The screen is a dream to look at. I found that after using for some time and then having to look at my iPhone screen that you miss the large screen immediately. Pictures and videos look terrific and browsing the web is simply a breeze. Unless of course you go to a web site that has flash or java in which case it’s difficult to use with those sites. Given that apple has sold millions of iPads and will probably sell millions more maybe website developers will start abandoning flash and java overtime – only time will tell.

The iPad definitely won’t replace me netbook at this point in time. Whilst I would prefer to use one integrated device for everything, there are just too many holes that a full windows OS covers. Eg. I run hubb networks software for stock information. This is written for windows and definitely will not run on an iPad. However given time maybe future apps will catch up and I can find an alternative. I also can’t plug USB devices into the iPad, though apparently there is an adapter for plugging in camera’s available. At the moment there is just too many things I rely upon that run on windows in order to make a complete move away from it – but maybe my view change over time.

I discovered the kids absolutely love the iPad. My niece used it to play a Thomas the Tank Engine app on weekend and she could not get enough of it. The interesting thing is that nobody real taught her how to use it. She was able to immediately understand that it all worked through touch. This shows just how versatile the touch interface really is and just how simple it is to use. However I couldn’t or wouldn’t leave the iPad alone with a child as I don’t think it’s tough enough to cope with the beatings that kids could give it. Way too expensive as a toy too. Perhaps we will see adaptions for young children in the future.

The keyboard is okay. Whilst a normal keyboard might have more tactile feedback I have noticed that you do learn to adapt to a touch screen keyboard quite quickly. In fact this article was written using the iPad through the word-press app and I think my typing is just as good as it is on normal keyboard. I have the official apple iPad case which does enable me to put the iPad on a lean and this does make typing easier.

I discovered that when I first setup my iPad that iTunes just put all of my apps that I have installed on my iphone straight unto the iPad. This was a little annoying as there are heaps of apps that didn’t really want on my iPad to begin with. However this has helped me to be able to assess applications on the iPad that would probably not have considered otherwise. I found there Serena number of apps that have the capability to run on iPad and iPhone and take advantage of the larger screen. Eg. Wordpress, IMDB, Amazon.com and goggle. I have discovered some apps have specific Ipad version which is a little annoying as I had to uninstall the iPhone version and reinstall the iPad version. Eg. eBay, shazam, backgrounds and bloomberg. But there is still a heap of apps that seem to only have iPhone versions. Eg. Facebook, pay pal and Skype. These iPhone apps still run but they don’t take advantage of the larger screen and iPad capabilties. I’m hoping these will eventually have iPad specific apps in the near future too.

Reading magazines on the iPad is just like reading the real thing only better. I have the zinio app installed and I’ve subscribe to Digital camera World. This magazine usually costs me $16 Australian to buy and is 1-2 months behind by the time I receive it from the UK. Now it costs me $6 and I can get it on my iPad straight away. This is a full color magazine and it read exactly the same as the paper version. Up until now this has only been a dream and reading it off a monitor didn’t quite do it for me.

I will post more as I keep experiencing new things on my iPad.

First of all – I’m assuming you already have your remote control working under lircd.

Second of all I used this guide to get me started –> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Setting_A_Button_On_Your_Remote_To_Restart_mythfrontend

But I found it didn’t quite work for me, so I modified it a little.

First I created the script similar to the guide above in my mythtv user local bin directory (in my case /home/mythtv/bin/) and called it runmythfrontend.sh
#!/bin/bash
# script to restart mythfrontend
for x in `ps -C mythfrontend | grep -v PID` end; do
test $x != 'mythfrontend' && continue
RUNNING=1;
done
if [ $RUNNING = 1 ]; then
`killall mythfrontend`
else
`mythfrontend &`
fi

Next I created an entry in my .lircrc file to run irexec. irexec is used to run programs when a particular button is pressed on your remote – in my case I wanted the Power button on my remote to run the script above when pressed – this is defined in the .lircrc file and in my case it is stored under /home/mythtv/.lircrc – yours might be somewhere esle depending on your setup. Go here to read more about irexec –> http://www.lirc.org/html/irexec.html

begin
prog = irexec
remote = mceusb
button = Power
config = /home/mythtv/bin/runmythfrontend.sh &
end

Now you need to setup your session to run up irexec when you log in or the server starts up. This is done whilst logged into the user you run mythfrontend as. In my case I have gnome installed so I just go to “System” –> “Perferences” –> “Startup Applications” on the gnome display. You should get something like this (mine is a little cut-off):

Press “Add” and fill in the name as “irexec” or anything you want really; command as “/usr/local/bin/irexec -d /home/mythtv/.lircrc”; put in a comment if you like or not; then press “Add”. This should now startup irexec when your session starts up.

I suggest you now give your machine a reboot and test it – you might want to check whether your mythbackend is recording anything before you reboot otherwise you will interrupt your recordings. Also if you haven’t already, your might find it easier to setup Fedora to auto login at startup - I’ve written a guide here.

Once rebooted you should be able to press the power button on your remote once to kill mythfrontend and again to start it back up again. That’s it. I welcome comments, feedback and suggestions to make this better or easier.

Edit /etc/gdm/custom.conf and add this to the file. You could use gedit or vi whatever suits you, but you need to do it as root.
[daemon]
TimedLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=username
TimedLogin=username
TimedLoginDelay=0

Obviously you would replace “username” above with the actually “username” you wish to login automatically.

Now reboot and test it!

1. Quit Outlook.
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\
   You should be able to see all the addins for outlook. Just find the one you want.
4. Right-click LoadBehavior, and then click Modify.
5. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
6. Quit Registry Editor.
7. Start Outlook and the addin shouldn’t load.

It might be a good idea to take a back of your registry or make a system restore point before doing this – just in case you make a mistake or something goes wrong.

Mythtv 0.22 frontend screen shot

In case you didn’t here, mythtv 0.22 has finally been released. I’ve been waiting more than 1 year for it to be released! Check it out now http://www.mythtv.org

For some reason on Fedora 9 gdm is different and you can’t easily configure it to auto login through the GUI, but here’s another way.

Edit /etc/gdm/custom.conf and add this to the file. You could use gedit or vi whatever suits you, but you need to do it as root.
[daemon]
TimedLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=username
TimedLogin=username
TimedLoginDelay=0

Obviously you would replace “username” above with the actually “username” you wish to login automatically.

Now reboot and test it!

2) Noise cancelling
With a touch of a button be able to cancel out any surrounding noise such as idiots playing their music too loud in public or even the wife. I’m so going to get a mouth full for that suggestion – hence the reason for this option.

3) Force Field
I want to be able to press a button and enable a force field around me. That way I could insult anybody I like in public and never fear them seaking immediate punishment upon me. I guess this would be good right up until the battery depletes – which as you know is fairly quick with an iPhone. Or it could just provide a cover above me to act as an umbrella so that I don’t get wet. No more carrying around an umbrella and no more getting poked in the eye with other umbrella’s thanks to my shield.

4) Site to Site beaming
This means I could instantly beam myself to another location. Okay, okay – I stole this from Star Trek and I guess I wouldn’t need an app to fetch my car because I wouldn’t need a car with this option.

5) Smell saving.
You should be able to save smells. Now I’m not talking about those aweful smells – though having the ability to email/SMS smells to people you don’t like might be good. Instead of calling SMS, Short Message Service, we could call it Smelly Message Service (SMS). But, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to forever save the smell of your new leather jacket, favourite perfume (to remind you of your girl friend or wife) or a fresh ocean beachy smell (whatever that is anyway).

6) Instant make up.
Instead of having to wait hours for the wife to put on her make up, just press a button and it’s done. Actually I think the ladies would probably love this feature. You could automatically setup a whole bunch of presets such as clown face, midnight panda, cup cake, cake it on and powder puff.

7) Frequency jamer
Gives you the ability to jam all frequencies within a 10km radius. This would be very helpful on the train to stop of those annoying people screaming into their phones – they simple wouldn’t work. But of course it should allow you to use your phone whilst jaming everybody else – just to annoy everybody.

8 ) Holographic head’s up display (HUD).
Why do we need to be pined down to a boring 2d touch screen. The screen should pop out of the phone in front of you and provide a holographic interface. It should be able to put a full heads up display (HUD) in front of you as you walk. That would be cool. You should be able to look at something/one and get relevant information about that entity, such as stock options, material, dimension (height, width, lenght), weight, cup-size and whether or not the entity is wearing panties (not that a married man like me would ever consider using this option – it’s for all you single people out there). It would be so useful to know whether the mailbox is wearing panties – don’t you think?

That’s all the crazy things I could think of at midnight on a Sunday night – thank god it’s a public holiday in Sydney tomorrow I can sleep in. Yipppeee!

Have you got a suggested feature (I don’t want serious feature – be creative people) – then feel free to add a comment.

Bing Screen Shot

I “binged” myself (I guess that’s a new term) and found my panaramio pictures on the first link.

The video searching looks pretty good too. It will display a thumbnail of the results and if you put your cursor over it, you can watch it directly out of the search results page.

Only time will tell if Microsoft can make a dent on Google though.

Step 1) Download v4l-dvb version that works!

hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/~stoth/v4l-dvb/

Step 2) Compile and install the v4l-dvb software (you should be root)

cd v4l-dvb
make
make install

Step 3) Download and install the firmware.

There is a small script included that you can use to get the firmware. It is under v4l-dvb/linux/Documentation/video4linux/extract_xc3028.pl

If you take a quick look inside of this script it should explain how to use it. Here are the instructions from the script.

# In order to use, you need to:
#	1) Download the windows driver with something like:
#		wget http://www.steventoth.net/linux/xc5000/HVR-12x0-14x0-17x0_1_25_25271_WHQL.zip
#	2) Extract the file hcw85bda.sys from the zip into the current dir:
#		unzip -j HVR-12x0-14x0-17x0_1_25_25271_WHQL.zip Driver85/hcw85bda.sys
#	3) run the script:
#		./extract_xc3028.pl
#	4) copy the generated file:
#		cp xc3028-v27.fw /lib/firmware

Step 4) Reboot. This should complete everything you need to do.

Step 5) Check dmesg log to see if it works. You should see something like this:

cx23885 driver version 0.0.1 loaded
cx23885 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
CORE cx23885[0]: subsystem: 18ac:db78, board: DViCO FusionHDTV DVB-T Dual Express [card=11,autodetected]
cx23885_dvb_register() allocating 1 frontend(s)
cx23885[0]: cx23885 based dvb card
DVB: registering new adapter (cx23885[0])
DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Zarlink ZL10353 DVB-T)...
cx23885_dvb_register() allocating 1 frontend(s)
cx23885[0]: cx23885 based dvb card
DVB: registering new adapter (cx23885[0])
DVB: registering adapter 1 frontend 0 (Zarlink ZL10353 DVB-T)...

Your done!

References

http://www.fusionhdtv.co.kr/ENG/products/DVBTDualExpress.aspx

http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DViCO_FusionHDTV_DVB-T_Dual_Express

http://linuxtv.org/hg/~stoth/v4l-dvb/