Tag Archives: open source

A Taste of Open Source XBMC

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I’ve been discussing home theater/media management software with Kevin, Mark, Otto and friends and thought I’d post a few screenshots of my OSS XBMC setup for them. Nothing fancy: just stock XBMC with the Aeon Nox skin. running on an older Mac Mini with an external 2TB drive, and serving to the household over Gigabit Ethernet.

Home screen
Movie Listing
Movie Details
TV Show Listing
TV Show Season
Album Listing

Although both very nice and built upon OSS XBMC, I didn’t use:

  • Boxee because I didn’t want/need to have the concept of [hosted] profiles in the household yet. It only complicates things with the kids, and if I stay logged into my account, they’ll start tweeting in my name.
  • Plex, because I didn’t really need the concept of a server any mor than what XBMC offers out of the box, I need Linux support for some setups, and I already run Air Video for iPhone streaming.

I might change my mind on either of the above, but migrating won;t be a big deal since in the end, it’s just XBMC -> XBMC-like. I should be all future-proofed, or as close as I could be.

Nanaimo’s Hackathon

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In an effort to encourage the creation of new applications, Nanaimo is hosting an Open Data Hackathon on April 30. The city will open up its public data and allow computer programmers free access to it. The goal of the event is to see what kind of creative projects developers can create with the data.

Via Nanaimo, B.C. hosts ‘hackathon’ to help improve local apps.

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.vimrc Tweaks

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I’ve recently made the plunge and standardized all my text editing needs around vim. That is to say vim when in local or remote terminal sessions and macvim when editing local files.

http://twitter.com/#!/stephdau/status/51275806772707329

Since this has lead me to tweak my .vimrc file, I figured I’d post its current incarnation for posterity.

set tabstop=4 softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 noexpandtab
set nowrap
set ruler
syntax on
filetype indent on
autocmd FileType php set omnifunc=phpcomplete#CompletePHP
autocmd FileType javascript set omnifunc=javascriptcomplete#CompleteJS
autocmd FileType html set omnifunc=htmlcomplete#CompleteTags
autocmd FileType css set omnifunc=csscomplete#CompleteCSS
autocmd FileType xml set omnifunc=xmlcomplete#CompleteTags
autocmd FileType python set omnifunc=pythoncomplete#Complete
autocmd FileType c set omnifunc=ccomplete#Complete

Here’s what it means:

  • tabs config: I like my tabs to be real tabs, but show as 4 columns/spaces wide, not 8
  • nowrap: most of my edits involve code and I don’t like soft text wrapping in that context. I just use set wrap when I need it instead
  • ruler: displays the current cursor’s position (line/col) at the bottom right, which means I don’t need line numbers displayed and save some screen real-estate
  • syntax: I like pretty colors when editing code :)
  • filetype indent: cursor remains at the same tab stop when editing indented code and going to a new line.
  • autocmd: sets code completion (AKA: Omni Completion) via ctrl-xo for PHP, Javascript, HTML, CSS, XML, Python and C

Those are the only configs I’ve found myself needing at the moment, but they made a huge difference in my daily productivity. Maybe they will for you too.