Category Archives: Geek Stuff

Geek Stuff

Investigating

As I begin to investigate the components of my Mythical TV I suspect that I will go for an nVidia graphics card, a pcHDTV card for OTA HDTV, a Seasonic or Enermax Power Supply, a couple of Samsung 160GB Hard drives, and either a Hauppauge PVR350 or a Twinhan TH1022 . And that’s just for starters.

I need to see how I will feed the 4DTV into the MythTV box. Since 4DTV is Motorola proprietary, and they don’t have a PC card, I will probably need to add a video capture card and feed the component video into the box. Still to be investigated. And I need to see if there is an MPEG2 4:2:2 receiver card I can can get, instead of the PVR350 or the Twinhan (I think they are both 4:2:0 receivers.) I think the 4:2:2 decoders run into $K. But I will keep on looking.

So, it looks like I will need at least 6 5v PCI slots to support the cards I am looking at. And I still haven’t looked at the sound card yet. I was planning on feeding the audio into my home stereo, but I still need to support 5.1 audio.

And at least a 2.4 GHz CPU, preferably 3+ GHz. And that’s going to generate a lot of heat, so I need to see how it will be cooled. A lot of factors to consider.

Geek Stuff

MythTV

MythTV
All right, I’m going to go for it. I will build my own Linux-based PVR that can support my two satellite receivers (4DTV and MPEG/DVB) and OTA HDTV. Now it is just a matter of getting the right gear to make it happen.

Geek Stuff

Some address issues

The new IP version 6 address space (128 bits) only allows you to address 340 Tera-Yotta-items (3.4×1038.) I hope they aren’t limiting themselves right from the start. (The current 32 bit IPv4 addresses only allowed you to address 4 billion items. )

I am reading that there are plans to start the the addressing off by using the 48 bit Media Access Control (MAC) address found in most Network Interface Cards. That only allows you to address 281 Tera-items. And once you give a MAC address to every toaster, refrigerator, and light switch out there, those are going to be in short supply as well…

Ahh, I see they are upgrading the MAC addresses to 64 bits. That means they can uniquely address 18 Exa-toasters. That should last for my lifetime. (Famous last words)

Geek Stuff, General

Single Government ID Moves Closer to Reality

This WP article,Single Government ID Moves Closer to Reality (washingtonpost.com), discusses the new NIST ID card and raises some of the objections some workers might have. One objection I don’t see addressed is the federal employee that doesn’t want to carry the card when not at work. Are they going to have a bank of safety deposit boxes at the door for the employees to leave the cards in?

What’s the problem? Tracking the cards off-premise. Not only is it a potential privacy issues, but those with the right scanners can track government employees from afar and indiscriminately. There needs to be an off switch on the card, or maybe the users can put the card in a lead-lined holder off-premise and block any RF.

I’m sure that the ‘powers that be’ will think of all this. It’s kind of silly to think of a squad of soldiers sneaking about in the dark and the enemy watching the IDs broadcasting their location, surprise.

Geek Stuff, General

Weatherbug

As an accident of having to install AOL IM on my PC at work, I ended up with the WeatherBug installed as well. I find it to be a nice little addition to my tool bar, showing the local temperature and alerting me if the forecast changes. So when I uninstalled the AIM, I decided to leave the WeatherBug.

Unfortunately, when the WeatherBug opens a window at bootup, it seems to corrupt my PC and prevents the other applications from running. So I decided it had to go. As I started to remove the software, WB kept shouting “Ohhhhh! Noooooo! Mr. Billlll!” and it asked me if I really wanted to go through with this. Soft-hearted chump that I am, I relented and agreed to keep the WeatherBug, as long as it didn’t open a window at boot-up. It can just maintain a presence on the toolbar and we’ll all be happy. Or will we? I shall see next week if I have to reboot the PC several times a day. (That was the nice thing about upgrading to the XP OS. I have only had to reboot maybe once a week. ) But, if the WeatherBug doesn’t crash your PC, it is a nice little toy to have.