ak3ldama's Journal: LinuxPVR/Ubuntu/Stuff

A few things to talk about:

I recently bought an ATI TV Wonder 200. It sucks, apparently it doesn't do hardware encoding. Why the fuck would they even bring such a piece of crap to market, I just assumed it did hardware encoding but I guess I'm dumb.

So I tried setting up mythtv for this but the version in FC6's repo didn't match up with the latest Linux kernel version -> so I installed Ubuntu. This went ok, but in the end the card's bttv driver didn't seem to recognize stuff quite right. I could have persevered but in the end I just put the card in my Windows box (I reverted the AMD64 back to Windows ... I know I suck.) Plus the mythtv frontend and configuration software took up the whole screen and the mouse cursor effectively disappeared so it sucks at life and didn't appear to be worth the trouble. This card basically takes up my whole single core's cpu while running with time shifting enabled. It probably isn't worth typical daily use but I may just use it to record shows to disc to be able to watch later.

On that note, I think I might have to get a Mac (Mini) the electricity useage of that thing is quite low which is really enticing. I really don't game much so I could leave the Windows box off most of the time.

My car is fixed, it had massive down shifting problem. It would have an engine hesitation and occasional backfire (if I fully pressed the accelerator under certain conditions - temp,rpm,speed etc). I had a hunch it was the Ignition Control module, since i've done almost every other minor maintenance I could. When replacing the wires i noticed that one of them had rust inside it on the 'coil pack' end of the wire. That seemed very odd. So after replacing wires and plugs the problem still existed. The ICM part is about $100. I should've fixed it myself. Instead I took it into the GM shop in town, they didn't think that was it -- they were wrong. The car runs faster than a raped ape now. With performance plugs and wires, cold air intake, clean MAF, Camaro style dual exhaust the 3800 in my car moves. So now, about 2 years later with the car running great I'll probably end up giving/selling it to one of my neices and buying myself a newish Jeep Liberty. The V6 with 6 speed manual option on the 4x4 Sport seems like a great setup. Plus winters would rock with that thing. Snow, mud, off-roading would be fun shiznit. And heading out to the ranch to go hunting and helping out would be much less of a problem.