Sean Houlihane

Myth TV looked quite tempting, even thought it seemed impossible to reliably check if a particular DVB device works - so I took the plunge and invested £30. Packaging and versions seem to vary from week to week and by country.
My device is WinTV-NOVA-T-Stick model 1185 SL-1185-V2.0-UK
Much faffing about and I work out that I need to download firmware (presuming this is proprietary so won’t be included in ubuntu, but the install documentation is so secret)
http://www.wi-bw.tfh-wildau.de/~pboettch/

http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB_via_USB

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV/Install/Troubleshooting

Other problems I have encountered are nVidia drivers badly autodetecting TV-out settings, and resetting themselves at the earliest opportunity, and the nvidia-settings tool playing some nasty games to avoid needing to be run as root. Then it says it can’t overwrite a backup file, it means it did nothing, and needs running as sudo nvidia-settings. Even then, nvidia-xconfig -A is the only easy way to change the settings easily. Plus the 8600GT doesn’t seem to do overscan, and can be killed by shorting out the composite output.

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gigabyte.com.tw%2FProducts%2FMotherboard%2FProducts_Overview.aspx%3FProductID%3D2758&ei=CP4QSM6DOKbowwHH2Z3KCQ&usg=AFQjCNGJZ7Rt_445CfKpYlGr6m91GmJ8pA&sig2=vtnZGzV7p2r3WI7ER6izgA seems to be an ideal replacement though,  single board with a  quality integrated video device. Just need to  find  an  as small as possible  HTPC case  with external  PSU.

Cambridge Road Pricing Pressure Group

All of the major out of town sites have been included, the Science parks and Tesco’s. It seems that residents will be charged for leaving Cambridge, even if there is no congestion associated with their journey. My guess is that the planners have some built-in contingency so they can shrink the zone without having too much impact on their revenue.

Spice claims that it’s great value for money. Here are a few comparisons for as close as I could find for a few events, all ‘twin share’ accommodation. Clearly the cheapest walking option would be through a group like the rambler’s association. The people on SpeedBreaks weekends have tended to be more independent than a typical Spice weekend, purely on the basis that they’ve booked the event on their own, rather than picking it as something to do this weekend from the brochure. This might increase the value of these trips for some people.
Weekend sailing

• Spice UK £173 (2 days)
• SymphonySailing £275 (3 days (£180 pro-rata))
• SpeedBreaks £290 (3 days)

Symphony’s boats are of a higher spec than the one I have done spice trips on, although the quality of the skipper is comparable, I’d sail again with both.

Walking Weekend

• Spice UK £110 (2 days)
• SpeedBreaks £220 (3 days)

Holiday park weekend

• Spice Uk £110
• Warmwell Party Weekender £90

Warmwell offers about 8 hours of dance classes, 6 live bands and a decent sized quality dance floor.

Diving Red Sea

• SpiceUK £ 640
• SpeedBreaks £600

Spice annual membership £144. This is equivalent to 6 times the annual membership of the Rambler’s Association, who will usually organise pub trips, films, sports etc. on their local forums. That would leave a bit left over to join a couple of other clubs. My local dive club membership is only £70, and that includes free events and use of their pool.

An interesting development, there is now a SpiceUK group on Facebook