TurboTax Online worked out marvelously once again for me this year, this time using Gentoo linux AMD64 + Firefox 2.0 + KGhostView (for PDF’s) + Gentoo’s nsplugin wrapper for 64-bit-browser flash support + my bank website (which uses PDF’s and flash(?!)) + OpenOffice Calc (for a worksheet to crunch charity numbers, medical expenses, etc.). The Turbotax “compatibility check” stated that you need Windows or Mac OS X, but linux took me from start to filed with zero problems, including always-available help and access to a great community-driven FAQ system that made even my fairly complex tax return as simple and clear as possible. Whee!

“4525 photos imported.” Whew. Not the biggest collection of photos, but enough to test my setup.

My requirements were:

• Gather photos at several locations (Windoze PC’s) into one central media repository
• Leave the photos at the original locations
• Anticipate some maintenance of photos at the original locations
• Use gallery (a great LAMP webapp) to manage the central media repository of photos
• Management should include creation of a public directory for shared photos
• Minimize duplication on the media repository

Yikes. Well, here are details on my best shot at this.

It’s time to move another step into the digital age.

I’ve worked for years on my HangTheDJ mp3 player, and it’s provided me with countless hours of pure bliss, playing a constant stream of mp3’s just right for the mood I happen to be in. But it’s time for a reassessment.

The problem: information organization. In the digital age, get organized or drown. The only practical solution to getting organized is to store all digital media in a central location. Then stream what you need from the central store to where you are. (continued…)

I have set a goal of importing all our home video (yes all the raw footage, hours of us staring at the camera :>) and incorporating it into the mythtv experience.

First step: get a clue. Looks like cinelerra is the FOSS advanced video editing software of choice, even though everyone seems to agree it’s been opened with a bad can opener and you’ll probably slice yourself on it now and then. The first hurdle: getting it installed. As always, gentoo makes things dead-easy, but there were a couple steps to get it to compile under AMD64, here they are so you don’t bang your head:

emacs /etc/portage/package.keywords
  media-video/cinelerra-cvs ~amd64
emacs /etc/portage/package.use
  media-video/cinelerra-cvs -mmx
emerge -DavuN cinelerra-cvs

Note that this is a package pulled from cvs, a first sign to proceed with caution. The date on the most recent package is 20070122 – apparently the developer of cinelerra doesn’t work too closely with the community, and the community developers have to occasionally take a snapshot and clean the hell up out of it – so you don’t want it to happen too often. The gentoo package compiles fine on AMD64, but only if you specifically disable mmx support (weird, eh?). Anyway, as always, upwards and onwards…

I took my time and tried to pick the best case I could for my MythTV box. I ended up picking an Antec case that included a beautiful chassis, great cooling features including separate airflow chambers and two large silent sidepanel fans, a generous mini-ATX form factor with just enough room for all the gear, silicone-cushioned drive mountings, and a couple cool bells and whistles – a large volume knob and LCD display panel.

I have loved everything about the case, but I always figured it was going to take some serious hacking to get the volume knob and LCD panel to ever work under linux. When I finally sat down today to tackle the job, I found out there was lots of support! Apparently the knob/LCD/infrared port combination are a packaged product called the Soundgraph iMon, and they have become a popular addition to many media center cases.

With a little guidance, I have the front panel totally hooked up to MythTV now, which does a great job of filling the display with all kinds of juicy information: the currently playing song, the currently playing TV show or movie, the current recording, the time (when otherwise idle), etc. To get the volume knob working, looks like I’ll need to rig up lirc mo betta…