REverberations - Technology

TwinHan Remote under Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 12:46:37 -0500

Years ago with one of my DVB TV tuner cards cards I unexpectedly also received a little USB IR receiver and remote. In common with almost all peripheral hardware, it was designed for Windows but can with a little effort be made to work with a linux machine, such as my MythTV machine.

I made it work by hand years ago, but then had no use for it for a while, and a few months ago wanted to make it work again. It turns out that Adam Pierce has a good set of instructions. But, like all other commenters on that blog post, my setup broke when upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04.

Grrrr.

I have finally found a working combination that hopefully will help others - the suggestions in the blog post were good enough to set me on the right track, but not good enough to make it actually work.

Here's the items that I had to modify by hand over and above my (upgraded) Ubuntu 10.04 setup:

It turns out that nothing makes the directory /var/run/lirc/, which is where lirc needs to put its socket. So, I have modified /etc/init.d/lirc to add this code block at line 109:

if [ ! -d /var/run/lirc ];then
log_success_msg "/var/run/lirc/ is missing, creating"
mkdir /var/run/lirc
fi

lircd should then be able to start and create a socket called lircd within that directory.
Nothing creates /dev/lirc. This may not be needed but certainly some of the lirc testing tools expect to find it, so:

cd /dev
ln -s input/by-id/usb-Twinhan_Tech_Remote_Control_1111111-event-if00 lirc
Nothing creates /dev/lircd. This may not be needed, as it is the legacy equivalent of /var/run/lirc/lircd, but I suggest linking it:

cd /dev
ln -s /var/run/lirc/lircd
You need to modify /usr/share/hal/fdi/preprobe/20thirdparty/lirc.fdi as per Adam's blog entry.
As other commenters have noted, the USB ID has changed and lirc needs to be aware of this, so modify /etc/init.d/hardware.conf to contain:

REMOTE="Custom"
REMOTE_MODULES=""
REMOTE_DRIVER="devinput"
REMOTE_DEVICE="/dev/input/by-id/usb-Twinhan_Tech_Remote_Control_1111111-event-if00"
REMOTE_LIRCD_CONF=""
REMOTE_LIRCD_ARGS=""

TRANSMITTER="None"
TRANSMITTER_MODULES=""
TRANSMITTER_DRIVER=""
TRANSMITTER_DEVICE=""
TRANSMITTER_LIRCD_CONF=""
TRANSMITTER_LIRCD_ARGS=""

START_LIRCD="true"

LOAD_MODULES="true"

LIRCMD_CONF=""

FORCE_NONINTERACTIVE_RECONFIGURATION="false"
START_LIRCMD=""
REMOTE_SOCKET=""
TRANSMITTER_SOCKET=""
Lastly, and this is the bit that had me stumped, I needed to take the header block from the released lircd.conf.devinput, remove unnecessary sections, and modify it with the keycodes published by Adam's commenters, installed as /etc/lirc/lircd.conf:

# generated by devinput.sh (obsolete 32 bit version)
begin remote

name devinput
bits 16
eps 30
aeps 100

one 0 0
zero 0 0
pre_data_bits 16
pre_data 0x8001
gap 132799
toggle_bit_mask 0x0

begin codes
FULLSCREEN 0x0177
POWER 0x0164
1 0x0201
2 0x0202
3 0x0203
4 0x0204
5 0x0205
6 0x0206
7 0x0207
8 0x0208
9 0x0209
RECORD 0x00A7
0 0x0200
FAVORITE 0x016C
REWIND 0x00A8
CH+ 0x0192
FORWARD 0x009F
VOL- 0x0072
PLAY 0x00CF
VOL+ 0x0073
RECALL 0x0198
CH- 0x0193
STOP 0x0080
PAUSE 0x0077
MUTE 0x0071
CANCEL 0x00DF
CAPTURE 0x00D2
PREVIEW 0x016A
EPG 0x016D
RECORDLIST 0x018B
TAB 0x000F
TELETEXT 0x0184
end codes
end remote

The key names in the above file line up nicely with the ones in my mythtv lirc config, and are all-caps versions of what is actually printed on my remote.

All that, and just in time for my Logitech Harmony remote to arrive and have to start again.

Lucid (Bad) Dreams

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:52:35 -0500

For years now I've loved linux. I've met and spoken with Linus Torvalds. I've even made a pilgrimage to where he wrote it. For servers, and many desktop uses, there's nothing quite like it.

The core linux system is a beautiful thing. Through uni studies, attending several linux.conf.au events over the years, and personal interest I've studied multiple parts of the code, and even fiddled under the hood myself at times.

And yet every time it comes to upgrading my highly-customised home server, one or more things breaks horribly, requiring much of my time to fix. These days the distribution I run on the server is kubuntu - a legacy from when the system was also used as a desktop. This upgrade will hopefully be the last for years, as the latest 10.04 release "lucid" is a Long Term Support release, meaning it will be kept safe and stable for years to come. Good thing, given it's taken me a few weeks to get this far. Here's a log for those who are interested.

X would start, but with only a small white window with no useful content. Looking into the logs, it turns out it was far from happy with the status of /usr/lib/libGL.so. Googling around and looking at symlinks, it turns out that the system of symlinks for such things has changed, only one package didn't get the memo:
```
reverb@trane ~ $ sudo apt-file search /usr/lib/libGL.so

libgl1-mesa-dev: /usr/lib/libGL.so
```
Fixing this, there's a similar mess for libGL.so.1. All this NVIDIA-related rubbish is most annoying, but this server isn't going to get any new hardware for years at the current rate, and as such it has to work. It sure did just fine before the update.

My IR remote control no longer worked. What a mess this was. Nobody online had this one sorted, and until last night neither did I. I think I'll post that separately so it can be of assistance to others trying to make this work too.

Linux is an amazing thing which is capable of complex setups well beyond that which most users would have, and all for free. That just doesn't mean that the complex stuff is easy when it breaks in new and creative ways. It would be a full-time job to keep up with the changes that have happened with this release. I've had to find this out after the fact and spend time patching it all up. I had hoped Canonical (maintainers of Ubuntu/Kubuntu) would be doing this for me, and on the vast majority of hardware-software combinations out there they do very well. I can just see as time becomes more and more precious in years to come that a service doing all this custom work for me would start to look very attractive. Especially when your setup looks like this:

Dual-core intel something or other, 4GB RAM
RAID5 using four 750GB partitions across 2x750GB, 1x1.5TB and 1x808GB SATA drives
Custom-compiled afpd shares the RAID to the Macs in the house
Backup to external USB hard drives, rotated off-site
Uplink is ethernet to Airport Express which extends the Airport Extreme network at the other end of the house where the DSL gear is
Downlink is to a network-attached APC UPS (through my ancient USB Ethernet adapter, no less!), which gets its address from the server using dhcp
USB IR receiver receives commands from a Twinhan remote
Two DVB tuners are connected via a powered antenna splitter
A SVN build of MythTV schedules (using Shepherd) and records (from the tuners) live TV
A SVN build of MythTVfrontend (although I've been trialling xbmc) displays recorded shows controlled by the remote out through DVI and SPDIF optical audio to my Onkyo HDMI receiver, then on to the 1080p TV.
Mythweb (with modified PHP and apache configs) runs to allow TV scheduling from a web browser
Boinc runs in the background searching for aliens and cancer cures. Seriously.
Lots of other things like mail, NFS, etc. that a server normally does.

Should be simple to upgrade, right?

Europe 2002-3 Blog Fixed

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 05 May 2010 09:23:14 -0500

The link over to the left goes to the almost-daily blog and pictures we kept during our Europe 2002-3 trip. When I moved webhosts I neglected to quality check it and have only just fixed a few little issues which were stopping the blog from working.

Also, the "Time Machine" which provides a quick link to a certain number of years ago today is fixed so that we can re-live our trip each day, but in a much cheaper fashion.

This is all custom code and today (or even when we went again for our Honeymoon in 2006) I'd do it quite differently, using flickr and/or one of the many online travel blogging services which did not exist in any form in 2002.

Insulated Twitter

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:33:23 -0500

Two tweets landed side-by-side in my Twitter feed the other day, highlighting the difference between our current government(s) and optimal reality:

Fully Sick

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:05:42 -0500

We're all feeling rather ill with cold-like symptoms (Liz is quick to point out they are not flu-like, and having dealt with suspected swine flue cases in quarrantine at her work I guess she'd know).
This has brought a return to the horrible nights of no Phoebe sleep, although worse because she screams for her mum who herself needs about a week of sleep.
We're mostly through this, having had Phoebe sleep through from 7:30 until 4am today, which is a huge improvement so we aren't complaining (much). Unfortunately we've missed a few occasions due to not wanting to go anywhere to spread our nasties around - sorry those we had to cancel with.
There are recent pictures added, with more coming soon (especially now that my new Macbook has a built in SD card slot, and I'm having a great deal of fun with the new 35mm 1.8 Nikkor lens ! ).

Naked DSL Exposed

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 15 May 2009 08:16:52 -0500

Naked DSL, for those who are not aware, is an impressive-sounding piece of technology that promises to free you of expensive phone bills.

In summary, since you can now run Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) phones which actually route your phone calls over the internet rather than the phone system, the next logical thing to look at is why have a "normal" phone at all? However, today you need a phone line to run your DSL connection over.

So, you pay say $30 to Telstra to give you a phone line, then $30-60 to your DSL provider for bandwidth, and then run free phone calls over the top of that.

See that $30 number at the start? It's paying for a phone line with the ability to make phone calls, which you now no longer need.

Enter Naked DSL. It's just a raw phone line no longer capable of making phone calls, it is naked in the sense that all it can do is host a DSL session. Cost savings abound.

This much information you can find out anywhere else online, such as most Naked DSL provider's websites. This far I had read before deciding to save the mother-in-law some money and set her up with a connection through iiNet - itself a nightmare but the root cause goes deeper than that.

The core problem with Naked DSL in Australia is that Telstra techs don't understand it.

Four times now she has been disconnected by Telstra (NOT iiNet) who, when probing around in either the local junction box or the exchange for free lines to connect other customers, find hers, and perform their standard check of whether a line is available - look for a dial tone.

But, from the brief explanation above, you will probably summise that Naked DSL does not have a dialtone!.

So, techs disconnect her, connect some other now-happy customer insted, and move on. Our poor heroine in this story is left with no DSL connection, a DSL provider who correctly insists that they have done nothing, and, for kicks, no phone to even call and complain.

Once for this to happen is excessive - especially when iiNet insisted that the end-user had to change the modem, check all the cabling, find the non-existent MFD on site, etc. etc. This took a month and a half.

The second time I was furious, but it only took them a week to get her reconnected. Each time now it takes a few days, but to get through to them takes a long mobile phone call or two, and then a report from iiNet to Telstra, which they act on lazily, in their own time, despite it being their techs and outdated practices which caused the ungodly mess in the first place.

Despite the cost savings, I simply can't recommend Naked DSL today. I told this to a few friends who signed up anyway. Last I spoke to one of them, the exact same thing had just happened to him...

New Job!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:22:29 -0500

Well, sorta.

A year or so ago when the team I originally started with in 2001 was transferred to Parramatta office, I used the excuse to stay in town with a different team and also move to a Technical Lead role for the experience.
Now things have changed a little - the team in town got moved across the bridge along with everyone else from that office, and also we have moved out to Picton. The combined two hours each-way commute was bearable for the transition period, but something had to give.
Coupled with this the old team at Parramatta had some internal re-organisiation, and the Team Leader role became vacant. I was asked to step up, and as of Monday, that's what I'm doing.
So yes, I'm now a manager and have the Crackberry to prove it. I view it as a challenge, but figure I wouldn't have been asked if people thought I wasn't capable.
I haven't even had time to unpack my boxes, it's been go-go-go since I walked in the door, so there will be precious little rest time it seems.

As I type this I'm cruising along in the train to Parramatta (using the rare-as-hen's-teeth Cumberland line trains), and out the window I can see where I cycled yesterday. There's a "rail trail" from Liverpool to Parramatta which is pretty good, but could do with the signs being replaced so I don't waste 30 minutes next time following the wrong railway line. But I guess that's what GPS is for. Liverpool station is also a poorly-designed bottle neck for an "interchange" with a cycleway.

I'm still balancing the train times to arrive at the appropriate work-life balance - this took me a little while at North Sydney and some experimentation appears to still be required.

iPhoto Libraries in mythgallery (mythtv)

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:19:46 -0500

Here's some information about a personal coding itch I scratched recently, on the off chance that it helps someone else out there. Certainly my Google skills didn't turn up anyone else who had solved the same problem.

Problem Description
You have a Mac somewhere where you use Apple's excellent iPhoto to manage your huge digital photography collection.
However, you don't have (and most likely don't want) a spiffy but locked-down and feature-light Apple TV to display them on your TV, instead preferring the excellent and far more versatile open-source mythtv.
Mythtv has mythgallery which displays pictures from a normal filesystem reasonably well, but the poor thing has little to no understanding of the complexities of Apple's "iPhoto Library" on-disk layout. I'm talking Albums basically, plus an understanding of "Originals" versus "Modified". I just want it to be how it looks in iPhoto, but on my big LCD screen in front of the couch, controlled with my myth remote. Is that too much to ask??!

Research/Analysis
Can't find anyone else with this issue so figure "how hard can it be?". Not very, it turned out, at least to get something working, if ugly.
The perl Mac::iPhoto looks like a good place to start, but since it hasn't been touched since 2003 it certainly doesn't do anything much useful on my current (7.1.3) iPhoto Library.
It uses Mac::PropertyList to do the parsing of the xml file, which doesn't seem to work either. After much fiddling it looks like the AlbumData.xml file in the iPhoto Library actually is invalid - it doesn't have the proper header. First hack Mac::PropertyList to accept the dodgy header, but later decide to keep that standard and put the hack into my script instead.

Design
Decide to make a directory next to the iPhoto Library which is full of symlinks pointing into the actual library. Directories in this tree will correspond to Albums in iPhoto, and the links will be named such that the alphabetical order used by mythgallery corresponds to the order in iPhoto.
Try and get this working on the linux box and also via Samba but in the end it's simplest to run the code and create the symlink tree on my mac and then rsync both the iPhoto Library and the symlink tree across to the linux box.
Don't use samba, it stuffs up the annoying ":" that iPhoto uses in paths, at least for me. rsync handles it fine, it's not even that Mac-specific one to my knowledge, just whatever is on my Ubuntu box.

Code
You'll need Mac::iPhoto 0.1-timg, which is the modification of 0.1 available on cpan to work with iPhoto 7.1.3, and Mac::PropertyList 1.31 from cpan. I guess I should put my code on CPAN, but just wanted to get it all up here for now.
Once that's available, you will of course need the actual iPhotoToDirectories script. It's all hard-coded - but you wouldn't have made it this far if you couldn't edit it to work in your situation :)

Operation
You'll need the same directory structure on both the mac and the linux box as the symlinks get created on the mac but are de-referenced on the linux box.
Once it's all in place, run iPhotoToDirectories on your mac whenever you want. It takes a long time, so I wouldn't script it. Maybe an overnight cronjob if you keep your Mac on all night. I don't so I just run it when I remember.
Then rsync both the iPhoto Library and the symlink tree to the linux box.
Finally, chmod -R a+rx the linux directories if the uid on your mac is different from your myth user.
And then, assuming mythgallery can navigate to that symlink directory, it should work and the browsing should be significantly more useful than it was before browsing the raw directory.

Known issues

Mac::iPhoto's parsing is amazingly slow, ie. ~30mins for me
hard-coded paths
ampersands (&) in album names break things
empty albums should be not put into output
sorting could be much improved
would be nice to understand Events too, hmmm...
lots more UNknown issues, for sure. Let me know!

But hey it works! And with a full-time life that's enough for me right now.

Phoebe Tests Flickr Video

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:16:48 -0500

Mac-free

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 12:01:10 -0600

Since day one, the DVD drive on my macbook has been pretty flaky. Doesn't read commercial DVDs properly, nor burn reliably. This never really bothered me, as a I have an external (faster) burner, and a DVD player on the home theater.

However, for a few months it has also had a nasty fan sound - the type that persists for a while but you know will eventually lead to fan death.

Between dealing with a new child, renovating and work I haven't found the mental space required to give up the precious device for the inevitable return to manufacturer for repair, since I use it for everything at work and everything at home. Sometimes it has been used every waking moment for several days.

But now, the fan has died it's death, and some monitoring sensor or other has decided that this means running the CPU for any length of time (>10 minutes or so) is not a good idea, and as such, the machine turns itself off.

So, it's off to meet it's maker, and hopefully be reincarnated better than it ever was.

But, that means I'm Mac-less, so email, contact info, IM, photos, the lot are all on hold for a while. Perhaps ring my mobile if you really need me.

Wii

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 21:23:46 -0600

So, despite not intending to get each other anything for Christmas, Liz and I ended up buying each other half of a Nintendo Wii.

This little gadget is an amazing amount of fun, advertised all over the TV and most people have heard of them by now so I won't blab on much except the controllers are great fun to use. So much so that we both have sore arms from frantic Tennis-ing and Mario-ing between screaming baby time.

Even the older, non-gaming generation get in to it very easily, having a hit of tennis and understanding the instinctive control methods immediately. And nobody has yet commented that "the graphics aren't as good as the other current consoles." They're too busy having social fun instead.

Funniest yet though goes to Meaghan and Dave boxing the proverbial out of each other. For your amusement:

Will trade money for sleep

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:33:18 -0600

But I don't think you can do that.

Actually, to be honest, it's getting better. Partially because Liz isn't waking me up during the night, she's just doing baby things by herself. This is nice of her, but not really fair, and I'm trying to get her to involve me more, but at the end of the day, since there is no feeding schedule yet, it's highly likely that Phoebe will need a feed anyway, so Liz will be involved eventually.

We had a bit of a scare last week with both of the girls going back to hospital for a couple of minor complications, but they seem to be mostly working themselves out. Our gut instinct that the local doctor's advice was rubbish proved well-founded after speaking to the hospital's top paediatrician.

Still going well with the cloth nappies, especially so since we got our new washing machine. And dishwasher, and big TV. Yes, we aren't supposed to be able to afford such things with a new bub and me off work, but that's the magic of 12 months interest free, and some times you just have to get things at the right time.

I've re-jigged Phoebe's homepage to point straight to the photos for now - less hassle for me to manage when we're between other things. Photos continue to appear there as we add them!

I declare closed the investigation

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:07:52 -0600

Just received the letter below from Portugal, which Google Translate has helped me gather is to tell us that the inquiry into our car being broken into in Óbidos is now closed due to lack of evidence.

To add to the fun of reading the original Portuguese to type in to the translator, some of the words hadn't printed properly so I am left to make educated guesses about a language I know two words in.

Announced themselves to V. Exa, as a Denunciante, which was delivered in the order of filing survey referenced above, resulted in a complaint lodged against DESCONHECIDOS, pursuant to art. 277 of Code of Criminal Procedure, with its reopening arise if new evidence which invalidem the pleas in that order-art. 279, paragraph 1, of the same diploma legality.

Junta is a copy of the order of filing.

(Overleaf)
I declare closed the investigation.

It was presented complaint against unknown by the facts contained in the self-denunciation of fls.3 whose content here is given by fully reproduced.
These facts constituting the practice of at least one crime of theft pep under art 203, 1e 204, 1 al b of the Criminal Code.
It was conducted survey carrying out all the steps useful and relevant in order to ascertain the authorship of the facts reported.
However failed to obtain such information is, or if there can perform qualduer another diligence able to achieve this purpose, because there are no witnesses presence of the practice of the crime, or any other means probatórios on the same.
Accordingly, pursuant to Article 277th 2 to the CPP, it is decidor the archiving of the present case, for insuficiencia of evidence regarding the identity of the author of the crime.
Accordingly, and without prejudice to arto 279 in 1do CPP, determino the closing of the case pursuant to paragraph 2 of arto 277th of the CPP.

Wait 30 days, after which they ask the OPC if new evidence emerged of evidence, nothing came, appropriately, obey the provisions of arto 277th no3 of CPP

Due in low.

Anyway, obrigado, Portuguese police! Or should that be "Due in low"?

Things

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 09:15:32 -0500

Well, you can probably guess from the slackness in blogging I'm showing here that life has been busy. The most obvious reason is of course the baby who is showing all signs of being healthy, and arriving early December. The midwife thinks possibly earlier, but we'd rather it not because she is away until the end of November.

There's modern cloth nappies galore here now, and buckets for dirty ones, plus of course clothes, wraps, furniture, car seat, pram, you name it. I've heard it described as the biggest consumer spend a couple goes through (after housing), and it's truly scary what some companies tell you that you 'need' to have.

We've been to birthing and parenting classes and spent countless hours reading stuff online so apparently we now know all, true experts in the field. Except it will of course have no bearing on the reality of actually having a child to look after 24 hours a day.

It was interesting to compare out situation to others in the class though - we're much better off and more prepared than several others, so that gives us a bit of hope.

Trying to organise a couple of short holidays before the due date too.

Some other quick point-form news:

Rain. Yay.
I did the Spring Cycle and home again, personal best time. Then we slept most of the afternoon.
We have a new home phone, this one is VoIP from MyNetFone. Pretty amazing deal, recommended.
Renovations are all done, except we need some new blinds now. Thanks to our parents for helping out with bits and pieces.
The car had it's one year (and first!) service, no problems found. We also have some fuel containers to stop us trekking out to Marrickville all the time. It's going to get a lot less use now that Liz has finished work.
Had a fair few gigs with both bands recently, two of which have been the best gigs we've done with the respective bands. There's few more before the end of the year (and my free time!).

plumbing x2

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:51:00 -0500

So, by plumbing the tubes of the internet - connecting this bit to that bit, if I post a blog post here, it appears on Facebook, huh? Cool.

As for the non-virtual plumbing, looks like we'll be spending some unfortunately non-virtual cash on getting our kitchen re-piped as there's a stink there that refuses to die.

But, the end of renovations is sorta kinda in sight!

Baby's room - just some wall decorations then done!
Study - painted, new light, new floor just waiting on floor sanding and oiling!
Lounge room - rising damp fixed! Skirting boards almost re-attached! Painter back soon!

You have to be optimistic with this stuff.

Facebook

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 11:38:12 -0500

As Kung pointed out a little while back, Facebook is dangerously addictive. Far more dynamic than MySpace, which has proved little other than a spam magnet since I signed up there.
I'm just riding these waves right now, not sure where it will all end up. But the social aspect is pretty cool.

iPhone!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 11:20:02 -0500

The world has gone iPhone crazy, with a peak of four stories per day iPhone related on the Sydney Morning Herald. Note the Sydney part - you can't even buy an iPhone outside of the US! In fact, as a write this now, there's still four stories linked there!

Being well known as a lover of Apple technology, you might expect me to be salivating over the new shiny toy, and perhaps even flying over the US just to get one like some people have.

No.

Here's Why.

I bought one of those instead. It's here, now, works on Aussie networks, and doesn't require a USD70 per month data plan at a minimum just to use it, locked in for two years.

And, as the link says, it has a whole lot more features.

But it isn't quite as shiny. I'll admit that.

Not Enough Happy Posts Recently

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:12:36 -0500

So here's one. You may not have yet discovered Cute Overload.

If not, the best introduction I can think of is this post.

Always a great site for a lift when you're in a less than 100% mood.

Sorry World

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:14:22 -0500

Yes, the rumours are true. I do infact have a MySpace.

I know, I know. MySpace is a hive of scum and villany, and since I've joined the spam has been pretty crazy. However, it's where lots of Sydney musos appear to be so I've started up shop there on that basis.

The blog will remain here, as will the vast majority of the content, as I can genuinely control how it all works, rather than relying on the ugly slow brokenness that is MySpace.

But I am trying to get some of my previously produced music available online - I had a listen to some things I did about ten years ago that are no longer available on the web, plus there's some more recent stuff I'm recording now, all of which I think may interest at least some of my audience.

Do Not Call Register

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 08 May 2007 11:31:44 -0500

In case you haven't found it yet, Australian citizens are expected to opt-out of receiving telemarketing calls by going to this website and registering phone numbers that they don't want to receive such calls at.

How does the register work?
Under the Do Not Call Register Act 2006, telemarketers can check their calling lists against the Do Not Call Register. If a telemarketer calls a number on the Do Not Call Register, they may be in breach of the Act, and may face penalties.

I firmly believe that it should be the other way around (ie. register if you do want to receive such calls), but that would of course offend big business. As it stands, there's plenty of exceptions on there they can use to call you anyway.

Still, better than nothing I guess.

Sticking with the music theme...

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 23:42:04 -0500

... this video defies explanation.
OK, I'll try, because you won't click it otherwise. It's a rendering of a machine playing stringed instruments.

Hmmm, that doesn't do it justice. I don't often post links to such things, but if you even vaguely appreciate music and/or technology, and especially if you play guitar, check it out. Then come back here and offer a better description :)

One-man bands

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 23:32:23 -0500

This story at SMH reminded me that I haven't posted anything about the conversion of the room off our kitchen from a "random storage of boxes" room. Into something far better. A music room.

Behold!

I'm still working my way through most of the technology, but the guts are in place and it's now at the point where I can't blame lack of anything for my lack of musical output recently.

Long-time readers (I've had a web presence since 1997 or so - guess I should have an anniversary or something but I don't know exact dates) may recall I used to have a music page available, with all sorts of information on bands I was in, MIDI files I'd created, my instruments and influences, fun stuff like that. Perhaps I'll get around to resurrecting that if my output increases, although it seems that all the cool kids are on MySpace these days.

Home-brew Solar Charger

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 09:15:54 -0500

This is just a little something I decided to try and build while shopping for electronic parts the other day.
Basically there's three solar cells, total output 5v, wired in series. They output to a little socket (pictured, left), which has a cord which terminates in a female USB socket (not pictured).
Then, anything which has a USB cable for charging can be connected to that.
So far, I've managed my camera battery (pictured), mobile phone, AA and AAA batteries and Liz's iPod.
My iPod seems to need a little more juice, and also the camera battery here only works in really strong sunlight. I'm going to consider adding either another volt or so or perhaps a few more milliamps.

Catchup Blogging

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 17:46:44 -0600

OK, News time. It's been a while.
I've uploaded some photos to my Flickr account which have titles showing a pictorial version of what we've been doing recently.
There's some from Adelaide (1 2 3 4), some from our recent weekend back up to the Hunter Valley to celebrate our wedding anniversary (yep, it's been over a year now...) (1 2), and even an ugly product of our veggie patch.

Margaret's house has been on the market for a while and is now sold, she's looking for a place to buy and has a few in mind. She may be moving in with us during the change-over period.

So we've re-organised the house a bit. We've now got a separate (small) room devoted to music. It's good to have everything out and in the one place, and I've been inspired to do some recording, helped out with a computer audio interface I found cheap on eBay. Still trying to decide what software I want to use with it though.

The junk that used to be in that room has now sort-of migrated to the spare room, but it could be consolidated to make room for Margaret should the need arise.

Around the house, I've been cleaning out gutters and getting things organised in preparation for the arrival of our water tanks. The fact that it's been raining a lot recently has been annoying us, thinking of the wastage. It looks like we'd have to vote capital-L Liberal to get the government to do something about water recycling, so becoming as detached as possible from it all is appealing.

Put some of the wine from our Hunter trip (came back with three cases!) under the house in a sort-of cellar arrangement. The conditions are good but it's hard to get to. Should be good for medium-long-term storage though.

We headed off to the Whiskey Experience again a few days ago - a great fun evening which we figure is just to raise brand awareness. Not that many people around us were aware of things around themselves by the end of proceedings!

One of Liz's birthday celebrations this year was a trip to the Löwenbräu Keller, something I haven't done for years and an evening we thoroughly enjoyed. The band there seems to do the same show every night, but it's very entertaining. Plus we get to drink great beer and practice our German.

... Which is good, because Sebastian Schnelle (whom we stayed with at least three times in Europe 2002-3 and caught up with again early last year) is back in the country to do his PhD in Brisbane. He and his girlfriend Jana flew into Sydney last week and we caught up a few times. She's still in learn-English mode, so we had a few conversations with me speaking German and her English, and my lack of skill there seemed to give her more confidence.

Oh, and I buggered my knee badly about a month ago, which is the worst it's ever been. I've had plenty of days working from home and far less cycling. I have a specialist appointment next week, so hopefully I can get something done about it.

Another Jersey Kerb gig happened last Friday - the first with Jono playing keyboards and me back on bass after Ed left for England. We played pretty well I thought, but the crowd was both thin and lacking energy. I think we have a job for our manager to get us sorted in a new venue or with some more aggressive advertising. Still great fun though.

Surely that's enough topic-hopping for now. Congratulations if you made it this far!

linux.conf.au 2007

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 12:42:28 -0600

I'm out at New South Wales university this week for linux.conf.au, a tech-oriented conference. This is the fourth time I've been along to one of these (they run every year), and this year it's being held in Sydney, back where the first one was that I came to in 2001.
The free software culture is generating some amazing things - one of the highlights for me has been the talks on the One Laptop Per Child project - these guys are really thinking how to bring technology to huge numbers of people (their target market is one billion children in the world), which involves quite a lot of rethinking existing ways of doing things. One telling statistic is that 60% of the children in the world have no power at their place of residence, so requiring a device to be able to draw power off the grid just was never going to work.
Plenty of talks more related to my work as well, the details of which I won't bore my mostly non-technical audience with! Suffice to say it's a nice break from work in the pleasant campus surroundings.

For Sale: Powerbook G4 15"

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 19:21:01 -0600

My old faithful Powerbook is up for auction on eBay.

Drop by and bid if you are interested!

NSW to roll out free WiFi service

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 08:44:09 -0600

So our state government is attempting to get a clue about wifi then huh?

Go for it I say, but Telstra is a powerful adversary, and underdog Optus looks like it wants to get on your side, so it is undoubtedly going to be a lot more complicated than just plugging in some base stations around the place.

Oh, and how do I ask for my local suburb to be listed as a "major centre" so we can have it out there too?

And where are you going to get your IT staff to implement it all, since there aren't many left in Sydney now?

Laws for the companies, not the people

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 07:43:19 -0600

According to the SMH, Apple had this to say, amongst others, about what the proposed Copyright reform currently going through parliament would mean to ordinary Australians:

"Apple submits that the current provisions of the bill will leave the [Australian Copyright] Act still outdated and overly restrictive given today's technology and the legitimate expectations of consumers," Apple's submission said.

"Many common everyday acts of copying to ... devices, such as an iPod, computers and even to VCRs ... would still constitute an infringement under the bill's current form."

Given the silence of most of the mainstream press, it's good to see SMH finally picking up on this nasty piece of work, and that as I write it's the number two viewed story today.
A law which would punish you and I for copying CDs that we paid for and own onto iPods (or computers, or anything else really) that we paid for and own, so that we could have them in a more convenient form is a very stupid law in today's society. We already have that law, and here is the opportunity to revise it and make it relevant, but instead they are making it even more of an attack on consumers.
Record companies really don't seem to understand that they are battling against free - that's the price of a download off Bittorrent or similar, and if you want to make it worth my effort to buy a CD and own it, drop the prices and let me do what I want with the thing that I bought and I own.

Don't even get me started on paid-for digital downloads - that's not an option. The stupid Digital Restrictions Management that these things come with mean that if you bought (yes, there's that word again) a song off any existing music store, and then decided (why I don't know) that the Zune looks like a good thing to buy for Christmas to listen to music on, then you can't listen to any of your previously purchased songs!
Microsoft want you to "buy" all your music again, and rinse and repeat in few years when the same thing happens. No thanks, give me a CD that means I have the physical media as a real backup, and I can turn into any form I want. All purely for my use, or at the worst to pass a couple of songs onto a friend to recommend a new artist I've heard.

Record companies, and the idiot governments that listen to them when creating laws to govern the people, should actually listen to consumers/voters now and them.

Update 30/11/2006: Wow, that's a quick backdown, even by government standards! Maybe more of them read my blog than I thought ;)

Gadget Lust Strikes Again

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 11:46:19 -0600

I held out for longer than most around me expected - but the shiny things got the better of me in the end. I've just ordered a new MacBook, stacked to the hilt with good bits.
My poor Powerbook has been working nicely for a while, but the combination of wanting a smaller machine to cycle most days with and the slowness of the current one mostly due to lack of RAM meant that I've been looking for a while at what was on offer.
The fact that Apple has made the RAM upgrades much cheaper now, along with bunging in the latest Core 2 Duo processor (finally) meant that I'd run out of excuses.
Even the tax situation will work out as I've pretty much finished writing off the current machine.

I was thinking about the MacBook Pros but the new prices for those are crazy, and I can't justify the $1000 difference vs. the Macbook for what amounts to a bigger screen (that I don't want), marginally faster CPU, a Firewire 800 port (that I've never used) and a better graphics card. I have another machine for playing games on, so the awesome graphics card in my current laptop has been completely wasted since I've had it.

Anyone want a pre-loved-by-Mac-addict Powerbook before it hits eBay?

Low-voltage home wiring

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 21:09:04 -0500

I was talking with the two most clever electrically-minded people I know about the idea of running a low-power DC voltage around modern homes a couple of months ago, as everything from your PC to your mobile phone takes the 240v from the wall and converts it down to 3.5-12v, loosing power and heat in the process.

So imagine my surprise today to see that Google is promoting the same thing. Must have been a good idea after all. Go Google.