Congrats to Sean Adams and the rest of the gang; I've never been a customer but always liked your hardware hacks (and a Mtn. View company to boot!) Glad to see you guys get the recognition (and presumably payday) you deserve!
(Oops, clicked submit too soon. That should read: )
Kegbot uses an inline meter, where kegerator.net appears to use the honor system. but they certainly are the trailblazers in this area (and are definitely owning us in raw volume).
The Kegbot has two uses: 1) To enforce responsible drinking. 2) To enable long distance drinking games.
No. You're forgiven for being wrong due to the misleading snippet.
My motivation and 'uses' for kegbot are:
- Track how much people drink (for fun, curiosity)
- Track amount left in keg (how many ounces were taken?)
Drinking responsibly has always been left to the user. In two years since kegbot's inception, none of my friends who've come over for a drink from the kegbot have had a problem with overdoing it. It's possible that the presence of per-drinker stats might influence a need to compete and drink more, but I haven't had the problem.
(In any case, I'm not convinced drinking games and challenges commonplace in homes and bars are much different. I, however, have an audit.)
I'm not sure who the submitter is, but the voice isn't mine; we think the kegbot is a fun project, but we are _not_ bent on taking over fraternies or changing the world's drinking habits.
There's a zillion and one things you can do with data from a network-enabled keg; in my imagination, connecting kegbots is one interesting possibility; using the drink data for diet/safety reasons is another - but neither are a focus of the project.
Let's celebrate that convenience, rather than spout nonsense about "responsibility", or some other ridiculous moralizing.
(Disclaimer: I am the author of the kegbot.)
The comment I made about 'promoting responsible drinking' was extremely tongue-in-cheek. kegbot is not intended to cure social ills or save the planet. It's just a fun hobby project. No delusions of grandeur here.
The UI is indeed a mess, and configuring the fonts to look properly on a tv is a nightmare (you have to get your X DPI *just* right, then change settings in the frontend for Qt...
Give a newcomer a chance.:)
Yeah, I agree. I'm sure a lot of the UI stuff in particular does not fall entirely in Myth's domain. But there are at least some problems to solve:)
I must admit watching my brothers Tivo I am extremely jealous of the it's UI. My mythbox completely trounces it on useability. I can tell my mythbox *exactly* what I want to watch and how I watch it.
I dunno, I still find missing functionality daily. Like, batch operations for transcode/delete/etc/.. and so on.. Or consider watching 'live tv' while your tuner is recording: on a Tivo, you hit live tv and you get the program that is being recorded. On Myth, you get a warning that says 'Go back to Media Library -> Manage Recordings, find what is currently being recorded, and select Play there' -- when it clearly has the technical ability to do exactly what the tivo does.
I'm willing to see how 0.19 improves things and also willing to put in some dev work, so I'm sure the UI issue will be due for a revisit in a little while -- I'm willing to wait.
I think MythTV badly needs an Edje UI. That would be a match made in heaven.
You bring up an interesting point. Here and elsewhere, I haven't really seen anyone defend Myth's UI. Based on replies it looks like improving some of the UI is a priority for the next release. But as we can see, users (and developers willing to spend time) have different preferences.
The real interesting thing is that a while back Myth split the 'front end' and 'back end' into distinct components. I believe the driving motivation was to decouple the backend from the playing unit, such that there could be multiple back ends and multiple players. What would be a great extension of this would be to see an alternate front end to the stock one. Say one written in a different language or with a different playback mechanism.
The impression I get is that the separation of these two components is not quite there yet. For example, I recently ran a 0.17 frontend with an 0.18 backend, and as a result the new front end was no longer usable (extra columns in the DB). At the very least, it is possible for these components to trample on each other. An API written to expect homogenous frontends (and not just THE Myth frontend) might help here.
I'm sorry did I miss the part where Microsoft and Tivo opended up their source and made it easy for anyone to come on in.
No, you did however invent an argument I wasn't making. I replied to a parent suggesting new program data was all that myth needed. Read it again.
I have no idea what menus for the EG referrs to
Sorry, a poorly punctuated shorthand. Read it as 'menus for, for example, the setup section'...
but you're right the settings section is pretty bad. Good thing it's been slated for a rewrite before.19 come out (which Technovera the parent compnay of LxMSuite will be paying for)
Great news, I am glad to hear it is a known issue.
And as for general uglinesss, pretty much every theme for Myth has been done by programmers. There's not a lot the theme system can't do when a real artist works with it.
I agree and can relate! I'm sure this is the case with most open source apps.
Then join LxMSuite, let your voice be heard and you dollars directed on fixing things you care about.
I know Slashdot is full of armchair experts on open source apps, but I do intend to help out. I do happened to be biased towards the language that other linux PVR app uses, and they seem to be starved for developers..
All MythTV really needed was a well-funded and backed listing system. Zap2it was a good mid-point, but not on par with Tivo's or Microsoft's offerings.
Gotta disagree. Myth is nice but is still FAR lacking in many ways - UI and ease of development in particular (speaking from some experience).
The UI alone is a mess; examples: menus for eg setup descend and descend with zero context; similar settings stored all over the palce (see commercial flagging and transcoding); recordings organized by show but then loop endlessly; general ugliness (skins can only do so much).
Fix it yourself? See my second gripe.
I like Myth, but it has many warts, and missing program guide data is not one of them. ymmv.
a: For the wired version: Support for Power over Ethernet. This way, separate power isn't needed in many installations.
The development board and DCME itself break out pins from the PHY for this purpose. No problems here. You just need to hook up something like a MAX5941 and you're set. (I haven't been interested in this yet, tho.)
b: A single USB port for both versions
The FTDI FT232BM is what you're looking for. RS232 to USB, with drivers for Windows, Mac, and a linux usbserial driver to boot. $5/chip in one-offs. Great chip for interfacing with any serial device, microcontroller, etc. Mouser sells this chip on a nice backpack board with all the external logic you need -- just connect the power, tx, and rx, and you're done!
Of course, this won't get you USB HOST (which is probably what you want), so in that case you may have to pursue another design.
is it worth 400$ and the possiblity of bricking it to get a less that ipod quality mp3 player?
You can't see it now, but the iPod linunx site states clearly that, to their knowledge, no one has bricked an iPod due to installing iPodLinux on it -- even since the long-ago development days.
In fact, iPodLinux's installer sets it up so you can dual boot into Linux and the Apple firmware, and you can make one the default. I installed this on my 1G and the other day, and it indeed works very, very easily. It is one of the more underrated hacks going on today, IMO.
Its sweet but does it ahve a point?
To satisfy your slashdotty interests: imagine you and a friend have iPods, and imagine you connect them with a firewire cable. You both boot into linux, transfer files, and reboot (back in to the Apple firmware). The use is left as an exercise to the hacker.
What a shame my moderation points expired (...) The Halloween images are from 2004
eh?
image one
comment: From: Mark Packham (Tue 18 Nov 2003 00:31:59 CET)...
and the photo properties: File Upload Date: Sun 16 Nov 2003 19:10:12 CET
Item Capture Date: Sat 01 Nov 2003 22:17:53 CET
etc, etc, for all images
believe me, i checked. you made the same mistake -- you believed the album title and not the comments, upload dates, etc! as someone else said, you can get results for halloween 2005, etc... surely those aren't from 2005?
(anyway, the official retraction makes this all moot)
Then why do searches for events such as "halloween 2004" -- which happened much more recently than the prison abuse -- show up just fine?
Because those images aren't from Halloween 2004!
Mod the parent down; he demonstrates nothing. Look at the results for "Halloween 2004"; the images all have comments from 2003. I get results for Abu Ghraib, too; they're also a little dated.
It is true that Moffett lies on the boundary; highway 101 is adjacent the golf course and the airfield, and the airstrip is roughly perpendicular to the freeway. In fact, there are runway lights on the golf course property!
Incidentally, I've often passed that golf course and been told that "golf is a deadly sport" -- it was always rumored that some golfers had been killed by a plane crashing into them there. This is the most confirmation I can find, but no ground casualties...
FWIW:)
Saw this on Discovery Channel ~6 years ago
on
Japanese Balloon Battle
·
· Score: 3, Informative
(That page says the device was taken to Moffetf Field in Sunnyvale CA, but Moffett is and always has been in Mountain View. I believe it was sometimes described as being in Sunnyvale because the military guys were sensitive to the perception of 'Mountains' being anywhere near their airship base. No reference, just remember this from many an airshow..)
I thought I read this before... Though the story is new, it looks this is a private company essentially duplicating (copying?) the earlier work of the MIT guys to reach... gasp... the same conclusion.
> If you just want small size, use PC/104 at 3.6" x 3.8" (90mm x 96mm).
Yeah, PC/104 is definitely cool stuff, but the problem with it for me has always been expense -- it seems more of a 'specialized' (vs 'off-the-shelf') solution. If the nano-itx is priced near the mini-itx (probably with a small premium at first), it would win both in terms of price and availability.
I bought an advantech SBC a few years ago, before there were any mini-itx boards readily available, and it set me back $500. A pure PC/104 solution is not much cheaper, last I checked, though they definitely have some neat modules.
The Nano-ITX board that they announced last year still seems to be the coolest thing around in terms of potential for off-the-shelf, single board computer projects.
I mean, it's only 4.7 inches by 4.7 inches! Of course I've never seen a price, but sell this thing in the $100 range and I'll take 3...
Re:Quality clay chips?
on
Geeks and Poker?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I doubt most people who have replied to you really have 'clay' chips. What are most popular (and what you see on ebay) are Chinese-made, plastic chips with metal disc inserts (to increase the weight.)
Though nice, these chips are hardly the real deal. For starters, they are a lot more slippery and noisy than casino chips. Clack a few real chips around in your hand, and do the same with these. Try shuffling stacks of ebay/5stardeal chips. Not nearly as smotoh and easy.
They are, however, nice for the home game and several steps up above the cheap plastic slotting chips that you find at your local drugstore. I even have a set of them.
But, if you really want nice chips, try searching on ebay for "Chipco"; they are the same manufacturer as is used by many casinos, and they are superior chips in every way (incl. price) when compared to 5stardeal/ebay "clay" chips.
Finally, check out the chip buying advice at http://www.homepokertourney.com/ -- I think it probably says what I've summarized, and he has links to more distributors.
Slashdot Mirror
Congrats to Sean Adams and the rest of the gang; I've never been a customer but always liked your hardware hacks (and a Mtn. View company to boot!) Glad to see you guys get the recognition (and presumably payday) you deserve!
You didn't pay to read my post and were not forced to read it. Don't whine about it.
You didn't pay to receive Picasa for Linux and were not forced to use it. Don't whine about it.
No; it wasn't worth it to design and tool a whole new case for the only board in existence, which seems to have been mistakenly shipped to you.
In all seriousness, where did you get your board (and for how much)? I saw mini-itx claim a few are in the wild in Japan. Any luck stateside?
(Oops, clicked submit too soon. That should read: )
Kegbot uses an inline meter, where kegerator.net appears to use the honor system. but they certainly are the trailblazers in this area (and are definitely owning us in raw volume).
cheers..
Kegbot appears to use an inline meter, where kegerator.net uses the honor system.
The Kegbot has two uses:
:)
1) To enforce responsible drinking.
2) To enable long distance drinking games.
No. You're forgiven for being wrong due to the misleading snippet.
My motivation and 'uses' for kegbot are:
- Track how much people drink (for fun, curiosity)
- Track amount left in keg (how many ounces were taken?)
Drinking responsibly has always been left to the user. In two years since kegbot's inception, none of my friends who've come over for a drink from the kegbot have had a problem with overdoing it. It's possible that the presence of per-drinker stats might influence a need to compete and drink more, but I haven't had the problem.
(In any case, I'm not convinced drinking games and challenges commonplace in homes and bars are much different. I, however, have an audit.)
I'm not sure who the submitter is, but the voice isn't mine; we think the kegbot is a fun project, but we are _not_ bent on taking over fraternies or changing the world's drinking habits.
There's a zillion and one things you can do with data from a network-enabled keg; in my imagination, connecting kegbots is one interesting possibility; using the drink data for diet/safety reasons is another - but neither are a focus of the project.
(finally, we're not fraternity members
mike
Let's celebrate that convenience, rather than spout nonsense about "responsibility", or some other ridiculous moralizing.
(Disclaimer: I am the author of the kegbot.)
The comment I made about 'promoting responsible drinking' was extremely tongue-in-cheek. kegbot is not intended to cure social ills or save the planet. It's just a fun hobby project. No delusions of grandeur here.
mike
The UI is indeed a mess, and configuring the fonts to look properly on a tv is a nightmare (you have to get your X DPI *just* right, then change settings in the frontend for Qt...
:)
:)
Give a newcomer a chance.
Yeah, I agree. I'm sure a lot of the UI stuff in particular does not fall entirely in Myth's domain. But there are at least some problems to solve
I must admit watching my brothers Tivo I am extremely jealous of the it's UI. My mythbox completely trounces it on useability. I can tell my mythbox *exactly* what I want to watch and how I watch it.
I dunno, I still find missing functionality daily. Like, batch operations for transcode/delete/etc/.. and so on.. Or consider watching 'live tv' while your tuner is recording: on a Tivo, you hit live tv and you get the program that is being recorded. On Myth, you get a warning that says 'Go back to Media Library -> Manage Recordings, find what is currently being recorded, and select Play there' -- when it clearly has the technical ability to do exactly what the tivo does.
I'm willing to see how 0.19 improves things and also willing to put in some dev work, so I'm sure the UI issue will be due for a revisit in a little while -- I'm willing to wait.
I think MythTV badly needs an Edje UI. That would be a match made in heaven.
You bring up an interesting point. Here and elsewhere, I haven't really seen anyone defend Myth's UI. Based on replies it looks like improving some of the UI is a priority for the next release. But as we can see, users (and developers willing to spend time) have different preferences.
The real interesting thing is that a while back Myth split the 'front end' and 'back end' into distinct components. I believe the driving motivation was to decouple the backend from the playing unit, such that there could be multiple back ends and multiple players. What would be a great extension of this would be to see an alternate front end to the stock one. Say one written in a different language or with a different playback mechanism.
The impression I get is that the separation of these two components is not quite there yet. For example, I recently ran a 0.17 frontend with an 0.18 backend, and as a result the new front end was no longer usable (extra columns in the DB). At the very least, it is possible for these components to trample on each other. An API written to expect homogenous frontends (and not just THE Myth frontend) might help here.
cheers..
I'm sorry did I miss the part where Microsoft and Tivo opended up their source and made it easy for anyone to come on in.
.19 come out (which Technovera the parent compnay of LxMSuite will be paying for)
No, you did however invent an argument I wasn't making. I replied to a parent suggesting new program data was all that myth needed. Read it again.
I have no idea what menus for the EG referrs to
Sorry, a poorly punctuated shorthand. Read it as 'menus for, for example, the setup section'...
but you're right the settings section is pretty bad. Good thing it's been slated for a rewrite before
Great news, I am glad to hear it is a known issue.
And as for general uglinesss, pretty much every theme for Myth has been done by programmers. There's not a lot the theme system can't do when a real artist works with it.
I agree and can relate! I'm sure this is the case with most open source apps.
Then join LxMSuite, let your voice be heard and you dollars directed on fixing things you care about.
I know Slashdot is full of armchair experts on open source apps, but I do intend to help out. I do happened to be biased towards the language that other linux PVR app uses, and they seem to be starved for developers..
cheers..
All MythTV really needed was a well-funded and backed listing system. Zap2it was a good mid-point, but not on par with Tivo's or Microsoft's offerings.
Gotta disagree. Myth is nice but is still FAR lacking in many ways - UI and ease of development in particular (speaking from some experience).
The UI alone is a mess; examples: menus for eg setup descend and descend with zero context; similar settings stored all over the palce (see commercial flagging and transcoding); recordings organized by show but then loop endlessly; general ugliness (skins can only do so much).
Fix it yourself? See my second gripe.
I like Myth, but it has many warts, and missing program guide data is not one of them. ymmv.
a: For the wired version: Support for Power over Ethernet. This way, separate power isn't needed in many installations.
The development board and DCME itself break out pins from the PHY for this purpose. No problems here. You just need to hook up something like a MAX5941 and you're set. (I haven't been interested in this yet, tho.)
b: A single USB port for both versions
The FTDI FT232BM is what you're looking for. RS232 to USB, with drivers for Windows, Mac, and a linux usbserial driver to boot. $5/chip in one-offs. Great chip for interfacing with any serial device, microcontroller, etc. Mouser sells this chip on a nice backpack board with all the external logic you need -- just connect the power, tx, and rx, and you're done!
Of course, this won't get you USB HOST (which is probably what you want), so in that case you may have to pursue another design.
This is a Digi Connect ME, which has been around for a while. I have one, and it runs uClinux nicely.
Dunno what Kleinhenz is shipping, but I'm gussing it's just the DCME with uClinux flashed onto it. Nothing new here.
IIRC, old newsgroup threads when these came out suggest the quantity cost is ~$50/ea, so this product's convenience comes at a bit of a premium.
is it worth 400$ and the possiblity of bricking it to get a less that ipod quality mp3 player?
You can't see it now, but the iPod linunx site states clearly that, to their knowledge, no one has bricked an iPod due to installing iPodLinux on it -- even since the long-ago development days.
In fact, iPodLinux's installer sets it up so you can dual boot into Linux and the Apple firmware, and you can make one the default. I installed this on my 1G and the other day, and it indeed works very, very easily. It is one of the more underrated hacks going on today, IMO.
Its sweet but does it ahve a point?
To satisfy your slashdotty interests: imagine you and a friend have iPods, and imagine you connect them with a firewire cable. You both boot into linux, transfer files, and reboot (back in to the Apple firmware). The use is left as an exercise to the hacker.
image one
comment: From: Mark Packham (Tue 18 Nov 2003 00:31:59 CET)
and the photo properties:
File Upload Date: Sun 16 Nov 2003 19:10:12 CET
Item Capture Date: Sat 01 Nov 2003 22:17:53 CET
etc, etc, for all images
believe me, i checked. you made the same mistake -- you believed the album title and not the comments, upload dates, etc! as someone else said, you can get results for halloween 2005, etc... surely those aren't from 2005?
(anyway, the official retraction makes this all moot)
Mod the parent down; he demonstrates nothing. Look at the results for "Halloween 2004"; the images all have comments from 2003. I get results for Abu Ghraib, too; they're also a little dated.
Jeez, this thread has TONS of FUD..
I think Blizzard's been the only company to simultaneiously release a highly anticipated title for both the PC and Mac.
Dont forget atari/macsoft... UT2004 has been kept very nicely in sync with the PC version, apparently all by just one guy (icculus).
It is true that Moffett lies on the boundary; highway 101 is adjacent the golf course and the airfield, and the airstrip is roughly perpendicular to the freeway. In fact, there are runway lights on the golf course property!
:)
Incidentally, I've often passed that golf course and been told that "golf is a deadly sport" -- it was always rumored that some golfers had been killed by a plane crashing into them there. This is the most confirmation I can find, but no ground casualties...
FWIW
Interestingly, one of these was also found in California.
(That page says the device was taken to Moffetf Field in Sunnyvale CA, but Moffett is and always has been in Mountain View. I believe it was sometimes described as being in Sunnyvale because the military guys were sensitive to the perception of 'Mountains' being anywhere near their airship base. No reference, just remember this from many an airshow..)
I thought I read this before... Though the story is new, it looks this is a private company essentially duplicating (copying?) the earlier work of the MIT guys to reach... gasp... the same conclusion.
This reminds me a lot of this story.
Simplified summary of both: buy some hard drives on eBay and you could end up with some cool data!
Here are some specs for a rack full of them...
A proof of your concept: the Mini-ITX Cluster
> If you just want small size, use PC/104 at 3.6" x 3.8" (90mm x 96mm).
Yeah, PC/104 is definitely cool stuff, but the problem with it for me has always been expense -- it seems more of a 'specialized' (vs 'off-the-shelf') solution. If the nano-itx is priced near the mini-itx (probably with a small premium at first), it would win both in terms of price and availability.
I bought an advantech SBC a few years ago, before there were any mini-itx boards readily available, and it set me back $500. A pure PC/104 solution is not much cheaper, last I checked, though they definitely have some neat modules.
The Nano-ITX board that they announced last year still seems to be the coolest thing around in terms of potential for off-the-shelf, single board computer projects.
I mean, it's only 4.7 inches by 4.7 inches! Of course I've never seen a price, but sell this thing in the $100 range and I'll take 3...
I doubt most people who have replied to you really have 'clay' chips. What are most popular (and what you see on ebay) are Chinese-made, plastic chips with metal disc inserts (to increase the weight.)
Though nice, these chips are hardly the real deal. For starters, they are a lot more slippery and noisy than casino chips. Clack a few real chips around in your hand, and do the same with these. Try shuffling stacks of ebay/5stardeal chips. Not nearly as smotoh and easy.
They are, however, nice for the home game and several steps up above the cheap plastic slotting chips that you find at your local drugstore. I even have a set of them.
But, if you really want nice chips, try searching on ebay for "Chipco"; they are the same manufacturer as is used by many casinos, and they are superior chips in every way (incl. price) when compared to 5stardeal/ebay "clay" chips.
Finally, check out the chip buying advice at http://www.homepokertourney.com/ -- I think it probably says what I've summarized, and he has links to more distributors.