Two Topics: RouteWord, and MythTV
Date and Time
Wednesday, May 19, 2004 from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Location
MIT Building 4-370
Jeffrey Perry - jeffperry_2003 yahoo com
Andrew Odewahn - andrew routeword com
Summary
Andrew gives a short talk about RouteWord, a word game based on graph visualization; Jeffrey demos MythTV, an open-source TiVo-like server.
Abstract
Combining elements of crosswords and mazes, RouteWord presents the player with a clue and a network of linked letters. The challenge is to find the route through the letters to reveal the hidden word. MythTV is a homebrew Personal Video Recorder (PVR) project that provides much of the functionality of a TiVo or ReplayTV. Basically it's like a VCR that records onto a hard drive instead of a VHS tape, and it offers scheduling capabilites far superior to a VCR's limited capabilities. With a VCR, you're essentially limited to specifying blocks of time to record a particular channel. It's left up to the end user to translate a desired show to the block of time and a channel that it airs at, and to keep track of which shows have been recorded onto each tape. With a PVR, the machine keeps track of when shows air and which shows have been recorded into which file on the hard drive. The end user can simply tell the PVR what shows to record, without knowing or caring when they air or on what channel.
Bio
Andrew is an independent software developer and writer. He received his MBA in 2002 from New York University, where he also worked as a business technology analyst at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. He's the author or Oracle Web Applications and co-author of the Oracle PL/SQL Developer's Workbook, both by O'Reilly Media.
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