Since MythTV is one of my favorite hobby projects, I figured I should start blogging about it. I started building my Myth box over the summer of 2006 with MythTV 0.19 and Ubuntu Dapper Drake. Since Dapper had no built in package support for MythTV, everything had to be compiled, including MythTV, IVTV, and LIRC. Edgy Eft has a MythTV package and it makes installing a lot easier.
The newest release of MythTV, 0.20, has many new features over 0.19, but only one stands out to me. MythTV’s internal DVD player is awesome compared to Xine. It is definitely the biggest improvement to Myth. MythArchive is also new and promising, but I haven’t used it so I can’t really comment. Once I get an HD card, I see myself using archiving much more. Its hard to waste a DVD on low quality shows.
Now that I have filled you in on my history with Myth and its newest features, I figure I should tell you what some of my favorite things about Myth are.
- MythTV recordings are near perfect, I haven’t missed any of my favorite shows in months.
- Transcoding compresses recordings to about 70% their original size, with very little quality loss
- MythDVD
- MythMusic + SSHFS to my desktop is amazing
Even though I love my MythTV box, Myth has many shortcomings. Here are a few of my least favorite things about MythTV:
- MythDVD doesn’t allow ripping of entire DVD’s, just the main movie. I use K9Copy to backup my DVDs.
- MythDVD digital audio pass through doesn’t work (I have an awesome home theater so this is really annoying)
- MythDVD autoplay doesn’t work
- Setting HELL
- Transcoding/Post recording processing is a pain
- Audio configuration is horrific
- XV vs. XVMC
- And 1000 other things that I barely understand
- Transcoding: Can’t make it happen by default
- MythBrowser never works good
- MythWeb is buggy
I will continue to keep everyone posted on my MythBreakthroughs and eventually I hope to post a script that will basically install MythTV on any Ubuntu system.
(Oh yea, Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn supposidly includes an IVTV package, awesome)
I have had an iPod for a little over a year, and never updated the software. Since I run Ubuntu on all my computers, without Wine, I rarely log onto my Windows partition. So, a couple days ago, I decided to update my iPod software from 1.0 to 1.2.1.
All did not go as planned.
When I loaded up Amarok after updating my iPod, I received this message:
Media Device: failed to create lockfile on iPod mounted at /media/ipod: Read-only file system
After a lot of Googling, I found nothing related to my error. Most of the problems I found were related to HFS filesystems (Mac iPod default) but mine was FAT32.
Then, I found the option to manually manage my iPod on iTunes. Since then, I have had no problems syncing my iPod via Amarok.
I recently found this while going through PHP’s online documentation:
Do not use return-by-reference to increase performance, the engine is smart enough to optimize this on its own. Only return references when you have a valid technical reason to do it!
So, the question becomes, what is a valid technical reason to use references? Objects are already passed and returned by reference, so using references for them is a waste. In the last couple years of PHP coding, I have only found one good use for references:
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| public function getNextLine(&$str){
....
$next_line = substr($str,0,10);
$str = substr($str, 10);
....
return $next_line;
} |
Parsing functions are the only place that I have effectively used references. Even then, there are perfectly viable alternative solutions, like returning an array of the next line and string.
So, the moral of the story is: try to stay away from references in most cases. They can confuse the code, without adding much benefit.
A few months ago, one of my friends told me to check out Pandora Internet Radio. Since then, I have rarely listened to any other internet radio services. A few years ago I tried out Yahoo’s music service and was fairly impressed but it wasn’t very good at recommending music I like. Pandora, on the other hand, is great at it.
Pandora is based on the Music Genome Project, and I have no idea what that is. Basically, I think it is really good at picking out songs it thinks a user will like.
Oh yea, its also free with no commercials. Everyone should go try it for those two reasons alone.
(About a minute before I published this post, I found PandoraFM which is a mash-up between Pandora and Last.fm. Definitely going to have to try this one out)
When I wanted a laptop for school a couple years ago, I came to the sad realization that I couldn’t buy one that didn’t have Microsoft Windows and 500 other pre-installed programs. I quickly reformatted to Linux.
Today, Dell and Microsoft are realizing there are many others out there like me. Since Dell started its Ideastorm website they finally must acknowledge that people hate not having a choice. The number one idea is “Pre-installed Linux.” Wow! could this start a shift away from Windows? (I doubt it but its definitely giving Linux boost)
A few other honorable mentions on idea storm:
- OpenOffice pre-installations
- No pre-installed programs
- No Overseas tech support
I encourage everyone to go vote, so that I can finally get a laptop with Linux.
Now if only Cell Phone and Cable companies would create ideas websites….