For the past few Westnet Conferences Dave Packham has presented on his MythTV installation. And every time he presents I get enthused about this cool technology.

MythTV is a built-from-scratch (well, not really. There's not need to go and write your own programs) Personal Video Recording (PVR, second parenthetical reference this sentence and a bad sign) based on a Linux platform.

After the January conference I googled MythTV, found the semi-official site and started dreaming about assembling my own system. Talking to a colleague who took the MythTV plunge I soon realized that to do it right I would need to invest at least $1400. That is a lot of bread for a free system that would take a mondo amount of time to get running. Tivo would be a much cheaper solution without all of the cool bells and whistles that are part of a truly geeked-out Myth install.

Oh, yeah. MythTV is very high on the geek factor scale. That's part of the appeal.

My MythTV desires will wain in the next few days and weeks. Likely I won't do much with this in the immediate future. One of the main impediments is that I watch less than an hour of TV every day and want to watch less. Even when I do sit down in front of the "vast wasteland" I generally do something else, tie flies, blog, read, surf the web. Watching with undivided attention is just not my thing.

And recently I read an analysis of television that drew some interesting conclusions. Boiling it down, the author felt that watching TV was a very visible way of saying, "I give up on life" and would be the equivalent of wearing sweatpants out in public. Hmmmm, but it's a great way to escape.

So, if you're interested in MythTV I suggest that you use google. There's more than enough info out there to get you started. But you better be ready to spend some time at it. There are a few MythTV distributions that attempt to simplify the whole experience. I imagine that they also restrict the feature set, too...........
2:53:30 PM    comment []

(Another dive into the dark cerebral depths)

Lately I've been thinking a good bit about blogging. And that's the problem. Thinking without action. I've wanted to write and post, but I've been busy. Too busy? Maybe.

Last week I spent three days in Tropic, Utah. It's a small town near Bryce Canyon in Garfield County. There is a gas station, three or four motels, a couple of restaurants and two public schools. I've been traveling to Garfield County the past three summers to help re-cable schools in this district.

It's a school district with 9 schools and 950 students spread over a huge mass of land. District resources are precious so there isn't money to pay for professional cable installers. So the district technology director is willing to put up with me and a few of my management-type associates.

In 2003 and 2004 we re-cabled the elementary schools in Tropic and Escalante. This year we were back in Tropic to upgrade the cable plant at Bryce Valley High School. It was a different experience. And not just because of stub-up conduit and lift-up ceiling tile. The Cyber Corps class at Bryce Valley joined the effort.

The Cyber Corps project has been going for some five years. It started with a simple set of ideas. Public schools have limited resources. Students have technical skills that could be channeled for good. It would be good to meet some of the school needs by providing an opportunity to these eager, tech-savvy youths.

Cyber Corps has been very successful. Each year students provide valuable services by implementing and managing LANs, supporting desktop machines, developing web sites and helping in technology areas where needed.

The Cyber Corp class at Bryce Valley eagerly helped in all aspects of the cabling process. It was good to work with them. The time passed by quickly and much was accomplished. It's a good example of finding opportunity in an otherwise tough situation. And in many respects, it's a good bit of fun...........
1:59:13 PM    comment []

Today I'm in Boulder, Colorado attending the summer Westnet Conference. The agenda calls for three days of meetings, however, I was only able to attend today's presentations. I flew in late yesterday, sat an additional hour on the tarmac at DIA. A thunderstorm passed right over the airport just as my plane landed. It was quite fun to sit in the hot little fuselage, reading and sweating. Good thing I'm not claustraphobic. And good thing I was well hydrated, too.

Still, it's nice to have a day where I can sit at my powerbook, on the net, without a big push to be somewhere else. And it's good to hear about the challenges and ideas of my networking peers from around the neighboring states.

I have meetings tomorrow in SLC that necessitate my bugging out late this afternoon, returning via Delta on a late evening flight. DIA has a 45 minute cutoff. Meaning, I guess, that unless you clear security 45 minutes prior to departure you will be tossed out of the line. I don't want to fool around with being left at the terminal for a lovely, sleepless night in some public place...........
1:39:27 PM    comment []

(Gen'd from the dark recesses........)

Hey, security is serious business. And yet there seems to be a pervasive attitude given off by many users and some network managers that goes something like:

Security, security, password, blah, blah, blah. I'm not vulnerable to a security attack, nothing is going to happen to me. And if it does then I'll get it fixed and it won't ever happen again."

Now I'll admit that no one has ever said those exact words. It's their actions that speak volumes. And some of us do take security seriously. Probably victims of multiple attacks. These are the types whose names show up on lists like the one obtained by an undercover british reporter.

So, no matter what you think about security, pay attention. It's only going to get worse..........
1:05:19 PM    comment []

I've been posting for the past four days and finally got to a network connection, edited my posts and sent them off. Sometimes with Radio the publishing takes a few tries and that was the case today. I've become accustomed to shutting down and restarting Radio to get my posts published. It's a big hassle, but works okay.

Well, today my posts didn't take. And when I restarted radio the last four posts, those that I prepared and attempted to publish, were gone. Oh, well. They weren't earthshaking writing or anything. The only significance is that they represented a few hours of my life, that's all.

The big problem is that I've been lazy over the past few months, writing directly into Radio instead of using and editor and then doing a quick copy/paste procedure. So all of those posts are lost forever. At least unless I can gen them up from the dark recesses of my cerebral memory stack............
12:53:54 PM    comment []