Open Any File With One Command - xdg-open

When working in a terminal sometimes I want to open a file. I use the command xdg-open. This command will open the file in your preferred application. xdg-open is probably my most frequently used command. Here is a video demonstration of xdg-open.

Setting Up the MythTV Pretty Filenames Script

MythTV recording file names look like this: 1320_20120515120000.mpg. You can use a contributed perl script to create a symbolic link that looks like this: House_2012-05-14_9-00_PM_Holding_On.mpg

On my system, Ubuntu 12.04 MythTV 0.25, the perl script created by Chris Peterson is located here: /usr/share/doc/mythtv-backend/contrib/user_jobs/mythlink.pl

You can set the script to rename your recordings after they are written with a MythTV user job but I prefer to run the script every hour.

This is the method I use. I setup my directory to hold the symbolic links and put my script in the /etc/cron.hourly directory. Below are the commands to set up the directory (your directory names will be different):

• sudo mkdir /mnt/disk0/mythtv/pretty
• sudo chown mythtv /mnt/disk0/mythtv pretty
• sudo chgrp mythtv /mnt/disk0/mythtv pretty
• sudo chmod g+w /mnt/disk0/mythtv/pretty

Create the script using nano text editor.

sudo nano /etc/cron.hourly/mythpretty

The script is just a one liner.

#!/bin/sh 
/usr/bin/perl /usr/share/doc/mythtv-backend/contrib/user_jobs/mythlink.pl --underscores --link /mnt/disk0/mythtv/pretty  --format %T_%Y-%m-%d_%g-%i_%A_%S

Make the script executable.

sudo chmod +x /etc/cron.hourly/mythpretty

Mythlink.pl has many format options. You can read about Mythlink.pl here: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Mythlink.pl

Custom MythTV Icon For Ubuntu Unity Launcher

To create an icon on the Ubuntu 12.04 Unity Launcher for a MythTV frontend with a certain window size, I created a text file ~/.local/share/MythTV800x450.desktop. I put the text below in the file. In Nautilus I set the file as executable and dragged the file to the Unity Launcher.

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=MythTV 800x450 
Comment=MythTV 800x450 
Icon=mythtv
Exec=mythfrontend -geometry 800x450
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=GNOME;Application;AudioVideo;Audio;Video
X-AppInstall-Package=mythtv
GenericName[en_US.UTF-8]=MythTV 800x450

XBMC 500px Picture Addon Installation and Demonstration

I created an addon for XBMC to view photos from 500px.com.


The 500px addon can be found in the XBMC official addon repository for version 11 (Eden) or you can install it from the zip file at http://pla1.net/500px-0.1.3.zip
The source code can be viewed here: https://github.com/pla1/plugin.image.500px

My MythTV Recording Stats

Here are my MythTV recording stats. This spans almost 2 years. During this period I dropped Cable TV. My stats should look allot different next year. I plan on moving to MythTV .25 in May 2012. I'll probably not bother saving and restoring the database. 

Number of shows:

266

Number of episodes:

3994

First recording:

Friday May 14th, 2010

Last recording:

Thursday February 16th, 2012

Total Running Time:

1 year 9 months 3 days 16 hrs 14 mins

Total Recorded:

6 months 29 days 24 mins

Percent of time spent recording:

8%

Shows				Channels
Title	Recorded	Last Recorded	#	Title	Recorded	Last Recorded
NBC Nightly News	597	February 16 2012	1	WCBD-HD	1906	February 16 2012
Today	533	February 16 2012	2	WCSC HD TV	1191	February 15 2012
Late Show With David Letterman	433	February 15 2012	3	WTAT-FO	302	February 14 2012
Late Night With Jimmy Fallon	418	February 16 2012	4	WCIV-TV	180	February 15 2012
Live 5 News This Morning	244	February 7 2012	5	WCSC SD 2	14	November 12 2011
NFL Football	167	January 22 2012	6	WMMP-MY	14	January 25 2012
The Colbert Report	103	February 3 2011	7	ETV	14	February 12 2012
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	91	February 1 2011	8	WCBD-DT	4	September 15 2011
60 Minutes	62	February 12 2012	9	ETVW	3	November 27 2011
NCIS	60	February 14 2012	10	SCC	3	January 31 2012
The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson	54	January 7 2012	11
Saturday Night Live	52	February 11 2012	12
The Mentalist	51	February 9 2012	13
The Middle	50	February 15 2012	14
College Football	44	January 2 2012	15
House	41	February 13 2012	16
Chuck	40	January 27 2012	17
Fringe	39	February 10 2012	18
NCIS: Los Angeles	38	February 14 2012	19
American Idol	36	January 22 2012	20
Cougar Town	35	February 14 2012	21
Live 5 News at 5	32	December 14 2011	22
30 Rock	32	February 9 2012	23
Raising Hope	32	February 14 2012	24
Burn Notice	27	June 22 2011	25
The Office	23	October 27 2011	26
Football Night in America	22	January 1 2012	27
The Good Wife	22	January 29 2012	28
The Event	21	May 23 2011	29
Blue Bloods	20	February 10 2012	30
Two and a Half Men	17	February 13 2012	31
The Simpsons	16	January 15 2012	32
Up All Night	16	February 9 2012	33
Hot in Cleveland	15	February 16 2011	34
Rescue Me	14	August 31 2010	35
The Good Guys	14	December 10 2010	36
Rock Center With Brian Williams	14	January 30 2012	37
The Closer	13	January 3 2011	38
Detroit 1-8-7	12	March 15 2011	39
Prime Suspect	12	January 22 2012	40
College Basketball	12	February 12 2012	41
The Chicago Code	11	May 23 2011	42
NFL Preseason Football	11	September 1 2011	43
Panthers Huddle	11	November 12 2011	44
Whitney	11	December 8 2011	45
MLB Baseball	10	June 25 2011	46
NASCAR Racing	10	September 10 2011	47
The NFL Today	9	January 22 2012	48
The Cape	8	February 28 2011	49
Fox NFL Sunday	8	January 8 2012	50