Strav's blog

Here are some links to for the 20" HP HDX laptop.

This post has some information regarding HWMonitor and some interesting widgits.

Information on cleaning fan / unit disassembly:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-envy-hdx/169232-official-hp-hdx-dragon-owners-lounge-1129.html#post6542848

iPhone development kit for ubuntu vmware (i.e. windows)

http://tungchingkai.blogspot.com/2008/01/iphone-development-using-windows.html

Here's a site with a large number of registry tips and tweaks for Windows XP.

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

in 2007 when I upgraded the myth backend server, I migrated the distribution from Debian to Kubuntu to be able to manage updates better. I didn't, however, migrate the frontend at the same time. This poses an issue as I don't want to have to deal with updating 2 different distributions in order to upgrade Myth versions. So I plan on migrating the frontend to Ubuntu which contains the same packages as Kubuntu but has a different default window manager. As part of this, I plan on changing the window manager from KDE which I currently run to Fluxbox since it is a much lighter window manager. Currently I'll outline what I think I need to do and update the post to accurately reflect the process so I can refer back to it in the future should I need to.

- Backup existing drive on minimyth
- Install basic Ubuntu OS
- Update fstab to include network shares
- Install and configure Fluxbox
- Install LIRC
- Install VNC
- Determine how to automatically start myth frontend
- Copy/Modify script to automatically restart myth frontend if necessary
- Determine if necessary to bring myth frontend to front and how to do so if it is
- Install backup script and cron job

Along the way, I found a new distribution called Mythbuntu. This is a unbuntu distro specifically designed to run Myth. Since this is exactly what I'm looking for, I'm in process of giving it a go. Installation was quite easy and basic configuration has gone well. Here's specific notes about what I'm doing.

To Do:
- Test sound
- OPTIONAL: need to find out how to raise window (mythfrontend)
- Tweak xorg settings for best performance
- See what can be done about the video distortion along the left edge of the screen during tv playback
Done:
- Old OS backed up
- Mythbuntu installed
- fstab updated to include network shares
- Installed LIRC - Note to self: make sure the IR header connecter is actually connected - DOH!. Also, MythTV expects the lircrc file to be in /home/user/.mythtv/lircrc. I put this file in the home directory and link it
- VNC installed as a base option
- mythfrontend starts automatically
- Turn off screen saver and dpms (power settings)
- configure to run as 'myth' user
- resolved hang on shutdown with the following 2 commands:

• ln -s /etc/init.d/umountnfs.sh /etc/rc0.d/K15umountnfs.sh
• ln -s /etc/init.d/umountnfs.sh /etc/rc6.d/K15umountnfs.sh

- Install backup script and cron job

I recently had a problem (trojan/virus?) that removed a number of windows file associations rendering my system nearly unusable (.lnk and .exe files wouldn't launch from the shell - yikes!). I found this page with .reg files which restore the default file associations for most standard file types in Windows XP.