Monthly Archives: February 2012

Don’t buy one Raspberry Pi, buy two and donate one to your local programming club

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What a seriously great idea from @Elana.

Whether your kids go to Code Ninja; Coder Dojo; a club in their school; or the Munster Programming Training in UCC, they should be looking at Raspberry Pi.

What the heck is Raspberry Pi?

It’s a tiny Embedded PC using a Broadcom SoC with a 700MHz processor, VideoCore IV Graphics processsor and 256MB of RAM for, wait for it….€39 including VAT!

You just plug in a keyboard/mouse, SD card, LAN cable and composite or HDMI video cable and boom you’re in business running a Debian Linux PC the size of a fag-packet.

It runs any standard Debian ARM software including educational apps like Scratch. I’m sure it’ll work for App Inventor too for any kids who want to build mobile Apps.

I have often talked about how cheap Chinese Android phones will be the ZX Spectrums of this decade. Plug em into your TV with an MHL cable and connect up a bluetooth keyboard and you have a kick-ass computer. But I was wrong. That setup is as limited as an iPad. It’s for consumption only. There is no ability to develop on an Android phone, you still need a PC to run App Inventor or Eclipse.

But this, this is what the original home computing was all about. And I don’t even mean ZX Spectrum era. This is almost like a ZX80 or ZX81 where your computer arrived as a kit and you built it!

I would love to see my kids take over the telly and do something useful with the Raspberry Pi like we used to with our Spectrums, Commodore 64s, BBC Micros, Oric 1s and Dragon 32s.

Sure, let them play Manic Miner 2012, but then let them build Manic Miner 2013.

So back to Elana’s idea. Rather than splashing out on a few pints, buy two of these. One for your own kids and one for their programming club.

It’s time to put a halt to all this dumb consumption of media and turn the next generation of kids into creators of media. Raspberry Pi may just be the recession-busting way of doing that. When you think that 16K Spectrums cost £99 in 1982, the Raspberry Pi is phenomenal value and puts affordable computing, once again, into the hands of anyone with a TV.

I already have two projects I want to create with this. But then I did start as an old Embedded geek in the 90s where software needed an oscilloscope to debug :-)

Note: They have been overwhelmed with orders since it launched today so maybe wait a few days before ordering.

Experimental GIMP for Windows in Single-Window Mode

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We use GIMP for all of our basic bitmap manipulations. Whether it’s changing the colour of stars or modifying logos for Facebook Connect, it gets the job done brilliantly. I’ve tried many others like Paint.net and nothing comes close. But as anyone who has used it knows, they have had that horrible multi-window setup for years.

I went looking earlier to see if there had been any progress on GIMP in general. I read a scathing post a good while back basically saying RIP GIMP since it was still only able to do 8-bit colour depth. But after a bit of searching I found that things have been moving along, albeit very slowly. The new versions sounded fab but the official site didn’t have any of them for Windows. A bit more searching and I found some experimental builds including one for Windows 7 64-bit.

And so far, it’s working great! Single-Window Mode yay.

Vodafone Ireland’s sly attempt to get you to pay more each month

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I suddenly realised two weeks ago that I was probably due a phone upgrade on Vodafone. They kindly gave me a HTC Sensation as a prize in a competition last year so I hadn’t bothered think about it.

But for fun I decided to have a look at what was available.

Whilst the screen on the Galaxy Nexus is lovely, it seems a strange “flagship” with only a 5MP camera and no SD card slot. Being an old softie, I would love some day to get a Nokia again. That Lumia 800 looks lovely and I hope it’s the beginning of the recovery for them.

So I clicked on that to see how much it would be. The old “Free” trick doesn’t fool me any more as it usually only applies to the higher tiers. Despite all my blogging about mobile over the years, I’m actually always on the lowest tier. Living somewhere with a dreadful mobile signal means there is no point in trying to use the phone for voice calls. Phones for me are mobile handheld computers.

The breakdown of my current bill is as follows:

  • Perfect Choice 50: €15.70
  • Text 150 Add-On: €6.61
  • 1Gb Data: €8.26
  • Insurance: €5.99 (I must cancel that, never once made a claim in 13 years)

Total (incl VAT): €43.88

When I clicked through on the Lumia, I was greeted by this message “To upgrade to this handset you need to change your plan to My Way or Perfect Choice Access Plus”.

I tried the My Way and was shocked to see the cost. It starts at €30 a month with no minutes or texts off-network and 500MB data. To get a package approximating what I have now would be:

  • My Way: €30
  • 500 MB Data: Included (half of what I get now)
  • 100 Minutes: €9 (they won’t let me select 50)
  • 200 Texts: €9.99 (they won’t let me select 150)

Total: €48.99 a month

So I get less data and an 18 month lock-in for more than €10 extra a month (when you take out insurance). Oh and the Lumia ia €99 on that plan.

First time in 13 years I’m thinking of moving, on principle. If I hadn’t won that Sensation, I’d now be forced into that plan if I was going to upgrade from my old HTC Desire.

Their good roaming value in recent years was the main thing keeping me re-subbing to Voda. But if that’s the sort of nasty up-sell trick they are going to try on with long-term loyal bill-pay customers who barely ever make use of the add-ons they pay for, I’ll look to see who wants my business more.

When I go to the UK I usually just pop the Voda SIM into an old phone in case anyone rings me, put a Three UK PAYG SIM in the smartphone and top-up with a tenner for 150MB of data in the generic mobile kiosk in Liverpool Street. So I’ve realised I don’t really need that cheap VF roaming as I’m almost never in any other country apart from UK.

So really any of the Irish providers would be fine for me as long as they do cheap data and have good coverage. So will it be emobile, O2, Meteor, Tesco Mobile or Three? Thoughts?

Ubuntu for Android – All the Horror of Unity in your pocket

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Why carry two devices, when you could carry only one? Your next high-end smartphone has far more horsepower than you’ll need on a phone, and more than enough for a laptop. So we’ve brought Android together with Ubuntu, the world’s favourite free operating system, to give you a full productivity desktop that fits in your pocket. Android for the phone experience, Ubuntu for the desktop, all on one device, running at the same time.

via Ubuntu for Android | Ubuntu.

Shudder shudder shudder. Ubuntu, please stop releasing new products and hire some people who know the first thing about OS GUIs. Unity is the first GUI on any platform (desktop, mobile, game) where my kids couldn’t find their apps.

Hands up who uses the Libreoffice Powerpoint clone on Ubuntu more than the Terminal. I rest my case.

XBMC + Windows Media Center make surprisingly great bedfellows

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Our main TV PC spends most of its time running the awesome XBMC software. It has everything you need in a media player except one – recording. Whilst there are forks of it out there which work with the MythTV or Media Portal recording software, I’ve never had much success configuring either reliably.

As I mentioned before, I accidentally discovered late last year that Windows Media Center is fantastic at handling TV. It detected both my PCI Satellite card and USB Saorview stick, scanned all the tv stations and then gave me a full integrated multi-week TV guide for both. Not only does it show TV beautifully but it records it too. And does series-link perfectly.

However, I don’t use it as the main media player because it is rubbish for playing AVIs. Between AV sync problems, the lack of  a simple directory browser and the lack of codecs, it’s not worth the hassle.

Then last night I had a brainwave. Could XBMC play the WMC recordings? The signs weren’t good as the recordings were in some format I’d never heard off. But I added the directory as a source on XBMC and kaboom, it worked perfectly!

You don’t need to leave WMC running to do this as it has background processes taking care of recording. So I only have to start it up to configure new recordings or watch live TV.

If your media PC runs Windows, give this a try, it works so well. Apart from the “why did they bother” hamstrung versions of Windows Vista and 7, I think WMC comes with all Win PCs.

If I ever revert that PC to Ubuntu, I may try the XBMC-PVR plus MythTV again since it’d be ever better to be able to watch live TV inside XBMC.

Speaking of which. Two projects which may be of interest:

  1. XBMC Live USB – Put Ubuntu + XBMC on a USB stick and try it out on your PC. Great way to see if it works with your hardware without having to install anything.
  2. Ubuntu TV – Not content with pushing that Unity rubbish onto your Desktop, now they want to destroy your TV viewing experience too. I’ll still give it a try when it’s released.

 

Patriot PBO Core is a very nice cheap Media Player device

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I’ve written at length about our media setup at home. The main box remains a low-end PC with a decent graphics card and HDMI-out. It mainly runs XBMC but we switch over to Windows Media Centre for playing/recording satellite/terrestial.

We have had two old XBOXes running XBMC for years and they are awesome. Their only drawback is that they don’t have enough welly to play h.264 so no MP4s, MKVs, 720p or 1080p.

Last year I got a tiny media playing box called the HDVP-2. I put a 500GB harddisk inside it and it plays everything. It has HDMI, Composite, LAN, USB and an option for WIFI. It’s our travel media box and is perfect for hotels or visiting parents and in-laws. However, it has four problems:

  1. It can’t browse networks shares over SMB, it only does UPNP. We have all media centralised and shared out over SMB. I use TVersity for UPNP sharing but I just hate the whole UPNP approach.
  2. It loses audio-video sync on many AVIs very quickly and doesn’t have a manual audio-offset like XBMC
  3. It doesn’t spin down the internal harddisk so you have to unplug it except when playing videos
  4. They aren’t making it any more so there will be no bug-fixes or updates and I haven’t been able to find any Open Source software that runs on it.

Then two weeks ago, one of the XBOXes died, the one we have setup for the treadmill. I refused to use the HDVP-2 due to the AV sync problem and wondered what the best approach might be. I was tempted by one of those dirt-cheap ROKU boxes and discovered they can play local media using a Private Channel trick, in addition to Netflix, but I figured it’d be as fiddly as UPNP on the HDVP-2.

Then I remembered the Patriot PBO Core that I’d discussed with @swhelband last year. He had bought one and tweeted very positively about it. A quick check revealed it was still for sale on amazon.co.uk for £60. I made sure it had SMB support and then happily ordered. It’s a very similar spec to the HDVP-2 but executed far better, so you get:

  1. Very high quality metal case which can take an internal 2.5″ hard-disk if you want
  2. HDMI-out
  3. Composite-out
  4. Up to 1080p
  5. Plays every format you can throw at it
  6. LAN with playing of both SMB and UPNP sources
  7. USB
  8. Remote control

We’ve have it for over a week now and the experience has been mixed. The core functionality is rock solid and I’m sure it works perfectly as a local media player. The main issues we’ve had have been around network playing. The default firmware has some features which become really annoying, such as:

  1. Insists on checking size etc of every file in a directory as you scroll through. Unbearably slow when doing this over the network.
  2. Pops-up network access speed as you scroll through files. As if you care!
  3. Doesn’t have an “already watched” indicator which is a bit of a pain
  4. Won’t let you add top-level shortcuts to specific directories on specific networked machines so you can jump quickly to your stuff after power-on.

Luckily the PBO Core is using a reference design (I assume from Realtek) and there are other boxes out there with the same hardware but improved software. I finally found one that avoids all the network problems here. (I used the v3.2 Mod from Shizzl of the MedeBO firmware). Upgrading is doddle and you just pop the file onto a USB stick and select “System Update” on the PBO.

I’m now a very happy bunny and have exactly what I need. Sure it’s nowhere near as slick as XBMC but for £60 I’m not going to complain too much.

Unfortunately it shares one downside with the HDVP-2. It’s pretty much end-of-lifed and hasn’t had a software update since early in 2011. I read recently that Patriot is releasing a much higher-spec Android-based device soon. But if the PBO Core meets your needs then the lack of updates is not a problem.

Speaking of Android devices, Richard Hearne spotted this awesome looking piece of kit. It is more than double the price of the PBO but the feature list is damned impressive.

I also finally gave in and replaced the 10 year old Philips portable 14″ TV as the display and got a really nice LG 22″ IPS, LED 1080p display from Amazon for £110 last week too. The picture quality with this combo is amazing.

Of course if you have an Android phone like a HTC Sensation, you could just use the MHL HDMI-out to achive most of the above. I bet one of the Bluetooth remotes or headset controls would do the trick for selecting the movies etc. I must try mine in a network streaming configuration.

Oh I’ll also blog shortly about using a US VPN and PlayOn to deliver Netflix over UPNP to the PBO Core. To be honest it was so much hassle you should just buy a Roku.

 

Sick of Windows Media Player screwing up your video files? Try VLC 2.0

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I love VLC. It’s a media player than can handle any piece of crap video you throw at it. When WMP can’t keep audio/video in sync for more than a minute, VLC nails it. There is an incredible set of features in there, of which I have only barely scratched the surface.

But, and it’s a big but, the UI was designed by a blind person. Or a sadist. Or a blind sadist.

We’ve read all about the new UI in VLC 2.0 for Mac but I just installed the PC one and it’s the same old horror. A pity since some of the new features include faster decoding on multi-core and GPUs and  even more formats and BluRay Disc support.

Still, I’m sticking with it as it has never let me down. Would love to figure out UPNP on it tho.

 

Google Says Hello to Jason Isaacs

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Ah this is just lovely. As anyone who listens to Kermode and Mayo’s film reviews on BBC Radio 5 Live (mostly via podcast) knows, they say hello to Jason Isaacs almost every week.

It has become a bit of a meme with people trying to do the same via ever more interesting ways, including the rolling credits on the spoof news on the Jay Leno show.

But Google just beat everyone. One of their Search engineers in Mountain View is a fan of the show and has adjusted the results on his name. I think it only works on .co.uk

Love it!

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Netflix UK/Ireland shoots itself in the foot already. No Lilyhammer for us.

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For me, in my innocence, the arrival of Netflix over here represented far more than just another source of media at a good price. I hoped it was the beginning of the end for the nonsensical region-limiting of media based on pre-internet, pre-airplane, business models.

All of the vested interests can fight all they like, but eventually every movie, song and TV show will be available in every format at the same time globally. You either facilitate this happening or you will go the way of the manuscript scribes.

As a Silicon Valley company, I had thought Netflix was at the vanguard of this change. Sure they have to work with the existing media structures, but bit-by-bit, we thought they were chipping away and fighting the good fight on our behalf.

I read about Lilyhammer recently and I got very excited. It is the first original TV series to be co-produced by Netflix and broadcast over their system. Even better it starred the wonderful Steve Van Zandt as a wiseguy going into witness protection in Norway.

I thought we would finally have proof that the new models work. A single TV series available simultaneously worldwide wherever Netflix was available. Two big fingers to the distribution dinosaurs.

It started on NRK on Jan 25th and then Netflix on Feb 6th, so last night I loaded up Netflix on the Wii (Sidenote: Someone in Netflix is paying attention, it now offers Netflix or Netflix Kids Only when you launch it. Nice one).

But to my horror Lilyhammer was not listed. WTF?

Yup, they are only showing a Norwegian show in Netflix US/Canada/SouthAmerica. A quick bit of Googling reveals the probable reason why. They have sold the rights to BBC4. Or BBC FØUR as some wag has named it due to The Killing and Borgen.

Jesus wept.

This is, by all accounts, a really great new TV series, which could have been the flagship for Netflix in new territories. It would show that they are about a lot more than old episodes of Fawlty Towers. And what do they do? They let the BBC get their mitts on it.

What next? They let RTE buy it in Ireland and then they don’t broadcast it just so they can shaft TV3? As they so love to do.

Netflix should have paid whatever it took to get all the rights to that show outside of Norway. It is staggering incompetence that they didn’t do so. Rupert must be laughing his ass off at their cack-handed bungling.

As I said last night when I heard about it, we all know that BBC4 isn’t where most people in UK/Ireland will be getting their copy of Lilyhammer.

At the end of the 30 day trial, I fully intended to subscribe to Netflix. It wasn’t just about access to lots of slightly aged but still good content, it was to support the principle of the service too. Now I’m not so sure.

We have to watch the Netflix UK Twitter account broadcasting fake interest about 40 year old TV shows:

Whilst we watch the Netflix US account talking about a show they helped pay for but won’t show us:

Who runs PR and Comms in Netflix? Have you heard of the internet?

Unfortunately, this is the OTT image that popped into my head last night when thinking about Netflix. I hope I’m wrong.