Author: Ianforrester

Senior firestarter at BBC R&D, emergent technology expert and serial social geek event organiser. Can be found at cubicgarden@mas.to, cubicgarden@twit.social and cubicgarden@blacktwitter.io

Installing Knoppix on box

At long last I've installed Debian complete with GUI by cheating. I ran Knoppix 3.4 and installed it to the hard drive of my spare machine today. This guide is great for anyone whos in the same position. All the other guides I saw were aimed at Knoppix 3.3 and 3.2, which I could have done but this is nicer. Next step for me will be installing Synergy so I can have one decent mouse and keyboard. Oh and I need to setup user accounts and all that.
Knoppix found almost everything including the firewire, soundblaster and usb's. Dont know if it picked up the multiple video capture cards though.

Ok so after the last few hours messing around the debian box, I'm glad to say I havent broken it yet. I'm learning the pain and joy of apt-get and sudo with the source.list.
I couldnt get the synergy client working at all. some fatal error = Cserver.cpp.102: unknown screen name 'Knoppix'. Anyway I've moved on to installing mythtv, freevo and VLC.

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Xbox mediacentre pulls it together

xbmc media center logo

I've just installed Xbox Media Centre version RC 1 on my own xbox. Came with the project mayhem skin built in so that wasnt the hassle it usually was, however there was a newer version on the mayhem site with some bug fixes so I uploaded that to the xbox instead. Seemed pretty much the same.

I was interested to read that xbox mediaplayer is now considered a dead project with the release of xbox mediacentre 1.0. Theres a really nice comparision of media player vs media centre. There are some interesting comparisons. I now know why shoutcast doesnt work recently, it doesnt support .sc files. Seems its been depreached in favour of pls files. Internet Radio (SHOUTcast MP3) support (native or streaming via RelaX) – Only supports PLS playlists. while xbmp Support both SC and PLS playlists.
So i've had to now go through most of my sc files and change them all to pls files, which isnt a easy batch job. Theres also no audio filters on xbmc which they say isnt needed anymore. kind of agree but it would be nice for the user to decide. The one I miss alot is the xmltv tv guide which was a pain because you needed to do it from your pc but it was there and working in xbmp. My weather isnt bad though and if the tv guide is as polished as the weather, were in for a treat.
Other things I miss from xbmp include. Xbox front LED Control, Busy Indicator, Video bookmarking via OSD (so can resume a movie later, even after reboot), M3U video playlists from DVD-ROM, HDD, SMB, XBMSP or XNS (inc. create/save) and FFWD/RWD and PAUSE in AVI/OGM/MKV/MPEG/MPG media.
The chart says xbmc doesnt support Quicktime 6 files, but I dont have a problem playing them, specially if there using the simple mpeg4 codec.

Anyway some interesting things I discovered while I was installing and researching. I finally got the FTP feature working but I cant work out how to change the password so it defaults. Which is a pain but I'm still considering using xbmc as my dashboard because evox is never really used too much. Plus xbmc has file explorer and a program launcher to go with the ftp server. But honestly I do think I will wait till version 1.0 before I do it. The other launchers seem really good but I use mediacentre all the time now. Why press a button each time it starts up?

Xbox connect, xlink, xbox link whatever you call it is something I havent got into too much, I know its a rival to the xboxlive service without all the hooha of monthly payment and centralised servers. But now the great creators of xbmc have bundled in a KAI client for connecting to your friends to play games. Think of it as instant messager and you got a rough idea. I prefer the term uber tunnelling for the masses..
Anyway I signed up for a xtag – cubicgarden.
The whole thing is unsupported at the moment, so I dont expect much at this moment. But would be nice to get a game of tony hawks underground and try it out anyway.

One of the other things I spent time on while working away on xbmc was the alternative ways of streaming. The problem I have is my windows 2000 server doesnt seem to share to the xbox at all. I only got it working once along time ago with xbmp. So I tried xbmsp and xns using ccxstream and relax-xstream. None of them worked. Relax came close but wouldnt share the media beyond the folders. ccxstream didnt show anything even though the test util said it was working. I may try again, but I would rather keep my network with two sharing protocals – webdav and samba. Specially now xbmc prefers smb to xns.

Can someone tell me what on earth NuppelVideo and PVA containers are? I've never heard of them. Nice to see xbmc supports Nero digital's mpeg4 files which claim to be mpeg4 simple advanced. I will give it a try later on as I've converted the brass eye mockmentary series to mpeg4.
I'm really hoping that someone will bring out a pvr which is in the same vain as the ReplayTV 4000 and 5000 series. There is a hacked Tivo which runs ccxstream but I dont know if that is possible with the freeview pvr's? Microdvd support is nice too.

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Windows media player 10

Got myself a copy of Windows media player 10. Lots more information here. And I will write a longer account once I get around to installing it. Lots of interesting information from a interview with Bill gates and Microsoft was available in digital home this month. But microsoft-watch has the highlights.
There are some screen shots of Windows media player 10 here

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Controlling two different os machines from one input

I've been downloading the screensavers episodes from bit torrent recently, then watching them on my ipaq into work. Anyway I was watching this episode and came across Sarah's Download of the day – Synergy.

I think this animation explains it all.

I cant wait to see it working on my Windows XP Pro workstation and GNU/Linux Debian test box. Will have to take a photo because my monitors are on different sides of the desk.

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Social software and google’s Orkut

So I've now signed up to Orkut.com from google.com. As I'm interested in how it compares to Wallop and Friendster. Gareth was messing with it and showed us that half of the more vocal members of the BBC new media are already on there. Actually looking at it, I did a search for BBC and got tons of groups sorry communities. Slaves of BBCi is where the newmedia people hangout. Owned by Tom coats of plasticbag

Generally it seems ok, tons and tons of questions could be answered, but I opted for a more secretive approch, only giving up name, work number, date of birth and city. Some of the drop downs ignoyed me slightly. For example – am I african american? I don't bloddy think so! Black yes not African or American! Typical American view. But also all the towns and stuff can only be filled in if you live in America. At least Meetup.com has a more balanced view of the world. Talking of which I listened to Scott Heiferman from meetup.com talk about it on Social Computing Symposium – Keynote: New Dynamics of Using Online to go Offline. Interesting the idea and the risks taken.
Back to Orkut a bit, the interface is yuk! Really need a way to allow you to upload your own stylesheet or pick a style?

Oh yeah my username is cubicgarden by the way, if you want to add me as a friend…

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Calling from munich, germany

So i'm hoping this goes through on to my blog before Wednesday, as I
should beable to send this blog as an email to blojsoms moblogging
plugin from my ipaq. Now unfortunately I tried to send a couple of
emails from work on friday but they never ended up on the blog, for some
unknown reason. Anyway will look into it when I get back from holiday.

Yes this time in munich, germany. And i'm happy to say international
gprs roaming with orange via tmobile is working a treat. Actually
working better than America and even some parts of south london I would
say. I'm in studentenwerk north munich and the gprs is actually quite
quick. All I need to do now is sort out my email accounts so at least of
them will send email from my ipaq. Honesty I even signed up with hotpop
so I could get it working. Should have signed up with orange's email
really, but its long and complex…

Anyway here's to moblogging from abroad…
*raised wine glass* from my sisters apartment in studentenwerk, munich.

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BBC’s DIRAC codecs

Matt web and tom coats seem to be doing a lot of interesting things in
bbc radio and
music. But I heard about bbc's open source
sourceforge project called DIRAC through this weeks NTK.net. Its basically a experimental video
codec like ogg theora. It supports resolutions
from quarter cif to 1080 hdtv progressive or interlaced.
Oddly it also uses wavelets and motion compensation as well the patent
tricky area of Arithmetic coding.
Anyway i'm going to try it out and if its good, i'm thinking we could
use it for the copyright vs community
lectures. But I douht its ready for
such use, saying that we could get some support from the bbc if I ask
really nicely? maybe? Worth a email I would say, wouldn't you?

I am hoping to push some of this type of innovation into the world
service. Theres already an opportunity to do some work on blogging for
43 different languages. Hence why i'm watching blojsom's
Internationalization. Thinking of bringing some of the work with HP's
semantic blogger to the world service. I mean blojsom is that flexible.
Only problem is were using mainly perl and cgi on the backend with
server side includes at the final stage. Don’t think this much of a
secret because everyone can see bbc.co.uk uses *.shtml. Anyway blojsom
with a bit of xsl 1.1 or even 1.0 could create static pages if needed.
More about xsl 1.1 soon I think.

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Programme guides all around

Been thinking about electronic/internet programme guides once again.

Someone in digital home asked the question about which Freeview PVR box to get. They recommended the fusion digital FRVT-100 over everything else. Including the Humax and Pace. Now I never heard of it but I'm wondering why they prefer it to the others? Is it only because it has its own propitery 7day EPG. While the others only have the now and next feature, hardly EPG contendars. But what will happen when the BBC do there 7 day EPG in summer/winter? Hummm?

Anyway while away I also saw a url in a magazine for tvtv.co.uk which seems more useable than anything else I've seen recently. Then that got me thinking why dont i create a xsl to transform there listings into xmltv? Then I started thinking wheres the tv_grab_uk? blah blah hit richards blog, interesting read might actually subscribe the rss. But I really want a xsl version of that… Cocoon's pipelines could easily handle it.
I'm going to scream… maybe annanova should give up the source files, so someone at the bbc can provide the same for the radio times, cause the current setup of the radio times is terrable…give me a break

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Clogging up the web with RSS

Wired are running a feature about RSS readers clogging up the web.
This kind of ties to my cutting rss short.

TeledyN's Murphy runs one of the most popular open-source Linux sites (which he started in 1994). He was one of the first to offer an RSS feed in 1999 when Netscape introduced the format. By late last year, Murphy's website would run out of bandwidth by 8 p.m.

Murphy's problems arose because he, like many bloggers, included most of his site's front page, including graphics, in the RSS feed, allowing users to read his entries in whole without visiting his website.

In contrast, most news sites, including Wired News, want to bring readers to their websites, so they serve up only a headline or a couple of sentences along with a link to the full story.

I think the feature is valid but blog software should include something like the conditional get helps with the badly written rss readers.

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Social Computing Symposium

Lunch time at the BBC and I'm still buzzing thinking about the possible outcomes of the moblogging plug-in in Blojsom 2.14. I posted a comment on blojsom blog about the ability to now blog anywhere there is a net connection, which for me is anywhere. Even abroad because I've got international GPRS roaming.

Anyway one of the things which happened when I started the plug-in was, Blojsom picked out a email which happened to be one I sent to myself in a BBC. I meant to keep it as a copy and the blog picked it up. Now think about it one second, a blog which picks up things you want to keep? (I keep forgetting email is the leader in social technology by the way) And imagine if you could do the same for instant messager too?
A blog which stores useful things through out the day without actually having to send a post? Nice, maybe not on my main blog but for example on the bookmarks blog will be useful. If you could add metadata too we would be very cool.

I've also been thinking about what happens when Blojsom can respond back to you? Its one of those things I wanted in blojsim for a while. I know Blojsom can send email but I've disabled it and I don’t really know why its there. Anyway, I'm thinking out loud…

Been watching Social Computing Symposium. And thinking about social networking and its software, social technologies like email, text, im, blogs, wikis, etc. E invite sounds interesting never come across it before. Would you call blogs and wikis lightweight authoring?
Interesting enough, the BBC try and encourage people to use im to communicate through-out the buildings. Unfortually there using Microsoft MSN messager so no interoperability with Ravensbournes Jabber server will be available in short term.

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Free Culture almost finished

So yes, I've almost completed Free Culture. (300 pages out of 352). My Palmtop Tagged version is up for all to grab if you want to read it on the go. I've been limiting myself to reading it only on the way to work and from work. Get some very funny looks from London commuters on the Train to Cannon Street from Elmers End. Wont tell you what time I leave for work however.

Anyway I was reading on owrede's log that there is now a wiki for people who want to remix the text while reading. Nice idea and I was thinking aloud with Dave about it yesterday. Was thinking about a Wiki based editor for async devices like palmtops and smartphones. So you can read it and edit it then upload the changes while your online. Kind of like a checking in checking out CVS or Webdav model. Only this time for ebooks?

Anyway getting all wound up ready for the copyright vs community lecture now. Reading lots and getting dave to do bits in college while I'm away as such. Need to watch Lawrence Lessig on the screen savers and I see he's also in London on the 27th may at the lift 2004 event. What ever happened to accessable sites? Thank god Lawrence put some detail down in his post

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Long time no see, at the bbc…

In blogging terms I havent blogged for ages…
Dont worry I got lots to blog, just been busy working on the copyright vs community lectures, been away on the BBC's upfront training and development programme which included a stay in the Hilton metropole without web access. Not please about that. I've also been studying for my motorbike theory test, which I'm pleased to say I passed 34/35. Know exactly which answer I got wrong too. Umm and on top of all that I'm a little nervious about talking too much about the BBC because I dont want to end up like a others I know plus I'm not sure if it counts as a conflict of interest. Saying that tom coats seem to get away with it ok. Maybe I'm being too paranoid about it?
Anyway blogs to come soon…

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