Mythbuntu is even simpler

January 29, 2008 by Oliver · 1 Comment
Filed under: Computers, Entertainment, Technology

One of the newest developments in MythTV land is the development of “multirec”. Multirec is the name of the SVN branch of Myth where code to handle the recording of multiple DVB streams from a single tuner (providing the streams are on the same multiplex). This means any DVB users (in the UK this essentially means Freeview users) have the possibility of recording many more channels at once. In fact if you had six tuners (three Nova-T 500s for instance) you’d be able to record the whole of Freeview (if you had enough hard drive throughput at least).

Unfortunately using this wonderful feature requires you to run the latest SVN version of MythTV. Since I didn’t fancy compiling Myth from souce I looked for a simpelr way – the answer is Mythbuntu. Mythbuntu is basically Ubuntu (7.10 – Gutsy) with MythTV installed. It’s basically the same idea as the other MythTV distributions. The big difference is that they also provide weekly packages built from trunk – i.e. if you’re willing to accept the small chance of instability you can have bleeding edge MythTV installed without having to leave your package manager (well within a week of bleeding edge at least).

PS – You can also add MythTV to an existing Ubuntu 7.10 installation by clicking the relevant link on the Mythbuntu page. This also comes with a nifty called Mythbuntu Control Center which lets you choose whether to install a frontend, backend or both as well as choose which desktop to use (Gnome, KDE or XFCE) and enable/disable various useful services (VNC, MySQL etc.) all in one place.

Tags: DVB, Mythbuntu, Mythdora, MythTV

Windows Vista

June 29, 2007 by Oliver · 3 Comments
Filed under: Computers, Entertainment, Personal, Technology, Windows

Well for various reasons I now have Windows Vista. I installed it myself and to be honest everything went smoothly. That’s not to say everything went perfectly, but nothing unsurmountable happened.

The first problem was the fact that I bought the upgrade version. I’d previously bought Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 but I was doing a clean install. Previous version of Windows just asked for you to pop the disk of the previous version in this situation – Vista didn’t. It would only let me install from Windows. So I had to install Media Centre first.

Then once I had installed Vista it didn’t have drivers for my network card or my sound card (and no network card meant no internet and therefore no video drivers and therefore horrible resolution (at the wrong aspect ratio no less). Well luckily I have another computer with internect access so I got the network drivers (and then the video and sound drivers).

Beyond that, I haven’t done much with it yet. The Aero glass lucks cool and stuff and the new games it comes with are at least as entertaining as the old ones were when I first saw them.

PS. User Account Control really is as annoying as they say it is for at least two reasons: Firstly it seems to ask you everything twice. Second since I have administrator access anyway it doesn’t really provide any security (it happens so often that you just click accept straight away without reading it).

Tags: Home Premium, MCE, Media Center, Microsoft, Vista

BBC interested in TalkTalk

February 27, 2007 by Oliver · 4 Comments
Filed under: Computers, Entertainment, Technology

I got an unexpected email today from Catherine Wynne of the BBC. Apparently they are doing a piece about TalkTalk on the 6 o’clock news tonight and during the research came across my TalkTalk problems post (the one with 500+ comments – mostly about problems people are having).

They would like a number of comments from TalkTalk users regarding the service. If you’re interested (and read this quite a bit before 6pm 27th February), call:

Catherine Wynne
Number snipped since it’s no longer relevant

Tags: BBC, complaints, Internet, TalkTalk

Play Supremacy

January 20, 2007 by Oliver · Comments Off
Filed under: Computers, Entertainment, Games, Programming, Technology

The first game I ever did in Shockwave is now available on my site! It’s basically a Risk clone but with a fewer features and reasonable AI.

Play Supremacy

Tags: Adobe, Director, Macromedia, Risk, Shockwave, Supremacy

Exploration in Revelations

December 16, 2006 by Oliver · 5 Comments
Filed under: Computers, EVE Online, Entertainment, Games, MPOGs, Technology

A recent update to EVE Online has made exploration (brought in a couple of weeks ago with Revelations) easier. How much easier? I don’t know since I was never successful before the update. But today I had my first success.

If you look around the EVE forums there is an in depth guide to scanning. I’ll give you short guide. First bit of info, you’re going to do most of your scanning on the solar system view. Get to this by clicking on the map and selecting solar system view from the top of the overview. Secondly you’re going to need a few skills, specifically Astrometrics III and whatever it’s prerequisites are. As with everything in EVE there are others that will help you.

Now, to actually scan. Open your scanner and from anyway in the system launch a Multispectral Probe. This scans an entire solar system and tells you if it finds a reading and what type. The type determines what type of probe to use next. You need “a bunch” (at least 5 or so per system) of “X Quest Probe”s where X is the type of the signature (gravimetric, ladar etc.). You can find stuff with the wrong probes but it will take more scans. Go to each planet in the system and launch one of the Quest probes. When you get to the inner planets you’ll have to choose which to cover since you can’t launch a probe within the range of another. When they’re all ready, select “Cosmic Signature” from your scanner and hit analyse.

Hopefully it will find something. If not, hit Analyse again. Once you have something, things get easier. With a lot of luck the accuracy will say 0m which means you’ve found and go warp there and see what it is. More than likely there will be a deviation of some sort and you will have to scan a bit more. So warp to the signature and destroy any probes that can “see” it (you can see the scan range of the probes you have selected in the scanner window).

The next bit is a little hard to explain. There are different probes besides the Quest probes – for example Sift (make sure they begin with type though, gravimetric for instance, otherwise they aren’t the probes used for exploration). Each of these probes has a different range – the shorter the range the more accurate they are. You want to use the shortest range probe that has a range greater than the deviation of your result. So deviation of 0.37 AU (which I got) can be found with the Sift probe (rand of 1 AU). So drop the probe and scan. Unfortunately (As was the case with me), you may need to scan multiple times (with multiple probes). But with any luck, you’ll find something :)

Below are some screenshots taken during scanning and of the Omber asteroid belt I found. Not the most exciting thing to find but I was in empire space and I’d guess the really cool things are in low sec and beyond.