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By Matthieu, 2013-04-06 11:23

Lately I’ve been reviewing my finances. I haven’t exactly been frugal over the past few years, and now that I’ve moved into a proper (and considerably more expensive) apartment, it’s time to grow up and take responsibility.

So far, I’ve found the following cost-saving opportunities:

1. Cancel Bell Fibe TV. As cool as I find IPTV, and despite the convenience of having loads of TV channels with a PVR, the fact is I don’t really watch that much TV. I do most of my media consumption via the Internet (like most other kids these days), and probably 80% of my live TV watching consists of CBC (The National, Strombo) and CityTV (BT, Community, Parks and Rec) – both of which are available in ATSC HD over-the-air here in Toronto. Combine that with XBMC‘s new PVR functionality and there’s no real reason to keep a TV service.
2. Cancel landline phone. Yes, I still have a landline. Landlines are cool. (I think I see a recurring theme here…) When I was little (and unburdened with privacy concerns) I loved the idea of being listed in the white pages. Later on, the PSTN gained a certain mystery, hearkening back to the days of dial-up internet, phreakers with their boxes, live telephone operators, teenagers wanting their own phone lines, all the way back to the early 20th century. But the fact is that now in the early 21st century, the age of the PSTN is past. I’m not even sure I make one voice call a week outside of work. It’s gotten to the point where I once flashed a CyanogenMod nightly onto my phone and used it for a week before realizing the Phone app was broken. All that and the simple fact that landlines are freaking expensive. Bell wants $28.98/month before tax for “Home Phone Lite“. Freephoneline.ca offers a VoIP number for $0/month.
3. Be more energy-conscious. For the first time, I have my own hydro bill. I went out and bought a Kill-A-Watt and started checking all my electronics’ and appliances’ power consumption. More on this later.
4. Move to the cloud. The public cloud, that is. I have a 1U server in a datacentre in Missisauga hosting a few VMs, including this blog. It’s a pretty hefty cost, especially since I upgraded to a more powerful but older server (more incentive for #3). Nowadays a VPS/Amazon EC2 instance can be had for under $20/month, running just about any OS, and with a better Internet connection than one could hope to have privately for the cost.
5. Cancel personal smartphone. My workplace provides me with a smartphone. When I started, it was a BlackBerry 8830 World Edition, which was super cool – until the iPhone was launched. Since then I’ve switched to an iPhone 4 for work and an HTC Sensation for personal use. Having two phones is great (more on that later) – and I CHOOSE to have 2 phones, either one could do both work and play – thank you very much SAMSUNG. (God do I ever hate those commercials. And TouchWiz. And their poor quality control. And all the cheap plastic and gaudy designs.  I could go on for a while…) Long story short, consolidate on one device, save space in pockets, save <$50/month.
6. Last but not least, stop buying random crap. I love technology. I love fixing things. I love learning and challenging myself. But at some point, keeping old computers to repair and experiment with Linux can go too far. Like a banker’s box full of possibly working laptops too far.

We’ll see how this goes over the next few months.

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By Matthieu, 2012-07-29 20:30

The four biggest sitcoms of the last 30 years were all NBC shows, and they were all somewhat broad: Seinfeld, Cheers, The Cosby Show, and Friends. But they were also original for their time: A show about nothing; an after-workplace comedy that dealt with social issues and recurring themes; the first family sitcom to center on an upper class black family; and, of course, Friends, which doesn’t seem novel now because every show is Friends, but a collection of attractive people who did mostly nothing was novel at the time.

via NBC Has Decided To Stop Making Great Shows Like ‘Community’.

Well that’s just wonderful. Let me think of my favourite (currently airing, US-based) comedies right now:

Community, 30 Rock, Parks and Rec, How I Met Your Mother.

See a pattern? Excluding HIMYM they’re all “witty”, “sophisticated”, “critically-acclaimed” shows on NBC. Which also happen to have poor Nielsen ratings.

Witty, sophisticated and critically acclaimed.

I was going to ramble on about why Nielsen ratings are dated, but you can just read about that anywhere on the Web.

Hopefully NBC execs will come to their senses and our “sophisticated” comedies will live on. Or perhaps it’s time for a new way to fund and distribute quality entertainment?

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By Matthieu, 2012-01-12 14:14

So Ubuntu is getting into the TV business. If they can pull it off, and get into Cable/Satellite/IPTV STBs, the would would be a much better place. This looks way better than Microsoft Mediaroom or any proprietary cable box software I’ve seen.

Now, is it just me or does that video sound a lot like this one?

I have to say, I gotta feeling that Canonical might have got it right. Unfortunately, past experience says Big Telecom isn’t very interested in what’s good for the customer.

more at

http://www.ubuntu.com/tv
http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697982/interview-ubuntu-tv-pete-goodall

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By Matthieu, 2010-10-13 23:10

Sesame Street is one of the best kids’ shows ever. It has always been clever, cute, funny and educational. Not overly childish, but simple enough to be understood by young children. Love it.

Since I was little, my favourite characters have been Ernie and Bert. Especially Bert, for being serious and going along with all of Ernie’s antics.

In second place, but not by far, is Cookie Monster. He’s a bit eccentric,

but later on is calm and logical. Well, for the most part.

Finally, there’s Grover. who smells like a monster.

And Grover’s not the only one who’s been keeping up with the times!

l

Comments (2)

By Matthieu, 2009-08-31 16:19

I currently am running this blog from an OpenVZ server managed via Proxmox VE. One issue I had with this setup is that the Proxmox 1.3 installer by default comes with a relatively old kernel (2.6.24), and I want a newer kernel (>=2.6.26, so that I can use my cx18-based TV tuner). Fortunately, Proxmox is just a customized version of Debian Lenny, so I just installed the linux-image-2.6.26-2-openvz-amd64 package from apt, then ran update-initramfs -u and update-grub.

After updating the kernel, however, I was unable to start any of my virtual machines from the Proxmox Web UI. Looking at the system log showed a message about vzctl being 32-bit; problem solved by updating vzctl via apt.

Now I’m attempting to compile v4l-dvb…. fingers crossed!

hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb