I got a call from Tata Sky for an upgrade to the new PVR based STB at Rs 5999/- for existing customers. My delivery should happen with the next 2-4 business days. According to http://broadbandforum.in/tata-sky-dth-service/36376-tata-sky-dth-service-hdmi-output/, there is no HDMI output – only SPDIF and component. Technically, I should be able to get HD over component (the STB is MPEG4 capable) if and when Tata Sky starts providing HD content. The Dolby Digital streams will be taken care of by the SPDIF interface.

I did dabble with Comcasts PVR stuff when I was visiting US earlier this month. The ability to pause programming is just too sweet. My hopes are high for Tata Sky+ service.

http://www.tataskyplus.com/

The DVR has component and TOSLINK output. The picture quality is much better. The PVR works decent too. Its not the most impressive device out there but I suppose it will do for now.

http://lameduck.codeweavers.com/

I already have a corporate copy of Mac VMWare Fusion installed and an option of installing Win XP on it. With Crossover being made available for FREE today, I can save myself a lot of disk space skipping the Win XP instal.

The Linux versions are also available for free today, go get it.

Thanks Codeweavers!

I had my office desktop (buffy) upgraded yesterday to a shiny new HP Compaq DC5800 (1 x Core 2 Duo E8400 3.00GHz, 2GB) with a wide screen 24″ HP LP2465. The move process worked like this:

1. Remove the old 80G IDE and 40G SATA from the old HP desktop
2. Install the 40G SATA along with the new 160G SATA into the new desktop
3. Boot from the 40G SATA into my existing FreeBSD 7.0 installation
4. Fix drivers for Network and Graphics (Xorg)
5. Convert the 160G SATA into a dedicated ZFS pool
6. Use an external IDE to USB connector and move the data off the 80G IDE into the ZFS pool
7. Enjoy

GRUB had to make things complicated going “GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB….” after the disk swap. I fixed this by downloading the FreeBSD 7.0 livecd, chrooting to my root disk and rerunning grub as below:

root (hd0,0,a)
setup (hd0)

[buffy] ~> sudo zpool status
pool: tank
state: ONLINE
scrub: none requested
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
tank ONLINE 0 0 0
ad2 ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

[buffy] ~> df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/ad0s1a 3.9G 2.7G 848M 77% /
devfs 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /dev
/dev/ad0s1e 9.7G 8.7G 231M 97% /home
/dev/ad0s1f 22G 17G 3.2G 84% /usr
procfs 4.0K 4.0K 0B 100% /proc
tank/movies 123G 1.1G 122G 1% /mnt/movies
tank/music 145G 23G 122G 16% /mnt/music
tank 122G 0B 122G 0% /tank
tank/obj 123G 532M 122G 0% /usr/obj
devfs 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /var/named/dev
/dev/da0s1a 2.0G 804M 1.0G 43% /mnt/old/a
/dev/da0s1e 70G 67G 1.5G 98% /mnt/old/e

What I really liked about the whole process is that my installation has survived 4 years (for as long as I have been with the company FWIW) without a single re-installation of the OS. My upgrades have worked seamlessly from FreeBSD 4.8 onwards to my currently updated latest and greatest FreeBSD 7.1. Of course, every time there is a GCC major version bump I have to recompile the entire ports collection via a simple portupgrade command which happens like once a year.

Barring the GRUB incident, it could not have gone any smoother.

I was trying to connect the Nokia E71 with Yahoo Calendar to sync up my contacts and scheduling – could not figure out how to do that with the default set of applications that ship with the device. So, the way I do it now is to use iSync with the E71 plugin downloaded from http://europe.nokia.com/A4299040. So iCal.app now updates calendar.yahoo.com and iSync update the E71.

2 more pending things to get going on the E71 are uPNP/DLNA and accessing my corp email via the VPN client.

BSD vs GPL is a sweeping epic, focused on the dichotomy between good and evil. It peers inside the hearts and minds of the
creators of these movements and dissects their battle for world domination. No common documentary will dare to follow the path that
BSD vs GPL blazes. This presentation was given by Jason Dixon at the NYC BSD Conference at Columbia University on
October 11, 2008

Hilarious presentation.