They’re language, its effecting me, two!

If you didn’t notice anything wrong with the title of this post, please quit your job, drop out of college, stop whatever you are doing, go find your 3rd grade teacher, and smack them for failing miserably. Seriously. Why is it that I see these mistakes over and over again? I’m not perfect either, but I do pride myself on at least getting most of my mother tongue written down correctly. I have some comma mistakes here and there. Every now and again, I make some small grammatical error. But there are some words out there, that I believe it is extremely important to know the meaning and correct spelling of. Even though everyone that reads it, will still know what you’re trying to say, it is that much more important, that people learn the correct way, so that the incorrect way doesn’t become even more mainstream. So here we go:

• Their – Possessive. As in: That is their house. That is their car. The house and the car belong to them. Clear?
• They’re – In the english language, apostrophes usually denote a missing letter and/or a combination of two words. They are. Period.
• There – Over there. Not here. There. Alright?

Round two:

• To – “I sent this letter to her.” “Let’s go to the store.”
• Too – Pretty much a synonym for “also”. “I wanna go, too!” Notice how it always has a comma preceding it in this context? It is also used for extremeties like “I am too tired”.
• Two – Whoever made up the English language even went to the extra trouble of adding a silent ‘w’ to this word, so that you wouldn’t get it mixed up. This is only used for the number 2.

Round three (this is probably the hardest to remember, therefore the most important):

• Its – Possessive. Belonging to it. “Its hat.” The hat belongs to it.
• It’s – Combination of ‘it’ and ‘is’ or ‘has’. “It’s a long way to the top.” or “It’s been a long time since we’ve been there”

Round 4:

• Effect – This is a noun. Don’t try to use it as a verb. It doesn’t make any sense. “What kind of effect does this have on me?”
• Affect – This is a verb. “How does this affect me?”

Okay. I hope you all can see that the similarity in pronunciation of these words makes it that much more important to learn the difference between them. Or else pretty soon everyone would be using these words interchangeably in any written context. Oh wait. That already happens. I’m not pointing fingers at individuals that make these mistakes. I am more disgusted at how many teachers didn’t correct them, and how many subsequent high school and college teachers continue to let their students make these mistakes. Am I the only one that had a decent 3rd grade teacher? I see college students make these kinds of mistakes and they don’t get corrected. Just because someone makes a grammar mistake in a Computer Science class, doesn’t mean it isn’t the instructor’s responsibility to correct it. Language isn’t just something for English class. It’s used by everyone everywhere.

Update: Okay, apparantly, everybody doesn’t read my blog, because I just saw another one that hurts… so here is Round 5:

• Then – This is a time reference. “Now and then”, “Back then”, etc..
• Than – This is used in comparative statements. “I have more money than you.” “I’m cooler than you!”

I know it’s just one letter difference… but… it’s only one letter… so it shouldn’t be too hard to memorize, okay?

No Camera, but…

It seems everyone else has pictures all over their blogs. Mine is pretty text-based, mostly because I don’t own a digital camera. Or any camera for that matter. I guess I could probably get one, but really I don’t know how much I would use it. I guess I’m not much of a picture-taking kind of guy. But it’s okay, because I found a cool site, that lets you make your own pictures. So here is a self-portrait. And really, everyone says it truly looks just like me. White T-shirt and everything.

School’s out for the summer!

I just finished taking my last final exam for summer term, so I have about 3 days of pure joy now, while I bask in the satisfaction of being finally finished, before my final grades come back and I sink into weeks of deep depression.  Either way, I think I put up a good fight, and it just feels good to be done.  Now I get to go back to working full time for a few weeks before I go on vacation.  But working is kind of a vacation from school.  So in a way, I get a few weeks of vacation, before I go on vacation from my vacation.  Yeah.  Awesome!

MythTV

Alright, so it has taken me a few weeks. But after endless hours of searching the web, trial and error, and Fred’s help, MythTV is up and running on my media center machine. We first started playing around with Freevo, but after the first few problems we encountered, we found virtually no help on the web. In my search for the perfect media machine, I did stumble across MediaPortal, which is a Windows open-source replacement for XP Media Center Edition. It looked rather promising, and of course like most things in Windows, the setup is a matter of minutes, rather than weeks. I played around with it a little, but after my first BSOD, I promptly remembered why I was searching for a replacement to XP’s Media Center in the first place. That idea didn’t last very long. So I consulted with Fred, and he assured me that MythTV is probably the best way to go. So I’ll outline the process a little, and maybe someone else will spend less time with it than I did.

First off, this is the hardware I’m using:

• Cheapo AMD XP motherboard and processor, 1.67GHz
• 512MB RAM
• Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150 TV-Tuner card
• NVidia GeForce 440 64MB video card
• Microsoft Media Center Edition remote control
• Cheapo DVD-ROM drive

I decided that since Kubuntu is doing so well on my laptop, and I already had the DVD downloaded and burned, I would just go ahead and use it for the media box, as well. So here’s Jabba’s quick guide to getting MythTV working and ditching Microsoft on yet another box:

1. Install Kubuntu. It’s pretty straightforward. You can use the text-based installer if you have the DVD, or you can use the LiveCD feature, or whatever you like
2. This box doesn’t have a monitor hooked up to it, but just a TV through the S-Video on the video card, so use this guide to get that part working. It works like a charm, even on Dapper Drake.
3. Once you have your desktop up and running on the TV, use EasyUbuntu, to get all the video codecs installed. Don’t install anything you don’t need, it might just break stuff. Remember from Stop 2, that the video driver is already working, so just install the codecs, and Java if you want. Check with your local laws before installing the DVD decrypting software, since it is probably illegal where you live.
4. I wanted my box to just turn on and automatically start into MythTV, so at some point during the setup, make sure to go to KDE’s login manager setting and enable Autologin. After you have MythTV installed, you’ll want to go to your home folder, show hidden files, go to the .KDE folder, and put a link to mythfrontend in the Autostart folder. You can do this last, but you can do it now, also.
5. Now, the really fun part is getting the TV card to work. But fortunately, it is a popular card, and everybody else already did the grunt work on getting it to work. There are many guides. All say the same thing, but there is a difference between Breezy Badger and Dapper Drake with the firmware folders. I got it to work using this guide. If you can’t get it to work, don’t continue until you do. It is the hump to the whole thing, and the most important and difficult part.
6. Once that is working, go ahead and install MythTV. I grabbed it from the apt-get repository, but later found that all the errors went away when you install an unofficial 0.19 build, since the repository only has the 0.18 build. But the 0.18 version is enough for now, to get things working. You can upgrade later to solve problems if you have them.
7. For this part, just follow the instructions in the MythTV wiki for your distro. It’s pretty straightforward. You have to set up a backend and MySQL and stuff, but its rather trivial. Once you go through the setup, you’ll want to get an account with Zap2It, so that you can download the tv-guide. Just follow the instructions on the MythTV wiki. Afterwards, you should be able to run mythfilldatabase and it will populate your tv-guide. If you have the newest version of MySQL, but not the newest version of MythTV, you’ll get a thousand lines of errors when doing that. If this happens, go ahead and upgrade MythTV to the newest version, by following this guide. This fixed every issue I had.
8. Okay, so now you are ready to run the myth front end. Do this by running mythfrontend as your regular username. You should be able to customize everything you need in the frontend menus. Theoretically, if you followed all the guides up to this point, everything should be working nicely. You should be able to watch TV, watch videos and listen to music. You can set up the MythWeather plugin and look at your weather if you want. I generally just look outside for that info. But some people care about how hot the weather channel thinks it is, so do whatever you need there.
9. Now, the really fun part is getting the Microsoft remote to work. Well, any remote for that matter. I couldn’t really figure out how to do this by using the LIRC package in the ubuntu repository, so I downloaded and compiled my own from the LiRC website. Specifically, using this guide. And it works as expected. However the really fun part is getting the remote to actually do anything in MythTV.
10. After getting your computer to recognize button press events on the console, you’ll need to have a .lircrc file in your home directory, and a symlink to it in your ~/.mythtv/ directory. That’s not too hard to accomplish, and the guide outlines that, but what you put into the file is kind of your own problem. Most guides I’ve found on this issue pretty much leave it up to you to map your buttons to your events. I would suggest googling around for a lircrc file for your remote, and then modify it to suit your needs. That is what I did. I found a file somewhere that works in MythTV, but not in MPlayer or Xine, which is what is used for videos. But once you read the documentation on the LiRC website about how the file format is used, you can add your own events to different programs. The trick is setting up irexec to startup at boot time. I did this by putting an application link in the .kde/Autostart directory, right next to my mythfrontend link. Use this guide, for help getting the power button to turn MythTV on and off.
11. I decided to use MPlayer for watching videos on my hard drive, and Xine for watching DVDs. Xine has support for DVD menus and such, where MPlayer does not, but I like the way MPlayer starts up from MythTV for regular video files. I used the mplayer -input cmdlist command to find out what MPlayer likes as far as commands go, and mapped those events to the corresponding keys on the remote. I was up too late last night getting all that done, so I haven’t finished the Xine mapping yet, but I think it will be pretty trivial. You can also leave MPlayer as the default DVD app if you don’t care about the DVD menus. If you want to change it, you can do so from the MythTV frontend under Player Settings. Just type the command that you want it to use to start up your media program. It details it all on the Myth Wiki as well.

Well, that is about it for now. If this guide helps, let me know. If something is not clear, let me know and I will update it. For now, I wish you good luck with your media box. And let’s all take a moment to grieve the loss of yet another Microsoft customer to Linux.

Update: In case you need a working .lircrc file for a Microsoft MCE remote(Second Edition?), you can grab mine, and modify it to suit your needs. It is configured to turn off MythTV, and all MPlayer and Xine processes when the power button is pressed, using the script from this guide.

More Blue Jeans Blues

If you plan on going to a golf course club house, because you were invited to see a motivational show by the guest of honor’s personal assistant, make sure to respect the No-Denim Policy. Seriously. Don’t even try to get in wearing jeans. The dress code is strictly enforced. And jeans are just not acceptable.

(Thanks for the invite, Mike!  I had a great time. )

Battery Backup for NSLU2

Yep, it’s true.  When Fred and I get together and start re-engineering stuff, we end up with some pretty cool stuff…  Check it out here.

Ice, Ice …. No, Thanks

So I am probably a little biased here, since I grew up in a country where things are generally thought over with logic in mind, before being implemented. And I’ll admit, that ice has its place in life. Ice, or frozen water as it is, has many uses. It makes things cold, usually sacrificing itself for the cause. Pretty nifty stuff. When it melts, it just turns to harmless water. Of course there are other substances that do a better job at keeping things cold, like freon, or liquid nitrogen, but those are generally expensive, and you don’t just want that stuff out in the atmosphere for no reason. So it seems that it is a pretty good idea to have ice around. If you go on an excursion for the day, you can put a bunch of ice in a cooler and it will kind of keep your beer and soda warm for a few hours. And afterwards, you just have a cooler full of water. So I really don’t hate ice. It has its purpose. But whose idea was it to go ahead and decide to put frozen water into a glass of soda, in order to make it cold? Isn’t that what refrigerators are for? Really, I can’t grasp the concept. Here is a list of reasons why it is a bad idea:

• Ice touches your mouth when trying to drink, necessitating a straw.
• Ice displaces liquid. Yep, when you buy a 16 oz. soda, you are indeed getting 12 oz. of ice and 4 oz of soda.
• Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Just transerred and transformed. While removing heat from the soda, the ice is absorbing the heat. Therefore melting at the same rate that it cools.
• Ice causes soda to go flat very quickly.
• As the ice turns to water, the soda becomes diluted, making it virtually undrinkable.

Now, to be fair, here is the list of benefits to putting ice in your soda:

• It makes certain parts of the soda slightly colder.
• If you put enough ice in, you can make the entire soda seem ice-cold.

However, those same benefits can be achieved by chilling the soda before consumption. Now, I have some friends who think I’m crazy for my views about ice. They love ice. I can understand that in this country soda is very inexpensive, and virtually every establishment offers its clients free soda refills. So the displacement thing might not hold validity. And as you are reading the list of reasons why ice is a bad idea, and secretly thinking that I am dead wrong on this issue, let me ask you this: If ice doesn’t affect your soda at all in a negative way, why don’t people put ice in their beer? Or in their milk? (Although, I have seen this done, and it still kind of grosses me out.)

Where I grew up, soda is kept cold in the refrigerator. In fact, soda fountains have a cooling system built in. I’m no expert in the soda fountain industry, but I believe that American soda fountains also have a cooling system in place and running, but just not set to cool very much. So perhaps, the electric bill is higher, if the refrigeration unit were turned up a little more? Maybe. But how much does it cost to freeze water by the gallon all day? How much does the water cost? Are you saving money by creating ice to put in your soda, rather than just cooling the soda a little more? I can’t imagine. It takes more energy to cool water to its freezing point than it takes to cool soda an extra 5-10 degrees. In Germany, I have never encountered an establishment that offers its customers free refills on their beverages, although I have heard rumors that such places might exist in the meantime. But I haven’t really needed a free refill in Germany, since when I pay for a half liter of soda, I indeed get a half liter of soda. And more than that is probably unhealthy anyway. In fact, I went to a McDonald’s in Germany once, and noticed that they are pretty American about it, but do have some German tendencies built in. Their soda fountains are not cooled sufficiently, and they don’t give refills. So you order a large coke, and get a half liter of luke-warm soda. But there is no ice. Noticing that they have warm soda, I asked them if they had ice. And sure enough, they do have ice available on special request. But the look I got when ordering a soda with ice was priceless. It just said, “You are paying for a half liter of cola, and you are willing to give half of it away so the other half can be a little colder and diluted?!? You must not be from around here!” And after thinking about it, I realized that it is very true. Ice is not a solution to warm soda. The pros are grossly outweighed by the cons.

Urlaub in Oberbayern

Yes, that is correct. Vacation in upper Bavaria. I just bought my plane ticket to Germany for next month. I’ll be leaving from Portland International bright and early on Wednesday the 6th of September, and I’m not coming back until the 22nd (Sorry, Zach, I won’t see you there, but I’ll see you before you leave). I’ll be flying into Frankfurt, perhaps tour around Baden-Württemberg for a few days and visit some good friends that I have made over the last year. After that, I’ll be heading over to my home town of Munich to see my dad and stepmom and the best little sister a guy could have. I’ll be spending a few days in the Czech Republic to see my brother. And of course, one can’t forget that the largest beer festival of all time just happens to be in Munich starting on the 16th. That’s right, everyone. Have fun going to your little parties next month, because I will be drinking the best beer in the world with six million other people, in the greatest city in the world. O-zapft is’! Not to mention, I’ll be eating the best food for two weeks: Döner Kebab, Wiener Schnitzel, real Italian Pizza, etc.

I hope everyone doesn’t get too jealous. Seriously, though, I am going to be having more fun than anyone else. Sorry. But I am in need of a vacation. I haven’t taken any time off for a year, and I have accomplished a lot this year. I’ve improved my grade point average at school. I have received two promotions at work. I’ve been taking summer classes, and I’ve been working hard on finishing my degrees, and I sold my car. So this vacation is very much needed. And two days after I return, I have to jump right back into school, taking an even larger load of classes. Besides, it isn’t all fun and games. Going to Germany will give me a good chance to work on losing my American accent that somehow crept up on me in recent years. Since I am a German major at the university, I see this as an academic experience. Alright, it’s back to work for me for now. You’ll be hearing from me from the other side of the big pond in about a month!