So – I went on a quest for the most sexy of all linux distros, and ended up giving Jolicloud a go. I only encountered one problem with Jolicloud – my mobile broadband wouldn’t work out of the box…

After a bit of playing around on both Google and in the Terminal, I figured out a quick solution I thought I’d share in case someone encounters the same problem I did.

This guide should work on both Jolicloud 0.9 and Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.04 – but of course – times can change, so I can’t promise anything…

Background info: The problem is that Jolicloud seems to think the USB dongle is a mass storage device – like a regular USB stick, so we need to change that perception.

Here’s what you do:

1. Open up a Terminal session (Click on “Terminal” in the Accessories pane)
2. Write sudo aptitude install usb-modeswitch and hit Enter
3. Then write sudo gedit /etc/usb-modeswitch.conf and hit Enter
   You will now face an open, empty document.
4. Copy the following text and paste it into the document:

   #

   ######################################## ################
   # Huawei E1752
   #
   # Contributor:

   DefaultVendor= 0x12d1
   DefaultProduct= 0×1446

   TargetVendor= 0x12d1
   TargetProdct= 0×1001

   MessageEndpoint= 0×01

   MessageContent= “555342430000000000000000000000110600000 00000000000000000000000″

5. Save the document (ctrl+s) and quit the application (ctrl+q).
6. Plug the Huawei E1725 USB dongle into your computer
7. Go back to the Terminal window and write sudo usb_modeswitch and hit Enter

Now all you’ve got to do is sit back, relaxe, and give your computer a minute or so to fix shit – and VOILA – your 3G Mobile Broadband connection should be good to go!

I’ve been getting a lot of invitations, like “We refuse to pay for Facebook – We are gone if this happens” and  “I will not pay for facebook from july 2010″ lately, and I’ve got something to say about you guys who joins these groups (and keep inviting me)…

First off all:

Yes you will. You fucking will!

Now, I don’t even know if Facebook actually have any plans to start charging people to use their site, but if they do, I am pretty sure it’ll be so cheap that ALL of you protesting it will jump right on the wagon. Because you’re hooked on it. You are addicted to the site, and for – say $9.99 a month or something, you would still want to take part in it.

And since the people running Facebook are some smart bastards, they would probably just launch a “way cooler” service at a low price, and then slowly make the free service boring and less appealing to the public, restricting access to apps and games, and also maybe drown it in ads, thereby pushing people over to the paid service.

And secondly…

…and this is my main issue with these groups:

Who the fuck are you to protest, anyway?

I mean, Facebook isn’t a human right, is it? Is it written in the constitution of your country that you shall have free access to this site at any times?
Who are you to demand anything from the guys running this sercive?

Facebook is a brilliant concept – OK, so maybe you’re one of those cool dudes who’s got some lame reason for not being there – but it’s still a brilliant concept. And the people who made it is free to do whatever the fuck they want with it, aren’t they?

They could start charging $199 a month starting tomorrow if they wanted to!
I don’t think they will, though, but they could if they wanted to.

So stop making these lame-ass groups pretending that you wouldn’t pay, because when push comes to shove, you would.

…and don’t even get me started with all the “Stop changing the design of Facebook – We want to go back to the one we just had” groups, who’s fighting every couple of months for a design they hated a couple of months ago. ADJUST, people. That’s what Facebook do…

Turns out that I have almost a 50/50 split between Microsoft Windows users and Mac OS X users among my visitors.

46.5% of my visitors are on some kind of Windows-based system. 46.4% of you are Mac-users.

That’s a close call!
I’ve never seen such a close race before on any of the sites I’ve been administrating. I don’t know why there’s so many Mac users visiting my site, but it might be because I am a Mac user myself, and because of my Mac OS X / PCH A-110 guide, or something like that…

Anyway – what really concerns me is the browser stats

The most popular browser among my readers (that means YOU) is of course Mozilla Firefox.

This is, in my opinion, the best browser out there.
I have tried a alot of different browsers over the years, but I’m always ending up back in Firefox. It’s been said that Chrome, Safari 4 etc. is faster or better or both, but for me, Firefox is the way to go for a number of reasons, with Add-ons being the most important one. The way I’ve got Firefox set up now, with the help of the add-ons, is exactly the way I would make my very own browser if I knew how to.

Moving on…

The worrying part of my statistics is this:
21.4% of my readers use Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE).

This is not good at all, and to be honest, I find it quite surprising.
I thought “everybody” knew that IE sucks bigtime, and had replaced it with a decent browser years ago.

Now…

The REALLY scary thing about these statistics is this:

Not only are my visitors using IE, but 50% of you are using IE 6! I mean… WHAT THE FUCK?!

Ok, I can understand IE 8. You probably just bought a new laptop or something, and you’re thinking “This IE 8 thing MUST be OK to use. It’s all new and shiny. Can’t be that bad” or something like that.
Well, I’m not gonna be digging any deeper into the flaws of IE 8. But I can help you to read up on the topic by providing you with this brilliant link.

Now, PLEASE, those of you who use Internet Explorer – whatever version and whatever reason you have for using it, here’s the first five links from Google about IE: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

To sum it up:

The only reason I can see for Microsoft to still impose this completely useless piece of software on all of you who run Windows, is to provide you with a tool to get a hold of Firefox, so please, GO GET FIREFOX NOW – I guarantee your quality of life will improve by a good 20% or so…

I’ll repeat it one more time, to end this post: DO NOT USE INTERNET EXPLORER. For anything!

Thank you, and have a great saturday!

- H

This time I’ve gathered some lovely YouTube movies I’ve found the past couple of days.

1. Matt Mulholland

This guy is both hilarious and brilliant at the same time. He is talented, and he is fun to watch.
Matt makes multitrack A Capela versions of know tunes. Here’s the links to Beyonce / If I were a Boy, Another Level / Freak Me and his own composition Penis Chorale Part II.

And here’s the best one, the Ghostbusters tune!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0SeGAi3II8

2. The Voca People

The Voca People are space aliens from the planet “Voca”, and in this elegant video they try to teach you The History of Music in five minutes. “Awsome” was the first work that came to mind the first time I saw this.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6EYrqIn0yI

3. Something Unreal

“Something Unreal” made this great song using only sounds from the Windows 98 and Windows XP operating system. I am not a big fan of electronic music usually, but since this is such a totally geeky idea, I just simply love it!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsU3B0W3TMs

4.  Ultra Sheriff

As I said above, I’m not the typical fan of electronic music in general, but I just have to mention the band “Ultra Sheriff”. These guys, Torjus and Edvard Førre Erfjord,  and Nils I. Holtar, are three Norwegian musicians.

I know Torjus a bit from the past, when he had a progressive hardcore punk band called “Nova” (and before that, “Humbug“), also with his brother Edvard (among others), and I used to love these bands, so I didn’t like it much when they suddenly disappeared from the local scene.

However, this new project, “Ultra Sheriff” is even better!

I don’t know exactly how to describe the music, and I hope I don’t offend anyone by calling it “Commodore-64 nostalgia with geeky lyrics and a space-cartoonish feel”, because that’s what it feels like to me.

Please visit “Ultra Sheriff” on Myspace, and check out their brilliant electronica! My favorite track is probably “Make Me a Cyborg“, with “Destroy All Humans” on a close second. I also LOVE the solo in “Spacehawk“.

Here’s the first song they made, “Remove Police” with beautiful flash animation by Torjus:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy6dtBXpy2w

5. Sungha Jung

Sungha Jung is a asian kid I know nothing at all about :)
All I know is that he is a talented little fucker. He plays excellent instrumental versions of well known tunes on his acoustic guitar. The songs include “Jump” by Van Halen, “Living on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi and “Smells like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana.

My favorite, however, is this one – Billie Jean, by Michael Jackson:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgVqX0a49HM

That’s it…

…for now. Stay tuned for more later :)

What is YAMJ and the ÆON Movie Wall Skin?

Well, the fast way to explain this is that instead of navigating our PCH like this:

we want to do it like this (click the screenshots for a larger version):

Yet Another Movie Jukebox is, to use the short version, a tool that scans your movie library or libraries, and then generates html files for each item. That’s not a very accurate description, really, but that’s all we need to know at this point. YAMJ was written by “Omertron” and is released under the GPL license, and I will be forever grateful! ÆON is a skin for YAMJ, made by “ejp”. You can meet up with both “Omertron” and “ejp” at the NMT Forum

Before we start:

First of all, I am assuming that you, the reader of this post, have a Mac and a Popcorn Hour box in your posession. Please note that I only have an intel-based Mac (running Snow Leopard), and my PCH is an A-110, so if you have a PPC Mac, or a different NMT, I cannot guarantee that this guide will float your boat, but you’re more than welcome to give it a go. Intel Macs running Leopard should be just fine.

One other thing I need to mention is the network settings. In my network, I have set up static IP addresses. My Mac has 10.0.1.100, and my PCH has 10.0.1.10. That might be different in your setup – you could have 192.168.xxx.xxx or something like that, so please keep that in mind as you work your way through this guide.

To sum it up: Throughout this guide I will be referring to my Mac as 10.0.1.100 and my PCH as 10.0.1.10 whenever networking is an issue.

Also, before we get going, please note that this guide require that your PCH has a HDD or some other kind of storage device installed.

So, let’s get started!

The first thing you need to do is download the following elements:

• The latest YAMJ build (When I wrote this guide, the latest build was r1118, but my guess is that it’s not anymore)
  Link: http://omertron.com/pch/YAMJ_Latest
• Now, go to the link below and download the latest versjon of the ÆON Movie Wall Skin (v2.9.0919 when I wrote this), the Overscan Tool, Sabish’s TV Detail Mod and Nodak’s SmokedGlass Mod
  Link: http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=25534&page=1
• Get the latest CLI (very important) version of MediaInfo from the link below (MediaInfo_CLI_0.7.22_Mac_Universal.dmg when I wrote this)
  Link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mediainfo/files/

Installation

The installation of the stuff we just downloaded is fairly simple. Let’s start with unzipping whatever needs to be unzipped. When you’re done with that, make a folder on your desktop, and move all the .zip-files there for safe keeping. You can also move all the folders you just got from unzipping over to your desktop to make it easier to remain control.

Now, rename your YAMJ-folder to MovieJukeBox (right now it’s probably called yamj-svn-r1118 or something like that) and move it over to /Applications.

Take a look inside your ÆON.Movie:wall.YAMJ.v2.9.0919 folder (or whatever version you got). In there you’ll see a Read Me file, and a folder called amwyamj290919 (or something similar). Drag that folder over to /Applications/MovieJukeBox/skins.

In /Applications/MovieJukeBox/skins, rename the folder default to BACKUP (or something). Then rename the amwyamj290919-folder to default. Your skins-folder should now have the following folders:

• default
• gfb107
• gfb107-sd
• hebrew
• sd
• BACKUP

Now, open the folder AeonSmokedGlass Mod and select all the files. Drag them over to /Applications/MovieJukeBox/skins/default/html/pictures and drop them there. Click on Replace if you get the option to.

Ok, we’re nearly there. Or half way, at least.
The next thing you need to do, is go into your Sabish-tvmod-folder. In there, move the files to the following directions, and remember to click Replace whenever prompted:

• detail.xsl -> skins/default/
• epi_back.png -> skins/default/html/pictures
• exportdetails_item_popcorn.css -> skins/default/html
• ppp-templates.xsl -> skins/default/ppp
• tvbg.png -> skins/default/html/pictures

Also, you need to move the truncate-phase folder to /skins/default.

Now it’s time to install MediaInfo.
Mount the .dmg (by double-clicking) and install by double-clicking MediaInfo CLI.pkg.
Go to the root of your drive (“Macintosh HD“) and if everything is OK, you should now have a file called mediainfo in there. Go to your Jukebox-folder (/Applications/MovieJukeBox) and create a folder called mediaInfo (please note the capitalized I in the middle – this is important). Drag the mediainfo file from / into the folder you just created. That’s it for installation. Now let’s move on…

Configuration

Before we get started on this step, I want to explain how I’ve organized my movies and TV-shows.

I’ve got my media in two different directions. I’ve got files stored in my Movies-folder on the Mac, and in the Video-folder on my internal PCH drive.
For YAMJ, it doesn’t really matter how you’ve organized the files, but I’ve placed them all in folders with the movie name, to keep the Movies folder all nice and tidy.
The TV-shows are also sorted into seasons folders, called Season 1, Season 2 etc.

The first thing you need to do before we get to the configuration, is to download a good text editor if you haven’t already got one. I use Smultron, which is free, small, fast, and easy to use. Download and install this now, if you need to.

Go to your Jukebox folder /Applications/MovieJukeBox and open MovieJukebox.sh in your editor. This file should look like this:

(Click the image for a larger version)

Control that it does and close the file.

Now open up libraries.xml.

This is the file that tells YAMJ where your movies are located. My file looks like this:

(Click the image for a larger version)

As you can see, there’s a nice explanation of everything in the comments (all the green at the top) of the file, but I’ll give you a brief version of why I have made the changes that I have, and hopefully you’ll all get the picture and be able to edit your own files to fit your needs:

First of all, you can see that I have two sets of <library> tags. That’s because I have my movies and TV shows stored in two different locations. The two <library> tags are enclosed within a single <libraries> tag.

Inside the <path> tags you write the path to your library.
This is the local path, as seen from your Mac. Since I have movies both in my Movies folder and on my internat PCH drive, I need to specify both – one in each <library> tag.

The first one is the Movies folder on my Mac. The second one is to the Video folder on my internal PCH drive.

Please note that in the first <path> tag you need to change the username (pisschrist) to your username.

Next we need to specify the path as the PCH sees it. This is done within the <nmtpath> tags.
Now, for my first share, the Movies folder on my Mac, I need to get the PCH to look for the folder on the local network. This is done by adding NETWORK_SHARE in the path, as /Users/pisschrist/Movies is a shared folder on my Mac. If you don’t want to use that folder, you need to share the folder you want to use, and specify which one it is in the <path> and <nmtpath>.

As you can see in the next <nmtpath> tag, I’ve replaced NETWORK_SHARE with HARD_DISK, since to the PCH, the HDD is already local.

Overscan

Fire up your FTP client, and log on to your PCH with your IP-address, username ftpuser and password 1234.
If you do not have an FTP client, I’ve listed a few good options in my review post.

Once you’re inside, you should see a folder called Apps. If not, create one. Go into Apps and create a folder called Overscan. Transfer the files from the Overscan Tool folder that you downloaded. Your folder should now contain the files index.html and readme.txt, and a folder called posteradjust.

Turn on your TV, and click on Media Source on your PCH screen. Then choose Hard_Disk and click on the file browser icon – the one on the far right on your screen. Navigate to the Overscan folder and click on the index file.

Read the instructions, follow them, and write down the output you get. Then get back to your Mac.

Now open the files skin.properties and poster.xsl located in skins/default/ to add the information you just wrote down.

In poster.xsl, change the variable to the one that you got from running the Overscan Tool.
In skin.properties the settings you need to change can be found somewhere around line 165/166, and looks like this:

posters.width=xxx
posters.height=xxx

Change these to the one you wrote down, and remember to add a couple of pixels to each value.

Save the files, but leave skin.properties open.

Open the file skin-options.xml and make sure that the variable for “roundedcorners” say awesome somewhere around line 68. Go back to your skin.properties file and find the line concerning “3 ROW POPUP” somewhere in the first section (“Default skin parameters”). Make sure that none of the lines below the first one is commented out. That means that they should not have a # at the beginning of them. All the lines in the “Default skin parameters” section should have a # at first, except these four:

mjb.nbThumbnailsPerPage=27
mjb.nbThumbnailsPerLine=9
thumbnails.width=182
thumbnails.height=272

Now, save all your open files, and close down your editor.

Movie files and file names.

YAMJ will scan your folders for movies, and will gather some information, and download some artwork from various sites to display on your screen. There’s two ways of getting YAMJ to get the right info for the right movie when scanning.

The first one is my preferred method.
As I’ve said before, I have all my movies organized in separate folders, like this : Movies/The Movie/Moviefile.avi
Now, imagine the movie in this example is “Psycho”. Then my path would look like this: Movies/Psycho/Psycho.avi.
That’s no problem for me, since I would know what movie I have stored on my computer. But when scanning the folder, YAMJ cannot know if this is the original 1960 version, or the remake from 1998, and that’s a problem.

My way of solving this is to put a .NFO-file in the same folder as the movie. The .NFO must have the same exact name as the movie file, so if the movie is called Psycho.DVDr.WhateverGroup.720p.avi the NFO must be named Psycho.DVDr.WhateverGroup.720p.nfo.
In the .NFO-file, the only thing you need is the URL to the movies page at IMDB. So you simply go to IMDB, find the movie, copy the url into a new document in your text editor, and save the file as Moviename.nfo
Then save the file inside the movie folder, where the movie itself is located.

The second way to make sure you get the right info and coverart, is to add some information in the filename itself.
You can simply add the movies production year right after the movie name. Read more about this method in the YAMJ Wiki here.

What about TV shows?

For TV shows I do the same thing as with the movies, except I use the TTVDb URL instead. The file is then placed alongside the season folders. So inside /Movies/TV/The Office (US) i would have the folders Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, Season 4, Season 5, Season 6, and a file called The Office (US).nfo.

It might take some time to prepare all your files if you have alot of them, but it needs to be done.

If you, like me, have alot of files named wrong, take a look at my Guide: Renaming files on Mac OS X post, that uses Automator to simplify the process quite a bit.

Now, prepare all your files by renaming them or make the .nfo’s, and you’re ready for the final step!

The Final Step

Ok, we’re nearly there now.
The only thing left to do before we can run YAMJ is mounting.

To get YAMJ to scan network shares, we need to mount them in OS X. If you’re not sure what mounting is, don’t worry – you’ll manage it :)

Mounting usually happens automatically in OS X, like when you plug in a USB pen drive etc. but for network shares it need to be done manually.

What you do is you click somewhere on your desktop, so that Finder becomes the active application. Now hit cmd + k. Type in smb://<ip of your PCH> (For me it would be smb://10.0.1.10) and hit Enter.
That’s it!
You should now get an icon for your PCH SMB server on your desktop (if you haven’t disabled it in the Finder preferences).

Now it’s time to scan your entire library, and test the whole thing!

Open a terminal window (Applications/Utilities/Terminal).
Type cd /Applications/MovieJukeBox and hit enter
Type bash Moviejukebox.sh libraries.xml -o /Users/YourUsername/Movies and hit enter
(Make sure you replace “YourUsername” with your actual username)

YAMJ should now be scanning your libraries. This could take a while if you have a large library, so you might wanna grab a Coke and do some laundry or something in the meantime.

When scanning is done, turn on the TV, and go into Setup on your PCH, and chose Network Share, and you should get this screen:

Fill out the information, of course replacing the URL with the URL to your Movies-folder (My URL looks like this: smb://10.0.1.100/Movies, but you’ll have to change the IP to your own).
Click add and then click home in the menu.

Click on Media Source again, and you should see a new source at the bottom, called whatever you called in when you just set it up.

Click on the new share, and VOILA – You should now see a beautiful Movie Wall with all of your movies lined up. Click on one of them to check out it’s detail page, to see if eveything looks OK.

That’s it!

We’re done, for now :)
I hope this guide were helpful, and that you managed to get it up and running.

Remember:
Any time you add movies to your libraries, you need to run the Terminal session again, to rescan the libraries. But don’t worry – this will go a lot quicker the next time around, since only the new files will need proper scanning.

I’d like to finish with some links to some great resources, in case you’re in the need for support of some kind:

• The YAMJ Wiki
• The NMT Forum
• The ÆON Movie Wall Skin Support Thread @ The NMT Forum

The NMT forum is a great place to start if you’re having any problems or questions about the PCH and/or YAMJ. The people there are helpful and polite, but make sure you do a search or two before posting questions, since most problems have already been covered several times.

ENJOY your fresh installation of YAMJ and ÆON!

- n5k

First of all, What is a “Popcorn Hour”?

The PCH A-110 is a so-called Networked Media Tank, or NMT.
It’s a small 300 MHz Linux-based computer equipped with a Sigma SMP8635 chipset, 256MB of DDR SDRAM and 32MB of Flash memory.

The PCH A-110 enables you to play movies and music, and also watch pictures stored on any disk or machine in your local network on your TV or HiFi system. The box support a long list of media types, both audio files and video files (up to 1080p). Check the official PCH site for a full list of supported formats and specs.

The PCH A-110 does not come with an internal hard drive, and you don’t really need one unless you’re planning on running additional software (BitTorrent client, SMB server, FTP server, UPnP server etc.) on your box, or simply need some storage for your media files. However, if you do put a drive in your PCH, it will make a great partner for travel, as it is small (270 mm/10.5″ x 132 mm/5.25″ x 32 mm/1.25″) and lightweight (1 kg/2.2 lbs) and easy to hook up to just about any TV setup.

Setting up and getting started.

The PCH comes in a small box containing everything you need to get it up and running. It’s got a good quality HDMI cable, some other cables to use if your TV does not have a HDMI connection, a nice remote control (batteries included), screws for HDD installation, and a power adapter.
What the box does not contain is a proper users manual, but a Quick Start Guide is included, and that’s really all you need at this point. A more comprehensive users manual is available on the web.

On the front of the A-110 you’ll find a USB 2.0 port, and a small reset button. On the back there’s another USB 2.0 port, a USB 2.0 Slave, a 10/100 Ethernet port, a power swith, and these options for hooking the thing up to your system:

• HDMI v1.3a (up to 1080p)
• Component Video (up to 1080p)
• S-Video
• Composite Video
• Stereo Analog Audio
• S/PDIF Optical Digital Audio

The USB ports can be used to hook up external HDD’s, a keyboard, or a Popcorn Hour WN-100 – a 802.11n WLAN adapter.

To get it up and running, you simple plug in all the cables where they’re supposed to go (I assume everyone can figure that one out, since they all tend to fit only where they’re supposed to be), and power it up with the switch on the back. Then turn your TV to the appropriate AV-channel and wait for the boot process to finish up. This can actually take a couple of minutes, since the PCH is a small computer, with only a 300 MHz processor – probably half the power that your cellphone have.

Once the boot process is done, you’ll end up on a nice “Home Screen”. You’ll see four self-explanatory symbols (Video, Audio, Photographs and File Browser), and also three links on your left – Media Source, Web Services and Setup.

The first thing you need to do is to enter the Setup and let the PCH know about your TV settings, like what resolution it should use, and stuff like that. This shouldn’t take you more than a minute or two. You also need to stop by the Network Settings and type in your settings (Will the PCH get an IP from a DHCP server, or will you need  to configure it manually? Will it need a password if it’s connected wirelessly? etc.). Simply go through all the categories and check if there’s anything you’d like to change.

The next thing will be to add shares for your PCH to stream media from. That’s a fairly easy process, and basicly what it means is that you need to enable file sharing on your computer, and pick the folders/disks which contain the files you’d like your PCH to have access to. I am not going any deeper into that subject, since the process for network sharing varies from platform to platform. What you want to do is set up either SMB or NFS shares, or a combination. I would recommend to use NFS for all HD shares, and SMB for everything else.

After setting up the shares on your computer, you need to let the PCH know about them. This can be done from the Setup menu, or you can add them from the Media Source menu. It is also fairly straight forward, and the Quick Start Guide will guide you through it.

Ease of use.

Once your shares is configured, your PCH will list them on your Media Source menu, and you should be able to navigate and watch/play/view whatever you want.

The navigation is an easy thing to get a hang of, as it is just like your Windows Explorer or Finder windows on your computer, with folders and subfolders and so on, depending on how you’ve organized your files, of course.

Once you find a file you’d like to play, just hit play, and the movie starts after buffering for a couple of seconds.

Installing a HDD

Installing a hard drive in your PCH is extremely simple. All you need to do is to unplug the powercord, remove the four thumbscrews on the top, and you’ll see the inside of your box:

As you can see, there’s plenty of space for the HDD.
The A-110 uses a SATA interface (as opposed to the older version, A-100, which used IDE/PATA) and you can use either a 2.5″ or a 3.5″ disk. There has been some issues with compatibility with the disks, so make sure you check out this list before shopping. That way you’ll be sure that everything will work properly. I got the Western Digital Caviar Green Power WD10EADS (1 TB) and it’s working like a charm!

Please note, thought, that some disks can get quite hot if you’re, say, transfer files for four hours or something, but I’ve never had any problems with that. Some people chose to install a small (30 mm max) fan inside the box just in case. The fan installation is also simple. You simply plug the cable onto the board, move the jumper to get the appropriate amount of power to your fan (5 or 12 V) and you’re done.

Anyway – to install your disk, just place it in your PCH and slide it to the left to connect it. Once you’ve done that, you get the small bag of screws that came with the PCH and secure the HDD from underneath. Then put the lid back on the PCH (this is actually important, since there’s a “pad” on the inside of the lid that helps to cool the system) and power it back up.
Now, go to Setup > Maintenance and select NMT Setup Wizard and follow the on-screen instructions.

To transfer files to your HDD, you simply connect to it with a FTP client, like Transmit (Mac OS X), FlashFXP (Windows) or FileZilla (Mac OS X/Windows/Linux). FileZilla is a free, Open Source application, so that’s a good pick if you don’t want to pay for one of the others, but I listed those as well, since they are my favorite FTP apps on their respective platforms.
To connect to your drive, just start the FTP application, and use ftpuser as a username, and 1234 as the password. The Server/IP setting depends on your network. I use 10.0.1.10, since that’s the IP I’ve assigned for the PCH in my router settings.

You can also mount your internal PCH drive on your computer, as a SMB or NFS share, but I’m not going into that here. Do a quick Google-search if you’d like to do this.

Summary and thoughts.

Well, I guess this turned out more like a summary and explanation, and also kind of a guide, to the PCH A-110, but that’s OK.

So what do I think of this box?

The PCH A-110 itself is brilliant! It is easy to hook up and easy to use. It requires a tiny bit of geekness, since you have to set up the networking and shares, but you don’t have to be a hacker to figure it out. If you cannot manage it by yourself, use Google, or join the excellent NMT Forum, where you’ll find great help quickly.

Those of you who read this post carefully might have noticed that I am mostly talking about the video side of things. That’s because that is all I use my PCH for. I’ve tried out a couple of other things as well, but I didn’t find them equally brilliant.

Music

For music, I find the PCH to be useless, to be honest. It might be because I am used to a Mac, and iTunes, and in iTunes you’re not supposed to care about the files, since it’s the music itself that’s important. When I tried navigating through my music on the PCH, I felt that I was instantly back in 1996, om my 133 MHz Pentium PC, jerking around with the files and Winamp and shit. That’s just not good enough for me. I might be able to fix this, and make it better by using some kind of “Music Jukebox” software, but I’m not going to even try, since I am happy with my current music system. Right now I have my HiFi hooked up with my Airport Express router with Airtunes, streaming wireless music from iTunes and Spotify (for Spotify I use the Airfoil software since Spotify does not support Airtunes by default) and I use my iPhone 3G as a remote control. This works perfectly, so I do not have any plans of changing that setup any time soon.

Photos

If we’re talking photos, I really haven’t tried it yet. The reason for this is that I really don’t spend much time looking at photos, so when I occasionally want to, I just fire up iPhoto on my 24″ iMac instead. I suspect the photo part of the PCH is just as sucky as the music part, and since my iMac is stationed in my living room also, iPhoto is the way to go.

Web Services

The PCH comes with built in support for a lot of Web Services. These services includes YouTube, Flickr, Break, Bliptv etc. For a complete listing, please visit the PCH Website. I’ve only tried out YouTube and Flickr so far, and they work OK. Some of the videos on YouTube suck in quality, even on a 10″ netbook screen, so of course, those are gonna suck even more on a 42″ or 55″ plasma. If you are planning on using these web services alot, I would recommend that you hook up a USB keyboard to the PCH, so you don’t have to use the remote control for searching and such.

Networking

When I ordered the PCH, I went for the A-110 and WN-100 bundle as I was planning on streaming everything wirelessly from my iMac.
Well… that didn’t work out all that well. I was able to stream SD videos, but that’s about it. I had my network set up as n, but with backwards compatibility to b and g. That is probably why HD media, such as a 720p Blu-Ray rip did not work. I got about two minutes of video, and the rest were just stuttering and lagging.
I could probably fix this by going n exclusive, but I didn’t want to do that since my iPhone 3G does not support the 5 GHz band.
So, what I did was I just moved my router, and hooked it up to my PCH with an ethernet cable. The iMac is connected wirelessly, and now I can stream whatever I want without lagging and stuff like that. I also get great speeds when transferring files to my internal drive using FTP.

All in all

If your main goal is to get rid of all your DVDr plastic laying all over your house, the Popcorn Hour A-110 is the perfect choice.

The default skin is not overly exciting, but it is the nicest looking skin I’ve seen so far. There’s plenty of skins on the web – some of them are OK, some of them butt ugly. But that’s all up to personal preference I guess.

On a scale from 1 to 10, I’d like to give the PCH a 9.5 for video, and a 2 for music and photos.

It can be a tiny bit slow sometimes, but not slow enough to get pissed over.

That being said,

it’s when you get around to using software like YAMJ (Yet Another Movie Jukebox) the PCH really start ruling the world.
More on that later :)

- n5k

Thanks to chris57 and dc11ab at the NMT forum for letting me use his screenshots for this review!

The League of Gentlemen (UK)

First off, The League of Gentlemen.
This is a great british show originally based on sketches, tied together to a sitcom by a common setting: a fictional village called Royston Vasey.

Royston Vasey is a fucked up village overwhelmed by fucked up characters, a large part of them played by three of the creators of the show: Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith.

This show is perfect for those who like shows like Little Britan, which is greatly influenced by this show, and share alot of it’s bizarre humor.

Links:
The League of Gentlemen – Official Website
The League of Gentlemen @ Wikipedia

Arrested Development (USA)

Anyone who haven’t seen this show: GET IT NOW!
This is absolutely brilliant, and I just don’t get why they canceled it after just three seasons.

The story is centered around the Bluths, a dysfunctional family with brilliant characters. It’s shot in a mockumentary/pseudo-documentary format, and specked with bizarre and subtle humor.

My two favorite characters is George Michael (Michael Cera) and Tobias Fünke (David Cross), although it’s very hard to pick, since they are all great.

I was recommended this show by a lot of people before I finally decided to check it out. The reason I took so long was because everything I read about it (IMDB, Wikipedia etc) and everything people told me to try to get me to watch it didn’t sound too exciting. But when I finally ran out of shows to watch, I decided to give it a go, and that’s one of the smartest things I’d done in a long time. I just couldn’t stop watching!

It’s now been three or four years since I watched it the first time, but I still laugh my ass of whenever I catch an episode. CHECK IT OUT!

Links:
Arrested Development @ Wikipedia

The Office (UK)

The Office is originally a British comedy, also in a mockumentary style, but I would like to recommend both the British and the American version since they are both brilliant. I was a die-hard fan of the British one, and didn’t want to spoil it by watching a bad American copy, but once I got persuaded to give it a chance, I found that it’s at least equal, if not even better than the original.

The show is written, created and directed by Ricky Gervais, who also stars in the show, and Stephen Merchant, and is about the day to day life in the office of a local branch of a fictitious paper company.

Both the US and the UK versions are full of hilarious characters, and if you’re into calm and subtle humor you’ll find this/these shows excellent.

This show is probably the one that’s best known out of all the shows I’ve recommended – at least here in Norway, so my guess is that you’ve watched at least half an episode already.
If you didn’t like it, all you need to do is get a hold of the first season and give it another shot, because if you just jump in in the middle of a season it won’t be the same as watching it from the beginning and getting familiar with the different characters.

Links:
The Office (UK) @ Wikipedia
The Office (US) @ Wikipedia

I tend to get hang-ups on certain things, like hobbies, TV-shows, movies of a certain type etc. Right now I have a hang-up on stand-up (again) and especially the four guys I’m mentioning here.

Frankie Boyle (Scotland)

Frankie Boyle must be one of the best stand-up comedians ever! He’s right up my alley with his pessimistic and dark controversial humor.
Boyle is a permanent panellist on “Mock the Week” in the UK, and is a former newspaper columnist. He’s got a morbid sense of humor (which suits me just fine!) and often joke about stuff that you’re not really supposed to joke about, like this quote:

Why do pedophiles always have beards and glasses? What is it about that look that children find so sexy?

Frankie Boyle is a recovering alcoholic and former drug user, but is now teetotal.

Links:
Frankie Boyle – Official Website
Frankie Boyle @ Wikipedia

Demetri Martin (USA)

Demetri Martin is an award-winning comedian, actor, artist, musician, writer and humorist.
He’s probably best known for his stand-up and his own show on Comedy Central called “Important things with Demetri Martin”.

His got a completely unique style of stand-up. He’s playing with words, drawings, one-liners and often even music. He’s got a smart touch, and in his show “If I” he’s joking alot about his “mensa hobbies” he had as a kid.

Here’s some nice quotes from Demetri Martin:

I was on the street. This guy waved to me, and he came up to me and said: “I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.”
And I said: “I am.”

I wanna make a jigsaw puzzle that’s 40,000 pieces. And when you finish it, it says “go outside!”

I heard this lady say: “I love kids”. That’s nice. A little weird though. It’s like saying: “I like people, for a little while.”
“How old are you? 14? Fuck off!”
You can say: “I love kids” as a general statement, that’s fine. It’s when you get specific that you get in to trouble.
“I love twelve-year-olds.”

Links:
Lee Mack – Official Website
Lee Mack @ Wikipedia

Lee Mack (England)

Lee Mack is a british comedian, doing both acting and stand-up. He’s style is more “standard” than Boyles, but not predictable at all, unlike way too many stand-up artists out there.
He’s got a sharp tongue, and he often pick someone in the audience and make fun on their expence.

Those of you who might find Frankie Boyle a bit too harsh will almost certainly love Lee Mack.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes from this great comedian:

I was guilty of drink driving last night, but there is reason behind it:
The number of people killed last year as a direct result of alcohol abuse was 35,000.
The number of people killed last year as a direct result of driving a car was 22,000.
The number of people who were killed last year as a direct result of drinking AND driving was 500.

I’m not taking any fucking chances…

Links:
Lee Mack – Official Website
Lee Mack @ Wikipedia

Stewart Francis (Canada)

Stand-up comedian, actor and writer Stewart Francis is the absolute KING of one-liners!

He’s headlined all over the US and UK, and has written for “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” among others.

He has a über-relaxed style on stage – he basicly just stand there – delivering killer one-liners one after another. Some of his jokes are easy to get, others will take you a couple of seconds, because he seem to stop all of a sudden, but then you realize that the joke is actually finished. Like this one:

I’m so lazy that…

I’ll finish my recommendation of Francis with this brilliant joke:

I like to go to libraries and say to the librarian: “I’m looking for the book called dealing with rejection without killing people, do you have it?”

Links:
Stewart Francis – Official Website
Stewart Francis @ Wikipedia

Note:

If you’ve got any good recommendations about comedians I should check out, please tip me in the comments.
Oh, and of course, you don’t have to mention guys like Bill Hicks, Denis Leary, Ricky Gervais, Dylan Moran, Eddy Izzard, Dara Ó Briain, Andy Parsons, Mitch Hedberg, Russel Howard, Dane Cook and all those guys, because I’ve already checked them out ;)

OK, fair enough – it’s not brand new.
It’s an iMac G3 with a 400 MHz processor, a so-called “Blueberry”. It was released in late 1999, and I remember thinking “Holy shit! That’s a sexy motherfucker!” when it came out. It’s got a 10 GB hdd, 64 MB of memory, a slot-in CD-Rom, “Fast Ethernet”, FireWire and USB.

I am planning to install linux on this machine, and set it up in my oldest kid Atari’s room. The reason I want to run a linux distro on it is simply because that will make it run smoother and more up-to-date than if I use Mac OS 9.

Now…
I’ve been trying four different distros today – openSUSE 11.1, Ubuntu 8.04, Fedora 11 and Debian 5.02. All of these were available for a PPC architecture, and I thought it’d be a simple job installing it. At least Debian, which has a lot of configuration possibilities during install, so I could remove crap I don’t need that would only eat from the performance pie.

Well, it looks like it’s an impossible job with the current specs…
I only have 64 MB of memory, and that seems to be just a cunt hair too little for these four distros.

I tried a minimal Debian install just now, giving up the GUI and everything, planning to go from command-line and then apt-get X.Org and Fluxbox and stuff, but the machine just hangs at 1% during installation of necessary software even before I reach the command-line.

SO…
I guess I need more memory, then.
I’ve found some on eBay, but I just know that somebody’s got to have an old computer stashed away somewhere, so I am currently mailing all my geek friends to track down two 512 MB PC100 SDRAM chips.

If I get my hands on two of these, I can max out The Berry, and run just about any ppc-linux on it. I’ll maybe even hook it up with a larger drive.

Bottom line:
If you happen to have some 256 MB or 512 MB PC100 SDRAM laying around and would like to donate it to my little project here – please ship me a mail and we’ll sort out the details.

SO…

Here’s a guide on how to get a Spotify account without invite:

• Click on this link (Click on Skip this ad in the upper right corner if you just see lots of ads)
• On the page you now see, write www.spotify.com in the search field (right beside the “Go!” button)
• You should be on the Spotify page by now. Click on Get Started
• Click Continue anyway on the next page, if it’s not the Spotify registration page
• Chose a username, password and email. Where it says “Postal Code” write: SW1A2AB. Under “Country” chose/write United Kingdom
• Fill in the letters in the spam-filter and click the “I agree…” box
• Click Create account and proceed

You should now be able to download Spotify!

If you wish to change from United Kingdom to Norway or France (I don’t know why you only get these two choices, but you do), you have to wait two weeks, and then do the following:

• Click this link
• Log in with your username and password
• Click Edit profile in the upper left corner
• Under Country you should now have a choice between Norway and France
• Pick your desired country and save your profile

ENJOY!