Excellent, Gud -- keep us posted. I keep not quite getting around to doing a Myth box, but being tempted by the idea.

My Linux box does have a capture card in it, but I'm running out of cable outlets, and splitting does not make the waves happy.

Just as background info, I'm using a very basic computer a homebuilt PC with a Athlon-XP 2000+ processor, 512MB RAM, ATI-9550 card, onboard (VIA) ethernet, and sound. Then, a PVR-250 for TV input (and also provides the remote).

I'm using Fedora Core 4 for the base OS using this very useful guide: [link]

I had to do my JFS video partition manually since the Fedora installer would crap out if I did it with the partition tool in the installer, but otherwise it went pretty smoothly so far. The guide had the hack for loading the IR driver, but I found that after I had already fixed it myself.

Still have some stuff to do, setting up the web interface so I can schedule and review recordings from anywhere, seeing if my recorded programs are turning out right, and finally hooking it up to a TV (thought that involves a lot of work that isn't software related, like getting an ethernet cable up to the living room and quieting the computer)

I installed MythKnopp, to test my hardware, but I didn't want to go that way for the real thing. I will say that MythKnopp was easy to install, but it runs much better now. MythKnopp may run better with a bit a tweaking, which I didn't do since I just wanted to make sure all the hardware worked.

anyone having trouble with gmail?

It was hellaciously slow this morning, but not since then.

Power tools are the vanguard of new battery tech: [link]

Excerpts:

... a new line of teeth-rattling 36-volt cordless saws, rotary hammers, and drills from DeWalt, a division of Black & Decker, finally delivers. The potent black-and-yellow beasts have twice the power of standard 18-volt tools and run for twice as long per charge.

Cofounder Yet-Ming Chiang, a materials science professor, succeeded in shrinking to nanoscale the particles that coat the battery's electrodes and store and discharge energy. The results are electrifying: Power density doubles, peak energy jumps fivefold (the cells pack more punch than a standard 110-volt wall outlet), and recharging time plummets.

A123's real target, however, is your car. Chiang says A123's cells could lighten a Toyota Prius' 100-pound battery by as much as 80 percent and help boost any hybrid's performance. The quick recharging time - the M1 takes five minutes to reach 90 percent capacity - plus high peak power also would be ideal for plug-in versions of gas-electric vehicles.

It's basically Lithium Ion batteries liberated from the hazards they've been worried about, dropping, heating, etc.

Toshiba has something of the sort coming on line as well.

[link]

Or is the M1 it?

t On edit

Nope, a competitor, and apparently beat Toshiba to it.

First recording with commercials on the Myth box appears to have worked perfectly. The commericals were cut out completely leaving out a brief fade to black and back.

I haven't have much time to mess with it, but even in it's incomplete state, the MythBox is awesome. The only problem is that now I have to work configuring it around it's scheduled recording times. Still need to make sure that SSH is configured and working, gotta get the web server starting up and add access control, gotta add network icons to pretty up the display, and gotta set it all up to start mythTV automatically. Then comes the quieting and putting in the ethernet cable to the living room.

ita, I have this air purifier in my bedroom and I've been happy with it. [link]