Hey wow, I just recieved an email from Adam Zand from Topaz Partners (who are the doing the PR for the guys who brought us the MyPodder software which I blogged about here). Russell Holliman and his team have built on the MyPodder application since I last blogged about it and are releasing MyPodder formally tommorrow under the banner of Podcast ready. He goes on to invite me to download and review the software (and the portal) which I fully intend to do – once I can find my 256Mb USB key – unfortunatly, this may require me to tidy my desk!
Category: HOWTO
These documents are my attempts to explain how stuff I’ve done was done, it may work for you it may not – I’m just sharing my experiences to try and save people from falling into the same holes I did :)
Toms TiVo
One of the guys at work here has a TiVo which has been ‘functionally enhanced’ to work in New Zealand (thanks NZTiVo) but it had run out of guide data – he took me around to his place this lunchtime to get things going again, which served to make me realise that it’s been a long time since I’ve played with my TiVo and perhaps a refresher HOWTO could be in order
LVM Lost (and found)
Oh crap… We had a big storm in Auckland today and the ensuing power cut seem to have fried my spanned drive on the Debian box. When power was restored, the drive didn’t come back up, the mount is gone and with it all my recorded media!
Apologies for the weird weird formatting – but something is happenning with my code tags which I don’t understand… Continue reading “LVM Lost (and found)”
Crikey – what a cool CMA!
In a number of my previous roles I’ve developed and led development teams to build some rather significant websites, these were all using enterprise level Content Management Applications (CMA) – my own personal site has however suffered somewhat from the ‘mechanics car’ syndrome and, though it’s had a few random refreshes, I’ve kept it flat, simple HTML, and it’s looked like it too.
In a number of my previous roles I’ve developed and led development teams to build some rather significant websites, these were all using enterprise level Content Management Applications (CMA) – my own personal site has however suffered somewhat from the ‘mechanics car’ syndrome and, though it’s had a few random refreshes, I’ve kept it flat, simple HTML, and it’s looked like it too.
Today we had a new guy start in our team and we got to talking about our personal websites and he�s recommended an Open Source content management suite called Joomla which on first view looks almost as good as Toms review. This blog entry will be a run down of my install experience on my Debian test machine.
Continue reading “Crikey – what a cool CMA!”
Debian Sarge and Cacti
As my network at home has got busier, I�ve been finding weird things are going on and so have needed to implement a degree of monitoring on my network (if only to keep tabs on where all my hard drive space is going), I looked at a number of possibilities but have settled on SNMP monitoring via �Cacti�, running on a Debian 3.1 �Sarge� linux server�
As my network at home has got busier, I�ve been finding weird things are going on and so have needed to implement a degree of monitoring on my network (if only to keep tabs on where all my hard drive space is going), I looked at a number of possibilities but have settled on SNMP monitoring via �Cacti�, running on a Debian 3.1 �Sarge� linux server�
Continue reading “Debian Sarge and Cacti”
Viewing multiple video streams using Linksys WVC54G
We’ve got a couple of Linksys WVC54G IP cameras lying around the office from a previous project, so I was thinking “How hard would it be to create a page I could navigate to from my home PC (or media center) to view live video streams from these cameras?”
Apparently, it’s a bit harder than one would think…
We’ve got a couple of Linksys WVC54G IP cameras lying around the office from a previous project, so I was thinking “How hard would it be to create a page I could navigate to from my home PC (or media center) to view live video streams from these cameras?”
Apparently, it’s a bit harder than one would think…
Continue reading “Viewing multiple video streams using Linksys WVC54G”
Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility
As I’ve posted earlier, I’ve been running Microsoft Windows Media Center 2005 (MCE 2005) for quite awhile and, for the most part it’s great – however I found a utility on the Green Button forums this morning which I wish I’d discovered a loooong time ago…
As I’ve posted earlier, I’ve been running Microsoft Windows Media Center 2005 (MCE 2005) for quite awhile and, for the most part it’s great – however I found a utility on the Green Button forums this morning which I wish I’d discovered a loooong time ago.
The problem I’ve had over the last few months is, that intermittently, I’ll get a ‘Video Decoder Error’ and need to restart the MCE box to resolve it. It points to an issue with video drivers, but – from what I’ve read on the forums over at The Green Button, it’s more likely to be related to ones choice of DVD decoder software.
This is by no means an uncommon issue so it was with some surprise that I learned that, this time last year, Microsoft released a utility to check your DVD decoder software. What it does is explained on the Microsoft site, so follow this link and see if it might be the utility that you too have been looking for.
Battlefield 2 � Flying a Helicopter
I�ve yet to find a suitable �Helicopter Flying 101 for Battlefield 2� page out there � so if you know of one (or have written one yourself) then please send me a link so I can point people in it�s direction. Give this lack of (easily found) flying tips, I�ve compiled a number of pointers which I�ve managed to glean from forums, message boards, in game chats and the occasional fleeting reference on clan and fan pages � while I�d like to attribute the original authors, the sources are too many so I�m only planning to link/reference pages which are outstanding in the depth of information they hold.
Read on, enjoy and please � play nicely
I�ve been playing Battlefield games since Battlefield 1942 was released and the game play has always been great, the in-game physics are better than I�ve previously experienced in other FPS and (back when I had disposable income and could afford a decent graphics card) the graphics are almost too compelling (in that you stand and look and the nice texturing on generated surfaces in appreciation, until someone comes along and shoots you for staying stationary for too long) and the range of vehicles and player classes just spoils you for anything else.
Anyway, I�ve recently upgraded my DSL plan (to one where the data cap wasn�t such an onerous monster that I�ve felt comfortable dipping my toe in the water of online play) and, in conjunction with my (also) recent Battlefield 2 addiction,
I�ve also come to the realisation that online gaming is far more compelling than AI or even local network play, but to be truly effective in the online space you need to be able to fly.
Because everyone wants to be a flyboy, and because helicopters are not that easy to fly (or at least, not that easy to fly well) there are continually people stood like dumb arses next to a spawned chopper, waiting for someone to dare to take the pilots seat, then the race for the gunner position begins.
I�ve been part of the great herd waiting for a pilot but I�m getting a bit sick of the behaviour of players at helicopter spawn points and have been team killed too many times for the gunners seat (the penalty for team killing is miniscule when compared to the points one can generate as a gunner for a good pilot) I figured it would be a good idea to learn to fly.
I want PRESENCE!!
Why is it that we’re in the bottom half of 2005 and companies STILL continue to ignore the internet as a method of reaching their customers?
We’re due to have a baby in just over 4 weeks and, we need to get our digital camera repaired so we can take some of those new arrival shots that parents love to bore their friends and family with.
I decided to don a ‘user’ hat* and try to find where to get our �Olympus Muju 300� camera repaired, as my fried Sunil would say – “What a mistakea to makea!”
Podcast on a Stick
Continuing in the vein of portable podcastiong, I’ve recently downloaded ‘MyPodder’, an open source pod catching client which installs on your USB memory key… Read on for my initial impressions
One of my favorite Podcasts at the moment is from Geek News Central, I find it has just the right amount of news, opinion and personality with the shows host Todd Cochrane sharing bits of his personal life (where relevant(ish)) with his audience… Anyway, he played a promo on his July 12th 2005 podcast which referenced an open source podcatcher which installs on your USB memory key.
Anyway, I’ve since headed over to the MyPodder site and downloaded their version 0.3 beta which has since installed quite happily on a spare 256MB USB key that I’ve recently freed up after getting a nice new Kingston 256MB key as part of a team day here at work. In summary:
- The MyPodder site is fairly basic, but I’d rather they spend time on developing good robust applications than eye candy – so well done there.
- The installation is basically “Unzip the download to the root of your USB Key” which is fine
- The application lacks some of the niceties which I’d hope will appear in future versions such as importing XML files from other podcatching applications
So, all in all – it’s looking fine from the first cut, I’ll probably be back to this post to update my impressions after a while – one change I’ve already made is changing the launch batch file to make the last line read “call podcatcher.exe” which I hope will get rid of the current DOS window which appears looking like this:
G:\>ECHO OFF
————————————————–
STARTING PODCATCHER ON A STICK …. please wait
————————————————–
You can close this ugly window
after the podcatcher had started.
————————————————–
I’ve also changed line 1 to read “@Echo Off” just to make that first bit invisible too 😉
I’m also having a quick google as a background task to see if I can develop an Autorun file so All I need to is plug in the USB key and the application will automagically start.
Nice effort, worth a look for those of you who want to take podcasts from machine to machine (I just want to be able to save state so I don’t re-listen to content and be able to archive/purge stuff I’ve already consumed).