From the monthly archives:

February 2009

Mplayer sound via SPDIF

February 21, 2009

I recently lost sound via mplayer on my MythTV mediacenter. This affected any of my video collection that weren’t DVD iso images since mplayer was the configured player for most types. At first I thought it might have been related to doing a system update, but now I think it was related to my tinkering [...]

Read the full article →

Do you need a Grails developer in Sydney?

February 18, 2009

If you haven’t heard of Grails, head on over to Grails.org and have a look. Grails breaks down the barriers to the Java platform and gives you a highly productive environment for building web applications - and you are always free to utilise plain Java seamlessly.
Having used Grails on my personal projects, and written several [...]

Read the full article →

Linux sound on the Dell 1525

February 15, 2009

Sound on my Dell 1525 notebook has always been dodgy under Linux. On windows it runs fine, but under Linux (Ubuntu 8.10) sound is very low - it only becomes audible at 50% volume, so at full volume it is quiet. The real show-stopper is that Skype is unusable since the microphone is also severely [...]

Read the full article →

The price of buying books online

February 15, 2009

I wish all books were available as PDFs. I don’t like the physical space real books take up, and I don’t appreciate paying for delivery, or waiting for delivery. Some books are available for Kindle, but I just want a PDF.
Recently I wanted to buy 4 books - my first instinct was to go to [...]

Read the full article →

Memory upgrade for media center

February 15, 2009

I’ve noticed that my MythTV (Mythbuntu 8.10) machine was using 100% of its 1G and swapping. (Incidently, I was running the Blootube widescreen theme, and just switching to the MythCenter theme resulted in a snappier experience).
So, I went to buy more memory - and found that 1G cost AUD23 and a 2G stick was AUD45. [...]

Read the full article →