Who Shall Control My Media? Part 3 - Media Players

• Marc Lewis
• Date : June 18, 2016
• Categories :
• Tags : android ,fire-tv ,mythtv ,plex ,roku ,shield ,sony-tv

Media players are a interesting topic.  Over the past couple of years, we’ve tried a variety of them.  The first one was back in 2007 and was the D-Link MediaLounge DSM-520 that got its media from a UPNP Media server.  It was designed to fit into a home entertainment unit, the typical ~19 inches wide and looked a lot like a DVD player or VCR.  At the time it was great.  There was no metadata, though, just a list of files. Select one and it usually played just fine.  It was a good product and nothing else even came close to it.

Redmine API and Jetbrains Integration

• Marc Lewis
• Date : June 8, 2016
• Categories :
• Tags : docker ,jetbrains ,phpstorm ,redmine ,redminepm

I just thought I would put this out there in case anyone else had the same problem as I did as there is surprisingly little out there.

I just recently switched back over to using Redmine from Jira, this time via a Docker image.  Its nice and clean and avoids the various problems I was having with Apache and Passenger, which is partly what made me switch to Jira in the first place.  After getting things all setup with various plugins and themes to make it look nice, I went back to work in PhpStorm.  I then added a Task Server, tested the connection and all was fine.

Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on Asus ZenBook UX501VW

• Marc Lewis
• Date : April 25, 2016
• Categories :
• Tags : asus-zenbook ,ubuntu ,ubuntu-16-04

UPDATE - Dec 1, 2018 - I’ve Finally installed Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on the Asus ZenBook UX501VW

First off, let me first say, what a nightmare this was. After the relative ease of installing Ubuntu 15.10 on the ZenBook I was more than a bit disappointed with how difficult it was installing Ubuntu 16.04.

Installing Ubuntu 15.10 on the Asus ZenBook Pro UX501VW, Redux

• Marc Lewis
• Date : March 27, 2016
• Categories :
• Tags : asus-zenbook ,ubuntu

Update 2016-04-25, this post is obsolete.  I now have information on installing Ubuntu 16.04 at https://marclewis.com/2016/04/25/installing-ubuntu-16-04-lts-on-asus-zenbook-ux501vw/

After writing about installing Ubuntu 14.04 on the ZenBook Pro I used it for about a month or so, but was not really happy with it.  Nothing seemed quite right.  Fonts were off, cursor sizes were off, applications didn’t look quite like they were supposed to, accelerated graphics didn’t quite work, etc.  Don’t get me wrong, everything worked, but not as smoothly as I would have liked.  So, I tried a few different things.

JetBrains IDEs, Haswell processors, Linux and FUTEX_WAIT

• Marc Lewis
• Date : March 16, 2016
• Categories :
• Tags : clion ,datagrip ,jetbrains ,linux ,phpstorm ,webstorm

I thought I would put this here in case anyone else has been experiencing the same thing I have been. Start up a JetBrains product, any of them -- PhpStorm, WebStorm, CLion, DataGrip, or any of the others and it will start up, start indexing files, and then freeze. The only way to recover from it is to go to the command line and do a ‘kill -9’ on the process.

Power Supply for ASUS ZenBook UX501VW

• Marc Lewis
• Date : March 12, 2016
• Categories :
• Tags : asus-zenbook ,reviews

After I purchased the new ASUS ZenBook, I went looking for another power supply for it, one to keep plugged in at my desk at the office, and another one for my backpack. One would think that would be easy to do, right? Not so.

ASUS decided to do something very odd, and rather stupid. They changed the size of the power tip for the power supply, but kept the same part number. I went through two different orders of the PA-1121-26 power supply and both of them had the wrong size tip. There is nowhere on the ASUS website to order a compatible one, and purchasing one from anywhere else will likely get you the wrong size tip.