Archive for November, 2005
The Humax 9200T PVR is available from Dabs for £210. Not only is it a good digital TV PVR with two tuners and a 160Gb HDD, but it might be able to support Linux as well. Here is some information that I’ve been able to scrape together from various sites on the net.
The CPU appears to be a uPD61120 “EMMA2″ MIPS-based processor with integrated MPEG decoder. It also seems to have a Philips ISP1581 device USB controller. And a JTAG port, but I’m not sure if you’d have to wire it up manually. This information is visible in string data sections of the Humax firmware, but if anyone could confirm it and find out what other chips are in the box..?
It seems ripe for a Linux port with MythTV or Freevo. This might be difficult, but the possibility is there: linux-mips has support for VR4111-type chips, MythTV and Freevo provide the user-land control software. This assumes that the two tuners in the 9200T are in the many supported by LinuxTV, the Linux DVB tuner drivers project.
Seeing as Christmas is coming, I could be tempted 
November 26th, 2005
I used to be able, long ago, to sleep on planes, but apparently this useful and sanity-saving skill has been lost. There were all the usual impediments to sleep: a screaming baby, screaming kids, etc… I put my earphones in, wrapped my sweater around my head and tried to sleep for about 5 hours.
It didn’t work. So now my body has absolutely no clue what time it really is.
I was talking to a colleague who was also flying back on the same flight (but fell asleep instantly…) about what could be done to make flying more pleasurable. Just about the only thing would be to hook everyone up to some nice hospital-quality anaesthetics in the waiting lounge and bringing us around in arrivals at the other end. Just completely erase the experience of flying totally.
There wouldn’t be many takers to begin with, but I think people would slowly realise that travelling without:
- screaming infants/small children,
- airline food,
- extreme tiredness and
- DVTs.
would actually be far more pleasant. Because the last thing you want, after a really good holiday/ conference/ whatever is to spend 9 sleepless hours in a noisy tin can suspended 38,000 feet in the air…
November 21st, 2005
I’m currently in Seattle, attending the Supercomputing 2005 conference. After arriving on Saturday, this is the first day that I haven’t actually been jet-lagged out of my skull. So, in my short time here, I’ve noticed a few things…
Seattle is full of:
- Tall buildings
- Starbucks (there is one per block)
- Homeless people
- People who, although they aren’t, look like they’re homeless…
And some environmental observations: its cold, much colder than Bristol, despite being at roughly the same latitude.
November 16th, 2005
Commuting in London makes me feel even more like a wage slave than I normally do. Maybe its being crammed like sardines into a can with thousands of other bored, irritable card-punchers. Maybe its the silence, the one guy in the carriage who doesn’t know what soap is, the minimal eye contact.
Now, I remember why I hated living in London…
November 7th, 2005