Matt's Tech Blog

1 week using the iPad

I finally caved to the pressure of the latest and greatest of what technology has to offer and purchased an iPad. I have had it for about 5 days and here are my thoughts on it thus far.

The screen is a dream to look at. I found that after using for some time and then having to look at my iPhone screen that you miss the large screen immediately. Pictures and videos look terrific and browsing the web is simply a breeze. Unless of course you go to a web site that has flash or java in which case it’s difficult to use with those sites. Given that apple has sold millions of iPads and will probably sell millions more maybe website developers will start abandoning flash and java overtime – only time will tell.

The iPad definitely won’t replace me netbook at this point in time. Whilst I would prefer to use one integrated device for everything, there are just too many holes that a full windows OS covers. Eg. I run hubb networks software for stock information. This is written for windows and definitely will not run on an iPad. However given time maybe future apps will catch up and I can find an alternative. I also can’t plug USB devices into the iPad, though apparently there is an adapter for plugging in camera’s available. At the moment there is just too many things I rely upon that run on windows in order to make a complete move away from it – but maybe my view change over time.

I discovered the kids absolutely love the iPad. My niece used it to play a Thomas the Tank Engine app on weekend and she could not get enough of it. The interesting thing is that nobody real taught her how to use it. She was able to immediately understand that it all worked through touch. This shows just how versatile the touch interface really is and just how simple it is to use. However I couldn’t or wouldn’t leave the iPad alone with a child as I don’t think it’s tough enough to cope with the beatings that kids could give it. Way too expensive as a toy too. Perhaps we will see adaptions for young children in the future.

The keyboard is okay. Whilst a normal keyboard might have more tactile feedback I have noticed that you do learn to adapt to a touch screen keyboard quite quickly. In fact this article was written using the iPad through the word-press app and I think my typing is just as good as it is on normal keyboard. I have the official apple iPad case which does enable me to put the iPad on a lean and this does make typing easier.

I discovered that when I first setup my iPad that iTunes just put all of my apps that I have installed on my iphone straight unto the iPad. This was a little annoying as there are heaps of apps that didn’t really want on my iPad to begin with. However this has helped me to be able to assess applications on the iPad that would probably not have considered otherwise. I found there Serena number of apps that have the capability to run on iPad and iPhone and take advantage of the larger screen. Eg. Wordpress, IMDB, Amazon.com and goggle. I have discovered some apps have specific Ipad version which is a little annoying as I had to uninstall the iPhone version and reinstall the iPad version. Eg. eBay, shazam, backgrounds and bloomberg. But there is still a heap of apps that seem to only have iPhone versions. Eg. Facebook, pay pal and Skype. These iPhone apps still run but they don’t take advantage of the larger screen and iPad capabilties. I’m hoping these will eventually have iPad specific apps in the near future too.

Reading magazines on the iPad is just like reading the real thing only better. I have the zinio app installed and I’ve subscribe to Digital camera World. This magazine usually costs me $16 Australian to buy and is 1-2 months behind by the time I receive it from the UK. Now it costs me $6 and I can get it on my iPad straight away. This is a full color magazine and it read exactly the same as the paper version. Up until now this has only been a dream and reading it off a monitor didn’t quite do it for me.

I will post more as I keep experiencing new things on my iPad.

restart mythfrontend using your remote control and irexec

mythfrontend sometimes freezes on me. So I configured a button on my remote control to enable me to kill mythfrontend and restart it. This is really useful especially if you don’t have a keyboard and mouse plugged into your machine all the time or if you just want to make it all wife friendly. Here’s how I did it on my Fedora Core 12 mythtv frontend.

First of all – I’m assuming you already have your remote control working under lircd.

Second of all I used this guide to get me started –> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Setting_A_Button_On_Your_Remote_To_Restart_mythfrontend

But I found it didn’t quite work for me, so I modified it a little.

First I created the script similar to the guide above in my mythtv user local bin directory (in my case /home/mythtv/bin/) and called it runmythfrontend.sh
#!/bin/bash
# script to restart mythfrontend
for x in `ps -C mythfrontend | grep -v PID` end; do
test $x != 'mythfrontend' && continue
RUNNING=1;
done
if [ $RUNNING = 1 ]; then
`killall mythfrontend`
else
`mythfrontend &`
fi

Next I created an entry in my .lircrc file to run irexec. irexec is used to run programs when a particular button is pressed on your remote – in my case I wanted the Power button on my remote to run the script above when pressed – this is defined in the .lircrc file and in my case it is stored under /home/mythtv/.lircrc – yours might be somewhere esle depending on your setup. Go here to read more about irexec –> http://www.lirc.org/html/irexec.html

begin
prog = irexec
remote = mceusb
button = Power
config = /home/mythtv/bin/runmythfrontend.sh &
end

Now you need to setup your session to run up irexec when you log in or the server starts up. This is done whilst logged into the user you run mythfrontend as. In my case I have gnome installed so I just go to “System” –> “Perferences” –> “Startup Applications” on the gnome display. You should get something like this (mine is a little cut-off):

Press “Add” and fill in the name as “irexec” or anything you want really; command as “/usr/local/bin/irexec -d /home/mythtv/.lircrc”; put in a comment if you like or not; then press “Add”. This should now startup irexec when your session starts up.

I suggest you now give your machine a reboot and test it – you might want to check whether your mythbackend is recording anything before you reboot otherwise you will interrupt your recordings. Also if you haven’t already, your might find it easier to setup Fedora to auto login at startup - I’ve written a guide here.

Once rebooted you should be able to press the power button on your remote once to kill mythfrontend and again to start it back up again. That’s it. I welcome comments, feedback and suggestions to make this better or easier.

Auto Login on Fedora Core 12

I previously posted details on how to setup Fedora Core 9/10/11 for auto login. Well I’ve recently downloaded and install Fedora Core 12 on my mythtv server and it still works. Here’s how to do it:

Edit /etc/gdm/custom.conf and add this to the file. You could use gedit or vi whatever suits you, but you need to do it as root.
[daemon]
TimedLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=username
TimedLogin=username
TimedLoginDelay=0

Obviously you would replace “username” above with the actually “username” you wish to login automatically.

Now reboot and test it!

Disabling outlook plugins/add-ins

I recently has a problem with an Outlook plugin (or add-in) which caused outlook to crash. I couldn’t for the life of me uninstall the stupid thing. But I did manage to disable the add-in by doing the following:

1. Quit Outlook.
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\
   You should be able to see all the addins for outlook. Just find the one you want.
4. Right-click LoadBehavior, and then click Modify.
5. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
6. Quit Registry Editor.
7. Start Outlook and the addin shouldn’t load.

It might be a good idea to take a back of your registry or make a system restore point before doing this – just in case you make a mistake or something goes wrong.

mythtv 0.22 released – finally

Mythtv 0.22 frontend screen shot

In case you didn’t here, mythtv 0.22 has finally been released. I’ve been waiting more than 1 year for it to be released! Check it out now http://www.mythtv.org