in medias res

So I’ve been working for some time now on devising a media system for my home that could potential replace cable. It’s a pretty sweet little setup. I’ll be tracking my progress here to let people know what I’ve got in my setup and any roadblocks I run into in the process.

1. The Mac MiniThis is the big one, the center of it all. I went with the Mini for several reasons: 
   1. Media ServerMy Macbook Pro is great, but I got mine a year ago– back before Apple upped the storage capacity in their laptops to 250 gigs. Mine has a measly 100 gigs. (Seriously? More than doubling the capacity in just a year? Wow.) And I’d like to have a place to not only store all my music and video, it would be great to be able to play them on the big screen with the great speakers.I also want to be able to sync my laptop with the media server for everything but videos (I’ll just keep the tv shows and movies on the Mini), but I’ll show you how to do that later.
   2. Backup ServerThis was one of my reasons for purchasing the Mini, but for now it doesn’t look like it matters. In the months before OS X Leopard was released, Apple had advertised that the new Time Machine backup application would be able to perform backups wirelessly (as long as the drive was HFS+ formatted and communicating over the network via Apple Filing Protocol). Apple yanked that feature from Time Machine shortly before launch. There’s still the possibility that the feature will come with a future update, but there are no guarantees.Here was why the Mini was crucial: there really are only two ways to meet the requirements of both HFS+ and AFP with network attached storage. There are some NAS server solutions that allow you to format the drive HFS+, and some others that allow the Apple Filing Protocol to be used, but only one that does both. Apple’s Airport Extreme. But that’s a pretty expensive router, and I already have a solid router that’s given me very little trouble. The only other option is to just share an HFS+ drive on another Mac. Hence the Mini. (Certainly too expensive if that’s all I was buying it for, but given all the uses the Mini has, I think it’s worth it.)
   3. Print ServerBasically, I hated always being in the living room when I needed to print something and having to walk into my bedroom, connect the USB hub, print one page, and then eject the three harddrives that are also attached to the hub. I just connected the printer to the Mini and shared it. Bingo.
   4. TiVo AlternativeDefinitely the biggest reason I got the Mini. Don’t get me wrong, I love being enslaved to Comcast’s lackluster performace and more-than-impressive monthly bill. But something about the possibility of an endless supply of storage for tv show recordings, the ability to export them to iPod/iPhone format, and the ability to watch them anywhere in the world really caught my attention. Meet elgato’s line of eyetv devices. I’ve got the EyeTV 250, the predecessor to the EyeTV 250 Plus. I can receive any of the analog channels from the standard cable package. It’s a great system, but there’s still room for improvement. I’ll review it soon in a separate post. I’ll just say that I’m impressed, I hope more features will come soon, but I’m not yet ready to ditch the DVR box we rent from Comcast.
2. EyeTV 250The second biggest piece to the puzzle, and I’ve already mentioned it above. I won’t go into much detail, that’s for another post. Basically mine accepts analog channels. The updated EyeTV 250 Plus also accepts over-the-air HDTV (called ATSC, the HD equivalent to the classic “rabbit ears” setup). EyeTV also packages their software with the HDHomeRun, a dual-tuner that accepts both over-the-air HDTV and cable-based HDTV (called Clear QAM).
3. Buffalo WHR-G54SI like this router because it’s both cheap (you can find it for $30-50) and potentially powerful. I flashed it with the much more powerful DD-WRT, which allows more options in the configuration. Recently Buffalo even teamed up with DD-WRT to release an officially supported, pre-flashed version of this router. There are definitely more options for the super-user. It even pings the DynDNS server to let them know you’re current WAN IP. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry. It’s definitely a nerd feature you’d just need if you wanted to watch all those TV shows anywhere with Internet access.

 It seems I’m not alone. Randy over at Ditching Cable is currently involved in a very similar experiment, trying to rid himself of the over-priced, under-performance that most of the monopolistic cable companies bring to the table. 

Posted in Ditch Cable!, apple, general, tech | Comments (0)

So I use my Mac for web development, and I just use the Apache web server that’s already present in OS X. Anyway, everything was dandy and working smoothly. My hard drive was filling up in my Macbook Pro, so I beefed it up with a 250 GB drive installed by CompUSA. (For only $29.99 by the way, and it stays under warranty. Sweet.)

Anyway, I thought it’d be a great time to test the Time Machine backup system. I had a backup to the Time Machine disk in case there were still issues with the Time Machine restores, but it seemed to restore everything perfectly. That is, until I tried to load back up some websites yesterday. Since then, I have spent probably 12 hours trying to figure out why http://localhost/ and http://127.0.0.1/ came up in Safari as if the server were off. Well, that’s because it never started, and here’s why…

Time Machine, for whatever reason, did not restore a crucial folder that Apache needs to write its error logs. Specifically, it’s the folder /private/var/log/apache2. If you’re having this same problem, open up Console and notice the errors popping up. Apache’s trying to start up, and it halts everytime with an error that looks something like this:

11/29/07 4:00:22 PM org.apache.httpd[1257] (2)No such file or directory: httpd: could not open error log file /private/var/log/apache2/error_log.

Anyway, the fix is simple. Open up Terminal and type this:

sudo mkdir /private/var/log/apache2

You’re welcome.

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The Tennessean has an article today about the settlement between Belmont and the Tennessee Baptists, and one of the best parts is a quote from Marty Dickens, Belmont’s Board of Trustees Chairman:

Dickens said the payout actually is worth about as much as a $5 million offer the university made to the convention two years ago.

Belmont could invest $4.2 million now and make the $250,000 annual payment for the next 40 years off the earnings, he said.

With the $1 million the university will pay the convention upfront, Belmont’s out-of-pocket costs would be $5.2 million under that scenario.

Ha! Nice little final jab at the Tennessee Baptists. Sort of, “See? If you’d only taken the same settlement two years ago, you could’ve avoided this whole PR nightmare.”

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I received an email a half-hour ago from President Fisher of Belmont announcing the official end of the relationship between Belmont and the Tennessee Baptist Convention. Included in his email was a statement released by Belmont’s Board of Directors:

Belmont University is pleased to announce that it has reached a mutually agreeable settlement of all disputed claims with the Tennessee Baptist Convention. We believe that this resolution honors the many significant contributions that Tennessee Baptists have made to the University and upholds the teachings of Jesus Christ, whom we all seek to serve by ending litigation.

The settlement concludes a 56-year relationship between Belmont and the TBC and provides gifts by Belmont to Tennessee Baptists of $1,000,000 next year followed by annual payments of $250,000 for the next 40 years. These gifts are an expression of gratitude to Tennessee Baptists for the financial and spiritual support that they have provided to the University over the past five decades. The funds will be added to an endowment at the Tennessee Baptist Foundation to support Tennessee Baptist missions and ministries.

Approximately $4,900,000 in funds being held for Belmont by the Tennessee Baptist Foundation for the benefit of the University will be transferred to another trustee selected by Belmont. Of that amount, $1,500,000 represents funds which are subject to the terms of the settlement agreement between Belmont and the Tennessee Baptist Convention.

Belmont is grateful to the many Tennessee Baptists who have encouraged the University as it seeks to broaden its Christian mission by including on its Board of Trustees Christians who are members of churches affiliated with other denominations. The University will continue to be a student-focused, Christian community of learning and service with a rich Baptist heritage that we intend to foster and nurture through our ongoing relationships with local Baptist churches. That is our promise and our covenant.

Though Belmont is parting ways with the TBC, we trust that our shared history has provided important groundwork to achieve common goals of the Convention and the University, and that our futures will evidence this good work. Belmont is committed to its Christian mission and to cherishing its Baptist roots.

Marty Dickens
Chairman of the Board of Trustees

I’m glad to see the end of it. Earlier this year I went down with some 25 to 30 other Belmont students to protest the TBC’s actions (detailed in the post “I’m Not Jesus.”)

Of course, instead of the Tennessee Baptists winning a settlement like the hethens do, they’ve won mandatory gifts for 41 years from Belmont. How nice of Belmont. Nobody gives me mandatory gifts totalling $11 million. That’d be nice.

But it is definitely a positive to see them settle it out of court. May 2008 would’ve seen the case placed on the court docket with a judge determining the validity of the document signed between Belmont and the Tennessee Baptist Convention in 1951. Given the settlement, I’d say that document was valid enough for Belmont to want the case never to reach that judge.

There’s a great letter to the editor in a recent Baptist & Reflector (the newsjournal of the TBC), and once I get a copy of it in front of me, I’ll throw in a few quotes.

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