Hi all, here is a baby update. Zavier is currently five days overdue so we will be going into hospital tomorrow night (Sunday 16th July) to start an induced labour process. So all going well, we should have Zavier born some time Mon or Tues next week. We are super excited about his arrival. Expect a blog update in the next few days with more news. I am taking a couple of weeks off work to get used to the whole family of 3 thing and supporting Dee. Anyway time for my last decent nights sleep for a while.....

- Gabe

Over the last weekend, I installed the Ubuntu 6.06 distribution of Linux on one of my old PIII laptops.

In short I must say I am really impressed with how polished Ubuntu has become for a free OS. I am treating this as a linux learning challenge for me to get to know linux a bit better. I thought what better than to install it on machine that I use for mainly web browsing and email while watching TV (how sad ).

The base install went fine but getting my DLink DWL-G650 Wifi card working turned out to be an interesting eye opener for how google-support (searching forums and web sites) works when you have linux. The shear range of solutions from people with similar hardware, OS, versions and problems ranged from re-compiling kernels right through to installing different wifi network stacks and everything else in between. Ubuntu was recognising my card but was unable to configure it to work on my network properly. It turned out all I needed to do was run this script:

sudo ifconfig ath0 up
sudo iwlist ath0 scan
sudo iwconfig ath0 key [key goes here]
sudo iwpriv ath0 authmode 2
sudo iwconfig ath0 essid "[SSID here]"
sudo dhclient ath0


I am impressed with how committed the linux community is to getting things to work and helping each other but I think the challenge for them is making this easy for your average joe who just wants his computer and hardware to work without much hassle. It seems to be a bit of minefield of solutions and you constantly have to check the solutions are for the same hardware, chip set, linux distribution, version, CPU etc. That said, I must admit the enjoyment of getting it working is increased when you have to hack around a bit!!

Anyway Ubuntu is definitely worth a look if you are Linux curious and running the LiveCD (same as the installer) is well worth a look.

-Gabe

Intergen are hiring. If you want to talk to me about this, please feel free to contact me on gabriel.smith@inNOterSPAMgen.co.nz if you are interested.

-Gabe

Well as most of you will know Dee and I are expecting our about to be released, baby boy Zavier any time around now. The due date is the 10th July 2006 but he doesn't seem to be in any hurry so far. We think it might be the cold weather that is keeping him from coming out  ! At this stage his delivery will be induced by the 17th of July at the latest so watch this space for any news or updates. We are looking forward to him arriving but it does feel like being held in holding pattern like when about to land at an airport. Dee is well and keeping active.

-Gabe

After a bit of time to think and research after the initial excitement of the Freeview announcement last week, I have the following predictions on Freeview and HDTV in New Zealand:

• Freeview set top boxes will be standard definition (MPEG 2, DVD like quality) only initially due the pure cost of the units. HDTV capable receivers are still pretty expensive right now. I will try and get this confirmed from Freeview New Zealand (currently I am questioning TVNZ on Freeviews behalf).
  
• HDTV content and HDTV capable set top boxes will arrive after (probably at least a year after) the initial release of Freeview in New Zealand.
• The introduction of HDTV Freeview in New Zealand will most likely follow the standards being trialled in the UK right now by the BBC which use MPEG4 with H.264.
• Sky New Zealand will no doubt introduce HDTV Sky before Freeview HDTV in a defensive move to keep subscribers.
  

Some interesting links:
Freeview set top boxes in the UK http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/freeviewreceivers.html
HDTV UK FAQ http://www.burnyourbonus.co.uk/hdtv-faq/faq1.html
New Zealand and Aussie Satellite TV info http://www.apsattv.com/

Things to think about:

• What sort of PVR will eventually replace my Tivo? Vista Media Centre with HDTV support maybe? A proprietary HDTV PVR set top box? Should I still use my Tivo with SD Freeview?
• Will Sky open up there HDTV service to third party PVR solutions? Probably not I would say but it sounds like this might be possible in the UK with SD Sky see http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/onyourpc.html.

I am keen to get a PC DVB-S card and start having a play with receiving the current TVNZ/Freeview trial service on the B1 satellite. If the budget can stretch far enough, I might try and get a MPEG4 H.264 capable card in preparation for HDTV in the future.

I will let you all know how this goes...

- Gabe

>Great news regarding digital TV but what is the status and timeframe of HDTV content?

Thank you for your e-mail regarding FreeView free-to-air digital television.

Content on FreeView channels will be up to the participating Broadcasters to decide and I expect that the introduction of HDTV by some will be a "point of difference" or giving one a competitive edge over another.  Given that this platform offers the perfect opportunity for HD TV I expect some Broadcasters will certainly introduce it sooner or later.

I am sorry I cannot yet be more specific with timeframe for the inclusion of HDTV programmes on FreeView.

Regards,

Ric

Well this is sounding positive. With Sky's HDTV plans as well, hopefully this is going to create a good bit of market competition for viewers and maybe some HDTV content.

The key good thing I get from this message is that it appears that Freeview will technically support HDTV from day one as a platform.

Bring it on.

Update:

There is some really good information on Freeview here http://www.apsattv.com/ thanks Skippy for the link.

Well today the New Zealand government will be announcing its digital TV strategy. This week has had plenty of media speculation about what this will mean for consumers in New Zealand. I personally hope the New Zealand government makes a firm commitment to adopting HDTV broadcast via whatever medium makes sense (IPTV, satellite, cable, terrestrial). We now have plenty of consumers with HDTV capable TVs, we have xbox's that output HDTV, folk are downloading HDTV over the internet, gee you can even buy HDTV video cameras in NZ now, not to forget all of NZ's major TV studios are fully kitted out with HDTV cameras and vision mixing gear. Come on government, adopt HDTV before it becomes a legacy technology.

Updates:

Not much detail if this is going to be HDTV but a positive sign anayway

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3701440a10,00.html

Some good info here http://digital.tvnz.co.nz/

I love my iPod but... I have had two occasions when iTunes or my iPod ends up corrupting some files in the hidden
directory \iPod_Control\iTunes\ on my iPod. It seems this problem is wide spread over a number of iPod models. This forum entry sums up the problem and some solutions really well. The most annoying thing  about this problem for me is that it leaves my iPod in state of having music files on it but the index file is corrupted. The rest of the iPod is otherwise fine. This means my iPod thinks it has no music on it when it actually does. Because I sync my iPod from a couple of different locations and carry a good few data files on it as well, I find restoring my iPod to be a really annoying task because I have to copy all my files off it and then back onto the iPod post an iPod updater restore. Even with USB 2.0 this still takes a long time with a nearly full 60GB iPod.

To try and avoid this type of problem in the future I have implemented a simple "last known good" database backup script using a good old .bat file. This backs up the important iPod database files to a backup dir but excludes the Music dir so the actual mp3 files are not backed up as well.

So in practice I run the backup after I have finished syncing with iTunes but before ejecting the iPod safely. I have tested this working by manually corrupting some files in the \iPod_Control\iTunes\ and testing a restore and this seems to work.

Hopefully those familiar with batch files can follow whats going on here. Please note I offer no guarantees on the success of this method and please use this at your own risk. Also keep in mind that really important files should be backed up on multiple physical media and kept in different locations to be safe.

rmdir iPod_Control_Backup /s /q
xcopy iPod_Control iPod_Control_Backup\ /s /e /h /y /exclude:excludebackup.txt
pause

It would have been great if Apple could have thought about providing a better solution to this problem with what I will call "logical disk failures". I guess Apple are considering the possibility that there could actually be some real "physical disk failures" starting and it might be hard for software like iTunes to able to tell the difference between logical and physical failures?

Anyway, good luck with your iPods and don't forget to back up really important data.

Well yes I thought it was about time to finally start a blog. While I would like to say my motivation to do this was professional, the main motivation is the fact that I am about to become a dad and I thought a blog was a great way to let all my friends and family keep in touch with how how things go. So watch this space around early July 2006 when our baby boy Zavier is due to be born. In the meantime check out some photos of the very pregnant and lovely Dee here.

I do plan to use categories to separate out family stuff from technology/work related stuff so bare with me while I work this out. For those interested, I have put this blog together using dasBlog which has worked pretty well so far, but hey I am no blogging expert yet. My colleague JD is using WordPress and JB has recently rolled his own blog software in ASP.NET 2.0 which will be interesting to see how it progresses.