I've been using ZapDVB as a simple TV and radio recorder via my DVB/Freeview card. It's generally worked well, but has let me down a couple of times lately for no obvious reason. It has some nice features, like being very unobtrusive and converting radio recordings to Ogg Vorbis, but it's a bit limited if you want more of a 'Media PC' where you can watch TV and choose to record at any time or select what you want to record from an EPG.

I've heard a lot about MythTV. It can be a full media PC if you want or can be used on a normal desktop. I followed the Ubuntu guide to make it do everything on my PC and let me use it as normal. You can get clever and have one or more dedicated 'backend' machines doing to recording and processing, but that's more than I need. Much as I'd love to have a dedicated media PC, and another for music making, I can't really justify the expense, space requirements and power consumption just now.

I had a couple of issues with the install and set-up. Firstly I couldn't configure my TV card. This turned out to be incorrect tables in the database it uses. I forced the re-install of those and it worked. Then it took me a while to get the right set of channels with appropriate EPG, but now it's working.

The GUI is very oriented towards a set-top box using a remote control with everything running full screen and simple menus. You can use it via the keyboard, but you have to learn what all the keys are. I'm still finding some. There's a list in the documentation. I also need to work out how to do things like converting recorded files to other formats and getting access to stuff I've recorded in the past. I need to read up on plug-ins and themes that might help.

I did a bit of music performance at the weekend. My kids have been attending the Bedfordshire Music Saturday Music Centre at Biggleswade for a few weeks. They can do various activities for a few pounds a week each. They both show encouraging signs of musical ability that I want to foster. The last session was a special one where adults were encouraged to bring instruments. About ten did and an orchestra was formed from the kids and adults to play a piece written by one of the music staff. I took my electric guitar to have any chance of being heard and ended up playing some chords on the middle east flavoured tune. It was good fun. I hope there might be some more opportunities for me to play.

Ages ago a friend gave me an ancient Alesis Microverb that he had lying around. It lay around my shelves for a few more years until I passed it on. Last week it bounced back to me. It's not worth much on ebay, but I thought I should at least check that it worked. I linked it into the effects look of my Peavey and fired it up. It's actually quite fun with reverbs from a small room to an 'infinite space'. I expect it could be even more impressive in stereo. I may as well hang on to it and see if it can find a place in my 'studio'. Not that I will come anywhere near the scale of Malc's racks. I expect I could do most of what I need with software effects, but some hardware may add an extra flavour.