More on myth

Managed to get a spare Molex 4 pin to SATA power adapter.

Four problems were still present at that time

a) No wireless, after a bit of messing around I found that if i changed my router to a different channel it got picked up fine (bit of a pain), unfortunatly I keep having to manually run /etc/init.d/networking restart to get it to spot when the router is switched on or off.

b) DVD player didn’t work, found out that I needed to set the region code using regionset

c) Remote wasn’t entirely working, found out that the keysyms used by the mythbuntu setup were wrong, replaced them with some I found on the net then it started working fine.

d) Problems with the via82xx audio driver, after a loud audio event (such as an error in the MPEG audio stream, the sound would pop and then no longer work), after a while messing around I still couldn’t find a solution. Current I have an older EMU10K plugged into the PCI socket, but I still need to find a better solution.

Over the last 3 days I’ve recorded a bit too much TV and seem to have not enough time to watch it all. One time mythbackend crashed, I wish it had a watchdog and restarted. A few times i’ve crashed the frontend, these seem to be when I try playing things from the recordings screen, if I wait until the preview comes up it doesn’t seem to crash, not sure why.

To add to my cold, my wisdom tooth is acting up again.

MythTV box

So my parts for my mythtv box arrived this morning, quickly put it, it goes quite nicely together, it was a bit fiddly with all the leads especially in such a confined space.

One slight problem was the lack of a SATA power cable on the motherboard, and lack of a PATA power socket on the HDD, hopefully I can pick one up tomorrow, I could play with a test install (I might try mythbuntu first) on one of my older PATA drives to see if it goes okay.

The final components are the same as those listed in “Ordered my mythtv box“

Gnocchi with gorgonzola

My mum is up for the weekend as she has a reunion with some of the people she went to college with in Ilkley. So I decided to try a few new things, firstly actually making salad dressing (why bother buying it, it’s just olive oil and a bit of vinegar usually).

Then I made Gnocchi with gorgonzola dolce out of “Cook with Jamie [Oliver]” it came out rather well, the gnocchi was store bought but the sauce made from stratch. I think I made a bit to much sauce relative to the gnocchi I had, but that was okay. I have rather a thing about gnocchi and gorgonzola as I had a really excellent version in Italy last year (I think it was stuffed gnocchi)

Today I might try asparagus risotto or some kind of risotto, I want to try making hollaindaise sauce again.

dabs and miniitx have dispatched my ordered, the hard drive is in leeds, the other bits who knows.

I’m still getting random disconnects on my iMac wireless under Windows XP/bootcamp.

Ordered my mythtv box

So I’ve decided against buying the PCI dual tuner right now, a) I already have a USB tuner, b) amazon have it cheaper than dabs (and scan have a more expensive model of the HDD) and they do free delivery

Edimax 802.11g 54Mbps USB Stick TURBO £15.98

Western Digital Caviar Green Power 750GB 7200RPM 16MB S300 £75.00

Total 96.98 (with 6 quid delivery)

Then the Mini-ITX parts

Jetway J7F2 Fanless 1.2GHz Eden C7 Mini-ITX Motherboard £99.00

Black Morex Cubid 2699V Mini-ITX Case £49.00

Panasonic UJ875 Slotload DVD-RW Drive £59.00

1GB DDR2 667 DIMM for VIA CN/EN/EX/SN & Jetway C7 & M72G £29.00

Jetway DVI + LVDS Motherboard Module (J7F2 only) £25.00

Mini-ITX total: £316.08

Full total : 412.98

I got my final pay from the university today, so it seems a good thing to spend it on

First day

My first day went well, did the usual induction type thing, of course I’m not allowed to talk about what I’m working on really so mums the word (Apparently that originates from Shakespeare in Henry VI Part 2). It was interesting to see the power mechanisms they have had to install as lots of people work with preproduction hardware.

After work went to the local pub with a few other people from work, spent far to much time there (till 9pm), then on the way home me and another person with the same last name stopped in Sainsburys, he was in a rush and got to the checkout before me, when I arrived at the checkout the one next to it, the woman on the till noticed that someone had left their wallet, I idly wondered if it was him, but I couldn’t ask the name obviously. During the scanning someone said ‘Freeman’ which picked my ears up as it’s my last name and I realised it was him, I tried to run to catch him at Keighley station but he had just got the train a minute before. Wonder what happened as his train pass was in his wallet.

I’m working to build a new mythtv boxen, it’l be a mini-itx board (probably a Jetway 1.2Ghz Fanless beast) also I’m going to go with Western Digital Green Power when you compare it’s power requirements the drop in idle wattage is quite impressive, but also the 1.27 (14.5% of power saving) drop in watts during read/write cycles is another nicety

WD Green Power drives (from the WD website)

Read/Write:7.50 Watts
Idle:4.0 Watts
Standby:0.97 Watts
Sleep:0.97 Watts

WD Cavier SE drives (from the WD website)

Read/Write:8.77 Watts
Idle:8.40 Watts
Standby:0.97 Watts
Sleep:0.97 Watts
 

So the CPU will take 7W (at maximum), HDD takes 7.50W (at max), I need to get a Power Monitor Socket thing (£27.99 from maplins) to actually calculate the wattage. It looks like it’s going to come to around £580.27 (a bit more expensive than a premade PVR, but more interesting to play around with and have the ability to watch DVDs and have as many tuners as I want (this’ll have 3 at the moment, 1 USB and a PCI card) and have 750GB of disk space (and the ability to backup to USB) instead of the usual 160GB.

It’ll be interesting to see the true power requirements, for comparision the Humax PVR-9200TB (which is the model I bought my mum) takes 11W on standby (ouch) and 28W in operation. It’ll be interesting to see if I can get it under 40W , since it’ll also be a DVD player as well.

 

Anyway, it’s 7:35, I should get ready for work (I woke up at 6)

New driving instructor

Now that I’ve moved up to Bingley, I needed a new driving instructor, so I did my first driving lesson up here. To be honest I far prefered my old driving instructor he was far more reassuring and I have a feeling that the new one is a bit of a misgynist. The roads around here are far more challenging, and I’m not used to having to change down a gear for the revs.

Moved up to Bingley

So my move went okay, slight issue with me getting virgin media installed for phone and broadband (4.50 for unlimited downloads, nice). One surprising little thing is I can get all freeview channels with an indoor aerial, which is pretty nice, time to setup a myth tv box again.

I bought an iMac 3Ghz, the screen is shockingly big really. I also bought a copy of Aperture 2 to process my photos, hopefully I’ll be able to catch up and then take some photos of the local area which is much more photogenic for landscape photos than Leicester.

I lost my debit card and had to cancel it, the fish seemed to have move well.