Xbox media centre

I’ve got my Xbox setup to play movies and music now. It’s connecting to my fileserver wirelessly using the Bufallo and OpenWRT in client-mode. 54g seems to be fast enough for MPEG/WMV/XviD/DivX/MP3, but nowhere near enough to backup games across the LAN, so I’ve still got my damn long piece of CAT5e going to my GigE switch upstairs for that!

I’ve got XMBC2 installed and added the Youtube2 plugin, so can play movies across the internet too, as well as connect to streaming radio stations like Shoutcast.

Fedora 7

I installed Fedora7 on my main desktop machine and it wasn’t fun. The first install went OK. After firstboot, it couldn’t see my network card until I fudged with /etc/modprobe.conf, then it wouldn’t shut down, then it wouldn’t play XViDs. The local YUM mirror wouldn’t work as it seems the Fedora-Releases repository changes, and is not simply the RPM’s from the DVD, so I’ve ditched mirroring that and am sticking with just mirroring Fedora-Updates.

Packing day

Work’s been busy today, preparing for leaving, setting up the new guy’s laptop and the backup server, as well as doing the regular testing and phonecalls. I reinstalled Fedora 7 on the work laptop – leaving out the Xen stuff, and it works much better now – the ipw3945 was detected (to a degree) and it shuts down properly, and you get a 2.6.21 kernel.

I’ve mostly packed the car, all I’ve got left in my room is bedding, clothes for three days, PC, monitor, toiletries and some food in the fridge.

Tuesday

I installed Fedora 7 on my work laptop today. It configured the widescreen monitor correctly, which I guess is down to 915resolution being in Extras, which is now merged into Core. It doesn’t like the non-widescreen LCD plugged into the docking station though. Compiz works out of the box with the accelerated Intel GMA950 graphics card drivers.

F7 didn’t identify the Intel 3945 wireless card, which I thought had built-in support in F7, I guess you’ve still got to use the awful ipw3945d from ATrpms. For some reason you have to use the power button to shut it down, maybe that’s an ACPI issue.

Big update

Friday I left work early after getting the testing done – that was all a bit chaotic with only me in the datacentre and not in the office, and Phil and the boss in meetings all day.

Mum & Dad came over to Blighty and I went down to Nanny’s on Friday night to visit. We went out for a nice curry, we all had the same thing – chicken and prawn balti spiced up to Madras. There was loads of chicken, not a lot of prawns, but it was really nice – with naan and pilau rice. Sore arses ensued the following morning.