I get a few support requests for MythNetTV, and I must admit that I sometimes get quite behind on my personal email, especially when I'm travelling. I've therefore created a mailing list for announcements and discussion in the hope that people will chat and come up with great ideas, as well as being able to support each other.
New things in this release: Removed gflags because people found it hard to find Bug fix patch from David Linville applied Fixed broken imports caused by refactoring Transcode not needed for avc1 and m4v Another bug fix patch from David Linville applied Store filesize in the db Removed some namespace imports I am not a fan of Made verbosity optional for --update Small code cleanups Let the user know of repeated attempts to download a program Documented the need for bittornado for bittorrent to work Abandon downloading after 3 failed attempts (you can configure the number) Detect stuck bittorrent downloads Release 3 had a few bugs folks reported, this release should fix those problems. Let me know if you still see any. You can grab your copy here.
I'm thinking of getting rid of comcast and getting a high def over the air tuner as well as a netflix subscription. I'd be interested in people's opinions of netflix. I guess I'm just fed up with comcast's woeful customer service, quite ordinary analog reception, and complete lack of any new programming. Its been about six months since there was something we really wanted to watch on the channels we get, and I've only just noticed...
In an effort to speed up my database updates, I've been looking for ways to batch some of my updates. CASE seems like the way to go: mysql> create table bar(a tinyint, b tinyint); Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec) mysql> insert into bar(a) values(1), (2), (3), (4), (5); Query OK, 5 rows affected (0.00 sec) Records: 5 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0 mysql> select * from bar; +------+------+ | a | b | +------+------+ | 1 | NULL | | 2 | NULL | | 3 | NULL | | 4 | NULL | | 5 | NULL | +------+------+ 5 rows in set (0.00 sec) mysql> update bar set b = case a -> when 1 then 42 -> when 2 then 43 -> when 3 then 44 -> else 45 -> end; Query OK, 5 rows affected (0.00 sec) Rows matched: 5 Changed: 5 Warnings: 0 mysql> select * from bar; +------+------+ | a | b | +------+------+ | 1 | 42 | | 2 | 43 | | 3 | 44 | | 4 | 45 | | 5 | 45 | +------+------+ 5 rows in set (0.00 sec) I see stuff online which warns not…
This is another of Asimov's robot short story collections, and many of the stories appear in earlier works. In fact, I would recommend getting I, Robot and this book, and avoiding The Rest of the Robots if you're not interested in owning a complete collection of books, but do want to have all of the stories. I say you should get a copy of I, Robot mainly because it has linking matter between the stories that this book lacks. The Complete Robot is as good as Asimov's other short story books I have read, which means I thought it was fantastic. [isbn: 0586057242]
Utopia is the third and final Asimov universe book from Allen. It centers around an attempt to accellerate the terraforming of a planet by drastic measures which drive third law robots wild... The measures are so drastic that they endanger humans, whilst protecting a large number of humans. Unfortunately three law robots have trouble seeing the difference between the two. I don't think this book is as well written as the earlier two Allen books (Caliban and Inferno) and therefore not as good as the Asimov books set in the universe. It was however reasonably engaging and I'm not offended that I spent time and money on it. An ok book, but nothing special basically.
I am increasingly becoming obsessed with science fiction from 1950s and 1960s. Again stolen from Wikipedia, here is a list of all the Stainless Steel Rat books: 1985: A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born 1987: The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted 1994: The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues 1961: The Stainless Steel Rat 1970: The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge 1972: The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World 1978: The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You 1982: The Stainless Steel Rat for President 1996: The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell 1999: The Stainless Steel Rat Joins the Circus 1993: The Golden Years of the Stainless Steel Rat (a short story in Stainless Steel Visions) 2011: The Stainless Steel Rat Returns Additionally, there is: 1993: Stainless Steel Visions 1998: You can be the Stainless Steel Rat -- a choose your own adventure book
I'm helping out with SciFoo for the third year running, which is a blast. Neal Stephenson is back again, which is fun. Anyway, there is always a bit of hurry up and wait at conferences, so I got a chance to finish off this book. Its an ok read, but suffers from the hard-to-believe time travel that The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World suffered from as well. It was ok though. I'd say 3 out of 5 stars if I had a star rating system. [isbn: 0553253956;0553227963;0553126253]
Asimov published two books named Nightfall 1 and Nightfall 2 which are collections of short stories. I have both of these books in a single volume named "Nightfall', which is not to be confused with the novel of the same name by Asimov and Silverberg. I was getting quite confused about which robot short stories I had already read already (many appear in more than one collection), so I built this table to help: Nightfall1969 The Complete Robot1982 Robot Dreams1986 Robot Visions1990 Nightfall Green Patches Hostess Breeds There a Man C-Chute In a Good Cause What If - Sally Flies Nobody Here But - It's Such a Beautiful Day Strikebreaker Insert Knob A in Hole B The Up-to-date Sorcerer Unto the Fourth Generation What is this Thing Called Love? The Machine That Won the War My Son, the…
This is an Asimov short story collection about robots, where the stories are entirely contained in The Complete Robot, although in a different order. These stories are similar in vein to those in I, Robot, although it is odd that not all of the hyperspace development stories are present (perhaps some weren't written yet?). This is a good book, I liked it. [isbn: 0586025944]