After trying multiple times to get MythTV working with Ubuntu 8.04 I kept running into problems.  It seemed that the majority of the problems centered around getting the latest ivtv drivers to compile correctly on the system: I just was not able to get it to work.

I am a very stubborn person, so trust me when I say I tried lots of different ways to compile the driver.  For whatever reason, it just would not work right for me.  I even tried Mythbuntu, which was gave me even more problems with database passwords and such.  That being said, I started to look for alternatives.  The hardcore geek in me turned to Slackware Linux, the stubborn guy said “lets give Ubuntu one more shot”, the adventurous spirit insisted that Gentoo Linux looked like fun, and finally the practical guy said that MythDora seemed like it would just work.

I have had a Slackware install before; it is an awesome distribution with a very cool name & logos.  When I installed it last it seemed all the configuration stuff was done command line style and they kind of just set you loose on the system – I ultimately wasn’t in the mood for this much work.  I couldn’t bring myself to try Ubuntu again – it was obvious it was just becoming a time sink for me.  It seemed that every new way of installing my PVR-150 would just end at a new type of error.  I have only heard good things about Gentoo Linux, including Myclawz compiling it completely from source to get a server working.  Again though, I wasn’t in the mood for that much work.  I know I could have just installed it the easy way, but what is the point of installing Gentoo if you don’t compile for source?  So, if you have been keeping track, you would know that left me with MythDora 5.0.

I had tried MythDora when I believe they were on release 3.0 (maybe).  It installed, but was giving me lots of issues – not something I wanted out of the “easy way”.  It was time to give 5.0 a shot.

I downloaded the DVD ISO and burned it to a disk.  It was at this point that I remembered that the old system I was dealing with only had a CD drive – I had to wait another 20 minutes to download both CD ISOs.  On the first attempted install everything was going smoothly – they even had an option to install the ivtv drivers during the install process…I was impressed and encouraged.  About 50% way through copying the files over my system restarted – I don’t know why exactly, but looking back on it, it was probably because something shorted out (I had the board resting on a book with wires all over the place).  I restarted the install and everything went smoothly.  I didn’t have to enter passwords for the database or anything too special – just a root password.

At the end of the install it had a button to configure MythTV – I just had to tell it I had cable and sign up for a SchedulesDirect account (20/year) so I could get the listings.  After configuring everything it automatically asked me to run mythfilldatabase, which puts all the channel listings in the database.  Once the computer finished doing this, I was off and running.  MythTV worked perfectly with my old PIII 933 on 384 MB of RAM.  The real trick was having a hardware encoder for the TV stream: PVR-150.

I must say I was really impressed with MythDora this time around and would recommend it to anyone.  All I have left to do is to buy a remote and also a video card with a TV out.

Like always, if you have any questions about exactly how I did this just leave a comment.

Last night Myclawz and myself hopped online to get into some long awaited playtime.  Since he was only level 8, I traveled over to DLW to help him quest a little.  As I zoned in I turned on mentoring so he could continue to earn exp as we did things.  I met him just a little outside of the city gates and we immediately moved over to a hut to get a bunch of quests.

This was about the time that I remembered one important fact: I am not an evil race.  A level 25 heroic guard came over and killed me.  Great – I think I deserved that for being stupid.  The really sad thing is that it gave me a few options of where to spawn, one of which was 0.0 meters away.

Without putting much thought into it I clicked revive; I spawned in the center of the huts.  The guard ran over and immediately killed me again.  Being stubborn I kept spawning in this spot until I was able to run away from the guard…it took me about 3 trys.

This reminded me of back in the EQ1 days where you could literally bind yourself anywhere (including over lava).  I had a few friends who decided to keep killing themselves until they were low level again (but with awesome weapons).  I also had a few friends who found themselves on PoFear corpse runs which never ended well.

What is your best corpse recovery/death loop story?

Archangel has started a debate on the EQ2 forums – we wants to join a guild purely to buy a mount and then immediately disband.  He is being honest about it.

The conversation on the forums seems to be directed towards ‘would you let him do it?’  To me it is more of a question of ‘why would you want to do it?’

When myself and the other EQJunkies came back to EQ2 we had a major decision to make.  Do we join an existing guild of casual players or do we create our own – we chose the later for a few different reasons.

So, how do you feel?  Would you want to take the easy way out and join a guild for a quick mount?

Would you have any interest in letting someone leech of you?  Would you charge them?

There is a story running over at destructoid about a new FFXI boss that takes 18 hours to attempt.  That was not a mistype – the encounter takes 18 hours to attempt – simply insane.

Back in my EQ days when guild would spend up to 8 hours a night raiding – FFXI puts that to shame.  If you think about it, 8 hours does not even get you half way through this encounter.  What is not mentioned in the article is wether this encounter is actually difficult or if it merly a time sink.  If everyone is hitting the same buttons over and over for 18 hours…I imagine everyone would go insane.  Likewise, scripting 18 hours worth of an encounter seems unlikely from a developers standpoint.

Regardless of how the boss is setup, it was interesting to hear about this guild’s story.  People were vomiting and becoming physically ill after sitting there for so long.  The guild that attempted this, Beyond The Limitation, actually had to call the raid off after 18 hours; people simply were unable to physically endure it.  Can you imagine watching an 18 hour movie without ever getting up – this would be even more difficult.

This makes everything else just seem easy or maybe just sane…

UPDATE:  I installed the Intel drivers from 6/08 (I had to update them through device manager) and they did not make any change to the game play.

My girlfriend recently moved closer to me and consequently I have been spending a lot of time at her place.  This is great and all, but she does not have a gaming machine.

She does have  a Toshiba Portege M400 Tablet PC.  It sports an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950, which is not the best.  She did upgrade the RAM to 3 GB and had been playing WoW on it with no problems – I figured EQ2 was worth a shot.

After transferring EQ2 from an external hard drive I started it up.  The loading screen looked amazing – there was hope.  As soon as I got into the game things were choppy.  I immediately went to the graphic settings and turned everything down (as low as they would go)- it helped a little.

I also went in and turned the wide screen letter box all the way up to max.  This also helped, but by no means was the game playable (or recognizable for that matter).  I didn’t bother to see how many FPS I was getting – I know it was horrible.

Considering her computer has a Core 2 Duo and 3 GB RAM I am force to believe it was the Intel graphics card that killed any hope of getting this to work.  It used shared memory and was able to go up to 128 MB in XP.  After some research I noticed that in Vista it could go up to 256 MB.

She was planning on formatting her computer anyway and just happen to have a copy of Vista Ultimate laying around.  After a little bit of trouble loading the correct raid drivers for her computer, the install went smoothly.  We updated all the drivers and I immediately loaded up EQ2 – the extra memory did not help much.

At best, one would be able to run around and do some harvesting, but I would never trust this computer for play in a group.

EQ2 is a much more demanding game (graphics wise) than WoW is and that was crystal clear after this.

There is still hope though – she just got a MacBook…I will keep you posted.

I have noticed overt the past few weeks that the Wordpress spam filter is going crazy marking everything as spam – even though many of the comments are legit.

I wanted to let everyone know we are aware of this issue and are working to correct it.  If you don’t see your message appear after you submit it, don’t worry – we are hand reviewing them daily until we get this sorted out.

Thank -

EQJ Team