Michael J. Hammel - The Graphics Muse

MythTV: EIT errors in backend log and fixing Video Manager failures with tmdb.pl

mjhammel — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:18:57 +0000

I was researching why Battle of Britain would not auto-fill using the new tmdb.pl in MythTV’s Video Manager when I started a tail on the backend log. tail -f /var/log/mythbackend.log I got a bunch of these messages: 2009-07-07 20:09:22.069 Error: offset>181, pes length & current can not be queried According to an Ubuntu posting, this appears to be related [...]

Switching from AVI’s to DVD ISOs for use with MythTV

mjhammel — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:13:12 +0000

With the upgrade to F11 I’ve discovered that when I install a DVD GNOME automatically mounts it with an option (right click on the desktop icon) for copying the DVD to an iso image. The ISO is typically 4-8GB which is roughly 3-4 times the size of the AVI files I’ve been creating with AcidRip. [...]

Update to MythVideo imdb.pl - getting the right metadata for you videos

mjhammel — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 03:30:37 +0000

The terms of service apparently changed for imdb.com and the original imdb.pl script in MythTV that is used to retrieve data about movies (via the Video Manager) is no longer working properly. The results vary but in my case the director information was not be pulled properly. There is a new script that will be [...]

Preparing for Fedora 11: Installation on the Acer laptop

mjhammel — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 02:27:06 +0000

Fedora 11 was released this past week and I’ve already downloaded the various netinst and DVD ISO images for both 32bit and 64bit systems at home. I’ve got 5 computers to upgrade: 1 development server, 1 MythTV server, my desktop, 1 Myth client and my laptop. Since I’ve now got a nice quad-core in [...]

3D graphics hardware for Linux

mjhammel — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:49:54 +0000

Someone asked on the Boulder Linux User Group mailing list today for recommendations for video cards. He wanted to avoid NVidia. One of the responses pointed out this very handy web site: 3D Graphics hardware performance using Free Software drivers (X.Org DRI). I noticed just recently that my NVidia GeForce 8200 based motherboard is not as [...]

Quickies: Flash 64, fixing skipping audio, mapping keys to applications

mjhammel — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 01:07:12 +0000

I’ve been having problems playing flash video on my new system at home. The system is a 64bit AMD running F10. Flash video plays but the audio skips a lot. I had similar problems with other applications but was able to get around it by using the right audio setup, such as using -A alsa [...]

AcidRip mod: Fix for faulty previews

mjhammel — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 22:44:36 +0000

AcidRip hasn’t been updated in a long time. In fact, I’m not even sure anyone is maintaining it anymore. But I still use it quite a bit. Today I noticed, after an yum update for F10, that the previews just wouldn’t work anymore. So I looked at the debug window and found this was the [...]

Multiple Firefox instances with different network settings

mjhammel — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:12:23 +0000

Prior to F10 I always created a second user that I allowed to display applications on my desktop that I use to launch a second instance of Firefox. There are lots of reasons to want to do this. The most obvious is that the second user is completely isolated from my desktop so I can [...]

XM Radio and Linux? Who cares.

mjhammel — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:18:29 +0000

I got an email from XM Radio last month stating that my multi-radio discount would be going away in March. I have two radios subscribed (though we actually have more radios than that, they just aren’t all turned on right now), both in our cars. The increase in price is minimal - $2/month for one [...]

Dawning of a new age: A Quad-Core system finds a new home

mjhammel — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:12:31 +0000

For the past 4 years I’ve worked happily at home with my Acer laptop. I’ve discussed many of the issues I’ve had with running this laptop with Fedora. For the most part, despite how those posts may sound, I’ve actually been pretty happy with both the laptop and with running Fedora on it. But times change [...]