Linux and Randomness

I previously posted about my computer with the jmicron controller that Linux doesn’t like. Well, Saturday was all about getting a live Linux distribution running on that computer so that I could partition the drive. Trevor came over with his Linux knowledge and we spent five (5) hours with various distributions of LiveUSB Linux and none of them would load, but we kept trying. (A liveusb distrobution is an entire Linux OS on a usb flash drive).

We kept trying because every time we would try, we would get a different result. It was completely random, and we all know how the human race is drawn to randomness. Take, for instance, the liveusb distribution of Gparted, we had to have tried that release a dozen times and every time it would hang at a different error. And the same thing happened with the liveusb release of Ubuntu and Puppy (I like Puppy because on the LiveCD I got to write “Live Puppy” and when Lindsay asked what it was I got to say “It’s a live puppy”). After five (5) hours of work I am still not to step one (1) of partitioning my harddrive.

On Sunday night Best Buy had an “exclusive” “members only” shopping experiance. I recently joined their rewards program and I’m hooked. I want to spend all of my money at Best Buy now because I can get points. And that is exactly what I did on Sunday night, I purchased a USB headset (anyone want to skype? or maybe chat on gchat?), and a video camera.

I have been looking at consumer grade video cameras for awhile, and I settled on the JVC Everio GZ-MG27. The Everio line is a harddrive based video camera that shoots standard def video with a 16:9 aspect ratio. The GZ-MG27 has a 20gb harddrive. I didn’t want to deal with any tapes so I was looking exclusivly at harddrive/flash alternatives and the Everio line gave the greatest storage in a nice small package. You can expect to see some fresh and original videos from me soon.

-Josh

Panic! At the Kernel

When I built my HTPC I made a big mistake. I bought an MSI P965 motherboard that utilizes a jmicron pata controller, whoops. This controller first gave me problems when I built the computer and my dvd player was all choppy on dvd playback and I discovered that I needed to install a specific driver for the the motherboard (and the mobo documentation didn’t mention it at all). Now the controller is pissing me off because there doesn’t seem to be any support for it in Linux and it gives me the greatest error I have ever seen “Kernel Panic”. So if I want to install linux on my htpc (so I can run Mythtv) I have to buy a sata dvd player (okay, I’m interested) or boot off a usb drive. I think I’m going to try booting off a usb drive, I haven’t tried that before, sounds fun.

I found out that Gparted has a liveusb distribution. I used gparted in the past to partition the drive on my laptop (read, break my laptop) so I have so experience on how not to use it. Then I read the documentation on the liveusb software, the documentation was priceless and so vary sparse that I’ll reprint it all here.

To use the LiveUSB follow these simple instuctions:

(1) Create a fat16 partition on the usb stick and make sure it’s flagged “boot”.

(2) Unzip the gparted-liveusb-x.x.x-x.zip to your home folder or anywhere you like.

(3) Copy the CONTENTS of the gparted-liveusb-0.x.x-x folder to the fat16 partition you just created (sda1?).

(4) UMOUNT the usb stick and execute this command:

syslinux -s /dev/sda1

That is it, that is all the direction on how to use the software. I don’t know how to create a fat16 partition on my usbdrive, but I’m sure that I can figure that much out, the step that kills me is number 4. Execute this command? Execute it where? WHERE? Canada? Linuxland? I’m on XP and that command looks completely foregin to a complete linux noob like myself. It seems to me that someone using a live gparted distrobution is probably not using linux or else they would probably use the regular gparted program. Hopefully all will end well, I’ve been reading a thread at the gparted forum and I should be able to figure it out. If it’s this difficult to get a partition, I can’t wait to see what it’s going to be like to dual boot to mythtv.

-Josh

Nintendo fever!!

You have used emulators and roms and mame all sorts of other tedious gaming programs for playing old NES games. It’s never as easy or as nice as you hope it will be to use those programs. I just found a website that has compiled a large number of NES games for playing right in the web browser. Other websites have done this before, but I really like the execution at vnes. The site probably won’t be around for very long because the world of abandon ware emulated games is still a gray area legally, but check it out while you can.

-Josh

Heat Vision and Jack; The Motion Picture?

Have you ever seen a tv show that was so good that it made you want to kick your own head off? Of course not! Because you have never seen Heat Vision and Jack. It’s a simple tale of a young astronaught played by Jack Black on the run from an evil Ron Silver (mind you Ron Silver isn’t playing someone, it’s actualy Ron Silver). Jack is accompanied by his trusty sidekick Heat Vision, a talking motorcycle voiced by Owen Wilson. The show was clearly ahead of it’s time, and hopefully it’s time will be soon because it’s shows creator (Rob Schrab) recently stated, on the Liam Lynch podcast Lynchland, that a movie is in the works. It’s probably in some terrible pre-greenlight stage, but it’s something that they are working on. What a glorious day that could be.

-Josh

RSS 2.0 and the meaning of everything

I understand that some of you have been having trouble with my rss feeds. Good news, I found a great plugin for wordpress called the Feedburner Plugin V2.1 that takes the default wordpress feed and puts it thought feedburner and spits out a feed that (hopefully) all of you can use. It also lets me look at how many people subscribe to my feed. So if you are using a next generation browser such as opera or firefox you can just click the little icon up on the address bar to subscribe, otherwise you can click here to open the feed in your rss reader of choice and for you copy/pasters out there http://feeds.feedburner.com/Schalictocom .

And for those of you out there that have no idea what I’m talking about, here is a picture of me at this very moment.

-Josh

Movie Trailer Review, Episode 1

Flags of our Fathers

I am sick and tired of this trailer already and I have seen it only three times. And I am sick of Clint Eastwood films. Eastwood has gotten into the habit of making big films like Martin Scorsese makes big films, they are gritty, they are big and they are bloody and somewhere in there are characters. There is a huge difference between the movies that Scorsese makes and the ones Eastwood makes and that difference is quite simply how much fun they are. Eastwood films are tedious and not very entertaining despite how “good” the movies might be, they just aren’t fun. And the trailer for Flags of our Fathers is just that, not fun.

Déjà Vu

The trailer for Deja Vu has lots of explosions and state that it is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer (like you want to advertise that fact for some reason) and directed by Tony Scott, and then you realize they are the same people who made Enemy of the State and then you realize that the trailer for Deja Vu looks and feels like Enemy of the State… except really retarded. The premise is that the government has made a time machine to stop crimes before they are committed (wasn’t Minority Report a great movie?) and all of their time travel is what causes Deja Vu. It stars Denzel Washington and it looks like the must miss blockbuster of the year.

300

This was a great looking trailer. I hate epic war movies as a rule (of course rules do have exceptions). The film is about Sparta (not Sparticus apparently) and a war and sun blocking waive of arrows, I guess, I don’t really care, the trailer got me pumped. And then they said it was based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller and I got a little bit more excited. I’m not quite the comic book fan that I should be and I have never heard of 300 but I bet the graphic novel was great and I’m sure the movie will be fun.

The Good Shephard

The Good Shephard is the second film officially directed by Robert De Niro (he had an uncredited directing roll in The Score which leads me to ask how can you be an “uncredited director”?). It stars about a million celebrities and it could be a good movie. It is about the people that formed the CIA and their personal lives and yadadada. I’ll go see this movie, maybe even on opening weekend (super matinee style).

Blood Diamonds

The trailer for Blood Diamonds is epic. It shows a man in Africa finding a gigantic diamond and then everyone in the world trying to kill him for the diamond. Along the way he meets a South African mercenary (Leo Decaprio) and an American journalist (Jennifer Connelly) that help him escape and then his son gets kidnapped and he has to give up the diamond in exchange for his sons life. The trailer carries on for what seems like the length of a 90 minute movie and then they tell you that it is directed by Edward Zwick (The Last Samurai) and it all makes sense. Blood Diamonds seems like a good premise but in the hands of hack film maker Zwick the film will likely be a three hour epic with a million loose ends, a dozen endings and a heaping hunk of waste-of-time. I will probably not see this movie.

I saw all these trailers before the film The Departed. Scorsese pwns n00bs so if you are a noob then you might not want to go see the film, otherwise it’s awesome.

-Josh