It’s a really dangerous game, stealing an iPhone, it’s even more dangerous when the owners husband is a geek and fancies himself a bit of a detective. I immediately told her not to worry, we can get it back. I had been meaning for a few months to install the MobileMe Find My iPhone service on her phone but couldn’t wrestle it away from her long enough to do so. However, we have been using Google Latitude for a while and it was functioning fully. I headed over to the Latitude web site and found that it was indeed out of the building and in a residential neighborhood not far from the school. I emailed the image to my wife who, along with one of the best school admins I have ever met (and intimidating as hell), went to pay a visit to the area. The other good piece of news was that it was on and working a little over 30-minutes ago. Time to do some detective work.

I switched over to hybrid map mode and saw that the GPS didn’t have an exact fix but was drawing a pretty reasonably sized circle around 8-10 houses. Google maps are good for a lot of things but finding actual addresses wasn’t one of them. A quick search found me a great site, DigitalInspiration.com that will allow you to find the address by clicking on the building location within the map. Within a few minutes, I had 10 addresses, 2 of which were questionably covered by the circle. I quickly called up the on-site team and confirmed the address number. It was time to put names with addresses.

Another one of those big-brother-is-watching sites is your local governments property tax web site. These sites usually will allow you to lookup information on a property with little to no control. I typed in each address sequentially and created a list of owners. I then texted the information to the on-site team.

At this point my job was done. We were into school record territory and absolutely none of my business. A few minutes later I received a call, there was a match. A student in her last period class lived at one of my 10-addresses. This is where we get into delicate territory and it becomes a psychology game instead of a technology game.

When you are pissed and your adrenaline is running high, you imagine all of the pain you want to inflict on the person who took your phone. You fantasize about seeing them hauled off by the police in hand-cuffs and being interrogated under a bright light. Unfortunately, you have to remember that you are dealing with a kid and there is a serious chance that someone else took the phone and put it in this kids backpack as part of a cruel prank. A call was made to the parents and the situation was explained, the phone was stolen and we would be very pleased if it was returned, it was an easy out. The kid comes out the hero for finding and returning the phone and we get the phone back. It played out well. Mom talks to the kid and the kid finds the phone, quickly. My wife and the school admin make a trip out and the phone is returned, it’s been wiped, but other than having her Gelaskin peeled off, it’s in perfect condition.

As soon as she gets it home, we pop it into iTunes and restore her backup from a few days ago. I immediately activate the MobileMe service and she will start locking it up on Monday.

Form Factor

My first impression of the Epic is that it feels massive and clunky. This model has a slide out keyboard (a district requirement) which makes the unit thick (1.5 times the thickness of my iPhone 4). I think the clunky feel comes from the fact that the keyboard tries to slide out a bit every time I put pressure on the side of the phone. I know there are thinner and smaller models out there but I don’t think I will ever find a phone that feels like the iPhone in my hand.

Text Entry

As mentioned above, the Epic has a slide out QWERTY keyboard. I was surprised at how quickly I fell in love with having physical keys again. They layout is nice although some of the keys seem superfluous (really, a smiley key?). The on-screen keyboard is much more of a challenge. Without the pop-up of which key my fat finger has hit, I have trouble typing with any efficiency. Swype is where things start to shine. I am very impressed with the speed and accuracy I am able to enter data. Just for giggles, I try to swype out theshanks.net and it gets it the first time. Finally, the voice control capabilities are leaps and bounds above the iPhone. This is where Android starts to shine and I can understand why there is so much hype on Android.

Camera

I love the camera on my iPhone 4, it is so good that my wife and I brought only our iPhone’s to Kauai to record our 10th anniversary trip. She took such great pictures with it that we blew them up and had them printed on canvas. People tell us they are amazed that they were taken with the phone. I haven’t had the opportunity to take many pictures with the Epic but the image quality looks on par. The lens is much bigger and the LED flash looks larger as well. I predict that I will be able to take pictures of similar quality to the iPhone but can’t comment yet. As far as accessing the camera, the Epic wins hands down. The dedicated camera button with half-push to focus takes me back to my Sony Cybershot days. I can’t tell you how many pictures I have missed while tracking down the Camera app on my iPhone and then waiting for the camera to start. There are a ton of options that are completely missing from the iPhone as well. Anyone familiar with a higher level consumer grade digital camera will be at home with the features and interface that the camera app has.

Apps

Apple has the clear win here due to quality control. I have only purchased one app so far and the experience was awful. My daughter dedicated her hard earned allowance to purchasing Asphalt 5 HD so she could continue after getting addicted to the trial. $5 later the app is installed and won’t launch at all. No support, just too bad, caveat emptor. There are also way too many app stores and payment methods, the whole process is chaotic to the first time user. Prices are everywhere, why are things $1.42 and $4.99 and anywhere in-between? Why does Asphalt 5 cost me $7.99 through the app, $4.99 on the Android Market and BOGO for $5 directly from Gameloft and includes Asphalt 6? It’s just too much effort to have to price shop for apps when Apple has set the standard.

Update: I contacted Gameloft and was provided a link to download a version specific for my device. Kudos for good customer service. Again, I don’t envy developers having to support multiple versions of their software.

I have several key apps that I depend on. Here is my take on making it happen on the Epic.

iHome – Alarm Clock

I wake up every morning to my iHome alarm clock, not the actual device, just the free app. It always works and works well. The main reason I use an app and not the built in alarm on the iPhone is that you can’t use full songs as alarms. My Epic has an alarm that will play songs built in but I wasn’t able to find a simple app that would do a nightstand dim clock. It looked like Night Clock would do the same thing but there was a warning about a complicated process to get the buttons to turn off on the Epic. I can’t imagine being a Android developer, so many different devices would be hell. I also did some research into a nightstand dock for charging. Good luck, there is exactly 1 for the Epic 4g and reviews say it sucks.

Waze – Driving Alerts

I use Waze for information on my route to work including delays, traffic and police traps. It’s available for Android and iPhone. That’s good enough for me. Android also kicks butt in the navigation department. Google Navigation is fantastic and very close to TomTom which I bought for near $100 when it was released.

Instacast – Podcast listening/management

I love listening to various podcasts on my drive and I like a no-brainer solution to getting new episodes, downloading them and never-ever losing my place. Instacast does this for me. It looks like DoggCatcher and Podtrapper will handle the same features but $6.99 seems steep to my Apple trained $0.99 brain.

I doubt I will be making the switch anytime soon but it’s good to get a feel for where the platforms differ. At this point I am very invested in the iDevices (2 x iPhone 4, an iPod Touch and an iPad 1) and have charging, media and docking solutions throughout the house and both vehicles. I have been working a little bit on getting my Linux based MediaPC to handle airplay and will try out the included AllShare to see if that will get me any further. Let me know in the feedback what you think or if anyone even read this. Sometimes it’s like posting into the nether. Thanks.

1. Download, install and run EagleFiler (Free 30-day trial/$40 to buy)
2. Close the how-to guide.
3. Create a new library in EagleFiler called Outlook Export (name doesn’t matter)
4. In Outlook, select the emails you want to import (use ⌘-A) and then press F1 (Fn-F1 for most Mac keyboards)
5. Let EagleFiler do it’s work. If you have Growl, you will see notifications as it processes the email into mbox format.
6. Repeat step 4 for all of the folders you want to import
7. Open Mac Mail and setup a dummy account if you don’t already have one
8. In Mac Mail – select File - Import Mailboxes and select Files in mbox format and select Continue
9. Browse to the location that you created your EagleFiler Library (mine was in Documents:Outlook Export) and select the Outlook Export Folder and Choose
10. After a bit of Searching for data… you will receive an Import box allowing you to select the folders you want to import. Check the ones you want and click Continue
11. Google makes it easier to get from Mac Mail to GMail by using the Google Email Uploader Mac. Go get, install and run it.
12. Google Email Uploader Mac will detect the Mac Mail account automatically. Enter your credentials for GMail or Google Apps.
13. Make sure you have Apple Mail selected and clock Import

It took me about 3-hours to upload 9500 messages but it worked. Special thanks to C-Command software for making a great product. I wish there was a donate button on their site so I could shell a few bucks their way for making this possible.

Source code

tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
	set newMessage to make new outgoing message with properties {subject:"Hooray for automation"}
	make new recipient at newMessage with properties {email address:{name:"Jim Shank", address:"jim.shank@example.com"}}
	open newMessage
end tell

After hours of searching, I finally came across this fantastic example from Bobby Kansara at Microsoft. Thanks to the early adopters and beta testers.

1. Download google-docs-upload
2. Create the script below in /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts/transfer – Google Docs.scrp
3. Right-click on a folder in finder and select Folder Actions Setup…
4. Select the script and you are good to go!
5. Now anything you put in that folder will be uploaded to Google docs!

Source code

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
	repeat with aFile in added_items
		do shell script "java -jar /Users/OSX_USERNAME/Library/Scripts/google-docs-upload-1.3.2.jar " & quoted form of POSIX path of aFile & " --skip-all -u EMAIL_ADDRESS_FOR_GOOGLE_DOCS -p PASSWORD >> /Users/OSX_USERNAME/Library/Scripts/GDocs-upload-log.txt"
		end repeat
end adding folder items to

The script as-is will upload to your root folder in Google Docs, however, by adding the –remote-folder switch, you can specify where you want it to be. You could create a number of different scripts for different destinations.

Happy Birthday Angel!

Go get it – http://communities.vmware.com/community/beta/fusion

I recently started playing Magic: The Gathering after discovering a wonderful little coffee and game shop in the area. The only problem is that I can only play once a week (Friday Night Magic) which doesn’t leave me a lot of time to practice and get better at it. I was very excited to find out that Wizards of the Coast also makes a Magic: The Gathering online game. What killed my excitement was that you actually have to buy virtual cards to play with. I couldn’t believe it, not only does it cost $10 to get started, there is no discount for the virtual cards compared to their real versions. I call foul on this. I went on a search to find a better way.

There are a few alternatives to Magic: The Gathering Online (MTGO) including Magic Workstation (MWS) and OCTGN. The difference is that MWS is heavily advertisement supported (or you can pay a hefty price for it) and seems to be quite a bit more popular. There are plenty of MWS walkthroughs and how-to’s but little to nothing on OCTGN.

OCTGN is a freeware Microsoft.NET application and a newcomer to the arena. It is more of a framework for multiple kinds of card games but has a truly beautiful interface and great design. It can be downloaded for free from http://www.octgn.net/ but I suggest getting the whole MTG package with it by searching for the torrent “OCTGN 2 with MTG v0.0.2.8″. This includes the MTG game definition as well as all the card images up to Zendikar. It weighs in at a hefty 1.3GB which is why bittorrent is the only sustainable way to get it. I played with it for a few hours last night and want to share how to play MTG with it.

Getting Started

1. Launch the executable and click on Manage Installed Games.
2. Click Install a new game
3. In the root of the folder you downloaded, select Magic-v0.0.2.8.o8g
4. Click Install new cards
5. Browse to 3. T2 Sets – Updated for Sealed\Core Set and select Magic_2010.v0.0.2.6.1.[GO].o8s
6. Repeat the same process for 3. T2 Sets – Updated for Sealed\Zendikar\Zendikar.v.0.0.2.6.1.[GO].o8s
7. Click Close
8. Go to Edit your decks
9. Go to Deck – New – Magic the gathering
10. Pick 20 creatures, 20 lands and 20 spells for starters. Google Build MTG Deck for more advice.
11. Click Deck – Save
12. Close the window

Now you have a deck. Most of the above is for demonstration purposes but is a good starting point. You can build and store as many decks as you want. There are some premade decks. If you want to use them, load 2. Extended Sets – Updated for Sealed\Core Sets\Tenth_Edition.v0.0.2.6.[GO].o8s. Then go to Edit Decks – Deck – Load and pick one.

Game time. One of the nice things is that you can load two copies of OCTGN and play both sides of the table. Go to Start a new game then Start. On the 2nd instance of OCTGN, click on Join an existing game and click Join. I like to use the two-sided table but it’s up to you. Just click the checkmark next to Use a two-sided table. You can also change who is on what side by clicking the A or B. Once you are ready, click Start.

Playing a hand

You now have a blank table. Now, let’s get some cards to play with. Go to File – Load a deck and select the deck you created before. I created a simple mono-black deck with a few of my favorites from Zendikar. I will be loading the same deck for both players.

Once the deck is loaded, the cards are in the exact same order as you added them to the deck. We must shuffle the deck. You can either right-click on the deck and select shuffle or use the keyboard shortcut, ctrl-s. Both players must do this and it will be indicated in the chat window on the lower right.

Who goes first? Typically you roll a 20-sided die to find out, no different here, just right click in the middle of the table and select roll a 20-sided. In the chat window you will see the result. You can also use the keyboard shortcut, ctrl-shift-r. You will start to notice there are keyboard shortcuts for almost all of the actions in the game. This allows you to play very quickly and naturally. In my demo game, Jim rolled a 20 and Jeff a 9.

Looks like Jim get’s to choose and he chooses to play first. Time to draw the hand. Right click on the library (deck of magic cards) and choose Draw many…, keyboard shortcut ctrl-alt-d. A window will pop-up asking how many and default to 7 (the standard hand side). Click ok. Jeff will do the same. Jim only drew 2 swamps and can choose to mulligan down to 6 cards at this point if he wants. Simply right-click on the drawn hand and select mulligan or ctrl-M while over your hand. OCTGN will ask you if you want to mulligan down to 6 (then 5, 4, 3…). I decide to try my luck and skip the mulligan, which I will most likely regret later. Time to start. I click on the green play button next to my Name/Life/Hand-size tab. The chat interface announces Turn 1:Jim.

Turn 1: Jim

I want to get into the untap, upkeep, draw order. You can right-click in the middle of the table and select Go to beginning phase or press F1. If I had any cards already on the table and tapped, it would untap them for me and announce Beginning of UPKEEP PHASE in the chat window. Check your cards and see if there is anything you need to do as part of upkeep.

Since it’s the first turn, I will skip the draw phase (ctrl-d or double-click on my library) and move on to my first main phase. I press F2 to announce that in chat.

This is a good time to make a clarification, especially for those who come from MTGO. OCTGN will not enforce rules, it has no concept of the actual game play. It is simply a virtual environment to play card games in.

Ok, with that cleared up, it’s time to play a card. Double-clicking on a card will move it to the board so I double click on one of my swamps. I have nothing more exciting to do. I can now press F3 to announce Combat, then F4 to announce Second Main Phase then F5 to announce End Step but I think I will just announce I am done by hitting F5 and then clicking the green play arrow next to Jeff’s name.

Turn 2: Jeff

Jeff hits F1 to untap (nothing there yet but a good habit) and then double-clicks on his library to draw a card. He then hits F2 for his main phase. Jeff also plays a swamp but he has a 1 black mana creature, the Guul Draz Vampire. He double-clicks on the swamp to tap it and then double-clicks on the vampire. Note that there seems to be a bug in this version that it plays both cards on the wrong side of the table. Simple drag them back to your side to play. The cards are a little small so he rolls his mouse wheel to zoom in. Then he holds down the space bar and left-click-drags the window around to his liking. Nothing much more to do, can’t really attack due to summoning sickness. To be polite, Jeff hits the Tab key to pass priority to Jim in case he wants to respond to the summoning of a creature. Jim has no response so he hits Tab to pass it back. This doesn’t do anything other than put a message in the chat window. Jeff is finished with his turn and hits F5 to announce the end phase and then clicks on the Play button next to Jim’s name.

Turn 3: Jim

Jim hits F1 as good habit and ctrl-d to draw a card (Jim likes the keyboard shortcuts), then F2 to begin the first main phase. Jim double-clicks on a swamp to play it. Now a choice, I can use disfigure to try to remove Jeff’s vamp or I can bring out a creature of my own. I use the mouse to draw a sqaure around both swamps (left-click and drag) and then double click on one, they will both tap. I play a Surrakar Marauder and press Tab to allow Jeff a chance to respond. Jeff has no response and presses Tab to hand priority back to me. Nothing fancy left for me to do so an F5 announces the end phase, I click on the play button to hand the turn back to Jeff.

Turn 4: Jeff

F1 untaps Jeff’s swamp from the last turn. Jeff draws a card, ahh, disfigure. Jeff hits F2 to move to first main phase. He plays a swamp by double-clicking on it. He wants to get my Marauder out of the way and now is a really good time. He hovers over each of his swamps and hits ctrl-g to tap them and then double-clicks on his Disfigure. Jim can assume that it’s meant for the only creature he has but there is a great way in OCTGN to do this. Holding down the shift key, left click on the Disfigure and drag up to the Marauder. He then hits tab to allow Jim a response. Jim has none and drags the Marauder to the graveyard, so sad. Jim presses tab to return priority to Jeff. Jeff hovers over the Disfigure and taps the delete key, off his spell goes into the graveyard (you guys getting there are multiple ways to do things? He could also right-click and select Destroy Card, pick one you like).

Now that the defenses are clear, Jeff is going to hit F3 to start the combat phase. Jeff hovers over the Vampire and clicks ctrl-A to signify the attack, this is a little different than tapping as it creates a red glow around the card and says “Jeff attacks with ‘Guul Draz Vampire’.” in the chat window. Jeff Tabs over to Jim for a chance to respond. Jim clicks the minus next to the life counter to indicate he is taking one damage to his player. The chat window also indicates that Jim has lost a life. Jim hits tab to pass it back to Jeff. Jeff right clicks in the middle of the table and selects Clean-up targets and combat which will remove the red glow and any arrows that were left over. Jeff now indicated the end phase by hitting F5 and passes the turn to Jim by clicking the play button next to his name.

Turn 5: Jim

F1 (untap and upkeep), ctrl-d (draw), F2 (begin main phase), play swamp, tap two swamps, play Vampire Hexmage. F5, pass the turn by hitting Play next to Jeff. Hopefully you are getting the hang of this.

Turn 6: Jeff

F1 (untap and upkeep), ctrl-d (draw), F2 (begin main phase), play swamp, tap two swamps, play Vampire Hexmage. Now Jeff hits F3, Jeff attacks with Guul Draz Vampire and tabs to indicate Jim is up for blocking phase. Jim right-clicks his Vampire Hexmage and selects block, then shift-left-drags and arrow over to the Guul Draz Vampire. The chat reads “Jim targets ‘Guul Draz Vampire’ with ‘Vampire Hexmage’”. Jeff taps one more swamp and uses the Hideous End against Jim’s Vampire Hexmage. He indicates this by drawing another arrow from the Hideous End to the Vampire Hexmage. The table is looking pretty interesting now. We officially have a stack to address. Starting from the last chat message up, we need to resolve it. Hideous End resolves first causing -2/-2 to Jim’s Vampire Hexmage. The Hexmage is only a 2/1 and therefore drops below 1 toughness sending her to the graveyard. Since Jim has no response and has priority, he drags her off to the graveyard. Jim passes it back to Jeff. Jeff then discards his Hideous End now that it has done its work. The block is still valid even though the Hexmage has moved on to darker places do no damage is assigned. It looks like Jeff has cleared the way for victory in the next few turns but you never know what will come up in the library next for Jim.

Finding Other Players

Honestly I haven’t explored this all that much yet. The one thing you will need to do is poke a hole in your firewall to let another player connect to you. OCTGN uses a peer-to-peer system so there is no central server (yet?) to arrange matches. Much like the actual card game, this is left up to the organizers and players. If you are the one Starting a new game instead of joining, you will need to open the port or forward it from your firewall to the computer running OCTGN. This port number can be found on the Start a new game screen next to Port number to use. Opening and forwarding ports are ouside the purview of this howto but Google is your friend and it depends on your cable/dsl router/modem and OS firewall. You may want to ask in the OCTGN chat for either help on this or finding other players to play against. You will need to provide the other player the internet IP address if they aren’t on the same school/work/home network as you are along with the port number. If you are lucky enough to be on the same network, don’t worry about the router part of the above statement and provide them the local (LAN) IP address. Both of these are on the Start a new game screen.

You can also use Hamachi to provide a small, free, private VPN to play in. This would also remove the need to modify the firewall or router. Check it out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamachi.

Links to Additional Information

Draft support – http://www.octgn.net/forum/index.php?topic=258.0

OCTGN Home – http://www.octgn.net

OCTGN Blog (with lots of hints and tricks) – http://octgndev.wordpress.com/

MTGSalvation OCTGN Thread – http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=184889

Summary

While the best MTG client out there is MTGO, I feel that OCTGN will quickly become the de factor standard in what a MTG PC client should be. There is a ton of potential and .NET is a great platform. It’s been a long time coming but I am hoping with guides like this one, people will start using and innovating to create unique solutions to allow a wide variety of gameplay. I think the next big challenge is to create a server based matching system and method to validate other peoples decks. Once this hurdle is overcome, it will be a truly great client for anonymous online play.

When I got home on Friday evening, freshly excited about the class, I grabbed the CUCM 7 media and fired up a new fusion VM. Settings are as follows:

1. If you have the iso, click Continue without disc and then select the disc image, otherwise insert the CUCM7 installation disc
2. The system will detect RHEL4 which is correct, press continue to use the disc, then continue again at the OS selection screen
3. Uncheck Use Easy Install (don’t we all wish), click continue
4. Click Customize Settings
   1. Sharing: Disabled
   2. Applications: Menu Enabled (don’t think this matters)
   3. Processors & RAM: 2 CPU 2048 RAM (this does matter)
   4. Display: 3D disabled (doubt it matters)
   5. Printers: Enabled, match default (doesn’t matter)
   6. Autoprotect: Disabled (doesn’t matter)
   7. Network: NAT (more on this later)
   8. Hard Disks: IDE Disk, 80GB, uncheck Pre-allocate disk space, check split into 2GB files (80GB is necessary, I think IDE is)
   9. Everything else, defaults
5. Start it up
6. Media Check: Your choice, I choose No and all was fine
7. vmware Found screen: Agree (a big thanks to Cisco for allowing this, they didn’t have to)
8. Product Deployment Selection: Cisco Unified Communications Manager – OK
9. Proceed with Install: Yes
10. Platform Installation Wizard: Proceed
11. Apply Patch: No (haven’t tried this yet)
12. Import Windows Data: No
13. Basic Install: Continue
14. Timezone Configuration: America/Denver for me
15. Auto Negotiation Configuration: Yes
16. MTU Configuration: No
17. DHCP: No
18. Static Network Configuration – This is where things get a little complicated. Start a terminal session and type ifconfig. Note the IP address for vmnet8. Mine was 192.168.223.1. This is the NAT network for Fusion. IP addresses .3-.127 are statically assignable. Thanks to Michael McLaughlin for this information. Note that if you do not setup the network correctly, the system will not install and will die with a Security configuration failed (1) error.
    
    1. Hostname: FusionCCM7
    2. IP Address: 192.168.x.3 where x is the third octet of the IP address you discovered in step 18
    3. IP Mask: 255.255.255.0
    4. GW Address: 192.168.x.2 where x is the third octet of the IP address you discovered in step 18
    5. Press OK
19. DNS Client Configuration: Yes
    1. Primary DNS: 192.168.x.2 where x is the third octet of the IP address you discovered in step 18
    2. Secondary DNS: blank
    3. Domain: cucm.local
20. Administration Login Configuration
    1. Administrator ID: ccmadmin
    2. Password: c123sco (a mix of letters and numbers is required)
    3. Confirm Password: c123sco
21. Certificate Information – Your locale information
22. First Node Configuration: Yes
23. Network Time Protocol Client Configuration: Yes
    1. NTP Server 1: 64.90.182.55
24. Database Access Security Configuration
    1. Security Password: c123sco
    2. Confirm Security Password: c123sco
25. SMTP Host Configuration: No
26. Application User Configuration
    1. Application User Username: ccmadmin
    2. Application User Password: c123sco
    3. Confirm Application User Password: c123sco
27. Platform Configuration Complete: OK

It took me about an hour for the full install and then I had my system up and running. Enjoy!

The other big feature of MythTV .22 is support for hardware acceleration on certain NVidia cards. I looked up VDPAU and selected the least expensive card that supported all of the features. I found a great deal on a  PNY VCG8600GXXB GeForce 8600 GT on NewEgg for a mere $25 after MIR.

When everything arrived, I set aside a full day for the upgrade. I moved the whole MythBuntu install onto a USB flash disk using Unetbootin, backed up the old database and the etc folder, disconnected the old HD and installed the new HD. Booting from the flash disk worked fine and I was quickly into the setup. Installation was a snap and recognized all of the hardware immediately, a task that has taken many weeks before. I followed the steps from MythPVR.com to migrate existing recordings to a new server. There is a comment at the end of the article that if the database is different enough, you should add a -f option to the import which did the trick for me.

I pointed the storage groups for videos at my already installed media drive (640GB) and then hot plugged in the old 500GB HD (love SATA), mounted it and then copied the recordings to the new recordings path. I launched the frontend and recordings were up and running. I was a little bummed that the video metadata didn’t come through but instead of going back to the original database, I used the included jamu script to gather metadata for all of my movies. It looked a lot nicer and the information was much more accurate and detailed than before.

I went into the Playback settings and set it for VDPAU+. The difference is amazing between the old video card and this one. It’s not just the VDPAU but having a dedicated card that seems to make the difference. The one major problem I did run into was pixelation of anything that was in MPEG2 format (recordings). I finally tracked down a thread that this is a known bug on certain motherboards and they are working on a fix. In the mean-time I have reverted to CPU Slim.

Overall I am very pleased with the new software and distribution.