SciFoo 2006
The first Science Foo camp is being hosted by O'Reilly, Nature Magazine, and Google. I'm going and I am excited like other people.
The wreck of the dominator
Another old thing to visit when next I happen to be somewhere: the the wreck of the Dominator in LA. Via SJH who found it on Metafilter. Oh, and the the guide to forgotten LA places is cool too (via Dan Goods).
This is why I went to MythTV
TiVo implements punishment mode for buying their product. Nice.
Updated nuvexport patch
To get nuvexport working with MythTV User Jobs as a transcoder, I needed to further modify my nuvexport patch to handle the fact that there is no controlling terminal for user jobs. Here is the new patch: Index: export/ffmpeg.pm =================================================================== --- export/ffmpeg.pm (revision 242) +++ export/ffmpeg.pm (working copy) @@ -70,11 +70,11 @@ # Audio only? $self->{'audioonly'} = $audioonly; # Gather the supported codecs - my $data = `$ffmpeg -formats 2>/dev/null`; + my $data = `$ffmpeg -formats 2>&1`; my ($formats) = $data =~ /(?:^|\n\s*)File\sformats:\s*\n(.+?\n)\s*\n/s; my ($codecs) = $data =~ /(?:^|\n\s*)Codecs:\s*\n(.+?\n)\s*\n/s; if ($formats) { - while ($formats =~ /^\s(..)\s(\S+)\s*$/mg) { + while ($formats =~ /^\s(.{2})\s(\S+).*$/mg) { $self->formats'}{$2} = $1; } } @@ -286,7 +286,7 @@ push @tmpfiles, "/tmp/fifodir_$$", "/tmp/fifodir_$$/audout", "/tmp/fifodir_$$/vidout"; # Execute ffmpeg - print "Starting ffmpeg.\n" unless ($DEBUG); + print "Starting ffmpeg: $ffmpeg\n" unless ($DEBUG); ($ffmpeg_pid, $ffmpeg_h) = fork_command("$ffmpeg 2>&1"); $children{$ffmpeg_pid} = 'ffmpeg' if ($ffmpeg_pid); Index: export/ffmpeg/PSP.pm =================================================================== --- export/ffmpeg/PSP.pm (revision 242) +++ export/ffmpeg/PSP.pm (working copy) @@ -170,7 +170,8 @@ $self->{'ffmpeg_xtra'} = ' -b ' . $self->{'v_bitrate'} .' -bufsize 65535' .' -ab 32 -acodec aac' - ." -f psp -title $safe_title"; + ." -f psp -title $safe_title" + .' -ar 24000'; # Execute the parent method $self->SUPER::export($episode, '.MP4'); Index: nuv_export/shared_utils.pm ===================================================================…
On a bunker kick
Now that I am back on my bunker kick dad points out that there was a bunker in Canberra (my home town) as well. Some references I can see online make it public now, including this heritage list. I'm wondering if it's the same as the Bunker Theatre in the same building now. That would be cool...
Back in Phoenix
I'm on another work trip to Phoenix, although the office is really in Tempe. There's not a lot of difference really, given that a lot of American cities seem to be much like suburbs of large conurbations. Not much to say, apart from that the hotel is nice and has a water slide, in fact a water park. More to report later.
The Greenbrier bunker opens for tours!
A while ago I was watching a documentary about the bunker under the Greenbrier resort. The Greenbrier is one of those swanky resorts close enough to Washington DC to be in easy reach for the powerful people who hang out there. That's why it was chosen as the location for the bunker that Congress would hang out at come the apocalypse. The bunker was built in secret, and the documentary mentioned cool bits like they had to move so much earth that an extra golf course was built with the rubble in order to disguise it's source. This sums it up pretty well: It was built at the suggestion of then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower as a way of preserving the balance of power among the three branches of the U.S. government in the event of nuclear war. But now, the Government Relocation Center, located under the luxurious Greenbrier resort in the mountains of West Virginia, is a unique and eerie tourist attraction, a monument to a nation's Cold War fears. That's from a CNN article on the topic. In fact, there is no shortage of content about the bunker. Anyways, back to my excitement... The bunker is now open for…
Hmmm, even more Police Academy
The Police Academy has problems with sexual harassment, as well as people bringing random firearms to class. I guess the next step is an article about one of the students showing up with an amazing ability to do voice sound effects. Via Crap On, which I found with The Australian Index which is an aggregator for Australian blogs (yes, another one).
I got MythBurn working!
It took a few hours, but I have MythBurn (a web interface for creating DVDs with MythTV) finally working. The problem was that the mjpegtools shipped with Ubuntu Dapper crashes with an invalid free(). Compiling from source fixed that. Update: I might have lied. I now have troubles getting Xine to playback the DVD when I mount the ISO image through a loop back. I don't have any DVD media handy, so I will have to wait a couple of days until I can do more testing. The symptom I see is that the intro MythTV screen plays, and then Xine freezes before displaying the menu.
Did I mention it’s hot here?
California is suffering under a record heat wave, I find it odd that people debate whether there is global warming, when we keep hitting new temperature records. Then again, as a single person I feel rather unempowered to actually do much about fixing the whole thing.