Network Booting A Raspberry Pi MythTV Frontend

When we moved house earlier in the year I wanted to simplify our home theatre setup. With my son starting to grow up, in a normal house he’d be able to turn on the tv and watch his favourite shows without needing us to do it for him, but with the overcomplicated setup that we had it would take him several years longer before he could learn the right sequence of buttons.

I’ve been a MythTV user for well over ten years, and all our TV watching is done through it. At this stage with our history of recorded shows and a carefully curated list of recording rules switching would be a big pain, so I wanted to try and simplify the user experience, even if it means complicating the setup somewhat.

I had previously tried to reduce the standby power consumption by using an Eon Power Down Plug, which monitors the master socket and switches off the slave sockets when the master enters standby mode. This works great as when the TV was off my Xbox and surround speakers would be switched off automatically. The downside is that if I want the use the speakers to listen to music (they are also connected to a Sonos Connect) then either the TV needs to be on, or I need to change the plug over. Lastly, because I was running a combined frontend and backend it wasn’t connected to the smart plug (otherwise it wouldn’t be able to turn on to record.) If you turned the TV off the frontend would still be on, preventing the backend from shutting down for several hours, until it went into idle mode.

FitBit Ionic Review

Since I received my Pebble Steel back in 2014 I knew I never wanted to go back to using a normal watch. Having notifications and apps on my wrist was just too useful to me. I skipped the Pebble Time, but when the Time 2 was announced I happily put in a preorder. Unfortunately it was not to be, and Pebble folded and was sold to FitBit. If Pebble wasn’t able to survive then as an existing FitBit user having them as a buyer is probably the the best option.

The idea of FitBit’s scale and expertise in building hardware, combined with Pebble’s excellent developer platform was an enticing prospect. Rather than switch to an Apple Watch (or Android Wear, although that would have required a new phone) I decide to wait for the fruits of the combined company’s labour to be released.

I was getting a bit itchy, and my trusty Pebble Steel was showing it’s age, but eventually the FitBit Ionic was announced. A few days before the official release date my preorder arrived. It’s now been two weeks of wearing it nearly 24/7, so it seems like a reasonable time to post my thoughts.

Leading Without Deep Technical Knowledge

In my previous jobs, when I’ve been promoted to a leadership role it has been as a result of being the most experienced member on the team. Having a deep knowledge of the business, the code base and the technologies we’re using meant I was already an authority on most topics of the team needed to discuss, and could weigh in on a discussion with a well formed and considered option.

When I changed companies at the end of last year I came to Ocado Technology as a team lead for an existing team, using a technology stack I wasn’t familiar with. In fact Ocado are a Java based company, which I had never used before, so not only was I not familiar with the frameworks and libraries used, but I wasn’t even familiar with language the code was written it either!

Leading in a situation like this required a complete change in how I approached problems. When a stakeholder or the product owner approached me with a challenge rather than immediately being able to respond with a rough solution, and vague estimate or a timeline I need to defer to my team, and let them propose a solution, estimate it, and then I could fit it into our schedule. I might challenge them on some points, but it was their plan. I quickly needed to learn who knew the most about which systems, so I could get the right people involved in discussions early.

Accessing FitBit Intraday Data

For Christmas my wife and I brought each other a new FitBit One device (Amazon affiliate link included). These are small fitness tracking devices that monitor the number of steps you take, how high you climb and how well you sleep. They’re great for providing motivation to walk that extra bit further, or to take the stairs rather than the lift.

I’ve only had the device for less than a week, but already I’m feeling the benefit of the gamification on FitBit.com. As well as monitoring your fitness it also provides you with goals, achievements and competitions against your friends. The big advantage of the FitBit One over the previous models is that it syncs to recent iPhones, iPads, as well as some Android phones. This means that your computer doesn’t need to be on, and often it will sync without you having to do anything. In the worst case you just have to open the FitBit app to update your stats on the website. Battery life seems good, at about a week.

The FitBit apps sync your data directly to FitBit.com, which is great for seeing your progress quickly. They also provide an API for developers to provide interesting ways to process the data captured by the FitBit device. One glaring omission from the API is any way to get access to the minute by minute data. For a fee of $50 per year you can become a Premium member which allows you do to a CSV export of the raw data. Holding the data, collected by a user hostage is deeply suspect and FitBit should be ashamed of themselves for making this a paid for feature. I have no problem with the rest of the features in the Premium subscription being paid for, but your own raw data should be freely available.

Losing Games

I’m not a quick game player. I don’t rush out a buy the latest games and complete them on the same weekend. Currently I’m most of the way through both Alan Wake and L.A. Noire.

Alan Wake is a survival horror game where you’re fighting off hordes of people possessed by darkness. L.A. Noire is a detective story that has you solving crimes in 1940s Los Angeles. Both feature an over the shoulder third person camera, and both have excellent graphics. They also both have a film like quality to the story. In Alan Wake the action is divided up in six tv style “episodes”, with a title sequence between each one. It also has a number of cut scenes and narration by the title character sprinkled throughout the game which help to drive the story forward.