Nick’s Blag

OH MY GOD!

Sometimes open-source software is amazing. Sometimes it really, really, really sucks.

So, I have a fairly large library of perfectly-legal tv shows on an external disk. Right now, the tv shows are arranged by folders. Ie show_name/season1/s01e01.avi which works, but its really annoying to go from show to show. Really, what I want is one nice, consistent interface I can easily watch my tv using.

So, I figured I’d give MythTV a shot! Surely, an application which can be setup to record actual live tv shows would be good enough to work as a ‘video juke-box’. All I need is one simple, consistent interface… And guess what, mythtv works fine for this! It shows you… The directory heirarchy.

Wha? So all it does is remove non-video content from the standard directory structure I know and… dislike. Fuck, I could buy a Playstation 3 and get a better interface! Even windows MCE is better than this shit.

I then tried out another solution call Miro. Miro is nice because it integrates nicely with the perfectly-legal bittorrent stuff I download. So, I set it up, and then import all my media from my external drive. I then go through and painstakingly, by-hand rename my tv shows (hundreds of them) to a nice, neat naming scheme, and then I arrange them into miro ‘playlists’; one playlist per tv show.

Restart, double-check, all is well. Then I knock my hard drive off my desk and it dies momentarily. Yes, it was an accident.

No, Miro does not remember anything about the hard-drive now it has been disconnected.

Essentially, this shitty software deletes all the information it has, simply because for a moment the directory the drive was mounted under (/home/me/Videos) got un-mounted. All that work setting it up, for nothing. Even the re-naming of the files I did is lost. Yes, the Miro file renaming interface doesn’t actually rename the files; it renames what Miro calls the files. And then it decided to delete that info.

So, now I’m back on windows using directories. Its not great, but at least it doesn’t waste my fucking time like these shitty open-source fuckers have.

Nick Uncategorized

My beagleboard!

Its the newest member of my computer family - a tiny 3″ by 3″ board, capable of doing 3d graphics rendering! The processor it uses its pretty damn nice, it comes with 128MB RAM, and a DSP.

It can also power… My arduino RGB Lamp! So in a few days I’ll have a wireless RGB lamp, telling me things like… The weather! Or whether or not I have emails. Stuff like that.

And maybe someday it will power my army of wireless robots. We can but dream.

Nick Uncategorized

So I use Linux. No, not GNU/Linux. Not “Free Software”. I use Linux, specifically Ubuntu Linux. And I use it because it is excellent.

Before using Linux, I used Windows. But there were always things that I disliked. Like finding new software, or burning a DVD, or… The list goes on. The day I discovered apt-get, I fell in love. I’m also a programmer, and programming on linux is so much easier! Fire up a text editor, write some code, compile some code, run some code. All from an awesome terminal.

But enough about how Linux is generally awesome.

Some people have iPhones. I think they’re nice, but a little too locked-down for me. That said, I’d like to write an application for one; I think I have a few neat ideas, and I’d also like to experiment with some UI design concepts. So, how does one get started?

Well, for a start, I’ll need to be able to let people download my app. That means I need to purchase an account from Apple.

Wait, what? I order to enhance the user experience for everyone who owns an iPhone, by writing ridiculously cool apps, I need to pay Apple. Then, when I sell my applications, which I can only do so through their store, they’ll take a cut.

Thats ridiculous! If they want to take a slice from my app, fair enough, but making me pay for the privilege of making them money? Thats a step too far.

But let’s suppose I buy myself a developer account. Now I can write software, right? Wrong. Even though the languages and libraries I need to use are all standardized, in order to use them I’ll need to BUY A MAC. I have an account, I have linux. I have all I need to write software, right here. But I can’t do it unless I use the right operating system. In this case, Mac OSX Leopard.

But thats fine, I’ll purchase leopard. But oh no, thats not enough. Even though leopard runs on exactly the same hardware I have on my pc, I’m not allowed to run it. I can only run it on a mac. Why? Because they link their hardware and their software. Even windows was better than this!

If I wanted to develop for windows, I’d fire up my windows virtual machine, and develop in windows. If I want to develop in linux, I’d fire up my linux virtual machine, and develop in linux. Notice what they’ve got in common? Neither of them requires any sort of hardware to run. I can run either OS on a virtual machine, and run the other at the same time. Cross-platform compatible development, made easy!

So why can’t I just run Leopard in a virtual machine? Its not hard; I can emulate all sorts of hardware in my virtual machine. But Apple says no. In order to start development AT ALL, I’d need to get a Mac Mini; starting from the great price of $1000Aud.

So boys and girls, whats my point? My point is that if I want to give Apple money for developing on their new iPhone, I need to pay them over $1100Aud.

Anyone for an Android?

Nick Apple, Development

Last year I discovered the wonderful world of Continuous Integration. At the time I was coding with Java, and using Ant with Hudson.

Ant is a really cool. I’m just going to flat out say it; Makefiles suck. I’ve never liked their syntax. Ant uses XML. Makefiles have some arcane tricks to make it all work. Ant has nice, clear stucture and syntax.

Hudson is also really awesome. It can be setup to checkout and build your code, works with Ant to run tests and generate output, and can then show you pretty graphs to show exactly how your code is going. It then uses pretty coloured balls to show the status of your project; Blue for good, Orange for ‘not quite right but still built’, and Red for ‘OH NOES!’.

This can then feed into eXtreme Feedback. Lava Lamp bubbling?! Someone broke the build!

But for a more Hudson-specific solution, the creator of Hudson, Kohsuke Kawaguchi, blogged about setting up a USB-Powered Orb, to show the status of a hudson build.

ZOMG AWESOME!

So awesome that I made one. I’ll post the details another time, but suffice to say that having a usb-powered RGB lamp is cool.

Nick Uncategorized Arduino, Hudson, lamp