tkh’s blog

TV capture card

Over the last weekend, I installed the TV capture card in the server machine and set up the driver under Linux, and now it’s mostly working fine. I also set up MythTV so that I can record TV programs. I need to set up the remort control and the framebuffer on TV out, but until then I just watch TV programs on my Linux box using MPlayer.

North Korea

The following is an excerpt from a NY Times article on North Korea:

Conservative Japanese increasingly say Mr. Koizumi should call the bluff of what they say is a bankrupt state that routinely hides behind scary bluster.

“At first, we should make economic sanctions,” Shintaro Ishihara, Tokyo’s conservative governor said in an interview this afternoon, just before North Korea’s nuclear weapons vow was made public.

“At the second stage, let them bomb Japan with that nasty missile,” Mr. Ishihara taunted with sarcasm in his voice as he spoke in his office, in Tokyo’s tallest building. “Their missile cannot load a nuclear warhead.” Asked what Japan would do in response to a missile attack, Mr. Ishihara merely smiled.

Ishihara said exactly what I have been insisting on to remove North Korea threats. His words may sound dangerous, but I think there is no way to deal with North Korea other than to take a very strong action.

PVR

After a week of searching for a good TV capture card, I ordered Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 350 today at amazon.com. It has hardware MPEG2 encoder/decoder, and it seems to be well supported under Linux. The primary reason to buy this is to copy VHS tapes to DVD, but I also plan to install MythTV to get rid of video tapes.

Nerd Quiz

Your nerdiness is: All hail the monstrous nerd. You are by far the SUPREME NERD GOD!!!

Hang up

My server machine got hung up at 5am yesterday morning. Before it went a completely frozen state, I noticed that the IMAP server was not respond. I opened a message in Thunderbird, and it appeared. Then I opened another message, but this time the contents didn’t appear. I tried to login via SSH, but the server didn’t respond. Neither did ping. I also tried to login directly using the keyboard attached to the server, but it seemed to be not responding (I don’t have a monitor for this machine). So I had to press the reset switch. I looked into the log files, but there is no single suspicious entry. It has been working fine since then, but I really need to find what went wrong.

Google Maps

I tried Google Maps to navigate around the town. It’s very easy and comfortable to navigate the map with mouse dragging, but sometimes the system fails to load some square fragments. I also found that there is no scale on the map. As it is very easy to zoom up and down the map, it should show scales. I’m sure they will have been fixed by the time Google Maps will be released. Anyway, it’s a very impressive map service.

Doom 3

I bought a Doom 3 Expansion pack preorder today. It’s just 10 bucks and came with a T-shirt. I need to wait for the official release date which is set to March 8th, but it’s a really good deal.