Failure is the Key to Success

Better late than never, this post has sat in draft for a nearly three months. I had a laptop running Ubuntu acting as a proxy server to filter all the kids’ internet traffic and decided back in February that it was getting a bit long in the tooth. It was a Compaq M700 laptop, with a 400MHz processor, 384MB RAM and an 8GB hard disc. A long time since it had been state of the art! The last straw came when I couldn’t upgrade the operating system to the latest version as I didn’t have enough disc space. The old laptop provided several functions for me, so these would have to migrated to the replacement machine.

A few days later, I bought a Dell D610 laptop (Celeron 2.0GHz, 40GB hard disc) off Ebay and some additional memory to take it to 2GB.

I had downloaded Ubuntu Server 10.10 about the same time and burnt the ISO to CD, however when I came to use it I found the image was incomplete, so had to download it again. Second time lucky.

The notes below are for me as an aid for future rebuilds, but may help someone else with their configuration.

Continue reading » Proxy server

Tags:Dansguardian,dellfand,proxy server,spamassassin,Ubuntu

When I first built the system, I had a problem with an annoying blue line above the picture during playback.

I searched for the problem and found a command to change the colour of the line to black, xvattr -a XV_COLORKEY -v 0

I added this to one of the mythtv startup files, but during one of the updates it got replaced. So we have been living with this annoying blue line for longer than we should have. I have been asked a few times to fix it and haven’t got around to it, oops sorry Jo.

Anyway, using the suggestion here http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/NVidiaProprietaryDriver, I have added it to the X11 configuration and now the problem has gone away again.

Tags:Mythtv

Mum was away over Christmas, so I recorded a couple of programs for her.

This then provided the next challenge with Mythtv, how to get a recording onto a DVD in a playable format. Mythtv has an archive utility, so here’s what I did.

On the main menu, select Optical Discs, Archive files. The first time I selected Create Archive – this isn’t the option I wanted, what this does is copy the recording to DVD, rather than create a playable DVD. Anyway, select Create DVD and then choose the type of media, I used DVD+/-RW and selected to burn to DVD and force overwrite DVD-RW.

Next you select the theme for the DVD menus, I used the first one, G.A.N.T. Animated.

Continue reading » Mythtv – Saving recordings to DVD

Tags:Mythtv

My DVD recorder that I have had for about 3 and a half years has been causing us a few problems when recording Freeview channels. We were getting breakthrough on the audio from the cable connection on the other Scart socket. This would get very distracting when watching a recording as there was this quiet, audible echo of another soundtrack.

A few months ago we picked up a usb TV tuner at Costco and that got me thinking about a PC based solution for the problem. About 9 years ago when we first attached a PC to our HiFi system, it was a very low specification and although we had a TV tuner card, the PC wasn’t powerful enough to record anything usable. As time went on, the PC has been replaced a few times and about 5 years ago we installed a piece of software called Meedio that we used to manage/play our video and audio files. There was also Meedio TV to record from TV, but we never explored it as the PC was still fairly low spec. At the time we chose Meedio, I had been aware of a Linux based program called Mythtv, but due to the fact that the PC was low spec and I was more familiar with Windows, this was discounted.

Roll forward to this year and I explored the options again. This time Mythtv sounded worth investigating, so I downloaded a copy of Mythbuntu, this is a Ubuntu Linux operating system bundled with Mythtv. I am currently using Ubuntu on a PC providing filtered internet access for the kids, so was more familiar with this than any other distribution. Using a 120GB disc in the old Dell desktop we replaced 18 months ago, I installed Mythbuntu and started trying it out. In the past few years Linux installations have become a breeze. My first installation was Slackware 2 back in 1995, and that was a command line experience that was challenging. Now, you just put the CD in and get lead through the install just like a Windows operating system installation. Anyway, after less than 30 minutes, I had the operating system installed, Mythtbuntu configured with my usb TV tuner and the first TV programs recording. I set the program guide to pick up from the cable guide and that gave me a few days available programming.

Continue reading » Replacing my DVD recorder

Tags:Mythbuntu,Mythtv

If you’re not an IT person supporting printers using HP Web JetAdmin software, tune out now.

What, you’re still reading. I am surprised!

OK, here is some background. HP Web JetAdmin is software that monitors network attached printers and provides alerts when certain conditions are met. For example, if the toner is low or there is a paper jam, it can alert you, allowing you to be proactive with support. It means that you can purchase toners when alerted rather than holding a large stock or being caught on the hop when all the colour printers are out and no-one has mentioned it until 5 minutes before a critical print job.

Anyway, we had been using this software for some years at work without any problems. You would just get the alert email with a summary of the issue and a link allowing you to open the admin interface in a web browser. Recently, we had some major network changes which resulted in the IP addresses being changed for all our network devices (including computers and printers). After the changes, and rediscovering the new printers (some of their details changed as well), the Web JetAdmin software continued to work as before. Unfortunately, this also included the link to open the admin interface. It was still using the old IP address which was no longer valid.

After ‘googling’ for the solution without luck, I tried several approaches, some of which got me into a bit of a mess with the database. In the end I got the software re-installed, only to find it was still hooked into the old database and the old information.

Continue reading » Changing the IP address of a HP Web JetAdmin installation

Tags:changing ip address,web jetadmin

A while back, when I got my new work mobile, I checked out my blog using the WAP browser. The blog was visible, but as it was faithfully reproduced, it meant that I had to scroll all over the place to see it. This was obviously not the best approach for mobile users.

I’ve had a look around at WordPress plugins and tried out two, WordPress Mobile Edition by Alex King and WordPress Mobile by Andy Moore. I used the demo of Opera Mini to assist me in my testing.

Continue reading » Going Mobile

Tags:alex king,FireStats,twitter tools,wordpress mobile edition,wordpress plugins