Western Digital Mybook World Edition (2nd edition)

The new(ish) mybook world edition

A few weeks ago, I decided I needed some kind of NAS for my home as I’m often replacing my linux distro, installing Win7 or whatever and I wanted somewhere more permanent for my files.

I looked at the possibility of getting another PC to set up as a NAS, but this looked like it was going to be too costly, and I really needed something that could be plugged into my router which is stuck in the kitchen so I went for the WD Mybook World Edition as I knew it was running Linux and was hackable.

So far I’ve been fairly happy with it, it was *Very* easy to enable SSH and get to work fiddling with it. There’s a checkbox option on its web interface to allow SSH access. From there it’s fairly easy to install optware (similar to apt on Debian/Ubuntu) which allows you to easily install pretty much anything.

Performance is apparently a lot better than the old blue-ring version, however I must say the USB & ntfs performance is laughable – after a lot of tweaking I managed to only get 1.2MB(megabytes!)/sec out of it via USB where as I get about 5MB/sec over my wireless network! Oh well.

The only other issue I’ve had with it is the software it runs.. WD have done something very bizzare indeed and used what seems to be some kind of generic PHP software for embedded devices to run the thing. At first I thought this was just for the web front end, but no, there are all kinds of system() and shell() (or whatever it is) calls in a whole bunch of weird php files that do everything from mounting hard disks to starting other services etc.. very weird! I think significant performance gains could have been made if WD had opted for a more ‘normal’ system rather than having the overhead of a web server and php for everything.

Having said that, using optware allows you to do things as you would on a normal system without interfering with the main system which is a nice feature of optware.

Overall, I’d recommend this device – it’s not the best, but for the price I think it’s pretty reasonable.

WDTV – Western Digital TV media player

Picked up a WDTV last night for $200. As you may have guessed from some of my other posts, I’m into my A/V stuff, so this thing seemed like a bargain. Many reviews will rave about how great it is, and I must say it’s not too bad, but I have found there are bugs (even in the latest 1.0.1.2 firmware):

Playback of any AC3 file seems to result in a barely noticable (but very annoying) 100ms or so audio lag. This doesn’t drift which is good, but it makes watching anything with an AC3 soundtrack very annoying. I’ve tried various things to try and fix this and make sure it’s not me or my files, but the unit. Strangely, this only seems to occur when playing back NTSC files, and not PAL (25fps) files.

Other than that, it’s pretty good. I’ll hang on to it until I can test it on someone else’s setup. Otherwise it might have to go back to the shop!

*update*

After more testing with different files, it seems to be off-sync with a bunch of files, not just ones with an AC3 soundtrack. I also tested the device at a friends place before finally taking it back. If Western Digital manages to sort this bug out, I may consider buying it again…probably not though, manufacturers need to start testing stuff rather than just putting things out there and then releasing good firmware a year later.

I also just found out the WDTV violates the GPL, so I don’t want it anyway!

*update2*

Version 1.02 firmware is now released for the WDTV, and I’ve recently bought an AV reciever which has built in a/v delay stuff (and optical/hdmi inputs etc..) so perhaps it is time to re-purchase WDTV after all. Converting MKV/h264 to AVI/xvid for my xbox w/ac3 isn’t so great.

*update3*

I did re-buy the WDTV, and I’ve been very happy with it, but only if using firmware version 1.02.03 (I think it’s that one) which has all the sync issues sorted. Recommended!

Common sense

I don’t believe in emailing chain-emails about, so I thought I’d put this here:

London Times – Obituary

An Obituary printed in the London Times……..

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend,  Common Sense, who
Has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was,
Since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He
Will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:
Knowing when to come in out of the rain;  Why the early bird gets the
Worm;  Life isn’t always fair; and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t  spend
More than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children,
Are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but
Overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy
Charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended
From school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for
Reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the
Job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly
Children.

It declined even further when schools were required to get parental
Consent to administer sun lotion or an Aspirin to a student; but could
Not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an
Abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses;
And criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a
Burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to
Realize that a steaming cup of coffee she had purchased in MacDonald’s was hot. She spilled a little in
Her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement against the company.

Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by
His wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers;
I Know My Rights
I Want It Now
Someone Else Is To Blame
I’m A Victim

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

Virtualbox 2.1

A new and significant release from Sun, Virtualbox 2.1 is now out just in time for Christmas.

I’ve been checking out a couple of new features that have been added. First, the most significant (to me) is native built in host networking support. This makes it super easy to connect a VM up to a host network adapter so that you can access the VM from the outside on the network – far easier and more simple than setting up tun/tap interfaces. It even works with wireless network devices on the host which is awesome.

The other neat new feature is 3d hardware support, this is a big deal if you’re a gamer and you use linux as it enables you to play your 3d games on VM rather than re-booting into windows or using WINE or whatever.

All in all, Virtualbox is now probably my favourite application ever, it just keeps getting better and better. If you’ve never used it before, it’s definitely worth giving it a try.

Download version 2.1

Internet censorship in Australia

Downmixing AC3 5.1 to stereo mp3 for xbox360 avi playback

*Updated!

The xbox360 doesn’t like divx/xvid files that have ac3 sound tracks, so we can use mencoder to convert these files so they use 128kbit stereo mp3 soundtracks instead. This isn’t too hard to do, just use a command similar to:

mencoder input.avi -ovc copy -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=128 -channels 2 -o output.avi

Easy when you know how.

Edimax EW-7728IN IEEE802.11n on Ubuntu

I recently purchased the Edimax EW-7728IN IEEE802.11n Draft 2.0 wireless card. Although I’ve not tested the performance yet, I have managed to get it to successfully connect to my Billion 7300N 802.11n wireless router at a rate of between 270 and 300Mb/sec.

Before I began I read on the Ubuntu forums that many people had problems trying to get the thing to work. I found it was fairly straight forward which is probably a result of the new(ish) drivers on the edimax website for Linux.

You can download the latest source from http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Linux.html – I didn’t see any restrictions or licenses on there for the source, so I’ve decided to compile and upload the modules as I need them. You can check back here to pick up the latest if you’re not confident compiling it yourself.

Please don’t try running the modules on kernels that they are not for. This will not work! You will need to compile it against headers for your currently running kernel if you don’t find it listed here.

Then you’ll want to extract the kernel module:

bunzip2 rt2860sta.ko.bz2

Now test that it works before you continue:

sudo insmod rt2860sta.ko

Now run iwconfig to see if the module loaded OK. If so, you should have the ra0 device listed.

If all is well, copy the module to the kernel module directory:

sudo cp rt2860sta.ko /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/ubuntu/net/rt2860/rt2860sta.ko

Now we’d like to tell it to auto-load upon system startup. We can do this by adding the line: rt82860sta to the /etc/modules file. Easy!

Update!!

I’ve recently found a link to a dynamically building kernel module .deb file, which is great because it means you can just install this .deb on your system and it should work. With a bit of luck the Ubuntu team will include the driver in Intrepid, but I wouldn’t hold your breath:

http://www.array.org/ubuntu/dists/intrepid/eeepc/binary-i386/rt2860-dkms_1.7.1.1_all.deb

Central Coast LUG (Linux user group)

Hi, I’ve posted this to my site in order to find people looking for a central coast linux user group (Central Coast, NSW, Australia that is.) Basically, I’ve sort-of found one at http://cclug.com, but it seems to be a bit dead with hardly any info. If you are interested in a central coast LUG, please leave a comment with your email address and I’ll get in touch. Perhaps you can help me find the mysterious CCLUG, or help me establish a new one? Who knows! Either way, it’d be nice to have a LUG that’s not all the way down in Sydney.

Why laconi.ca and identi.ca should be your choice for microblogging

Explaining microblogging is slightly difficult, but I’ll give it a go:

You sign up for a microblogging service like twitter. You ‘follow’ your friends that are already on there, and perhaps some people that aren’t your friends but people who say interesting things. Once you’ve started following your friends, you might download a program for your computer to alert you when they post (or in the case of twitter ‘tweet’), and to allow you to post your own ‘tweets’ without having to visit the twitter website at all. This is great because it allows you to know what your friends are up to, or tell the world what you’re up to, or that you’ve just discovered an amazing new pizza at dominos.

When you post an update on a service like twitter, it’s totally public. You are broadcasting, and people who are following you will be automatically alterted to what you say. It gets really cool when you consider all of it can be done from your mobile/laptop/pc etc..

What’s wrong with twitter?

Now that’s cool, and I’ve used twitter and it’s good. However, there’s one (or two, perhaps three?) major flaws with twitter. The first being that it’s a closed service. Imagine if email was a closed service, eg people on hotmail could only send and recieve email from other people on hotmail and people on gmail could only send and recieve mail to @gmail addresses. This is effectively the problem with twitter, jaiku and all the 100′s of other closed microblogging services – it’s cool, but it’s silly. Oh yeah, the other things wrong with twitter are it breaks often is all closed up.

Laconi.ca

Enter laconi.ca. Laconi.ca is an open source microblogging server program. This means that anyone can start their own microblogging website. Please don’t stop reading here! This is where it gets good. You can easily link your microblogging website to any other laconi.ca microblogging website – adding to a big mesh of microblogging servers.. just like email servers. laconi.ca uses an open standard for communication also meaning that you’re not limited to using laconi.ca as your server.

Why is it better for me though?

laconi.ca does lots of cool things that twitter doesn’t! Firstly, you can use an instant messeging client with it, and post to your feed just by sending the laconi.ca contact a message. Secondly, you can ‘track’ certain words. Say you’re interested in cake, you can type into your IM client: track cake and every time someone posts something with the word ‘cake’ in it (not just your friends!) you’ll get their post. There’s other neat things I haven’t tried yet such as posting attachments and things, but it’s got some killer features that no other microblogging services have.. the best being it’s open.

Find me on identi.ca

You probably don’t want to have to set up your own laconi.ca server, so why not just use the ‘main’ one! Check out identi.ca and subscribe to me: johnhunt

Move to Australia

Just a quick upadte, john-hunt.com is now hosted in Australia rather than the UK. This is good because it means I don’t have to wait ages for pages to load on my own sites etc..

I’m going to set up a more personal blog, probably at blog.john-hunt.com with posts about life in Aus, photos etc…what I should have sorted out ages ago really.