never got around to posting this. rather than clean it up, i’m posting as is.

i’m currently using vmware player to run a virtualized winxp under ubuntu on my dell latitiude d620. i’ve tried to migrate as much crap off my winxp install that i can but i still have a vmware image file that is almost 10gb. i really want a 2gb winxp image so it’s a lot easier to maintain.

i’m also not sure if i want to use vmware player, qemu, or virtualbox. over at the ubuntu forums, out of 242 votes virtualbox has over 50% of the votes. hrm, i guess i’ll try virtual box then.

ubuntu virtualization poll
VMware		80	33.06%
VirtualBox		130	53.72%
QEMU		32	13.22%

ubuntu virtualization links:
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=17531
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsXPUnderQemuHowTo
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SeamlessVirtualization
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VirtualBox
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wine
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoftwareEquivalents
http://www.osalt.com/

p.s. i’ve gotten my vmware image down to 6gb, but i really need to create another vmdk vmware image ( shooting for something that can be burnt on a dvd so ~ 4gb ) and use g4l to copy my current vmware image to the newly created image. shrinking a vmware image isn’t as easy as you think it would be… sdelete & JkDefrag are helpful utils you’ll need to help you shrink a vmdk image.

i finally got around to ordering the pet upgrade for my roomba… still waiting for it to arrive, but hey… it was free shipping so it can take an extra day. i really don’t do more with the roomba than hit the ‘max’ button and walk away. when the roomba has run out of juice, it goes right on the charging stand and that’s about it. i think i need to get a scheduler remote just so i don’t have to remember to turn the silly thing on.

eventually i’d love to hook up an ir-blaster to my mytht box and control the roomba via mythtv and a remote. right now. i’ll gladly spend $25 on a remote just so i can set it and forget it. i’d also love to teach my roomba to chase my dogs around and be an electric guard… that way i wouldn’t have to deal with a baby gate at all… just keeping the roomba charged.

i was following the mythtv.org firefly wiki entry to setup my new firefly remote. i copied their lircd.conf & lircrc to their proper locations and restarted mythtv. *tada* the firefly remote is controlling the mythtv menus. i start up a video, and test to see if i can pause… yeah, nope. boo.

irw reports different values than what i have in the lircd.conf, and i can’t get irrecord to write to a file. i think it’s time to backup my mythtv install and just blow it away. it’s a perfect reason to try out mythbuntu on gutsy.

loading up the installer for the mythbuntu command center is as easy as clicking a link. for some reason my fricken controler STILL isn’t working though. there is a python script, mythbuntu-lircrc-generator , for mythbuntu that will generate an .lircrc for you though. [here] run that as the mythtv user and it will create both a ~/.lircrc and ~/.mythtv/lircrc. unfortunantly that didn’t work either.

ha! figured it out. keep reading for the config files…

1. i’ve included my ~mythtv/.lircrc file, copy it to ~/.mythtv/lircrc and symlink it to ~/.lircrc [here]
2. copy the lircd.conf.firefox to /usr/share/doc/lirc/remotes/atiusb/lircd.conf.firefox /etc/lirc/lircd.conf
3. copy the hardware.conf to /etc/lirc/hardware.conf
4. sudo /etc/init.d/lirc restart
5. sudo killall -9 Xgl , or restart X and log in as the mythtv user
6. start mythfrontend and play around with the remote

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