TV Wonder USB Burn-in

Last night I got a chance to do some video recording on my computer. The movie Congo was on USA last night, and I was able to record it. The output format for the files (I stopped and started in midstream) is MPEG, and the files are huge. I tried to convert them to AVIs using Virtual Dub, so let's see how that's going this evening.

True to form

I was thinking about the name of my blog, and I thought I'd give you all some insight as to where else I've been hiking on the Information Superhighway.

I keep my bookmarks on iKeepBookmarks.com. Check them out!

An interesting development experience

This past weekend I had a laptop computer I used to do some development for my job. I didn't want to install any of the tools to do development with, so I opted to use the SLAX live CD and create the modules I used for development. The module creation was exceptionally easy, and I had a very pleasant experience this holiday, although I didn't get my work completed.

I used Java, MySQL, Ant, and Netbeans for development, and I like how I was able to use Netbeans for my work. I didn't realize how easy it was for me to create and modify databases with Netbeans. I learned a lot this weekend, especially how to set up a Java servlet to be accessed via the web, and how to set up MySQL.

As I haven't finished my work today I'll just commit the changes I made over the holiday and bring my work home.

Module issues

I was able to install and run the SLAX modules I created already, with the exception of postgresql. I just made a MySQL module instead, and downloaded a JDBC connector for it. All in all I'm impressed with how SLAX performs on the laptop I borrowed. It's nice to be able to carry Linux around in your bag and use it on any computer.

Module issues

I've made all the SLAX modules I was going to say in the last post, but the postgresql mod failed to run properly, so I just made a MySQL module in its place. That works, with some tweaking, but now I need to install a JDBC connector for MySQL. I got one today, so I'll be able to work on my database projects from anywhere, and on any computer.

SLAX rox!

I got an opportunity to create a module for use with the SLAX live cd, and that has to be some of the simplest stuff I've seen to date when it comes to modifying bootable CDs. I made a java module based on a Slackware package I got from one of my Slackware CDs. Once I booted the CD I was able to use the module that I made! A really nice touch to that distro. I'll put the module up later when I get a chance.

Other modules to create.

• Apache ant
  
• Jakarta Tomcat
  
• Postgresql
  
• Netbeans
  
• Apache - just for good measure
  

What to Do?

What else to do on my Xandros machine at home?

• Install Tomcat


• Install blosxom


• Install Bochs or qemu so I can play Descent

Test Post

Until now I didn't know you could title posts in Blogger. Hmmmm......

Got a lot done on my Xandros machine last night. I had to reinstall Apache so that I could use PHP with it. Then I also installed the PHP module for Apache, Webmin, Apache Ant, and PostgreSQL. I'm trying to set up my computer like what is on the server at work, so I can start bringing work home, because it seems like that I might need to to meet my deadlines.

A couple of days ago I loaned one of our TVs to a friend of my wife, which only left us with one TV in the house. I have a TV wonder USB, which we used to watch TV in our room. That was pretty impressive to be able to do that.

Another thing I like about Xandros is that when I compile software and install it using checkinstall it keeps track of it. Even packages I imported using alien were kept track of. Nice....

Interesting.....

I've been using Xandros for some time now, and I'm getting used to using it more and more often. Last night I was able to install Diablo II on my Xandros machine last night as well as finally get my ZSNES installation working last night. My sound worked as soon as I hooked up some speakers. Hook up my joystick, and I'm in business.

Keeping the blog alive :)

My Xandros machine at work is humming along just fine. I installed Mozilla on it, as well as Firefox 0.9 (which I accidentally trashed by installing a wayward extension), Xine, and I'm trying to get the dvdrip program to work. Zinf never worked on this machine, so I insalled Yammi for my audio library. That really sucked, too, for I liked Zinf for its ability to organize music.
Don't have Xmame, snes9x or zsnes yet, but that's coming. Also need to install Java/eclipse/Ant as well.

What about my home Xandros machine? Since I got it up and going I haven't touched it too much. I installed a WineX package I built at work. It works okay, but crashes if I leave it idle too long. Not a problem as long as I keep saving my Starcraft games often. I haven't had a chance to record any shows to computer or perfect my AutoHotkeys solution to setting up a timer for recording shows, yet, but that'll be in the future.

Some days it seems so hard to pick myself up and get any work done. There are plenty of things that I can tinker with on my computer that I allow myself to get distracted. I'm working on that.

An interesting note-taking site.

A nice way to capture thoughts as they come to you.

I was able to install PostNuke on my computer, after having to recompile apache and PHP so that they can talk to each other. Interesting concept. From my perspective, I think each user will have his/her own PostNuke installation. Now it's just a matter of figuring out how to configure the sites so that users can just log in, update their content, and most importantly, design the site the way they want.

As a desktop machine, Xandros is cool, but for server tasks, I may have to go back to Gentoo or Slackware. I wanted to host a demo of ColdFusion and put PostNuke on here for testing, and I may still do that, since I need the environment in short order, but at my next opportunity I may put Gentoo back on my machine. I will still keep my Xandros setup at home, though.

The Xandros works well. I like using it at home, and I'd like to put it on my machine at work. It's simply a matter of playing musical filesystems as I find out what I need and what I don't need. :)

I have a Gmail account! I didn't realize that as Blogger user I had an invitation. It's good that I have something like this. It's about to be on!

I also have the TV Wonder USB working on my computer at home. I can view and record movies now. I'm trying to automate the thing such that I can set it up to record shows at a certain time using ATI's program. I'm experimenting with AutoHotKey to try to do that.

I was able to fashion a Celeron 500MHz computer with 512 MB Ram and a 40GB HD. I was able to install Windows 98 on it (so I can use my TV Wonder device for capture) and try out Xandros Desktop (Open Circulation Distribution) for usage on my machine. I like it so far, but my only beef with it is that if I want to be able to update software as easily as Gentoo I'd need to have internet access, which is what I will not have. So I will be stuck with creating stuff from source, or switching back to Gentoo or Slackware. I installed checkinstall, so when I compile stuff from source now I just create Debian packages for it for later. I really like the interface it has on it, so I may keep Xandros around a while. I will still keep Gentoo and Slackware around.

At one point I was trying to get a Live CD together with all the games I was able to put on it. I was using Gentoo's catalyst to put it together, and I was able to get to livecd-stage1 before I put that project aside. I found a LiveCD distro, SLAX, that will allow you to compile modules that you can add into the LiveCD on the fly. I plan to compile ZSNES, Snes9x, XMAME, and WINE so I can bring all my games with me on the road as I pleas. I think that'd be neat.

I remember also a time where I tried to record a program using that TV Wonder USB device, and my computer kept crashing. I was using the software that came with the device, but now I may try using VirtualDub to capture video now; I may also use it for my tape collection. I can save the music as an AVI file, then strip the audio to make WAVs, then MP3s.

My Gentoo installation process didn't work! :( The most frustrating part of it is that the installation usually choked on decompressing the tarballs or compiling the software. So I went about installing Slackware on the machine last night, which we'll see if that worked, since I had to go to bed before I completed the installation.

I found out today that there are some machines one of my fraternity brothers wanted me to look at. Maybe I can get some parts out of that thing.