/proc/mind

Server went down again, so posting was interrupted. Hopefully I can get something iLO enabled to replace the old 1850R that I’m using to host this deal.

Work on OpenZone has progressed nicely and I hope to have boards ordered within 2 months.

First priority is to take the Cisco SND and SNRS tests since Cisco has revamped the requirements for CCSP; SND is going away and they are replacing the SNPA test with two different ASA tests (basic and advanced). Cisco is supposedly going to release the Advanced test at the end of this month, so I should be able to find out what is on it and see if I can take that instead of trying to take a MARS class since we’ve gotten word from on high to cut the budget at the day job.

I won 3rd Place in Lord of the Rings at Ultrazone Nationals at Bailey’s last month. I’m cool.

Wow, no posts since last October.

Let’s see - I’ve passed the IDS test, so I’m 3 tests away from CCSP; I just got back from a SNRS class within a couple of weeks, so I should be able to knock out that test and the SND test shortly. Then I will probably take the MARS class and then test.

Baby is doing very well; his signing vocabulary continues to grow and he is trying to speak more and more frequently.

Now that the server is back online, I will try to update more frequently.

Took the SNPA test again this morning, scored a 988/1000. My first attempt was 685/825.

Real practice tests, FTW.

So, 1 down, 4 to go for CCSP.

Spent a week with the extended family at Walt Disney World.

Besides transportation issues, it was an enjoyable time. Out of all the trains, buses, cars, planes, etc that the family used, only Amtrak didn’t screw anything up and in fact, we were in early (!) on both legs on the Auto Train. Travelling with a room and bed was wonderful as always and the food was excellent as well. (Oh for the days of first class travel! and no TSA)

Disney needs to tighten up it’s intra-property buses and make sure that employee training is kept up to date. We ran into a problem multiple times with being told two different things about a particular place or service. This is poor customer service and can be annoying when you are plunking down $5K and some change for a week’s vacation.

Scored 204K on the buzz lightyear shooting game in the Magic Kingdom; liked the test track in Epcot and the flaming knife dance at the Spirit of Aloha luau was very very very sweet.

The buffet at the Settlement for Fort Wilderness (where we had two cabins) was crap all over; poor food, poor service, just ick. The restaurant at the Fort Wilderness lodge: good. The restaurant at the Grand Floridian hotel: Excellent!

I give it a 7.5/10, overall.

I now have communication at 2400bps working! I ordered some Vishay IR LEDs from Mouser (also got more detectors, just in case) and with the same hardware, it works great.

I found a couple of problems with my idea to use a Timer output to make a waveform with the mix of PNP and NPN transistors controlling the LEDs; namely, you could never get all the LEDs to be off at the same time. Whoops! Right now I have one AVR pin per LED group, which also gives me the ability to make other patterns, which will be cool.

I’m finishing up the code and making the last couple of tweaks right now. My goal is to send the boards out for production beginning this weekend so they will be made during my vacation. It would be nice to get the boards back after I get back from seeing the Mouse.

I finished up drilling the holes in the PCBs I made with the toner transfer method. I used the Staples pictures paper as listed on this site here, which seems to be the seminal research on the topic. Also, 5 Bears has a nice picture by picture write-up on the process as well.

I made a bunch of 2×5 to 1×10 header adapters, so I can take connections off the STK200/STK50x boards and get them to a breadboard while I work on finishing up the software and hardware design of OpenZone V1.

Things I did right:
Check the printout of the board to make sure the components fit. KiCAD doesn’t default to print at an accurate 1:1 scale, for some strange reason.

Make enough layouts to cover all the board.

Lessons Learned:
A 6 quart glass baking pan needs LOTS of etchant to be filled 1/4″ deep. (Like 10 oz or so..)

I need a better way to cut boards than a hacksaw - a different blade for the table saw would be good, or maybe a small bandsaw with the appropriate blade. (The table saw I have is a loaner anyway, and it isn’t square either.)(yeah, a plastic bodied saw…GG Sears)

Drilling the holes freehand with the Dremel on the fastest speed (30K RPM) isn’t as hard as it sounds.

Check the printout of the board to see if it is actually going to fit where you think it is. The boards will work, but not be convenient to use as the cobbled together ones I have now.

So, there you have it. I will take some pictures and post up later today.

Added some links from the other blog-o-sphere I read. Probably will add some more soon.

In other news, comment spammers should DIAF.

Yeah, been a while…

This week’s Orwellian Doublespeak award goes to forum poster civprod who stated that:

‘Pointing guns at people is actually making them safer.’

Apparently he is studying to defend the next OJ.

In lighter news, I’ve finally got IR communication working on the AVR for the lasertag project. I’m running at 90 baud currently, which I might be able to run higher with a different IR LED. I’m currently using a Rat Shack IR LED, and I think the rise time is just too slow to be able to run at higher rates - when I ran at about 150 baud, I was missing the three most significant bits. Any faster, and it didn’t have any data cross at all.

The references I have found seem to suggest that 2400 baud should be about the max, so there is some room for improvement.

I have a pack schematic just about done; the last thing to do is to design the laser section and then get the PCB laid out. I will probably send it to batchpcb.com for production just to save myself the hassle of making the board myself.

I did make a board this last weekend; it is a pretty simple design that takes a 5×2 pin header and turns it into a 10×1 header. I’m going to use it to connect the STK development boards to breadboards. I just need to drill the holes and then solder on the pins and I will be done.

The baby is crawling and climbing like a madman; still not walking quite yet. He also has this urge to not be still whilst being changed. Ask me how annoying that is.

Pictures in a bit.

I felt compelled to scrible something in regards to network directory services after seeing this comment:

I recently brainstormed with Corey on competing with active directory. I was debating speccing out an “Active Directory Killer” for UDS Mountain View. What do you guys think? Federico’s survey results prove that GNOME is being deployed in large numbers, is now not the time to architect an Active Directory killer? Of course I am at the mercy of the amount of finite resources that other people can contribute, so my idea is to at least be able to spec what admins want. If you want to help with this, mail me, so that we can show up to Mountain View prepared. The least we can do is spec something out in detail so that someday someone can make it happen.

Having been a network/sysadmin type since I was a wee lad, I have some strong feelings on directory services. As a long time Novell jockey, I have lots of experience with Novell’s NDS; which is/was one of the first commercial grade DSes out there. A short history lesson for those of you that might not have been doing this then: Circa 1995/1996, Novell has Netware 4 out - it includes NDS for the first time. This is a distinct change from the bindery system of old that Novell used since the early days. The bindery was 3 files that kept all the users, groups and rights matched up to provide what we though of as a network OS; authenticate users, the ability to serve files to the right people, and be pretty darn fexible. Only problem was that if you had two servers, you needed to have individual accounts on each server to use it. Kind of a pain with 2 or 3 servers, a nightmare if you had 100.

NDS changed all of that - now there was a central repository, synced across the servers, of users, groups, and now, for the first time, objects! It was nirvana, even with the growing pains. (Can you say Netware 4.0.2?)

Now, remember, Windows 95 was just out and NT4 was being released late summer. All that pretty GUI stuff still didn’t save you from the SAM and the non-hierarchy user management. Also, since disks/volumes were not objects in the SAM, file systems rights were a each server thing, using a totally different tool from what you created users with. How lame. How non enterprise. How 1995!

Netware Admin aka NWAdmin/Netadmin did all the good stuff via one app, for all your servers. How cool is that! Serious, this was a giant leap for those of us in the i386 server world. Like going to the moon.

Course, I think we all know where and how this story ends. Microsoft out marketed Novell, helped by all those great OEM deals and we sit where we are today.

This brings us to my thoughts on a directory service for the Linux shops out there. There is, of course, LDAP, which works, but it not close to being at the level of NDS (eDirectory) or AD for smoothness or ease of setup. You can always do Samba and AD, but that means, at this time, Windows Servers. I think the solution is existing: NDS. Novell is making itself a Linux company, so they need to make eDirectory work with all the distros out there - make a package: novell-edir-client.deb or .rpm or whatever that runs a admin through the steps to make it into the directory and gives all that neat background admin stuff up for admining. Figure you give away eDir and the packages and the Console1 type app and offer Zenworks as the stuff for cash. Also offer support on the directory, of course, but give it away for people to use. That would hurt AD. Bonus points if somebody makes NDS4NT work with Windows 2k3 and eDirectory. (DirXML was that product later in its life; no idea what the current status is there.)

Ah, that would be awesome. A real Directory Service and a real OS. That would be cool. Seriously, let us not try to start another directory service, from scratch and learn all the old mistakes, again. DSes are something that needs to work from the beginning, since all your stuff is in them, a major screw up and you might have to ‘rebuild’ your network. I’ve seen even mature DSes commit hara-kiri and cause the IT staff a 168 hour week. With the problem that F/OSS has in the corporate environment with legitimacy, having a OSS product eat itself in production would be bad.

So, to recap: Obi-wan Novell, you are our only hope before we screw ourselves, again.

Herein is my initial review of the generator I just recieved.

Now, I have not, repeat [b]not[/b] done a run test yet. I am, however, fairly confident it will run. My plan is to get a couple of magnets to drop into the oil pan to pickup any machined dust and the like during the first run stage. I’m also planning on getting some neoprene insulated mounting tabs to hopefully isolate the engine from the rest of the assembly. I also have to wire up the electrical side (outlets, panel, breakers) and buy a Kill-A-Watt meter.

This particular model uses a Chinese built, single cylinder horizontal, diesel engine. This type was originally designed to power tractors from what I understand and was thankfully designed very simply so that any Chinese peasant could fix it. The primary ingrediant in these things is cast iron, so don’t plan on moving it unless you have lots of friends about.

The generator head is a very large, robust unit that is self exciting and uses 4 brushes, which are user replaceable. This head is from the ST series and you can learn a bunch about these heads and engines at [url=http://www.utterpower.com]Utterpower[/url]. My original plan was to purchase the head and engine separate and roll my own gennie. The engine supply (via ebay) dried up due to a EPA rule change, but it seems that an exception has been granted for stationary engines. I expect to see these type of engines offered for sale again shortly.

I purchased this engine from generatordepot.com. They are in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, I believe. 972-980-7280 is their number. This particular model was about 1000 pounds, so shipping was a bit pricey at roughly $400 to ship from there to a friendly business with a loading dock in Virginia Beach. A truck with a lift gate was more $$ for shipping. The generator itself cost $1795; which is more that what I probably could have pieced one together for; had I gotten off my ass and bought an engine in April.

Now, a few pictures. The whole set is at my gallery.

Engine Head Detail:

Large Flywheel:

Overview:

Tools and Spare Parts:

I will update when I get the first run test done, as well as a load test.

Kind of late, but he will get used to that around here..

My first (and according to the wife, the only) child, was born at 1556 EDT in Chesterfield, Virginia, on the 7th of August.

His name is Bryce; he was 7 pounds, 2 oz at birth and was 20″ long. Mom and baby are doing very well, even though Mom worries too much.

We have official pics from the hospital, and I should be able to provide a link sometime soon - have to lay my hands on the paperwork. I also have some pictures I shot that I will upload to the gallery.

Let’s see here:

Got married on the 26th of February. Pics in the gallery right here!

Only have a few pictures up; should be getting the rest of them fairly shortly.

Wife and I are expecting - August 17th (which is my dad’s birthday, btw) is the due date. I feel amazingly unprepared.

I’ve got two Compaq Proliants for Sale:

5500 Tower Model
1 500Mhz Xeon CPU (P3 type)
1.5GB ram
2x 18GB HDDs (hot swap)
2x 36GB HDDs (hot swap)
4200 Smart Array Card

$250 before shipping; you pay shipping. This is a big box, so pickup would be cheaper if you are anyway near Richmond, VA.

ML350
P3 1Ghz
256MB RAM (might have 512, have to check)
3x 9GB

None of the drives are hot swap. Figure $250 before shipping, same deal as above.

Feel free to make an offer. Email me or catch me in #linux on irc.arstechnica.com.

First picture here:
omg!

Second here:
Color!

I will snap some more pictures and upload some more pictures from my latest .jp trip, too.

I have my new Instek oscilloscope setup and working - pics up this evening.

150MHz bandwidth, 2 channels, color screen, Digital Storage with serial, USB and parallel interfaces built in. Very cool and at less than $1100 shipped, new in the box, a damn good deal.

Already found a problem with my IR comms, and am working on getting that worked out and going.

[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Nat Friedman nat at novell.com
Tue Dec 13 00:47:08 PST 2005

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On Mon, 2005-12-12 at 17:46 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.

Everyone on this list knows the Linux desktop is in a “pick your poison”
state right now.

Anyone who’s used Linux for a year has experienced this, whatever
choices they’ve made of desktop environment, settings, etc.

We can snipe at each other all day long. (Linus, every time I copy
large files between devices on my Linux system my mouse pointer skips.
It works fine on my Mac). That’s not productive.

Usability is important. Usability encompasses multiple things:
functionality, robustness, performance, sensible user interface design.
We all need to do a better job of this (insert usability
testing/betterdesktop.org plug here).

Yes, some GNOME developers are self-appointed control freak antifeature
nazis who’ve stripped functionality in pursuit of some theoretical “non
geek” user who does not exist, thereby crippling their software.

And probably some KDE developers are feature sluts who never saw a
checkbox they didn’t love, exposing users to all kinds of broken
features.

I’m glad to see somebody understands; and later in his email, Nat makes a wonderful point: If he was Microsoft, he would be loving this.

Linux is supposed to be about community; you know, working together and coming to compromises. If I wanted to be told what to do, I would run Windows everywhere.

Linus makes some good points in this same thread - there is no majority when it comes to how stuff should be done. A couple of somebodies need to come together and get stuff to the ‘good enough’ point. A quote from my model train side comes to mind about now: ‘Great is often the enemy of good.’ Wanting everything to be perfect is the way to madness.

Course, the majority of my opinion about Linux on the Desktop (LOTD) can be summed up as follows: who gives a fuck?

Seriously, desktop machines are not where the $$$ is - support on enterprise grade stuff is where the $$$ is. Supporting databases, real time apps, medical stuff like PACS, high end hardware etc.

I don’t think there is a way to make money selling or supporting desktop Linux now, or in the near term future. (Say at least 5 years, or until Vista arrives sometime before first contact..)

My next thought is this: I wonder how many people actually have a real, licensed copy of Windows? In 10 years of doing this computing thing, I would guess it to be around 50% or less. Seriously, MS is not making the bling on Windows alone - they are making that bling on Office and the rest of their (acquired) application services - SQL, Exchange, etc.

So, that concludes my LOTD post.

Happy Turkey Day to all you #linux people out there. I’m sitting here at the computer being a bit bored before I finally call it quits for the day and turn in.

I did some searching via ebay and found the scope I want for a shade over a grand. Did get the pcb stuff from Rat Shack, but I think I might hit up another one for some perf board and order some larger pc boards from Digikey this next week.

Between traveling to Florida for work in the middle of October and then to Japan/Thailand at the end of October and the beginning of November, I haven’t made any progress. :(

So, at this point I am recaping what needs to be done and calling again for help. I’m looking for a Linux coder - I would guess this is something that needs to run in X, so anybody out there that wants to play with coding an app to talk over the network and also talk IrDA via the serial port please let me know.

Radioshack - blank PC boards and etchant
Online - Instek GDS-820C oscillioscope (Seemingly hard to find a vendor that will respond to emails..)
Online - Iron-on PCB layout sheets (Basically, you print with a laser onto this media and then iron it onto the pcb board and then etch

I did order a bunch of samples from Maxim - lots of cool stuff. I did get one surface mount component in my order though. :/

Plan is to order the Oscope and the iron on stuff before the beginning of next week. The rat shack stuff I am going to track down today.

I have started to layout a schematic in Kicad for the main pack board. Main micro is a AtMega64 from Atmel, from the AVR line. I have some test code running on a ATMega8515 to test the serial comms. I’m probably going to layout a test board or two and get that to work so I know I can send and recieve over the IR correctly. Need to stop by Ratshack and buy some PCB board blanks and etching solution. I also need to find those iron on transfers so I can get a design onto the board. I guess I could use perfboard, but I’m not a big fan of that stuff and I should get some practice making boards anyway. Will need to buy some drill bits though; I can probably get what I need at the local hobby shop since they have stuff up to #80 bits. (I should probably say down to, but anyway.) Now that I think about it, I think I have a complete set of bits in my trains tools.

I did tweak the RAM I made. It is actually a 32K ram, not a 256K ram. The part number is 62256 and that is what threw me off. Anyway, I updated the schematic library for it and should upload it to the Kicad yahoo group this evening. Next order of business is to make a latch library for Kicad so I can use my ram with the AVR.

In other news, looking at used Oscilloscopes on ebay and doing some research, I was all set to purchase a used Tektronix 2246 or 2336. On a lark, I joined #electronics on irc.freenode.net and talked up some of the folks in there. One of the guys recommended I spend a little more and get a new digital scope that has on screen display. I asked what that meant, and was told that not only does the scope show the waveform, it tells you the frequency, the amplitude, etc, which I thought to be a killer feature. So, I did some more looking. The Tek scopes are going to be out of my price range at $3K+, but scopes made by a company in China (The ROC, not the PRC) are pretty nice at about $1.2K. Color screen, 100Mhz bandwidth, 2 channels. I read through part of the manual last night and I think it will work well. I’m going to do some more searches to find the best pricing and will probably order it shortly. I hope to receive it before I head to Japan so it doesn’t sit on my porch for a week or something crazy. I might just want to wait until I come back to order it though; so that I am sure to be around.

Oh, and I am looking for somebody to write a Linux app to talk IrDA and/or over the network for this OpenZone deal. Please email if you are interested to my first name at csbnetworks dot com.

Still working on the Openzone stuff. Haven’t really heard much in the way of interest, but I have to admit I am just talking to a small segment of the population, really. I need to see if I can send an email to the gnutag project to see if that can be merged or taken over.

One thing I have found that I thought was pretty cool is I found a F/OSS piece of software to draw schematics and board layouts. Most of the software out there is commercial and expensive. A good example of this is Eagle, one of the more used pieces out there. To buy a non-crippled version, will cost about $1500. There is a “hobbiest” license at $125, but it is crippled by board size and does not have the autorouter piece. Not that an autorouter really matters, considering most of them suck serious ass.

Kicad here is a GPL software that is most certainly the answer to a maiden’s prayer. Board layouts, schematics, and decent documentation. The libraries have some basic devices in them, but they are easy to extend. I made a new device (256K ram, if you are curious) in about 10 minutes. This from somebody with laughable programming credentials.

I recommend it and encourage folks to join the mailing list and contribute.