Books read in January 2009
Bio of a Space Tyrant: Refugee Battlefields Beyond Tomorrow The Compleat Bolo Prince of the Blood Dawnspell The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Refuge
Isaac Asimov’s Robot City: Refuge
This is the fifth book in the Robot City series. I think its actually the best written of those that I have read so far. The story makes sense, isn't hard to believe like some of the others, and the dialog doesn't feel wooden.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Ok, so this is a classic. I hadn't read it in years though, and it's still awesome. Loved it. Things to note that I hadn't thought of before -- "SubEtha" is talked about a lot, that probably explains "SubEtha Edit" which is an editor I have used in the past; the term "Googleplex" is used in the book, its also the name of the campus I work on; I love the idea of depressed computers, I should see if I can whip one up.
Restricting anonymous edits
Because of two examples of wiki spam today, I am restricting anonymous edits. From now on you will be required to have a wiki account before you can make an edit. That doesn't seem all that onerous to me, and lets me avoid having to deal with spam.
MythTV Chapter Ready: The Easy Way: Installing MythBuntu
The The Easy Way: Installing MythBuntu chapter is now ready. This chapter provides an overview of a basic MythBuntu installation, which is something which wasn't covered at all in Practical MythTV, as MythBuntu wasn't ready at the time. MythBuntu provides a simple installation and configuration option for those people who want to build a new MythTV system from scratch, and want to hide the normal Ubuntu install. Thanks to Michael Carden and Jost Stewart for their reviews of this chapter, as well as Paul Wayper for his comments.
Looking for a logo
I'm not a very graphical person, so I'm looking for someone to help me with a logo for the online MythTV book project -- specifically I need something to replace this image: I hope you agree that the current logo lacks a certain... something. A simple logo which somehow says "book about MythTV" would be really cool. It would also be good to have a version which works as a favicon. Please email me if you think you can help.
Dawnspell: The Bristling Wood
This is the third book in the Deverry series, and is very readable. This book is a little different from the previous two because the two plots aren't as strongly linked as they have been in the previous two books. In previous books they've been interleaved, whereas in this book the first half of the book is one plot, and the second half the other. [isbn: 0586207414;0553285815]
Prince of the Blood
This is a follow on to the Riftwar Series that follows Borric and Erland (Arthura's sons) as they travel to Kesh for the Empress' 75th birthday celebrations. Along the way they grow up quite a lot, and learn what it means to rule. To be honest, the story is ok, but a little shallow. Its not as good as the Riftwar Series or Daughter of the Empire. Its about as good as A Darkness at Sethanon I guess. [isbn: 0586071407]
MythTV Chapter Ready: Selecting Hardware
The Selecting Hardware chapter is now ready. This chapter details the benefits of starting small, how to select the right hardware for a MythTV system if you're building one from scratch, and what the authors use for their MythTV systems. This chapter was originally written by Stewart Smith, and this version was reviewed by Josh Stewart. Thanks as well to Julien Goodwin and Michael Carden for their helpful comments.
MythNetTV talk
I gave a MythNetTV talk at linux.conf.au yesterday, and it went remarkably well. Hardly any fruit was thrown. I'm quite please that so far two patches have been sent to me after the talk, and questions in the talk promoted a release of version 7. I should share the following resources from the talk: the slide deck, my cheat sheet, the MythTV book chapter beta which I wrote while gathering my thoughts for the talk. The last one is probably the most useful, as its pretty much an expanded version of the talk. A historical note from November 2020: the mythtvbook.com website is now offline.