Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
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Stuck at home tonight after doing the photo thingy and seeing Jerry Richert Jr. and Cam Schafer nab UMSS wins at the Saint Croix Valley Raceway.

Terry McCarl and Brooke Tatnell were both in the house last night and it got me to thinking.  I've got family obligations so I've got to stay home tonight and was thinking of doing the Knoxville PPV.  What is the Knoxville PPV (streaming internet video) website and what format is their video in?  More specifically will their broadcast stream on Linux Mint 16 or do they use any Microsoft proprietory plugins like Silverlight or whatever it's called?  By way of explanation, I can watch Dirtvision, XSAN, and The Cushion using Linux and Firefox but cannot watch Netflix on Linux (they use the aforementioned plugin). 

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  Tonight's broadcast in my man cave will be sponsored by Miller Lite and Mr. Large Burger of Forest Lake, Minnesota.  "Go large or go home!" 

Stan Meissner

PS, Brooke Tatnell lives in the neighborhood and (bear with me while I explain the relationship) my mother's cousin's daughter's husband (think that's first cousin once removed) Dan Shearen works on Davey Heskin's crew.  There's plenty of incentive to watch the broadcast if we can make it happen with Linux. Otherwise we'll be tied to the audio out by the fire ring. 

Stan Meissner

Stan, I think Knoxville broadcast is done by The Cushion so u should be ok

They do a good job its worth the money. 

Bob

Thanks rachasin.  I've got a user and password saved around here somewhere so we should be good to go. 

Would I be considered odd if I dragged out the Nikon gear and took "racing photos" of an HDTV?  I can't remember the last time I watched a Sprint Car race from somewhere other than the infield.  LOL

Stan Meissner

http://thecushion.com/live-schedule/

Watched last week and it was a pretty good broadcast. Besides a few buffering issues, 15 bucks well spent.

You could always go the radio broadcast route, too. Fire, meat, beer, and racing is pretty hard to top.

http://radio.securenetsystems.net/v5/KNIA

KNIA 95.3 - 1320 has an app that I listen to when I cant make it to knoxville.  Pre-race show starts at 5 with a run-down of last weeks action along with an update who is in the infield for the nights races.

With the amount of different drivers showing up at Knoxville either traveling through or doing an August tune-up I do my best to tune in @ 5 regardless

We might have to go with the fire instead of racing.  Fire ring is too far from the house to get my wifi signal and even if I could I haven't figured out how to get the broadcom modem in the dell laptop to work in Linux.  Still working on that piece. 

The plan was to sit down in the man cave where I've got an network cable next to the TV.  I remembered that last summer when we streamed the Cushion that I was still using XP.  Replaced XP with Linux on all the computers when XP support expired.  Too damn expensive to buy a copy of Windows for three computers so I went with Linux and running a few necessary photo editing programs on the Wine emulator platform. 

I was going to test drive the samples that are posted on the Cushion but could not remember my user or password.  Entered my email address and they sent me a link to reset my password twice but it wouldn't work.  Tried a third time and it said that it's timed out for 30 minutes.  I'm baby sitting a couple of grandkids so I don't have time to f*** with computer hell right now.  It says on the Cushion site that I have to have the latest version of flash.  I'm on the desktop upstairs where I do my photo editing and record music (reverbnation.com/skmeissner) and do my racing photo editing.  This box is running Ubuntu Studio and the one I use to stream XSAN is running Linux Mint 16 (the latest version).  Three years until retirement and a fixed income, no way I'll throw anymore money in the direction of Microsoft.  Willing to accept the few things I have to sacrifice. 

I'm pretty sure that the Cushion will run on Linux but good luck getting an answer this week if I email any of these racing PPV services on a Saturday an hour or two before the races.  I'm sure they're super busy right now. 

I did do a review of Dirtvision to verify for them that it would run on Linux and that one chedked out fine. XSAN runs super and I did podocasting for the owner a few years ago so he's allowing me to test drive it.  Maybe we'll opt for whatever is on there tonight, at least I know it works.  Later, grandkids sound like they're breaking shit.  LOL

Stan Meissner

I just sent a message to their tech through their contact form.  I've got experience building computers, programming websites and trouble shooting software problems so whenever a simple process like an auto responder password reset doesn't work properly I know it's usually a problem with the page and not something I'm doing wrong.  My son is a supervisor for a security company and does all of their program in the different OS's so if the tow of us can't solve an issue it's usually best to move on to something else because it's generally not a lack of expertese on our part.  They'll try to convince us otherwise but they don't know who they're dealing with. 

Stan Meissner

I just got an automatic response to my message.  Good luck on getting an answer this week.  Looks like I better go pick out some nice dry pieces of oak and grab the acoustic guitar.  We'll probably be spending the night around the fire ring.  With my racing schedule I probably won't get another chance to try this out for the rest of the summer.  Free Saturday nights are pretty rare.  Hell, at this point I'd be willing to pay three times the going rate to watch the races tonight.  Do ya' think they'd answer prompty for $45? 

Gotta go, I hear breaking glass and screaming kids.  LOL JK!!

Stan Meissner

Just setup a new account.

I'm not afraid to admit it when I put my foot in my mouth.  The folks at the Cushion responded to my harrassment in a dignified and professional manner and gave me the info that I need.  We'll crank it up as soon as my son gets here.  If it doesn't work I suspect I'd be able to re-register.  A smart man would have wrote down his user name and password last summer and there wouldn't have been any issues. 

Stan Meissner