open source

mythtv - it works!

Posted by cafuego on Sunday 9 December 2007. In categories &open source  &linux  &mythtv  &dvico

After over a year of using myth on my laptop (which has tv out) to view video files on tv, I now have an honest-to-god working mythtv setup with dual tuners, remote control and everything.

For my birthday I obtained a DViCO FusionHDTV DVB-T Dual Digital 4, after doing a spot of googling about Linux compatibility. This is a PCI card that, after plugging in, is detected as two USB tuners and an input device.

Hardware 

I had scrounged together a pile of hardware from various defunct machines in the house and been given a mobo by a friend (Thanks Steve!) The system is an Athlon64 2800+ with 512Mb ram, a fanless nvidia FX5200 with an RCA tvout connector and an 80Gb harddisk. (Though all recording is done to a 500GB LVM volume in another room via NFS over 100baseT)

a spot of php tweaking

Posted by cafuego on Wednesday 28 November 2007. In categories &open source  &conference  &osdc  &php

Well, as it turns out there is a ready-made fix to some of the horrid inser-input-filtering problems I - and probably any PHP coder - encounter.

This morning was the first time I saw Rasmus Lerdorf speak and, although his views on web security want me to give up coding in general and become a potato farmer more specifically, he did point out some tools to make it a lot harder for a macilious user to abuse any web app you write.

x86_64 lightning extension

Posted by cafuego on Friday 9 November 2007. In categories &open source  &thunderbird  &lightning  &calendar

I'm not sure why, but it seems pretty tricky to find a v0.7 copy of the lightning extension for thunderbird on amd64. (Ubuntu Gutsy only comes with v0.5)

This is the version that supports remote calendars and is as such much more useful than the versions that don't.

I had a go at changing the targetPlatform tag in the i686 package yesterday, but that resulted in my Thunderbird being broken and not even displaying mail correctly. Not good.

Anyway, to make a long story short, today I compiled one and please find attached lightning 0.7 for x86_64.

linux.conf.au update

Posted by cafuego on Thursday 1 November 2007. In categories &open source  &conference  &mel8ourne  &linux.conf.au

I suppose it's been pretty quiet on the linux.conf.au front since we've opened registrations, so perhaps an update is in order.

Things are progressing well and we seem to be tracking okay. Data is being generated for graphing purposes :-) There are 16 days to go until Early Bird registrations close!

Nothing major has broken as of yet (*tap*) and we're just about to do some updating on the main site.

Until that's done, here is a quick listing of the social programme for those who asked:

  • Speakers Dinner - Tuesday Jan 29, 2008
  • Penguin Dinner - Wednesday Jan 30, 2008
  • Professional Delegates Networking Session - Thursday Jan 3, 2008
  • Open Day - Saturday 2 Feb 2008

OSDC

Posted by cafuego on Wednesday 3 October 2007. In categories &open source  &conference  &osdc

Last year I properly attended my first Open Source Developers Conference, and this year's - held in Brisbane from November 26 to 29 - is coming up fast.

I'm planning to attend again this year and if you have any developers doing open source work or doing any open source work yourself, I can heartily recommend going. OSDC is a great place to pick up tick and trips and find out how to use your favourite tools and languages in unexpected new ways.

The theme for this year's conference is "Success in Development & Business".