I am designing a new theme for Wordpress and within this theme I wanted to use the accordion effect that comes with the jQuery library. By default Wordpress comes packaged with a jQuery function but because the jQuery libraries are updated constantly I decided to call my own jQuery libraries from a CDN. CDN stands for content delivery network, large enterprises have their own CDN’s where they host copies of popular script. In the following example I’m using the CDN of Google. What I’m going to do is make a function for functions.php that unloads the default libraries, registers the new and updated ones and makes them available for use.
What seemed impossible has finally happened. XBMC has been ported to the Popcorn Hour 100 series. The port is currently in beta phase and is only available on invite but my guess is that it wont take long before the project matures and releases a public version. This is of course good news for those who have a Popcorn Hour from the 100 series and would like to spice the interface to something with more eye candy. Check out the video below.
More information can be found on the Networked Media Tank forum.
I recently bought a new audio-video receiver to add to my home-cinema setup. After some period of research I have chosen the Denon AVR-1910 to do the job. This AV-receiver is a mid-range receiver that fits all my needs and was also selected as home-cinema receiver of 2009 by whathifi.com. Although I’m very happy with this machine, it’s functionality and the sound quality I have encountered a bug/failure when the receiver is used in co-operation with a Humax digital TV tuner. This post explains the issue and it’s work-around for future reference to people who run into the same problem.
If you own a successful Wordpress blog you know that managing all the comments you receive every day can be quite some work. Today I read about a desktop application that can make your life easier. The application is called WP-Comment-Notifier. The application displays an icon in your system tray to let you know if you have new comments and allows you to manage/reply/edit your comments directly from your desktop.
About a month ago XBMC announced the new features for the next version of XBMC. These new features, although very useful and a step forward, might not mean that much for the average XBMC user that just want his home theater system to work. One of the features however will improve the user experience even for these average users. Yesterday the XBMC team announced that the new code for the addons manager and the basis for the PVR frontend will be added to the development branch of XBMC.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how to get BluRay playback within XBMC. At that time development on this issue had just started but I already predicted that this would continue. Now the next step has been taken. The original author of the script has created a plugin which makes it easier to manage your BluRay discs or ISO’s within XBMC.
I’m a Windows 7 user because some of the programs I use on a daily basis arent available under Linux (if so I would have switched to Ubuntu or Linux Mint a long time ago). Shortly after upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 I noticed that the operating system reported that there was a problem with my laptop battery and that I should replace it. I also noticed that my battery life was down to a mere one hour compared to the two and half hour of juice available under Vista. But I never gave much attention to it. Most batteries start to degrade after their first year and I certainly didnt link it to the upgrade to Windows 7. I thought my laptop battery was wearing out and since I’m mostly hooked up on the powernet I dont use it that much anyway. However only recently I read that a lot of Windows 7 users are experiencing the same issue and are complaining that their battery life is being killed by Windows 7. Microsoft has investigated this problem and has come with a statement.
There is a pretty weird problem with the ASRock ION-330HT. The machine will boot itself from time to time. I did some research together with other ION-330HT owners and I’m pretty sure we narrowed down the problem. If you experience the same issue and really dont know what is going on be sure to read on.
A couple of days ago Boxee has announced they will be bringing paid content to their media center software. For those of you who dont know Boxee: Boxee is a fork of the popular XBMC media center software and is capable of playing all sorts of media when installed on a computer or HTPC. Compared the XBMC Boxee features some custom and proprietary additions and is more focused on social and online media.
The idea is that Boxee users will have the ability to buy content like TV shows and movies with a click of the remote. Content owners will be able to package and price as they wish, including pay-per-view and subscription. This could be a great step forward towards paid content as a countermeasure for piracy. I would love to see this in XBMC as well although I doubt this is gonna happen.
There are many people out there that have a Home Theater PC with Blu-ray drive (like the ASRock ION-330HT-BD) running with the mediaportal software XBMC. By default XBMC does not support original Blu-ray playback but it seems progress is being made on this from the XBMC community. A user named magnetism wrote a post on the forum of xbmc.org explaining how he fixed this issue. Below is a short tutorial as seen on the dutch site XBMCFreak.nl. Warning: from here on it is assumed you have basic knowledge of Linux and SSH.
