I’m thirty-years old and in the year twenty-ten I finally experienced 3D in a movie theater! My wife was more in shock about it than you.

I’m glad to say that I’ve contributed to the blockbuster movie sales of James Cameron’s Avatar and experienced yet another great Tim Burton masterpiece, Alice in Wonderland. Two great movies and two totally different 3D experiences. Come; see me banter on about the “avatar experience” and the twisted add-on to a timeless classic.

James Cameron’s Avatar

The wife and I finally saw this ground-breaking movie. The movie was released December 10, 2009 and we saw it January 24, 2010. We were concerned that the movie would be pulled from the movie theater because it’s been out for so long. Boy were we wrong. The movie has already made billions of dollars world-wide. When we arrive at the IMAX Theater with only minutes to showtime, to our surprise, the movie was sold out!  We ended up getting tickets for the regular theater viewing (still in 3D).

This was my first ever 3D experience. I realized that I’m very fortunate to have my first experience be Avatar and not any of the other movies using the quirky 3D effects. Overall; I had a great time. People rag on about the story not being so deep and twisted, but I thought it was well played. I think Jame’s purpose was to not overwhelm people since the visual effects of the movie would already do that.

It took me a while for my eyes to adjust to the subtle 3D effects. After I got comfortable, I really lost myself into what was going on. Sure I could narrate the hero’s every move, but that’s just a product of us being so used to complex storyline.

Alice in Wonderland

The story in this movie is awesome! I loved the fact that they weren’t retelling “Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland.” The cast was well done and I will certainly buy this movie when it’s available in BluRay. The only thing I could have done without was the 3D effects. It actually took me out of the movie, the 3D effects kind of got in my way.

I’m too tired to really post a long drawn-out synopsis of both of these movies. Avatar is basically the model for doing a movie in 3D and Alice in Wonderland is not, plain and simple.

There was a short segment on NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! podcast; they were talking about 3D movies and how people will actually miss watching movies in 2D. So; I got the idea to write this. I actually agree with them. In the distant future, we will become so used to the 3D emersion of movies that actually watching them in 2D will become a novelty. So much so that the young hipsters will schedule a “1999 2D Movie Party” and VH-1.0 will host a series titled “How I Loved My 2D Movies.”  Just a thought.

Well; we’re finally getting a Home Theater PC (HTPC). I’ve been dreaming of this moment for about a year or so, but never really pursed it. I’m the kind of person that doesn’t intoxicate myself with things I cannot have. So; I just left it alone. The wife and I’ve been talking about it, though, ever since I introduced her to the Boxee Box, showcased at CES 2010.  The wife LOVES Boxee and she’s been playing with it on her desktop machine.

I’m starting to do my research and getting ready to emerge myself into the HTPC-underworld. Of course, I know nothing about this. I have some PC-building skills, but that’s only a hobby. I’m a big Linux geek and I plan to run Mythbuntu and Boxee on the intended machine. I’ll blog from time to time to share my resources, but I’m also looking for any advice.

To my surprise, after doing a Google search for “htpc” – the results were a bit disappointing. I immediately signed up for an account on HTPC Forum (without checking it out first). I realized after confirming my email address that this forum isn’t as active as I thought it was. Well that was a waste of time. With that lesson learned I’m looking for other resources.

Resources

• Tom’s Hardware, seems to have some good articles.

I almost blew my lid when I finally found this web site. I’ve been searching the Internets for anything with the keywords “boxee”, “rpm”, “fc12″, and “fedora 12″. My only result was an RPM for Fedora 10. The version of Boxee was x.7.x and the most recent version of Boxee is x.20.x. That wasn’t going to work – I HAVE to have the latest, I’m running Fedora for peace sake – how much more bleeding edge can I be!?

Well; luck would have it, I came across a forum thread where kurgan posted his latest Boxee/Fedora 12 build. The Great Guin smiles upon us all! So; I’m posting this blog entry to help spread the good word that a Fedora 12/Boxee RPM is out there!

Introducing Boxee Fedora 10/11/12 Port – Boxee Forum Thread

There is an Alpha and Beta version available. Please take the time to view the readme file. I figured you wouldn’t so I posted it below. As of 10 January 2010 this is what it reads.

A couple of notes about this port. The rpm will create necessary symlinks for the Boxee dev’s prebuilt binaries to work. I found them to be their rtorrent, flash player, flash libraries, and some of their xulrunner stuff. Without the symlinks, flash apps such as Hulu and Youtube will give you the “meatspin”. The symlinks created by this rpm are necessary because this package contains pre-bundled binaries built against libraries with a different naming convention than Fedora. Given this fact, a standard rpm -ivh will fail due to dependancy errors. Running the rpm install with the –nodeps is necessary at this time.

It is worth noting I do not run pulseaudio with Boxee or XBMC, so I recommend removing it since pulse cannot do SPDIF passthrough.

My initial testing on F10 has been positive, and I have found no problems thus far. I am able to play dvd .iso’s as well as dvd folders (play VIDEO_TS.IFO works for me), and flash based apps work. Unfortunately, Hulu content is not working with the Beta builds. At the moment, I cannot get any Hulu content to work with any Linux distro and the Firefox browser, so I do not think this is a Boxee specific issue.

Due to an rpmbuild error about an invalid rpath in one of the Boxee pre-built flash binaries/libraries for xulrunner, I have to use the following command when building:

QA_RPATHS=$[ 0x0002 ] rpmbuild -ba rpmbuild/SPECS/boxee.spec 2>&1 |tee box_rpm.log

Installing Boxee

Since it’s an RPM, you’d think it’ll be easy to install. Well of course it is stupid! Just joking. You can either double-click on the .rpm file or run the following command after you “cd” your way into the directory where you saved the .rpm file.

# rpm -ivh --nodeps boxee-0.9.20.10263-0.1.b.fc12.x86_64.rpm

Running Boxee

The Boxee link is conveniently placed within your “Applications | Videos” menu. When you run it for the first time, don’t expect it to actually load completely. If it does crash, run the launch file in terminal to then see what the error is:

/usr/bin/run-boxee-desktop

For me, I was missing two libraries. I installed them and I was good to go!

# yum install faac glew-devel

A fellow coworker and Georgia State student is organizing an event to raise money for Haitians that experienced the devastating earthquake about a week ago. I’m simply trying to help promote it. Here’s a way to party, donate, and feel good all at the same time.

Want to help the people of Haiti but aren’t sure how? Come to the Sutra Lounge on Friday, January 22nd. Admissions go to the American Red Cross and CARE International for their Haitian relief efforts. Come have fun (as long as you’re 21+) and help Haiti!

Event Details

• When: Friday, January 22, 2010 @ 10pm – 3am.
• Where: Sutra Lounge, 1136 Crescent Ave. NE, Midtown [404-607-1160]
• Cost: $10 suggested donation or items valued at $10 (Needed items include: blankets, clothing, shoes, hygiene products, over-the-counter medicine, etc)

If you’re not able to attend the event, collections will be taken at Institute of Public Health (IPH) office on the 8th floor, Urban Life Building, GSU.

This event is coordinated by Georgia State University’s PHISA (Public Health Institute Student Association) and HSA (Haitian Student Association).

I know that title is very very cynical and I’ll probably get a lot of hate-mail and comments over it, but it did get your attention. Sorry Shawn you’re a great guy – I’m just playing the marketing game. Seriously though; Shawn Powers, Editor of Linux Journal, announced the tragic news today on Twitter that his house burned down to the ground. Wow! His family made it out alive, but the family pets were lost, *tragic*. On a brighter note, the community which Powers has built, over the years, has shown him tremendous support and love by donating their imperial credits to him. At the time of me writing this post, he’s raised $8,858.98 of $10,000 in under 24 hours. That’s tremendous!

The money is linked directly to his Paypal account and he was able to buy winter coats for his family. Now that’s love. Way to go community! You can follow Shawn’s updates on the following web sites:

• http://www.brainofshawn.com/
• http://www.facebook.com/shawnp0wers
• http://twitter.com/shawnp0wers
• http://www.natuba.com/shawnp0wers/

The donation service is being provided by Chipin. I know Shawn is happy that his family is safe and very happy that the community is here to support when needed. Good luck rebuilding and keep safe.

Again; if you want to send me hate-mail over the title of this article, please send it to blackhole@fergytech.net – I’ll make sure to keep an eye out for it!

Here’s my take on etiquette using location-based social platforms. Since I’ve only used Foursquare on my Blackberry 8820, well.. that’s what I’ll talk about. I finally dived into Foursquare when I caught wind that it came out with a BB app. It was exciting and also a bit confusing. I don’t go out much (family guy with little kids at home), so there aren’t many opportunities for me to “check in”. So; in order to participate I started checking in to places on my normal commute to and from work. It felt weird since I realized that I can easily become mayor of these places. It seemed like an unfair advantage.

I found it very odd that I couldn’t find any guidance on Foursquare’s web site. I guess they wanted the guidelines to evolve on its own through the users. I did a Google search for “foursquare etiquette” and I’ve listed some sites below that do a good job spelling out the Do’s and Don’ts of checking in.

My Do’s and Don’ts

• When you check in, don’t post EVERYTHING to Twitter and Facebook. It’s bad enough people get junk posts in their feed all the time. Don’t become an enabler. Post it within the Foursquare environment – it was meant to take that kind of abuse.
• Configure your settings to only post to Twitter and Facebook once you’ve achieved badges or mayorship. This way, people will be exposed to the application, but not burdened by your constant check ins.
• Don’t check in at home or work. You will become mayor and it’s definitely an unfair advantage. No one will be able to catch up to you.

Ha-ha. I thought I’d have more, but that’s my list. Check out the references below for more detailed lists.

References

1. http://www.oldmedianewtricks.com/foursquare-etiquette-guide/ – this site’s post dominates the search results.

Well; I Googl’d it and found this wiki. I thought I’d attempt to give it some traction since others must have the same question.

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ChromiumBrowserVsGoogleChrome

How to Enable Flash Support

Once I got Google Chrome installed, of course, the Flash plugin wasn’t associated with the web browser. So; here’s a quick tutorial. First off, the Chrome install is now in the “/opt” directory.  If it’s not there create a “plugins” directory:

$ sudo mkdir /opt/google/chrome/plugins

Now you’ll need to make a symbolic link to the “libflashplayer.so” file. This can be accomplished with the following command.

$ cd /opt/google/chrome/plugins
$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so

The system will create an alias file named “libflashplayer.so” within that plugins directory. If you’re running an x86_64 system then you’ll need to make a symbolic link to the “nswrapper” file instead of the direct “libflashplayer.so” file. Do a search and find the location that fits your system.

$ locate libflashplayer

Here’s a link to an Ubuntu-related post on Flash support for Google Chrome. http://maketecheasier.com/enable-flash-support-in-google-chrome-in-ubuntu/2009/08/19

I’m on and off with listening to Linux Outlaws, but their last podcast for the year 2009 went out in style. All other podcasts are doing a roundup of 2009, but for the most part, I feel that folks are half-assin’ it. These guys did it big by highlighting significant events in the world of Free and Open Source Software. The coolest thing, which has me writing this blog post, is the parities of their favorite podcasts. It starts out like something happened to the show (with some radio distortion) and then a bizaro FLOSS Weekly or The Linux Link Tech Show would play, with Dan and Fabian acting as the hosts. I LMAO’d on the train, headed to work, it was good stuff.

It was odd at first, I didn’t know what was happening with the show, but after the second interlude, I realized their genius. I eagerly awaited their paratiy of The Linux Action Show (recently renamed The Computer Action Show). I don’t think I heard it.

Anyway; great job fellas. You guys have class and do Linux proud with your podcast! Please check out their show.