Archive for September, 2007

fixing PVR500 signal quality problems

Friday, September 28th, 2007

I have a Hauppauge PVR-500 with dual Samsung TCPN-2121P30A tuners. This card has given me fits ever since I bought it, but when it works it’s great.

The latest problem with it isn’t new, but I decided to write a note about it so that I don’t have to go off into the wilds of Google again the next time there’s a kernel update.

Details:

kernel 2.6.20-16-generic (ubuntu feisty)

patch:

--- drivers/media/video/tuner-types.c.old       2007-09-28 10:55:16.000000000 -0400
+++ drivers/media/video/tuner-types.c   2007-09-28 10:48:44.000000000 -0400
@@ -1027,9 +1027,9 @@

/* '+ 4' turns on the Low Noise Amplifier */
static struct tuner_range tuner_samsung_tcpn_2121p30a_ntsc_ranges[] = {
-       { 16 * 130.00 /*MHz*/, 0xce, 0x01 + 4, },
-       { 16 * 364.50 /*MHz*/, 0xce, 0x02 + 4, },
-       { 16 * 999.99        , 0xce, 0x08 + 4, },
+       { 16 * 130.00 /*MHz*/, 0xce, 0x01, },
+       { 16 * 364.50 /*MHz*/, 0xce, 0x02, },
+       { 16 * 999.99        , 0xce, 0x08, },
};

static struct tuner_params tuner_samsung_tcpn_2121p30a_params[] = {

Steps to fix:

  1. cd /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.20
  2. cp /boot/config-2.6.20-16-generic .config
  3. make oldconfig
  4. Apply patch
  5. make drivers/media/video/tuner.ko
  6. cp drivers/media/video/tuner.ko /lib/modules/2.6.20-16-generic/kernel/drivers/media/video/tuner.ko
  7. rmmod all ivtv/video drivers and reload (important — have to get them all to ensure that things are re-initialized) … or reboot
  8. Check live TV to ensure that the signal quality is good again

Posted in MythTV | 1 Comment »

Hello JAVA

Monday, September 17th, 2007

No, not the language (shudder). As soon as I return the paperwork, I will be on my way toward becoming a Sun employee. No requirement to move anywhere (not yet, anyhow), and overall a pretty good deal. Better than a sharp stick in the eye, anyhow.

When I was a wee young geek, I always thought it would be pretty cool to work for Sun. Funny how life goes some times.

Posted in Life, Work | No Comments »

stinky dog followup

Thursday, September 6th, 2007

I gave muttley another bath tonight, with a stronger de-skunking solution.  This time I focused on his head and neck.  Seemed to do the trick — D’s super-sniffer detected the faintest whiff of skunk up close.  Much better than the previous situation, which was me still feeling somewhat nauseous when in the same room as sir stinks-a-lot.

I made a 1/4 solution, but undiluted.  So 8oz of hydrogen peroxide, 3tsp of baking soda, and 1/4tsp of dish soap.  Used a sponge I bought with the peroxide to really scrub his head, going against the grain of his fur.  I was surprised at how patient he was, given that it must have stung a bit and smelled awful.

Anyhow, all that smells well ends well.  Or something.

Posted in Animals | No Comments »

stinky dog!

Wednesday, September 5th, 2007

The dog went and got himself skunked last night. No, not drunk as a skunk, SPRAYED by a skunk. He was out on a walk with D, the neighbor, and the neighbor’s dogs. I think the other dogs egged him on, because he’s the only one who got the full brunt of the spray.

Having never dealt with a skunky dog before, I started to dig out cans of tomato sauce. I decided to check the Intarwebs and found out that tomato juice for de-skunking is a myth. It masks the smell, at best. The real deal is to mix 1 qt of hydrogen peroxide with 1/4 cup of baking soda and 1 tsp of dish detergent. The peroxide and baking soda react to form lots of oxygen, which breaks down the thiol compounds in skunk spray. This allows the detergent to do its job and remove the gunk.

I got him pretty clean, but his head still stinks a day later. I think I’ll have to bathe him again, but it’s hard to really scrub his head without getting the nasty concoction into his eyes/nose.

Sigh.

Posted in Animals | No Comments »

ez-scrobbler widget

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007

I made a widget for ez-scrobbler.

Drop this into ez-scrobbler-files/widget.php:

<?php
function widget_ezscrobbler_register() {
  if (function_exists('register_sidebar_widget')) {
    function widget_ezscrobbler($args) {
      extract($args);
      echo $before_widget;
      echo $before_title . 'Cooler Than Thou' . $after_title;
?>
      <ul>
        <?php get_scrobbler(); ?>
      </ul>
<?php
      echo $after_widget;
    }

    register_sidebar_widget('EZ Scrobbler', 'widget_ezscrobbler');
  }
}

if (function_exists('add_action')) {
  add_action('init', 'widget_ezscrobbler_register');
}
?>

And then, in ez-wp-scrobbler.php, add the following somewhere (I added it right after the other include()):

include('ez-scrobbler-files/widget.php');

The results speak for themselves —–>

Posted in Geekery | No Comments »

motherboard update

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007

mjmac@ganymede:~$ uptime
12:01:43 up 24 days, 12:23, 17 users, load average: 0.26, 0.31, 0.21

I have to reboot soon to install the new kernel that came out the other day. :/ Nice and stable with the new hardware, though.

17 users??? I guess I have a lot of terminals open.

Posted in Geekery | No Comments »

wow.

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007

I posted my grousing about comment spam yesterday morning at 11:33, on my own blog, and at 12:36 I got a response from reCAPTCHA’s chief software architect telling me to read the FAQ. He’s right — I am an idiot. :) The “comments” were actually trackbacks, and there’s nothing recaptcha or any other plugin can do about those.

The story here is not so much that I am idiot (nothing new there), but that I made a post on my own backwater blog and it somehow drew the attention of the recaptcha hackers within an hour. Hooray for Internets.

Posted in Geekery | Comments Off

recaptcha != magic bullet

Monday, September 3rd, 2007

Sigh.

I received my first spam postings within about 2 days of installing WordPress.  I nuked them, and installed the ReCaptcha plugin.  It seemed to be working fine, but this morning I found three more spam postings.  How do they do that?

I am thinking that either there is a flaw in ReCaptcha and/or its WordPress plugin, or else  spammers are actually outsourcing ReCaptcha solving to humans, somewhere.  How crazy would that be?  Who buys something from an obvious spam comment that has nothing to do with the post?  Why is this a viable economic model for anyone?

Posted in Peeves | No Comments »