The feature presentation for ALE’s
April 13, 2006 Central Meeting will be
“MythTV for the Common Man for $300”
with Mike Harrison and Jesse Guardiani
MythTV is a home-brew, Linux based PVR (Personal
Video Recorder), conceptually similar to TiVo.
The MythTV project, created by Isaac Richards and
extensively documented by Robert Kulagowski, is
comprisied of a suite of Open Source, GPL programs and
has been under heavy development for almost four years.
The current MythTV package is now quite stable and
capable. An abbrevieated list of MythTV features includes:
— Basic ‘live-tv’ functionality with
Pause/Fast Forward/Rewind of “live” TV.
— Support for multiple tuner cards and multiple
simultaneous recordings.
— Distributed architecture allowing multiple recording
machines and multiple playback machines on a network
— Compresses video in software using rtjpeg or mpeg4,
plus supports hardware MPEG-2 (PVR-250 / PVR-350)
— Completely automatic commercial detection/skipping
— Grabs program information using xmltv.
( complete feature list and screen shots at MythTV.org )
Bio:
— Mike Harrison is biomedical engineer turned
programmer/geek. He built and operated the
regions first Internet Service Provider from
1994 until 2003, and now operates GeekLabs,
a small programming and services company in
Chattanooga TN.
— Jesse Guardiani, Professional Programmer and
Sys Admin. Sys Admin for a small town ISP from
2002 – 2005. Professional PHP programmer in
Chattanooga TN from 2005 – current. Avid Linux,
MythTV, hardware, and gaming enthusiast.
==========
Meeting time is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to Emory Law School are at the
Central Meeting link on the side bar.
Note that there will be a follow up for this
featured topic and an opportunity to get
assistance building your own MythTV
PVR system at the “MythTV Build In”
(full notice & details below)
For the March, 2006 Central meeting Mr. Dennis Boylan will be
presenting his quasi-annual “State of the TiVo” address, keeping
us up to date on the latest developments and hacks for the Linux
based TiVo media technology.
Dennis is a long standing member of ALE who has been active in
supporting the ALE NE meeting since it’s inception. His knowledge
of Linux and networking is extensive and he regularly presents for
ALE meetings on a broad array of topics. His greatest “super geek”
distraction, however, is the TiVo, and with 6 different TiVo
models in his home he can clearly be classified as a TiVo-holic.
We invite everyone to share this meeting announcement with any
educators and school administrators that they are acquainted with,
because the feature topic for the February 9, 2006 ALE Central
meeting is:
Evangelizing Open Source Benefits for Education
presented by
Daniel Howard,
President and CEO, Quadrock Communications
After years of frustration trying to keep Windows legacy computers
functioning at Morris Brandon Elementary School, two parent volunteers
recommended to the principal and the PTA leadership that the school move
to a Linux thin client server system employing the K12-LTSP package. The
proposal was accepted, with the result that all of the school’s computers are
now fully functional and over 50 donated PC’s have been converted into useful
Linux thin clients. Some of the teachers are now considering what they could
do with a computer for every student. Initially, the school district
technology personnel staunchly oposed the system, but they have become
believers after observing the success and benefits of using open source
software first hand.
This presentation will cover the decision process for moving to open source
software, the challenges of convincing legacy locked administrators of the
benefits of an open systems approach and, most importantly, how the teachers
have used their new Linux systems effectively in their classrooms.
Presenter Daniel Howard was the Associate Director of the Broadband
Telecommunications Center at Georgia Tech, and is now an entrepreneur.
His first startup company was Digital Furnace, a cable modem technology
company, which was acquired by the Broadcom Corporation in 2000. His
current startup efforts are in the area of interactive television
software. He has been a parent volunteer at Morris Brandon Elementary
School for over two years, and is now the chairman of the Brandon
eParents, a group of computer-savvy parent volunteers who are all being
introduced to the Linux operating system as a result of the new
technology initiative at Brandon Elementary School.
— Meeting directions and maps are available via the side bar links.
—————————————————————–
2005.01.10 update:
Video DVD of the full meeting is now available at
ftp.ale.org/meetings/central/2005-12
(anonymous log in)
—————————————————————-
The main presentation for December’s ALE Central meeting was
on Scalix and was provided by Ben Chapman, Assistant Dean for Information
Technology at the Emory law school.
Scalix allows Unix / Linux based systems to support the common Outlook
client bundled with windows desktops while avoiding some of the problems
and security issues of Microsoft Exchange. The product has a strong technical
pedigree (HP OpenMail is the underlying foundation) and is an outstanding
webmail client. The Emory law school is investigating the deployment of
Scalix to handle approximately 150 faculty and staff email accounts.
Ben Chapman is in charge of the I.T. department at the Emory University
School of Law. Before formally entering the IT field in 1997, he practiced
law for five years with a 40 lawyer firm in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was
previously IT director for the University of Tulsa College of Law and
has been at Emory since 2003. He has owned some flavor of Unix-based
computer since 1991, and has also owned a Sinclair QL, an Atari 520ST,
an Epson HX-20, an NEC Starlet, and other bits of micro-computing history.
Ben has made his PDF presentation slides available and they are posted here:
Scalix Presentation Slides, 2005.12.08 Central
Right Click on link above to download. Size is 351 KB
The feature topic for the November ALE central meeting
will be an overview of Classcaster, a blog system supporting
telephony messaging and podcasting:
“Classcaster is a course blogging system that provides faculty,
librarians, and staff of CALI member schools with a new way to
interact with students and communities. A Classcaster blog
provides authors with tools for posting not only traditional blog
articles but also tools for podcasting and sharing any documents
and/or files with students and communities.”
( More at http://www.classcaster.org )
Our presenter will be Elmer Masters, Director of Internet
Development for the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal
Instruction ( CALI, http://www.cali.org ).
He is also an admin of the Teknoids mailing list and website
( http://www.teknoids.net ) and blogs at
http://www.content4.symphora.com/ .