MythTV on Kodi (XBMC)

I've been playing with Kodi (once known as XBMC) which is a slick open-source media centre system that runs on almost everything (OSX, Linux, Raspberry Pi, Android, Windowz, even [jailbroken] iOS). I wanted to connect it to MythTV, which is rather a handy open-source DVR for TV streaming and recording. So in Kodi (v15.1) I went to System->Settings->Add-ons->My Add-ons->PVR Client->MythTV PVR Client and then added the IP address of my MythTV server. That's all then I thought... so how does it work...?

It's not entirely obvious - but very simple when you know how - you then need to go to System->Settings->TV->Enable and just enable it! Then a new TV menu item appears on the main screen with various options for interacting with MythTV - like watching live TV, or recorded shows etc.

Also it seems that one can reduce the CPU load when running Kodi with the current versions by switching off the RSS display on the main screen by going to System->Appearance->Show RSS news feeds and disabling the option.

Apple Bluetooth keyboard problems

If you've got an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard it may be working fine then one day it just seems to stop working (in a variety of ways such as; the caps/shift lock light not coming on, certain keys working (like alphanumeric) whilst others do (e.g. arrows keys)). So you search the Internet for 'Apple keyboard reset' or 'Apple keyboard fix problem' etc. There's a bunch of pages out there suggesting to just take out the batteries on the keyboard and then put then back in and reconnect the keyboard over Bluetooth.

But it can also be caused by [temporary] software issues on your computer (with the Bluetooth drivers) - so try rebooting your machine (or iPad etc) and try again. It may well fix the problem - as the lack of a caps lock light etc isn't necessarily due to the keyboard itself.

Stopping iPhone Voice Control appearing (so much)

Does the iPhone's Voice Control keeping appearing when you hit the home button? It's annoying as it is basically useless. So how does one disable it?? Well unfortunately without a jailbreak you can't (With a jailbreak you can install the Activator app and set the 'long hold' action on the home button to no action).

However I've found that if you have the triple click Accessibility Shortcut enabled (for stuff like Invert Colours, Greyscale, Assistive Touch etc) then Voice Control seems to pop up a lot more. So if you want Voice Control to appear less often then try switching off the Accessibility shortcut - by going to Settings->General->Accessibility->Accessibility Shortcut and unticking all options. I think I've also noticed a slight overall responsiveness on the phone too (this is under iOS8.3 on ye olde iPhone 4S).

How stop an iOS app from being upgraded by iTunes

So there's that app that you like the current version and newer ones just suck but iTunes doesn't make it easy to stop arbitrary apps from being upgraded. The problem with trying stop an old app from being upgraded is that it's all or nothing - you can either switch off automatic updates or you have to manually select the apps you want to upgrade every time.

The way to stop this is to change the permissions on the app so that it's can't be deleted (nor upgraded) by iTunes - first locate the app (e.g. /Users/test/Music/iTunes/Mobile\ Applications/Twitter\ 2.19.ipa ) Then you set the immutable flag on the app from the Terminal:

chflags uchg /Users/test/Music/iTunes/Mobile\ Applications/Twitter\ 2.19.ipa

When iTunes tries to update the app it tries to delete and replace it with the newer version but it fails ('Saying the original file can't be found'). But you can ignore that warning.

If you want to upgrade it at another point you'll need to just delete it and rerun iTunes so that it fetches the new version.


Note: That apps are unique to your user ID so you can't just copy an app (an .ipa file) from someone else an install it on your device, though you can with if you have older copies of an app for your device installed with that user ID.

Update:27nov15: Unfortunately it's not clear that this technique does stop iTunes from upgrading the apps in all situations;(

Update:23feb16: If this doesn't work you can copy the desired version of the app ipa file elsewhere and then delete the app from iTunes and then copy in the older version and sync again.

iTunes stopped syncing with iPhone?

The other day - as had happened a few times before - when I plugged my iPhone/iPad into my Mac iTunes failed to automatically start. Indeed iTunes didn't even seem recognise that my iPhone was plugged in - neither when directly plugged into USB nor when trying to 'sync over WiFi'. Another odd symptom was that my iPhone suddenly started to ask if I wanted to Trust this computer (that I have always synced to the past). A reboot had usually fixed this in the past but that's a pain so I snooped around for other answers - The usbmuxd daemon seemed to be complaining about weird stuff in the logs so I figured lets try and kill it! And low and behold that fixed the problem - usbmuxd restarted (probably care of launchd) and all was well again - iTunes saw my devices and wanted to talk to them again - a handy quick fix.

Here's the command line way to kill it - to be safe quit iTunes and unplug your iPhone beforehand:

sudo killall usbmuxd 

Hide twitter app worldcup menu

Since the World Cup started the Twitter app has been suggesting I look at the latest World Cup game. I'm not that interested anymore but it keeps on bothering me. 

The good news is that you can disable or hide the world cup menu in the Twitter app by tapping and holding on the world cup banner till you get an option to "Hide" or "Never Show Again", or "Cancel". Choose Hide or never show again and it's gone forever.

Spotlight not working?

You just tried to use Spotlight and it found nothing apart from a dictionary word?! Spotlight seems to shut itself down for a variety of reasons  - one being lack of disk space - it seems to need about 5% of your disk space to free to operate effectively. Here's one way to fix it.

Firstly you can check if Spotlight has indeed stopped (from a terminal):

mdutil -s /

If it says: "No index." then you can re-enable it again - making sure you have about 25GB free if you have a 500GB hard drive - you'll need to type in your password as it requires root privileges:

sudo mdutil -i on /

It should say "Indexing enabled" - sometimes you have repeat this last step a couple of times until it says "Indexing enabled".

If you have no joy enabling it you can go one step further and try erasing and rebuilding the Spotlight index:

sudo mdutil -E /

Or as a last resort try removing it manually - firstly you should disable Indexing:

sudo mdutil -i off /

And then remove the index:

rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100

And finally re-enable Indexing:

sudo mdutil -i on /

Once you have enabled Indexing again be prepared to wait for a few hours before it's finished (it'll tell you roughly how long if you click on the Spotlight icon). However you can actually use Spotlight whilst it is building the index - it starts to provide some results fairly soon after it begins indexing.

Uninstall Silverlight on OSX

It seems that even Microsoft can't explain how to remove their own software (they omit the first step) so here's how to do it:

sudo rm /var/db/receipts/com.microsoft.SilverlightInstaller.*
sudo rm -rf /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/Silverlight.plugin
sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/Silverlight.pkg