Windows Media Centre, a good idea, but …

We borrowed a house for our summer holiday.  The owner loves his gadgets (more than me?) and has two TV's one in the bedroom and one in the Lounge.  His system comprises:

• Two PC's running Widows Media Centre Edition.
• Two flat screen monitors.
• Four 500Gb network drives (that's 2Tb!).
• Some fancy amplifiers.

I love the idea, great plan, have all your media networked, watchable from your main media viewing areas and downloadable to any Pc on your network.  A system that can pause live tv, record multiple channels and can be accessed and used by different rooms without any hassle. I love the interface of Windows MCE.  It is easy to use, very intuitive, and you can run it from the remote easily.  However, it has some problems:

• The main PC reboots its self without notice during viewing.
• If it reboots while you are watching something on the other PC, you have to restart that one too.
• I think there are some configuration issues.  The tuner in one doesn't work well, you can't watch anything but recorded TV or BBC news in the living room.  There is only one tuner in the PC upstairs so you can't record one channel and watch the other.

Based on my experience here, I have come to some conclusions:

• Windows is unstable, I wouldn't go back.
• I wouldn't risk my TV viewing on two PC's with no alternative traditional system.
• I have a TV/Video combi in our bedroom.  It's old, small and not very technologically advanced.  It makes a very loud noise when you rewind a tape.  You can only record four hours of TV in a shot, but you can record one channel and watch another.

I have found this LinuxMCE, this video suggests it will do everything well and it's built on my favourite operating system!  I might have a play, but you'll never get me to install a Windows option!

Encrypted WMA files and my IPod.

I need to play a hymn at a funeral tomorrow.  There's not going to be many people there (2) so singing is out of the question.  So we agreed to play the hymn.  The truth is I don't have any hymns on my ipod so I had to buy it.  My usual Russian sources don't sell hymns so I had to go to a British store.  I chose Tescos Downloads and paid an astronomical 79p for the offending item. I paid no attention to the format so was a bit miffed when neither my Ubuntu Linux Laptop and my itunes app (running on Louise's windows laptop)  wouldn't play it.  To get over the problem I had to use Windows Media Player to burn the encrypted file to a cd, then rip the file from the CD back to the computer in order to transfer it to my ipod. What a bizarre world when you have to go to such lengths to play music that you have bought and paid for on your ipod!  Anyway I now have one hymn on my ipod.  How long will I keep it on?

Knowledge, Status and Web sites

I have been doing a few little techy jobs recently. These arethe kind of things I slip into my spare time (which is usually very early in the morning).

• Experimenting with Knowledge Base Publisher. I was going to post all the little things I needed to remember in the "Techy" category of my blog, but I didn't want to bore people subscribed by a feed reader. KBPublisher works quite well and has never yet fallen over. My copy is here: http://graham.doel.org/knowledge-base/
• Upgrading to Ubuntu 7.10 which is excellent. The best yet. they have sorted all the little problems with printing. This time I plugged a printer in. Went to add printer and it was smoother than adding a printer in Windows. My sister in law needed a new computer so I bought a cheap one from Ebuyer and installed Ubuntu 7.10. It works great (after a few teething problems with their old monitor). Now they have a speedy computer and all for £150!
• Installing the "StatuPress" plugin for wordpress and using it on the home page of my blog. The home page now shows my facebook status in almost real time. If, for some bizzare reason, you wanted to add my status feed to your feed reader it is here.
• Designing a wordpress theme for the church web site. I am using the pages function in order to theme the site into four areas: Thinking of attending, Attended recently, Attend regularly and News. This is slow progress because it is not high on my priority list.

The church Web Site bit the dust.

About a week ago the church web site vanished along with the ISP who hosted it. The disappearance of the ISP didn't really affect me much other than a few bouncing e.mail and a bunch of musicians who turned up on Sunday thinking I had not send them the songs. The consequences for other people were massive (more here) and it is frightening that something that people rely on for their incomes is so fragile. We have restored our e.mail and our mailing lists. I managed to rescue the mailing list archives which I was relying on to keep a copy of the weekly bulletin. I have posted a front page to the web site. Matt and I have thought that perhaps this might be a time to rethink how we use the web site (The vicar of Dibley was thinking about this the other day). If you have some thoughts about our web site feel free to get in touch or to comment below.

My router keeps resetting the DNS settings.

I have started using opendns.com for my dns servers. It means that I can use the dns no matter which ISP I am using (handy on the laptop). However on the computer in the study, which like my laptop runs on Ubuntu, gets the dns settings from the router. The router has stopped forwarding the dns requests on to the ISP's dns server (in short: the Internet's broke).

I have set the dns servers to www.opendns.com's servers 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 in the file /etc/resolv.conf.

Then I set the immutability bit so that nothing can over write the file with the routers ip address.

chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

It's a bit of a dirty hack because the computer is trying to get everything to be assigned by the DHPC, However dirty it may be, it worked! It is odd though because I haven't had to do it on my laptop, I just set the DNS settings through the GUI and it has never complained.

Getting my k610i phone to sync with Ubuntu.

I have no idea how to get this working but here are some links I found on the way. My intention is to have the phone working hand in hand with evolution.

“BlueZ - Official Linux Bluetooth protocol stack.” http://www.bluez.org/faq.html.

“BluetoothSetup - Community Ubuntu Documentation.” https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothSetup.

“G33k T4lk: How-To syncronize Nokia N70, Palm, Evolution and Google Calendar?” http://geektalk.andreat.de/2006/11/how-to-syncronize-nokia-n70-palm.html.

“HOWTO: Sync Nokia E-series Phone with Evolution via Bluetooth - Ubuntu Forums.” http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=260676.

“Skunkworks » Blog Archive » Using Ubuntu Linux 6.10.” http://www.skunkworks.ro/?p=19.

“Sony Ericsson K610i and GNU/Linux - WebLog Olivier Berger.” http://www.olivierberger.com/weblog/index.php/2006/09/06/57 -sony-ericsson-k610i-and-gnu-linux.

“Sony-Ericsson K610i + HBH-DS970, a Linux users experience - Amarok Blog.” http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/263 -Sony-Ericsson-K610i-+-HBH-DS970,-a-Linux-users-experience.html.

“Sync Sony Ericsson W700i with Ubuntu? - Ubuntu Forums.” http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=242932.

I’ve made the switch!

Windows annoys me. The longer you have it installed the slower it goes. It costs a fortune, is difficult to reinstall and has loads of programs that also cost a fortune. For the last year I have been intentionally switching to programs that are designed to be cross platform (ie you can use them on Windows, Linux or Mac) so that next time my computer needs upgrading I can migrate away from Windows. All these programs are free because they are developed by a community of people rather than owned by a company to make a profit (people do make a profit from them, but that is another story). My three favourites are:

• OpenOffice: A complete office suite that is Microsoft Office Compatible. It does have some minor incompatibilities but I have been using it for over 5 years with no real problems.
• Thunderbird: Thunderbird does e.mail.
• Firefox: Firefox is a web browser.

There are others that I use, but more about those another time. So faced with a slow computer, and in need of a job to keep my mind active I backed up, formatted my hard drive and installed Ubuntu (more from wikipedia, take a peek). I have played with Ubuntu before, it is installed on Isaac and Alice's computer and it runs fine. It is free and well supported. Above all it works. I installed it on their computer and never had any problems. However, when I installed it on my laptop I have had two problems.

1. I can't get the wireless network to work (neither can my friend Matt for that matter). I think it is because the card defaults to off and for some reason won't turn on. I will solve the problem by buying an external wireless card. However, for now I have a wire trailing accross the living room floor, at least it got me to finally wire up the network wires I installed when I rewired.
2. The DNS settings seem to (for no apparent reason) reset themselves. I think I have found a fix here, but time will tell.

Live Support?

I had to use one of those live support things today. Dabs customer service lives up to it's diabolical reputation! Read on ...

Please wait while we find an agent to assist you... In the meantime, have you reviewed our help section as most questions can be answered instantly? http://www.dabs.com/help All agents are currently busy. Please stand by. You are currently at position number 3 in the queue. An agent will be with you in a moment. Thank you for your patience. You are currently at position number 2 in the queue. The next available Agent will be with you in a moment. You are currently at position number 1 in the queue. All agents are currently busy. Please stand by. You are currently at position number 1 in the queue. You have been connected to Philip . Philip : Good afternoon, how may we help you? Graham Doel: Hi please could I progress o/n 8##### Graham Doel: apparently it is waiting for an e.mail from me? Philip : We are sorry but we are unable to deal with your query as this relates to part of our Security which needs to be handled by our webaccounts team. If you have already emailed them relating to your query, then we can confirm that they will reply to your query as soon as possible. If you have not yet emailed them, then please do so at webaccounts@dabs.com. Graham Doel: I have e.mailed them and had no reply. Could I have a telephone number for them. Philip : As we are an e-commerce company, we do not operate a telephone service for our customers. We prefer that all communication is sent to us electronically, either by email or through our Live Chat service. For more information on this policy, please visit : http://www.dabs.com/contenttopic.aspx?ContentType=Help&ArticleID=125 Philip : Have you replied to the email they sent you regarding this? Graham Doel: They sent me an e.mail to which I replied. I placed this order and they have not sent an e.mail but have not processed the order either. What should I do? Philip : The order will be updated when the e,mail is processed Philip : the webaccounts team are working through emails as we speak Graham Doel: They have not sent me an e.mail regarding this order. Graham Doel: They sent me one regarding a previous order. Philip : Please email webaccounts@dabs.com about this and they will be able to advise Graham Doel: sigh.... Thank you for your help. Philip : We are glad to be of assistance. Goodbye. Thank you for using this service. You may now close this window. Your session has ended. You may now close this window.

ISP problems causing delay to the incarnate network website.

The incarnate network website has caused its own set of problems. I have been using the fantastic open source Joomla which has been an interesting learning curve for me. The biggest problem has been the isp we have been hosting with. He migrated to a new server during the initial stages of the project which caused no end of trouble and delay. In the end we decided to sent our own server and start from scratch. We ordered the server from 123-reg.co.uk who offer unlimited bandwidth at an unbelievable price (the customer service is not so hot though.

The network web site seems to have three main purposes:

• To act as a social networking site for people who are involved it front line mission or church planting in Europe.
• To provide a magazine of regular stories and information to the church planting community.

It also gives of my first opportunity to start pod-casting. All i have ever done is post the odd MP3 to my site and link to it through my Blog it will be interesting to do something a bit more regular and intentional.

Online Video’s

I have watched some funny (and some naff) videos online recently. The best ones are: Alien Song http://www.navone.org/Media/Movies/AlienSong_mp4.mov (Which is far better than the naff one with Jesus in!) Mario Brothers Level One. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D4ymdpkCXI Lassie Remix. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNWXWTb2fpw (Thanks Stella, the kids loved it.) I also watched this one which is a kind of meditation on Jesus. I often wish there were more pictures that made Jesus look like a real person. http://33whitehall.video.blip.tv/uploadedFiles/ ReasontoBelieve-KingOfGloryVideo697.mov

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