09.30.07
Posted in KnoppMyth, MythTV, rant at 11:05 pm by Nate Smith
The Samsung Spinwrite Hard Drive I have been using in my MythTV (KnoppMyth) back-end machine died tonight. It made the awful head crash sound . I turned it off for a while and restarted it later. Although the machine still began to boot the sound was still there so I powered-down. The Drive has had a good run. Three or more years on a MythBackend has to be pretty challenging for a consumer hard drive. I bought Samsung when I did because you could get a lot of HD for the money and they were pretty quiet and fast. I think the next drive will be a Seagate. They seem to be about the best drive you can buy. I wish somebody made an uber-reliable hard drive for the consumer market. Maybe one that had some kind of internal RAID using two platters. Or how about enough compact flash in the drive to write a CRC check for each sector or block? Maybe something with extra (excessive?) cooling. I think the HD manufacturers have about a 3 year lifespan built into the drives. It would be nice if they just admitted it so you could plan on buying a new hard drive every three years or so. I’d like to get a warning from the BIOS when I start my machine- “your hard drive will expire in 45 days”. Plenty of time to order a new one.
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Posted in CallWeaver, Linux/*BSD/Unix, VoIP Telephony at 10:52 pm by Nate Smith
In the coming weeks I am going to write a tutorial on installing Callweaver on a bare machine. I will probably start with a fresh install of Debian and then make sure I include all the problems I have along the way.
Callweaver is a little daunting to get started on, it has a few pre-requisites that can make it a bit challenging. It might help some people coming into the fold to see what is involved.
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Posted in Linux/*BSD/Unix, Slug - the NSLU2 at 10:49 pm by Nate Smith
I de-underclocked my 3rd NSLU2 tonight. I follow the directions here: http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/OverClockTheSlug. I have used needlenose pliars and an X-acto knife in the past. I used the Needlenose again tonight.
The difference is really perceivable. Before it is de-underclocked it takes it a while to boot. After the procedure it pops right up.
I’m going to try to move this blog to the NSLU2 in a couple of weeks. Right now it seems the debian installer is broken. I may work around that or I may just wait. When it is working it is super-easy.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 10:45 am by Nate Smith
The latest version of KnoppMyth (http://mysettopbox.tv) has support for Schedules Direct new service. Knoppmyth is easily the best way to get MythTV up and Running on just about any hardware. I had it installed and running for about two and a half years on an older version. It’s software I really *used* everyday. It works best with nvidiavideo drivers but will work with anything. I have it setup with a front end and a back end as described on the knoppmythwiki. Some of the greatest additions to MythTV are already installed and working on KnoppMyth.
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09.19.07
Posted in ramblings at 8:25 pm by Nate Smith
I was reminded again today you can’t pay people to care. I was in a presentation given by an expert on branding. He was talking about how sometimes in the service industry you are left with an impression based on people who don’t care about their job. Of course this goes back to my theory that people who don’t care about their job often believe they deserve more than they do. They are waiting to be astronauts, rock stars or actors and not focusing on what they are doing in the here and now. I’m still working on my point, but it will be something like this: because you can’t pay people to care, if you find people that do care, you need to take care of them.
Take care doesn’t necessarily mean big paychecks either. It may mean empowerment or other kinds of recognition.
A work in progress here.
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