March 29, 2004

Commercial MythTV Box

An Australian company is selling pre-built MythTV-based PVRs for 1,799 AUD (~$1,345.50 USD) (via Boing Boing)

Although the price is roughly twice what it cost me to build my own MythTV box, I think this is a good trend.

There’s some excellent threads regarding this box on /. and the Myth-Users mailing list.

March 26, 2004

Missing: Silver 2000 Volkswagen Passat

So this morning I’m out walking my dog before I head off to work, chatting with my neighbor about the NCAA games at the Meadowlands the night before when I noticed that my car was missing from our driveway!

WTF!!!! It’s gone! Stolen while we slept during the night!

Called the police, insurance company, etc… Ugh! Frustrating!

However, if you happen to be in vicinity of West Orange, NJ and see a silver 2000 Volkswagen Passat with a black Thule roof rack, let me know, because apparently the driver “borrowed” it sometime early this morning without my consent.

March 24, 2004

Open Source Movies

I just read via Boing Boing that the copyright on the original Night of the Living Dead movie has expired and the entire film is available online for download via Archive.org! (Brewster Kahle, I’ll say it again, you rock!)

Incidentally, not only does the Internet Archive have a huge collection of Public Domain movies, it also has what appears to be a growing compilation of Open Source movies (and I don’t think they are talking about code)

March 23, 2004

ERP All Over Again

After taking week off to spend with the family I’m getting back into the swing of things and stealing some time to blog.

To motivate myself this morning I read an out of the ordinary article in Info World regarding how ERP implementations are coming back into favor (again).

The topic of the article is of particular interest to me because I’m in midst of an implementation of PeopleSoft 8.4 and seeing many of the themes of this article played out in real-time.

March 11, 2004

Gunning for Google Below the Radar

Stefanie Olsen of CNET News.com pulls together a good overview of the start-ups targeting Google’s dominance.

Some quotes from the article:

“…Google also faces Lilliputian threats from a fast-growing group of start-ups that hope to replicate its own meteoric rise from unknown upstart to Internet powerbroker….

At the top of the list are companies like Quigo and Industry Brains that aim to improve on search engine advertising techniques. A second group, including Mooter, Eurekster and Dipsie, are advancing ways for people to get personalized query results, something that both Google and Yahoo also are hoping to perfect. Others are developing search tools tailored to specific localities as well as visualization features to assist in better targeting search results around specific topics.”

March 10, 2004

WinMyth: MythTV Front End for Windows

I’ve got to try WinMyth on my Laptop. It’s simply a .Net-based Windows front end for MythTV.

And now with spring approaching, we can watch our Stevo outside!

However, I suppose I could simply re-boot with KnoppMyth, but since I run XP as my primary OS on my laptop, I’m hoping it will be simpler with WinMyth.

Note: WinMyth requires the dsMyth, which contains the DirectShow filters that enables playback of MythTV .nuv files on windows. (Also very cool!)

March 9, 2004

Personal Search Synergies

After the excitement of the last week, I’m finally catching up on work and subsequently blogging.

In particular last night I had a few minutes to check out one of the latest Desktop/Personal Search applications.

Specifically, Lookout Soft’s email search add-on for Outlook, which seems like a great tool.

In limited tests I found Lookout’s search accurate and fast (once the initial indexing was completed). In general I think Lookout and similar products such as X1 are immensely useful.

March 3, 2004

Nathaniel Delett Hatch

The last few days have been an amazing series of sleepless nights filled with dirty diapers and emotional highs that I suppose can best be appreciated as the right of passage for parenting.

On that note, please join Catherine and me in welcoming our son Nathaniel Delett Hatch to the world!

Mother and son are doing well. Pinto is very happy with his new pack member.

Update: More pictures here, with a RSS feed of course

February 26, 2004

Thumbnails and Archives

Another new search engine player ZapMeta, which has page thumbnails as well direct links to older versions of a link via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine

February 25, 2004

MythTV Mailing List Archive with RSS Feeds

I was just looking for an RSS feed for the mythtv-users mailing list and I stumbled across David Jeske post regarding an “experimental archive browse/search software” that he co-developed with Brandon Long.

In addition to search and threaded views of posts, their tool also includes RSS feeds in many flavors … although the feeds only include summaries and there’s no Atom feed yet, but suffice it to say, I like this trend.