Simon Rumble’s blog

I finally got MythTV running under Xen last night. It was quite a bit more work to get it running under Debian than Ubuntu which works out-of-the box, but Ubuntu has problems installing using debootstrap.

There's one major problem though: Xen seems to choke on large volumes of I/O going across the PCI bus. The whole machine locks up. So I think I'll end up having to run Myth inside dom0, though at least I can still run the other stuff I want for this server in various domUs.

I'm buying a couple of 300 gig hard drives off Moz, which should give me lots of disk space for recording telly. Just in time too, as the non-ratings period has ended and there's the occasional good show on now.

Last night I also bought one of these digital telly cards. They're the cheapest ones going and, to boot, they can also record analogue simultaneously. They're actually Pinnacle 300i cards and fully supported under Linux. They're clearance items from Dickies so get in quick if you want them. I think I might buy another as that would let me record five channels if you include analogue and my USB stick DVB thingy.

So the job over the weekend (apart from going to Good Vibrations) is to get Myth running in dom0 and get the diskless front end going.

Our ever-smart coppers have made a shock revelation in the Sydney's red light district. The sex shops there sell porn!

Australia's film classification system allows for a bunch of different ratings, with R being the highest allowed in the states and X being the most explicit and only legally sold in the territories (ACT and NT). So legally the X films aren't supposed to be sold in NSW but they have been openly on sale for decades.

I used to work in the porn industry back in the early 90s. At the time I'd never been into a Kings Cross sex shop and when I first visited one on business, I was quite shocked to find they stocked X-rated videos and displayed them quite openly. I figured (as we sold them wholesale X porn from Canberra) they were available but under-the-counter or using some other sleight of hand. So I was quite surprised by them being available.

Thing is, the cops can't avoid knowing about this, so there has to be some level of official corruption. Yet you get them coming over all innocent with statements like:
Information from this case led to police conducting undercover operations in the shops to determine the type of material that was being sold.

and:
Despite the stores openly displaying the apparently X-rated material, worth millions of dollars, on their shelves, Ms Hayes said the sale of the material had been going undetected for some time.

Yes I'm sure it would have been hard to work out. It would have been impossible for them to have noted down a couple of titles from the films and search for the title in the OFLC database. I mean, searching for one of the titles we used to sell took all of a minute to confirm it's rated X.

Yet more evidence that the NSW Police are institutionally corrupt. Not that this should be news.

Dave Cross pointed out a scare story in Britain's Daily Fascist newspaper. Seems Rupert's Daily Terrorgraph has stolen the story wholesale, though the sub editor amusingly "corrected" the spelling of warez.

Wonder if Rupert has legally licensed content from the Fascist or if they've just ripped it off like they've been known to do. There's certainly no mention of the Daily Mail in the article.

This is just too funny. DNA testing has shown Pauline Hanson is of mixed race, including some middle eastern blood. That's just too good!

Of course a smarter racist would have expected this and refused the test.

There's rivers running down the roads near our place. Crazy stuff. At least some has hit the dams!

Just tried to get to work and was turned back by being soaked, head-to-toe, at about 1/3 of the way to the bus stop. This was with an umbrella. I'd got used to London rain where it's constant but doesn't actually get you particularly wet...

After turning back, I found the street at the end of our street was almost knee deep. Had to wade through it to get home, but I was soaked already by then anyway. Gave up on work today.

We had our housewarming party last night and it was loads of fun. The theme was "Departure Lounge" and we had some fantastic costumes. Lots of boogie board bags with suspicious additions. Trolly dollies and rock stars. And lookit the great racoon-ski look in the bottom-left of this photo. Fantastic one Mel!

Thanks to those of you who came. Was great to see youse all and the house is now thoroughly warmed.

Photos here.

It seems crappy country singer Keith Urban is is sueing oil painter Keith Urban for owning and using the domain name of his own name. Nowhere on his site does painter Urban claim to be a country singer, alcoholic or married to a redhead.

This is the thing about these high profile wankers sueing. If they asked nicely, they could probably come to some arrangement. For example, put a prominent link on the front page pointing to the other Keith Urban's site, for people looking for the lousy alcoholic country singer. Instead, they start out with legal letters.

So warbling country loser Keith Urban, you're an arsehole.

Oh and if you're a somehow more famous Rumble, take this as a warning. Legal letters will get you nowhere.

When did Planet Linux Australia become emo planet? WTF?

My family has dinner together most Mondays. Last night we went out to Bronte Beach for a surf and barbecue. This is probably the best thing about being back in Sydney: getting to the beach regularly. It's very very nice.

Though when I see upcoming gigs happening in London, or Glastonbury news, I get a bit sad.