The Musings of the Kat

Posted by Kat Crichton Thu, 17 Nov 2005 09:27:00 GMT

The cold has finally come in with snow and icy winds and I'm very glad that I'd finished chopping the majority of the wood in the garden. The logs are heaped in three piles by the house and are already being tossed into our fireplaces.

They came in most useful when a big fire in a junk yard next-door to my work took down the main power cables for Poole and Bournemouth, and we had a fairly long power cut that left us without light or heating for an evening.

We ended up lighting fires and candles, cracking open some nice wine and playing boardgames till the early hours.

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 02 Nov 2005 05:13:00 GMT

I've just returned from a week in Scotland trying to find out about the Crichton clan and the history of my family.

Unfortunately my investigation in Edinburgh just led me back to London. The critical information I need to track my great-great-great-grandfather George Crichton who was born in Scotland will be his marriage certificate and the only clue I have as to where he was married is that his children were born in Lambeth, London.

However, I did pay a visit to Crichton Castle, just south of Edinburgh, which was spectacularly bleak in the cold October rain.

I've also kitted myself out with the appropriate kilt (Royal Stuart) and caboodle, so Hogmanay should be fun this year (and any other parties I can think of using as an excuse to dress up).

Posted by Kat Crichton Tue, 18 Oct 2005 11:34:00 GMT

I've ordered a DVB card. It's the Hauppauge WinTV-Nova-t PCI. Hopefully I'll be able to set it up on Linux and integrate it with the MythTV setup.

It'll hopefully allow me to record MPEG2 streams without recompressing, as well as allow me to record two things at once in MythTV.

I'll post my progress with this card as I try to get it to work.

Posted by Kat Crichton Mon, 17 Oct 2005 07:07:00 GMT

It was inevitable really. Having climbed the large cherry tree and cut off five or six large branches with a hand saw, some chopping and cutting would ensue.

The first tool I chose for the job - the Black & Decker Scorpion electric saw - endured two branches of defoliating before falling to bits.

So, off to the the DIY store I went, planning to buy a replacement Scorpion. Then I noticed the garden tools section and within about two minutes went from looking at 50 quid electric toys to this...

McCulloch Mac 438 petrol driven 14 inch chainsaw.

I had no idea how much fun these things could be. It's like an extreme sport, dangerous and adrenalin pumping. Obviously real-man, phallic-symbol stuff, but all stereotypes have their basis in reality.

From the moment you open the packaging and fill up the petrol tank, you know you're dealing with a proper grown-up tool.

I wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone with a lust for life - and who can read and follow the frightening instruction book.

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 05 Oct 2005 19:36:00 GMT

It's always tricky performing maintenance on hardware that is central to the family's computing/entertainment life, but this change could take out all the TV's in the house for days or even weeks.

I have a projector in the living room, attached to a Linux PC running MythTV, an open source personal video recorder project similar to Sky+ or TiVo.

At the moment it can only record one channel at a time from an NTL digital cable tuner and the big plan is to add a Freeview DTV card to it so that we can watch one live channel while recording another (or record two channels simultaneously).

It's a bit scary though, as these things have a habit of needing a fair amount of Linux hacking to get working correctly and that could knock out the entire house (6 people)'s TV and video.

Wish me luck ;)

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 05 Oct 2005 18:11:00 GMT

Windoze just doesn't seem to be capable of it.

You want to upgrade a PC's processor; so inevitably, the motherboard and memory have to follow suite. You try to boot the PC and it goes into a reboot-loop.

This has happened a few times recently and each time I end up reinstalling Windows. Not that I mind too much, Windows seems to need regular reinstalls to stop it from seizing up altogether.

Linux seems to handle new hardware a lot better, although it's always possible to boot into a low run level (a rather extreme equivalent of Windows Safe Mode!). You just don't get the Windows clog-up problems with Linux, as applications' settings aren't all installed into one bloated registry file.

Posted by Kat Crichton Tue, 04 Oct 2005 06:17:00 GMT

I found the option in Typo to enable 43 Things and 43 Places to my blog. Nice idea as it ties two Web2.0 technologies together.

Should help to give a better idea of what I'm about, although I'm some way off the number 43 (or 86) just yet, clearly need to be more interesting and make some more plans ;)

Would be nice if there was an option to show 43 posts on your Typo blog.

Posted by Kat Crichton Mon, 03 Oct 2005 04:41:00 GMT

Much as I love MythTV, it's web interface for anything other than TV recordings leaves a little to be desired.

So, I'm considering writing an interface to MythMusic in Ruby-on-Rails.

It should be ajax enabled so that you can do iTunes style search constraining and it should have a decent artist/album/song type browser.

I think I'll add this to the end of the project list after Mad Margaret's e-commerce.

If anyone else thinks this is a good idea, reply to this post.

Posted by Kat Crichton Sun, 02 Oct 2005 07:27:00 GMT

Well, the start of October seems like the right time to start a proper blog. A bit late for the term-start, but it's been a fair few years since I had a decent length summer holiday anyway.

I've had a news/diary section on klaws.org for a while, but I just never quite got around to updating it. Hopefully being able to edit on line will help.

What's this all going to be about then? Current projects include...

• Ruby-on-rails (web framework behind this site)
• MythTV (Linux based PVR)
• Extreme Programming
• Sorting out home bandwidth contention with a Linux firewall
• Getting my loft converted
• Writing and recording some music

So, glad you could make the grand opening. Hang around for a while, and help yourself to a cocktail and some canapés.

God bless this blog and all who sail in her!