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Playing Around With HTPC Stuff

While I’ve not got an antenna attached for FM radio, after playing around with media center apps in both Ubuntu and Win7, I have to give the edge in media center/home theater pc stuff to Windows. TV only “sorta” worked in Ubuntu. The much ballyhooed MythTV and other options–including MythBuntu, LinucMCE, etc.–for integrating TV/Radio/Video/Music into PC use are just too much like work to get ’em functional and too rough-edged to boot, even when they do work. Kudoes for great effort on the Linux side, marks down for actual accomplishment.

On the Windows side… *sigh* I could wish everything Just Worked out of the box, but “it ain’t necessarily so” as the song goes. Windows Media Center… what can I say? I don’t like its look and feel, but that’s just my idiosyncratic response. What killed it for me was that while everything BUT one thing worked pretty well, that one thing was… setting up TV. Yep. Every Single Time I got to the channel download the thing choked. Bah.

Hauppauge’s own WinTV apps almost got TV working. Got further than Windows Media Center, at least. But still, no joy.

GBPVR looked promising but stumbled getting out the gate with Win7–“wrong OS” or some such error.

Tried several other non-solutions and then hit on MediaPortal, an outgrowth of the XBMC project. Now, XBMC isn’t suited to tuning TV or FM radio, although it does all the other media center things one might want and will (when I get another Round Toit) serve well as a media director in the old XBox I have half-modded to use it, but I wanted to tune TV (and later FM radio) on this box, so I tried MediaPortal.

MediaPortal Just Works. Oh, there’re more than a few rough edges. Scanning for channels found all the channels I wanted, and they previewed just fine in the scan, but when I tried tuning them initially, some would not tune in. (“Search the forums for solutions” time… ) The manual? Just fine. IF everything goes without a hitch. No real problem solving–or acknowledgement of issues–in the manual. Managing the settings isn’t intuitive, so a better manual would be a help.

Still, I marked “TV working on PC” off my list before my “work day” started this a.m. I’ll get into the whole “time shifting” thing later.

MediaPortal: not ready for Aunt Tilly but definitely a workable solution.

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WWW=Wacky Windows Weirdness

Been over in the Ubuntu side of this computer for a couple of days. “Housekeeping” and other stuff best done from there. Exporting the T-Bird address book I have there into T-Bird Portable, etc.

So, I decided to reboot in Win7 Beta. Weird stuff going on.

1. I was just on an Ubuntu session and all was well, but now the keyboard/mouse are acting weird. Kyboard droppng letters typed (Yp, just like now) and mouse acting herky-jerky. I do NOT have capslock on at any time (disabled the key mechanically), but sometimes, the SHIFT key sticks.

2. Have already had to re-register keyoard/mouse twice–hardware rnegotiaaaae. Again.

3. Can CLCK start orb, but nothing in it s clickable .

No, I have fresh batteries in wireless input devices, and besides, they were jst working fine in Ubuntu, a few minutes ago.

TOO WEID.

(All typos in this post apparently caused by Windoze Weirdness.)

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Minding Our Own Business

THE Must-See Video of the Day at Woody’s Place. In fact, it’s so very must-see, I’m stealing it off Woody and posting it here, too. I encourage you to do the same. No, go to Woody’s Place and link to him, then post the video yourself and encourage others to do so.

Pass this one around.

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R&R

About halfway through just the first of my Saturday projects. Means I’ve left the easy one (pretty easy but tedious and messy plumbing project in the basement) for last. Right now, taking a break. Who’d-a thunk snaking RG6 cabling could generate so much sweat? Yeh, finally getting around to rationalizing the CATV/internet access cabling inside. Have been running off two “not the greatest solution” splitters for several years now. One is a pretty decent splitter “donated” by our cable guy–OK, but not ideal. The other a better one but in the wrong placement in the topology map.

Drilling holes, snaking cables, swapping out splitters: in the end, best splitter a 1-2 with one cable going straight to cable “modem” (via a very nice quad RG6 cable) and other going to a multi-Ghz 1-4 splitter for the TVs (including this computer). Have to build a short quad RG6 cable for that one, but have nice quad RG6s for the four TVs.

Later… (much later) I need to figure the “TV over RJ-45” for using this computer as a media server and the modded (almost finished–cobbler’s kids and all that) XBox as a media director to go to a lil 25″-er in our bedroom.

But after the 2-1/4-1 switch and rerouting of CATV cabling… plumbing gig! Yay! *heh*

Update: I can retire these tasks now. Nice. Means tomorrow evening (after Chuck–*heh*), I can start in on another project.

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No More Pork! No More Earmarks!

No, all of these have been eliminated from the omnibus bill by the simple expedient of the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind relabeling these excesses as “parochial projects“.

See? There’s no pork; there are no earmarks; they’re all now magically transmogrified into something more palatable: merely parochial projects.

Now, don’t you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

Thanks CBS (A.K.A., See B.S.)

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Radio Wales again…

See the link in my right sidebar.

Frank Hennessy’s mostly Celtic folk program on Radio Wales is addictive. Lyrics like,

“They say he is too old to toil/And yet he is too young to die…
It doesn’t matter where or when/He comes like rain, like wind he goes…”

…sung in distinctive close harmonies with acoustic instrumental accompaniment as a sample. Or maybe it’s a Celtic harpist playing solo or leading a small band. Or a Celtic-flavored group re-styling a song from another tradition.

Voices that can actually sing a tune. On pitch! Acoustic instruments. Who’d-a thunk it? Well, Wales. It’d be a real shame if Wales ever became the musical wasteland most of the USA is today.

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“Forget-Me-Not”

“heh”

“If you don’t have something to say, you may be tempted to just say something, because if you don’t, people will forget you are there.”–Jerry Pournelle

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