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	<title>Digital Moose Tracks &#187; Tips</title>
	<atom:link href="http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/category/tips/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog</link>
	<description>.Net, MythTV and Me</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:24:50 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Yay! PNGOUT – How to install on Dreamhost</title>
		<link>http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/yay-pngout-how-to-install-on-dreamhost</link>
		<comments>http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/yay-pngout-how-to-install-on-dreamhost#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:10:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joshua</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tips]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wordpress]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/yay-pngout-how-to-install-on-dreamhost</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[PNGOUT is a wonderful little utility written by …. (of Duke Nukem fame) that compresses PNG files by about 15%-20% on average.  Which if you have many PNG images in you website can make a small but noticeable difference in load times.  Although there are other similar utilities PNGOUT seems to be regarded as the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>PNGOUT is a wonderful little utility written by …. (of Duke Nukem fame) that compresses PNG files by about 15%-20% on average.  Which if you have many PNG images in you website can make a small but noticeable difference in load times.  Although there are other similar utilities PNGOUT seems to be regarded as the best so I decided to use it.  Since I already had a lot of images I wanted to compress on this blog I had to figure out a couple of things to easily compress them.</p>
<ol>
<li>I wanted to run PNGOUT on my webhost server since then I wouldn’t have to transfer the files back and forth to compress them.  Since Dreamhost has linux servers so that required finding a linux port of PNGOUT.  As and added benefit this should make it reasonably simple to make a cron job to compress all PNG images later.</li>
<li>I wanted to basically make it a one line command to compress all my PNG files so I had to figure out how to find all PNG images under a directory and run PNGOUT on them</li>
</ol>
<p>Nothing particularly complex so lets dive in.  Step one was easy as there is already a well know port of PNGOUT available although it took a bit of searching to find the <a href="http://www.jonof.id.au/pngout">download site</a>.  Now I just download the Linux  Dynamic zip, unzip it and load up the i386 executable to my home directory on my webhost. (Make sure to make it executable)</p>
<p>After testing to make sure pngout worked on a single file I set about finding how to do it on all PNG files under a directory.  Give that I am not a linux expert it was pretty easy as the find command let me do everything I wanted.</p>
<pre class="brush: bash;">find blog_directory -name *.png -exec ./pngout {} \;</pre>
<p>That will find anything under blog_directory that matches the naming pattern *.png and run pngout on it.  That was easy enough I may actual setup a cron job sometime.</p>
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		<item>
		<title>Where Ultra@VNC store its ‘host’ list</title>
		<link>http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/where-ultravnc-store-its-host-list</link>
		<comments>http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/where-ultravnc-store-its-host-list#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:40:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joshua</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tips]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ultravnc]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/where-ultravnc-store-its-host-list</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Short answer HKCU\Software\ORL\VNCviewer\MRU Long answer In UltraVNC it keeps a list of the host you connected to before in its little drop down. Over time it tends get cluttered with one time use entries making it more difficult to pick the right one.&#160; After it became enough of a burden I opened up Process Monitor [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Short answer </p>
<p>HKCU\Software\ORL\VNCviewer\MRU</p>
<p>Long answer </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.uvnc.com/">UltraVNC</a> it keeps a list of the host you connected to before in its little drop down.</p>
<p><a href="http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/image1.png"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/image_thumb1.png" width="644" height="220" /></a> </p>
<p>Over time it tends get cluttered with one time use entries making it more difficult to pick the right one.&#160; After it became enough of a burden I opened up <a href="http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx">Process Monitor</a> to see what I could see.</p>
<p><a href="http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/image2.png"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/image_thumb2.png" width="644" height="89" /></a> </p>
</p>
<p>After dialing in the filtering so I was only looking at vncviewer.exe I can see its writing to the registry in a directory called setting – that sounds promising.&#160; Opening that up and routing around a bit reveals this.</p>
<p><a href="http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/image3.png"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/image_thumb3.png" width="644" height="241" /></a> </p>
<p>Which looks suspiciously like the dropdown.&#160; Basically you have some name/value pairs for the host names.&#160;&#160; And index specifces their order.&#160; And you can just delete any entries you want provided you also remove it from index.</p>
<p>And now I can sit back and enjoy my clutter free pull down.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>MythTV TIP &#8211; Power Button</title>
		<link>http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/mythtv-tip-power-button</link>
		<comments>http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/mythtv-tip-power-button#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 07 Feb 2009 05:26:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joshua</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[MythTV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tips]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[remote]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/mythtv-tip-power-button</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Every once and a while mythfrontend gets stuck for one reason or another.&#160; Now when this happens I just ssh into the mythbox and restart gdm.&#160; This almost always brings thing back up and running.&#160; While I do usually have my laptop about its still a bit of a pain to break out of TV [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Every once and a while mythfrontend gets stuck for one reason or another.&nbsp; Now when this happens I just ssh into the mythbox and restart gdm.&nbsp; This almost always brings thing back up and running.&nbsp; While I do usually have my laptop about its still a bit of a pain to break out of TV mode and start sshing in.&nbsp; Seeing <a href="http://www.wilsonet.com/mythtv/tips.php">this</a> gave me the idea to put my power button to good use but I felt the script was overly complicated given how well the gdm restart worked.&nbsp; But since&nbsp; restarting gdm requires root privileges and thus a password to run I was stymied.&nbsp; Until I learned about the sudoers file that is.&nbsp; Editing this file lets you gives users the ability to sudo certain commands without a password &#8211; it actually does way more than that but its not relevant to the post.&nbsp; Now if you are not careful editing sudoers can scrap your system so precede with caution.&nbsp; Now on to the good stuff.&nbsp; To edit sudoers use the following command.</p>
<p>sudo visudo</p>
<p>This will apply some basic sanity checking before you save the file; making it every so slightly more difficult to slag your system.&nbsp; Anyway add the following line. (replace user_name with the user mythfrontend runs under)</p>
<p>user_name ALL=NOPASSWD: /etc/init.d/gdm restart
<p>Make sure to put this at the end of the file otherwise rules may override it.&nbsp;&nbsp; That took me about half an hour and countless fiddle logout/login cycles.
<p>Now add something like the following your your lirc file.
<p>#Power Button<br />begin<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; remote = remote_name<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; prog = irexec<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; button = Power<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; config = sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart<br />end
<p>Now after you logout and log back in your power button should restart gdm allowing you to &#8216;fix&#8217; any frontend hanging issues from your remote.
<p>*Note &#8211; This tip has no warranty or support.&nbsp; If it deletes your files or blows up your computer don&#8217;t come crying to me.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>MythTV Tip &#8211; MythWeb Memory Limit</title>
		<link>http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/mythtv-tip-mythweb-memory-limit</link>
		<comments>http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/mythtv-tip-mythweb-memory-limit#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2009 03:31:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joshua</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[MythTV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tips]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mythweb]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/mythtv-tip-mythweb-memory-limit</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Once you start getting more than 150 recordings you start hitting the memory limit of 32MB when you try to view all recordings in Mythweb.&#160; The obvious solution is to just up the memory limit but its not obvious where to do that &#8211; at least not to me.&#160; After some searching I found this [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Once you start getting more than 150 recordings you start hitting the memory limit of 32MB when you try to view all recordings in Mythweb.&nbsp; The obvious solution is to just up the memory limit but its not obvious where to do that &#8211; at least not to me.&nbsp; After some searching I found this <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mythplugins/+bug/141528">post</a>.&nbsp; Which gives the correct location(at least for me on Mythbuntu 8.10) /etc/mythtv/mythweb-config.php.&nbsp; Then I just upped the limit to 64MB so I figure I&#8217;ll be good till around 300 recordings. Obviously you can increase it even higher if you like.&nbsp; </p>
<p>As an aside I imagine it is the on demand creation of all the thumbnails that sucks up all the memory.</p>
<p>*Note &#8211; This tip has no warranty or support.&nbsp; If it deletes your files or blows up your computer don&#8217;t come crying to me.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>MythTV Tip &#8211; Guide Button</title>
		<link>http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/mythtv-tip-guide-button</link>
		<comments>http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/mythtv-tip-guide-button#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Dec 2008 04:21:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joshua</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[MythTV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tips]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[remote]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/?p=10</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Although I don&#8217;t use it much MythTV has a nice &#8216;Guide Screen&#8217; where you can see what is coming up on TV.&#160; And the remote I use for MythTV has a guide button on it so I figured I&#8217;d set it up so when you press it the &#8216;Guide Screen&#8217; comes up.&#160; There are a [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Although I don&#8217;t use it much MythTV has a nice &#8216;Guide Screen&#8217; where you can see what is coming up on TV.&nbsp; And the remote I use for MythTV has a guide button on it so I figured I&#8217;d set it up so when you press it the &#8216;Guide Screen&#8217; comes up.&nbsp; There are a couple of things you need to do to set this up.</p>
<ol>
<li>Have your remote setup to control MythTV.&nbsp;
<li>Check/Edit the MythTV keybindings &#8211; this is where you setup how keyboard shortcuts are interpreted by MythTV.
<li>Edit your lircrc config file &#8211; this is where you setup what commands each button sends to MythTV.</li>
</ol>
<p>One is outside the scope of this post so for the rest of the post I&#8217;ll just assume you have the remote setup and working.</p>
<p>Two is pretty easy.&nbsp; Just open up MythWeb -&gt; settings -&gt; key bindings.</p>
<p><a href="http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/image3.png"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="373" alt="image" src="http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/image-thumb3.png" width="491" border="0"></a> </p>
<p>After some searching I found the following two shortcuts that concern the guide, the &#8216;TV Frontend -&gt; Guide&#8217; command and the &#8216;Program Guide&#8217; jump point, shown below.</p>
<p><a href="http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/image.png"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="51" alt="image" src="http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/image-thumb.png" width="1157" border="0"></a>&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/image1.png"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="51" alt="image" src="http://digitalmoosetracks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/image-thumb1.png" width="1164" border="0"></a>&nbsp;</p>
<p>After some experimentation I determined that the &#8216;Program Guide&#8217; jump point works anywhere but when you exit from the guide screen you are dumped back into the MythTV Main Menu.&nbsp; The&nbsp; &#8216;TV Frontend -&gt; Guide&#8217; on the other had only works if you are watching a show/recording but it pauses it before you enter the guide and when you exit brings you back to where you left off which is nice.&nbsp; Now this is probably just a coincidence and may change in future MythTV versions but if you set both you actually get the best of both worlds.&nbsp; If watching a show/recording it pauses for you and if your in the menu somewhere it still goes to the &#8220;Guide screen&#8221;.&nbsp; So set both of these to the same key, I used S, and your half way there.</p>
<p>Step three isn&#8217;t bad but it depends on exactly how you have your remote setup. But I&#8217;ll outline the basic steps.</p>
<ol>
<li>Find your &#8216;lircrc&#8217; file its probably in /username/.mythtv directory
<li>Add/modify an entry for the guide button &#8211; it should look something like this</li>
</ol>
<p># Guide button (EPG)<br />begin<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; remote = YourRemoteName #Optional<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; prog = mythtv<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; button = RemoteButtonName<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; config = S<br />end
<p>And that&#8217;s it, after a quick reboot you should be able to press the guide button and have the &#8216;Guide Screen&#8217; come up.
<p>*Note &#8211; This tip has no warrenty or support.&nbsp; If it deletes your files or blows up your computer don&#8217;t come crying to me.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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