Liv & Paul’s Web Page

Finn Capital comment on ABM and HAT:

H & T – BUY [pdf]
Albemarle & Bond – BUY [pdf]

Not as painful to do as I thought. Partly because I spread the chores over a few days. On Tuesday get the bottles ready and fill with sterilising solution, Wednesday add the Finings to the brewing bin,Thursday 16th rinsed the bottles and finally bottle the beer (7 days after putting in the brew bin).

Beer is now sitting in a warm cupboard for a couple of days before going back out to the garage. Got another 30 empties in the garage, so once we are through the first 10 pints can start a new brew kit.

We’ve been in the new house for a couple of months now so have been wanting to get some beer on the go. So ordered the tried and tested “Woodforde’s Wherry”, one of Woodforde’s Norfolk Ales’ brew kits. I ordered it online this time for a good price of £15.73 from Brew It Yourself.

Done the easy bit of getting it into the brewing bin after sterlising everything, annoyingly broke my thermometer so not sure it’s at the ideal temperature for the yeast. Going to bottle this one so have got the unenviable task of sterilising 40 odd bottles in the next few days…

I quickly hacked together a WordPress plugin to help friends and family keep track of which Mr. Men books Henry has in his collection. The code is in a pretty ropey state and does not take advantage of all the new WordPress plugin API’s but thought it worth making available in case anyone wants to take it further.

Although it’s called ‘Mr. Men’ wishlist plugin it will take any list of books/CD’s available through Amazon and create a simple tiled array of covers. I grabbed the images and amazon reference numbers (ASIN) values using a simple perl script that accessed the Amazon Web Services API. However that was a while ago and the API has changed quite a bit since then.

Although I started to make it possible to have multiple wishlists but have not finished writing this bit yet.

Available to download from here: Mr. Men Plugin[zip]

May in some ways has been much quicker at picking up stuff than Henry was, walking, climbing, eating with a spoon, drawing, etc. Partly as she has a big brother to show her the way…

However her vocabulary is frustratingly minimal, which is odd as she knows she is guaranteed a smile from us when she shouts out ‘Trac-Tor’!

Here are the ones I can remember:

By By – Bye Bye
Eh Lo – Hello
Tongue Clicking – ‘Clip Clop’ = Horse
Moo – Moo (Cow, Sheep, Monkey, etc.)
Eh Oh – Uh Oh (after dropping anything)
Bum Bum – Bum Bum (Henry’s Contribution to May’s education)
Aap – Up
Trac Tor – Tractor
Ca – Cat

Bit of a nightmare getting the database schema upgraded, and I am reluctant to throw away all my recording history for the last 7 years. The problem I created for myself is that I misunderstood the wiki page detailing how to remove the database corruption, last time I was considering the upgrade. Basically a year ago I converted the database using the instructions in the guide, upgraded to the latest version of MythTV 0.21 – Fixes and assumed that was it fixed.

Alas MythTV has been inserting latin1 encoded characters into the database ever since, so I have a mixture of encoding methods in the database, options are:

1. Throw away the database, and somehow import the old recordings, or ditch all my old recordings.
2. Work out when I did the database fix and somehow convert the latter part of the database into the correct encoding method.
3. Work out when I did the database fix, ditch everything after that point in time.
4. Convert the whole database into utf8 encoding using scripts.

So lets try the one with the least amount of manual messing about first! Apparently Mysql will attempt to munge incorrectly encoded characters into the correct encoding format when you insert the data. So based on the advice found at Blue Box Group I took a new backup of the mythconverg database, copied it and changed the encoding type from latin1 to utf8. Using the sed script ‘s/DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1/DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8/‘.

This did not appear to convert the characters, tried lots of combinations to try and convert the database with no great progress. Examining the hex dump of some of the UTF sequences did not seem to make any sense, so I’m taking the view that the data is corrupt.

Next attempt involves simply stripping out all the non-ASCII characters and replacing with ‘?’ characters. Easy to do in vi with something like ‘s/[^ -~][^ -~]*/?/g‘.

This will generate a few problems in that the INDEX’s may now exceed the maximum length, so wherever ‘hostname’ is used as a key in the index change it to `hostname`(20). Additionally there will almost certainly be duplicates in the people table, so I removed the line UNIQUE KEY `name` (`name`(41)) where the people table is CREATED. Had to also change the KEY to the oldprogram table to be PRIMARY KEY (`oldtitle`, `airdate`).

Create a new mythconverg23 database with appropriate user privileges and import the modified database. I wrote a short php script to find and remove all the duplicate people from the people table and to remap the credits entries.

To check this was successful recreate the index on the people table with the sql command: ALTER TABLE `people` ADD UNIQUE (`name` ( 41 ));.

Export the database again, change the encoding back to latin1, and import back into mysql.

mysqldump -u mythtv -pmythtv --opt --skip-set-charset \
  --default-character-set=utf8 --skip-extended-insert \
  mythconverg23  > mythconverg23_utf8.sql
cat mythconverg23_utf8.sql | \
sed 's/DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8/DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1/ \
      s/`hostname`(20)/`hostname`/' > mythconverg23_latin.sql
cat mythconverg23_latin.sql | mysql -u mythtv -pmythtv mythconverg23

Okay see if we can now upgrade the schema…

mythbackend -v all

Not convinced my EPIA SP800 will support the latest version of Myth so I will be taking precautions to allow me to revert to my old configuration (0.21 fixes).

Moving to version 0.23 Fixes Branch, so Grab initial SVN copy, see MythTV SVN

svn co http://svn.mythtv.org/svn/branches/release-0-23-fixes/

This can be updated periodically with svn up as required.

Make a clean copy using svn export release-0-23-fixes/ clean-release-0-23-fixes_XXXXX, where XXXXX is the SVN revision. Then on the server and all client take a copy of the latest SVN in /home/mythtv/XXXXX.

Shutdown all clients and the backend using /etc/init.d/mythbackend stop

On server backup myth database as described on the MythTV Wiki using mythconverg_backup.pl.

Rename the database from mythconverg to mythconverg21 and duplicate the database into mythconverg23. Add appropriate permissions for the mythtv user. Update all mysql.txt files (note the one in /var/run/mythtv/.mythtv) to point to mythconverg21.

Create the new version of MythTV: Run the previous configure recorded in config.log, updated as appropriate. Run qmake mythtv.pro and then make.

Finally shutdown all clients and the backend again. Ensure any local modifications to myth are in ~/.mythtv (i.e. mysql.txt and any menu modifications). Copy .mythtv to .mythtv21 and .mythtv23.

Remove any copies of mysql.txt (/usr/local/share/myth/mysql.txt & /var/run/mythtv/.mythtv/mysql.txt). Create a shell script to swap between version of myth.

Where XX is either 21 or 23, XXXXX is the directory of the source tree for the appropriate version of MythTV.

Restart the server using /etc/init.d/mythbackend start. Check database is upgraded okay, check detected all tuners, listings, recordings and videos. Restart the client and check it is working (live TV, recordings and videos).

Always worried that we are bringing a lot of incorrect settings and unwanted orphan database guff. We could now create a new mythconverg database using the mc.sql file. Restart the backend pointing at the new database, this will populate with working defaults. Run mythtv-setup to add tuner cards, listings provider and channels. Run mythfilldatabase to get listings. Restart client and set up appropriate Video Playback Profile, check live TV works. Import videos, music and photos. Import old database tables – previously recorded programs (oldrecorded), current recordings (recorded, recordedprogram & recordedseek), and supporting tables: (recordedrating, recordedcredits, people, credits).

Once successful, install mythweb on the server:

There are quite a few possible cycle routes to work, none of which are ideal for various reasons, so I intend to keep a log of the routes and times taken until I find the best one. I’m using Google maps to mark up the various routes and in the comments recording the times taken and any other pertinent notes.

It is quite likely that I’ll have different routes for getting to and coming from work, and as the seasons change move from some off road routes to more road based ones and back again.

Factors to weigh up:

• Total distance / Time taken
• Amount of Traffic
• Awkward or Dangerous junctions & other hazards
• Quality of surfaces Tarmac, gravel, dirt, mud, pot holes, water logging
• Legality of route, footpaths, farmers fields vs bridleways, cyclepaths, tracks and roads.
• Obstacles including fords, footbridges, stiles, gates, undergrowth.

View Map

We recently moved house which involved moving to a new exchange and getting a new phone number. So I took the opportunity to transfer the old number to be the incoming number for the Sipgate account, surprisingly easy and cheap to do.

Strangely as soon as we did this we started getting lots of calls from a phone spammer, so I instated the phonespam filter, which after a few modifications works a treat. Now all calls rated as spam are instantly hung up.

Have also installed Growl on my macbook, and a couple of scripts on the Asterisk box to send call notifications to the laptop. After knocking up a quick script to look up incoming numbers in my address book, it also shows when friends and family are ringing.

So now the incoming dial plan boils down to:

1. Look up Incoming Number in Address Book
2. If not recognized filter out Spam calls
3. Send notification to laptop (& Myth clients)
4. Dial Extensions

notify (shell script)
notify.php (Notify php application)
lookup.php (Lookup contact agi script)
contacts.php (Contact php library functions)

Central Heating
Current boiler is a Glow Worm Fuelsave 60B Mk II – which SEDBUK has listed as a 65% efficient boiler costing approximately £550 a year to run. A typical 90% efficient boiler would cost £400 to run – however might need to increase size of the radiators, increase system flow rate and would not work very well with ‘mains flow’ hot water system.

Google Maps & Bing to get Ariel Photos and Bird’s Eye View of Locations:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=bh23+8bw
http://www.bing.com/maps/?where1=BH23+8BW

Planning Portal for recent applications (applications also include detailed location plans):
http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/
http://web3.newforest.gov.uk/planningonline/acolnetcgi.gov

Compare House prices of recently sold and estimated valuations:
http://www.mouseprice.com/house-prices/bh23-8bw
http://www.zoopla.co.uk/house-prices/BH23-8BW/?q=bh23%208bw

Local Information:
http://www.upmystreet.com/bh23-8bw.html

Other Checks:
Smoke Control
Flooding

Council Tax Checking:
Use Mouseprice to get local house sale prices.
Use Nationwide House Price Calculator to get a valuation for 1991 Q2.
Check against Government Bands
Compare with neighbourhood Tax Search

Rebuild Cost Calculator:
BCIS

Other Links listed at MSE
MSE

Ever since we moved house and subscribed to Virgin Media for our broadband connection I have been amazed at how much call rates are for the phone package we are on. For example over 5p a minute for national rate, 15p for mobiles and 33p for international.

However the 10Mbit broadband is pretty decent overall, and a few test SIP calls proved that it was good enough at prioritisation to give good call quality. This inspired me to get the cheap ATA I bought out of storage and re-instate our ‘black’ phone. The phone is no longer black – having been consigned to the dustbin long ago, but the name has stuck. This gave us much cheaper calls over the internet (1p National, 9p Mobile and 2p International).

I estimate this will save us over £200 a year on call charges, but some stuff still niggled and I wanted better call logging and accounting than SIPGATE provided. So I have install the Asterisk PBX software on the server in the loft to do some more clever stuff.

So I now have the ATA registering with the Asterisk server, the asterisk server has registered with the SIP providers and routes calls according to least cost (Currently it distributes the calls between SIPGATE and VoipCheap). Additionally it will automatically re-direct 0845 and 0870 numbers to cheaper national rate numbers, using the script written by Martin Smith to query the saynoto0870 database.

Once the system proves itself to be reliable, I will be tempted to use this as our main incoming phone number as well. Then I can set up other cool stuff, like host my own voicemail server, set up auto-redirects to other numbers when I’m away from home. Automatically filter out junk and cold calls using the phone spam filter database.

Certain members of the household still can’t remember when to use the black phone and when to use the normal landline (National calls are free at the weekend with Virgin). So am tempter to get a PCI FXO card to allow me to connect and route calls automatically to the landline from the SIP phone.

Having still not found a house, need to keep an eye open for new good savings deals as well as possible mortgage deals. Our good Nationwide rate of £70,000 at 2% has now expired.

Savings Accounts

Newcastle Building Society’s 5 Year bond @ 5% is a current market leader only allows withdrawals after 90 day notice.

Mortgage Options

First Direct’s Offset 2 year fixed rate mortgage @ 4.99% (no fee) if we get a house that needs money spending on it. Shove all the cash into the linked accounts ready to spend on the renovation/extension.