BunkBlog

The gummint sure does think they can get anything approved if they just claim it’s to stop child pr0n. Of course, any decent criminal will just use Tor or some other system to avoid their data being collected. The rest of us get to pay for a series of massive data warehouses holding every chat log and email we send. Go, Big Brother! Won’t someone think about the children?

I seriously appreciate the automatic update feature of Windows XP. It is very convenient, and unobtrusive if set to nag you rather than do everything without input.

I do wonder, though, why I need to install security updates for programs that I don’t use and have purposely removed, such as Outlook Express or MSN Messenger. Oh, right. It’s because you can’t actually remove OE or IE or MSN Messenger. No matter what you do, the little bastards just stick around, opening up their security holes for all to exploit. If Linux had decent wifi usability…

Yes, I know you can use various and sundry hacks and workarounds to attempt to get your wifi card mostly working with some specific combination of hardware and software. Doesn’t count if I need to work at it that hard.

The latest in the world of “energy drinks,” Coca Cola Blak, is quite possibly one of the strangest beverages I’ve ever tried.  Coke and coffee?  I think I’ll stick with Dew.

Slashdot is pink. ThinkGeek is selling USB tanning centers and wireless extension cords. Welcome to April Fool 2006. Be afraid.

Since Qumana didn’t work, and I finally got my host to unlock the xmlrpc functionality so Performancing can work now. Let’s see how this goes.

Checking out the Qumana blog editor for posting to the site. It’s also supposed to work with Livejournal, but it’s not working for me.  Maybe in the next beta.

Since Livepress is stuck in version 1.5, and I’m using WordPress 2.0.2, the automatic post synch doesn’t function directly.  This is my attempt to get there through a different route.  Maybe another way, since this isn’t ready yet.  *sigh*

Apparently, Microsoft is still running into issues with Vista, even after deleting several features from the original Longhorn plan. They’ve announced an updated availability date, and it’s 2007! For those keeping score, Longhorn was originally planned for a 2004 release.

They delayed it until 2005 for security issues. At that point, Allchin promised WinFS would be in the release.

Four months after that announcement, MS announced the removal of WinFS from the 2006 release.

Eight months after that, there was rampant speculation that the 2006 date was optimistic. MS denied any such thing.

Just recently, EFI booting support was pulled from the planned Vista release.

Wonder when it will ship and what will be in it.

I swear, Family Guy is written just for nuts like me. Just in the first seven minutes of tonight’s episode, the references included Mytzlplk, 80s children’s television, John Cusack movies, the Disney versions of Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, and the war in Iraq.

The other obscure references that I noticed include the Dukes of Hazzard, Punk’d, the psychotically vague Second Amendment verbiage, a particular Burgundy wine (or restaurant in Tribeca), Planet of the Apes, Woody Woodpecker, Fatal Attraction, Less Than Zero (or maybe Bright Lights Big City – I’ve only read the books not seen the movies), and zombie movies.

There was also a reference to a movie that doesn’t seem familiar – ancient language-speaking forestdwelling people who are apparently reincarnated soul mates later in history. Anyone know that one?

Microsoft originally said WinFS (the pseudofile system) would be part of Longhorn (now named Vista). WinFS was dropped months ago. They said Vista would boot with EFI. EFI support won’t be available at launch. Maybe later?

What other features promised in Longhorn won’t actually be in Vista when it launches? Tell me again why Vista is better than XP?  It has a new skinning engine?  Ooh, pretty.  I guess if you’re into bright shiny things, you’ll want to pick it up.

Remember the new hard drive? Well, I decided to stop the separation of the various media files between hda4 and hdb1, because it causes issues that require me to manually move recorded movies to the video share in order to free up the space on hda4 (which was the original purpose of the extra drive). So, I spent a few hours today moving 140 gigs of files around from drive to drive, so as to get the system up and running using the Logical Volume Manager system. Now that it’s up, it’s sweet and future maintenance will be crazy easy.

Previously, the df command showed

/dev/hda1 /
/dev/hda3 /cache
/dev/hda4 /myth

/dev/hdb1 /myth/video

Now, the df command shows:

/dev/hda1 /
/dev/hda3 /cache
/dev/mythvg/mythlv /myth

Physically, that /dev/mythvg/mythlv device is a logical device, spread across two physical devices, with a combined total available space of 365 gigabytes. Now, instead of having 120 gigs free on the video drive and 80 gigs free (and falling fast) free on the main myth drive, I’ve got 206 gigs free on the logical myth drive. And, if I decide to be a bigger packrat, I can grab a SATA drive or two and extend the logical volume group across the new drives as well. I’m gonna get a terabyte, babay!

Officemax had a deal on a 300 Gigabyte Baracuda drive this week, so I grabbed one to replace my secondary drive on the Windows machine (which was a 160 GB Maxtor).  Then, the 160 went into the MythTV box, to serve as a storage place for ripped DVDs or movies I record from TV but don’t want to erase for a while (if at all).

The default structure used by Knoppmyth is to make four partitions on the primary drive (hda), with the fourth being the /myth directory and using the vast majority of the space on the disk.  With a 250 GB drive, I ended up with 160 GB used within six weeks of starting this project.  So, I added the 160 GB drive as /myth/video and away we go.

New partition structure:

hda1 – / (user files and operating system)
hda2 – swap
hda3 – /cache (for live tv)
hda4 – /myth

hdb1 – /myth/video

And now I’ve got over forty gigs used of the hdb1 partition, and down to less than half used on the hda4 partition.

When I bought some blank CDs this week, I ended up with a free 128 MB USB thumbdrive.  Anyone want it?  What the heck will I do with this thing?  I’ve already got three SD cards of varying capacity, an old CompactFlash microdrive (340 MB), and a spare 128 MB memory stick.  Like I need more solid-state storage?

I’ve finished the MythTV install, and posted a quick description for your edification.

I didn’t do any work on the MythTV box Wednesday, but I got a borrowed monitor to help me set things up Thursday.  Looks like I’m in business, although I need to get a cable to split the speaker output from the sound card into RCA jacks to get to the TV.  Then, I’ll push a tunnel through the firewall so I can program my PVR from work.  Oh yeah.  That’s the stuff.

I promise to post a full review and more pretty pictures soon.

And the hardware is installed.  Tonight, I have completed my mother’s federal tax return preparation and then finished installing the hardware in my MythTV box.

The only tricky part has been finding somewhere to tuck all the power cords. The PSU I chose has a lot of cables attached to it, very generous compared to most power supplies. Unfortunately, I only need two of them to power the drives and front case fan – the rest are just in the way.  Fortunately, I have a spare 5 1/4 drive bay that I am not using, and it’s placed perfectly to hold the cables.

Strangely, neither the motherboard (which has onboard sound) nor the DVD drive included an audio cable, so the optical drive won’t be pumping any CD audio for the time being.  Good thing that’s not a big issue for me, eh?

The case now contains all the components I intend to install. The only other parts that are not connected are the mouse, keyboard, and remote control.  Whew.

For photos of the progress so far, check out the gallery.  Good night.

I just spent an hour putting the first pieces into the case. The LC13 case is quite roomy and built like a tank. The Sempron processor is easy to install, as has been the case with every ZIF-style chip in the past decade. The heatsink was equally easy to install, although they sure have grown since the last time I installed a processor (that was a K6-200, if I remember correctly). The pre-installed thermal paste is a nice touch and worth the extra few bucks for the retail package, in my mind at least.

I’ve got the hard drive temporarily placed, as I have to pull its cage out again in order to install the DVD burner (which arrives via UPS tomorrow). And, that’s enough fun for tonight. My pile of hardware has dwindled considerably, with the tuners and video card being the only parts left to install (after that burner, of course) tomorrow night.

By this time tomorrow, I’ll have the last piece of my MythTV kit in the house. I will probably not assemble it until this weekend, but ya never know. The initial hardware will include a 250 gig hard drive, two analog tuners, and a wireless keyboard and mouse to assist the remote.

Photos and details as I complete the project. This should be fun. 🙂

Boy, those congresscritters really don’t seem to get it. Nobody outside the MPAA and RIAA wants a broadcast flag, no matter what you call it. As always, Cory Doctorow’s analysis is fantastic.

Under the DCPA proposal, digital media technologies would be restricted to using technologies that had been certified by the FCC as being not unduly disruptive to entertainment industry business-models.

Unduly disruptive? Hey, folks, the disruptive technologies are the ones that drive us forward and upward to ever-higher levels of economic and creative success. Phonographs, automobiles, computers, compact disks, radio, television – all disruptive technologies in their time. There is no Constitutional right to protect existing business models, and isn’t Congress supposed to be in the business of protecting the Constitution and the sovereign people of the United States? Or are they instead in the business of protecting campaign donors against their own customers? Yeah, that was rhetorical, thanks.

Blame suddenlydizzy

Open your chosen media library for this (iTunes, WinAmp, MediaMonkey, whatever).

Answer, no matter how embarrasing it is.

How many songs?
18212

Sort by artist
First artist: ? And the Mysterians
Last artist: ZZ Top

Sort by song title:
First Song: #1 Zero – AudioSlave
Last Song: ZZ Top Goes to Egypt – Camper Van Beethoven

Sort by time:
Shortest Song: CEO Outro – Slick Rick (0:02)
Longest Song: (Excluding Symphonic Works) Sasha’s Voyage of Ima – BT (42:30)

First song that comes up on Shuffle: Pre 62 (Akasha’s Post Modern Mix) – Groove Armada

How many songs come up when you search for “sex”? 53

How many songs come up when you search for “death”? 35

How many songs come up when you search for “love”? 668

How many songs come up when you search for “you”? 1444

How many songs come up when you search for “why”? 54

The gallery is back, after a long bout of “what the heck” with the hosting company and with the PHP-based installer script.

The photos that are up now may or may not be the same exact photos that used to be up, but it’s a start.  You try posting 300+ photos in an evening and remember which ones you used to have on the site.  Yeah, I didn’t think so, biotch.

I’ve added the new and improved WordPress 2.0 software to the site.  It’s nice, the upgrade was simple, etc.

Somehow I ended up trashing my photo gallery setup completely, though.  Hopefully it will be back in business by tomorrow, but we’ll see.  What’s perplexing is that many directories moved around, as if by magic.  Magic because I don’t actually have permissions on those directories, so I shouldn’t have been capable of moving them even inadvertently.  Mysterious.