Author: admin

Media Center Noodling

After attempting to install a dual channel Hauppauge card into the General, with the associated software installs/deinstalls – Windows Media Center could no longer see any TV Tuner Cards. This had been bugging me all week.

As always, I am determined not to go the de-install/re-install of Windows solution to problems. I’d much prefer to logically think through the problem, and learn along the way.

I found that the ehRecvr service was failing to start with a “file not found” error (check in the logs in

C:Users<username>AppDataLocalTemp) … and further checking showed ehRecvr was attempting to read a value from the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionMedia Center

Comparing this branch of the registry with a known-good version, I found that something had lopped significant sub-branches off such as “…Start Menu…” – in fact, only 3 branches existed in my registry.

I suspect that one of the de-installs in the swapping from Hauppauge to/from DVico caused this, and a quick export/reimport and all is well. Subsequently, components of the Windows Media Center software were set into a strange half-state of working.

Hope this helps someone.

Live Mesh

Nic Fillingham, Aussie in Seattle for on10.net, goes Hands on with Live Mesh

Jon Udell interviews Ray Ozzie.

(more videos on the team blog, here)

This has to be the technology of 2008. Live Mesh.

I’ve installed it on General Melchett (home), Captain Darling (work craptop) and little PrinceEdmund (EEE PC) – and the ability to share files “in the mesh” is just easy.

Right click on a folder, add to the mesh (I’ve done this with my Favourites folder)

Go to second machine, right click and add to the mesh – and Live Mesh recognises the similarities and allows you to synch the two directories.

Yes, Mac OS X client and Windows Mobile client are on their way, too.

General Melchett goes 45nm

q9300-installed

Time to save some electrons. On yet another whim, I purchased a new Intel Q9300 processor for General Melchett, replacing the venerable Q6600.

The CPU temperature seems to have dropped by 9degC, whilst the performance (12Gb video encode using Expression Encoder) is within a margin of error the same. The Q9300 is 4% faster. I think there might be something else at play as the benchmark results from xbitlabs seems to show 11% or so improvement.

Installation: 10 minutes; and 6 minutes of this was spent chasing screws around before I relented and grabbed a magnetised screw driver. The Zalman fan makes CPU replacement a little more difficult.

I expected that the General would have dust throughout. None. The first rear fan’s filter has grabbed the dust bunnies and holds them steady. w00t!

The strategy is to overclock the new Q9300 a little; with a lower temperature starting point it’s all upside from here!

EEE.TV via Bigpond NextG

As a recent fan of micro-TV stations, and live podcasting audiences; and as an owner of an ASUS EEE PC, it was time to join the dots.

eeepc_bigpond

After installing the Bigpond Next G software for the USB card I own (note: this is the slower NextG as well) over to ustream.tv and broadcast away.

This makes an ultra-small, ultra-inexpensive and ultra-mobile micro TV broadcast system in-a-box.

Below is a 6 minute sample recording from earlier today.

Bandwidth use? About 1Mb/minute upload video+audio.

Loosely Coupled Communities Across Space and Time

 Godley Head, Christchurch

From Glenn Derene, wiring at Popular Mechanics in “How Social Networking Could Kill Web Search as We Know It”

… with the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Second Life, LinkedIn and even Google’s own Orkut, the next generation of Web users may find what they want by using their social network rather than a search algorithm. After all, the people in your online social network should know you better than a mathematical equation, right?

I find this article resonates. The concept that a mathematical formula can replace the collective knowledge of trusted friends always seems weird, and the absolute innocent dorkiness that “algorithms solve all problems” as naive.

Being able to ask your twitter-hive mind friends a question, say about WordPress themes (see: http://www.nickhodge.com/blog/archives/2508) and receive an intelligent set of answers is way more powerful than blind search engine bingo.

The power of the internet comes from its ability to very cheaply connect like minded people into loosely coupled communities unbounded by space and time.