Videoblogging theoretics, being the media, and the completely improvised future of a world currently without rhyme, reason or good beetroot fertiliser.
There's an absence of information on how to get a Subversion server running on Mac OS X, and what information there is on the web gives the impression that it's difficult. It's not.
I used to run an application called Mac SVN Server - MAS, a standalone app with Apache and a Subversion server all built in, by Uli Kusterer. You just run it and you have an instant web based svn server. But it's all packaged up, meaning it's not that easy to upgrade to new versions of svn, and is pretty heavy weight considering it's an entire Apache 2 web server.
Instead, contrary to what most web sites seem to say, you can just run svnserve, the Subversion custom server component with Mac OS X. Here's how I did it:
The server is now installed. To run it, simply log in as svnuser and run the server with svnserve -d -r /Users/svnuser/svn. You can now access it from any client (1.4 is built into Mac OS X 10.5 so no need to install the client anywhere) by doing a standard svn check out: svn co svn://ipaddress-of-svnmac/repositorypath
But instead of running it manually, we can run it automatically when the server Mac starts up by using launchd. You can read up on Getting Started with launchd, but basically it's the new startup process in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). So, to start svnserve automatically, create the file /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.tigris.subversion.svnserve.plist, and put the following in it:
Main feed
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Disabled</key>
<false/>
<key>Label</key>
<string>org.tigris.subversion.svnserve</string>
<key>UserName</key>
<string>svnuser</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/local/bin/svnserve</string>
<string>--inetd</string>
<string>--root=/Users/svnuser/svn</string>
</array>
<key>ServiceDescription</key>
<string>Subversion Standalone Server</string>
<key>Sockets</key>
<dict>
<key>Listeners</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>SockFamily</key>
<string>IPv4</string>
<key>SockServiceName</key>
<string>svn</string>
<key>SockType</key>
<string>stream</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>SockFamily</key>
<string>IPv6</string>
<key>SockServiceName</key>
<string>svn</string>
<key>SockType</key>
<string>stream</string>
</dict>
</array>
</dict>
<key>inetdCompatibility</key>
<dict>
<key>Wait</key>
<false/>
</dict>
</dict>
</plist>
This automatically starts the server when it boots. It also switches it from a standalone daemon to running under inetd, but it makes no real difference. There are a lot of different versions of this plist out there, but this is the only one I got to work. Unfortunately I can't remember the site I borrowed it from. Email me if it's you.
You're done.
Note that the UserName property defines the user to runs svnserve as, but launchd only allows this property when it is running as root. There are two launchds on the system, one running as root (process 1), and one running as each user. The one running as root loads its plists from /Library/LaunchDaemons.
Updated from comments over time.
Today is Molly's due day, 8/8/8, and it's also the opening of the Olympics.
When Molly was born on 1st July, all the nurses were saying how it was a great date to be born on. Well, sort of, because our due date was even better!
Just before the opening ceremony started, we had a little birthday cake for Molly. It was actually a pavlova, but who's counting. Speaking of which, how many candles do you put on for a 0th birthday? We decided to have one candle, which I had to blow out, because Molly was asleep. Louise and I then ate the pavlova, which was lucky, because it wouldn't have gone three ways.
One of the big changes for us is the lack of time to do anything but eat, sleep, work (for me) and look after Molly. And even the work is just the ones that I'm contractually bound to. Other work? Film and stage project? Nah, no time. I even had to miss Scriptless last night because I had a massive headache from exhaustion. Louise is doing pretty well though, considering she's doing 4 to 5 of the 6 daily cares Molly needs.
At this point it's tempting to go off about how offensive some of the open ceremony was, but... there's not enough time, aside from saying I wasn't amused at the children of all the countries China has invaded carrying the Chinese flag, and seriously does anyone believe the whole "will the birds ever come back, we need to look after the environment" when they're the most polluted country on the planet? I said I wouldn't do a rant didn't I... Did I mention the big white dove, the great symbol of hypocrisy?
Molly's yet to reach that constant crying period, and we're starting to think she mightn't actually be a crying baby. We had a visit today from the community nurse (courtesy of the awesome RPAH), who said we'd start to see some changes now that she's officially reached her due date. No idea what that means, but more normal sleep and feeding patterns were mentioned, so we'll see how that turns out over the next few weeks.
After so many years of embracing independent media, if you think that big media's stranglehold on the world is loosening, then you'd be wrong, and the Olympics are a primary example.
Time zones are always a problem when reporting world wide news events, but most of the world understand this and just deal with it. Something broadcast from Australia, say APEC or some such, gets broadcast on Australian time, and if this means evening in Europe, the middle of the night for the U.S., or daytime for Asia, then so be it. The current conflict in Georgia? During the day in Europe and Asia, but middle of the night for the U.S.
The rest of world recognises that time zones exist, and that sometimes they work for you and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they fall during television's prime time, and sometimes they don't. Unless of course you're U.S. broadcaster NBC, in which case you can simply pay to make sure world events, in this case the Olympics, happen in U.S. television prime time.
Let's just put this into perspective. A television broadcaster has paid money so that a news event will take place in prime time.
Traditionally, at a swim meet, the heats are run during the day, and the finals are held at night. That's the way it's always been, regardless of where they're held, and regardless of where they're broadcast. Yet NBC has the power to change the Olympics so that the finals are held during the day, and the heats are held at night, so that they sync up with U.S. time of heats during the day and finals at night. And they've done the same with a whole range of events, including the gymnastics and the marathons.
In Australia, we're only a few hours ahead of Bejing time, so the traditional timing for the swimming would have been perfect, heats during the day, and then finals at night. But with the U.S. pandering in place, we now have the finals being run at lunch time Australian time.
For us, the swimming is where we excel, it's what we do, and we generally have a passion for swimming more than any other sport. It's a tradition for us, especially when we usually beat the U.S. swimmers.
But not this time. On one of those rare occasions when a world wide event actually occurs in a good time zone for us, we're now stuck with most of our population not actually being able to see the swim finals because they're being held at lunch time.
NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol is one of the key people to blame. In an interview with The Guardian, he said:
In the first conversation that I had with the new head of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, I told him that it would be almost impossible for an American network bidding on the games in the future ... not to have some way to have 'live' happen. ... I emphasised from the beginning that it was important to us, if possible, to have swimming and gymnastics work this way.
But it's not just NBC who's to blame. Obviously it was the IOC, traditionally as bent and corrupt as the drug cheats they keep ranting about, that had to agree to the change, because the Chinese certainly don't need the money. Co-incidentally of course, the change in schedule means that the swim finals will now broadcast in Europe in the late afternoon and early evening, not such a bad compromise for them.
Now the swimmers themselves aren't particularly impressed with the situation either. All their competitive lives they've been used to swimming heats in the day and finals at night, and now that's been completely flipped on it's head. So much so that swimmers are saying they rarely reach their peek until the night, and so world records won't tumble as much as they usually do under the new schedule. Yet obviously NBC don't care if the performances are watered down, so long as it's watered down in prime time.
Big media is still in charge, they've integrated citizen media into their model, and they still control everyone who counts. Meanwhile the world keeps on spinning, and still the world's news events just happen to occur more often than not in U.S. prime time. Their demise cannot come too soon.
With the U.S. credibility around the world at it's lowest point ever, and their financial markets completely crumbling, when will big U.S. media lose its stranglehold on what world events happen outside U.S. borders?
It's amazing, but this blog has actually ruined Louise's social network. Lots of Louise's friends are reading my blog, which is great. (Where were you 7 years ago when I first started?) But many of my Molly news posts are full of more information and personal thoughts than I've even shared with Louise at times. So whenever Louise speaks to someone on the phone, not only have they heard all the news, but sometimes they're telling Louise additional things about her life. Louise still hasn't read my blog since going into hospital, so it's all pretty surreal to her.
Molly's doing really well. At times she seems to smile, and sometimes even acknowledge that we exist. Not really, but almost. And she's still not crying much, except when she's doing a number twos. Very similar to her Daddy in fact.
We're still pretty sleep deprived, as she's still on 4th hourly feeds, but we're dealing with it quite well, and are starting to get into a rhythm. The Olympics on in the background helps, but that just reminds me of how much a hate our free to air TV stations. Insert Channel 7 TiVo rant here.
So finally TiVo is about to be officially released in Australia. And the TV ad for it is attempting to pull the heart strings of any Australian watching the Olympics. Average Aussie householders walking down the street extolling the virtues of TiVo, with the tag line:
We're Australian and we're taking control. Join the revolution. TiVo. TV your way.
In case the advert isn't clear enough, TiVo is being brought to Australia as a Channel 7 joint venture with the U.S. based TiVo company. TiVo of course is a U.S. product that's been around for almost ten years now, and while it's easy for people watching the ad to think that Channel 7 and TiVo care about us the viewers and just want to bring this great product into our lounge rooms, the truth is fact much much different.
Ten years of TiVo in the U.S., but not here. Could it be TiVo not wishing to enter the Australian market until now? Could it be some technical innovation that's only now allowed Australian PAL televisions to work with TiVo? Or is that there's never really been a market here? None of these in fact.
The only reason we've not had TiVo in Australia, is because the free to air broadcasters, especially channel 7 and channel 9, have been preventing TiVo from entering the market for almost ten years, because one of TiVo's main features, is the ability to skip over ads in recorded programs. Ads of course are the televisions stations' primary income, so the threat of TiVo to our local broadcasters was and still is, huge.
Yet TiVo went to market in the U.S., so how come it was prevented from doing so here? Well, Channels 7 and 9 found a nice arguably dodgey loophole in our copyright laws. Because their program schedules were devised by them, they apparently thought that they held the copyright to them. And as with most people who don't understand what copyright is actually designed to do (protect an artist's right to income), Channel 7 and 9 used their copyright over their program guides (or EPG, Electronic Program Guide) to prevent TiVo from using them.
And of course without a program guide, TiVo can't be programmed to record anything, and would be dead in the water in the Australian market.
Third parties have in the past set up their own EPGs on web sites, by manually typing in program schedules as they're published in the newspapers, or by screen scraping web sites which display limited program schedules, such as the television station web sites themselves, but 7 and 9 have shut each of them down as they appeared. In fact 9 are still in court with IceTV, who were selling an EPG with a web site which would act like a VCR for you.
TiVo have been in Australia unofficially for years though. A friend of mine has several, and has been using them successfully for about five years now. Local hackers reprogrammed the TiVo software many years ago, and several web sites have published EPGs for it at various times before being shut down. But it's not like taking a box home and just plugging it in and it works.
Enter Foxtel's new iQ box, which basically does the same thing as the TiVo, but only if you have Foxtel. Consolidated Media Holdings (CMH), a Packer company, owns 25% of Foxtel, so of course Channel 9's EPG is available on the iQ, but Channel 7 and Channel 10 refused to provide theirs to Foxtel, or at least didn't initially, I'm not sure of the situation now.
So in response, after ten years of aggressively preventing companies like TiVo from entering the Australian market, Channel 7 did a deal to bring them in as a Channel 7 branded product. To 7's credit, they've left in the ad skipping, and it's going to be a one off purchase for the TiVo itself, although there are rumours that you'll have to subscribe to the EPG for a small fee. From devil to angel in a single business deal.
And so it is amusing in so many ways, the tag line used in the Channel 7 TiVo commercial. Yes we are Australian and are taking control, but only after Channel 7 had run out of ways to prevent us from doing so. You couldn't really call it a revolution, and you couldn't really call the last ten years TV our way. But TiVo is finally here, and that's not a bad thing. It's just a shame that Channel 7 is now considered the TiVo champion, when fact they were until very recently, it's biggest opposition.