Stupid VPS

Stupid VPS keeps going down. I wonder if its modrails doing it.

I need to have another one ready to swap to.

Linux, TV & The XBox

A little while back I hacked the xbox ( softmodded ) using the well know technique of loading Splinter Cell and downloading a boot loader via  a saved game. I had to cut the wire of one of the controllers and wired it to a USB socket, I copied the bootloader onto my old iPod Shuffle and got linux installed on it.

Its worked great. I've been using elgato on a macmini to record films off tv, and have been scripting them to upload to my OSX Tiger Server. The xbox plays them great, streaming without a glitch. I've installed XBMC as the main dashboard and the scripts are pretty neat too.

After this, I decided that the bundle of wires under the TV was a pain, so I cancelled the cable tv, boxed up the DVD-R and all the other paraphernalia and was left with just the xbox and a digital-tv box. 

That wasn't enough, so I looked at MythTV for the mac mini, but after struggling to get it working, found out it couldnt access my TV usb stick, so was a bit stumped. Then I decided to try installing linux on the mini. A brief flirtation with Gentoo ( so much compiling ) and I had opensuse up and running and eventually the elgato-diversity ( Hauppage NovaT ) working with Kaffeine, Mplayer and xine. ( ppc is a pain, not many rpms, so compilation hell again ). I did try distcc and creating a cross compiler for the G5 but it wasn't to be. Another day perhaps?

Next stop. I'm trying to get MythTV compiled and working. It's a long road. but I hope to be able to schedule the recording of tv from anywhere I am and stream it too.. 

Meanwhile I had to start learning about AudioUnits....  and the rest of my life.

iPhone Dev

As a change from music, and because it fascinates me I've been working on some audio software for the iPhone/iPod Touch.  My app is currently in review. I am now working on a full version, that being a stripped down, how the hell do I do this version.

Deprecated Functions

I think these 2 days can be categorised as trying to make old things run with newer libraries.

My main work website is on hosting rails at the moment, but I have a VPS Im trying to move everything to. Well when I looked at my local copy of the site, it wouldnt work on Locomotive anymore and I had no idea why.

Today I'm trying to compile openAL into an iphone app.  My demo app for cocoa uses alutloadwavfile.  

Both days, ive spent time trying to figure out 

1) where i was in the project when i left it

2) why it wont run

3) what the replacement for the bloody deprecated function is

doh!

Plesk virtual hosts

Another thing I need to remember for plesk

If you are creating changes to the apache files, do not change the http.includes.

just add a vhost.conf in the conf folder

and do

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng --reconfigure-vhost --vhost-name=domain.com

I have seen the future

Got on the tube, saw a man reading a v thin filofax. 

2nd glance, it was an ebook

3rd glance, the screen was amazing.  it didnt seem to be a screen, it looked like paper

4th glance, it was Sony

I remember the times when this happened for me

1. seeing my first Personl computer.  A commodore PET

2. seeing my first mobile phone

it is the future

and the future is now

VPS & Dist CC

I will fill more info on this soon BUT the short version

my VPS hasnt enough memory to compile mod_rails 

so I had to learn distcc which meant learning ssh reverse tunneling which meant installing ubuntu on parallels ( after many attempts )

and the end result

mod_rails crashed my VPS.   so im not sure yet, what the result of all that was.

ssh -R username@vps  3632:localhost:3632 

and then compile using 

CC=distcc ./configure