stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley

Free kitchen designer from Ikea

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 12:22:00 GMT

Ikea hands out a free 3d kitchen designer, which is cool. It's windows only, which is not cool.

Tags for this post: link() ikea() kitchen() design() software() free()

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I just noticed...

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 05:09:00 GMT

That I forgot to put the slides from Stewart and my MythTV tutorial at LCA online. So, here they are, and sorry for the delay. You can also see the video of the tutorial here, and the homework we set here. Weirdly, there is even a remix video of the presentation.

Tags for this post: mythtv() conference() presentation() linux.conf.au() lca() 2007() mythtv() tutorial()

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I just noticed...

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 05:09:00 GMT

That I forgot to put the slides from Stewart and my MythTV tutorial at LCA online. So, here they are, and sorry for the delay. You can also see the video of the tutorial here, and the homework we set here. Weirdly, there is even a remix video of the presentation.

Tags for this post: presentations() conference() linux.conf.au() lca() 2007() mythtv() tutorial()

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Managing MySQL the Slack Way: How Google Deploys New MySQL Servers

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 04:47:00 GMT

I'll be presenting about Slack (the open sourced tool kit we use for deployment software configuration) at the MySQL user's conference in Santa Clara in late April. The talk will focus on the interesting aspects of Slack as it relates to MySQL and should be fun. A DBA mate of mine is gonna present with me, so it should be a barrel of laughs.

Tags for this post: mysql() conference() mysqluc2007() mysql() presentation()

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Done and done

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:44:00 GMT

Stewart finished off the last trailing chapter of the MythTV book a week or so ago, and I finished the last copy edit (the process where we learn US grammar) just now. That means we only need to have page layout done for a chapter or so and we're home. Hurrah!

Tags for this post: mythtv() book() progress()

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Scott Adam's blog: the boner theory of management

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 01:35:00 GMT

The Boner Theory of Economics also predicts that in the long run -- perhaps in a few hundred years -- the military will be 100% gay men. This is the best case scenario for taxpayers because it will keep down costs, and recruiting will be easy.

Recruiter: "We can't afford to give you body armor, but you'll be surrounded by young, vital men who are a long way from home. Would you like a tour of the showers?"

Recruit: "Yes, but I can't stand up right away."

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/03/the_boner_theor.html

Tags for this post: link() scott() adams() dilbert() management() theory()

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An occasional rant about spam

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:38:00 GMT

mikal@daedalus:~/blog-comments$ find . -type f -name "*.yes" | wc -l
664
mikal@daedalus:~/blog-comments$ find . -type f -name "*.no" | wc -l
18361
mikal@daedalus:~/blog-comments$ find . -type f -name "*.blocked" | wc -l
32111
mikal@daedalus:~/blog-comments$ find . -type f -name "*.badword" | wc -l
5007
mikal@daedalus:~/blog-comments$ du -sh
506M    .

664 real comments on this site, 18361 I manually said no to, 32111 were blocked based on originating IP, and 5007 contained a bad word. Andrew currently donates 506 mb of disk to hosting just comments. That seems excessive to me. I'll take the time to cleanup the disk usage in the next couple of days.

Tags for this post: blog() spam() comment()

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MythTV on AMD 64

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:56:00 GMT

I just built a sweet MythTV backup based on an Athlon X2 64 bit CPU. To get MythTV to compile, you need to change -ldts to -ldts_pic in libs/labavcodecs/Makefile.

That is all.

Tags for this post: mythtv() compile() amd() athlon() 64()

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Peaked?

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:21:00 GMT

I don't mean to imply I have peaked yet myself, but this is something I wonder about sometimes. How do you tell when you're at the peak of your talent and shouldn't go for that next interesting job / project / promotion?

Presumably it happens to everyone at some stage that they end up at the edge of their competence. Ignoring additional training as an option for a second, surely it's a good measure of one's personality to therefore stop at that point. How do you know when you reach that point though?

Tags for this post: work() talent() wondering()

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Dentist

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 05:00:00 GMT

I went to the dentist for the first time in the US last night. It was a pretty odd experience. 19 xrays (apparently that's standard here), a TV set on the wall where they showed me the tooth which needs a filling, and then showed me the filling after it was done, photos of my teeth with a digital camera so they can show me before and after in a few years. Heck, they rubbed lotion on my lips for me so that I wouldn't have to suffer at all by keeping my mouth open for more than 30 seconds.

The best bit? They came up with a written estimate before they did the filling, and made sure I was ok with the whole thing before they did any work.

I think I like the dentist here.

Tags for this post: travel() usa() dentist()

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MythNetTV beta 4

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 11:42:00 GMT

As it says in the email:

To: Discussion about mythtv <mythtv-users@mythtv.org>
Subject: MythNetTV beta 4

Hi again.

MythNetTv is my video downloader / aggregator / importer thingie for MythTV.

I've spent a little longer testing this beta, and I think it's getting
kinda ready for a real release number or something. New things in this
version (from the change log):

  - Made --update more terse
  - Made --update more liberal about what it considers to be a video,
    specifically added video/quick time and text/html (to work around the
    rather broken http://www.mobuzztv.com/uk/rss/quicktime
  - Added a filter option to --download to constrain it to only
    downloading shows with a specific title
  - Added transcoding for mov and wmv2 files
  - If there is a straggling import, and it causes as error, just skip
    it and mark it as imported
  - Don't reset transferred data statistic when we start downloading a
    show again
  - Started implementing moniker support for downloads
  - Unsupported monikers will result in an attempt to download the URL
    using mplayer (which works for RTSP and MMS at the least)

Yes, that's right. You can now download only shows with a specific
title, and you can also download any protocol which mplayer supports --
specifically, RTSP and MMS are now supported.

Now, if only there was a non-sucky way to work out what streams
abc.net.au were offering at any given time...

Get it here if you care: http://www.stillhq.com/mythtv/mythnettv/

Mikal

Tags for this post: mythtv() mythnettv() beta() release() video() download() rtsp() mms() stream()

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Dell e310 upgrade

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 01:35:00 GMT

I'm starting to get annoyed with the reliability of the USB chip sets in my external disks (of which I have six), so I am considering upgrading to a home theatre style case for my Dell e310 so I can have room to move the disks to inside the case. There are of course warts -- the Dimension e310 appears to have a BTX mother board ( which causes people pain ). Additionally, no one seems to make a BTX home theatre PC case, which sucks.

So, I might end up having to replace the entire machine, which isn't so cool. I'm gonna put all of this on hold until I can apply more thought to it.

Tags for this post: blog() toys() dell() machine() upgrade() btx() home() theatre()

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Kernel report video

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 11:55:00 GMT

The video of the kernel report is cool. It only has left hand audio though. I wish people would ask questions using the microphone though.

Tags for this post: conference() lca2007() video() kernel() report() jon() corbet()

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MySQL scaling: query snipers

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 05:03:00 GMT

I've been wanting a query sniper for a while for MySQL (some people seem to call them "query killers"). They're basically programs which inspect the MySQL "show processlist" command and decide to kill some processes if they violate specified rules. I have a prototype of one in python, and couldn't find any other implementations until tonight when I came across Querybane, which is what Wikipedia use to do exactly the same thing.

Now, I need to think further about if querybane does what I want, especially given I can't find the source code. Perhaps it's hidden in the media wiki code somewhere? The only code for a project named "servmon" (it's parent project) that I can find is four years old and in PHP.

(Oh, by the way, the Wikipedia MySQL docs are really interesting, for example this page has some nice practical advice about replication log corruption. I wish I had found this before now for two reasons: it's nice to see how other people do this stuff; and there is some stuff I can totally steal from here.)

So, does anyone know where I can find recent querybane code? Alternatively, what do other people use as a query sniper? Is it worth open sourcing mine?

Update: Apparently what I needed to do was sleep on it, and use Google Code Search. The querybane code appears to be at http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/servmon/. In the end it's not going to work for me, as it seems to be really based around a world in which you use IRC to keep a track of the state of your servers, which isn't something I want to do.

Tags for this post: mysql() query() killer() sniper() admin()

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I am sometimes amazed by the childlike political discourse in the US

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 03:59:00 GMT

It amazes me that the best political argument Ann Coulter can come up with is that John Edwards is a faggot. While it is true that Ann specialises in a particularly vile form of hate politics, I guess she's sufficiently lame that she can't even think of good insults any more.

It's a bit like the Anna Nicole Smith burial thing... Isn't the best way to fix these problems just to turn off the media coverage of these morons?

Tags for this post: travel() usa() politics()

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LCA 2007 Video: CFQ IO

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 07:44:00 GMT

I'm watching the CFQ IO Scheduler talk now on MythTV using my MythTV program downloader thingie. Beware the very large audio volume jump about three minutes in. Just saying.

Oh, and the "pan across blank blackboards for a bit at a funny angle" thing at around 6 minutes is pretty amusing too.

Update: now with working URL for the downloader thingie!

Tags for this post: conference() lca2007() linux.conf.au() video()

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Free on demand from Comcast

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 04:32:00 GMT

Catherine and I have had analog Comcast cable TV in the US since we moved into our apartment here. We've resisted going digital because of the brain dead requirement that you use the Comcast set top box (which sucks), and therefore it not working with MythTV. If they shipped a digital decoder card which worked in a PCI slot with Linux, I would upgrade right away.

I've told them that a bunch of times, and they've offered us free upgrades about four times.

In the end they must have got the hint, because they just gave us a free "on demand" digital box for our analog cable. It's free for a year, and appears to be a Motorola DCT 700, which seems to just be a embedded computer which uses a two megabit connection to Comcast to deliver programs.

Now I'm meant to be activating the device, but I've been on hold with Comcast for 15 minutes. The user documentation even promises the call should only take three to four minutes. Of course plugging the MythTV box into the back of the Motorola box also broke our existing analog reception, so I might end up giving on the call and backing out the cabling change until Comcast gets with the program...

More device gossip as it comes to hand.

Tags for this post: blog() toys() motorola() comcast() analog() digital() set() top() box() on() demand() free()

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Controlling DirecTV STB via USB

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 08:43:00 GMT

Might come in handy if I ever change pay TV provider in the US... DirecTV set top boxes are controllable via USB.

Tags for this post: link() mythtv() settop() pay() tv()

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Debugging reboot problems with a n800?

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 03:45:00 GMT

The n800 seems to be spontaneously rebooting, which is very annoying. It's also at the same time going through a lot more battery life when idle than I would expect. Does anyone know of a good tool for tracking down what the device thinks is happening (I don't have R&D mode installed on the machine).

Tags for this post: blog() toys() n800() reboot() problem() battery() life()

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Now, about the video backlog

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:12:00 GMT

$ ./mythnettv --statistics
Programs tracked: 385
  Google EngEdu: 279
  Scoble Show: 26
  linux.conf.au 2007: 74

Programs still to download: 283
  Google EngEdu: 202
  Scoble Show: 8
  linux.conf.au 2007: 73

Data transferred: 22 gb

This is why I want to queue video, and then have it download to Myth a little at a time.

Tags for this post: mythtv() mythnettv()

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