So I joined Github

I'm currently learning the Python programming language, and in all the excitement, decided to finally take a look at setting up and using git!

For those who don't know; git is a version control system used by many, many developers world wide. Github is a sleek, elegant & convenient web front end and hosting/sharing site for code committed through git.

Plus... who wouldn't want to use a service with a cat/octopus hybrid as their mascot?

Dropping status bars for tmux

As I'm sure some of my readers know, I run Linux on an 11" MacBook Air as my 'daily driver' machine. I love smaller laptops, especially one as tiny as the Air. But of course, when you're using a machine with a small display, screen real estate is a primary concern for some, it's always nice to squeeze as many pixels as you can out of your desktop, y'know, use the space for useful stuff, the stuff you actually want to see!

Cubes and i3

So I moved from awesome to i3 on my MacBook Air, and I've gotta say; I love it!

In other related news, I started using Reddit just yesterday and quickly discovered how amazing it is. I posted the below screenshot of my latest setup on there and my DeviantArt gallery and people seem to be loving it. I figured; why not share it here too?

Click the image to visit the shot in my DA gallery!

As I never got round to doing that post I kept saying I'd do, about my experiences with my first tiling window manager (awesome), and I love i3 so much, I might just do post about that to make up for my procrastination.

HD PVR Capture Script Updates!

I've made some improvements to my HD PVR capture script for Linux that I think makes it that little bit more nifty :)

First off, I've reformatted my 'capture drive' to Ext3, since I found my Synology NAS supports Ext3 hotplugging, as it's faster and more secure than FAT32.

I've also added a sorting function, at the end of the script. After the user presses the 'Q' key to tell ffmpeg they're ready to stop recording, the script names the file to the current time and date (syntax changed to better suit changes), then moves the captured video to it's applicable directory on the drive according to the current date.

So if I were to capture some video right now, the file would be named 30--14 37--Tue.mkv
Then, it would be move to the 'Oct' folder on the Capture drive :)

I'll probably add support for the current year soon, just for the sake of it.

Another snippet of code I've added will also quickly check to see if the drive is already mounted, nothing fancy, it just cleans the shell up a little bit.


For anyone using this script as a base for their own; if you use sudo, I'd suggest adding some of the utilities in this script to a NOPASSWD rule in the sudoers file. I've managed to eliminate having to type the sudo password in for this script completely :)

So, if you want it, here's the shiny new script!

Linux captured HD content heading to YouTube!

A short post as a quick follow up from my last post

So here's the end result of my HD PVR capture script I wrote for Linux:

The video is captured in raw 720p (watch in HD) with AC3 audio, not too bad if I do say so myself!

This was simply a quick test to see how my footage would end up once published to YouTube... expect to see better content in the future :)

**EDIT: See updated script post here **

A bit of artwork...

I probably haven't mentioned here before that I'm very into desktop customisation. I run a DeviantArt page and upload screenshots quite regularly, I just got done with my latest and figured; why not share it here?

Click to visit the shot in my gallery for a full view

This is on a MacBook Air (4,1) running Arch Linux with awesome, URxvt with zsh, ncmpcpp, Vim, MPlayer and Ranger.

HD PVR Capturing in Linux

Just a short post today :)

I've played the Halo series for a number of years and, like many people out there, like to capture/record gameplay. After the release of Halo : Reach, I stopped playing. I really just don't like it one little bit, but, with all the news and excitement for Halo 4, I figured I'd get back on Halo 3 and start practising for its release.

Naturally, I'm going to be doing a lot of recording when I get my hands on Halo 4, and most probably uploading it to YouTube, so I wanted to set up my capture card with my current system. I have a Hauppauge HD PVR and fortunately, it actually has very good Linux support!