Linkification v2

Tech tips:

Bulk Convert Old Documents to Office 2007 Format - handy
SSL Shopper - compare pricing & features of SSL providers
9 things you should not buy new - I'm not sure about how second hand jewelery would go down with the other half mind
Outlook troubleshooting tip: The magic of the CTRL key
Five best FTP clients
The Best Free Apps for Your Windows Mobile Device
Convert your Windows Server 2008 to a Workstation
Remotely Log Off Remote Desktop Users
Free replacements for paid tools

Web news / happenings:

Firefox SSL debate rages on - debate on how FF3 handles self-signed certificates
Microsoft enlists Seinfeld, Gates to battle "Get a Mac" ads
Using Fedora Red Hat Enterprise? Check the security announcements
So maybe there is a point to spam...
Web Fraud 2.0 — Point-and-Click Cracking Tools
Telecom free mobile e-mail offer extended
Xero announces Acclipse partnership
Hands-on with the Palm Treo Pro 850 (review)

iPhone:

Orange paying actors to line up for iPhone in Poland
iPhone 3G Tests: Antenna passes, networks fail
iPhone Game Pads Are Coming To Enhance Gameplay Tenfold - the concept is great, but I can't see these becoming widespread enough to turn the iPhone into a serious gaming platform.

Coding / Programming:

Enterprise .Net vs PHP - web comic
Latency is Everywhere and it Costs You Sales - How to Crush it
Top 10 things that annoy programmers

LOL / cool:

Crime fighting GPS turtle!
RC Cars Are the Javelin Errand Boys of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics
QinetiQ's Zephyr sets another unmanned solar plane flight record - very cool tech in action
Draganfly X6 UAV: UFO Thingy Packed With Carbon Fiber, HD/Night Cameras and GPS - I want one!
A Map of Olympic Medals
Want to Know Everything About a Website? Try Quarkbase - pretty cool, try it with geekzone.co.nz

Gaming:

Gold Farming: It Prints Money

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Over this weekend I have had a chance to properly try out MythTV with Freeview so here is an update on where I am at for now.

Firstly I did a major hardware swap, moving my Antec PSU, 3800 and Nvidia 8600GT to my main box in return for a cheap X-Power PSU and 5200 X2. The X2 provides more grunt for software decoding H.264, enough to work in Windows but not myth as will be seen.

So with Mythubuntu 8.04.1 + latest upgrades, including from Paul Kendall's repository, I monitered the CPU usage over SSH whilst testing out the channels. I got around 40%-70% CPU overall, obviously the SD channels where lighter on the CPU than HD with TV3 causing the max load.

However despite not maxing out the CPU TV3 was unwatchable, freezing for half a second every 1-2 secs. This is a problem a few others with similar CPU's on the mythnz mailing list have and the solution is changing the 'skiploopfilter' settings, I think forcing myth to drop frames rather than lag. However what is required to make this change is beyond my current Linux/GNU abilities so I am putting this project aside for the moment. What also contributed to that decision is reports from others about frequent frontend crashes, something I don't want on a HTPC that gets regular use.

So now I am re-installing Mediaportal (the change in graphics cards did something weird to the Windows install) and will work on getting Mythbuntu installed onto my old IDE drive so I can have my USB drive back.

When I am prepared to figure out rebuilding patches etc, or Paul sets up a GUI to make these changes (as he indicated he may) I will revisit this. Until, MP it is. It may not be perfectly stable, or make every recording I schedule (NCIS 2 weeks ago came back with just the xml file, no .ts at all!), but the codecs work better for obvious reasons.

I am glad just to have something that works, support is very limited for these MPEG 4 codecs and will be for a while yet.

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