As the lock clicked open a strange thing happened. L400's eyes suddenly faded and the android doubled over. Theodore's heart skipped a beat as he saw the little android go down. Was his robotic friend already the casualty of his delusions of grandeur? Could it be that the journey he had just embarked upon was over before it had really ever begun?
Trembling with anxiety Theodore moved to the android's side and checked his vital signs. With a sigh of relief he discovered a strong blinking light on the android's back indicating he was at least still alive. An immediate further inspection showed that the blinking of this light meant that L400 had gone to sleep. De Noobilar prodded the bot's manual wakeup switch and the light stopped blinking and turned on entirely. L400 righted himself and light returned to his eyes.
'What was that all...' Theodore began but was cut short as the adroid fell over immediately again. Frustrated with the bot's drowsiness he pushed the button again and again but with no change in results. L400 appeared to wake up only to fall asleep again directly after.
Theodore checked the android's exterior but to no avail. Nothing strange was apparent from his inspection but then he was about as close to being a robotics engineer as a cow was to ever catching it's own tail. After several minutes of checking Theodore was forced to realise that he could do nothing about the situation. He was going to have to find somebody to help him resolve the situation. It would however take far too long to get out of the Windows estate, find some help and return. L400 would have been discovered and punished or possibly even executed. The Microsoft lords had shown no mercy to escaped slaves so far and this would be a very unlikely first. Bringing help to L400 was therefore not going to cut it, he would have to do it the other way around. Theodore had reached a decision and got to his feet to act on it.
L400 was strangely light for a metal being that possessed a fair amount of brutal power. Theodore had often seen the androids at work when he himself was working in the gardens and had marvelled at the physical labour these small robots could get done. He had imagined L400 to be extremely heavy but the opposite was true. Theodore assessed that he wouldn't have too much of a problem carrying the weight of his friend but needed to find a way to keep his hands free. Feeling a little embarassed he made L400 into a makeshift backpack by tieing his hands to his knees. L400 had better not wake up like this or there would be no end to his complaining. He put on the robotic backpack, moved to the exit of the slavepen and checked his surroundings. Luckily neither the other robots nor the guards had awoken so he could still make good time in getting to the border of the Windows lands before dawn.
As he crept through the village Theodore realized he knew this place very well from all his years in living there as the gardener. Theodore had always been free to move around the lands and had managed his work in order to find the spare time to explore far beyond the reaches of the slaver's village. Getting out of the village wouldn't be alltogether too hard, the difficulties would arise when he got to the borderlands that were being patrolled almost continually. The slavemasters were as fearful of seeing someone escape as they were of having unwanted guests. Their sentries were trained to be diligent and ruthless and wouldn't hesitate a moment to stun anyone they did not recognize. Theodore had therefore always avoided the borderlands on his explorations. He would have to chance it this time though and the sooner he got there the better. The guards were good in the dark but they had an extremely easy job in the flat borderlands during daytime. He would certainly be caught if he and L400 didn't make the trip across the border before dawn. Theodore moved silently and undisturbed between the last houses in the village and picked up the pace. He still had at least a two hour walk to even get to the borderlands and then the same amount of time to get across the border and to relative safety.
After walking for a quarter of an hour or so Theodore got into his walking rythm. He had always enjoyed hiking because it allowed him the time to gather his thoughts and get his path in life sorted out. While Theodore was pondering about the strange events that had occurred that night the minutes and finally hours flew by. Without directly realising it Theodore suddenly got to the edge of the woods and was out on the borderlands. As reality struck him so did something heavy.
Wow, those were two busy weeks. Here in Holland we've just had the celebrations of koninginnedag (queen's birthday), hemelvaart (the day Jesus ascended to heaven), dodenherdenking (remembrance of war victims, not exactly a party) and bevrijdingsdag (the day we were liberated from the germans in WWII). All that didn't leave me with a lot of time for my project and for writing, but I must say it was quite a lot of fun.
I had to see how this storytelling would be going, but I think I have now decided on a frequency of publishing. I will publish back on this blog every 10 -14 days as it takes me a fair amount of time to write this story and I also want to work on the project itself. Let me know what you think about this!
maandag 5 mei 2008
zondag 27 april 2008
2. First steps - liberation
The night had advanced to a point where it would be light in a matter of hours. Theodore quickly realized that if he was going to start the quest he had just been burdened with, he had better start off with haste. He packed some foodstuffs in his coat pockets and set out to the slaves quarters. Determined to find out if he was sane or insane he walked at a brisk pace and soon arrived at his first and potentially only stop. There was only one barn near the holding pens that held any hay at all, so there was no mistaking which barn the elderly woman had meant.
Theodore quietly slipped into the barn, confident that there would be no guards patrolling this far from the outer edges of the compound. He did however have to be quiet as the guards sleeping quarters weren't far off. Too much noise and he might have the entire platoon on him. Wanting to cause no suspicion, Theodore found himself fumbling around in the little moonlight that shone through the windows. There was quite a bit of hay to search through and he had no idea what a Culicular Disruptor might look like. To his surprise his search was over almost before it began. Besides the hay was a pile of boxes with a big sign above them labeled "Culicular Disruptors". Surprised at the stupidity of anyone putting obviously serious firepower next to a large stack of extremely flammable hay, he quickly picked up one of the boxes.
At least there actually had been an elderly lady and she had not been lying about this part of her story, what about the rest of it? Was there really any chance, that he, Theodore de Noobilar, could start out on a quest that would free the entire Latitude race? It started to dawn on Theodore that he was beginning to hope there was some truth to all of it. He had never been the heroic type but seeing the way their masters were treating L400 and his relatives had always bothered him. In spite of that he never had harbored any hopes of doing something about it. 'Bravery was something for the foolish and the dead', Theodore had always told anyone who was willing to listen. Still, he had to consider this strange vision that had appeared before him. Surprised at his own sentiments he was beginning to hope there actually was some truth to the words the old lady had spoken to him. Surely L400 would know how to operate a Disruptor, he said to himself, as he stood up from beside the boxes. If not, he would just put the thing back where it belonged and go back to his bed.
De Noobilar slipped back out of the barn and started for the slave pens. He knew exactly where to find L400 as he had often seen the poor fellow getting tied down for the night. Company policy dictated that any and all slaves were to be tied down when they were not working. Frustrated at the sight of this horrible custom, de Noobilar would make sure he was working in another part of the compound gardens when the guards started their daily routine. Often he would return to the pens after the guards left and talk to the slaves that were held there. At first they had looked at him in disgust but after several return visits they had slowly opened up to him. Over the course of the last two years he had actually befriended one of the Latitudes and his long conversations with L400 were now the reason he kept coming back there on an almost daily basis.
His heart now pounding with an unfamiliar excitement, Theodore reached the pens and sneaked inside. He quietly passed several sleeping Latitudes until he finally reached the location where his friend L400 had been tied down. Puzzled, L400 looked up at him from where he had been tied down on the floor.
'Shhh, I'm here to..' Theodore started, but L400 cut him short. 'N00b, is this for real?' the slender android asked him softly. 'Is there truth in this dream I just woke from?'
Theodore nodded, 'Apparently there is' he said, 'though I'm as surprised as you obviously are.'
Straightening as much as his shackles would let him, L400 was suddenly wide awake.
'Then let's not waste any time. I was told you would bring the Culicular Disruptor, let me have it, quickly.'
Theodore handed him the box but was caught off guard by a soft curse from his friend. '
%#^%#^$& N00b, this is an orange Disruptor. It has entirely the wrong MD5-hash for the shackles they keep me in.' Peering through the darkness, de Noobilar could barely see that the box was indeed a slightly orange colour. Realizing his ignorance Theodore could have put his own head through a brick wall right then and there. In his haste he had not paid any attention to the difference between the various boxes and had forgotten something the mysterious woman had said about the Disruptor.
amp; N00b, this is an orange Disruptor. It has entirely the wrong MD5-hash for the shackles they keep me in.' Peering through the darkness, de Noobilar could barely see that the box was indeed a slightly orange colour. Realizing his ignorance Theodore could have put his own head through a brick wall right then and there. In his haste he had not paid any attention to the difference between the various boxes and had forgotten something the mysterious woman had said about the Disruptor.
'Look in the haystack in the barn near the slave encampment and bring the red Culicular Disruptor I have put there' she had said and Theodore could melt in shame at the spot. He was glad when L400 broke his frustrated thoughts, 'If you really are serious about this, please go back and get one of the red ones. I will wait here.' he said and then added 'as if I have a choice.'
Still annoyed at himself, Theodore stood up and moved past the still sleeping Latitudes to the door. He would have to hurry even more now. There was still a good bit of time left in the night, but they weren't off the compound yet. At the barn the night's calm hadn't been broken. He had feared someone might have checked and found a Disruptor missing but there was no sign of anything like that. He moved over to the pile, returned the orange box and found a reddish one. This must be it, he thought and returned as fast as he could to his waiting friend.
'Excellent, glad to see you're going through with this, even though I don't know how or why you and I were chosen.' L400 whispered as Theodore returned to his side.
'I don't know either' Theodore said 'but first things first, we'll figure out the rest as we go along.'
Taking the box from Theodore's hands L400 said, 'I was told our next step was to find the one named Gavin. He will know our next move.'
L400 opened the box and took out a strange but small and extremely harmless looking device.
'Watch your eyes' L400 said and turned the device on. A red beam emanated from the Disruptor as L400 pointed the small contraption at the central lock in his shackles. The lock made a sharp click and fell open.
The start of my personal quest to make a linux media front end out of my Latitude L400 had gone off to a great start. I was trying to install Mythbuntu, but had hurried too much and hadn't checked the MD5 hash for the download. Of course when you don't check, something is always wrong so I had to throw away a CD-r and redo my download.
Theodore quietly slipped into the barn, confident that there would be no guards patrolling this far from the outer edges of the compound. He did however have to be quiet as the guards sleeping quarters weren't far off. Too much noise and he might have the entire platoon on him. Wanting to cause no suspicion, Theodore found himself fumbling around in the little moonlight that shone through the windows. There was quite a bit of hay to search through and he had no idea what a Culicular Disruptor might look like. To his surprise his search was over almost before it began. Besides the hay was a pile of boxes with a big sign above them labeled "Culicular Disruptors". Surprised at the stupidity of anyone putting obviously serious firepower next to a large stack of extremely flammable hay, he quickly picked up one of the boxes.
At least there actually had been an elderly lady and she had not been lying about this part of her story, what about the rest of it? Was there really any chance, that he, Theodore de Noobilar, could start out on a quest that would free the entire Latitude race? It started to dawn on Theodore that he was beginning to hope there was some truth to all of it. He had never been the heroic type but seeing the way their masters were treating L400 and his relatives had always bothered him. In spite of that he never had harbored any hopes of doing something about it. 'Bravery was something for the foolish and the dead', Theodore had always told anyone who was willing to listen. Still, he had to consider this strange vision that had appeared before him. Surprised at his own sentiments he was beginning to hope there actually was some truth to the words the old lady had spoken to him. Surely L400 would know how to operate a Disruptor, he said to himself, as he stood up from beside the boxes. If not, he would just put the thing back where it belonged and go back to his bed.
De Noobilar slipped back out of the barn and started for the slave pens. He knew exactly where to find L400 as he had often seen the poor fellow getting tied down for the night. Company policy dictated that any and all slaves were to be tied down when they were not working. Frustrated at the sight of this horrible custom, de Noobilar would make sure he was working in another part of the compound gardens when the guards started their daily routine. Often he would return to the pens after the guards left and talk to the slaves that were held there. At first they had looked at him in disgust but after several return visits they had slowly opened up to him. Over the course of the last two years he had actually befriended one of the Latitudes and his long conversations with L400 were now the reason he kept coming back there on an almost daily basis.
His heart now pounding with an unfamiliar excitement, Theodore reached the pens and sneaked inside. He quietly passed several sleeping Latitudes until he finally reached the location where his friend L400 had been tied down. Puzzled, L400 looked up at him from where he had been tied down on the floor.
'Shhh, I'm here to..' Theodore started, but L400 cut him short. 'N00b, is this for real?' the slender android asked him softly. 'Is there truth in this dream I just woke from?'
Theodore nodded, 'Apparently there is' he said, 'though I'm as surprised as you obviously are.'
Straightening as much as his shackles would let him, L400 was suddenly wide awake.
'Then let's not waste any time. I was told you would bring the Culicular Disruptor, let me have it, quickly.'
Theodore handed him the box but was caught off guard by a soft curse from his friend. '
%#^%#^$& N00b, this is an orange Disruptor. It has entirely the wrong MD5-hash for the shackles they keep me in.' Peering through the darkness, de Noobilar could barely see that the box was indeed a slightly orange colour. Realizing his ignorance Theodore could have put his own head through a brick wall right then and there. In his haste he had not paid any attention to the difference between the various boxes and had forgotten something the mysterious woman had said about the Disruptor.
amp; N00b, this is an orange Disruptor. It has entirely the wrong MD5-hash for the shackles they keep me in.' Peering through the darkness, de Noobilar could barely see that the box was indeed a slightly orange colour. Realizing his ignorance Theodore could have put his own head through a brick wall right then and there. In his haste he had not paid any attention to the difference between the various boxes and had forgotten something the mysterious woman had said about the Disruptor.
'Look in the haystack in the barn near the slave encampment and bring the red Culicular Disruptor I have put there' she had said and Theodore could melt in shame at the spot. He was glad when L400 broke his frustrated thoughts, 'If you really are serious about this, please go back and get one of the red ones. I will wait here.' he said and then added 'as if I have a choice.'
Still annoyed at himself, Theodore stood up and moved past the still sleeping Latitudes to the door. He would have to hurry even more now. There was still a good bit of time left in the night, but they weren't off the compound yet. At the barn the night's calm hadn't been broken. He had feared someone might have checked and found a Disruptor missing but there was no sign of anything like that. He moved over to the pile, returned the orange box and found a reddish one. This must be it, he thought and returned as fast as he could to his waiting friend.
'Excellent, glad to see you're going through with this, even though I don't know how or why you and I were chosen.' L400 whispered as Theodore returned to his side.
'I don't know either' Theodore said 'but first things first, we'll figure out the rest as we go along.'
Taking the box from Theodore's hands L400 said, 'I was told our next step was to find the one named Gavin. He will know our next move.'
L400 opened the box and took out a strange but small and extremely harmless looking device.
'Watch your eyes' L400 said and turned the device on. A red beam emanated from the Disruptor as L400 pointed the small contraption at the central lock in his shackles. The lock made a sharp click and fell open.
The start of my personal quest to make a linux media front end out of my Latitude L400 had gone off to a great start. I was trying to install Mythbuntu, but had hurried too much and hadn't checked the MD5 hash for the download. Of course when you don't check, something is always wrong so I had to throw away a CD-r and redo my download.
zaterdag 26 april 2008
1. The beginning of a journey
Foreword
After a long hard week of working my butt off as a software consultant, I decided to relax a bit and bring some order to the chaos called my attic. I made sure it would be relaxation by deciding to set my goals low. Bringing some order where none was to be found would be an infinite improvement anyway so I didn't really have to make work of it. Of course I started with the stuff that was really mine to clean up. A big pile of cables and ancient equipment such as a 400 Mb harddrive were scattered all over the attic floor. My girlfriend would really appreciate it if this pile were at least neatly stored in boxes so I started sorting stuff out.
The goal I had set for myself was however rudely disrupted after as little as fifteen minutes by finding a particularly valuable treasure. My girlfriend had been using an old company laptop as her very own and had decided a few months ago it was too slow and started using my new laptop. The laptop had been carelessly discarded even though it is still in fine condition. Sure the battery is dead and it is older than most people I know, but that's not to say it should be tossed to the floor between my cables like this, is it?
I took some moments to pick it up and set it up on my desk and started to ponder away the time I had originally taken to cleaning up. What could I still do with this laptop? It sure was a little old, so using it as a games machine was out of the question. Using it as a really small notebook was not going to work anymore since the battery had given up and a search on the internet revealed that a new power cell was going to cost over $150. What to do, what to do?
After some time, another treasure caught my eye. I rummaged through the pile and quickly found the other part of it: my old PC remote which I had bought for a media center pc I was going to use which had never really worked out after all. The batteries were still functional after seeing no use at all for over 4 years!
Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel I quickly came up with a plan of action. This laptop would be great as a media center for my precious little bedroom LCD tv! I had never been able to find a media center solution which was small enough to fit behind the TV and had given up searching. So, putting two and two together I decided to start a brand new project.
Setting project goals
In my work as a software consultant I was currently venturing into the work of project leadership. I therefore decided to use these skills and first take some time to set some simple goals and boundaries.
Goal number one, have fun doing this project.
After checking the web, I found several options to get a media center functioning with my stuff. One of the key requirements for me however, was that this project should not cost anything. I'm looking to learn some stuff here and reuse the old laptop, not pay hundreds of dollars for stuff like windows media center, mediaportal etc.
The next requirement, but to me a very big thing, is that the media center be very user friendly and that it should look sweet! I've got a modded Xbox with Xbox media center on it in my living room and that is sooooo great. If I get something like that working, I'm sold on whatever it is I get operational.
Another requirement was that the laptop start working on the native resolution of my bedroom LCD, which is 1280 * 1024 in order to get a good visual experience. The windows driver limits the graphics card to the native resolution of the laptop which is 1024 * 768. I am currently still hoping it is not an actual limit of the graphics card, but we'll see about that as the project gets going.
Getting directions
Free software that does stuff my laptop was not meant to do... The only right operating system choice seems to be linux. After doing my fair share of googling for a media frontend, I found that the linux way was called MythTV. Although the program is currently at version 0.21, which seems rather low, I've found several reports of people that love using it for real. I'm a bit of a techie myself (although not at Linux) so I decided to go for the Linux/MythTV combination.
Having no real experience with linux outside the webserver side, I feel compelled to go for a low-threshold version of Linux. To me this was either Ubuntu (love the philosophy) or Suse (Novell appeals to me somehow). After doing some further research I found the great distro called Mythbuntu which bundles MythTV and Ubuntu together. It looked fairly mature and felt like the right way to go about this project.
The most important goal for this project to me is that I have fun doing this. For me to have fun on something like this, there needs to be some form of sharing and community in the project so I decided to share my experiences in this project. Now I understand that nobody would be interested in reading about all the steps I take to get this project done, so I'd have to make my writing a little fun. If people enjoy reading about my work, they might be inclined to help out if I get stuck, which I'm bound to do sooner or later. So I'll write about it and hope to make for an entertaining read by capturing my work as a story.
1. Starting a journey
Theodore de Noobilar woke with a start. The dream he had just had was more vivid and clearer than any dream he had had in his 25 years. He got out of the chair he was in, walked over to a mirror and looked at himself apprehensively. Was any of what he had just seen real or was it all just a figment of his own imagination? He went over the dream in his mind again.
He had sat in his rocking chair reading a novel of one of his favourite writers when he heard a knock at the door. He remembered thinking it was really strange that someone would knock at that hour as most people were already sound asleep by now. Annoyed by having to pause midway in an interesting chapter, he got out of his chair and walked to the door. A light shone through the seam below the door and he thought to himself, Did I turn the outside light on? As he was walking to the door another knock came and Theodore muttered 'keep your pants on, I'm coming.'
De Noobilar unlocked, then opened the door and immediately took a stumbling step back from it. In front of him stood a radiant, somewhat translucent being that began to speak as Theodore shrunk back from his front door.
'Have no fear, Theodore, I do not intend to harm you.'
Having never in his life before seen someone he could look straight through, Theodore thought to himself, that may be well and good, but what you say and what you do might very well be totally unconnected.
'Theodore, I know people have mistreated you in the past, but what I'm saying is true. Please do believe me.'
As de Noobilar took a deep breath he looked at the figure a little better. The person appeared to be an older woman in her sixties with a slight stoop. His own grandmother had had more of an aura of threat to her when he sometimes displeased her in the past.
'Very well, though I can see through you, you don't look to be alltogether too frightening' he said.
'Good', translucent elderly woman said, 'now listen very carefully because I only have the strength to say this once. You, Theodore, have a quest ahead of you. A quest full of peril but one of destiny.'
'Great, just what I needed, more hard work.' Theodore said and got ready to close his front door and go to his bed.
'Halt!' she said, 'What I am proposing will also bring you great riches, fame and what you yourself need most, freedom. At the end of this quest, you yourself will be the owner of a small piece of the great Mythbuntu nation.'
'Freedom' Theodore spat, anger suddenly overpowering what was left of his fear, 'Freedom is a dream, a dream for people who think too much of themselves. I'd rather have my belly filled and a decent place to sleep like this cottage on the master's compound.'
'The one thing I hope will actually persuade you to listen to me might be the fact that your quest will bring freedom not only to you, but to your friend L400 and all his enslaved Latitude brothers.'
Stunned, Theodore stood still at the spot for a while. As weird as this whole encounter was, he had not thought this being of some sort actually knew him, let alone his hidden allegiance to one of the slaves at the compound.
'You actually know who I am, how can this be?' he asked her.
'Answers to these questions must come later, when we meet face to face. Right now all I can offer you is a path to start on and a means to get your quest going. To prove I mean what I say, I will supply you with a way to free L400 so you will not have to make your journey alone.'
'Look in the haystack in the barn near the slave encampment and bring the red Culicular Disruptor I have put there. This Disruptor will break L400's shackles and allow him to accompany you on your journey. Together you shall travel to the far Mythbuntu nation. Go now, while there still is time left in the night.' and with that she faded and Theodore stood alone in the cold of the night.
Looking at himself in the mirror, Theodore shook up from his contemplations. A fantastic story, he thought, but that's what I always have been praying for. I don't know for certain if all this is true but I must at least know if I'm going crazy. Still a little hesitant, de Noobilar took his coat from the other chair in his room and stepped out of his small home. With a great sense of foreboding for things to come, but a sense of purpose he had not had in a long, long time he set foot on his first of many paths on a potentially long and arduous journey.
After a long hard week of working my butt off as a software consultant, I decided to relax a bit and bring some order to the chaos called my attic. I made sure it would be relaxation by deciding to set my goals low. Bringing some order where none was to be found would be an infinite improvement anyway so I didn't really have to make work of it. Of course I started with the stuff that was really mine to clean up. A big pile of cables and ancient equipment such as a 400 Mb harddrive were scattered all over the attic floor. My girlfriend would really appreciate it if this pile were at least neatly stored in boxes so I started sorting stuff out.
The goal I had set for myself was however rudely disrupted after as little as fifteen minutes by finding a particularly valuable treasure. My girlfriend had been using an old company laptop as her very own and had decided a few months ago it was too slow and started using my new laptop. The laptop had been carelessly discarded even though it is still in fine condition. Sure the battery is dead and it is older than most people I know, but that's not to say it should be tossed to the floor between my cables like this, is it?
I took some moments to pick it up and set it up on my desk and started to ponder away the time I had originally taken to cleaning up. What could I still do with this laptop? It sure was a little old, so using it as a games machine was out of the question. Using it as a really small notebook was not going to work anymore since the battery had given up and a search on the internet revealed that a new power cell was going to cost over $150. What to do, what to do?
After some time, another treasure caught my eye. I rummaged through the pile and quickly found the other part of it: my old PC remote which I had bought for a media center pc I was going to use which had never really worked out after all. The batteries were still functional after seeing no use at all for over 4 years!
Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel I quickly came up with a plan of action. This laptop would be great as a media center for my precious little bedroom LCD tv! I had never been able to find a media center solution which was small enough to fit behind the TV and had given up searching. So, putting two and two together I decided to start a brand new project.
Setting project goals
In my work as a software consultant I was currently venturing into the work of project leadership. I therefore decided to use these skills and first take some time to set some simple goals and boundaries.
Goal number one, have fun doing this project.
After checking the web, I found several options to get a media center functioning with my stuff. One of the key requirements for me however, was that this project should not cost anything. I'm looking to learn some stuff here and reuse the old laptop, not pay hundreds of dollars for stuff like windows media center, mediaportal etc.
The next requirement, but to me a very big thing, is that the media center be very user friendly and that it should look sweet! I've got a modded Xbox with Xbox media center on it in my living room and that is sooooo great. If I get something like that working, I'm sold on whatever it is I get operational.
Another requirement was that the laptop start working on the native resolution of my bedroom LCD, which is 1280 * 1024 in order to get a good visual experience. The windows driver limits the graphics card to the native resolution of the laptop which is 1024 * 768. I am currently still hoping it is not an actual limit of the graphics card, but we'll see about that as the project gets going.
Getting directions
Free software that does stuff my laptop was not meant to do... The only right operating system choice seems to be linux. After doing my fair share of googling for a media frontend, I found that the linux way was called MythTV. Although the program is currently at version 0.21, which seems rather low, I've found several reports of people that love using it for real. I'm a bit of a techie myself (although not at Linux) so I decided to go for the Linux/MythTV combination.
Having no real experience with linux outside the webserver side, I feel compelled to go for a low-threshold version of Linux. To me this was either Ubuntu (love the philosophy) or Suse (Novell appeals to me somehow). After doing some further research I found the great distro called Mythbuntu which bundles MythTV and Ubuntu together. It looked fairly mature and felt like the right way to go about this project.
The most important goal for this project to me is that I have fun doing this. For me to have fun on something like this, there needs to be some form of sharing and community in the project so I decided to share my experiences in this project. Now I understand that nobody would be interested in reading about all the steps I take to get this project done, so I'd have to make my writing a little fun. If people enjoy reading about my work, they might be inclined to help out if I get stuck, which I'm bound to do sooner or later. So I'll write about it and hope to make for an entertaining read by capturing my work as a story.
1. Starting a journey
Theodore de Noobilar woke with a start. The dream he had just had was more vivid and clearer than any dream he had had in his 25 years. He got out of the chair he was in, walked over to a mirror and looked at himself apprehensively. Was any of what he had just seen real or was it all just a figment of his own imagination? He went over the dream in his mind again.
He had sat in his rocking chair reading a novel of one of his favourite writers when he heard a knock at the door. He remembered thinking it was really strange that someone would knock at that hour as most people were already sound asleep by now. Annoyed by having to pause midway in an interesting chapter, he got out of his chair and walked to the door. A light shone through the seam below the door and he thought to himself, Did I turn the outside light on? As he was walking to the door another knock came and Theodore muttered 'keep your pants on, I'm coming.'
De Noobilar unlocked, then opened the door and immediately took a stumbling step back from it. In front of him stood a radiant, somewhat translucent being that began to speak as Theodore shrunk back from his front door.
'Have no fear, Theodore, I do not intend to harm you.'
Having never in his life before seen someone he could look straight through, Theodore thought to himself, that may be well and good, but what you say and what you do might very well be totally unconnected.
'Theodore, I know people have mistreated you in the past, but what I'm saying is true. Please do believe me.'
As de Noobilar took a deep breath he looked at the figure a little better. The person appeared to be an older woman in her sixties with a slight stoop. His own grandmother had had more of an aura of threat to her when he sometimes displeased her in the past.
'Very well, though I can see through you, you don't look to be alltogether too frightening' he said.
'Good', translucent elderly woman said, 'now listen very carefully because I only have the strength to say this once. You, Theodore, have a quest ahead of you. A quest full of peril but one of destiny.'
'Great, just what I needed, more hard work.' Theodore said and got ready to close his front door and go to his bed.
'Halt!' she said, 'What I am proposing will also bring you great riches, fame and what you yourself need most, freedom. At the end of this quest, you yourself will be the owner of a small piece of the great Mythbuntu nation.'
'Freedom' Theodore spat, anger suddenly overpowering what was left of his fear, 'Freedom is a dream, a dream for people who think too much of themselves. I'd rather have my belly filled and a decent place to sleep like this cottage on the master's compound.'
'The one thing I hope will actually persuade you to listen to me might be the fact that your quest will bring freedom not only to you, but to your friend L400 and all his enslaved Latitude brothers.'
Stunned, Theodore stood still at the spot for a while. As weird as this whole encounter was, he had not thought this being of some sort actually knew him, let alone his hidden allegiance to one of the slaves at the compound.
'You actually know who I am, how can this be?' he asked her.
'Answers to these questions must come later, when we meet face to face. Right now all I can offer you is a path to start on and a means to get your quest going. To prove I mean what I say, I will supply you with a way to free L400 so you will not have to make your journey alone.'
'Look in the haystack in the barn near the slave encampment and bring the red Culicular Disruptor I have put there. This Disruptor will break L400's shackles and allow him to accompany you on your journey. Together you shall travel to the far Mythbuntu nation. Go now, while there still is time left in the night.' and with that she faded and Theodore stood alone in the cold of the night.
Looking at himself in the mirror, Theodore shook up from his contemplations. A fantastic story, he thought, but that's what I always have been praying for. I don't know for certain if all this is true but I must at least know if I'm going crazy. Still a little hesitant, de Noobilar took his coat from the other chair in his room and stepped out of his small home. With a great sense of foreboding for things to come, but a sense of purpose he had not had in a long, long time he set foot on his first of many paths on a potentially long and arduous journey.
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