Category: Uncategorized

Posted on
by

I love Netflix. And beyond the service itself, one of the things I’ve noticed lately is that I even love the UI of the Netflix site. A lot of the little tweaks they’ve done in the past few months have just rocked. For example, they went through the following progression:

  • easily adding a movie to your queue (nice)
  • adding the capability to easily move that movie straight to the top of the queue (sweet!)
  • adding a little mini-queue to the side of the screen, which includes the newly added movie (even if it’s at the bottom), and the top several movies. So now you can easily move it straight to, say, #4 of 53.(awesome!)

It’s this sort of seemingly little stuff (also including RSS feeds of your queue, popup hover previews, etc., etc.) that has really impressed me. And that’s not even counting the massive Long Tail of cool movies. Netflix rocks.

Posted on
by

WSJ (well, until the link rots, anyway): Senate Rejects Wiretapping Probe. *sigh* May we reap what we sow. And we will.

And just to clarify, I’m not trying to suggest anything ominous and terrorism-related with that comment at all. Far from it. What I mean is that, probably sooner than later, this whole it’s ok, it’s for the War on Terror, don’t worry about the whole civil liberties THAT ARE SUPPOSED TO BE WHAT WE’RE DEFENDING ANYWAY thing will become not such A Good Idea as it seems now.

Some administration (maybe not this one; maybe not even this party; both of the major ones have lost their minds for the most part; just to varying degrees) will do something so obviously across the line that people will stand up and take notice. I only hope that it is indeed sooner than later. Otherwise, we’re gonna burn the village to the ground in order to save it. And I’ll have to think about getting my head frozen again, because I can’t handle 20 years of this in order to make it to the Singularity!

Posted on
by

Damn. I actually planned a couple of weeks ago to bring some info from the Opensecrets up periodically and randomly. I thought it would be interesting to just stick your hands into the zipcode list, rustle around, grab one, and pick either the House member or a Senator related to that zip code.

Seemed like a good idea at the time. Then I turned on C-SPAN2 today, and watched Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) discussing the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. And I changed my mind. Here’s his info, and I will be reviewing it. Career Profile (since 1989) — Jeff Sessions. *sigh*

Go, Senator Byrd. And no, I’m still not a Democrat (go Blue Guy!); here’s Bryd’s OpenSecrets info, knock yourself out: Career Profile (since 1989) — Robert C. Byrd. But I’ve sat around and taken it as long as I can…way longer, in fact. I am tired of it.

I have plans to add topic tags to posts in the near future, which will allow those who want to filter to do so; feel free. See, I’m a nice guy! *grin*

Posted on
by

I was reading a really good article tonight on government data and the Semantic Web, and realized that this pointed me to yet another treasure trove of data from our government. I believe it’s important to be an educated citizen and voter, and one of the great things about the internet is it’s ability to provide us with the information we need in that regard.

Here are some sites I’m fond of:

  • AOL Government Guide (I’ve been using this forever; it’s been overtaken to a certain extent by now, but still a goodie)
  • THOMAS: Library of Congress legislative info (another long-time favorite, and a great primary source)
  • Opensecrets.org (AWESOME guide to where the money in politics comes from, and where it goes)
  • FactCheck.org (attempts to fact check and “de-spin” claims made political speeches, election ads, etc. Pretty impartial, IMO)
  • GovTrack.us (this is new to me…aggregates other data for high-level review of legislation. Looks to be pretty good)
  • CitizenJoe (another new one to me; highlights and discusses national policy debates)

A good reminder list for me (I can always track down stuff I put in my blog!) and a good starter list if you’re looking to keep your eye on what’s really going on with those pesky legislators!

Posted on
by

Holee crap! I’ve been trying to get a Windows-based mythfrontend working for awhile now…unfortunately, the most well-known contender, WinMyth, doesn’t work so well yet. As in, not at all (for me, anyway…as always, YMMV). But one of the prereqs for WinMyth is called DSMyth (it’s the DirectShow filters for the MythTV protocols), and I was reading through the news on that site today and finally noticed that they mention another option. So I downloaded Media Player Classic (6.4.8.7), per the DSMyth instructions…and lo and behold, it freakin’ works! (Additional notes; I’m using DSMyth 0.10 with this, and go to this forum thread for info on changing live TV channels [it’s supposed to get easier in next version]).

I’m impressed. I’m freakin’ impressed. And it’s all open source/free software, so I can poke it with a stick if I want. Joy. This makes my Windows laptop (w/ 802.11g) a wireless TV extender, and player for recorded Myth programs. Uber-cool. Much thanks to everyone involved with WinMyth, DSMyth, and MPC. You all rock.

Posted on
by

Joy…after far too much worrying about it, I’ve got my MythTV box back up and running. I figure I’ll tell the tale, and get notes for my future self in the bargain!

I had a horrible crash back on the box back during the summer, and pretty much talked myself out of rebuilding it. I had all my notes, but with all the backtracking, tweaks, etc…I just didn’t want to deal with it. But guess what? As is so often the case, I remembered the bad alot more readily than the good. Most of my notes were, um…unneeded. Surprise, surprise.

First off, I realized about a week ago that I had been COMPLETELY stupid, and not checked my memory after repeated box crashes during the summer. I had previously convinced myself (sans proof) that the issue was the hard drive…but a quick dig around and test via the excellent memtest86 diagnostic tool last Friday confirmed the memory stick was indeed the culprit. (Hmmm…a test; fancy that. Repeatable, even.) And memory is even cheaper today than it was a year ago…

  • NB: check the memory!

After that, the machine was actually up and running remarkably quickly; I love Debian. Pretty much from install, I was running. Mostly. I had picture…but no sound. Second thing to remember:

  • NB: ALSA:default is frontend setting. Test ALSA quickly; if that isn’t it, check the card settings!

I spent way too much time spinning my wheels with ALSA settings that were correct the entire time. I had accidentally cleared the audio recording field when doing the initial card setup, and didn’t bother to re-check THAT setting for two days (in the meantime, I had tweaked ALSA about 200 times…). Lesson learned. (Hey, can’t a man dream?)

Finally…if you plan on running mythfrontend without setuid (ie, the way it’s set out of the box), turn OFF the realtime priority threads setting (which is ON by default). Otherwise, with no setuid and r/t priority on (which, as you may note, IS THE DEFAULT), watching live TV hangs the frontend and crashes the backend in about 10 seconds. With realtime priority threads turned off, there is joy. She works. Maybe someday I’ll play with setuid’ing the frontend just to see if it works better…but not today. (There may be something tricky going on here like Debian turns off the setuid for security reasons, leaving the settings wonky. I could be convinced of this. But still weird, and frustrating. Thus the note.)

  • NB: in case it’s still unclear; realtime priority is evil *grin*

That’s pretty much it! I’m up and running smoothly, with no crashes or hangs, and Battlestar Galactica set to record weekly. All is well with the world.