I had one of those moments tonight, and accidentally dropped the mythconverg database on my production MythTV instance, not the development one. This made me sad. Luckily I had a backup which was only a week old (although I am now running night backups of that database). Recovery wasn’t too bad once I wrote some…
Importing downloaded videos as recordings into MythTV
I’ve been playing with downloading videos and treating them as recordings in MythTV because the MythTV player is nicer than Xine, and because it works well as a demo for the linux.conf.au tutorial I am working on at the moment. I wont document it here because it’s not quite ready, but it’s actually quite easy…
There is a reason Ikea is crowded on the weekends
It only just occurred to me the other day, but I now know why Ikea is so crowded on the weekends. Sure, the cheap furniture is attractive, but I think it’s also go something to do with: Free child care Free nappies and baby change facilities! Bathrooms which are actually designed to be the right…
They all use MySQL…
I was walking down Mountain View’s Castro Street this afternoon, and noticed that meebo is advertising for developers and system admins. Interestingly, they seem to match the design pattern used by pretty much every web 2.0 company I have seen around here (except MySpace): linux, MySQL, and Ajax. So, there you go.
Want HDTV but only for US free to air?
The HDHomeRun seems to be a pretty useful device. There are a bunch of people on the MythTV mailing lists trying these things out at the moment. It’s a networked dual tuner HD set top box. Kinda cool. Now, if only someone would come up with a digital cable card which works with MythTV…
As pointed out by a friend at work
Trends for “return gift”: . Who would have thought that people only return gifts at Christmas?
Reactive economies?
The other day while in Costco (for the foreigners, think Bunnings or some other hardware warehouse, but for food), I was graced with this conversation at the checkout, between two Costco employees: e1: Where the hell is e3? e2: Oh, we didn’t meet our sales target yesterday, so they cut hours today. e1: So he’s…
Bloomberg: How to handle those annoyingly poor relatives at Christmas
Resist the urge to impress family members with your purchasing power and instead give them only what they can afford to give you. Avoid luxury goods, for example, or other items redolent of leisure. Choose, instead, gifts that encourage productive labour. Hand tools, say, or cookbooks. Obviously your gift needs to say, “I love you,”…
When in San Diego, visit the aircraft carrier
Just a note to myself to remember to visit the USS Midway if I ever find myself in San Diego.
Christmas morning
Our kids seem to have the Christmas thing under control — I remember waking my folks up at 5am to open presents, but our kids let us sleep in today until nearly 8:30am. They liked their presents heaps, so if you got something for them, well done. I’ll put some pictures online later when I…