MythTV Sound Woes
LinuxThe biggest problem I am currently having with MythTV is sound. I have onboard sound which is theoretically disabled in the bios and a Sound Blaster Live! Value which is the one I want to use.
I have tried a number of things.
When I removed the Sound Blaster and tried to use the onboard, I lost all sound.
I tried to set a script to switch the default VLC sound driver to the Sound Blaster.
What really gets me is why the system even sees the onboard sound at all, disabling it from the bios should in theory keep the OS from knowing it is there at all.
What I belive is happening is that at boot time the system sees the two sound cards and assigns them an address, either hw0 or hw1, but not the same every time. So if I boot and the Sound Blaster is set to hw1 and VLC is set to use hw1 then it works, but it is set to hw0 it does not. In this case I have to exit out of MythTV, open VLC preferences and switch the sound hardware address manually, then restart MythTV. Try talking your wife through that over the phone.
I want MythTV to work without having a mouse connected.
I also can't seem to get ISO's to have sound. I belive on this issue I just haven not found the right command switch to open the file.
These issues make me want to give Vista MCE a try. Another plus with using Vista is that I will be able to stream Netflix.
If I can find any of the answers for any of these problems I will update here, if not I will post about Vista MCE.
Hack Your Kids Toys
TechnologyOne of the many many toys our children have is a Lullaby Light Show, you wind it up, it plays music and lights up stuff on the ceiling. The problem is that it uses 3 D cell batteries. When they ran out I decided I could make it better.
I picked up a $3 LED flashlight from Frys and proceded to rip it apart to get the LED and batterries. I then opened up the toy to figure out where I could connect wires to complete the circuit.
Once that I connected the wires to the batteries and LED. Since I don't have a soldering iron I used the next best thing. Old speaker wire, duct tape, and hot glue.
Here is the bottom of the toy opened up after I had connected all the wires.
A closer look
Here is where the LED is housed.
To finish it off I shoved paper towel in to keep it from bouncing around too much. You can also see the leftovers of the flashlight housing.
All closed up, I present to you the finished product. Now not only does it weigh a lot less but the batteries should last at least until they no longer care about this at night.
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Protein Bar Recipe
FoodSo I have been looking around for a Protein bar recipe to make from home because store bought can be expensive, and have tons of ingredients that make it really expensive.
Here is the recipe.
Conrad's Almost Pretty Good Protein Bars
8 TBS Natural Peanut Butter, slightly melted
3 Egg Whites
1 Whole Egg
2 Scoops Protein (I use a low sugar Vanilla flavor)
2 TBS Ground Flax Seed
1/2 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
2/3 Cup Low Fat Soy Milk (I use Vanilla flavor again)
1/4 tsp Baking Soda
2 Cups Rolled Oats
1 Cup Whole Almonds
2/3 Cup Dried Cranberries
Mix all ingredients and squish into a 13x9 baking dish. Bake at 350 for 20 - 25 minutes. Allow to cool and cut into 8 bars.
Makes 8 bars.
Each bar will have about 350 calories, 20 grams of protein, and costs about 50 cents each, depending on specific ingredients used.
This creates a slightly breadlike bar, but the oats do not make it overly chewy. While the cranberries add sugar, the taste they add is hard to beat.
Let me know if you have any suggestions on how to further improve this.
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Does this remind you of anybody
HumorThis reminds me of someone, but I can't figure out who.
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Best use of Diet Coke + Mentos
HumorI found this amazing video that will forever change the prank world. Now I just need to find someone who drinks diet coke.
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How to fix your /etc/sudoers permissions
LinuxSo you decided to be brave and mess with your /etc/sudoers file but you end up just breaking it. Or maybe I am the only one who did that.
I was trying to find a way of running the Ubuntu update-manager without having to put my password in. I read that you have to edit the /etc/sudoers file to do that, so no problem, right. First I sudo gedit /etc/sudoers but it tells me that I don't have permissions to do this, no problem, just change the permissions. So I sudo chmod 0640 /etc/sudoers which changes the permissions, what I did realize that sudo does not work unless it has a permission of 0440. So now every time I try and sudo anything I get the message " sudo: /etc/sudoers is mode 0640, should be 0440" so I cannot sudo chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers.
The Fix:
After some more pain and searching for how to fix it, I find that I can just go into recovery mode from the GRUB menu and then chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers and reboot. So once again I avoid a reinstall of Ubuntu
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