hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1400.txt

Episode: 1400
Title: HPR1400: How We Use Linux
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1400/hpr1400.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 00:55:02

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Looks like I have some fun?
Now with a 4x4
Hello everyone and welcome to HPR. This is Kay Wisher and Honki Magoo again. We're coming
to you on a mumble and we're going to do a part two from our first episode. Tonight's
topic is going to be how we use Linux. How are you doing tonight, Honki? Doing really
well. I just enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving meal. Same here and we're doing this show
the day after Thanksgiving on Friday evening and I had my second round of Thanksgiving
tonight for dinner so you can always count on the leftovers. It's always good the second
time around too. And hopefully that trip to family will kick in in the middle of the
show and be able to make it through. True, very true. We'll catch keep an eye on that
if I hear you snoring or I'll know to give you a little poke. What if you do a little
horn over this thing? I'm not sure. I think my son has one of those air horns. I can fire
up if we need it. I want you to wake up the house. Well tonight or on this episode we're
going to kind of give a brief overview of what we use Linux for our own homes, our
own setups and the first topic of discussion would be a basic file server. I have actually
I have to some of our servers running on my home network. One is running on a Zubuntu
install which basically has all my music and all our families digital pictures stored
on and it allows multiple access to all my family members and we've got quite a bit
of digital pictures. I've got quite a bit of ripped music on the other machine is where
I keep the video, my personal home videos and my ripped DVD content because that system
happens to be my myth TV system that's connected to my TV. So I like I've got two actually
somba and NF servers running on both machines. It's serving somba because I've got windows
PCs and I use the NFS part for for my Linux Linux. I just kind of like NFS better than
somba for Linux Linux. It's a little bit easier to set up. How do you how's your setup
honky? Well mine is just set up for mine is set up so it's attached to a 1.5 giga terabyte
external USB drive and I have it set up just basically to share everything. The only thing
I mean I have I have everything on there for the most part. I keep my wife keeps all of
her pictures on a thumb drive and I try to do any chance that I can get just plug that
thing in and back it up as much as I can as you know knowing my luck. One of those days
that thing is going to either break or fall apart or get lost or something's going to
happen to it. I want some sort of a backup of it and there's been several times when
I've had to recover my wife's laptop either from me screwing it up or just from windows
being windows. So I've had to go in there and I've taken all of her MP3s and iTunes stuff
and I have probably actually I could probably go in there delete it delete a bunch of that
stuff because I have probably about two full complete libraries of that backed up on there.
And yeah I have it somba shared just for everything anything that can go to it. Yeah real
quick now with with mid TV on the client side can you go on to like the music as well.
But I know there are some people who want to use how well I just have the play music over
their television and stuff like that. So it can go to both servers. Yes from from my auxiliary
or my main file server with houses that stores on my music I have a share link to the main
system the main myth TV system that's connected to my TV and home stereo. So anytime I want
to play my music over my home stereo I can just usually I think myth TV has a built-in
music player but it's kind of clunky so I just use I think it's a rhythm box that came
and sold on that it's running Zubone 2. I like the Zubone 2 for the myth TV part because
it's easy to get set up and configured so that's why I run that on both those systems
and so and then like if we're not watching if my wife's at home during the day and she's
not watching TV she I use I can you remember the app it's a front-end for Pandora I think
it's called PETA that sounds familiar. I'm not sure but the only time I've ever used Pandora
is on my phone. But it's in the repos of you know in the Ubuntu repositories and if you
got a Pandora account you can sign into this app with your account credentials and it pulls
in all your stations you have set up you know through the website and you can and you don't
get all the commercials like if you have it playing through the website so it's a really
nice little app. Awesome. Now are you running X on your servers?
The two file servers yes because there's no way to set both these servers are actually
myth TV servers also and there's no way to set up myth TV without a GUI unfortunately.
Oh yeah there's there's no other way to go in there at all there's no no. Now it the setup
the setup is all GUI based. Now I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure I'm sure I would have
discovered it by now that if you could do it all command line but I'm pretty sure you cannot
so you have to have and on the main system that actually broadcasts live TV that's running an
X server if you know to get the display out of it of course and then it's and it has to you
you don't have to but I run a video card because in video offloads a lot of the video processing
to the GPU instead of your CPU so that's so yeah you have to have X installed and have a GUI well
on a myth TV system now can you set up what you're going to record off of the client or do you
have to go into the the server side to set up some of the recordings and stuff well you can either
do it from the graphical you know the the front end on the TV you know you can use your remote and
go in and and schedule recordings but the easiest way that I've found to do it is it's got actually
comes with doesn't come with you install a a web server that has its own myth TV interface
and I can go in there and look at the channel guide and do all my TV scheduling and through that
you know from any computer in the house so it makes it a little bit easier to to set up all your
recordings and stuff oh there you go that's easy now if you ever opened up important
scheduled some stuff from I don't know outside the house somewhere yeah I have done it in the past
them it's not I don't do it anymore because I'm opening I think I got other stuff on report 80 but
I mean I could you know like a change of default port if I really wanted to but I don't you know
I don't really have a need for it anymore when I first started using I thought it was neat to
remote down and and show everybody hey look here's my recording schedules and blah blah blah but
it's it's it's not that important to me anymore where I need to do that remotely right and it's
always it's only like every once in a while that you ever actually need that and you know if you
didn't have the port open for something you really need then might as well have it open for what
you really need now there is I don't know if you know who Dan Frey is from the tilt program he
and another guy I think right we have written a Android app for myth TV and I think you can
actually set that up to where you can access your stuff externally and but yet that you know
that's going to require a port to be open to your router but you can actually do it over your
Android or I don't think no they don't have an iPhone that that's all Android so you can actually
install this Android app to get access to your myth TV system from you know anywhere outside of
your network also now have you played with that at all um I did once and like I say I don't really
have a need for that to have that kind of access to it it's it's the shows I watch I mean the
the scheduling goes out two weeks so I mean if I hear about a show coming up I really don't have
an immediate need to get to it until I get home so I must not really it's just not a big you
know one of the top priorities on my list of things I need to have access to from outside my
home now is it just a scheduler or can you watch things from your myth TV on it from what I've
heard you can actually you know you can actually stream off of your from you can stream your
recordings now don't know about live TV but I know you can stream your recordings through your
Android device that's pretty cool I mean I can wish I still had the the unlimited data
on Verizon because on my lunch hour I used to you know start up a show and shows that run like an
hour long you know actually would take all the commercials out and then it's you know 45 minutes
and you know that's pretty much my whole lunch hour and I couldn't watch some show on Netflix and
but you know now with the restrictions on my data I'm not doing that anymore but that was always
fun to do if I had that ability I might you know try it um if you know if if you if you if you like
recording TV for later you know for later viewing like I do I don't I don't I don't ever watch live
TV anymore because of the myth TV it's it's just so much convenient more convenient for me to watch it
when I want to instead of scheduling it you know sit down and especially to watch have to watch
commercials it is commercials drove me nuts so and meth TV auto flags commercials and skips
commercials while you're watching your recording so I hardly ever have to the you know see every
any commercials anymore well I've been running a TVO for um sometime now and about the only
I think about the only good thing about the TVO is the Netflix app but I can probably get that off
my uh DVD player and I don't know it's it's not a bad idea and I'm probably well at some point
should sit down and look at and see if it's worth it but I don't know at the same time I keep on
going back and forth in the same idea of trying to cut the court as well but I'm feeling that's
going to cost some stake in the house with some things that won't play right and or won't look
as good or won't have all the shows I don't know I I gotta sit down and look at everything yeah it
depends on you know how you're getting you know how are you getting your TV now is it cable or is
it over the air it's cable say cables uh as a different beast um just uh got a letter in the mail
from Comcast as my provider and they have been they have kept their local channels unencrypted
which means I can use a standard store bought tuner and it will uh pick up those unencrypted
local channels and I was using those to record off of well they're starting December 12th they're
going to start encrypting everything which means they're forcing you to rent one of their devices
to do the unencryption so when I heard heard this let you know got this letter and start thinking
you know what am I going to do with because I was using using that part of their feed the unencrypted
stuff for local channels and I purchased a I mean network attached tuner device this week off of
eBay for $62 it's got two tuners in it and you just you don't even have to open up your computer
you just plug your cable into it and I'm connecting it to an antenna instead of the cable
and you just connect your coax to it connect it to your network connect the power to it
and go into myth tv and you add the tuners and I had it all set up today I got it today and
within an hour you know I had it all set up and configured and it's recording some shows right
now oh very nice but I also since I still do have cable because my wife likes it because she
likes some of the premium channels wait I mean we don't we don't subscribe to HBO or in that type
of premium channels but we get the extra the pretty much get all the digital channels she likes fox
news and some other stations that she can't live without the the same company that makes us
uh network tuner it's called silicon dust is the name of the company they make a cable card
version of this which I have so I have two of these network tuners now one of them has a cable
card in it so that I can get the it'll do the decrypting of the all the stations and I can reach
I can still record off of those I just can't get the HP you know the movie you know the paid
movie channels and stuff like that so you able to set up a package with Comcast where you have
some of the digital other packages but none of the local channels no I mean they've got different
tiers of you know they got their basic cable which you get like you know through channel two through
60 years 70 or something like that then you pay for the next package and you get a little bit more
in the name I mean it it's got different tiers and this device this uh that takes their
I rent their I rent this cable card from them which I don't have to use their set top box anymore
and this this cable card is really cheap to rent I mean it's like two or three bucks a month
and it does all the decrypting and it's whatever package I have it comes into this
this tuner box I'm able to view live or record from very cool I actually think I have it
should they had to put a a tuner card into my uh Tivo I wonder if I can take that out and start playing
with it yeah yeah I mean if you can if you can if you can take it if it's one of the PCI device
SM no I'm not exactly sure they they said they had to send a tech out to install the thing and
I really didn't see when he put it in but I can always pull that box around and take a look
do you do you have a cable card for it for for your cable TV system I want to say uh yes
and I'm not that familiar with Tivos but if it doesn't plug directly into that tuner that
just plugs into the box you know somewhere else you probably you may or may not be able to use
that tuner in another you know regular PC I'm not sure right that's probably true oh well
but if it's if it is a uh what's known as ATCS ATSC tuner which is what you can tune in the
the free digital channels over the air and it does have Linux support for it and it's a PCI
device you can plug it into any computer and and pick up free digital channels you know through
an antenna that said I'm taking apart tomorrow I hardly doubt that I hardly doubt that
that thing will work but I don't know I mean it's it's I know that I've heard that Tivos do run
a version of Linux is that correct I believe so I've never actually been able to dive into it
I just heard that it's pretty locked down I have like one of the older boxes is like a Tivo 2
or something like that that's just been sitting down here that I never had a chance to do anything
with I figured at the very least maybe I'd be able to you know see if I can wipe out the hard drive
on it and try to install something else on it and hopefully I can find a kernel that would work
with it but I've never got around to doing it yeah it's the the whole TV tuner um and Linux it is
it's kind of when I first started in it and it's been years I think it was uh the first OS I used
with it when I've built my first the first well it's my still the same box I'm I'm using
ment5 was what the current version was when I first set up MFTV such shows how long I've been
involved with MFTV uh it was kind of uh it was kind of hard to set up if you had internal tuners
because you had to make sure you had the firmware was if it was not you know supported in the
kernel then you had to go out and find the firmware which the cards I purchased were not
included in the kernels I you know I had to go out and find the firmware form and you had to put
the firmware in the correct place and you know on the in the file system and and I still have to
do that too when I reset it if I wipe the box and start over um but it's now with these net with
these network attached tuners it's so simple you don't even have to do any of that you just plug
a man and and go through to set up you don't have to do a whole lot of upfront work with them
well that's good I that's probably one of the things that kind of keep me from it uh it's just
the amount of time I think it's gonna take just uh get it all set up but it's one of those things
that I've always wanted to but for right now I have the uh the tvo installed and that's just been
working easy um yeah and I've been I've been pretty happy with it I mean it's not the the greatest
thing out there but like I said I can get the Netflix on it uh with Comcast the uh Comcast on the
man is just gotten within like the last year or so is now supported with tvo so that's been that's
been actually really nice um yeah I mean it's it's a nice little system but you know it's just
it's an extra bill every month and if I can kind of take that extra bill away every little bit
helps nowadays you know so is there a is there a fee for using the tvo not not counting your
Comcast subscriptions yeah um and don't ask me I want to say it's like 10 15 bucks a month something
like that I don't remember anymore it's been a while since I looked now with the myth tv system if
you want to get your tv programming there as a there's a service you pay for yearly it's up to
when I first started it was $20 a year to get uh the scheduling um now it's gone up to $25 a year
but uh that's barely very you know that's insignificant and when you're trying to cut services
yeah $25 a year ain't bad so we want to move on to uh uh move away for a few minutes from the uh
from the media server side on over to uh uh more of the let's go with uh own cloud uh I wrote
an own cloud server on um my home server mostly for the purposes of almost the same thing as
Samba um I think it's it's worked out great for um for file sharing but it's it's mostly for
file sharing off to my network there are times when it seems like it's just a hog on my system
because it's it doesn't I don't know I don't use it as often sometimes and then all of a sudden
there'll just be a need for it where I need I'm off my uh I'm off my home network and I need
stuff off there or I need to share some files with somebody and a lot of times it's just a giant
pain to try to buy uh share big files with people that this just makes it so much easier that you
know uh just all you have to do is just set up a little share thing and then you email that little
share thing with somebody and they just go to it it goes straight to the um this one little page
that has the link up at the top it says uh this has been shared with you and they click on that
and it starts downloading it's a beautiful little thing that and it's got a uh a nice little
calendar app which um I you know I think it's cal dev that uh it runs off of which I wish
there was it ran off of something else that was a little bit more flexible because I tried to find
a application on my phone that ran with cal dev and I believe I found like maybe one that was
like a paid one but that was really about it other than that I've been very happy with it I mean
I but about it's a little bit sluggish and uh I know you and I have talked about this in the past
about trying to get it so it's trying to but number one get it to work on a Raspberry Pi
but uh number two just try to get it so it's a little bit more snappier because I know I know
I've had problems where I've just been set there and watched it load and load and load on a page
but I've been very happy with it and I know you uh you've been running an old cloud as well what do
your uh what your opinions on it? I uh I I use it uh probably not as much as you do now um we were
using it a while back as a collaborative tool for a podcast we were involved with um that worked
out real well um I find it I find the same thing it's it's it's sluggish at times but uh it's
it's very similar to having your own drop box is what I like about it it's free um in fact what
I'm doing now with mine is I've installed the own cloud client on one of my PCs at the like
well it's the garage my garage server main file server and I have it I've just when I installed
drop box I just set drop box to have you have you have you used the own cloud client on any of your
PCs? I have not I've only used the uh the website well that the own cloud client is very the whole
own cloud server and client is very I mean it's x and behaves the same way as drop box does you
set up this client you put in the uh address to your own cloud server and your credential names
and whatever and it sets up a an own cloud folder in your home directory and any files you put
in there it just it automatically uploads them and keeps them synced to the server so what I've
done on this one on the server that stays on all the time is I've just when I installed I installed
the own cloud client first and then installed drop box and I just move my you can tell the in the
own cloud or the drop box client to where you want to put your drop box fuller so I just put it
inside the own cloud folder so that's continually getting synced to my own clouds or just in case
you know drop box is a free service you know what they say about free services one day they're
gonna go away maybe always possible and then with if I like you say anytime you got a file you want
to share with somebody it's real simple to the right click and and send somebody an email link
just like you can in drop box um I like the cat like you say the calendar is nice it's not as full
featured as what like you said not as lucky you'd want it to be but it's it's it's very useful um
you can uh set up if you set up that calendar and you can get the link for it you can actually
uh in any calendar application like uh on thunderbird has a lightning add-on it's a calendar big
color calendar say it for me honky calendar it's a calendar calendaring app add-on for thunderbird and
you can put that link in there from your own cloud server and it will stay you know synchro guys
with thunderbird if each and if you change it to calendar and thunderbird it'll link it up and
it'll sync it up to your own cloud server also so it works you know by directionally so I mean
it's it's got its purposes so if you don't like the the calendaring interface of the own cloud
interface you know the webgoede you can find a calendar application to link to it that has maybe
more features and well and it actually also has the ability to put in pictures to be able to view
pictures on it and stuff like that and that's another one of the things that either I could
get a do a better I do I know I have to go in there and do a much better job of organizing my
pictures because it'll show like like a big screen of all of the photos and do it and show like
little samples of them and you can do like a little slide show in there with them but it's
number one I got to organize them better so it's not loading up so many things at one time but
it's also I think just because own cloud is a little bit slow and I mean if if I can get that to
work a little bit better and we were talking about own cloud by default runs off of well yeah by
default runs off of a Apache server and we had looked at the idea of running on an engine next
and I think one of these days I'm going to probably throw engine next onto this thing as well and
see if I can just link own cloud up to it just to see if I can get it running a little bit snappier
just it it has so much potential for so many cool things like there's also add-ons for like
music player and I want to say for different type of video files there's also an add-on that you
watch videos through it and stuff there's lots of cool add-ons and from what I've heard that
they're working on it more and more and more I just I need I need to get it so it's just runs a
little bit smoother and maybe it's my hardware I mean I just need to upgrade my hardware for what
I'm doing yeah I don't know what the answer is whether it's you know like say I'm running if it's
on their their own hardware whether you need you know I don't know you know what what the minimum
requirements are for this whether engine X would help I know on my I just reinstalled own cloud
on on a box we did we did another server I've got but houses the own cloud and instead of putting
my SQL on I put Maria DB but I don't think that I'm pretty sure that that's not going to give me
any preferred I've noticed any performance effort so I think Maria DB is just a fork of my SQL
so it's probably got the same performance I like say I haven't noticed any increases in speed so
I don't know what the answer is to make it a little bit snappier I mean I mean talking when I'm
using the web interface on my local network it's still sluggish yeah I find that so and I and we've
been talking about it back and forth for a while now and I keep on looking for the possibility of
different types of databases and unfortunately not that smart when it comes to databases but they
I was looking at possibly doing the sq light SQL light or whatever that might be a little bit easier
but at the same time it's it said something about only being able to have one user which for me
wouldn't be that big of a deal because normally you know I'm the only guy who uses it for the most
part so it wouldn't that would I don't think that would matter but really I'm willing to try
anything at this point but I just got to get around to probably wiping it out and starting over
again or doing it on another box so do you do you have other accounts on areas just you and you
by yourself it's just me by myself I mean I've added other accounts before like a friend of mine was
trying to do a her husband's birthday was coming up and she wanted I was gonna do a video montage
to her husband type of a deal for his birthday and she was just uploading I had set up an account
so she can just sit there and upload a bunch of um a bunch of movies on two little like five
second videos that she took with her phone and whatever music she wanted to put on it and a bunch
of pictures and stuff so I had to set up an account for that and I'd set up like a very general
guest account that I wanted it for like my mother my family to be able to go on to and see pictures
of my daughter and that was that that was the big thing with me is just trying to just show them how
to we use that and show show the show them that site and it just it took forever to load up any of
the pictures and stuff and that's where I kind of went you know maybe I need to do a much better
job of organizing this stuff so it doesn't take you know three hours just to load up the page
and then you know you just to hit on one picture and all of a sudden it just sit there and lags
forever to load up that picture and then it lags forever to go back to the giant thing of thumbnails
or you know just a little bit snappier and maybe I maybe that's not right the right tool for that
and maybe I need to find something else to be able to show off pictures and I don't know but it's
it's a real nice program that just seems like it's almost there you know yeah and they're
continuously making improvements to it um it's always adding features and um now what what type of
OS are you running this on a boon two twelve four LTS I just switched mine over to a devian
this same this box that houses this own cloud over to devian and I'm not I'm not I'm not
know that like say I don't notice any speed increases there either so I'm pretty sure it's
you know related to to the internals of bone cloud I just I really I'm really interested in
the next time I have to I didn't have time to do it this time this week to try engine X and see
if that's if that's the bottleneck now how do you install uh own cloud because I know there's
like several different ways to do it um I think I usually just wind up downloading the uh downloading
the file and unzipping it but I know they also have like a recently they I went on there and they
well uh last time I installed they had a like almost like a web based thing to be able to install it
where you just download this one little thing and it's supposed to walk you through it on as long
as you it as long as everything on the on the lamp stack has uh you give it access you can just
kind of walk through the install and it'll set everything up uh through like almost like a little
web GUI type of a thing I haven't tried that feature I know what you're talking about I've seen that
but what I uh what I always do is I just had to repose to Ubuntu or just you know here recently
you know Debbie and it gives you uh I think on their website it gives the uh Linux installers and
it if you follow the other links to uh and it lists all the how to add it to all these you know
the other popular distros but you can just add uh uh with uh add you know add us something to your
source just file to where you can just continually get automatic updates when you do your normal
updates also yeah maybe a version you know like a point version behind what the latest is where
if you just downloaded you know the tar file and and did like you're saying just you know
unzip it into the the VAR WWF folder and went that route but uh I like just doing that through
the through a repo that way it's getting its updates automatically and when you do the
you know do the install it automatically pulls in all the dependencies and everything
see that's probably the best way to go and if you're going from a different repo then uh I'm
gonna have to ask you just send me what uh with uh repo link was because on Ubuntu 1204 it's actually
in uh they're just standard repo I did an advocate install the first time I installed I installed it
but it was like you said it was like but like this time it was like several versions behind and
one of the things that that I liked about it was that I can hook it up to the um to be able to
set up which drive uh it was going to and in the system uh there there was a much easier way
to be able to do it and that didn't come out exactly the way I wanted to but I have uh I told
you how I have the Samba shared um the directory the 1.5 terabyte that that's hooked up to it
and it's Samba shared I wanted to get that set up on um own clouds that's basically just the only
place where I'm going to dump files and uh in that Samba share and to do that in the later versions
was very simple you just go in there and they had like uh it was part of the the whole um the
whole settings page where you just added that directory in there and it was just automatically added
into it while the older versions you had to go into some big file and that drove me absolutely
nuts because I sat there and played with that and got absolutely nowhere so I wound up downloading it
and uh the latest version and installing it that way but if I can get it from a repo it was like
you're saying that that's that's the best way to go I mean it'll automatically update I don't think
mine's been updated and forever yeah and then like when you if you do the you know if you do the
get the tar file and and on zip it then you then you have to can do the you know make sure you
keep it updated yourself if you want to get you know when the next release comes out you have to
kind of jump through some hopes to get the new release and but on the on cloud the main on cloud
dot org site it's where you get to the install or you're talking about there's um there's a link
that has on the main distors and that gives you you know it's got sent us uh devian fedoria open
suits red hat slas yes open suits um and i'm going to if you just click on the link you know
your operating system it gives you instructions on how to add the repose so that you can you know
get the continuous updates cool now I just got to find the time to do it and I think you know
I'm not sure whether you can add that on now if you've done it another way I'm you know
I'm pretty sure you could I don't think it's going to break anything too hard
about the only thing I'm worried about breaking on the system is the uh the uh
some of uh other than that the rest of this can probably go I mean the only other thing I have on
here is the uh what I got here I got well I got the um the plex uh server that I've been playing
around with I had put that on there to um because I wanted to play around with uh
razzplex which is a uh a plex uh client for the raspberry pie that I didn't have much luck playing
around with but um then I I lose the uh plex well now now now that I'm not using it for the
raspberry pie uh what's it called my ps3 has plex and I've been using my ps3 in my living room
because it has uh netflix on it so I'd watch netflix and then I can also go to the plex side and
watch this stuff that I've uh ripped my movies from um and I lose that and uh recently I
installed uh just for the hell of it uh elgg which is a uh it's a uh it's kind of a blogging
uh social media site that I kind of downloaded and wanted to play with for the hell of it and uh
that's a I'm probably gonna wind up wiping that out because I have no reason for it I just
you know one of those things to try and do it just to say that you can try and do it you know
yeah I mean it doesn't hurt anything to try something out and like you say you can always
if it's some type of web you know like runs off of a web server you can pretty much just
you know wipe out that folder it puts under the rear of the www folder and you're you know maybe
delete some configuration files and you can play around the next thing you want to play around with
yeah like I actually installed uh uh the uh my server before I wiped it out I had uh
jungle installed on it which is a content management system and um after playing around with
that for a little while I actually kind of I downloaded a bunch of like dollar books from the
the Kindle store and I was playing and learned a bunch of stuff on how to actually get some stuff
moving on that but after a while I just sat there and went I have absolutely no purpose for a website
so it just sat there and sat there and sat there until I wiped the whole system out and
now I don't have it anymore yeah I mean web development you know websites if you don't
like you say if you don't have a need for if you don't have a business if you don't need to get
your you know your name out there and interact with customers or the public and it's yeah it's
there's really not a whole lot of I mean unless you just want to play around with it on your
you know on your home home network yeah and with the ELGG I was kind of playing around with the idea
in my head um the same idea as I was uh thinking about or talking about a minute ago with the
young cloud uh just as kind of a place where I can set up um all the field to show off all the
pictures and stuff like that and then try to incorporate like maybe a calendar app and have it
as it are for the um the probably just more for the family that the family can you know kind of go
into go on to the sites and um you know they can go in there and get updates on the calendar
and what's going on um you know pictures a lot of pictures and stuff like that but you know
and maybe if I can use the cat get the calendar work get the calendar working for the whole house
so we couldn't you know get my whole house on the one solid calendar but I don't think it's
it's it's I don't think it's going to do what I want it to do so I think I'm just going to wind up
wiping it out what uh popular service do you compare this L2 uh mom we're gonna have to go with
it's I don't know lgt is is kind of a um it's it's a social media blogging type it's but it's
it's like regular blogging like you can have like a full like one person can have like a full
blockings a blogging site with like micro blogging and with uh I actually installed a uh chat service
to it that's almost like a like a little IRC system um yeah I it's yeah that's pretty much it
and I was thinking about this the other day and I'm just gonna uh I'm just gonna throw this out
there if you think about it what's the difference between a blogging a blogging social media site
and a forum the only thing I can come up with that the difference is is um one is referenced by
the subject matter the other one is referenced more in the lines of the people true uh I don't do much
blogging um and I don't even participate that much on google plus um I just basically read it um
but yeah I don't I don't have much of a need for blogging or telling people about my daily
goings on exactly and that's you know that's why I'm not on too many social media and I do the
same thing with google plus I just I got it on my phone for the most part and I turn it on and I
sit there and I flick through uh what other people have written and a lot of times there's uh you
know you got to subscribe to the right people and just get uh the good information and go through
that yeah I don't really want to know about people's days and stuff like that either but but that's
kind of like what I was thinking if it's if if you couldn't kind of incorporate the same idea
of of blogging and forums I think it would be an interesting experiment but I don't know I
it would that be one of those projects that sit there and play with and then find absolutely no
use for and then it just gets thrown away anyways I guess if you was going to set it up for you
I mean if you're family and an extended family though it was off you know out of state or whatever
if it if there was a way to where you can set it up to where you can just be a family related
site and I think that would be nice yeah it'd be yeah it might be pretty cool but like I said I
have a feeling it's just not going to do what I wanted to do if I do that I wish I could
search around and see if I can find like a fantasy football plugin for it and uh I don't know
stuff like that that would that be kind of cool my family does does family does a family
a fantasy football that's why now I that's something else I'm not into is the fantasy stuff like that
I just not into like football and sports he just uh kind of the fantasy oh I like sports so I
mean I like watching uh my local teams here uh professional you know the NBA and NFL um
and the college like college sports too I love college football and basketball but uh as far as
doing uh what I'm afraid of is if I tried doing a fantasy league of some sort of get hurt
and it's like gaming that's why I never started gaming I think I'd give I'd just go whole hog
and to become a hermit well you know I don't know I've uh I've been doing it for well this is my
second year doing it and I find that the only by the only thing I do is um the most of the week
I just kind of sit down I take like one day where I sit down and look at my team I go okay
who's still playing who's who's uh injured and then I go through and they do like a projected
points and I go all right and I kind of uh stack my list and uh who I think is going to be best with
the projected points and then I just kind of walk away from it and then like every Sunday good
lord every Sunday I'm looking at it like every couple of minutes just to see who uh you know who's
getting me points who's not getting me points but besides that I did you know it just kind of sits
there that's the that's the that's the one thing about footballs you have pretty much like
besides now when they're doing the the Thursday night games and you know the Mondays and Thursdays
you're pretty much got that Sunday and that's the only time that you really got to pay attention
to football for the NFL least right now it's not yeah you don't have as many games going on
it was like a baseball or football or basketball right that's my opinion that's one of the downsides
to those uh sports is I mean I'm I love hockey but I can have a hard time watching a regular season
game of hockey just because it takes so long for the season to go by and you know if you the one
thing with football is you lose one game and it's it's completely detrimental to the entire season
you lose one game of hockey and it's not that big of a deal and I think we've went completely
off the rails from uh our uh talking about our servers yes um another another server type
application I run on and this is only because I was a big um google reader user I for my RSS
feeds do you use any type of RSS to get into RSS feeds of any type the only ones I do is for my
pod catching and I only do my pod catching on my phone for the most part and right now I'm using
an app called Beyond Pod which I'm not terribly happy with but I'm just kind of I've you hit that
point where you have everything loaded into it and you're just like yeah whatever and that yeah I've
I've used it a little bit for um kept it the for like uh uh uh uh uh some news but not by much
I'm not big on news I don't know yeah I I only had maybe 12 feeds that I watched and they were
all technology related just to keep up on what's going on you know with technology news and there
are some some Linux feeds that you can get that are real interesting um but anyway I was a like
say Google reader was a free service and like some you know free services they took that away
and so I was I'd started researching or and hearing about all these you know Google reader
replacements that were coming around and there's this free project it's called Tiny Tiny RSS
and it's it's kind of like own cloud that you add a repo on you know Ubuntu or a devian or
you know whichever distro of a machine you're running and it's basically a web server and you
uh just go through a quick setup you know through a web GUI once you log in once the the
software is installed you just log into it through a web browser and you can import feeds from
another you know if you get there's a standard XML format that you can that I that I was able to
get out of my Google you know from my Google account so I was able to import that into it and
I've got it opened up to the outside so I can access it from work when I want to and
it works really nice it's it's the nice little nice little server if you're if you're into
you know RSS feeds if it's it's it's very nice little very nice little application very
cool so you're able to uh download the podcast to the RSS and then listen to it from
uh out off your site through there or streaming through there I imagine you could if you wanted to
I don't do that I I use a dedicated pod catcher and I don't use the the web this tiny TTRS server
to do my pod catching I just I use a standalone well the dedicated application on my home desk
you know on my desktop system too it goes out lightly with a crumb job and goes out and downloads
on my podcast nightly now when you download your podcast do you pretty much just listen to them on
your computer or do you upload them then to like uh some sort of an MP3 player or like your phone
about once or twice a week I just connect my phone to my computer that that the pod catcher's on
and I just do a arsenic to the phone to the ssena the SD card and just do that once or twice a
week when I'm running low and what's the the pod catcher I get I use is called podget and it's
available in the repos of about doing devian and it's all it's not a gooey program you it's got
two configuration files in it that you go in and configure the way you want it to download your
file you set up one file that gives all your rss feeds for your podcast and the other file is
more for how the program behaves how it you know how often you go out get get the files and you know
it creates you can choose to create a playlist of each time it downloads so I have it creating a
playlist after every night's download it creates a playlist and I like that because I kind of like
to listen to my podcast and chronological order so each day I have a playlist made it's
generated automatically for each night's download so I just load when I arsenic the folder from my
computer to my phone the playlister in that folder and I just look at my player or my android phone
and play the playlist in chronological order so I get all my I don't have to worry about
hearing news it's you know out of order I kind of get a chronological order of any news and
tidbits going on very cool so you just use the standard player on your android phone and
this use and then just have it play the playlist yeah I think it's called the the free player I
use is called rocket player I think it's it was kind of the replacement for the free when
that came through through the android that that's the one on the unit is called rocket player
that's pretty cool now most I mean even before my other droid that the older droid I had in my
first smartphone it does stock Android player with any about any of these media players will do
playlists so even you can take advantage of that all about anything I mean even I mean even a
lot of the first empty players I had with the playlist right so what else you run it well
while you mentioned it we mentioned we were meant to start the show that we were recording on a
mumble server well this murmur well actually murmur is the server portion of mumble a mumble is
the client which is what we're using to talk to each other with but the murmur server is actually
running on a Raspberry Pi I'm here at my house and that's what we're we've connected to
last two episodes and we're actually using that to record the shows that we're putting out for
HDR here very cool and how how do you go about configuring this thing well I've got a nice
we'll have a nice link for the show notes but there's a if you just type in and your google search
how to mumble you'll come to a source forage pay does the first hit I got and it's very simple it's
the murmur server is in Debian and Ubuntu repos you install it you know the usual way I get
and it's got a few basic settings in a config file you know you start the server with you know
the Etsy and that dot the command and your your gold I mean you just do like say a simple text file
configuration and if you open up yeah I have to open up a port out of my router of course to get
for you to come into it but it's you know it's about a 15 minute install and get up and going
and you can be talking to people that's awesome how's there any special way to be able to configure
rooms and stuff like that or can you just do that from a config file if you part of the installation
in the terminal it'll pop up and give you where you have to set up an admin user and if you log
if you connect through the mumble client as that admin user then you can you get extra features
in the mumble interface at you and I both know by you know the mumble client feature then you
can go in there and set up your rooms if you want to or there's an add-on application that's called
mumble dashed Django and it's basically a web GUI interface to your mumble your murmur server
that you can go in and use to configure rooms and user permissions and whatever what have you I
don't I've used it a few times but it's really just as easy to log in to with the mumble client
with that admin account that you set up during install and just configure all the rooms there
it's it's not that difficult to do very cool I always thought about setting one up but then again
I just between I've also just been recording with you and you know between that and the Linux
basics open speak server that that's pretty much what we what most people use yeah the reason
I did my own was because I think one time we were trying I don't know if it's you were present
or not but we were trying to do a podcast and and on you know the open speak the Linux basic
server well you know anybody can just jump into a room we got interrupt and this just kind of
gives what it gives a little privacy if you're doing now not to say that the Linux basic server is
you know crowded and busy all the time I mean probably 99% of time you could go in and record a
show not having problems but it was just that one time that we got interrupted by somebody just
jumped in and started blabbing and so I just I just wanted a little server so like you know if I
needed to talk to somebody in private I just give the information to who I want right that makes
sense I mean there are times where especially on a Friday night just because Friday night is just
open night and if we don't have you know the credentials be able to set up a private room or
something like that then yeah that's it's a big help just to have our own and just on the same
pie I also have an icecast server running now you got to oh I know everybody's probably familiar
with the pie but this just blows me away at what you can do with this little device this is
actually running two server applications the murmur server and icecast which is basically a way
to where you can stream you can broad you can you can you can broadcast a audio stream out to
the internet with it and I first discovered it probably a little more than a year ago you know
last year when the HPR show decided they were going to do a 24 hour they I think they did a 12
hour show the year before that back in 2011 and 12 and then last year they decided to go 24 hour
so I decided to provide some to help out with that and I discovered icecast for
for streaming you know live audio I can be you can play music whatever audio feed is coming out
of your sound card you can actually broadcast to the internet this way and like the murmurs
it's very simple setup there's a link and it will be a link for the show notes how to forge I
just love that side I don't know if you are you familiar with how to forge I think so I don't know
anytime I run into a problem I just do a search and wherever it takes me and I think it's
taking me how to forge several times but I go to wherever it takes me and then just kind of go
through there and see where you know see where I go I kind of hop around right but usually a 90%
of the time if you type in how to with some type of subject for Linux usually you're going to run
into a source forage page or how to forge page and they just it's so useful for setting up services
like this and it like say you go that site and it's like a 15 like it's another 15 minute install
config and you can be pumping your own radio station out to the internet if you'd like as long
as you have an open port you know through your firewall and that's awesome how did you take part
in the last the 24 hour HPR yes I provided I was actually pumping the MP3 feed through mumble
out to an ice cast server I had set up at my work let's keep that on the download because they
don't know about it but I got an ice cast server running off our internet feed there because we
got more bandwidth and plus it was you know during the time of schools out of session so I wasn't
that big and and even even if you had I mean the ice cast the biggest demand on ice cast and
streaming is your bandwidth going up so because you're you're how do I say the people drawing
off of the feed is feeding off your up uplink so if you don't have a very good uplink you're
going to be limited so like we did sometimes going to do it from here at home but I only have like
a four megabit up and with the help of the old cast plan IRC I put out a call to do a test we
had I could only handle like 30 35 connections to through my home internet you know feed before
it would start breaking down so it's all dependent on your upload stream upload your upload speed
so that's why I set one up on a devian server work and so I was pumping the MP3 port we had two
people pumping one one was doing an augfeed and I was doing the MP3 feed so I was pumping it to
the first ice cast or at my work vocation and then we had another and then we had a mirror of each
one of those so we had like two two people with clients just pumping the streams the audio out to
the two main ice cast servers and then they had off of each one of those they had a real ice cast
relay so we had actually four ice cast server running to where it would spread the load and if
one happened to go down you'd have another one for a failure or so it was pretty simple setup really
it only took you know us getting together on IRC you know a few times and the meeting on mumble
maybe wants to get everybody get everybody over ducks in a row and it's we're getting right to
have a meeting tomorrow after the HPR community news on Saturday to meet with whoever's you
going to be providing a server this year so it's it's it's kind of fun to help set up set that
up and be a part of it that's very cool now are you broadcasting or helping broadcast anybody now
well right now I've let I've volunteered my pie streamer by i call it the podcast
the minicast podcast and the Sunday morning Linux podcast are using my pie for their live streaming
so if you go to their websites and get the link for the live stream you're actually connecting to
my Raspberry Pi that we're actually on right now and you can listen to their live broadcast
that's very cool and it I mean it's it like say it's just incredible this little pie and it
it doesn't take much system resources for these two I mean I'm sure we could be doing
I mean right now the one of those podcasts could be streaming right now while we're doing our
are recording here since you know the recording's not being done on the pie it's doing on
her local machine but it wouldn't bog it down because I've watched the load on the pie while
they're streaming to it and they get maybe you know I think the most listeners I've seen it one
time was like 12 and that pie just it doesn't even hardly even know it's going on I mean it's
now I was watching my internet feed through my router and now that was going up but as far as
the load on the pie there was nothing I mean it was just it's just like it wasn't even running it
all I know there was some talk last year about how many people that they were worried about crashing
the the open-speak server with too many people or upping it so that they thought that it can only
hold maybe about 50 at a time would you ever think about how many people it might actually take
the pie could take on this you know I I'm not I think as far as like I say I think as far as
the system and load it's it could handle a hundred people but I think it's going to be my bandwidth
since I'm limited on my home connection I think it would be the bandwidth that would actually bring
it down and not the the you know the overload of the of the system yeah so it's not that hard
where it's off it's just the connections right and like every year when we do this uh
john j newsteader who's the owner and operator of the open speak Linux basic server he just
he has to go in and change shanky ups the number of connections that they can have on that server for
you know that 24 hour period and like it it costing very little money to do that but it's hosted
of course of a you know a dedicated vps server so it's got you know I'm not sure what the bandwidth
he has to it but it's it's been more than enough I think last year at the peak we seeing
close to close to a hundred people connected at one time at the peak really yeah there was
there there was close to a hundred connections now not everybody was talking at once of course you
can only talk one person at a time but and that's something else that you know is bandwidth
depending is when you're actually speaking so I mean you weren't if you have one person speaking
that's not a lot of bandwidth you know just one one audio stream but so I mean in that and that
server I'm it didn't have any problems with the uh I'm almost perished I know it was I know
was 80 to a hundred connections at one time that's pretty awesome I wish I was on during that time
the only time when I was on I think I've only saw maybe about I almost want to say I saw like 25
on at a time and once again it wasn't everybody talking but you do run into like five people trying
to talk at the same time trying to make a comment about something and then you also have like
there's always the possibility of lag so you have a lot of people that you know they'll start talking
and start falling on top of each other yeah and like I know when I was monitoring I was when I was
there monitoring everything and had the client hold up you know how the the user list is on the right
hand side of the interface on my full screen monitor at one time you had a you had a
had a scroll bar because they had so many users that you had to use the scroll bar to see the whole
list of users so that's you know I you know it depends on your screen resolution of course also
but under normal you know screen resolution I couldn't see the whole list of people connected
without scrolling up and down and I've never you know that's the only time I ever see that many
people on a mobile server of course and that's absolutely awesome I don't know who first came up
with this idea but it was I thought it was a great idea and you know everything that said during
that 24 hours isn't necessarily pure gold but it was it was I sat there and I listened to every
last minute that was recorded it was great yeah it's a lot of fun um well um and I guess I'll
mention this other this little app I was using for that there's a there's an application it's called
butt and don't everybody laugh at once but that stands for broadcast using this tool and it's not
included in any of the repositories of Ubuntu or Debbie and you have to download it and extract it
and do a config you know do the make make install type you know install of it but it's very simple
to install and it does exactly what it says it you use it to push this push your whatever's
coming out of your sound card out to a nice cast server and so it's a neat little app that's
cool you think they came up with the the acronym first or the name I'm not sure but it's it's
every time I mention that people chuckle so it's beauty that's what it stands for broadcast using
this tool and it does exactly what what it says it's it's a gooey little it's a little gooey app and
it's pretty easy to configure to start pushing you a string amount very cool and do you have
anything else that you use on your servers um well not really um just file sharing uh
meth tv pushing you know doing recording tv life watching tv the own cloud tiny tiny rss
mumble icecast I think I've mentioned about everything I can think of all right so you have
one of your raspberry pies uh running the both the uh icecast and mumble servers do you have any
other raspberry pies and what are they doing uh I've got two and the other one I just basically play
around with I don't uh tried running own cloud off of it but if you think it runs slow on a regular
PC it just it's untolerable on a pie and I I wish it was I wish it wasn't so because the pie
would be a perfect you know application perfect uh device for a small cloud based server and it's
just I just I just I mean I can barely tolerate the way it is on the computer I've got now and
but I just could not tolerate it on the pie now it does run the tiny I have put the tiny tiny rss
on it and it runs that this fine but I don't know what it is about own cloud it just makes it
so sluggish yeah uh with me yeah yeah well now the reason though okay the the reason
original reason I bought my pies was to uh my son wanted to take advantage of my
meth tv system and he's bedroom so I got I've done a little reading and research about how
you could X X use a raspberry pie to make a little media server they connect to a tv and you can
access your well you know whatever media you have on your network so I started out putting rss
BMC on it and got it all working and set up and it does and it does great for doing your ripped
content your your music um it's got a nice interface that you if you hook up a remote control
to it it didn't have to configure anything it just worked right off the right out the you know
right out of the get-go the remote control I had laying around I was like you had a usb receiver
IR you know an IR usb receiver worked right out of the box and X BMC has a plug-in for meth tv
where you can actually connect to the to your main meth tv system where you could watch you
could even do live tv you could watch live tv and you didn't have to install meth tv you just had
to get the plug-in and get it installed into X BMC which I did and I found that for watching live
tv through it it it it was tolerable but I couldn't it this it was very choppy and I think it has
to do with the file format that meth tv is it's an impag format and I even purchased the
impag codec from the pi foundation and that helped I mean that actually made it usable but it
but any other media I had like my ripped movies off a DVD would they'd play just fine and even the
recorded stuff from meth tv would play fine it was the live tv portion of it that would not
function correctly it was just undesirable I mean it would work but it was just it was just got
it wouldn't buffer it was like it was buffering pause and skip and just it just it just wasn't very
pleasant to do but yet the recorded stuff which was in a different format and I get straight
impag I can't maybe this live tv is in a different format that it wouldn't play right because of
the codec issue but everything else worked fine on that it was it's a great little front end if
you aren't going to connect it to a meth tv system I really like the interface of X BMC it's very
intuitive and easy to set up you can if you got a little keyboard a portable keyboard
in a simple little remote you can hook up to it that makes a nice little media center what are
you doing in your store well I just wanted to ask you how did how did like the whole the
mall menu system being able to go around from you know trying to choose your files and everything else
that hold that how did X BMC run did it run pretty smoothly or was it kind of sluggish or
anytime I read anything about the X BMC I hear that it's very sluggish the RISBMC that it's
very sluggish but I don't know what are they talking about or do you do you know what they're talking
about I found the interface to be very responsive and it's it was the only thing I found
fault with it was like I said it was trying to interface with live tv off my meth tv system
but as far as playing playing media rip media or the recorded media from meth tv or your music or
your pictures and your browser and your picture files you know through a samba share or whatever
it worked excellent I I'm in fact I'm thinking about taking that second pie that's just
sitting there and once I get a excuse me once I get a network drop run to my our master bedroom is
is putting that on the back of our tv in our bedroom so I can watch when my wife wants to when she
has control one you know the main tv I can go back to the bedroom and watch some movies and stuff
that I have on my network because I started I had like I was saying before I had found RISBlex which
was a plex front end for yeah plex front end and the it seemed like it would be like an ideal thing
because the whole idea of plex leases as far as I understand is that it's just basically streaming
so it's just basically streaming off the server does all the work and it sends it up and it's just
it was absolutely horrible and I can't I can't see why but it was just absolutely horrible I couldn't
get and I've tried like different formats of ripping I've had some horrible avi's that I've had
downloaded with that I were just the whole they were they were they were bad and then I've found
some really good rips that I've had done and it all came out looking horrible but like a little
bit better than the other stuff and I've tried to rip in my own stuff all sorts of different ways
and nothing nothing nothing look good on it all and go back to what the it the whole menu system
they say you're supposed to just kind of go through and let it all cash and then then it's
supposed to be smoother it just it ran so sluggishly and I don't know it I had such high hopes for
the RISBlex and it just it just let me down and so I was looking online and I think you and I
talked before about using the RISBMC and I know you said you were impressed with it and like I said
anything I read just like any of the reviews I read just based it said that it was kind of slow
and sluggish and so I found this thing called Zyban and Zyban is basically the same thing as the
RISBMC but it's it's supposed to be like it's supposed to be the newest the latest and greatest you
know the bleeding edge hard software for everything and I've been running that and I have it I don't
know what it looks like on regular RISBMC but compared to the RISBlex it is I have not been happier
I mean it's everything's been looking great I mean there's always moments when you get it you kind
of got to wait a few minutes for it to kind of I mean it's over Wi-Fi anyway so you got to kind of
wait for it to finally fully buffer and then the picture gets really nice and crisp and
the only always have those moments where it's kind of a little bit blocky but I was Zyban I've
didn't nothing but happy with it and I'm hoping to play around with it a little bit more and get
everything set up because with with with XBMC there's so many different types of skins and
stuff that you can set up then each skin seems to have like a whole different type of interface to
it so I want to play more with that and the one thing I kind of I kind of I don't necessarily well
that I miss about the RISBlex was RISBlex had a lot more channels involved like I can get a
like an NBC channel and a lot of the local network channels and stuff like that and I'm not
finding with I know there's and I got a plus that's another thing I'm gonna search for a little
bit more with is the there's I know there's other plugins and other repositories you can set up
with at the XBMC to be able to run more channels but to get more channels like the like I said
like the NBC and stuff like that other than that I run RISB and but what I'm trying to do is I'm
trying to get a little setup here with a I bought a portable battery it's like one of those ones
that you're supposed to recharge up your phone afterwards it's got like two USB power supplies
plus a little 12 volts slash I think it's a 12 volt slash nine volt out that I'm using for
to power up a little seven inch monitor and then the the Raspberry Pi it kind of have it as a
portable device so far my only I need to find a decent container for it I've been looking around
to I might try to find something like a small like a small pencil box type of a thing something
because the the model of seven inch monitor I have is kind of chunky that it's that I gotta get
something that it'll close with the the whole little battery pack plus the Raspberry Pi and then I'm
I'm also stuck with a great deal amount of wire and I'm not a very good electrician so I don't
have any plans on taking the wire apart and splicing it and putting it all together so I got to
find something that can kind of house all of that stuff and still be in a small container but I've
I've run it before and it's you know it Raspbian C is just a nice little not Raspbian C
Raspbian the the Debian version for Raspberry Pi it's it's just a fun little distro and it's
half of it it says like as soon as you load it up it's got like so many things for Python and
had a had a play around with Python and I thought that was pretty fun too and I
want to get that all set up and bring it with me so I can just sit there on my lunch hour at work
and just like screw on with Python type stuff but yeah that's pretty much what I do with my my
Raspberry Pi I'm gonna have to investigate this Xbian how do you say that? I think it's pronounced
as I ban yeah as I mean XBI8 and I just getting ready to start downloading the image file now
it's like I said I well maybe just because coming from the the Rasplex I have been nothing but
happy with it and I've been using the there's an app on for Android that'll run XBMC where it works
over the Wi-Fi so as long as the your XIBAN is hooked up to the to the wireless or to a network
then you can just kind of use the use that as a remote but I am like in your idea that you're
talking about with a you found a USB IR I might have to look into that yeah when I when I first
built my meth TV system I of course I did all this research on all the hardware I was going to need
and the the remotes that were recommended at that time were a I hate to say it Microsoft Media Center
branded remotes and with the USB IR receiver and they're supported in Ubuntu Zubuntu whatever
you know the district of time that I was using to put meth TV on top of and it was pretty easy
setup you know through the through the meth TV setup to get that remote working it was already
pretty setup now I've switched over to a oh a Logitech Harmony and I was able to actually program
past the programming you know do you set the two remotes in front of each other and you can actually
program the Logitech you can actually press buttons on the on the source remote and program
right into the Harmony the Harmony is a really nice device and that's the big expensive one like
the $80 one with a little digital display isn't it yeah I think I paid $80 for mine it's not the
color display it's just the plain else I think we can get now now they've got color displays and
they just get crazy yeah I was actually looking at the remotes today it being Black Friday and
everybody you know all the families now are wanting some sort of a list or ideas for Christmas
buying for Christmas you know Christmas buying I was looking around at different type of things
that I might want and so I'm sitting there going well how can I best optimize my my systems here
because everywhere in my house I have probably at least two or three remotes going on they all
upstairs I have the the Tivo remote with the the the the Blu-ray remote downstairs I have the PS
the PS3 controller that I use my PS3 by the way has just that fourth thing it hasn't played like
any video games since I got it my brother got it for me probably about I want to say he got it
for me Christmas like two years ago as out of the blue big spring gift shocked the hell out of me
but the poor thing has just basically been like a media center at this point it's a Blu-ray player
so it's been a it's been a downstairs Blu-ray player and it's it's got Netflix on it and I've
been using it for for Netflix like crazy and and now that that it's also has aplex on it which I
found by accident I think plex was just on there by default it just the the PS3 just kind of found
that there was a plex server on there and installed everything on its own because I was just like
scrolled through about ready to play DVD and when it saw this thing what hey what the heck is this
it's plex oh look at there there's all my movies so yeah but I was looking around for a decent
remote to connect everything together and if I can and I found one that the be able to connect
to the PS3 is a Bluetooth way and so I was thinking about getting one that was for just like
downstairs that was meant for the PS3 and the cable box but I didn't was I don't know if I can
if I can do the on-demand with the cable box but if that I are if I can find a little USB
IR that's going to be that's going to be freaking cool just for the for the pie yeah they work
pretty nice it's like say it's just a when I'm doing the Raspbmc image install it I didn't have
to configure anything you just plugged it in and it worked right out of the box that's awesome
because I know because of the I have the plex downstairs on the Raspbmc I got to move my
Zyban up into the bedroom and the only problem with that is I have two HDMI inputs one's got the
Blu-ray player with other ones got the Tivo so I'm going to have to get a HDMI switch and then I'm
going to have to get some way to connect to the to the to the Raspberry Pi and then I might be
the best way to go to be able to just kind of connect everything together and I was looking around
they have switches HDMI switches that have some sort of a remote to them if I can figure out one
remote to do everything for the bedroom that would rock including the switch that would rock I'd
recommend looking into one of the I mean you don't have to go whole hog on on a harmony like
say you can go with the $80 model networks you can do multiple devices I mean you can do for
at least up to I think up to four devices you know with different you know with different menu options
my question was be in this where I kind of stalled on the on my whole thought process was the
trying to use the Tivo with it but they're actually you know what kind of think of it it's all
basic it's all pretty basic stuff just you know a pointer to move everything around and then
there's no real special buttons to it besides the live TV button also works to be able to switch
because I have the the tuner card in there I can record two things at the same time and switch
back and forth which by the way is also one of the really cool things that I was thinking about with
the with the mid TV because we were talking before I believe you're saying that you couldn't
that you can record multiple things on and at the same time right right all together I have
one two three plus four I have seven tuners on two I mean this is split between two different
myth TV you got a master back in then I got a secondary back end and so I have seven tuners
between the two systems so I can watch live TV and actually be recording six programs while
watching live TV or I could be recording seven shows and not watching any TV and that in my opinion
is awesome because with with Tivo with only the two a lot of times you'll hit that you want to record
something and it'll say this will overlap with that and that will overlap with this and even you know
even now with being able to record two that starts to get annoying after a while if I can set up
a system where I can record it's like you said six or seven at the same time I didn't bet
yep and it's all free unless you suffer your hardware yeah the hardware being a big price and then
just the time to get it all set up well honky we're coming up on a hour and a half recording here
I think maybe we better give our listeners a break from hearing us ramble on
all righty it sounds good we better save something for another show
although I like the ramble well any parting thoughts no I think I think we've pretty much covered
everything I just want to say that those who are listening that if you get a chance
joining in on the New Year's Eve 24 hour podcast I joined in last year and I'd only
join in a few times but I sat there and I know I listened to a lot of it and it was it's a really
fun time if you get a chance even just to log on for a minute and listen to some of it or download it
when it all comes out it's really it's really great I agree and with that I think we'll
call this a wrap and well if there's anybody that like to hear you know us talk about some more
specific topics to make you know a dedicated show to a specific topic you can reach me on IRC I'm
K. Wisher on the IRC channels and I believe honky magoo is honky magoo on the IRC channels so just
give us a holler if you'd like enjoy this show and like us to maybe do something else on a more
dedicated subject and just dedicate one show to a specific subject of anything we've spoken of
I know we probably can fill up another hour and a half on each subject we spoke about tonight
oh definitely I mean just going through the configuration files for I know I could probably
speak for at least at least a good 20 minutes or so on configuring somba but I know one question
I was going to have I had for you I forgot to ask what he was talking about somba do you do
specific do you get in grain granular with your file permissions and shares to where you know
I don't know how old your kids are but I got the kids old enough that can accidentally delete
some files and we don't what I raised the whole reason I set up the somba server with Linux was
for file permission so that I could lock down you know I wanted the kids to be able to see our
family pictures but I didn't want them to be able to you know delete anything or open one up and
start editing it with something and and and destroy it so I've got stuff kind of granularly
locked down with you know user rights and permissions do you do you get that in grain with it
no but I know I'm going to need to my daughter's one years old so she's not she's not getting into
the computers yet and my wife she doesn't she really even realizes that it's there I pretty much
just use it I mean it's set up on her computer she can go on to it anytime she wants to but she
I said she's got a she's got a thumb drive where she keeps all of her stuff and she's happy with
that and anything else she tries to store locally even that she barely stores anything you know
even myself I barely store anything locally I just basically I personally just store everything
onto the the 1.5 terabytes external hard drive that I have somba shared you know anything
anything locally I figure it's going to get wiped out probably the next time I get ticked off
with my with my operating system and feel like wiping it out and trying something new so
yeah I back up all of that oh no sorry I don't do any I don't do any permission I keep everything
could just completely open just because like I said I nobody nobody else uses it anyway so well
yeah if you don't have a need for it then there's no need to I mean it causes more headaches but
you'll eventually find a need for it I'm sure once you get if you want to get your daughter and
maybe any more siblings she has gets older and starts using computers yeah well I think we're
going to wrap it up for night and I want to thank everybody for listening to HBR so that we're
going to say good night all right good night they can also reach us like you said they can reach us
on IRC and the I know I'm in the Linux Basics Room broadcast planet and pod nuts room on pre-node
I'm also on Google plus if you want to hit me up on Google plus that's fine I don't care who
you are I just I accept everybody and you can also and you can also leave a comment on the
the HPR site for this I haven't actually checked the last one we did in a while but I have to do
check it every once in a while oh I wasn't aware you could leave comments yeah I believe comments
are open like I said I checked that there's a little section right underneath where the page is
right there on the bottom it leaves a little section where you can leave comments on it
well that opens up for some for some hate comments then so everybody please leave
their feedback for us let us know how we're doing and if you want to hear us again
if you want to hear me mumble on for a little while about this and that and stutter on trying
to figure out my words just let me know can't be as bad as me I don't know I listened to that last
one I have a couple of times I sat there and went come on man find the right words it's right there
right there in front of you hey this just this is just an if prime example for all our listeners we're
not professionals I mean you can tell by our course by our the quality of our content but anybody
can do this if we can do it anybody can and that's the great thing about HPR I agree so thank you
for listening and we're going to sign off for now good night
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