James Galvin

Call of Duty 2 in the Office (U.S.):

A few months ago (here), I mentioned the fact that HBO might be making a TV series of George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire”. This fan has matched each character with the actor he would like to see in the role (good call on the clerk from ER as the Greatjohn). Just looking through the lists I’ve forgotten half of the characters…hope I’ll be able to follow it when the fifth book, “A Dance with Dragons”, is released (probably later this year).

I went off to Africa to work in an orphanage and when I was leaving, this man came up to me and said “please take my son because if he stays here he will surely die, but if he goes home with you I know he’ll have a good life. And I didn’t take him… and emmm.. but I have in other ways”.

Congrats to Colm and Joost in becoming immortalised in /etc/services - they now have an official IANA assigned port. Incidentally - if you haven’t got a Joost account yet and feel like checking it out, let me know because I have a few invitations available.

I spent some time today setting up a new TV the old fashioned way, scanning through the frequencies with the remote control. I confess that I was gripped by an eager anticipation as RTE 1 materialised on the screen - a residue of the excitment from the old days when one guy would be up on the roof adjusting the aerial, while the fella in the living room shouted up the chimney whenever the blob of dots on the screen began to resemble Gay Byrne. Somehow its still a surprise when TV3 and TG4 pop up on the box.

If you had asked me in 2001, I would not have predicted that six years later we would still be fiddling with bunny ears and coat hangers in Ireland, trying to tune in Network 2 without losing RTE 1. In the rising tide of media centre PCs and wifi enabled gaming consoles, surely this next six years will see major changes in the way we watch the television. TV over the internet has been a long time coming, but at last, it is safe to say that we’re nearly there.

The first step is modernising is increasing the definition, and just about everyone I know bought a HD-ready LCD TV this year, but none of them have actually gone so far as to watch anything in high def. Extra hardware requirements and monthly subscription costs for a couple of HD channels on Sky renders that service impractical. And with BlueRay still volatile in its infancy, I expect that only those of us rich enough to own a Playstation 3 will be experiencing that in the short term. This is why I see Zudeo Vuse, from Azureus, as being a great service. “A radically new way to discover and watch popular TV shows and hard-to-find videos - Hi-def and full screen” is exactly what the doctor ordered, and with BBC having pledged tons of content, this is a resource that is destined for very big things.

There has been plenty of news lately about Babelgum - a next generation TV provider with a Long Tail philosophy who recently set up shop in Dublin. Babelgum sounds promising, but it has been overshadowed a bit by Joost who are that bit closer to launch. I was pleased to receive my Joost invitation today, apparently they have been very busy fine-tuning it for me. They’ve even given me this here image which makes me so proud:

There’s no Linux version just yet, but they have released a client to run on my new Macbook Pro. I had a very quick tour of the software earlier, and it is impressive to say the least. The problem with beta software is that it doesn’t always work, and this is exactly what is stopping me from examining the service further. The Joost support forums are hopping at the moment with people unable to connect, and unfortunately one of them is me. First impressions - it looks great, but in a country where our ISPs think 128k upload is standard for broadband, do we have the bandwidth for it? I’ll come back to that…

This will come as great news to any fan of George R. R. Martin’s heptalogy-to-be, “A Song of Ice and Fire”.

The series will begin with the 1996 first book, “A Game of Thrones,” and the intention is for each novel (they average 1,000 pages each) to fuel a season’s worth of episodes.

This is a series that lends itself to TV more than most in its genre, since much of it is driven by George Martin’s own passion for the history of the middle ages - authentic battles, knights, jousting tournaments, castles, etc. Keeping the dragons and pookas to a minimum is advisable, since they so often end up looking cheesy. The books are so steeped in cruelty that it will take a courageous director to maintain the spirit - I’m glad its HBO at the reins.

Other fantasy epics that I would like to see coming to our screens:

• Tad Williams: Memory, Sorrow, Thorn
• Stephen R. Donaldson: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever

A couple of interesting Linux-related tidbits from the mailing list today. Conor on ILUG linked to a very valuable wireless card database. I have been forced to use ndiswrapper on all four of my linux boxes that have wireless cards, since none of my randomly chosen wireless cards were natively supported.

Elsewhere, on the Freevo Users list, there is discussion about the ivtv_xine_tv plugin, which allows you to record live TV on your Linux box. You’d need a few hundred megs of disk space, but it looks like a very nice feature.

All the fiddling with Freevo has made me think about compact PC’s, which has unfortunatley given me a crazy desire to build an in-car computer for myself. I spent some time on the MP3 Car forums today, and the idea is very firmly rooted in my mind now and I am struggling to shake it.

You’re a Star. You’re a waste of my TV licence fee more like. The best thing RTE has produced in recent years, Reeling in the Years, didn’t cost them a penny and is now repeated more often than the Simpsons “Timmy O’Toole Trapped Down the Well” episode. But they continue to play it safe with more cop-out reality TV, and mock us with their complete lack of creativity or common sense.

Celebrity You’re a Star… I turned it on because I wanted to hear John Aldridge singing. How could I have been such a fool. You’re a Star has been a source of so much anger for me in the past, its back and worse than ever. How can they continue to do this to us? The people at RTE - they axed our favourite radio shows and now they continue to torture us with the four most despised faces on RTE:

Pestilence

Louis Walsh: Nausea incarnate. I won’t feed his ego by mentioning him anymore.

The fact that the show is a success despite these huge obstacles hints at the potential it could have, given some halfway acceptable presenters. RTE - please conduct a survey to prove me wrong. Honestly, I don’t think its possible to do worse than you have managed with this cast. I would sooner watch a dozen Ant and Decs co-presenting with Ryan Tubridy. What would it take for you to listen to your viewers?

Today my boss introduced me to Freevo - an open source home theatre system for linux, written in Python. Record your TV shows and save them for later, accessible via the web interface if you’re at work and you forgot that The Return of Howard the Duck is on. A localised and accurate TV guide is provided on the system by XMLTV.

Play mp3’s, dvd’s, divx, and whatever else your average media centre does. Maybe install it on a modded Xbox for the ultimate entertainment system. I like the sound of Freevo, I think I will have to give it a bash.

Despite her best efforts - picking the worst team possible, and getting soundly beaten in the task. The contest was sewn up last week by her good performance in the interviews. The badger softened slightly towards the end, and actually gained my support at the final hurdle, but it was the dark horse who triumphed, thanks to the “working three jobs in one day to support your family” Tim-factor that Sugar loves. Ruth returns to her day job of digging for grubs and beatles.