A bit of Rygel in the DNLA

 I needed to share some pictures from PC to the TV and I remember setting up Rygel in the past to do it. It wasn't pretty because it only worked if I kept rygel running in the foreground. That was several distributions ago. Figured that things might have changed. 

I forgot how people on this side of the fence think. The "don't fix it unless it's broken" and "You need to scratch your own itch" mentality is still very much in force. A quick check confirmed that things were pretty much the same, not working by default. I prepared myself for an afternoon of shell commands and config file editing. But this time, I had something going for me. I had AI, specifically Google Gemini AI.

Started simple enough. It advised me to check whether everything is ok. Which included using the verbose mode using the command rygel -v.  I found that really just displayed the version. What this meant was that Gemini may not know about rygel specifically and was using similar programs as analogies to come up with answers (Lesson #1). So I did what most people in conversation would do, I told it that it was wrong. Chatting AI is a form of communication which means information has to flow both ways. Telling it was wrong made it think harder and gave me the correct parameter, rygel -g 5. This increased the log level but it still didn't show anything. Gemini told me to set the environment variable G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all rygel, which forces output from the underlying libraries. That did the trick. I also had to change the user's rygel config file to point the URIs from a link to the actual full path. From there I was able to set it to run automatically at the user level using systemctl --user ...

 

I propose a new Firefly timeline

To recap, I thought the new Firefly timeline could go something like this

• The end of the TV series in Objects in Space
• The capture of River by someone. Could be the Hands of Blue or a new villain.  
• The rescue of River (now by the crew of Serenity) and the visit of the Operative to the Laboratory. 

The gory details about how this came about is here. There are a few plot points between the TV series and the movie to be addressed  

1. Inara's departure
2. Shepard Book's departure
3. The role of and eventual demise of the Hands of Blue (maybe)

It would also create opportunities for new critical story lines or story points.   

• The Hands of Blue would still be alive and still chasing River
• There could more storylines involving Inara and Sheppard Book with the crew before their departures
• And the eventual re-capture of River and her being brought to the Laboratory. 
• The search by the crew of Serenity to find where River was brought to. 
• The planning and execution of the rescue
• The events leading to their heist on Lilac 

And between it all other storylines that create new stories, introduce other characters or expand minor characters from the movie to be more prominent. The Operative could be introduced sooner or another villain would take over from the Hands of Blue and capture River. Which would eventually lead to the movie Serenity.

Just thinking aloud. 

Was I thinking of writing fan fiction using this timeline? Nothing became out of just thinking.

Firefly Returns and I have thoughts

The recent announcement of the Firefly revival as a animated series brought back a lot for me. First, I held off watching Firefly because I had missed it when it came out, due to life and work, and the high praises it was getting made me wary of a possible over-hype. When I finally was able to watch it, I just couldn't stop. And like so many before me, the feeling of loss, emptiness and confusion came when the series just ended. I followed the development of the movie and watched it on the big screen. The movie was great but I didn't agree with the framing of the events. I wasn't introduced yet to the graphic novels but later found them and read them. I still didn't agree with the timeline.

Sorry for the bad AI image

Looks like I wasn't the only one. The timeline of the movie and with the series didn't seem right. The Operative's visit to the Laboratory didn't align with the time elapsed that with his next encounter with the Firefly crew. From The Operative's perspective it seemed a short time elapsed. From the Firefly crew's perspectives it was some time ago because River Tam's rescue was from the Laboratory was before the start of the series. Which implied that The Operator's visit to the Laboratory was long after River Tam's rescue. 

That felt off to me. The Operative would have visited the Laboratory soon after River was rescued. Which means he was chasing them throughout the TV series but couldn't get close, which seemed unlikely. The Alliance High Command would have sent The Operative soon to investigate River's escape. All of this was explained in the "Those Left Behind" graphic novel series, where the Hands of Blue failed to re-capture River, the Alliance then decided it needed "a more personal touch" and The Operative had a cameo. Which meant that his visit to the Laboratory was long after River's escape. And that felt off. The Alliance would have dealt with the Laboratory severely for letting River escape. Which meant that there was nobody for the Operative to kill when he came much later. 

I propose a different timeline to stretch the time between the end of the series (Objects in Space) and the movie Serenity. This would create the space for more stories to be told. Alas, this necessitates the events in of the "Those Left Behind" graphic novel no longer be canon. I developed this alternative timeline after I saw Serenity because I didn't read the graphic novel until long after I saw Serenity.  

In this new timeline, the events of Serenity is not changed but rather the timing does. I propose that River Tam's rescue that we saw in the movie was done in between the end of the TV series and the movie. The fact that this could have been done by the Firefly crew is entirely possible given the events in the episode "Ariel", where they infiltrated a hospital. This would put the visit by The Operative to the Lab much later and that the time elapsed between that visit and him finding River much sooner. 

The announcement forced me to re-visit these thoughts so many years later. I'll need a bit of time to think more about this. Stay tunes