The World of a Penguin

This is one of my favorite video clips which I today found sub-titled in English. It also illustrates todays problem and maybe also why it is so hard for people to learn a new software or change from Windows to Linux. It is originally from Norwegian television.

I have had the possibility to do some coding this weekend. Which also gave me the possibility to learn XSL(T) , look closer on iCal, and xmltv. The result is a small application to search TV charts including the descriptions of the TV shows. It uses xmltv to fetch information about whats on TV. Then there are a very googly search interface to find the interesting shows. Out comes a new reduced XML file in the same format as xmltv but only including shows that match your search. This XML-file can then be translated to either HTML or iCal using XSL. Its is of course possible to write other XSL-files to create other formats. It is written in Python. I am not ready yet to publish the application. It needs some documentation and packaging. My main reason was not to write the program, it was more about to play with different algorithms and programing techniques. The program was just a side effect. I will write more about this software when I am ready to publish it.

Yesterday, I installed kissdx on my Ubuntu server. Thanks to this nice little server application I am now able too stream my music and videos direct to my Kiss DP-558 from my computer. It is quite easy to set up, the only mess was that I have to change the following lines in the Makefile: # remove -liconv below if your system has libiconv built in $(CC) -o $@ $(OBJS) -ldvdread -liconv -ljpeg -lm to: # remove -liconv below if your system has libiconv built in $(CC) -o $@ $(OBJS) -ldvdread -ljpeg -lm Then I just changed some paths in the kissdx.conf-file and started with: kissdx -c kissdx.conf I walked to my TV and let my DP-558 search for a PC-link server. Then I looked at Road Runner.

When reading that Motorola ships it 800 000th IP-TV set-top box running Linux, I start to wounder what would Linux market share be if we include all embedded devices running Linux. As most of you now, a lot of digital equipment we can buy in stores for home electronics are running Linux. Like your WiFi router, set-top box, some phones etc. If we take a look on the embedded market there are even more equipment like console switches, firewalls, surveillance equipment etc.

The small amount of time I have spent on Apparmor to day have been to merge my and Kees Cooks work. Then I updated to the latest subversion revision. Now I run into problems with dpatch , which I never have used before. I have to spend some time to look into more details, but it have to be another day. I have not released any new packages to day, but Kees uploaded his packages to revu a few days ago. I will soon watch on Jamie Oliver on TV.

I gave up on my problems with Hauppauge PVR 500MCE. I think the card is broken. Instead I saw a shop selling a KISS PVR 558 for about €200. So I bought one. The box runs Linux and the GPL-parts of the software can be downloaded as source. I can FTP to the box and read and write videos, pictures and audio files. The box support free format such as OGG as well as propitary formats. Through their web service can I program it to record a show where ever I am. I have now uploaded the go-open TV-shows and can finally look at them from my sofa, without having the laptop in my knee. The campaign and shows was sponsored by Canonical and HP among others.

I did a network install yesterday of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Herd 5 on my meant to be TV-computer. I have earlier struggled with getting a good picture with my Hauppauge PVR 500MCE. A few weeks ago I noted that Feisty will have full support for the TV-card, including firmware. Today it was time to try it out. It worked out of the box, I did noting extra. Brilliant!! But, a big BUT ... there is still a bad picture. If I amplify the signal, it get worse. If I reduce the signal then it, also, get worse. It looks like there are two problems; noise and not fully correct tuned signal. So on the picture quality view nothing had been better since last time. Does anyone have any ideas? I start to believe that I have a hardware problem, maybe it is time to buy another card. The new feature within Feisty that suggests what application or decoder you need to show a file works great. This feature will simplify for a lot of users. By the way, here is a dump of my dmesg output. Everything looks good, from...