Adam & Amber’s Blog

About a week ago I saw this post on mythtvnews.com and was immediately inspired to try hacking together a mythtv frontend for our bedroom TV (connecting to the backend/frontend mega box we have on the living room TV). I have been using MythTV on the TV in the living room for over a year and I love it, it is the perfect one stop media box for us.

The specs on the frontend/backend in the living room are:
Quad-Core Pentium
2 Gigs RAM
2 TB Storage
6 Tuners (4 Standard Def, 2 HD on HDHomeRun)

Point is it is a beast of a machine, but we use it all of the time for recording/watching tons of TV, it holds our entire DVD collection, it holds my entire (non-DRMed) music collection, it holds a gallery of all our pictures, we use it for weather, internet radio, and as our print and file backup server. Which is all great in the living room, but we have two other TV’s in the house that are used frequently and we really wanted to bring all of that media to them as well. I had been looking at running mvpmc on a MediaMVP box as a good low cost solution for these TV’s, however it does not have a full MythTV frontend and has no prayer of being able to play HD. As a fill in solution we have been using MythTV Player which is a windows program that can play recordings off the backend along with accessing the movies and music over samba share. It was a workable solution, but HD did not work over the wireless and it meant watching TV on a laptop which isn’t a great bedroom solution.

When the Apple TV came out (as when any media playing device comes out) the entire MythTV community started asking if it could be hacked to run Linux and what kind of MythTV performance could be expected. Just on face value the Apple TV looks like a perfect MythTV box, it has Ethernet, HDMI, Digital Audio, Component Out, Analog Audio, an IR Sensor, and a USB port.

On the Inside it has:
1.0GHz Intel Pentium M
NVidia GeForce Go 7300
256 MB DDR2-667 RAM
40 GB Hard Drive (min)

It is definitively not a heavy-weight in the power department, but considering it is in a small elegant package and is passively cooled it is not bad. The question was, is it good enough? After reading the mythtvnews post and doing a little research I decided to try it for myself. I ran to Best Buy, laid down my $229 dollars and was ready to start.

What I did

I decided that I would try the Gentoo install following this wiki page. I chose Gentoo for two reasons, I liked that I would be compiling everything for the hardware and I wanted to learn about Gentoo (My other MythTV box is an Ubuntu install). There are other options out there (including Ubuntu) and even some that work in conjunction with the Apple TV software so you don’t have to loose the Apple TV functionality. Seeing as how I really just wanted MythTV and I wanted it to perform as best it could, a Gentoo clean install seemed like a good path.

As far as the Wiki HOWTO, it was pretty good. From looking around online you can see the sources that were pulled from to compile it, and sometimes they have a little more information. For me it worked great up until getting into the thick of the Gentoo Install, specifically after booting onto the live system (no USB patchstick) and attempting to install everything. Most of my issues were because I had never used emerge before and had to stumble a few times before I got everything configured correctly. After getting everything installed I ran into a couple issues getting the sound to work (the wiki explains how to get digital sound working, I needed analog) and getting XvMC and MythTV to play nicely together (looks to be related to the MythTV version I installed). However, after 12+ hours of time spent compiling (it is just a 1 GHz processor) and another 6+ hours of time on my part debugging and learning about Gentoo, the system is up and running.

Conclusions

First off, this little box is impressive. It can play HD, stream movies, and is pretty snappy (not like running on a quad-core but good enough). However, I will say that hacking the Apple TV is still in it’s early stages and while all of the information is out there on how to do it, it is definitely not for the faint of heart or the easily frustrated. Many of the threads that talk about problems end abruptly with no solution and sometimes you have to look at other distributions Wikis and translate it to the one you are using. Of course this is a problem with finding help on any Linux install, but with the scarcity of sources on doing this the frustration can be amplified. I imagine that all of the information will mature in the coming months and the Wiki pages will get more complete. I would be interested to hear if people have an easier time with Ubuntu (I imagine so) and if the performance is as good.

I currently have only one issue left to resolve (getting XvMC to play nice with MythTV) and this looks more to be a legitimate bug somewhere then a problem related to Apple TV.  Even with this problem I can watch up to 720p HD with no issues, it is just the higher resolutions that are choppy.

Links to information sources

http://code.google.com/p/atv-bootloader/
This is the boot loader project that makes all of this possible. The have some good information in their Wiki and also the config options to using inside MythTV to get HD to work.

http://code.google.com/p/atv-bootloader/wiki/PostMythbuntuHardy
The “Audio” section here is where I found the fix for Analog sound. Everything else I found told me I had to patch and recompile the Alsa driver, this is much easier.

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-690419-view-next.html?sid=2878926708a80088c6b2048b61927580
This forum post (and the bug reports it links to) is the closest match to the issue I am having with XvMC.  Unfortunatly following the directions did not fix the problem.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_NTP
Setting up NTP in Gentoo (Time Syncing)

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_LIRC
Setting up LIRC in Gentoo (I did not try to get the remote that came with the Apple TV working, too few buttons).

As I mentioned in the last two posts, this morning my GMail account was hacked. In the panic that followed I went through a lot of work trying to check to make sure all my other accounts were ok (Credit Cards, Paypal, etc) while at the same time trying to figure out how to get my account back. The surprising thing to me was that it was not obvious to me how to get through the help to the form I needed to fill out, and when I got to the form trying to find the verification information they wanted took some ingenuity on my part.

What would have really helped me was to have some simple directions to follow to find what I needed fast (to get the hacker away from my account as fast as possible). Seeing as how I did not find such directions out there I figured I would write my own to help someone else if this happens to them. The other part that caught me off guard was what information Google wanted from me in order to verify my the account was mine. Much of this info was tough for me to find, because I have been using GMail as my only personal email account since back in the early “invite” days. So I recommend that everyone takes a second to write down a few things while they have access to their account to save themselves a good amount of time later.

1. What every GMail user should have written down

To start with here is all the information I wish I would have had immediately available to me when trying to verify my account. Keep in mind that Google doesn’t need all of this to verify your account but the more you can give them the better chance you have of them verifying the account.

• Most recent secondary email. When you setup your GMail account you gave Google a secondary email account, this is the account they use for sending password resets etc. If you are like me then right now you have no idea what email address this is. You can look in your Google Account Settings (not GMail settings) under the “Change Security Question” link to find it, and if it is out of date update it.
• Email addresses of up to five frequently emailed contacts. This one might be easy for some people, but outside of my Wife I don’t send much email from GMail. The best way to find this is just browse through your “Sent Mail” and write down some email addresses you send too often. I was lucky enough to find a replica of this folder on my iPhone to figure this out after the fact.
• Names of up to four labels. I use labels to organize all my email, and hopefully you do too. If you do, write down four labels you use (and I assume the less common the better). I could have probably done this one by memory, but I did check the replica on the iPhone to find unique ones. Remember that being as exact as possible is important (Where are the spaces? What letters are Caps?, etc).
• GMail Invite Information. If you were invited to use GMail then that invite information can have a wealth of information that could be useful. Google will want to know “Invitation URL”, “The Gmail username of the person who invited you to create an account”, and “The email address to which your invitation was sent”. For me this was long enough ago that the invite is long gone, luckily Google didn’t hold that against me, but if you have this information find it and save it.
• Account creation date. This means your Google Account (which is probably the same date as your GMail account, unless you set it up earlier). Again if you have an invite this is easy, it is probably the date you got your invite. If you don’t, then in GMail you can click on “All Mail” and then goto the “Oldest” mail and as long as you don’t throw things away that should give you a good idea.
• When you started using other Google products (including GMail). All you need is a rough idea, but if you have access to when you started using any products write it down. I was able to put down a rough estimate for these so don’t stress about the exact day.

Remember that you don’t need all of this info, but the more you have to give them the better.

2. So your GMail got hacked, now what?

Note: This assumes you are locked out of your account

The simple answer is to go here (The link is current as of this writing, but could change)

If that doesn’t work you will have to traverse the help to find the form and unfortunately there is only one path that leads to the right place. Here are my directions:

1. On the GMail sign in screen click “I cannot access my account”

2. On the next screen choose the “My account has been compromised or taken over” radio button. That will bring up a link to the “account recovery form” follow that link.  Update (6/24/08): The text of the radio button now reads “My account has been compromised”

3. This is where you need to be exact (choosing other options leads to other forms or no form at all). Select “No” when it asks about Google Aps, and in the list on products select “None of the Above”, then click “Continue”. This was complicated for me because I did have some of the above, fill out this “None of the Above” form first and then go back and fill out other forms if needed.

This should bring you to a form where you can put in the information listed in the above section. My request had a prety quick turn-around from Google (about half an hour) but I imagine depending on the information you give them this can be variable. After submission they give a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” sort of statement, so I imagine it could take a while.

3. Lessons Learned

I was caught off guard by all of this and I imagine pretty much everyone is, but it made me think about some ideas that I am going to use from now on “just in case”.

• Forward Email. It is pretty easy to find a place that will forward your email anywhere you want. The beauty of this is that if something goes wrong with your “backend” account you can immediately divert your incoming email to a different account. If the account allows you to save and forward that is even better because then you have a copy of your email “just in case”.
• Immediatly delete email that has sensitive information in it. You shouldn’t be getting email with sensitive information in it in the first place, but if you do don’t keep the email around. You don’t want to be stuck worrying about other accounts or personal information if you get hacked.
• Make sure you have multiple passwords for different purposes. Considering how many places just take email address and a password for login, you want to make sure that if someone gets your email password they can’t get access to many other accounts. My suggestion would be to have at minimum an “Everyday” password and a “Sensitive” Password. That way if someone gets your everyday password your sensitive information is secure.

I am sure there are plenty more tips out there, but these three were born out of my immediate concerns after getting hacked. I hope something in here is helpful to someone out there, and if you have more suggestions, tips, etc put them in the comments so all can see.

There are people who make charts/graphs/diagrams of music lyric/title representations.  I think this is cool because it requires the interest of small subset of people who listen to popular music and enjoy graphing.  There is a Flickr set here (there are a few really great ones and many that are just people putting song lyrics on an arbitrary graph but the good ones are good enough to warrant the mindless clicking).

Can you believe that some people got paid to make this? I would have paid to help

The site is a bit annoying, but check it out here
I highly suggest getting past the annoying layout. You give it a short musical phrase on a piano and then they create a musical piece based off of that and you watch it all happen live. Very cool, almost makes me want to drink Vodka?

Here is my attempt at music, I am sure others will easily be able to top it

A very cool concept for a game and proves that there is still a place for innovation in game play not just graphics quality.  I don’t want to give any strategy away so give it a try and just click around (after you get the concept down see if you can get all the points).

Link to the game

Someone went to the trouble of teasing apart David Lee Roth’s vocal track from Van Halen’s ‘Running with the Devil’. The result is something that should be enjoyed in the season of American Idol. It is impressive to me how well Roth can actually sing (during the 20 seconds in the song when it is called for) and how a rock song should never be sung without a band EVER.

Here is the link

Of course this has been used in various mashups. My favorite, although admittedly purely Middle School Humor, is this one (don’t judge me).

One thing Amber and I have in common is our love of good deals. I am a big purchase deal lover, meaning that if you got something that retails for $500 on sale for $200 I am interested. Amber is more of a small purchase deal lover, meaning if you got something under $5 or over 75% off in the craft or apparel world watch out (don’t even get me started on the $1 section at Target, or worse when the $1 section goes 75% off. You wouldn’t believe the stuff that has come through our door because, “I got these for only a quarter each”.) The point is, we both like a good deal, which makes Black Friday Perfect for us.

Our 2008 Black Friday in Dayton, OH:

Thursday 10PM EST: We arrive at CompUSA to look for a good deal on a LCD monitor I wanted ($150 for a 22″ LCD). When we arrive, I am dismayed by the completely full store and the small line of people forming for their 5AM Sale. It took me a second to realize what Amber apparently knew the entire time, you can’t show up at 9PM CST for a sale that starts at 9PM EST. I am not sure how I made the time zone mistake (other then my watch and Amber’s car are still in Central Time), but needless to say I left CompUSA empty handed. Which means no new LCD for me, I convince myself I really didn’t need it anyway.

Thursday 10:15 PM: We find a Dunkin’ Donuts that is open until 11 on the same side of town as CompUSA and plan the rest of our evening. A steady stream of people from the already 75+ people line out front of the nearby Best Buy (which opens at 5 AM) come in to buy coffee and use the restroom. The guy behind the counter, that already had to give up part of his Thanksgiving to work short staffed at a Dunkin’ Donuts looks thrilled. A few of the line waiters stop and talk with us, and I learn that people who wait all night in a line are usually Crazy (as in Certifiable) and very friendly (but still crazy).

Friday Midnight: I am sitting in the car at a mini-mall parking lot watching the snow fall outside and “Pushing Daisies” on my iPhone, Amber is waiting in a small line of mostly middle-aged women ready to bum-rush the doors at Simply Scrapbooks (ok, maybe not bum-rush, but they were standing out in the cold/snow waiting for a scrapbook store to open). The sale? 50%+ off all sorts of crafting supplies, PLUS TRIPLE CARD PUNCHES!!! You would have to talk to Amber to find out exactly how good of a deal this is, but she was excited.

Friday 2 AM: I am still in the car at the same mini-mall parking lot, the snow has slowed down (or at least I can’t see it as well because at 1AM they turned the parking lot lights off), my iPhone’s battery all but drained 20 minutes ago, and Amber has been craft shopping for 2 hours. Soon after Amber returns to the car with a smile on her face and a card full of punches.

Friday 3 AM: We are back at Amber’s house. Amber is showing me her spoils, and I have to admit compared to what she normally spends she got some really good deals. We are staying up the rest of the night because I want to go to Staples when they open at 6AM (which means get their at 4:30 AM). I then realize the only difference between me and the people outside of Best Buy is that I am sitting inside a warm house right now, it is a small difference but I hold on to it.

Friday 3:30 AM: Staples posts some of their Black Friday deals online, I pounce and get some of the things I wanted. Now I am feeling elated that I won’t have to wait in line after all! I then notice something so fantastic that I had to reload to make sure it was real. Staples online has their own 22″ LCD Monitor for $150, a deal not available in-stores. Needless to say I pulled the trigge, buying the last of the items on my black friday list. I then did something I never had done before (mostly because I have never been up shopping online at 3:30AM before). I posted my deal on Slickdeals.net, which is the online deal site I (along with tens of thousands of people) use all the time (it helped me get my laptop for $800 off). The way slickdeals works is you post a deal on a forum, people rate the deal and if it is good enough it gets put on the front page (kind of like a mix of slashdot and digg, only for deals). I was heartened to see positive comments on my post immediately, but I was also very tired. At about 4:30 AM Amber and I finally went to bed.

Friday 1:30 PM: We wake-up, realizing in full what we have done to our sleep schedules, and I go online to see how my post did. And I see this:

That is right, my deal made the front page of Slickdeals! By now reaching 14,000 views and over 100 comments! You can look at the thread here, but the deal is unfortunately dead now. I will admit it isn’t my finest writing, but it was 4AM and I was very tired.

So that is my story of Black Friday ‘08. We ended up getting everything we wanted (except sleep) and didn’t even have to brave many crowds to do it! I hope all of you had similarly good experiences (probably for most of you it involved sleeping and laughing at people like me).

Every so often when I need to look something up on Wikipedia, it turns into a multi-hour click-fest that always makes me feel a bit smarter and a little sad. That is the beauty of Wikipedia, it isn’t so much about finding what you are looking for as it is finding all the things you never knew you needed to know. But, what if you don’t know what you are looking for in the first place? That is where Wikipediavision comes in, it is a real-time Google Map/Wikipedia mashup that shows you what pages are currently getting updated, and where geographically the update is happening. While watching it, it is amazing to note how often Wikipedia is updated and all the weird topics that come up that I never knew I needed to know about.

A while back I posted about a pizza vending machine and made the point that food preparation could easily be done more efficiently by robots. From a business standpoint I still agree with this, there will come a tipping point where it will be much more cost effective to maintain a robot, then employ people.

Recently, this topic of conversation has come back up around the lunch table and it got me thinking of another aspect of this robotic society. In a world of ATMs, Coffee Vending Machines, and Online Ordering we are quickly coming to a day when there is no reason to directly interact with a human all day. It is not hard to imagine a very efficient world where every non-internet business involves just a touch screen and a credit card swipe. I am not sure how I feel about that, this world would allow the introverted to stay introverted (which would make them happy), and the businesses could charge extra for the extroverts to get human interaction (which would make the businesses happy), but is anything lost?

I remember when I was in middle school one of the most uncomfortable things for an introverted youngster like myself to do was order pizza (probably not where you thought I was going). On half days a couple friends would usually come to my house (yes, introverts can have friends) and we would order pizza, for some reason making that phone call was nerve-racking. It seems idiotic to me now that I would be afraid to call and order pizzas, but it probably had to do with the fact that as a middle schooler I never really had to directly interact with “adult” strangers, alone, before that. It took some time, but I got over it (as most people do), but if it hadn’t been for that experience, or others like it, would I have ever broke out of my introverted shell? To put it another way, if all I had needed to do was go online and order the pizza, then I would have never been forced to face that irrational fear. This makes me think that the side effect to this ultra-efficient future, is a psychological one, and I am not sure this world needs more adult introverts (except, maybe for population control).

Looking at this another way, human interaction cuts down on the inherit stupidity of people. I found this blog today about a guy who decided to test out the Dominos Online Pizza ordering system, which allows you to be very specific about what you order. I am not saying that beef-bread isn’t a perfectly valid order, I just think that you should have to go through the indignity of an “excuse me? what was that again?” if you really want to order it. Don’t get me wrong, I can understand the flip-side of this, in my world of phone ordering an introverted, beef-bread loving, adult may never be able to get their beef-bread fix. Maybe, but maybe today’s satiated introverted beef-bread lover, would have been yesterday’s extroverted beef-bread restaurant pioneer, so we could all have enjoyed this little known culinary masterpiece.

Maybe none of this matters and we will adapt to fit technology into our society, instead of technology replacing our society, but hey, I got to use “beef-bread” in my argument and that has to count for something.

It was cool to read the Post Bulletin online today and see an article about a student I have worked with. Stephanie this summer has been showing cattle at local shows. I am hoping to see her and another student of mine at the local fairs this summer. I am becoming very well versed in cattle showing.

What is cool about Stephanie is like anything else in life she has not let the fact that she has CP get in the way of her doing what she wants to do. Read on and enjoy.

Stephanie