Firefox within MythTV

I recently setup a MythTV box with dual tuners. For those that aren't familiar, MythTV is essentially TiVo on steroids! I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) as my operating system with MythTV v 0.21.20070820-1 as my personal video recorder (PVR). For keyboard and mouse I'm using a BTC 9019URF. I'm also using a Logitech Harmony 670 universal remote to control both my TV and MythTV box -- and it works flawlessly after configuring, testing, and tweaking.

Yesterday I decided I wanted to switch from Mythbrowser as my MythTV web browser to Firefox. Looking around on the web I saw that one simply needs to replace /usr/bin/mythbrowser with /usr/bin/firefox in within Web Settings -- it didn't work.

Here's the problem and what I did to fix it. First, when I made the change and tried launching the browser, nothing happened. The next logical step was to look at the logs (/var/log/mythtv/ mythfrontend.log). I ssh'd in to my MythTV box from another system and saw the following error:

Usage: /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin [ options ... ] [URL]

Ok - so some options are being passed to firefox which it can't handle. I went back into the Web Settings in MythTV and changed the browser back to /usr/bin/mythbrowser. I launched the browser and then ssh'd in to my MythTV box from another system and looked for relevant processes:

ps -ef | grep mythbrowser

What I saw, which shed light on the issue, was the following:

sh -c /usr/bin/mythbrowser -x 0 -y 0 -w 800 -h 600 -z 20 http://www.google.com/

See those screen commands, "-x 0 -y 0 -w 800 -h 600 -z 20"? Firefox doesn't like those. The quick solution was to create a simple script that acts as a wrapper to filter out those options. Simply do the following to create the wrapper (I was using tcsh when I did the following...use whatever you want; vi, pico, vim, emacs, whatever...and set the permissions correctly afterwards. This also assumes your firefox is located in /usr/bin -- of course, change this as necessary to match your system):

sudo echo "#\!/bin/sh \
/usr/bin/firefox --fullscreen $11 \
exit 0" \
> /usr/bin/firefox-wrapper
sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/firefox-wrapper

Then, back on the MythTV frontend, go to Web Settings and change the browser to /usr/bin/firefox-wrapper.

I also installed the following addons and themes for Firefox:

• Mostly Crystal Theme
• Autohide Addon
• • Set mine to Autohide Menu Bar, and Show Always Navigation Toolbar & Tab Bar
• Better Youtube
• • Enable Theater View
• Download Statusbar
• Keyconfig
• • Will work on this ... but leaning towards just using the wireless keyboard/mouse for web needs
• Locatiobar
• • Enable "Show the favicon"
• PageZoom
• Tab Mix Plus
• • Check "Enable Single Window Mode"

I may experiment with using Smart Bookmarks Bar and NoScript.

I've now replaced Mytbrowser with Firefox on my MythTV box and am loving it!

Request for Scholarship Money

My wife and I need a scholarship to pay for our NLP Practitioner Certification through NLP University. NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming and essentially provides a framework with the fundamental dynamics between mind (neuro) and language (linguistic) and how their interplay effects our body and behavior (programming).

We need to raise $5865 by June 1, 2008.

This year's NLP Practitioner training and certification will be held between July 6-26, located on the beautiful UCSC campus.

Please help us reach our goal. Help contribute whatever you can through our PayPal donation link.

Thank you very much -- your help will be greatly appreciated!

Scholarship Request Website [link] -Steve

Sunday Post #7

I recently picked up a copy of Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown. The book has been a very fun and enjoyable read thus far. For those interested in the underlying workings of the art of magic and mastery of showmanship, this is a must read to add to your repertoire of trickery and prestidigitation!

Early on in the book Derren writes about ideomotor movement - the inspiration for today's Sunday Post:

photo: Steve Zenone, Creative Commons License

"The principle works like this. If you focus on the idea of making a movement, you will likely end up making a similar tiny movement without realizing it. If, undistracted, you concentrate on the idea of your hand becoming light, you'll eventually find that you make tiny unconscious movements to lift it. While you may be consciously aware that these movements are happening, you are not aware that you are causing them. In the same way that a nerve repeatedly firing can cause a twitch that feels outside your control, so too an ideomotor movement (from idea + movement) will feel that it is happening outside your control."
-- "Tricks of the Mind", Derren Brown

Derren is a genius - he would be such a great dinner guest to have over! Thank you for visiting. -steve

Sunday Post #6

In addition to my typically busy schedule, I spent time this past week tinkering around with my iPhone and managing it using native tools in Ubuntu. I plan on posting about what I've experimented with this week; what worked, and what didn't. In the interim, here's my next Sunday Post. This week my quote focuses less specifically on gratitude, as I did in previous postings, and more on our own potential. It's simple...

photo: Antonello Michele Mastinu, Creative Commons License

"You have not yet reached the limit of what you are capable of."
-- "Coaching With NLP", Joseph O'Connor & Andrea Lages

Have a great week! -steve