Went skiing with Dan and Jon in Taos, NM on February 12-13, 2010. Our trip was so short, we didn't get to see much of the town. It was just under 3 hours from Albuquerque. We got into ABQ at 9pm Friday and to the Abominable Snowmansion hostel in Arroyo Seco outside of Taos just after midnight. We skied Saturday, ate dinner, went to sleep, skied Sunday, and went straight to the airport to come home on the last flight. I got in last night at 11pm. We only got into Taos to eat Saturday night, and of course drove thru it twice going to and from. It looks like a cool town though.
As far as the mountain, it is known as being one of the most technically challenging in the US. Most of the green runs are fairly narrow and many with dangerous drop offs. I felt like they were advanced greens or blues. Some of their blues I thought were easier because they were much wider without drop offs, but steeper of course. It isn't a great big mountain, and it was pretty busy due to President's day weekend.
It is the wrong place for a first time skier. For a good beginner skier on to advanced, it is a very good place. For snowboarders, you need to be a solid intermediate or better to have fun there. It is very hard to snowboard on narrow runs especially when there aren't buffers and it is busy. You have to stay on an edge at all times or you will fall, and transitioning to the other edge takes more space than a skier. The mountain also has many more shady parts, and gets darker quicker because of the mountain's positioning to the sun, compared to most of the places I've skied in Colorado and Salt Lake City.
When I was snowboarding I repeatedly fell because skiers flew by and startled me, causing me to catch an edge in the snow and go flying head over heels or face plant. I wasn't getting back up to speed as fast as I hoped, and the distraction of the skiers was making it harder. On the first day in the early afternoon a skier flew by me about 3 feet away when I was going relatively slow. I caught an edge as I tried to quickly turn, flew up in the air, and landed on my head and butt on hard packed snow. I saw stars for several minutes, and had a headache for about 20 minutes. After that I had enough of snowboarding, traded for skis, and had fun the rest of the trip.
They charged a $10 trade fee, which I have never heard of before. The lift passes were reasonable at $70/day. But I thought the equipment rental was high at the mountain ($40/day) for middle range skis or snowboard. They also didn't rent the snowboard separate from the boots, which almost all other places in the US do. So I didn't save anything by bringing my new snowboard boots.
I knew it was a good idea to wear a helmet snowboarding, and skiing probably. But I figured there was a very low probability of hitting my head hard when going slow. I figured it would probably eventually happen when I was trying to push my skills on a faster or harder run, or some idiot running into me. After that happened, I think I will try to get a helmet before I snowboard again.
The skiers there are very aggressive, to the point of being discourteous, much like snowboarders used to be accused of. Surprisingly they are not good about yielding down mountain, or out of courtesy checking up mountain. They fly by people very fast and very close on even the green runs, where they should know some people are still learning.
Friday, March 05, 2010
Monday, March 01, 2010
The endless abyss of LIRC
I built a home made Tivo out of a computer running MythBuntu (a flavor of MythTV). It installs very easily and quickly if you buy decently supported hardware. If you are using hardware with questionable Linux support, or you want it to do something a little bit custom, it can be an endless time sink to set up. I marginally justify it by thinking I am learning Linux in general along the way.
There are several ways to use a remote control with MythTV, the most common uses LIRC. LIRC is a trashy little pain in the ass program, with outdated and incomplete documentation, that generally can be forced to work if you know what you are doing, or are willing to spend tens of hours trying. I appreciate the author's time in making this program. But honestly if it wasn't free, it wouldn't be worth my time and frustration to use. LIRC needs an IR dongle to receive the remote signals. I use the serial dongle from Iguanaworks.
Set up the receiver
This assumes LIRC is installed and runs by default on your Myth distribution. This is true for most of them. Shut down the computer, plug in the serial dongle, restart the computer.
Test the receiver is working
mode2 can be used to test that the receiver is recognized and passing a remote signals to the computer
sudo mode2 -d /dev/lirc0
Now use any old remote and press some buttons, while pointing it at the receiver. You should get a bunch of pulse/pause gibberish. If you do, all is good, press ctrl+c to break out of it. If you get nothing, you need to figure out why the computer can't see the receiver, or the receiver isn't picking up any signal.
Pick and record the remote codeset
Select a set of codes on the universal remote you want to use. I'd suggest using the highest DVR codeset number, of the same brand as the universal remote, so all keys are likely to be usable. I'm going to use Sony DVR component code 3210 on their RM-VL600 remote.
If lirc is running and you want to reconfigure it, first you have to kill it
sudo killall lircd
Now let's record a new remote control configuration, first change into the recording directory.
cd /etc/lirc
Now start the recorder.
sudo irrecord -n -d /dev/lirc0 lircd.conf.new
Follow the directions onscreen. After you are done, archive your old lircd.conf and make the newly recorded conf current.
sudo mv /etc/lirc/lircd.conf /etc/lirc/lircd.conf.old
sudo mv /etc/lirc/lircd.conf.new /etc/lirc/lircd.conf
Verify the remote is being recognized
Use irw to test Lirc's interpretation of the remote keys. First restart lirc to load the new conf file.
To restart Lirc on Ubuntu 9.10 and up
sudo service lirc start|stop|restart
On older Ubuntu versions
sudo /ect/init.d/lirc start|stop|restart
Now type irw. Press buttons on the remote. You should get the name of the key, and the name of the remote echoed in the terminal. After you are satisfied, press ctrl+c to break out of irw. If you got nothing, lirc can't see the receiver, or wasn't able to load the new configuration file.
Map button names to a lirc event
Open up the lircrc file to see what remote keys are mapped to MythTV keyboard shortcuts.
nano /home/(username)/.lircrc
You should see an include statement for
/home/(username)/.lirc/mythtv
You need to open this file,
sudo nano /home/(username)/.lirc/mythtv
Verify the remote name and button names in lircd.conf are mapped to the correct MythTV keyboard shortcuts in this file. Edit lircrc as necessary. After you get done doing this, you need to restart lirc and restart MythTV frontend. Your remote should work now. MythTV no longer requires irexec or irxevent anymore, contrary to a lot of docs you will find on the intrawebs.
Other random notes
Check /etc/lirc/hardware.conf that DEVICE=/dev/lirc0
There are several ways to use a remote control with MythTV, the most common uses LIRC. LIRC is a trashy little pain in the ass program, with outdated and incomplete documentation, that generally can be forced to work if you know what you are doing, or are willing to spend tens of hours trying. I appreciate the author's time in making this program. But honestly if it wasn't free, it wouldn't be worth my time and frustration to use. LIRC needs an IR dongle to receive the remote signals. I use the serial dongle from Iguanaworks.
Set up the receiver
This assumes LIRC is installed and runs by default on your Myth distribution. This is true for most of them. Shut down the computer, plug in the serial dongle, restart the computer.
Test the receiver is working
mode2 can be used to test that the receiver is recognized and passing a remote signals to the computer
sudo mode2 -d /dev/lirc0
Now use any old remote and press some buttons, while pointing it at the receiver. You should get a bunch of pulse/pause gibberish. If you do, all is good, press ctrl+c to break out of it. If you get nothing, you need to figure out why the computer can't see the receiver, or the receiver isn't picking up any signal.
Pick and record the remote codeset
Select a set of codes on the universal remote you want to use. I'd suggest using the highest DVR codeset number, of the same brand as the universal remote, so all keys are likely to be usable. I'm going to use Sony DVR component code 3210 on their RM-VL600 remote.
If lirc is running and you want to reconfigure it, first you have to kill it
sudo killall lircd
Now let's record a new remote control configuration, first change into the recording directory.
cd /etc/lirc
Now start the recorder.
sudo irrecord -n -d /dev/lirc0 lircd.conf.new
Follow the directions onscreen. After you are done, archive your old lircd.conf and make the newly recorded conf current.
sudo mv /etc/lirc/lircd.conf /etc/lirc/lircd.conf.old
sudo mv /etc/lirc/lircd.conf.new /etc/lirc/lircd.conf
Verify the remote is being recognized
Use irw to test Lirc's interpretation of the remote keys. First restart lirc to load the new conf file.
To restart Lirc on Ubuntu 9.10 and up
sudo service lirc start|stop|restart
On older Ubuntu versions
sudo /ect/init.d/lirc start|stop|restart
Now type irw. Press buttons on the remote. You should get the name of the key, and the name of the remote echoed in the terminal. After you are satisfied, press ctrl+c to break out of irw. If you got nothing, lirc can't see the receiver, or wasn't able to load the new configuration file.
Map button names to a lirc event
Open up the lircrc file to see what remote keys are mapped to MythTV keyboard shortcuts.
nano /home/(username)/.lircrc
You should see an include statement for
/home/(username)/.lirc/mythtv
You need to open this file,
sudo nano /home/(username)/.lirc/mythtv
Verify the remote name and button names in lircd.conf are mapped to the correct MythTV keyboard shortcuts in this file. Edit lircrc as necessary. After you get done doing this, you need to restart lirc and restart MythTV frontend. Your remote should work now. MythTV no longer requires irexec or irxevent anymore, contrary to a lot of docs you will find on the intrawebs.
Other random notes
Check /etc/lirc/hardware.conf that DEVICE=/dev/lirc0
To see if lirc or irw is in the process list (ignore grep x in list)
ps aux | grep (lirc or irw)
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