I’m hoping that this post will serve as a guide to others and myself should something go terribly wrong. Expect follow-up posts with performance and power saving tweaks.

I’ll start with the hardware. With the help of some veteran MythTV users on the arslinux irc channel I put together the following list of hardware:

Winegard SS-2000 Antenna
Silicon Dust HD Homerun
HTPC Case
Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H
Intel E6300
4G Ram
1.5TB Disk
Remote

As you can see, this machine requires a 64-bit os. I chose Mythbuntu because it is familiar to me. Installing Mythbuntu is no different than your typical Ubuntu install with the exception that Mythbuntu has modified the installer to help you configure your new mythbox. The configuration wizards for the mythbackend and mythfrontend services haven’t changed much since I last spent any ammount of time on them (~5 years ago at the Sharon house?). One thing you need to keep in mind with the HD Homerun is that mythbackend appears to try to connect to the tuner once and if it doesn’t find it you are SOL until you restart the service. This ended up being a problem for me as mythbackend would start before I actually got an IP from my dhcp server. This could be seen as a bug in the upstart script for mythbackend, but if you have a PCI based tuner card then you won’t see this issue. When you are finished installing you can reboot and the user you created is automatically logged in and runs mythfrontend. Mythfrontend is configured to hide the mouse pointer by default and you are presented with something that looks like it belongs there. A little screen configuration was required in my case as my tv doesn’t do 1080p. I ended up configuring the NVidia driver to display at 1280×720 and all was good. One interesting note is that my tv detects the signal as 1080i rather than 720p. I would have thought that the pc output would have been in progressive scan. Something to follow up on in my case.

The onboard video on the motherboard is supported by NVidia’s VDPAU hardware based video decoding. I’m currently not using this as mythfrontend doesn’t have full support yet and when I turned it on I had a few issues with deinterlacing, vsync, and audio sync. It is really nice to see your CPU usage drop to 3% on average though when VDPAU is in use. Definitely looking forward to that in the future.

Getting the sound to work was a pain. By default Ubuntu uses pulseaudio which has proved to be less than stellar in my experience. On an initial install I ended up removing all traces of pulseaudio in favor of using dmix. This caused the package management system to remove a ton of other important packages (like mplayer). On the second time around I simply setup dmix and piped pulseaudio through that. This was accomplished via a simple .asoundrc in the default user’s home directory.

pcm.dmixer {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
ipc_key_add_uid false
ipc_perm 0660
slave {
pcm "hw:0,3"
rate 48000
channels 2
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_time 0
buffer_size 4096
}
}

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

After that it was time to work on media streaming. I’ve aquired a ton of content over the years and had been using the ushare upnp server to play that content on my xbox360. This worked well for awhile, but the XBox360 is quite picky about what file formats it will support (no soft subtitle support so watching anything in Japanese and Chinese was out). I had picked up a 400G drive a few years ago on a steal of a deal and never had a purpose for the disk. Now I do. It is now sitting in my server and shared out via nfs to the mythbox. I managed to more or less fill the drive will all of the content that I had sitting around on various disks. The plus side to all this is that my mostly full 500G raid1 array on /home now has a lot more space. The only configuration required in Mythmedia was to simply point it at the proper directory. Everything plays back just fine. We were able to verify that subtitle support is indeed working when playing back both Chinese and Japanese content (The live action Initial D movie is in Chinese and Shinobi is in really old Japanese for those wondering). The next task will be to go through all of the content and add some metadata (mythmedia will pull this from IMDB). I’m looking forward to spinning down my ushare virtual machine for the xbox.

That’s about all I have for now. I need to come up with some settings that work well for transcoding and the like. Stay tuned.

We left on a Thursday after work and drove to Toronto. We arrived at Jess’s uncle’s house around 11pm and went to bed. Woke up early the next morning and hit the road for Ottawa.

We arrived in Ottawa in the early afternoon and pulled in right after Jess’s cousin Sherry. It was quite cold so we quickly unpacked the car and went to pick up Sherry’s daughter from day care. From there we changed our clothes, grabbed our skates, and made our way to downtown Ottawa to go skating on the canal. The canal in Ottawa is the world’s longest skating rink at 7.8km or something like that. It was pretty fun, but I still suck at skating. We met up with Sherry’s husband for some dinner, went home, and went to bed.

Saturday morning we woke up early to head into Quebec to go skiing at Mont Tremblant. I thought I had the GPS all programmed and ready to go, but it turns out I was dead wrong. We ended up having to stop to re-download directions (data roaming eww!). We didn’t end up too far out of the way, but we had another problem when the GPS told us to get on a boat. We both recalled that episode of the office where Michael drove the rental car into the lake. Sure enough though there was a boat. The problem, cash only, and we had no hard Canadian currency. Back to the gas station to use the ATM. Out of order. Back down the road 5 miles to the next gas station. I decided I’d fill up here since I didn’t know how long the trip was going to be. I couldn’t get the gas pump to dispense regular 87 octane gas and got frustrated enough to just accept the default and started pumping, that is until I realized that what was going into the tank was the Canadian equivelent of E85. Thankfully I only got a 2 liters worth in before I figured out what was going on. The car ended up being fine. We got to the ski hill about an hour later than we were hoping.

Mont Tremblant is one impressive ski hill. I only had one gripe with the facilities themselves and that’s that they need to update their gondolas to accomodate wide skis. I had to ride with my skis in the gondola with 7 other people. Not fun. Other than that it was bloody cold. My brand new $80 gloves weren’t cutting it so I ditched them in favor of my cold weather 40-gram thinsulate mittens ($15 or so from the Dunham’s in Houghton). I also had to make a stop at the top of the hill for a new facemask as apparently one of mine went missing and Jess took the other one. Can’t ski in -15F without being totally covered from head to toe. We took lots of breaks. Ski a run or 2 and then go in to warm up. Very impressed with the hill though. I want to go back for a bit longer of a trip and try and ski around a bit more. I fell once on my last run of the day. I was trying to make it back to the car via one of the runs that dumped out by the parking lot. I went to take a carve over a crest which was apparently solid ice. Skis completely lost their edge when I hit that and my feet slid right out. Only thing bruised was my ego, but thankfully my skis stayed on. DIN 8 seems to be working out quite well on the new bindings. I have a feeling that the real test will be in February when I head out to CO with Alex and Scott.

We made it back to Sherry’s in time for dinner. Mark, Sherry’s husband, and I watched a bit of the NHL all star skills competition before heading to bed.

Sunday we woke up early and hit the road. We stopped for lunch in Toronto and somewhere in (I think) Macomb county for dinner with Jess’s mom and boyfriend. We finally made it home around 8pm. Jess went straight to bed and I stayed up a bit to help dad install skype on his PC so that he could talk to Abby for cheap.

It was a great weekend. All told, 1400 miles in 3 days. Time for another oil change…

We got to Hakuba around 2:30 in the afternoon as planned. Nathan Thompson was waiting for us which was good because I never pulled his cell number from the internet to something a bit more local (haven’t had internet in like 5 days).

Our first night in Hakuba we wandered around a bit looking for this British Pub (run by Austrailians). Food was pretty decent. From there Nate and I set out to do some night skiing, but as it turns out the rental shops don’t rent equipment for night skiing. Kinda lame. What was really stupid was that of this entire massive mountain, one run was open. I didn’t care. I needed to ski. I spent the next couple hours by my lonesome trying to get acquainted with the new bindings and their closer proximity to center mount. Took a bit but I managed to get the hang of it.

Tuesday’s plan was to ski all day, but things pretty much went horribly horribly wrong. First, we got to the hill too late for first chair. Then Nathan Walker suffered a boot failure and couldn’t ski, Nathan Thompson rented a snowboard which promptly broke after arriving at the top via gondola. Jess suffered a minor boot failure and claimed to forget what she was doing; although when I skied with her she was doing everything, including pole plants, correctly. I’m not sure what happened there. Jen and I were the only people who didn’t have any equipment failures. The only problem I had was that when REI mounted my new bindings, they set the DIN too low on them. This resulted in my ski popping off at a rather inopportune time. I was less than pleased. Thankfully I was able to find a ski bench to tighten them up. Nathan Thompson and Jess left the hill a bit early, but Jen and I decided we wanted to go all the way to the top of the mountain. We hit the gondola and rode up, unable to see anything. When we got to the top we were greeted by high winds and blowing snow. Couldn’t see anything (lift included). Decided that it was best to just call it a day. Problem was there was about 1500m of vertical between us and our hotel. We took the approach of following the lift line we could see, 2 poles at a time, until we hit the bottom. This took awhile as one might expect. We topped the day off with a dip in the Onsen and a fantastic meal at an Indian resturant. From there it was back to the hotel and ultimately, bed.

I had a really hard time sleeping Tuesday night. It was ungodly hot and I was really sore after my first full day of skiing of the year. I decided to go for a walk around 3am to find something to drink. I managed to find a free massage chair in the lobby, so I sat there while I drank my sports drink. Before going back to bed, I checked the snow accumulation in the parking lot, about 3 inches of fresh snow. This could only mean one thing, a hell of a lot more at the top. I went back to bed, still a little sore, but a lot less thirsty.

Woke up early Monday morning with the hopes of being able to get everything packed up and ready to hit the slopes for first chair. Again, fail. On the bright side, Nathan Walker decided he’d give it a go with me. He managed to rent some boots. We hopped on the gondola with the goal of making our frist run from the peak, where Jen and I failed the previous day. When we got to the top there was awesomness abound. They hadn’t started running the chair to the top yet and there was untracked powder; hundreds of acres of glory waiting to be pillaged. This was going to be awesome. As we were waiting in the lift line we watched the lucky first few make their mark on the hill. The powder was knee deep at the top! On the way up Nathan’s boots started giving him trouble again, although in a different spot. He forged on, but the pain proved to be too much when he got off the lift. Thankfully there was a groomed track down that he could ski down without too much exertion. Problem was that only took him to the top of the gondola. I noted the easy way down and told him I’d see him in an hour. I had to hit up one of the bowls.

I got back in the lift line and started making my way up. When I got inside the lift loading area an announcement came over the loudspeakers. I have no idea what it said as I was listening to my ipod, but they stopped the chair. After a minute or so they started it back up. I hopped on the lift what a French douchebag who was rude and decided it’d be a good idea to swing the chair with his massive powder boards. As we neared the top, I pieced together the reasoning behind stopping the chair. Wind. There we sait, Frenchie and I, in 50mph winds and Frenchie trying to one up himself in asshattery. Probably one of the scariest lift ride’s I’ve ever taken. We arrived at the top to a shuttered unloading zone. There was enough room to get out of the way of the chair and clip off your skis. From there everyone was funneled into the topside cafe (sponsored by Virgin) where we were supposed to wait the wind out. Being that the lift ride took a lot longer than it should have I had to forgoe the precautions. I stepped out into the unloading zone and started to gear up for the wind. When I had my clothing situated, I picked up my skis and started hiking to what would be my drop in point. I estimated the wind speed to be at least 30mph, but it could have easily been 50mph for all I know. I know that I couldn’t keep myself upright to clip my gear on. I trekked back to the cafe and used the building as a shield against the wind so I could clip in. Once clipped in I trekked, slowly, back to where I wanted to drop in stopping every few feet when the wind kicked up to huddle myself low to keep from being blown off the side of the mountain. I reached the top of the bowl to find another guy with the same idea. I huddled down to catch my breath and watched him drop in. A minute later, I followed. The next 30 minutes were some of the best skiing I’ve ever had. I had bowls, trees, steep faces, and powder, glorious powder, everywhere. About halfway down I managed to meet up with a group of powder seekers. They led me to some good stuff. Everyone was waiting for me when I arrived back at the gondola. I was ready to collapse. I pretty much skied it without stopping because of all the delay introduced by the lift stoppages. I stripped off my gear, put my shoes on, and walked back to the hotel to check out. Mission accomplished.

We left Hakuba around 2:30 on a limited express bound for Shinjuku (Tokyo) which arrived about 4 hours later.

After Nara we headed back to Kyoto to pick up our stuff and hopped on the Biwako line to Yasu to meet Jess’s host family. We went out for dinner and then came home and went to bed. Their house is smaller than Mr. Fujita’s but its still a pretty decent size for Japan I think.

I have no idea what’s planned for today (if anything) but whatever. Should be fun. Skiing tomorrow. PUMPED.

On the way home we stopped in Gifu to pick up some beef for Shabu Shabu. The store happened to be right down the road from the place where Nathan, Juice, Kazu, and I went for $260 steak 3 years ago. It was funny because at the time I was trying to explain to Mr. Fujita that we’d been somehwere in Gifu and had this awesome beef when we passed it.

Dinner was awesome, Stein, Sayuko, Junko, and Bonnie, a JET in Nagahama, came over for dinner. Afterwards we played some cards and chatted for awhile before going to bed.

We woke up early this morning in hopes of catching the train to Nara. As per usual, I was a bit slow in the morning and caused Mr. Fujita to have to drive really fast to the train station. It ended up being ok as the train we were supposed to take didn’t leave the station and we had to get on a train that ended up being 45 mins late. We’re currently sitting on the local train bound for Kyoto where we’ll drop our bags and transfer to a train bound for Nara. I’ll finally be able to battle deer without pants!

Jess’s host sister apparently missed her flight out of Peru so instead of going to the airport to pick her up we’ll be going directly to their house from Nara. Should be fun.

Nap time…

There are also a ton of weird looking deer hanging around. Japanese deer are pretty small. It was weird to be able to walk right up to them and pet them. And here I thought it was just a floating tori gate…

From there we went back to Hiroshima and then to Kobe to find our hostel. The place was pretty easy to find and we got a decent night’s sleep.

We woke up the next morning and made our way to Nagahama to meet Junko. The plan was to eat lunch and go to church. Everything went according to plan. After lunch we hopped back on the train and went to Omihachiman to check out the mall. When we returned to Nagahama it was time for church. We went to the candle light vigil at Junko’s Church. After church we visited with some friends and met the new Nagahama Jet’s. They are a nice group of people.. We slept in the guest room at the church.

This morning we met Mr. Fujita at the church. We went on a quick errand to meet a lady that embroiders things like school uniforms and the like. It was a pretty cool sight. After that we hit up the Onsen and had some awesomeness. We spent the rest of the day hanging around Nagahama before coming back to Mr. Fujita’s house for dinner.

All in all, it was a good day.

We have 1 more day in Nagahama before moving on to Jess’s host family’s house for 2 days. From there we head to Nagano for skiing. I just read that the backcountry is prime right now and that snow is in the forecast for the week. Should prove to be awesome.

Yesterday we spent the day in Kyoto. After getting a bit lost looking for our hostel (which we managed to find) we decided to walk all the way to Kiyomizudera. After that we got some lunch and met Mina, one of Jess’s friends from high school.

We met Mina at the station and proceeded to Fushimi Inari, the place with like 4km of tori gates. It was pretty awesome. My left knee is killing me now though. I’m looking forward to the downtime in Shiga before skiing. I don’t think I could go today if we had to.

We found an all you can eat Yakiniku place on Sanjo and went to bed early. We woke up early and here we are, on our way South. Should be warm. It got quite cold in Kyoto yesterday and this morning so I’ve taken to wearing my hoody under my jacket. Yesterday I was freezing with just a tshirt on under my jacket.

Well that’s all I got for now. Time to catch up on some TV.

Jess and I spent my birthday on a plane for 14 hours. The flight was mostly uneventful if boring as all hell.

We got to Kansai Airport about 15 minutes behind schedule, but that wasn’t a huge deal as when we got to baggage claim our stuff was mostly there waiting. None of that wait for an hour before you can get your stuff crap that happens at any airport in the US.

Last night after picking up our stuff we managed to get everything done in good time. We got the skis shipped to Hakuba for even less than what they quoted me for via email so that was nice. I managed to find a phone card and called Yuta and Nathan to let them know we made it. We cashed in our rail passes and Jess made sure to get all of our reserved seats for things like shinkansen and limited express trains that we’ll be taking over the duration of our stay. Needless to say the $400 per rail pass has already been paid off and then some. We hopped on the train from the airport at 7:10 and got to Shin-Imamiya station in Osaka about an hour later. Yuta was waiting for us at our hotel. We checked in and made our way around the corner to Spa World.

Spa World is still awesome. We got a 3 hour bath pass, ate dinner, and proceeded to hang out with our wangs out if you will. Jess managed to not get kicked out (tattoos) which was a plus for her.

Pictures to come later.

I’m headed back to Japan tomorrow for vacation. We’re going skiing in Nagano (Hakuba). Should be Epic!