Automating MacTF-EPG
One of the things on my ToDo list was to hook some of the functions in MacTF-EPG up to AppleScript. This isn't the easiest thing when you do it the first time, but luckily I had worked out how for MacTF, so it was mainly a process of copying the relevant files and changing them to fit MacTF-EPG. This went fairly smoothly and before long the app could download data and upload it to the Toppy via AppleScript.

Where it got a bit harder was adding the automation so it was, you know, automatic... I've not really delved into cron and the like, and as MacTF-EPG is 10.4+ anyway, I thought I'd go for the launchd approach. For those who haven't heard of launchd, it's basically Apple's replacement for cron as well as a number of other Unix processes. It runs off XML files and is actually one of the first processes launched during startup, and it is responsible for starting most of the others.

So far so good. I played around with some of the XML plist files and slowly worked out some of the options. Lots of the links on Google about launchd refer to a number of (fairly large) bugs that existed in 10.4.0 through to 10.4.2. One of these was that repeated launches of a program based on a time/date was broken in that it would launch fine the first time, but never again (until a restart I guess). As this is fairly important (especially as I wanted something to fire daily), it was lucky that it was fixed in 10.4.3. However, it seems it isn't completely fixed, as now when you set a timer for daily use, it won't fire the first go, but then will the next time around (and hopefully thereafter). Which makes it a pain in the arse for testing, as I need to wait 24 hours to fix any errors I make...

The good news is that I think I have it working, so expect an update soon.

Small UI changes
Occasionally I get really good feedback on features and UI improvements people would like to see. I'd class MacTF as "usable but not pretty" software, so feedback like this is great to see where to improve things. Janne from Finland sent a great one with lots of ideas that I've had a crack at adding. Also, while I'm thanking people, my artistic talent is pretty lacking (I'm a scientist by trade, not an artist!) but thanks to Angus Hume, Tofi has a great 3D icon now, and MacTF-EPG has one for the next version too.

So here's some interface changes to look forward to in the next version of MacTF:

• Drag and drop files to upload them to the current folder (hopefully I can work out downloading too, but that's not done yet)
• Double-clicking on a file now downloads it.
• Icons have been added to a column on the left, so it's now easier to tell what's a folder and what's a file (and even which type of file in some cases).

Domain active
noates.com should now be going fine. I had a problem with my .htaccess which worked fine in the old location but not in the new subdomain (thanks to bur.st support for working out the problem!) which meant there was a 403 forbidden for most of a day. Most things should work fine (not the /blog shortcut though), but as I gradually move all the links over, some things on the bur.st/~cazlar/ domain may get broken, so try to use noates.com from now on.

Domain disruption
Having received my first ever donation, I decided to in turn donate to bur.st which hosts this website. They provide a great service for free, and survive on member's donations. As a bonus for donating, your webspace increases to 1Gb, so I'll finally be able to host all my files here rather than on my current ISP account (which I will likely close next year sometime when I move).

While all this was happening, I decided to move the noates.com domain over to the bur.st nameservers, rather than leave the ugly forwarding that was here before. However, never having done this, I bumbled through it and the domain was in limbo for a while before I worked out that it wouldn't be enabled on bur.st's end until early tomorrow. Plus it stuffed up my email (please email me again if you tried and I bounced). So I've put it back to normal hopefully, but will try again soon.

btw if you need to reach me and my email bounces, try noates at zipworld dot com dot au.

ToFi progress report
I just thought I'd say where I was up to in regards to ToFi. The app works well on USB 2 machines but seems to fail usually on USB 1.1 transfers. Using an old hub, I could replicate the problem, but so far I have been unable to solve it. By tweaking the maximum packet size, I was able to get one firmware transfer to complete fine, but another firmware file failed. However the good news is that the failures always seem to occur in the same spots (for a given packet size and file), so I just need to work out why!

Until I sort that out, I'll release an interim version (v0.2) of ToFi soon. It has a great new icon and simplified layout (thanks to Angus Hume!) and a German localization. I'll leave the (semi-successful) tweak in too, if anyone finds it has improved things please tell me.

MacTF-EPG 1.0 released
Well, actually it was released a few days ago but I forgot to write about it. Most of the changes are to enable UK support. Nigel from toppy.org.uk wrote the great little perl and php scripts that do the fetching and converting to TGD format, and I wrapped them up, much like I did with JavaXMLTV. Due to differences in how the data comes down, the UK functionality only has the one progress bar and currently doesn't have proxy support or configuration on how many days to load. Otherwise, it should work just like the Australian part.

Other changes include a few additions to the keyword logic. Although the live search bar searched within titles, subtitles, descriptions, etc, the keyword matching was on title alone. I've now added the channel, subtitle, category, and other parts of the "shortinfo" section to the keyword search. This is especially useful for the UK people as the repeat flag will show up here, so you can now put a "repeat" keyword in the negative column to cut all these matches out. The side-effect of this is a slightly increased risk of false matches, especially for really common keywords such as "lost". In this case you may need to get a bit more specific by filtering by channel or time.

Speaking of time, dates and times have also been tricky to search on. I've added these to the keyword search now in two ways. Firstly, the start time can be a direct keyword. Secondly, you can use the special keywords in the form "<xx:xx" or ">xx:xx". These will then match any starttimes that fit the condition. So you could have a keyword entry of "lost" ">13:00" "<18:00" to find those matches to lost between 1pm and 6pm. Note that these searches don't handle midnight at all, so 00:01 is considered less than 23:59. So if you want your time period to stretch over midnight, you might need two separate entries (or use the negative column to choose which times it should not cover).

Site reorganized
The main page was getting a bit bulky, so I split it into different pages for each product, with the main page as an index. It should allow me to edit the pages easier as I usually get lost in all the nested tables...
I also added Google AdSense ads, I'm not sure it's worth it but I thought why not give it a try.

FAQ 05: How do I get a 7-day EPG on my Toppy using a Mac?
Firstly, this only applies to Australian and UK users for the moment.

Grab a copy of MacTF-EPG and start it up. Go to the prefs and select your region and how many days to download (up to 8) then hit the "Fetch EPG info" button. This may take a while so be patient. Once the data is downloaded, connect the Toppy via USB (make sure other programs such as MacTF and MPEG Streamclip aren't running) and hit "Upload EPG to Topfield". It uploads the data in the form of "TGD" files to the Program Files directory by default.

The next step is to display the EPG data. There are two options at the moment, epg_uploader and JustEPG.
1. epg_uploader is a TAP that takes the TGD files and loads them into the Toppy's internal EPG storage. You can then use the built-in EPG, or any other EPG TAP, to look ahead in the guide. Timers can also be created based on a flag set in the TGD file, enabling you to mark programs to be recorded from your computer. Setup requires you to edit an .ini file with some values for your area, and instructions are in the TAP package.
2. JustEPG (although the current version is here) is a TAP that acts as a replacement EPG that displays a list of programs for 6 channels at once. It is able to read the TGD files directly (but you can also use it in conjunction with epg_uploader if you want). It is very intuitive and makes setting timers dead easy. Although this also requires you to edit an .ini file to set it up, this step is less complex than epg_uploader's.

BTW, if you inadvertantly download EPG data for the wrong region, you may need to delete the contents of your ~/Library/Application Support/MacTF-EPG/output folder to force any cached data out.

FAQ 04: How do I burn a DVD from my recordings?
Although it is possible to use MacTF to download recordings from your Toppy to a Mac for later burning, I recommend you instead use MPEG Streamclip from Squared 5. This app shares a lot of functionality with MacTF but also allows you to stream the file direct off the box and other such goodies, and saves a few steps in the DVD burning process too. As both MacTF and Streamclip try to use the USB port, please do not use them at the same time to avoid problems.

Firstly, if you have not used MPEG Streamclip before, go to the prefs and enable the Altair option. Then you can use the Altair/Files... menu option to navigate through the Toppy's hard disk much like MacTF. Go into DataFiles and select the recording you want, then you have the option to either download the file or open it. Either way is fine, but the simplest way is probably to open it. Then you can use the editing features of Streamclip to remove any ads or programs on the ends that you do not want (note that doing it this way does not actually change what is on the Toppy, just what will be downloaded when you hit go later).

When you have the file ready, you can convert, export or demux it to a number of formats. Personally, I use "Demux to M2V and M1A..." but you could use "Convert to MPEG..." just as well (in fact this is probably the easier option as you can then take it back to Streamclip for further editing if needed) or "Export to DV" if you want to use it in iMovie. Whatever way you do it, the file will now be downloaded from the Toppy and converted on-the-fly to the format you have chosen.

Now that you have your edited file on the Mac, you can burn it. The easiest way to do this is with Toast. Simply select the "Video" tab in the Toast (versions 6 or 7) window and drag the file to it. (If you used the M2V/M1A option above, just drag the M2V file, the audio should be found automatically if you haven't moved or renamed it). Change any options in regards to menus that you want, and make sure you have selected DVD-Video as your output format. Then hit go!

Some things to remember:
1. DVDs hold ~4.7GB, so watch how much you are trying to fit onto the disk. If you exceed the limit, Toast 7 will re-encode the video to fit, which is slow and reduces the picture quality too. I can't remember what Toast 6 does, probably just complain.
2. You can always use the File/Save as Disc Image... option in Toast to do the conversion etc without actually burning the disk. Therefore you can preview how the disk will look without wasting a disk. You can also use this to get around the space limit if you are using Toast 6, as you can then use the disk image in a DVD shrinking program such as DVD2OneX or Popcorn before burning.
3. If you want advanced things like multiple soundtracks and/or subtitles, have a look at ffMpegX in conjunction with projectX, this can handle it.

FAQ 03: How do I upgrade firmware with a Mac?
The official program provided by Topfield to upgrade the firmware is a Windows program and I gather there is no intention of them writing a Mac (or Linux) version.

However, thanks to FireBird for giving me some protocol information, I was able to write a Mac firmware updater called ToFi. It currently works great on USB2, but not so well on USB1.1 machines.

FAQ 02: How do I install and run TAPs?
As seen in FAQ 01, you can upload TAPs to anywhere in the Program Files folder. Once you have placed a TAP in this folder, call up the file list using your remote (sometimes called the Archive button). Usually when you first call it up it will display your previous recordings. However, if you use the << and >> buttons on the remote you can move to the Program Files and MP3 folders too. You should see the TAP listed here now (only files ending in .tap will be displayed by the Toppy onscreen). If you select it and press OK, the TAP will start. Depending on the TAP you may see nothing or a message may be displayed. See the instructions with the TAP for information on how it should be used.

If you would like a TAP to always run on startup, place the TAP in the Auto Start folder. If for some reason there is no Auto Start folder in the Program Files folder, you can create one, just be sure to have the right capitalisation and the space too.

Some TAPs come with .ini files that you may have to place in certain spots (or not). Again, see the instructions for that particular TAP.

FAQ 01: How do I use MacTF?
Firstly, once you have installed MacTF and plugged the USB cable in, click the "Connect to Topfield PVR" button. You should see three listings in the table now (DataFiles, Program Files and MP3). Double-clicking on a listing will go into that folder (if it is a folder of course!). Once inside a folder, double-click on the ".." listing to move up the hierarchy to the parent folder again.

The three folders you start with store three types of files mainly. MP3 holds MP3 files, DataFiles holds .rec files (your recordings) and Program Files holds everything else (but mainly TAPs and associated ini files).

Once you are in the folder you want, hit upload to upload a file or files from your Mac to the Toppy, or you can select a file or files in the table and hit download to transfer them to your Mac. You can also rename and delete files.

MacTF 1.1.1 released
And another release today. MacTF has a few little bugfixes.
It seems I broke 10.2 compatability when I switched to XCode 2.1. This release should restore it (I'm not sure how many people still use 10.2, but it's more than zero!).

Also some German users were having problems displaying some recorded files. I'm not sure why but the filenames contained control characters (such as 0x05) that were therefore causing problems. This is now fixed too.

MacTF-EPG 0.8 released
I haven't had much time to add stuff for MacTF-EPG, but thought it was time to release what I had. This version contains the upload bug fix, so USB uploading is smoother as it does not require the timeout workaround that I was using before. A small bug where downloading only one days worth of EPG was broken is now fixed.

The biggest change is the addition of FTP capabilites to MacTF-EPG. This is mainly useful to those who connect to their Toppy via another device such as the NSLU2 box. Simply enter the path to upload to into the prefs and it should upload it via FTP. Note that this uses PORT rather than PASV mode.

AppleScripting MacTF
A few versions ago I added some AppleScript capabilities to MacTF. As far as I know, nobody has actually used them (including myself!). So with the increased reliability of v1.1, I've written a quick droplet for myself to upload things to the Auto Start folder (ie new TAP versions). In case anyone wants it, it can be downloaded here.

It should be easily modifiable if you want to direct things to other folders. In the future, someone could integrate this into a Dashboard widget (similar to the Transmit widget I guess).

MacTF 1.1
A new version of MacTF has been released. This update contains mainly bugfixes and reliability improvements.

USB errors should now time out, and commands now check to see if the Toppy is responsive before they ask for anything. This means that even if there was an error somewhere that further commands should hopefully work without requiring a physical resetting of the USB by re-plugging.

And perhaps most importantly (for me at least!), the upload bug that caused some files to fail has hopefully been solved. I always suspected it was a file-size related error, but could never work out the pattern. Luckily peteru (the developer of the Linux command-line tool puppy) hit upon the same bug in the Topfield USB protocol/firmware. So now I am able to easily avoid the bug, and uploading seems to work great.

MacTF-EPG 0.7
A new version of MacTF-EPG (0.7) is available. This version beefs up the keyword functionality by adding exact matches, auto recording and variable paddings. These functions are only really useful in regard to people who use the epg_uploader TAP.

More generally, a "Check for update..." function has been added and a there has been a reworking of how and when TGD files are loaded and saved. This means that now on startup all the TGD files are loaded into memory, sorted and then written out. They are also written out on quit and after a few other actions. What this means is that if you Force Quit the app it may not have had a chance to write out yet. And startup time is a bit slower, although it runs on a seperate thread so hopefully it won't be a problem. If you switch to the keyword pane too quick you can catch it doing it's stuff, but just give it a sec to finish up.

This change was made to fix up some bugs where the list of entries got out of sync with what was actually on disk, and also to simplify (and speed up) the selection of TGD files on the left pane. However, because the new left-pane code uses predicate searching to work, it means that there's not all that much chance of getting it running on <10.4. So sorry to any people still on 10.3 but v0.5.3 will be your last version (although I could mod v0.6 to work if needed).

Forums offline
I had to take the forums offline. They weren't used very much and took up the bulk of the limited space I have. I'll try to incorporate the info they contained into a FAQ, and they may make a return in the future.

On the plus side, I fixed the blog's CSS, and now have room to write posts here

Space
Due to space issues (the whole site has to fit in 2MB!) I've had to delete some stuff and I managed to stuff the blog's formatting, hopefully when I have time I will fix it.