motorola T9500XLR 25-Mile 2-Way Radio Pair

I got these radios to keep a safety contact when I'm nearby in the forest, with hills and of course lots of trees in between. The effective range was about 2 miles in this condition, which was good enough for me. The radios are light to carry, they come with a handy belt clip. There's a dock for easy recharging. Using it was rather easy and intuitive, although the menu key that has several functions seem a bit confusing at first -- just adjust all settings with the manual in hand and then don't touch them again :-)

I'm not sure how long the battery lasts: I've used it for whole mornings or whole afternoons mostly sitting there on standby with maybe a few minutes worth of chat and it took several days like this for the battery indicator to get down to 2/3rd. It's a NiMH battery so it *will* have aging issues after a few years but by the time they start loosing their charge it will be more economical to simply buy a new set than replace the batteries.

I do give it 4-star instead of 5 just because of the "iVox" hands-free feature: I just couldn't get it to work and the manual is not too helpful on that one. I kept setting the mode on, then later when I'd try to use it nothing would happen and I'd realize the iVox mode had gone off in between. I'm dubious of the utility of that mode anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

If there's one feature I miss: I wish the radio would also display the current time. Like that I could skip carrying a watch. But then most people probably don't care about that :-)

Sony MDR-NC40 Noise Canceling Headphone

Overall these are good headphones. I use them when I travel, mostly to cancel airplane noise. If you've never used cancellation headphones, they are great to remove constant background noise, so in a plane that means you can better listen to your music/movie without having to put the volume insanely high. Note that noise cancellation does not cancel voice chatter, so don't even try to use this in an office -- in this case you want over-the-ear cups for good isolation.

They fold easily but folding the whole thing in the accompanying case takes a bit of practice and patience at first. It's a tight squeeze but I now manage to store my iPod nano in the case too. It then stores easily and it is pretty light to carry around.

Otherwise they are OK comfort-wise, just a tiny bit tighter on the ear than my older Sony noise canceling headphones. Sound-wise, the bass is a bit too much boosted even for my taste; a bit of equalization on the iPod fixes that easily.

Panasonic BL-C131A Network Camera Wireless 802.11

Overall this is a good camera. Setting it up with my wifi was trivial. Price is a bit steep but you get a quality product with good support, for once. I found a few limitations, your mileage may vary:

MIU Connoisseur Corkscrew

This is a really good "rabbit" like wine opener. If you've never used one, you'll be impressed the first time you use it. Not only is it faster but it is also more reliable and it's hard to break a cork with such an opener, even an old cork. That's a gift that will keep on being appreciated.

Price is really good and quality is on par. I generally use it once a week and I have no problem with the corkscrew. The screw itself is replaceable and I have yet to use the replacement after several years of use. The foil cutter broke after several months, but that can be easily replaced -- or just use a knife to remove the foil, as it is customary to do.

Sleep Better 3-Inch Visco Elastic Memory Foam Mattress

We have this on our queen bed, which mattress was good but now feels a bit too hard to our aging backs and has saggy spots. This foam topper fixes both issues, as is to be expected. The 3-inch is a good size and it's a pleasure to sleep -- or more appropriately "to sink" -- in it every night. At 2.5 lb/ft^3, the density is medium, which is good enough.

The foam arrived rolled in a big box. It was not as compressed as I thought -- some reviews make you think it's compressed in a dark hole and then will expand to fill your whole house... it's not that dramatic!

However the smell of new foam toppers is a known issue -- all foams I've seen do that anyway, it's not just that one. The original smell is not only nauseating, it gives me immediate headaches. I can't stress that enough: you must let the mattress air and expand in a *ventilated* non-living area for at least 2 or 3 days before using it. Don't rush it -- in case of doubt, let it air one more day rather than be deceived by the chemical smell, as it will be nauseating at first. Put it somewhere out of sight in a ventilated area, such as in the basement or the garage. If after 3 days you can stick your nose on it and not feel the urge to run away fast, then you can consider moving it in the bedroom.

After a month or so of use, there's still a slight curious smell the first time I'd get in bed, but nothing dramatic. It's such a pleasure to fall asleep and wake up on that thing, it's totally worth it.

So instead I found an old axe and used it to clear the old trees fallen on the paths. By old axe I mean in good condition yet 2 generations behind; and although the head was of really good quality it kept coming off the handle. A practical ax expert would just tell you you have to know how to hang your own handle to the ax head.

Although that sounded attractive for about a microsecond or two, I just got myself a brand new Fiskars Chopping Axe which was really so much more efficient yet shorter and lighter. I got the 23.5-inch one, which is the closest to the old 25-inch one I had been using. It's a tad short, but the only other choice is a 28-inch, which is really too long.

I also had some fun with the Craftsman Lawn Mower 917.288700 and did some maintenance on it, simple stuff like changing the oil and all the oil/gas/air filters.

The older Craftsman Tractor 917.256544 was out of commission but after removing the mower and adding a new battery that now makes a working tractor and I can attach it to my dumping cart.

The other thing I did was explore the 250 or so acres of forest, trying to match the deed description (in perch and rod units, no less) and I ended up with some nice tracks on Google Earth.

My main tool was mostly MyTracks, to record the tracks and upload them to Google Earth but eventually I also ended up writing my own Android Bearing app to compute the compass bearing between two marked points.

It's the first time I actually play with a GPS. On one hand it was nice as it actually worked fairly well it the medium-dense forest; on the other hand the precision wasn't that impressive -- the GPS generally indicated 8 or 16 meters for accuracy but it did not update fast enough when walking. Also the integrated compass on the phone was incredibly noisy with the reading typically fluctuating -/+ 10 degrees.

Finally I got quite a lot more done, including many many hours spent reading the vast content of TV Tropes, working on my Android apps ([Bearing|] obviously, but Timeriffic, Brighteriffic and Flashlight got translated to French too and had many other improvements, without even mentionning Nerdkill) and much more.

Overall what made the biggest difference was having a real 24-hour almost-instant internet connection instead of a 33K modem line. In that regard, I must say the ARC booster antenna was incredibly good when combined with the aging Kyocera KPC650. Bandwidth ranged from 70/40 KB/s (down/up) down to 3 KB/s (in rain at night, it's really that weather sensitive) with a typical average speed of 15 KB/s when I was generally getting no signal at all without the booster antenna. I guess being in the middle of a forest, behind a hill and out of the official zone coverage doesn't help :-) The signal strength indicator was around -100 dBm without the antenna and up to -80 dBm with it.

 *** curr_category=[[raw locals().get('curr_category', 'NOT-SET2')]] permalink_url=[[raw locals().get('permalink_url', 'NOT-SET')]] rel_permalink_url=[[raw locals().get('rel_permalink_url', 'NOT-SET')]] 

A few days ago this happened again. In the past, the problem would happen for a while and suddenly the mobo might start booting, so annoyed I unplugged my cell phone to go read my mails somewhere else and... oh wait it just booted!

Huh? Backup! OK the cell phone is one of these smart cell phone and I had plugged to the USB to charge it (incidentally the USB has power even when the PC is stopped.)

I tried a couple of times and this is definitive: having the phone plugged into USB simply locks up the BIOS. At boot it will stop after printing the CPU and before starting to detect the drives.

A flagrant test is to boot the PC without the phone plugged, enter the BIOS setup and plug the phone: it locks up instantly. Remove the phone and the setup works again.

Anyhow, I found an Abit AN8 forum page that describes exactly this behavior. Granted the page is for the Abit AN8-SLI motherboard, not the ASUS M2N-E but the description is right on and I take it's not just a coincidence.

The numbers may vary and the ranking might chance slightly but overall that's a pretty constant search pattern on my site except for one unusual entry.

Amusing, isn't it?

That looked like a foot-long piece of solid, maybe wood or similar.

And it landed. On the hood.

And bounced back. On the windshield.

And finally bounced back somewhere else.

The whole thing lasted 2 seconds and now I need a new windshield and 5 days of body shop on the hood.

I guess it could have been worse. But, damn, that windshield was barely 4 month old!

Thinking about it later, my reaction had been to do absolutely nothing and in fact it was the right one -- there was traffic all around me, there was no escape pattern to avoid it.

That config has been running mostly smooth for quite a while. Once last year, I remember trying to boot the computer, the BIOS starts showing up and then nothing happens. It would look like this and just sit there:

That was once and it stopped the next day. And now it's doing this again.

Eventually if I let it sit there for 15 minutes or more, the BIOS might concede to start but the whole thing seems pretty flaky. It might not start or Windows might crash during the boot or something like the sound chip might not be working at all.

A quick search online seem to indicate that the ASUS M2N-E has frequent boot issues and the culprit might be the support of the memory. And I'm not even overclocking mine, so it's clearly a sign of a flaky series of motherboard. What is strange is that for me most of the time it had worked just fine (until now at least) and that eventually the board boots. Maybe because I run the conservative BIOS settings.

Reports from forums indicate that some BIOS updates might fix this so I'll see what the latest BIOS update does.

As always, getting to Thunderhill is the hardest part (not to mention the 6 AM wake up call) but at least the weather was very nice -- relatively clear, sunny with a refreshing wind -- and the people from Hooked on Driving were really nice.

The group was pretty small, we had 4 people in the beginners groups and 6 in the advanced one. The 4 of us in my group had 3 instructors whom were giving plenty of feedback, which was much appreciated.

The program consisted of a series of exercises: running over dots to understand the car limits, simulate getting in the dirt and back on the track, and of course the mandatory find-the-apex-yourself, the cone zigzag and the braking exercises. All the kind of stuff you have to do when you want to learn your car, which is exactly why I went there in the first place.

We also had some more practical exercises to learn the track, especially a good amount of time practicing turn 9. For those unfamiliar with the track, it's a nice "blind" spot: the track goes up the hill, and right at the top there's a turn to negotiate and since you can't see the road on the other side of the hill it's really hard to know where to go when you're doing that at 50 MPH :-)

Later we did the same with turn 5, which is even more tricky, but this time we stopped and literally walked the turn. Once used to it this way, I found these turns to be almost the easiest ones. We walked turn 11 too but I still found it pretty tricky to get right after.

We also had a nice number of real track laps, basically I was following a lead car driven by an instructor. This started nice and slow and depending on how the student behind was following the instructor would give some nice feedback or pickup speed. I built up a descent speed although a couple of times I almost wanted to pass the lead car ;-) but it was really nice to have a reference point in case I had forgotten how to negotiate a turn and most important to see in advance which zones would be tricky and where to brake. Having the instructor in front made most turns look almost obvious; remove him and it's a whole different story...

In total I drove 85 miles, with most of it on the track so it was pretty good for a training program. And I used about 8 gallons of gas, so that gives me a respectable 10 mpg, not bad :-)

Most important I see now what my little car can do, it's really nice to see it in action and to have a safe place to experiment with it. It's only a Civic Si so it's clearly not as spiffy as the other cars one expects to find there -- for example the others "beginners" cars included a Subaru STI, a Corvette Z51 and an F430!

I can really see a clear difference with the old 240SX. The most important is the understeer instead of oversteer of course, but the way the power builds up is interesting too -- the VTEC really kicks in at 6k RPM and the red line is at 8, so after a couple of laps I found where to downshift to get more RPM faster thus a better momentum.

So overall a great experience which was totally worth it.

It's cute and nice. Here are a couple of pictures:

Continue reading on the [OlpcXoTips] page. There rest of the pictures are here.

The original goal was that it would be a laptop for the kids to play with. That's still the goal, but I'm going to play with it first ;-) I need to see what activities would be good for them and maybe program some things I have in mind or alter existing stuff for my needs and then have them play with it under supervision.

Last time I was ranting about how our last Brother HL-1440 sucked and we replaced it by an HP LaserJet 1012.

Turns out the HP LaserJet 1012 sucks too.

I always knew it was an "host-based" printer, meaning the Windows box is the one that prepares the image and sends it to the printer. What I didn't know is that it is actually a more powerful printer which is caped down due to some firmware bugs. These bugs are known by HP but they choose to ignore them, as one can read one this forum page: HP LaserJet 1012 Unsupported Personality PCL.

In my case, 3 years down the road, the printers works fine, very fine. When it decides to work that is, which doesn't happen very often. Continue reading the HP LaserJet 1012 rant for the full details.

So is another HP LaserJet going to suck too? What other printer would you recommend?

Luckily I'm "only" in for a new rim and tire, and some alignement.

Sorry for the poor picture quality, I took that one quickly with the cell phone just before going to the garage. What you see is a good size dent in the front left rim and a serious rip in the tire.

So what happened? I'm used to that turn, to go to the daycare, and it's usually a nice turn. However I made the turn too sharp too much in advance and I realized I was heading towards the divider, so I tried to correct and it looks like I was almost there since I barely hit it with the side of the rim. Even so it was quite a shock, I even immediately stopped on the middle of the bridge to see how much of the front bumper & wheel was still intact -- that's how bad it felt.

And a while ago I "shaved" another divider with the left rear rim & tire:

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/startx and 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.

The fact you can read this is a good sign.

My initial goal was to rebuild my home DSL server and split it between a front DSL/DMZ server and then place a NAS behind it.

Currently it does both, and it's also my linux toy box, so it runs a mix of Debian stable + security and various Debian unstable, with a complicated iptable setup to expose only a limited set of ports to the outside with plenty more services in the inside, and then with a secondary network just for the wireless that is treated as mostly insecure with WEP, MAC filtering and all sorts of goodies.

That Linux install has been around since almost 7 years now, perpetually evolving as I updated the kernel many many times, changed hardware, changed hard drives, etc. There's no much in common with the stock Linux that got installed 7 years ago, and there's probably not a single hardware component that hasn't been upgraded.

So anyway, this time I needed to upgrade the hard drives again. I could just have swapped one hard drive by another twice bigger but that didn't sound satisfactory enough. Since I have so much free time in my hands (negative numbers always look more impressive), I decided to rebuild a new server from scratch just for the NAS, and then a simpler smaller server just for the DSL and NAT.

Then I realized that I can really dispense of the separate server for the DSL and NAT, or more exactly use a Linux box that does that very well: an embedded Linux such as any of those DSL/Cable Wifi routers does exactly that. So I started looking for one.

My first choice was towards a Netgear WGT624. I like the design, the specs are OK and I'm familiar with the configuration interface since my father has a Netgear DGB834G for ADSL2+ and that works pretty well. Unfortunately, the reviews and online comments for the WGT624 are really terrible (lots of wifi disconnects or router freeze.)

Since there's ample concurrence in the domain of 802.11g gateway/routers, I continued looking online and eventually it turns out that people mostly like the Linksys WRT54GS or the Buffalo WHR-G54S. Comments have it that the latest revision of the Linksys WRT54GS is bit too cheap and most will prefer the Linksys WRT54GL (same hardware with a bit more memory). All these apparently share the same reference design and the firmware is based on Linux.

Note that generally I wouldn't care so much if it ran Linux or whatever else. However here the bottom line is that the firmware being open source has been made public and there have been at least a couple of good projects started around this code base, adding features that you may not find in the original firmware.

Anyhow I ended up getting the Buffalo WHR-G54S, which incidentally was cheaper than the Linksys, available at Circuit City online with a discount and in-store pickup. Oh and it looks much better than the Linksys massive box.

So I first gave it a try. My idea was to keep the setup the router to do the NAT, DHCP and all that, disable these services on the PC server and use port forwarding to make the other services available.

Setting up the router was easy. The first thing was to change the admin password and to close the open wifi network (brr!), then configure the LAN on 192.168.1.x (it comes on 192.168.11.x), add some DHCP static hosts and the port forwards. On the old PC server side, it was a bit harder. It took me a while to realize that clearing the iptables tables was a bad idea when it defaulted to drop rules. Then of course I had to change all the bind config to match the new network. As usual what should have taken 5 minutes took a whole afternoon.

Anyhow yesterday I had my network mostly setup, with the only problem that trying to access my web site using the external domain name would just show me the router's config page. Quite frankly, I find it really dumb that they would put the router's internal web site on port 80 (Netgear puts his on 8080). Now that the problem with Apache's virtual host is that they depend on the hostname, so fine I duplicated the virtual host to use a specific hostname that was mapped to a local network address. It worked but then Wordpress started barking at me because they name their database table using the hostname itself! Grrr... That sounded like too much hacking around the fact that I couldn't change the integrated web server's port.

After thinking about for a while, I had a look at the DD-WRT forums and found a post indicating the web server port can be changed. DD-WRT is one of the open source replacement firmware for the router. So finally this morning I bit the bullet and just upgraded the firmware (flashing the router was as easy as following the instructions).

The feature set is mostly the same with some obvious enhancements: the integrated web server can run on https rather than http (which in itself solves the port 80 issue), and most important you can ssh to the modem, view the config files and manipulate all variables in the nvram manually.

So there I have, part 1 of my new home network. Next step is the NAS and DMZ.

I went to one of the many caffees at work today. That had me think about food at home back in France. I think my mother is a really great cook and I love all her dishes. Stuff I can remember eating during this trip, in no particular order:

The astute reader will notice this is actually a mix of cuisine Normande, Spanish and Languedoc. That's what I take for granted when I hear "French food", including the associated variety and freshness. That's also one of the reasons I have a hard time appreciating so-called "French restaurants" as authentic.

The AirFrance flight was actually nice, the babies had a good amount of nap/sleep and overall a good meal and the individual seat-mounted screens had nice comics to keep them from getting bored. They even went for a nice little walk and enjoyed the stairs in the 747.

The TGV leg of the trip was a bit harder at first. Eventually they fell asleep for a good part of the trip, so that was nice. Yet overall dragging the luggage in and out of the train in the ultra-short stops was the most stressful part.

Anyway I'm glad we're here at last. It's been a while.

I can see the structure flowing. I feel right home here :-)

Reading the trance article brings lots of good memories... For me, it all started about 11 or 10 years ago with Cosmic Cubes which was an awesome multi-volume compilation -- just check the line-up and you'll see the familiar crowd. Then was Rave Mission another annihilating multi-volume masterpiece, with it's splendid Vol. 11, then it was Goa Trance time with Astral Projection and of course Hallucinogen. Then all that was superseded by Progressive Trance and Paul van Dyk, Oakenfold, Tiesto and finally Armin van Buuren.

 *** curr_category=[[raw locals().get('curr_category', 'NOT-SET2')]] permalink_url=[[raw locals().get('permalink_url', 'NOT-SET')]] rel_permalink_url=[[raw locals().get('rel_permalink_url', 'NOT-SET')]] 

Of course MediaCoder is just a fancy shell over FFMPEG and a lot of over video/audio tools. It is however extremely convenient since the installer brings all these tools as Cygwin executables, whereas it's a pain to compile them oneself (I never myself managed to compile FFMPEG with x264 support under Cygwin, it's just too much pain and it's quite an unnecessary distraction when all I cared was to get some video files right away. YMMV.)

There are two problems with MediaCoder though. The first one is that it's again yet-another Cygwin-based app which installs some Cygwin DLLs (just like the NX Client for example.) So if you happen to already have Cygwin installed both MediaCoder and your Cygwin install will be broken if don't tweak it around (I haven't tried but I think doing the same trick as NX should work, that is locate the new DLLs and trash them before they run and register themselves.) The second issue, which is minor, is that it's a bit of a nagware; each time you run MediaCoder is actually opens a web browser to display its homepage and ask for a donation. I have no problem with freeware asking for donations but I find nagging to be a bit objectionable -- it screams "I make it free but really I want to get paid for it". Makes one wonder about what happened to shareware.

Besides that it's a great tool and I highly recommend it.