Geek Quanta

Using MythTV with FIOS TV

2011-02-06T14:00:00.015-05:00

For many years now, I've been enjoying the benefits of running MythTV on a cheap, bare bones tower. With two capture cards, I've been able to record just about everything my family and I want to watch. It's ability to autoskip commercials and export all of the content I record to any format and device I choose (iPhone, laptop, etc) puts it well above commercial DVRs out on the market.

The price for this, however, is that setting up MythTV requires bit of knowledge and effort.

Recently, we got FIOS and dropped our Comcast Internet and TV. When using Comcast, the tuner cards installed in the server set the channels internally. Of course, because FIOS TV requires set-top boxes, some changes were needed so that MythTV could control the channel changes on the external devices.

First, a bit about my setup:

OS: Mythbuntu 10.04.1 (updated)
LIRC version: 0.8.6
Capture Cards: Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150, Hauppauge HVR-1600
Set-top boxes: Motorola DCT-700

The DCT-700 can be rented from Verizon for $3.99/mo, or can be purchased online from anywhere as cheap as $10. The only means to control the channel on this box is via Infrared.

Although the Hauppauge cards both have IR receive and transmit capability built into them, I wasn't easily able to get the transmitter working (the receiver works out-of-the box with Mythbuntu). Although it's fairly easy to make a serial IR transmitter, I decided to buy the additional hardware.

After shopping around, I chose the USB-based transmitter by Iguanaworks. There were two things I liked about their product. For one, they provide their own drivers and give support to getting their product working with LIRC. For the other reason, I only have one serial port on my current MythTV backend server. I didn't feel like cracking open the case to install an expansion card, and even if I did, doing so would have limited my ability to add another capture card later, if I wanted to.

For some reason, the LIRC included in Mythbuntu didnt have IguanaIR drivers installed from the start. However, the IguanaIR software installation was fairly easy, though I did require a little help from the guys who run Iguanaworks. It should be noted, they helped me get their software installed before I even bought their product - BIG props to them for such excellent customer service.

Here was the jist of the steps they had me do to install their drivers:

If you haven't, add our repository to apt-get (see downloads page for instructions). Run sudo apt-get install iguanair to install our software. Now to install LIRC, you need to add Mythbuntu's 'source repository' to apt. This may already be done, or you may need to add it via synaptic (settings, repositories). Once that is added, run sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get build-dep lirc apt-get -b source lirc sudo dpkg -i lirc_*.deb and that will install the new LIRC that you just compiled. Now run lircd -H ? and you should see iguanair listed.

Following their directions, their drivers loaded perfectly into the kernel. I then bought from them a USB IR transceiver with 2 plugs and two 5ft wired IR emitters. When I inserted the USB plug & the two adapters, and was greeted with the following output from lsusb:
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 1781:0938 Multiple Vendors Iguanaworks USB IR Transceiver

To configure LIRC to use the hardware, I made the following changes to /etc/lirc/hardware.conf:

TRANSMITTER_DRIVER="iguanaIR" TRANSMITTER_DEVICE="/dev/iguanaIR/0"

To configure LIRC to be able to speak to the Motorola DCT700's, I used the posted config file for the DCT2000 from the LIRC Sourceforge Product Page. This is included in Mythbuntu by default, and should be referenced as follows in /etc/lirc/lircd.conf:
include "/usr/share/lirc/extras/transmitters/motorola/dctxxxx.conf"

That line is the only one that's needed in lircd.conf.

Two changes are needed in /etc/lirc/hardware.conf to specify the DCT700:

TRANSMITTER="USB-UIRT2 : Motorola Cable box" TRANSMITTER_LIRCD_CONF="motorola/dctxxxx.conf"

Of course, its necessary to recycle lirc after making all these config changes (/etc/init.d/lirc restart)

To verify that the transmitters worked, I used the irsend command from the LIRC package. It should be noted, a multi step command is needed to change to a specific channel:

irsend set_transmitters 1 irsend send_once DCT2000 1 irsend send_once DCT2000 2 irsend send_once DCT2000 OK

The first line specifies which transmitter on the USB to use. Right now, I'm only using two, which I specify with either "1" (as above) or "3". Stereo 3.5 to Mono 3.5 adapters can also be purchased to add an additional 2 transmitters to the USB stick.

For MythTV to change the STB via irsend, wrapper scripts are needed. If there were any that came with in MythTV, I didn't bother to find them, but wrote my own:

root@mythtv:~# cat /usr/local/bin/ch0.bash #!/bin/bash /usr/local/bin/sendir.pl 1 $1 root@mythtv:~# cat /usr/local/bin/ch1.bash #!/bin/bash /usr/local/bin/sendir.pl 3 $1

More on the "sendir.pl" script in a few.

To configure Myth to use these scripts, it was necessary to load up the GUI configuration program on the backend server where all of this was going on. The magic config screens are found at "Input Connections", one for each capture card:

Two fields needed to be changed. The one was "External channel change command", which set to the respective script shown above (0 or 1). The second was "Preset Tuner to Channel", set to "3", which is the analog channel that the DCT700 transmits on.

As it turned out, there's a strange bug in LIRC that prevents transmission of the number "0" to the DCT 700. I found some commentary about it, but since any fix seems to require code changes to the compiled LIRC binaries, I got really lazy and just expanded my Perl wrapper script sendir.pl to handle the odd requirement to never try to send "0" to the DCT700's:

root@mythtv:~# cat /usr/local/bin/sendir.pl #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; my $transmitter=$ARGV[0]; my $channel = int($ARGV[1]); print "irsend set_transmitters $transmitter\n"; system "irsend set_transmitters $transmitter"; if ($channel =~ /.0./) { my $diff = $channel - 99; &setch(99); while ($diff) { &chup; $diff--; } } elsif ($channel =~ /0/) { $channel += 1; &setch($channel); &chdown; } else { &setch($channel); } sub chdown { print "irsend send_once DCT2000 CH-\n"; system "irsend send_once DCT2000 CH-"; } sub chup { print "irsend send_once DCT2000 CH+\n"; system "irsend send_once DCT2000 CH+"; } sub setch { my $channel = shift; my @channel_bits = split("", $channel); foreach my $ch (@channel_bits) { print "irsend send_once DCT2000 $ch\n"; system "irsend send_once DCT2000 $ch"; sleep 0.1; } print "irsend send_once DCT2000 OK\n"; system "irsend send_once DCT2000 OK"; sleep 0.4; }

It should be noted that the above script will workaround the "0" issue when handling channel sets [1-9]0 and 10[1-9], but it will not handle the [2-9]0[1-9] channels. I didn't bother to write the code to do that, as we currently don't have those higher channels in our subscription. :-P

Naturally, it's necessary to physically isolate the two DCTs, otherwise any command sent to one transmitter would likely affect both. A cardboard box was a handy solution. ;)

In all, it was a pretty painless process, and so far everything seems to be working as needed.

Cell Phone Evolution - Nesting Doll Style

2009-11-17T17:27:00.003-05:00

My wife linked me to this clever creation, thought it was quite cool.

More details at curbly.com.

The Story of Stuff

2009-02-03T20:56:00.002-05:00

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

From the website:

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

The 2008 Election from Delaware

2008-11-04T20:34:00.001-05:00

The line I faced this morning when I arrived at about 7:15am. I've voted in De in every election since 94, and can't recall such a crowd. I stood in line for about an hour. Granted, not as long as bigger states, but hey, this is Delaware ;-)

Uploaded by www.cellspin.net

We are going to do what we do every night, Pinky...

2008-10-01T19:54:00.001-04:00

i luvz my lolz...

Man decorates basement with $10 worth of Sharpie

2008-09-30T21:28:00.002-04:00

The Lexington Herald-Leader published an article about a man who knows how to wield a permanent marker.

When Charlie Kratzer started on the basement art project in his south Lexington home, he was surrounded by walls painted a classic cream. Ten dollars of Magic Marker and Sharpie later, the place was black and cream and drawn all over.

There are fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, Winston Churchill lounging with George Bernard Shaw — and the TV squirrel Rocky and his less adroit moose pal Bullwinkle.

Click on the link, there's an amazing animation showing the whole basement. It's quite cool.

2008 - a new depression?

2008-09-29T23:00:00.003-04:00

In reading news articles about Congress' rejection of the $700 billion bailout, I stumbled across disturbing testimony to the US House of Representatives' Committee of Financial Services regarding the parallels between the stock market crash of 1929 and the present economic situation.

The reader, if bold enough to undertake such a deep reading, should be quite disturbed by the fact that the testimony was given almost a year ago...before the subprime meltdown really got into swing and we reached the current state of crisis.

Some interesting quotes,

"Your predecessors on the Senate Banking Committee, in the celebrated Pecora Hearings of 1933 and 1934, laid the groundwork for the modern edifice of financial regulation. I suspect that they would be appalled at the parallels between the systemic risks of the 1920s and many of the modern practices that have been permitted to seep back in to our financial markets."

"Since repeal of Glass Steagall in 1999, after more than a decade of de facto inroads, super-banks have been able to re-enact the same kinds of structural conflicts of interest that were endemic in the 1920s -- lending to speculators, packaging and securitizing credits and then selling them off, wholesale or retail, and extracting fees at every step along the way. And, much of this paper is even more opaque to bank examiners than its counterparts were in the 1920s."

"A last parallel is ideological -- the nearly universal conviction, 80 years ago and today, that markets are so perfectly self-regulating that government's main job is to protect property rights, and otherwise just get out of the way.

We all know the history. The regulatory reforms of the New Deal saved capitalism from its own self-cannibalizing instincts, and a reliable, transparent and regulated financial economy went on to anchor an unprecedented boom in the real economy."

"Mr. Chairman, we are living on borrowed time. And the vulnerability goes far beyond the spillover effects of the sub-prime debacle.

We need to step back and consider the purpose of regulation. Financial regulation is too often understood as merely protecting consumers and investors. The New Deal model is actually a relatively indirect one, since it relies more on mandated disclosures, and less on prohibited practices."

And one last bit...

"One last parallel: I am chilled, as I'm sure you are, every time I hear a high public official or a Wall Street eminence utter the reassuring words, "The economic fundamentals are sound." Those same words were used by President Hoover and the captains of finance, in the deepening chill of the winter of 1929-1930. They didn't restore confidence, or revive the asset bubbles.

The fact is that the economic fundamentals are sound -- if you look at the real economy of factories and farms, and internet entrepreneurs, and retailing innovation and scientific research laboratories. It is the financial economy that is dangerously unsound. And as every student of economic history knows, depressions, ever since the South Sea bubble, originate in excesses in the financial economy, and go on to ruin the real economy."

Truly, those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.

The original article is very long, and very heavy in its economic details. I don't pretend to understand all of it, though I do get the jist of most of it.

In the end, it's very frightening, as are the times we live in.

Here's hoping we're not on the cusp of the next Great Depression...

I'm a Mac and I'm a PC...

2008-09-19T19:33:00.001-04:00

Best...Parody...EVAR!

Election 2008

2008-09-17T20:18:00.001-04:00

Normally, I don't post about politics on my blog...but this article disturbed me enough that I feel I need to this time.

Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes

Tired? Just go back 100 years...

2008-07-27T17:56:00.007-04:00

It's been a bit crazy at work lately, things have been getting very busy and time consuming. The weekend went fairly well so far, we took the kid out to a playground with my parents and spent the day together. This morning was a lot of overdue lawn work. About four hours ago, the kid went down for her nap and my wife and I were just settling in for what promised to be a quiet afternoon, talking about what movie we'd like to watch.

It suddenly got a lot more quiet than we had expected.

A freak thunderstorm blew into the area with no warning, spraying rain and covering the sky with dark, ominous gray clouds. The soaked the ground with water, but then left as quickly as it came. It only lingered for a half an hour, but as it left it took our electricity with it.

It's been a long time since we lost the power, thank Heaven. Since moving into our house about five years ago, the local power supply has been remarkably robust, in spite of much worse thunderstorms in the past. This time, however, we lost our electricity after a few disturbing flickers that brought the lights up and down.

My wife and I were both surprised at the event, and immediately did the usual drill in case it was a long outage. We retrieved our candles, planned for a cold dinner, and thought forward to the next day. After taking twenty minutes to clean the living room (children are messy creatures ;) we then found ourselves wondering what to do.

There was no Internet, no TV. We couldn't run the dish washer, neither the clothes washer nor dryer. The air-conditioner was silent, as were the computers and all the appliances.

The depth of the silence was astounding.

We opened the windows, as the house was getting stuffy and the storm had passed. The cool air from outside breezed in, flushing away the stuffy air that had been stiffening ever since the central conditioner died with the rest of the house. The outside was as quiet as the inside. Gone were the humming noises of our neighbor's central air units, gone was the noise of televisions, radios, and even lawn mowers.

The only noise was the rustle of the wind in the trees, or the occasional twitter of a bird, the buzz of an insect.

At first, the quiet was slightly annoying. We both had things we wanted to do, chores to accomplish and entertaining electronics we wanted to relax through. My wife took to the quiet much more quickly than I did, having grown up in a quiet house. She simply picked up a book and started reading. For me, however, I had grown up in a house that was always abuzz with the hum of circuitry and the rush of air from a central unit.

Following Linda's lead, I went down to the basement to find a book to amuse me. For many years now, I've been trying to find time to read Huck Finn. So, I picked up a book I'd bought years ago with four of Mark Twain's novels.

Sitting down, I opened the plain book and quietly read the pages. Many, many years have passed since I read a book that was not a technical manual or a college text book. As I read the ink-laden pages of the tome, memories of my teen age years came back to me, when I had time to read books for leisure. The added silence of the power outage only enhanced the experience.

Five chapters and an hour later, Linda and I took to talking, giving our eyes a break from the reading. It was all the more relaxing, just chatting idly about matters of the day in our lives. Soon after that, we took to playing dominoes while listening to quiet tunes pouring out of the speaker of a hand-crank radio. The air was cool and crisp after the storm, and we continued our chat, the room filled with the music, the sound of our voices, and our laughter.

Gone was the world of electronic beeps and whirs, the emails, the web pages, the instant news, instant chat, instant everything. Life was slow again, and peaceful. I felt a calm overtake me that I had not experienced in years, perhaps even ever before. All that we had before us was each other and the gentle sounds of the radio.

After a good hour of this pleasant time, the entire house came to life as the power came back on, appliances whirring once more and computers beeping as they sprang to life. The central air rushed out of the duct at our feet, and suddenly the radio seemed small and insignificant in the face of so many other electronic components of our modern home.

We finished our last domino game and went back to our typical day. Perhaps we were just a bit more relaxed than before the power so graciously left us for the time.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as we sat in the silence, reading and enjoying each other's company. The experience was simply unparalleled in my busy life of late, so laden with the rush of work, childcare, and keeping up with family and friends.

Life truly has become too fast paced of late, I think. Not much can be done to stop it, we can't turn back the clock. However, I think we could all benefit by unplugging now and again, forcibly ripping the plugs and antennas out of our digital days to sit in the same peace and quiet as our grandparents must have enjoyed decades ago when the only media around was a record player or the radio. Perhaps we are more efficient and productive than they were, but are we happier?

There's much to be said for disconnecting, now and again.

2008-07-12T08:55:00.001-04:00

So with iPhone 2.0, I'm trying the Lifecast 3rd party app. Just giving it a whirl here...

Posted with LifeCast

Home Roast - Ethiopia Organic Dry Process Golocha

2008-07-07T08:55:00.000-04:00

Last night, I roasted the next bag from the Sweet Maria's sampler that my wife gave me for my birthday. Here's what the bag read:

Ethiopia Organic Dry Process Golocha
At Full City. A rustic cup with very heavy body, dried apricot, hint herbs, tobacco, bittersweet finish, modest acidity

This roasting experience was markedly different than the last couple that I'd done. First, the beans had a lot more empty shells than I'd ever seen before. As the roasting progressed, these shells quickly turned into a great deal of chaff. Because of this, I pushed the beans to a darker color than I'd ever done, mainly because I was concerned about the quality of the beans. I figured it was better to roast more heavily (though I probably finished with a full city level anyway).

It seemed that some of the beans darkened very quickly, while most seemed to take much longer. I started to be concerned that the roast wouldn't taste very good because of this, as it seemed I was going to end up with some over-roasted beans amongst the majority.

The cracking was rather frequent and pronounced with this batch, continuing all the way to the end when I turned off the burner.

I brewed up a first batch this morning, and it's pretty good. There's much less of an oil taste than the last bean I did. It kind of tastes more like coffees I buy already roasted. I'm not sure if that's because of the bean variety, or how dark I roasted this batch.

When I buy more coffee beans, I'll have to try roasting a given bean type two or more times, so I can start to gauge the difference between the type of bean and the effect of roasting to different degrees.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I found a blog by Sweet Maria's, including this post for the same bean that I just roasted.

Dia2SQLpy - new release

2008-07-06T22:55:00.003-04:00

Well, after five years, I finally got around to releasing a new Dia2SQLpy. No new features, this is simply a bugfix/documentation run.

It seems that in five years time, the Dia people had changed their XML doc for a UML diagram. How could they? ;)

http://arnoth.net/earnoth/dia2sqlpy.tgz

A Cup of Sulawesi Enrekang "Mount Alla"

2008-06-29T08:17:00.004-04:00

So I started off this morning with grinding and brewing a pot of my home-roasted coffee from yesterday. The first thing that struck me about this bean was the smell. It had a strong smell of oils that reminded me of popcorn. I've noticed that about coffees before, but this was particularly strong.

When I poured the hot water over the grounds and saw the liquid accumulating in the carafe, the second thing that struck me was how light in color it was, when compared to the first bean I had tried, last week.

The coffee tastes very good. It's light and low in acid, but still has a very rich taste that pleases my palette. There is no hint of bitterness, just a delightful coffee that I thoroughly enjoy.

I'm going to continue on with these beans for the next four days (that's about how long a half pound seems to last me). Then I'll roast another batch late in the coming week.

I'll post about my next foray into home roast when I do it.

A triple shot of joe

2008-06-28T19:40:00.005-04:00

So today was a three-way coffee experience. First, because I had brewed the last of my home-roast coffee yesterday, I prepared a pot of the remaining Gevalia I had on hand.

My first impression of it, when compared to the coffee I'd been enjoying, was that it tasted very dark and bitter. Now, that may have been just the variety, as it was a mocha blend. I might have guessed that it was partly due to the Gevalia coffee being more darkly roasted. However, if one reads the description, it's advertised as lightly roasted.

So, perhaps the difference was the home roasting. ;)

This afternoon, I had some Wawa (decaf) coffee after lunch. It tasted decent, but as with the Gevalia I was comparing it in my mind to the home-roasted stuff. It compared better, in my opinion. But then, I've always liked Wawa coffee (as do most people I talk to in this area ;)

So, the last experience was that I roasted again today. The first batch was so enjoyable that I want to ensure I don't go long without more home-brew. I find the process easy and enjoyable, and the end-product is incredibly tasty, compared to brews roasted by companies.

I just finished roasting Sulawesi Enrekang "Mount Alla". I was going to link to Sweet Maria's catalog entry for that variety, but all I could find was this.

I'm going to post the relevant text from that link, just in case it disappears with the natural changes of the site:

In 2008 we have offer both super-clean, bright, non-traditional wet-process coffee from the Toarco estates, and traditional Semi-Washed, rustic type Sulawesi Toraja. We had a special lot of the later type too. I am referring to the Mount Alla coffee from Enrekang. In 2006 and 2007, Sulawesi offers have been brighter and cleaner in general, which throws a few cuppers for a loop since they look to Sulawesi to have no brightness/acidity. I think a good coffee needs the liveliness of some amount of acidity, and welcome this cup profile. The preparation of the green coffee, the absence of defects, has been fantastic. And now we have a wet-processed Sulawesi to offer alongside the traditional dry-process (well, semi-dry-processed). This is the first time I have cupped a wet-process Sumatra or Sulawesi, the most rustic of Indonesian coffees, and been impressed ... well, actually, blown away! It's fantasic stuff. Those looking for a more natural, earthy cup, head to the Sumatra Classic Mandheling or Gayo Mountain.

The bag that the coffee came in describes it as "At Full City+ chocolate, spice, and earthiness. Low acidity with pepper and caramel aromatics. Both clean and earthy". Here's what the final product looks like:

It doesn't seem that different than the last batch, does it? ;)

Anyway, I'll be brewing a pot tomorrow morning. I'll post with my take on tasting it.

The best part of waking up...

2008-06-23T06:53:00.005-04:00

is not Folgers in my cup, it's my own home-roasted brew. ;)

This morning I ground and brewed my home-roasted coffee that I'd talked about yesterday. Since I'd gone to the trouble of roasting my own coffee, it only made sense to me that I brew my coffee in a more purist fashion.

So, I forsook the coffee machine and went for the old-school method of just boiling the water in a kettle and pouring it through a filter filled with the freshly-ground beans. The whole procedure worked fairly well, I was able to grind the beans while the kettle boiled the water, the timing was almost perfect.

As I poured the water into the coffee grounds, I was struck by two things. Firstly, the water foamed as it was poured over the beans. It's been a while since I brewed in this fashion, where I could see the process unfold. Because of the difference in color of the different roast levels of the beans, there was a gradiant in the color of the foam, as well.

Regardng the other sensation that really struck me, the smell and taste was definitely unique to all other coffee I'd had to date. Yesterday, I'd roasted the beans to about a "city" or "full-city" level (see the wikipedia article on the matter). As such, I believe the flavor of the beans really came through.

The cup I'm finishing now, even as I write this, has a much lighter flavor than most coffees I drink. I can sense the oils in the coffee, and the taste really kind of resonates upwards into my nose, as opposed to being heavy in my throat (my typical experience with coffee). I would almost say there was a "green" sense to the taste, perhaps the freshness of the beans coming through (?)

In any case, I really am enjoying the thinner quality to this coffee, it's nice not to have a cup that sits so firmly on the palette. I've got a travel mug full of the stuff yet, so I'm looking forward to finishing that as I head into work.

I'll definitely be brewing again, I've got another five bags of coffee yet to go. After that, I'll be buying more from Sweet Maria's. When one does the math by pound, it's actually cheaper than most roasted coffees (of any quality) that one may buy. (By 30% or upwards...)

So, for now I think I can say this was a complete success. I'll be posting more as I roast other coffees and learn more.

Home Roast

2008-06-22T17:32:00.005-04:00

One of the presents my wife gave me for my birthday was green coffee beans for me to roast at home. Years ago I'd already made the leap to grind store-bought beans, so this was a neat step up.

Linda bought me a sampler pack from Sweet Maria's. Sadly, because we're so busy, we didn't try it until today. It's hard to say yet if it was a success, but I'll be able to tell tomorrow morning, after I grind & brew my first cups. ;)

In any case, here's what I did.

We followed the directions given at Sweet Maria's website for skillet roasting. While we have a very nicely seasoned cast iron frying pan, we opted for the wok method, as it would be (1) less work, and (2) easier to see what's happening. Maybe next time I'll try the shake & bake version. :P

For this first batch, we started with the "Colombia Huila Valencia" variety. Green beans smell very different than roasted coffee. After all our gardening, I'm rather surprised at the smell. I would have anticipated a smell closer to the green things that grow right outside our window, but coffee beans have a very strange, musty tentor to them. It's not a foul kind of smell, mind...nothing like anything rotting or molding.

However, it doesn't smell fresh, either.

Here's how the beans looked when we started, when we had just poured the green beans into the hot pan.

It was incredibly easy, and took very little time at all. All I had to do was keep stirring the beans while they heated.

As we cooked the beans in the wok, the smell of roasting coffee started to waft over us. It was very subtle at first, but before we knew it, the atmosphere was saturated with it. The smell had a very dark flavor, an aromatic air that quickly filled the entire house.

Within about five minutes or so, we heard the beans start cracking. Right or wrong, I had expected the cracking to follow the same progression as popcorn popping. First one, then a few, then many upon many until the sound started tailing off.

However, that didn't happen with our experience. What did happen was we heard the first crack, and then silence. It was sometime before the next followed, and a while after that until the next one.

One thing that concerned me, though it may have been unavoidable, was that there seemed to be great disparity among the beans. A few of them darkened up very quickly, while most remained green or a very light brown.

Nonetheless, as roasting continued, the overall color of the beans continued to darken. After about fifteen minutes, we took them off the heat and dumped them in a glass bowl to cool.

We took them outside and stirred the beans for another ten or fifteen minutes before finally deciding they had cooled sufficiently. Then we transferred them to a colander to shake the chaff off. Another twenty or thirty minutes, and the coffee was cool enough to put away.

I'll be grinding and brewing it tomorrow. Here's hoping it tastes great. ;)

Legendary Content with MythTV

2008-06-21T14:45:00.002-04:00

Okay, so maybe the title of this post is a little over hyped. Myself, I blame the guy who called the Linux PVR software "MythTV".

As a geek, Mr. Richards should have known the pun potential he was letting loose on the world. ;)

But enough of that. Here's what I did. It's nothing revolutionary or untried before, just a little tweak on what others have done before, as well as a plug for Myth.

Long story short, there's a new and free site out on the Internet called Hulu.com which provides free, legal TV and movies, for free.

Did I mention it's free?

Oh, yeah...there are advertisements. One thirty-second commercial every fifteen to twenty minutes.

Yeah, I know the die-hard Myth users are probably turning up their noses (the commercial skipping feature of Myth is amazing, I use it all the time ;). However, you can't argue with free TV and movies.

How is that different than what we get on the airways? Well, go to Hulu and see for yourself. Simply put, they provide content that you can't find on TV anymore. Good shows, too, that were on major networks, a few years ago.

How's it work? Well, it uses Flash to provide the content. Since Linux runs Firefox, and that lovely browser has a Flash plug in, it was fairly trivial to get up and running.

First, I followed these instructions on my R5F1 install of Knoppmyth. Then I took the remote and went to "Utilities / Setup" -> "Setup" -> "Info Center Settings" -> "Web Settings".

From there, I did two things. I created a "New Bookmark" for www.hulu.com, and I changed the Browser from "/usr/bin/mythbrowser" to "/usr/bin/firefox".

After having configured the built-in browser to be Firefox, I again used the remote and went to "Information Center" -> "Web". There was the link I created, so I just selected that.

Firefox loaded quite nicely, but I had no way to control it using the remote. So, I had to make use of the mouse and keyboard. Mainly the mouse. It was a bit of a pain, but it works, so it'll do for now.

As it turns out, the instructions didn't quite work for some reason. I was told that I needed a more current Flash plug in. Thankfully, because Firefox works so very well on Linux, all I had to do was click the "Install Missing Plugin" button at the top of the brower's display.

At that point, it all worked. There's even a button inside of the Flash display to go full screen, which works perfectly.

The only other quirk is that the volume is appreciably lower than regular MythTV usage. I'm not sure yet how to fix that, but it's not a show stopper. It's just an annoyance.

EPIC FAIL

2008-06-19T23:15:00.002-04:00

Only in Windows...

Sticking with Blogger

2008-06-16T06:52:00.002-04:00

Well, after a few days of evaluation, I've decided that I'm sticking with Blogger. Wordpress can go take a hike.

What changed my mind, after all my ranting about Blogger's limitation? It's simple, really.

Wordpress asks you to pay for their advanced features. Features like...custom fonts and colors.

So, maybe I'm just a cheap bastard, but I have a problem with the principle of someone charging me for the privilege of using `font-face:` and `color:` tags in my website's cascading style sheets.

Blogger, of course, is subsidized by Google, who makes their money through advertisements. As of yet, I haven't found anything on Blogger that requires payment.

So, I'm going to stick with this old horse.

Besides, knowing Google, they'll improve matters around here. ;)

Cats

2008-06-15T16:54:00.002-04:00

If you've ever owned a cat, odds are you can appreciate this video:

If you've ever owned a cat...
by a62vw

Trying a new blog

2008-06-10T20:35:00.001-04:00

I've gotten a bit sick of Blogger and it's limitations. So, I'm looking at moving to Wordpress.

So far, I like what I see.

LOL!!!

2008-06-06T18:26:00.003-04:00

I love LOLcats. This has to be one of the funniest I've ever seen (it's something we all should be able to relate to...)

New photos uploaded

2008-05-24T13:29:00.003-04:00

I finally got around to uploading some of the pictures I've been taking lately. Last week I kinda went on a snapping spree, running around my back yard while I was cooking some burgers for the family.

Naturally, I took lots of photos of our garden:

I also did some experimental stuff, just finding whatever caught my eye in the area.

Random thought of the day

2008-05-23T22:01:00.001-04:00

Youtube - never was so much storage available to so many, only to serve up so much crap.

Look away

2008-05-01T22:10:00.001-04:00

What is it about people that sometimes we don't see things until we look away, and then look back again?

It's the silliest thing, but I was just killing time by playing solitaire (mind-numbing activities are great relaxation after a long day of heavy brain usage). I thought the game was done, but then something distracted me and I looked elsewhere. When I looked back a second later, I saw an obvious move (what move in that game isn't obvious? ;-) that was had been staring me in the face for several moves. As the old adage goes, "if it were a snake, it would have bit me".

Yet, I had missed it.

Of course, a game of solitaire is a ridiculous example indeed, but we've all been there with bigger matters, haven't we? Staring at some complicated problem for a long time, beating our heads against the wall to find a solution. Finally, we give up and walk away.

Then, minutes, hours, or even days later, we come back to what we were doing, only to find the solution staring us in the face.

I have to wonder what it is about the human brain that causes this phenomenon. I don't have any answers, of course, but it is a curious thing. Just the kind of thing to make you pause and think.

So, always make the time to step away from whatever you're doing. You may find yourself more productive for less effort.

New post to SquareFootGazette

2008-04-13T17:53:00.001-04:00

Linda posted our first update for our Square Foot Gardens in 2008.

New Photo Album - Longwood Gardens

2008-03-22T14:11:00.007-04:00

I finally got around to sifting through some of my old pictures and uploading them into my online photo gallery.

These are shots I've taken of Longwood Gardens when we went there a couple of years ago. In all, it's a really nice place to visit, very relaxing with all of the beautiful plants and landscaping.

Here's a sample ;-)

Perhaps a little cheese with that wine...

2008-02-17T22:21:00.003-05:00

I found a neat site to record the wines I buy/try. Winelog.com is rather well done, sort of a social bookmarking site for wine. I find it's very well designed, intuitive, and easy to learn and use.

Nice to see, sadly too rare in development. :-(

MythTV Upgraded to R5F1 - now using SchedulesDirect

2007-08-27T19:12:00.000-04:00

As I wrote in my last blog post, I've now upgraded my KnoppMyth box to the latest release, R5F1. What a difference five revisions makes! :-P

In the hopes of preserving all the programming that we'd recorded on the prior install, I chose to upgrade, rather than reinstall. That proved to be only partially successful. The raw files still live in /myth/tv, but MythTV no longer knows anything about them. When I have time, I'll try to figure out how to move the videos so that MythVideo will recognize them.

I also took the effort to migrate my listing service from Zap2IT to SchedulesDirect. The project leader for KnoppMyth posted the procedure on the phpBB forum.

Signing up for the service was no problem, and the manual upgrade procedure went fairly straightforward. The only two hiccups I have are with the channels recognized by MythTV for the input source. After doing the upgrade and setting up MythTV to use my SchedulesDirect account, the channel scan failed to eliminate the channels that I don't have. The other problem was that the names for the channels are all listed as "Adding Channel". Both problems are being encountered by others, per the postings to the forum.

If I find any solutions besides just manually correcting, I'll post it.

Eh, it was time to upgrade MythTV anyway...

2007-08-25T12:50:00.000-04:00

Okay, so like I posted last week, I'm interested in figuring out how to export videos from MythTV to my 5G iPod. Also like I last posted, Google lead me there and it wasn't very difficult after all is said and done. The good news is that I was right. Using the following ffmpeg command, I was easily able to take the default format that MythTV records in and export it to a format that my iPod could read.

  ffmpeg -vcodec xvid -b 300 -qmin 3 -qmax 5 \
-bufsize 4096 -g 300 -acodec aac -ab 96
-i /myth/tv/1011_20060820230000.mpg -s 320x240 -aspect 4:3 \
ipod_output.mp4

All I had to do was import the resulting file in iTunes & synchronize the device. Works like a champ.

The bad news is that I killed my MythTV install in the process of doing so.

It wasn't the above command that did the damage, it was my attempts to mess with Myth2ipod. I strongly recommend that any Knoppmyth user avoid it at all cost, if their system is newer than March 2006.

It really is my own fault. I should have taken a moment to look and see that the project hadn't been updated since March 2006. By comparison, I (was) running Knoppmyth R5C7, which was released May 2006. The Myth2ipod perl script is harmless enough, but it was the instructions for upgrading ffmpeg that did me in. Here's what the start of that looked like:

root@mythtv:~# apt-get install ffmpeg
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
libasound2 libasound2-dev libavcodec0d libavformat0d libc6 libc6-dev
libdc1394-13 libdirectfb-0.9-25 libgsm1 libogg-dev libogg0 libraw1394-8
libsdl1.2-dev libsdl1.2debian libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsysfs2 libvorbis-dev
libvorbis0a libvorbisenc2 libvorbisfile3 locales tzdata
Suggested packages:
libasound2-plugins libasound2-doc glibc-doc manpages-dev libraw1394-doc
Recommended packages:
libaa1-dev libdirectfb-dev libcucul-dev
The following packages will be REMOVED:
alsa-headers base-config initrd-tools libsdl1.2debian-oss
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libavcodec0d libavformat0d libdc1394-13 libdirectfb-0.9-25 libgsm1
libraw1394-8 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsysfs2 tzdata
The following packages will be upgraded:
ffmpeg libasound2 libasound2-dev libc6 libc6-dev libogg-dev libogg0
libsdl1.2-dev libsdl1.2debian libvorbis-dev libvorbis0a libvorbisenc2
libvorbisfile3 locales
14 upgraded, 9 newly installed, 4 to remove and 633 not upgraded.
Need to get 17.3MB of archives.
After unpacking 4898kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y

I had a bad feeling about it when I saw so many packages that were being replaced. In the end, when I went to reboot to validate nothing serious was broken, MythTV wouldn't go past the boot splash screen. (I can't even find a way to get the raw output from the boot, the box locks up just after the LILO screen disappears).

All the same, Knoppmyth's latest release is R5F7, published May 2007. So, I'll just rebuild with that (hopefully I can save all the TV shows I've recorded).

After I get MythTV up and running again, I'll hack that myth2ipod script and make it work with the modern version. I'll then post the results, after I get it cleanly done.

iRediculous

2007-08-19T16:38:00.000-04:00

So as I count down to my iPhone¹, I try and make do as best I can with my iPod. One thing I have yet to do is figure out how to convert MythTV default format AVI files to the iPod video format I've don't that once before, but I didn't really figure out a quick & easy way to do it repeatably. Thirty minutes experimenting with transcode and a little research on Google and I'll have it.

In the meanwhile, I figured it'd be quick and easy to put some eBooks on the iPod. Sure enough, when I look on my iPod in the "Extras" menu, I see a "Notes" section, with the following text:

To view text files here, enable iPod for disk use, then drag text files to the Notes folder on iPod. See the iPod Features Guide or go to www.apple.com/support/ipod for more information.

Simple enough.

Connecting my iPod to my PC, I activated "Enable disk use" for the device. It then appeared in my explorer as E: drive, with a "Notes" folder under the root. Doing some research, I learned that the iPod will allow up to 1000 files, each with up to 4012 characters. That's a fair bit of text, though I would have expected more, given the disk space on the gadget. But then, I guess Apple is all about multimedia these days (sound and video, not text).

Given that the Gutenberg Project has lots of great books, there's lots of free content to choose from. So, I wrote up a simple Perl script to hack up a large text file into smaller pieces so it could fit into the iPod's inane requirements.

Here's what I came up with.

#!/usr/bin/perl

$filename = $ARGV[0];
open(INFILE, "$filename");
undef $/;
$content = ;
close INFILE;
$ipod_max = 4012;
$ipod_max -= 17; #Title tags
$ipod_max -= 34; #tail link tags
$ipod_max -= length $filename;
$ipod_max -= 7;

print "Slurped ". length($content) . "\n";
$chapter = 'CHAPTER ';
#break it up by chapters
@chapters = split(/$chapter/, $content);
print "Found " . $#chapters . " chapters.\n";

$count = "000";
foreach $chapter (@chapters)
{
   print "Working on chapter $count, ";
   my $part = "001";
   my $outfile = $filename;
   $outfile =~ s/\.txt/$count\.$part/;
   open (OUTFILE, ">$outfile");
   $content = "CHAPTER ";
   @chapter_by_lines = split("\n", $chapter);
   $chapter_length = length($chapter);
   print "found ". $#chapter_by_lines . " lines ($chapter_length bytes)\n";
   foreach $line (@chapter_by_lines)
   {
      $len_content = length $content;
      $len_line = length $line;
      $len_total = $len_content + $len_line;
      if ($len_total > $ipod_max)
      { 
         $part++;
         $outfile =~ s/[0-9]{3}$/$part/;
         print OUTFILE $content;
         close OUTFILE;
         $content = "";
         open(OUTFILE, ">$outfile");
      }
      if ($line =~ /^$/)
      {
         $content .= "<b><p>$line";
      } else {  
         $content .= "$line";
      }
      ($chapter) = $content =~ /(CHAPTER \S+)/;
   }
   $count++;
   print "Writing to $outfile...\n";
   print OUTFILE $content;
   print "done.\n";
   close OUTFILE;
   $content = "";
}

Running the script on Huck Finn from the Gutenberg Project looks like this:

earnoth@twinstar[07:32 PM|508]$ bin/splice_book.pl books/huckfinn.txt 
Slurped 597298
Found 43 chapters.
Working on chapter 000, found 72 lines (1748 bytes)
Writing to books/huckfinn000.001...
done.
Working on chapter 001, found 116 lines (7207 bytes)
Writing to books/huckfinn001.002...
done.
Working on chapter 002, found 234 lines (12337 bytes)
Writing to books/huckfinn002.004...
done.
<SNIP>
Working on chapter 043, found 433 lines (22487 bytes)
Writing to books/huckfinn043.006...
done.

The result is 172 text files, all less than 4012 characters long (avg 3400). A nice fit on the iPod.

New Brew - American Cream Ale

2007-08-06T17:42:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I brewed a new beer, an EZbrew American Cream Ale. It's a pretty simple brew, using both liquid and solid malt extract, along with some cluster hops. The only interesting part is the lactose that gets added during bottling (making the cream part of the ale).

This morning the fermentation started off strong, bubbling well. This afternoon it's tapered off a bit. I'm concerned the higher temperatures may be impacting it. My pantry seems to run a bit warm in the summer.

I'm writing it up in my Document Trove.

New Document Trove online

2007-08-05T14:46:00.000-04:00

Previously I attempted to set up documentation for my various geek efforts. It was modestly successful for what it was, I received comments from a few people that they found the write ups useful. Unfortunately, MediaWiki proved to be a very high-maintenance and difficult to use wiki solution.

So now that I've finished migrating my website from one hosting company to another (more on that later) I've set about recreating my Document Trove. Unfortunately, the database that I had been running on was corrupted, so I lost the two-dozen articles I'd posted. It's partly my own fault, however, as I hadn't backed up the database in a long time. However, the former hosting provider was no help (again, more on that later).

Fortunately, I was able to salvage a few postings. Thank heavens for Google's cache. ;-)

My new Document Trove is running DokuWiki. I'm very pleased with it. It follows all of the standard Wiki conventions, and doesn't require a database backend. Very slick.

Remapping CTRL and CAPS LOCK in Windows Vista

2007-07-04T23:48:00.000-04:00

As any Unix geek will quickly tell you, one of the greatest frustrations of serious geeks with the PC keyboard is the placement of the CTRL key and the CAPS LOCK key. Look at your PC keyboard, you'll see the CAPS LOCK by your "a" key and the CTRL key waaaay down in the bottom left (and usually also on the right). That wasn't the way it was back in the day. Once upon a time, the CAPS LOCK and CTRL keys were switched.

Now, I'm too young to have cut my teeth on Sparc stations, mainframes, mid-ranges, or minis back in the days of BSD and AT&T Unix, where these keyboard configurations were standard. However, I've read about them in various Linux & FreeBSD mailing lists, websites, etc. Amongst the Linux crowd, it's still a big todo.

Having carpal tunnel syndrome and being an avid Linux CLI user, the concept was always appealing to me. For those that don't know, the CTRL key is used heavily in advanced CLI operations (e.g., CTLR-L will clear your terminal screen, CTRL-U will clear the line of text you're typing, CTRL-K will clear the text after your cursor, etc.)

Since it's so heavily used, putting the CTRL key next to the "a" key makes a lot of sense. One doesn't have to move too far from the home keys in order to hold it down while pressing the other key of interest. One also strikes the CTRL key far more frequently than the CAPS LOCK key. Less movement of the fingers is a BIG and GOOD thing when having to deal with RSI. That's the same reason I'm teaching myself the Dvorak keyboard...but that's a story for another post... ;-)

So, switching the CTRL key with the CAPS LOCK key is a very good idea, for those of us who live on the command line interface.

In either case, the remapping is easy enough to achieve in any Linux distro. I had thought I could achieve the same in Windows using Mark Russinovich's CTRL2CAP. It's worked well for me in the past, on Win2K and even WinXP. However, my new Toshiba is running the dreaded V, and I face the imminent and depressing prospect of having to use the same at work. So, finding a way to make the switch was somewhat important to me.

After a thorough job of Googling, I found this link with instructions to directly manipulate the Windows registry to achieve the switch in WinNT and Win2K. I was wary about it working, since when I clicked through on the in-depth technical background on the registry tweak referenced a mailing list posting from 1996 that talked about the hack definitively working on NT 4.0, and maybe on 3.5...!

Still, I figured, what's the worst that could happen?

The answer is, nothing bad happens. I got it wrong the first few times and nothing failed or crashed, it simply didn't change anything. Once I got it right, it worked like a champ on Windows Vista. I fixed my keyboard problem, my CTRL key is now completely switched with my CAPS LOCK. I'm now a much happier and healthier geek.

Oh, just in case the page evaporates, as things are wont to do on the Internet from time to time, here's the original posting in full:

Windows Registry Key-remap
Changing NT and Win2K Keymaps through the Registry 1. Run Start->Run... 2. Open: regedt32 to edit the registry. 3. Select the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout 4. From the Edit menu, choose "Add Value" to add a value named "Scancode Map" with type REG_BINARY. 5. Set the value for the layout you want (copy and paste the bold text below): * Map CapsLock -> Left Ctrl: 0000000000000000020000001d003a0000000000 * Swap CapsLock and Left Ctrl: 0000000000000000030000001d003a003a001d0000000000 * CapsLock->Left Ctrl, Left Ctrl->Left Alt, Left Alt->CapsLock: 0000000000000000040000001d003a0038001d003a00380000000000 6. Reboot your machine

I tried the third option, to do a full three-key switch between CTRL, ALT, and CAPS LOCK, but immediately realized it was a mistake. The ALT key is used too frequently for things like ALT-TAB window switching. It's native placement by the space bar makes it handy to hit with the thumb, which is the strongest digit on the hand - a good thing for those of us with carpal tunnel.

In addition, here's the original email that the original poster references. It's fairly interesting.

Scancode Map Email
From: Shane Holder <holder@mordor.rsn.hp.com> To: "Jeff McCarrell" <jwm@cccpp.com> Cc: cmcmahan@Teknowledge.COM, Jonathan Payne <jpayne@marimba.com>, ntemacs-users@cs.washington.edu Subject: Re: Re[2]: problem with caps/ctrl swap on NT 4.0 Date: 04 Dec 1996 14:36:21 -0600 Found this on the net somewhere. Add this value: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\KeyBoard Layout\Scancode Map It's a binary value that lets you map keystrokes in the low-level keyboard drivers in NT. As a result you don't have to worry about applications bypassing mappings that you've done at a higher level (i.e. it just works). Here's the format of the value: DWORD: 0x00000000 header DWORD: 0x00000000 header DWORD: length (in DWORDs) of remaining data, including terminating DWORD DWORD: mapping 1 ... DWORD: mapping n DWORD: 0x00000000 terminating null DWORD Each mapping DWORD has two parts: the input scancode, and an output scancode. To map scancode 0x1d (left control) to scancode 0x3a (caps lock), you want a value of 0x003a001d. Note that this does not swap the keys. Using just this mapping value, both the left control and the caps lock key will behave as caps-lock. To swap, you also need to map 0x3a to 0x1d, using 0x001d003a. So, the complete registry value you'd use to swap left-control and caps-lock is: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 1d 00 3a 00 3a 00 1d 00 00 00 00 00 This works on NT 4.0, I don't know about 3.51. This registry value is system wide, and can't be made user-specific. It also only takes affect on reboot. -- Shane Holder e-mail: holder@rsn.hp.com Hewlett Packard phone: (214)497-4182 3000 Waterview Never underestimate the bandwidth Richardson, TX 75083 of a truck moving at 70 MPH.

So, I hope this posting helps some other poor geek who's tearing out his hair about how to make Windows Vista somewhat tolerable to work within. (I'd say work with, but it's more similar to operating within the confines of a cage, really...)

Toshiba Satellite A135-S4427: More Display problems

2007-04-06T13:48:00.000-04:00

As nice of a unit as the new laptop seems to be, it has not been without its problems. I bought the computer about two months ago. Just past 30 days of purchase, the LCD back light went dead. After backing up my data I took it back to CompUSA and asked for an exchange. They gladly obliged me (mainly because I had bought their extended warranty). Within 20 minutes, I had a brand-spanking new laptop and was happily on my way.

Fast forward to today, and suddenly in the last twenty-four hours my screen has stated acting...funny. I've been booted into Windows since this morning, and whenever I open my lid, the display flickers in a frighteningly familiar fashion. It's very similar to the way the LCD back light on the last unit started behaving before it went kaput.

Naturally, this has me greatly concerned. It's only just started, and maybe it's just the way that Windows behaves vs. Ubuntu (where I haven't yet seen such a strange behavior). I'm going to watch it closely over the next few days, however. I have a bad feeling this one's on its way out, too.

If this goes, I'm getting something completely different. Should I have a second dud unit, it either speaks poorly for this model of Toshiba or Vista, or some combination thereto.

God I hate hardware...

New Laptop - Toshiba Satellite A135-S4427

2007-04-01T10:57:00.002-04:00

Recently I bought a new laptop, a Toshiba Satellite A135-S4427. It's a decent enough, middle-of-the road computer. It has a dual core Centrino chip, 1 GB of memory, and a 120Gb HD. In all, pretty good for a laptop. :-)

Of course, I had to install Linux on it. I wasn't about to run with Windows Vista as my primary OS. I've been playing with Ubuntu lately, and have been pretty pleased with it. So, I decided to give it a go as a laptop OS.

Unfortunately, I couldn't just wipe Windows. There are still some apps that I need (Quicken foremost among them) so I went dual boot. Compared to previous Windows versions, it wasn't quite so painful a process. The last time I did it, I needed some next-gen Fdisk that could handle resizing existing NTFS partitions. Now, with Vista, Microsoft has finally put in facilities to resize the disk natively.

The install for Ubuntu was a breeze, as is just about everything with that distro. Most things just worked the only exception being (drum roll please...) ACPI. This, however, should not surprise any Linux aficionado whose used a Toshiba laptop. Unfortunately, the Toshiba BIOS tools available for Linux don't work on this model laptop, as it's of of the models using a Pheonix BIOS.

The ACPI support I've got is limited. Hibernation and screen blanking work, but suspend doesn't (the system never quite gets all the way into suspend mode and doesn't come back). The fan seems to work, but I get the sense it's a dumb thermistor switch in the BIOS that is not managed by the OS. I can't read the system temperature, the CPU speed isn't being stepped, and I can't adjust the screen brightness (in fact, none of the special Toshiba function keys work).

I've done some initial investigation into additional packages to deal with the Pheonix BIOS on Linux. The main (only?) one I've found is the Omnibook project. However, the project doesn't seem as well maintained as its sister project.

So, hopefully I'll be able to pursue more research soon and figure out how to make it work. My ambition makes me want to contribute to the Omnibook project, but my expectation says I don't have the requisite experience to write code for kernel modules. :-P

First email post!

2007-03-28T22:33:00.001-04:00

Just giving the post-by-email thing a try. It's a pretty clever delivery mechanism I just wish the security was a little better than a "secret" value in the destination email address itself.

Then again, it's about all that one might expect for simply making use of simple email. It's not like there's any hooks for an authentication mechanism, or anything.

I've also been looking at client software with which to post, but it seems like the move of Blogger to a Google service has broken the old apps that were written for Atom. I checked the Google API developer's guide and compared it to the atom.c file in drivel, a nifty-looking Linux client for Blogging.

Unfortunately, in comparing the code, it looks like going out of Beta for Blogger 2 also brought a new API, which perhaps requires a rewrite of the other client packages out there?

On the other hand, it might simply be a user error. When I try and log into the https://www.blogger.com/atom URL, it doesn't seem to acknowledge my account. Maybe that's a Blogger v 1.0 thing, though.

Still too new to know.

C'est la vie.

My blog, version 3.0 - First Post!

2007-03-28T19:48:00.000-04:00

Ever since the mid nineties, I've been dabbling with posting stuff online (though it wasn't called blogging back then...). My website has gone through many different forms over time, from a set of static pages hosted first on my home account the University of Delaware webservers to hosted on @Home and then Comcast.net.

Then I decided I wanted something a bit more elegant, and got myself a small web hosting account. I installed PHPNuke (what was I thinking??) and ran with that for a while. It was fairly serviceable, though not very well suited for a blog. In particular, spammers started to exploit security holes to post their garbage. Not to mention, I had the entire burden of administration. Backups, upgrades, all that happiness.

So, I locked the site down and tried some software specifically suited for blogging. Simple PHP Blog was the software I settled on, for the very reason of it's namesake. It was simple. While I found the result appealing for a while, it too had its disadvantages. Again, as time went on, security holes were found and spammers started to spew upon it.

In addition, since my site was off on its own, there was nothing really to draw people to it. what's the point of blogging if no one's watching?

So, I figured I'll give an account on Blogger a try. Allow me now to christen my latest blog version with the time-honored Slashdot tradition...

....FIRST POST!!!