book – Page 2 – Made by Mikal

Introducing the online MythTV book

Post author:mikal
Post published:January 19, 2009
Post category:Mythtv

When parts of the first edition of the MythTV book became out of date, I decided to take the book online and ask others to help me improve it and bring it up to date. There is a blog for announcements, at http://mythtvbook.com/blog and if you're interested in helping out, please visit the Help Wanted page. This book does not aim to be a complete reference to MythTV or a guide for how to develop plug-in modules for MythTV. Although we include a brief overview of the major features of MythTV, we explore only those parts of MythTV that are relevant to the projects in this book, which will include all the parts of MythTV that an average user will be interested in. It will also give you an excellent grounding for further projects with MythTV as well. This book is intended as a hobbyist's project guide, providing suggestions about what sort of projects you could take on and how we went about implementing our own versions of those projects. Instead of including exhaustive coverage of features that few people use, we'll provide pointers to how to find out about those features, and we'll cover the 80 percent of MythTV's…

init script

Post author:mikal
Post published:April 13, 2008
Post category:Mythtv

Jake Graft pointed out in a comment that I had forgotten to put the init script from the MythTV book online. My apologies. #! /bin/sh # # mythbackend # PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin BACKEND=/usr/local/bin/mythbackend BACKEND_NAME=mythbackend MYTHUSER="myth" test -x $BACKEND || exit 0 set -e case "$1" in start) echo -n "Starting MythTV: $BACKEND_NAME" su ${MYTHUSER} -c "$BACKEND -v all -d -l ${MBE_LOGFILE}" & echo "." ;; stop) echo -n "Stopping MythTV: $BACKEND_NAME" killall $BACKEND echo "." ;; *) echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop}" >&2 exit 1 ;; esac exit 0

The book is doing ok

Post author:mikal
Post published:October 12, 2007
Post category:Mythtv

I must say I am pleased with the Amazon rank for the MythTV book. The ranks seem volatile though -- the other day it was doing well in "Linux books", now its doing well in "video books".

Illegal download sites for the MythTV book

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 15, 2007
Post category:Mythtv

In the last week, I have discovered three download sites offering illegal downloads of the MythTV book e-book. If I can find three without really trying, I assume there are a lot more of them out there. This raises a question for which I don't have a good answer. Do illegal downloads of books increase, or decrease sales? I can see arguments either way, but I'm tending towards the belief that they don't increase sales. Does anyone out there have any data which isn't merely anecdotal? Want to share it?

Google book search

Post author:mikal
Post published:August 23, 2007
Post category:Imagemagick

I just noticed that the ImageMagick book appears in Google book search. I'm pleased.

More reviews

Post author:mikal
Post published:July 16, 2007
Post category:Mythtv

I just got back from a lovely four days in Tasmania, and am just now catching up with the resulting email backlog. There are some new alerts about reviews of the MythTV book in there which are worth pointing out: I'm surprised and disappointed that the installation of MythTV through pre-built packages or a CD distributions like KnoppMyth or MythDora were not covered deeper than a sentence or two in passing. This is likely to be a turn off for readers who were hoping for a quick and simple method of getting MythTV up and going. ... On the whole I consider this a good book that is excellent for the new to intermediate MythTV user, although advanced users may pick a few good pieces of information out of it as well. It was well written and covered most items at just about the right introductory (yes -- practical) level. Once it has taught you the basics, you can then go and look up more details online for features you want to get more information about. http://www.mythpvr.com/mythtv/books/Practical_MythTV.html Linked at: http://smart-home-blog.com/archives/670 Linked at: http://mythtvnews.com/2007/06/29/more-practical-mythtv-book-reviews/ I think the comments about installation technique are fair, although the method described in the book is…

Review

Post author:mikal
Post published:June 4, 2007
Post category:Mythtv

"If you're interested in setting up a PVR, then this is definitely a book to check out. Apress sells the paper version for $30, and offers an eBook for $15. Amazon offers it for $19.79, but I doubt that price will last long. I definitely give this book a 5 out of 5..." http://www.yeraze.com/article.php/20070603160650701

Book printed!

Post author:mikal
Post published:May 5, 2007
Post category:Mythtv

I got off the phone with Catherine a few hours ago, and apparently my copies of the book have arrived at home (I'm in Dublin for work at the moment). That's very exciting. Looks like now would be a good time to buy it, while it's shipping soon and still on special.

Mark is right

Post author:mikal
Post published:April 17, 2007
Post category:Link

Mark Pilgrim is a smart guy, and he's right that the correct time to start writing is while you have that sense of wonder. That was the big difference in the approaches I took with the ImageMagick book (an attempt to be definitive and therefore boring to write), versus the MythTV book (a cleaned up version of my lab book notes from when I installed Myth and got it working nicely, with some other stuff added for completeness). The MythTV book was a lot more fun to write, and I don't feel nearly as burnt out at the end. Read more about Mark's burnout theory. So, I wonder what is next for me?

Status

Post author:mikal
Post published:April 16, 2007
Post category:Mythtv

The book went to print two days ago. Now we wait for it to come back...