Jay McGavren’s Journal

You know, it wouldn’t be that hard to re-do the MythTV frontend system to be like XBox Live/Wii channels. Instead of shows, you’d flip through games available for download. When you found one you wanted, you could choose a menu entry to install it via the package manager.

Networking would be a little harder - you’d need a list of IP addresses for your friends/party members, which would then need to be fed to the command line for each game using that game’s options. I don’t think exiting back to the menu in the event of a connection failure could be made automatic in most cases, either, but that may not be a show-stopper.

I’m on this train of thought because I’m a little tired of dumping money into these locked-down ecosystems that I know will go away as soon as my console dies. I know I can’t attract people to play open-source games when the consoles are so much better integrated, so anything that ties a few titles together can surely help. There were some efforts in this regard a few years back, but I haven’t heard anything of them since…

MythNetTV is an early but effective MythTV extension that downloads podcasts and adds them to your recordings list, just like the free downloads feature on TiVo (except you can subscribe to anything you want, provided the format’s supported).

These commands will install and configure the app (be sure to substitute the path you want videos saved to):

sudo apt-get install mythnettv
mkdir /your/dir/here
mythnettv --datadir=/your/dir/here

Subscribe to some geeky shows:

mythnettv subscribe "http://revision3.com/pixelperfect/feed/Xvid-Small" "PixelPerfect"
mythnettv subscribe "http://www3.youtube.com/rss/global/top_rated.rss" "YouTubeTopRated"
mythnettv subscribe "http://revision3.com/trs/feed/Xvid-Small" "TotallyRadShow"
mythnettv subscribe "http://applebytepodcast.cnettv.com/" "CnetAppleByte"
mythnettv subscribe "http://buzzreportpodcast.cnettv.com/" "CnetBuzzReport"
mythnettv subscribe "http://cnetnewspodcast.cnettv.com/" "CnetNewsDaily"
mythnettv subscribe "http://firstlookpodcast.cnettv.com/" "CnetFirstLook"
mythnettv subscribe "http://hackspodcast.cnettv.com/" "CnetHacks"
mythnettv subscribe "http://howtopodcast.cnettv.com/" "CnetHowTo"
mythnettv subscribe "http://realdealvideopodcast.cnettv.com/" "CnetRealDeal"
mythnettv subscribe "http://revision3.com/coop/feed/Xvid-Small" "Co-Op"
mythnettv subscribe "http://www.onnetworks.com/feeds/1460/video/rss.xml?target=site" "PlayValue"

Get show lists for all subscriptions, then download 10 shows:

mythnettv update
mythnettv download 10

List the next 10 shows that will be downloaded:

mythnettv nextdownload 10

Download 1 show from the given subscription:

mythnettv download 1 CnetNewsDaily

List subscriptions:

mythnettv list

More info on these commands and others:

man mythnettv

jay@dandelion:~

$ sudo port install cowsay

Password:

--->  Fetching cowsay

...

jay@dandelion:~

$ cheat lipsum | cowsay

 Continue Reading »

												
					

These commands will install some quality games that can be played full-screen:

sudo apt-get install a7xpg
sudo apt-get install gunroar
sudo apt-get install kobodeluxe
sudo apt-get install parsec47
sudo apt-get install rrootage
sudo apt-get install sdl-ball
sudo apt-get install titanion
sudo apt-get install torus-trooper
sudo apt-get install tumiki-fighters

This command will add a “Native” games entry under the Games menu. You’ll be prompted for your MythTV DB password, which is likely stored in “/etc/mythtv/mysql.txt”.

mysql --database=mythconverg -u mythtv -p -e "INSERT INTO gameplayers (playername, gametype, commandline, rompath, extensions) VALUES ('Native', 'Other', '', '$HOME/bin/games', '');"

Then fill $HOME/bin/games “ROM directory” with scripts that launch each respective game. (These are set up for a control pad and 1024×768 resolution, so they may need tweaking.)

~/bin/games/titanion
#!/bin/sh
titanion -fullscreen -res 1024 768

~/bin/games/gunroar
#!/bin/sh
gunroar -fullscreen -res 1024 768 -enableaxis5

~/bin/games/rrootage
#!/bin/sh
rrootage -fullscreen -lowres

~/bin/games/parsec47
#!/bin/sh
parsec47 -fullscreen -lowres

~/bin/games/torus-trooper
#!/bin/sh
torus-trooper -fullscreen -res 1024 768

~/bin/games/a7xpg
#!/bin/sh
a7xpg -fullscreen -lowres

~/bin/games/sdl-ball
#!/bin/sh
sdl-ball

~/bin/games/kobo-deluxe
#!/bin/sh
kobodl -fullscreen -width 1024 -height 768 -joystick -nomusic

~/bin/games/tumiki-fighters
#!/bin/sh
tumiki-fighters -fullscreen -res 1024 768

Be sure to make the scripts executable, or they won’t launch:

chmod ugo+x ~/bin/games/*

In mythfrontend, go into game setup and scan for new games. Each script you set up should then appear under the “Native” entry in the games menu - just pick one and fire away.

Questions/suggestions? Post ‘em in the comments!

More often than I’d like, I have to open the Pickaxe to look up a core class or module that I can’t quite remember the methods on. I wanted to put some reminders in a place I could review them daily, yet was unobtrusive.

Enter the Phosphor screensaver for X-Windows; it scrolls text from a file or command by the screen. I pulled the classes and modules I wanted from the “ri” utility, made them into a “fortune cookie file” (run “man fortune” for details on fortune), and then piped fortune’s output through the screensaver.

I’ve attached the files I made. Unzip and drop them in /usr/share/games/fortune (or wherever fortune cookie files go on your system) and you’ll be able to type “fortune ruby” at a command prompt. Only core classes are included, but I’ll make a separate one for Rails on request. You can set up Phosphor (or other text-display screensavers like StarWars) from the xscreensaver control panel.

RubyFortuneCookies

Edit: On systems using gnome-screensaver, save this in your screensaver config folder, probably as /usr/share/applications/screensavers/xscreensaver-phosphor-ruby.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Phosphor - Ruby ri
Comment=Draws a simulation of an old terminal, with large pixels and long-sustain phosphor. On X11 systems, This program is also a fully-functional VT100 emulator! Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1999.
TryExec=phosphor
Exec=phosphor -root -scale 2 -ticks 5 -program 'fortune ruby'
StartupNotify=false
Type=Application
Categories=GNOME;Screensaver;

…then select “Phosphor - Ruby ri” in your Screensaver Preferences. This should also scale back the text so you can see the whole ri screen.

Playing with Fedora 8 on the new Dell at work… Pretty nice. I feel like I jumped from Windows 95 straight to XP. It’s fast. Firefox popped up in 3 seconds. Even turned on wobbly windows for the hell of it. The main system menu and the various app menus still aren’t organized worth crap, though.

OK, why the hell can’t I find a Windows text editor with a “Filter Selection Through Command” option? TextMate has it. Even freaking KDevelop has it. Ctrl-A, Shift-space, “sort”, Enter, and my document’s sorted. (The Ctrl-space is a custom setting.) And piping it through Ruby only takes a fraction of a second.

Oh, I could very readily become a Linux user for that alone. But the experience outside my editor might drive me mad. Wonder if TextMate would be as fast as KDevelop?

Heh, 8 days till I’m outdated again - that’s when Fedora 9 is released.

My latest way to make Windows play nice with Linux is to paste in files via the terminal. I do:

$ cat > file.txt
[pasted content]
^D
$

That Control-D ends the file and puts me back at a prompt, with [pasted content] saved safely in file.txt.

Well, I just realized the same thing will work with xargs. I had some noisy terminal output that contained some file names I needed to delete. I copied it out, pasted it to my favorite text editor, played around with it until only file names were left, and then did this:

$ cat | xargs rm
[pasted file names]
^D
$

And voila - the files are gone. I haven’t used this (or xargs) extensively, so try at your own risk, but it seems to work nice so far.