In the last post I described how you can use XBMC Live on the Acer Revo but as well as that works it seemed a waste to restrict the Revo to just XBMC so I’ve since installed the 64 bit version of Xubuntu instead and run XBMC on top of that.
I chose Xubuntu as it is a light weight version of Ubuntu using the XFCE window manager instead of the Gnome desktop environment so has the advantage of having all the Ubuntu repositories available without the overhead of running Gnome or KDE (in the case of Kubuntu).
I installed the 64-bit version of Xubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) available here.
As with XBMC Live I used unetbootin to create a bootable image on a USB flash drive (actually an SD card in this case). Once this is done insert the flash drive or SD card into the Revo and turn it on, pressing F12 during boot and selecting the USB drive or SD as the boot device.
I installed it into the unpartitioned space on the Revo drive leaving the factory Linpus install in place. Linpus is added as an option to the Grub boot menu allowing you to choose between it and your new Xubuntu install should you need to (I can’t see why you would).
Once you have installed Xubuntu and booted into it you will see a popup within a few minutes prompting you to install the proprietary Nvidia drivers which you will need to use the Revo’s ION GPU for HD playback (you will also need to change the “Render Method” to VDPAU in the XBMC settings later on as with the Live setup).
Earlier this week I bought an Acer Aspire Revo R3610 to replace my original Xbox based XBMC system which has provided sterling service for the last 7 years.
I’ve been a big fan of the Xbox version of XBMC and its predecessor Xbox Media Player (it was the only reason I bought my Xbox) but it’s getting a bit limited now due to its 733MHz CPU and paltry 64MB RAM.
By contrast the Revo R3610 has a dual core Atom N330 CPU and up to 4GB RAM as well as a NVIDIA GeForce 9400 Ion GPU. As a result XBMC on the Revo is capable of playing full 1080p HD video without problem. It makes a perfect media center; it’s small, low powered and if you have a MCE remote control it will work straight off, just plug the USB receiver in.
I’m currently using the XBMC Live release which is a self contained install built on top of a minimal Ubuntu installation. Installing XBMC Live on the Revo is a breeze:
Use unetbootin to create a bootable image on a USB flash drive
Insert the flash drive in the Revo and turn it on, pressing F12 during boot and selecting the USB drive as the boot device
At the menu you can select to run straight from the USB drive (option 1) or you can select “Install XBMCLive to disk”
Once that is done just reboot and it will boot straight into XBMC
You will then want to go into the settings and change the “Render Method” in the video section to VDPAU. This allows XBMC to use the Revo’s NVIDIA Ion GPU for video processing. If you are using HDMI for your audio output you will also need to go to the audio section and change the output to Custom and enter plug:hdmi
It makes a fantastic media center and the Revo R3610 with dual core Atom N330 CPU, 2GB RAM and 250GB HD is currently on offer for £199 at ebuyer which is a great deal.
Here is a great video showing the extent of the universe as we have observed it so far:
“The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History.”
Apart from being a breathtaking video and tribute to the amazing work done by astronomers and astrophysicists around the world it made me think of the Total Perspective Vortex from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
“When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, “You are here.”
An unfortunate side effect of being placed in the Total Perspective Vortex is that the shock of being shown just how infinitesimally small you are compared to the Universe annihilates your soul. Watch with care.
Thanks to @Rablenkov on Twitter for the heads up on the video.
Wikileaks, the site that allows whistleblowers to anonymously leak information has had to temporarily shut down while they try to raise more funds. The site currently says:
“To concentrate on raising the funds necessary to keep us alive into 2010, we have reluctantly suspended all other operations, but will be back soon.”
Wikileaks is a valuable tool for freedom, utilising the Streisand effect – the online phenomenon where an attempt to censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of causing the information to be publicised to an even greater extent, ie. once it is out there it isn’t going back in the box.
The site has a history of publishing reports and data that otherwise would have remained secret; recent leaks of note include the BNP membership list, the Climate Research Unit emails, Internet censorship lists and The Minton report. The site has won numerous awards including the Economist Freedom of Expression Award in 2008 and the Amnesty International New Media Award in 2009 and its continued operation is essential to ensure that companies and governments cannot get away with censoring the exposure of injustice.
Wikileaks is run by a non-profit organisation and doesn’t accept government or corporate funding in order to maintain its absolute integrity so all funding has to come from its supporters: human rights campaigners, investigative journalists, technologists and the general public.
“We have received hundreds of thousands of pages from corrupt banks, the US detainee system, the Iraq war, China, the UN and many others that we do not currently have the resources to release. You can change that and by doing so, change the world. Even $10 will pay to put one of these reports into another ten thousand hands and $1000, a million.”
Last week YouTube and Vimeo introduced experimental support for HTML5 video but their choice of video codec, H.264, has caused a bit of a stir. One of the aims of HTML5 is to reduce the need for proprietary plug-in-based technologies such as Flash through the use of the new video tag for embedding video in web pages. The problem with using H.264 for these videos is that it is patented in many countries and its use in a product (eg. a browser) requires a licence from the MPEG-LA. So is it really any better than Flash, Quicktime, Real Video and all the other proprietary standards we’ve had to suffer over the years?
It’s not as if there aren’t free, open source alternatives available, the Ogg Theora codec for instance was actually recommended in earlier drafts of the HTML5 specification.
Whilst H.264 licensing isn’t a problem for Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. it’s a different issue for free and open source software, not just from a cost perspective, but also from a philosophical one. Mike Shaver, Mozilla’s VP of engineering explained why Firefox won’t be supporting H.264 video for this reason:
“there is no apparent means for us to license H.264 under terms that would cover other users of our technology, such as Linux distributors, or people in affiliated projects like Wikimedia or the Participatory Culture Foundation. Even if we were to pay the $5,000,000 annual licensing cost for H.264, and we were to not care about the spectre of license fees for internet distribution of encoded content, or about content and tool creators, downstream projects would be no better off.”
Granted, these are only experimental options so far, but YouTube in particular, has a huge influence here due to its ubiquitousness; how many people would be happy with a browser that won’t work with YouTube? Admittedly, Flash support isn’t going to go away for a long time yet but if H.264 gets entrenched as the default HTML5 video standard early on by such an influential content provider then the situation is unlikely to change.
In large the web is built on open technologies and HTML5 video has the potential to open up one of the few areas where proprietary technology has a hold. Let’s hope it doesn’t fall at the last hurdle.
I bought this book as a Christmas present to myself, along with a DVD box set of Cosmos. Put together and edited by comedy writer, journalist and creator of the Atheist Bus Campaign, Ariane Sherine, The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas is a collection of stories and tips for enjoying the Christmas season from 42 atheist celebrities, comedians, scientists and writers.
The book is split into six categories: Stories, Science, How To, Philosophy, Arts and Events; It’s a great mix of funny and serious pieces covering everything from the LHC, listening to the big bang on your radio and experiments in Christmasology to why as an atheist you shouldn’t have to reject Christmas and why Christmas is as good a name as any for the winter solstice festival, even for an atheist. It makes great reading and the short, sharp pieces make it the ideal format for dipping in and out of.
With an impressive and diverse list of contributors which includes Richard Dawkins, Charlie Brooker, Derren Brown, Ben Goldacre, David Baddiel, Simon Singh, Brian Cox, Richard Herring and Simon Le Bon (no, really) there is something for everyone. The editor and all the contributors have also donated their share of the profits (50% of the books overall profit) to the AIDS charity Terrence Higgins Trust.
It really is an excellent book and essential reading for any atheists who have ever felt conflicted about celebrating Christmas.
Merry Christmas to all and as Mitch Benn says in the book, may random circumstance and the smooth operation of the laws of the universe bless you!
One of my vices is single malt whisky, my favourites being the peaty Islay whiskys, particularly Laphroaig (pronounced La-froyg).
Each bottle of Laphroaig comes with a little booklet with a unique code printed on it which you can use to register as a “Friend of Laphroaig”. This gives you a lifetime lease on a square foot of land on Laphroaig’s land on the island of Islay which you can visit and claim your annual ground rent of a dram of Laphroaig.
You can use the codes from subsequent purchases to accrue points towards merchandise such as engraved glasses, clothing and so on, it’s all a bit of a marketing gimmick really but occasionally there is something a bit more special on offer exclusively for the “Friends of Laphroaig”. Such was the case with the Triple Wood special edition. Only 700 bottles were made available for the Friends of Laphroaig with the rest going to duty free sales so I quickly snatched one up which arrived on the 3rd December and I wasted no time in opening it.
Triple Wood is, as the name suggests, triple matured in 3 types of wood cask; Firstly in American oak ex-bourbon barrels, then small 19th century style quarter casks and finally in large European oak Oloroso sherry casks, it is non-chill filtered and bottled at 48% ABV. So this is very similar to the excellent Quarter Cask bottling but with a second finishing in sherry casks. I found the nose to be very woody with toffee and strong on the iodine but a lot less of the peaty smokiness than is usual for a Laphroaig. The mouth feel is quite creamy like the QC but it’s sweeter than expected, the sherry influence is noticeable and there is quite a bit of vanilla and wood followed by the usual long Laphroaig finish. It’s an excellent whisky and makes a nice alternative to the standard 10 Year Old and Quarter Cask I usually keep ‘in stock’. Having demolished half of it already I’ll be trying to keep the rest for an occasional treat.
Jim Murray of The Whisky Bible fame was on Chris Evans’ show on Radio 2 today with a tasting of his top 3 ever whiskys.
I won’t spoil it by mentioning what they are but I’ve made an mp3 file with all the unrelated music/travel stuff edited out which you can download here: Jim Murray – Chris Evans – 01-12-09.mp3 It is 7.8 MB file with a runtime of 17 mins 7 secs.
Update 2/12/09: If you just want to know what they were see comments below!
I expect most people are aware of the debate surrounding the UK Government’s proposals to disconnect alleged illegal file sharers from the internet without a fair trial. This is the so called “Three Strikes” system which has the potential to cut entire households off from the net due to the alleged actions of one family member or because of a hacked wireless router. This is despite the Government’s own Digital Britain Report espousing the benefits of, and need for, universal broadband internet access.
Last week it emerged that Secretary of State Peter Mandelson wants to make additional changes to the Digital Economy Bill which would give him and his successors the power to make “secondary legislation” (legislation that is passed without debate) to change the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act to create new remedies for combating online copyright infringement as well as the ability to impose “duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified” and giving rights holders new investigative and enforcement powers. All without debate. See Boing Boing for the full horrors.
Disconnecting people from the net would be a hugely disproportionate response in my view and flies in the face of the ambition stated in the Digital Britain Report “To ensure that everyone can share in the benefits of a digital Britain” but Mandelson’s new proposals take things to another level, they are simply outrageous – giving someone in an unelected position the ability to create further legislation related to this contentious issue without debate is dangerous and must not be allowed.
I’ve had my eye out for a compact digital camera for a while and after a lot of research I finally bought the 12 mega pixel Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS15 from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. It has a great feature set, the price was right and virtually all the reviews said it was a good choice. They were right.
I was after a compact camera and that’s certainly what this is, and lightweight too, 138g with battery and SD card. The build quality is excellent, it feels very solid and well made and the brushed metal casing looks great. I went for the black one but it is also available in blue and silver for around £10-£15 more.
It’s incredibly quick to start up from power on to being ready to take the first picture and produces some fantastic results, with strong vibrant colours and excellent detail plus very good low light performance. It’s a great all-rounder and has really exceeded my expectations.
The great results will be in no small part due to the superb 29mm Leica DC Vario-Elmar lens which has a 5x optical zoom (equivalent to 29-145mm on a 35mm film camera). These Leica lenses are renowned for their quality and it is a big plus point for this camera.
For point and shoot photography it has a fully automated “Intelligent Auto” mode that works really well, detecting if you are shooting scenery, faces, close up macro etc. but it also has a range of preset scene modes and control of ISO modes and exposure. Other features include macro zoom, burst mode, image stabilisation, face detection, red-eye reduction and AF Tracking to keep a moving subject in focus.
It can also record video at 30 fps in motion jpeg format in 4:3 or 16:9 up to a resolution of 848 x 480. The quality isn’t bad but there are a couple of downsides, namely the maximum amount of time you can record a single video is 15 minutes and once you have started recording you can’t zoom in or out. It’s a nice bonus feature to have on what is really a still camera though.
In use it’s very user friendly, the controls and on screen menus are intuitive and the 2.7″ screen is exceptionally bright and clear and the rechargeable lithium-ion battery gives you over 300 images per charge.
Mine also came with a free Lowepro Apex 5 AW case which is also of very good quality, very rugged, well padded and a nice snug fit for the FS15. It took a couple of days to discover there was also an integrated waterproof cover hidden in a flap at the bottom!
Although I suppose this camera is really intended for point and shoot it is capable of quite a bit more and overall it is a very impressive bit of kit for the size and cost. Check out the Flickr page for some sample images.
V. insteresing dram more reminiscent of Islay than the Highlands. Creamy like the Laphroaig QC, peat, vanilla and wood. Superb. #twhiskyabout 12 hours agofrom Echofon
Picked up a bottle of Ardmore Traditional Cask in Sainsburys tonight, currently £5 off. Wonderful peated malt finished in qtr casks #twhiskyabout 12 hours agofrom Echofon
I’ve had my eye out for a compact digital camera for a while and after a lot of research I finally bought the 12 mega pixel Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS15 
