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Friday, November 10, 2006 08:04:17      So many PVR problems, so little time.      There was once a time when I was very happy with my PVR. It had a couple of minor bugs but the only thing that it really needed from me was to clean out the hard drives every once in a while so that it didn't run out of space.      Now we have a master back end with 1.4TB of storage and a secondary back end next door and things are running like crap. The master back end crashes constantly, the secondary crashes constantly. Until recently the master back end's PVR-150 had an awful tinny audio issue. Currently I'm having a random no audio issue on the secondary back end. There's a problem where in the first 7(ish) seconds of video it stops and jitters and then you miss another 15(ish) seconds of video in the recording.      So, we need a strategy. I've been reading a whole lot trying to find out where to go to get this stuff working because I've invested far too much time to go back now. Basically it seems that there's one or two problems. The first is that the memory errors which are being logged to the console and sometimes result in the mythbackend process crashing could actually be because the video can't be written to the disk fast enough. I've seen this problem a few times on the secondary back end, and I know that system's system drive is making awful sounds, so I'm guessing that rebuilding that onto the bigger drive may just do the trick. Because the master back end is using Logical Volume Management to make all of those drives show up as one drive, there's a performance decrease there, so for the purposes of testing, put in a different drive to run as the storage drive to see if that has any effect. Then network-wise I'm not having any significant issues, but I'm wondering if putting all of the systems in one network with a reliable switch would help. Right now the front end at my house is on a different network than the back end at Sean's which works, but I'm wondering if the master back end is doing needless switching because of that, which should drop performance, but technically could. Another possibility is that the master back end system actually does need more than 512MB of RAM. Perhaps that's because the LVM uses ram to make things happen so when it needs that RAM to write the recording TV buffer, there just isn't enough of it 7 seconds into a video? If running with just one disk solves that problem, then that could have been the problem too.      The system really needs to get to a more stable point because I would really like to add a third back end, so that when two recordings are going simultaneously, we could watch that other live feed, or better yet have all of the programming that we want to watch for the night recorded by 10pm instead of re-arranging things so that it's all done by 4am and you have to watch it the next day.      I'm going to figure out a plan today and execute it tomorrow. Friday, November 10, 2006 12:26:31 finnegan's dad writes: 512 MB of RAM sounds small. I think the slowness of my database application went away at work with the new PC, not because of dual core or a slightly faster hard drive but because memory went from 512MB to 2GB. Disk drive cache memory might be an issue, too. Monday, November 13, 2006 06:26:59 Ian writes: I'll try pitching another 512 in there tonight. Now that I know I can reproduce the issue by having a second recording immediately follow the first, it will be easy to test to see if that solves it. Monday, November 13, 2006 08:19:54 Ian writes: The only problem I have with that theory is that the whole point of buying the PVR-150, PVR-250, PVR-350 and PVR-500 cards by Hauppauge is that they have their own encoder built-in so they should be handling all of the resources of the recording process and can supposedly run on 700MHz systems. Technically, they shouldn't be adding to the load of the box. I posted a message to the ivtv-users mailing list to see what they can make of my crash data from last night.

Thursday, November 9, 2006 08:30:20      I was going through my junk mail and found a phishy message, so I decided to click on it. Maybe because I thought eBay got my email address wrong, or maybe because I was actually worried that they suspended my account, but mostly because I wanted to see how this new Firefox feature handled it. Though it didn't let me get to the site, because the server was down or something, Firefox 2 did catch the address I was at as a phishing URL and told me so. I'm enjoying this new version. The built-in spell checker for web forms is great too. It would be cool if it could ignore HTML/code somehow though.

Wednesday, November 8, 2006 13:51:52      I'm too busy these days so I just installed Firefox 2. They've done a nice job of updating the software. I personally don't care about the close button on each tab now but, that's one complaint I got from someone who I subjected to Firefox, they couldn't figure out how to close a tab. Opening in a new tab instead of a new window by default is also cool and I can't wait to play around with this session thing. I was using the Google one on my desktop because my power is constantly tripped with my dead UPS which I'm using as a sugre protector, but I found it bothered me because I use too many expendable windows. The Google Suggest-like feature of the search is awesome, I think I'll stop automatically starting up that tab now when I open up my browser. Read the release notes.      I updated the Data Matters web site on Monday night and last night I fixed up the software a bit. Like when a slow machine is calculating a hash on a large file, the connection could disappear due to lack of activity (courtesy of Rogers in my test case) so I added a heartbeat thread to the service so that it keeps you connected. Very sweet.      On a completely un-technical note, check out halton.ca/SaveTheTree and donate a buck or two to save a 250 year old oak tree from becoming part of a road.

Monday, November 6, 2006 09:11:18 Whoa, I just did one of those balancing equation things to make: price = total - (total * (discount / 100)) become: discount = - ((price - total) / total) * 100 Now when those people around the office need to calculate the discount for my application they can do it quicly and easily. Much more efficient than that trial and error. My math teachers would be proud. Friday, November 10, 2006 12:21:00 finnegan's dad writes: "quicly"? Maybe not your English/spelling teachers though...

Thursday, October 26, 2006 12:01:43 Oh yeah, I've been driven nuts while using Fedora because the touchpad keeps going forwards and backwards in Firefox... Here's the proper fix from the Gentoo Wiki Horizontal Scroll Issues with Firefox I was looking for this information for a long time and couldn't find it. I finally found reference to this in a cached version of this (gentoo-wiki). So that firefox will not misinterpret the horizontal scroll as 'back' and 'foreward' For many like me this is irritating because you are reading a webpage and by moving the mouse you accidently go to another page. Some forums suggest disabling horizontal scroll (editing xorg.conf to: Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"), but instead the correct way is to configure firefox so that it doesn't misinterpret the horizontal scroll. In firefox type in URL (address bar):      about:config and double-click on the line:      mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action to set it to 0. And then also set      mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.sysnumlines to true. To add fonts to Fedora from your... uh... true type font source... open Nautilus to fonts:/// and simply drag and drop them. (Firefox looks so much more normal when it has the fonts you're used to.) To make the CPU fan stop running constantly on your notebook, open up /etc/cpuspeed.conf and comment out the two OPTS lines to monitor temperature and battery power.

Thursday, October 26, 2006 11:17:03      Well, I got Fedora Core 6 all downloaded yesterday. The torrent was pretty slow and I ended up using ftp.telus.net and less.cogeco.net to get the ISO images. Today I did an upgrade of my laptop which was running an up to date FC5 install. So far so awesome. One big thing that I like is that they no longer have seperate kernels for SMP and non-SMP machines for i386 hardware. Why's that good for me? I can take a FC6 installation of whatever, pick up it's hard disk and throw it in any other system and it won't require kernel module changes. I suppose you could always go from plain kernel to a system with smp and not use it, but you couldn't go the other way around, it got all screwy. yum still isn't connecting to fedora for it's updates due to the massive amount of geeks updating to FC6 one would suppose.      Went to see The Prestige with Jayme, Sean and a friend of theirs from the lab at school Alma last night. Very awesome movie. I went in knowing absolutely nothing about it so I had no clue what it was about. As Jayme said on the way home; "It was nice to finally see a new plot line in a movie". It kept you guessing the entire way through it. On the way home, I had driven past Alma's place so I backed up down the road since no one was on the road and it was 0:40 in the morning. Just as I got going a cop turned around the corner and so I signalled and then backed into a driveway. Then waited for him to pass, but he was waiting for me. So, I signalled the other way, drove back to the corner by Alma's and she got out. The cop was sitting behind me and then I rolled down my window and waved for him to come up. He drove up and said "You're going the wrong way". So I explained that I was dropping a friend off and that we just passed her place. The cop said; "Fair enough." and drove away. I've heard a lot of stories of Guelph cops being power-trippy so I was worried that he was going to book me for something or giv e me a hard time, but this guy was really nice. I like nice surprises.      Oh, by the way, in the movie, David Bowie sounds scarily like Pierce Brosnan and is totally unrecognizable.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006 23:25:54      Hey, anyone noticed that the internet is damn slow tonight? Why? Fedora Core 6 was released today. Get your copy via torrents. The new default desktop looks purty. I'm downloading now. Hopefully I can upgrade my laptop tomorrow.      Sean's birthday today! Happy Seanday Birth!

Thursday, October 12, 2006 23:22:32      I'm playing around with using Linux as the primary OS on my laptop. Each time I've done this previously there's been a major stepping block that I couldn't get through, we'll see what happens this time. Not the point however, I stumbled upon something awesome. Lots of people probably already know this, but if you want Firefox to open a bunch of tabs on startup (Gmail, Google Calendar, and say Nasdaq FlashQuotes) open the tabs the way you want them and then go to the Edit -> Preferences or Tools -> Options window and then on the first tab, select use current pages and voila! Multiple tabs on Firefox startup. Dead sexy. Friday, October 13, 2006 08:23:55 Ian writes: Actually, Windows was easy to find. Fedora's default grub installer found it and called it Unknown. So I just needed to rename it in the /etc/grub.conf file. I do like the fact that a lot of the stupid tweaking is done automatically with these Fedora installations. Like the ZAxis thing on the mouse. All that stuff that geeks love to do hinders mass acceptance of their opertating systems. Monday, October 23, 2006 22:30:21 finnegan's dad writes: Lots of people probably already know this. ;-) I like having weather (forecastfox), 3 gmail accounts (gmail manager), gmail space and downloads (download statusbar) at the bottom. I don't need gmail in a tab. My other fav' extension is Adblock. And it's not just for ads as they say. My credit union has very annoying pictures of happy customers and slogans. I have zapped them all so I can just see my account information.

Friday, September 29, 2006 15:25:28      The infocentre is closed!? I drove out to the gym at lunch and on my way down the 401 just before Winston Churchill the service centre signs have had all of the logos ripped off and there's a CLOSED through the middle of the sign. FERMÉ en français. Whoa! I just found out you can leave number lock on on this laptop and still type. You have to press Fn for the number keys to work. Nice job Dell! Now, if only my 5 key would work reliably.      Anyway, back to the news... The info centre is now closed. No more hockey at 2am in the gas station, though that hasn't happened in years, but still. On my way out there, they were taking down the signage (<-- Brianne's favorite word) and on my way back it was all gone. No "Wendy's" or "Tim's" anymore. I wonder if there's anything about this online anywhere... TheStar.com - Hortons spinoff goes ahead Local Wendy's remains open Wendy's restaurants abruptly close doors      Well then, those stories are interesting, but really have nothing to do with the info centre. Maybe I should buy some Tim Hortons stock... Wait, you need money to buy stock. I guess I won't then.

Thursday, September 28, 2006 09:12:52 You can work here, just don't have a bladder on the second floor. You may remember, three years ago a sign got posted in the second floor mens washroom at the office prohibiting dumpage to to toxic fumes. Now, due to noise violations, unless you can pee without making a sound, you can't do that upstairs either. Maybe we should just bulldoze the washroom instead of posting warning signs. Or, better idea; issue company head phones and a clothes pin to those who have to work next to washrooms. How about we just tell everyone not to eat or drink all day so that they get grossly unhealthy, but they won't have to hear or smell co-workers bodily functions. I think I'm going to close down the women's washroom on the second floor citing equal rights. Sunday, October 08, 2006 22:48:40 finnegan's dad writes: Reminds me of a sign at one washroom at work a few years ago over the bathroom sinks telling you to turn off the faucet "gently" because the water hammer of a quickly shut tap disturbed the office behind the wall. Why do they put offices beside washrooms? In large buildings the washrooms are usually next to stairs, elevators, meeting or break rooms. Or the male/female washrooms are back-to-back to keep the smells and plumbing noises "centralized".

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