Caddickisms

G-Ding.TV | Viewing Linux in a whole new way

For the cost of basic hardware you can have a PVR (Personal Video Recorder, e.g., TIVO) in your house. You can even use an old computer (maybe go get a bigger hard drive, and a TV Tuner card if you don’t already have one), to save even more money.

This is nothing new, really. MythTV (the PVR software) has been around for a while. Linux (the computer operating system on which MythTV runs) has been around for quite a while. Both are free. Run MythTV on the Linux flavor of your choice, hook it up to your cable outlet, and bang… you’ve got free TV Recording.

So why bring it up now?

Because I just found a way past my biggest barrier: complete lack of understanding of Linux. A couple of guys put together an installer that installs Linux AND MythTV together for you. If it runs as cleanly as I hope, that means I can just accept all defaults and I won’t have to mess with Linux settings at all! WOO HOO!

I’ve got an old 266MHz computer laying around serving Free Cell to my wife all day. With a TV Card and a bigger hard drive, that could easily be turned into a PVR, and life would be good.

So will I actually do it? Probably not real soon, since I still have to buy the components I mentioned, but yeah – this definitely is something to shoot for.

[tags]TV, PVR, DVR, free, personal finance, MythTV, Linux, TIVO, BeyondTV[/tags]

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[update: I've since started using the Anarchy plugin, which also makes standard hyperlinks playable, and though I'm on the fence about which technology I like better for audio (I got Anarchy for the video component), I lean toward the method described below because it's less visually intrusive. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to disable the Anarchy audio player segment without disabling the whole thing, so all the example links below (and throughout this site for now) show Anarchy's "audio mp3" indicator beside the simple blue arrow used by the del.icio.us player described below. The blue arrow is the only thing installed by the instructions below (visually) so keep that in mind as you continue reading.] 

I’ve been looking for something like this for months. Who knew I’d find it without even trying on one of the most popular websites in the world?

A while back, I was working on some podcasting ideas for work and testing some things out here on Caddickisms. I spent a long time just trying to get an audio player to work correctly in WordPress (the software that runs this blog). The problem is that everything I found used the HTML <object> tag, which WordPress kept re-writing (and breaking) behind the scenes. I thought I had it fixed when I ran across the Gmail audio player, which uses the <iframe> tag, but apparently something gets screwed up there too, because while it works in Firefox, it’s broken in Internet Explorer (at least in version 6).

So… I gave up. I’m still working on Podcasting related stuff at work, but it’s not posted in a blog, so there was no reason to try to fix something I wasn’t going to be doing very often, if at all. But it kept gnawing at me…

Today, I finally found something that works and it’s easier than any other method I’ve found.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. Copy this [updated. See comments]: <script type="text/javascript" src="http://images.del.icio.us/static/js/playtagger.js" ></script>
2. Put it somewhere in your HTML.
3. Put up a standard link to an MP3 file.

That’s it.

On a blog, you might think you’d have to put the HTML into a template page. You could do that, but with WordPress’ Sidebar Widgets, you don’t have to! Just use one of your existing Text Widgets and put the code in there. I put mine in the “About Me” widget. Works great! Now anytime I want to link to an MP3 file, visitors can play it directly from my page!

Here are some examples:

Grey Eye Glances: Close Your Eyes

Grey Eye Glances: If I was…

(for more of this type of music, try out the Grey Eye Glances site.)

[tags]website MP3 player, javascript tricks and tips, WordPress tips, del.icio.us tools, play tagger, Grey Eye Glances[/tags]

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