Marc's Public Blog - All Items

Trying out K1 Speed Indoor Go Kart Racing

2012-01-28T16:00:00Z

Jennifer got a groupon for us to go try K1 Speed Indoor Go Kart Racing in Santa Clara. Turns out it's a stone's throw from where Speedring used to be before it closed.

What's special about this place is that all the karts are electric.

So, what I thought about the place:

unfortunately, they use lead acid batteries, so they don't have the power to weight ratio I was hoping for. They were fast enough, but not as fast as other indoors gas karts I've driven.

the lack of noise is actually not bad, and the lack of fumes is good :)

they have 3 rows of cars and 2 charge while the 3rd one is used. That's not so bad.

the track layout is a bit basic (easy-ish), but eh, it's still fun enough to drive.

the kart max speed is remotely controlled. This is used to force you to do a slow lap and come back in slowly or stop everyone to walking pace if there was an accident. It's a bit spooky but I guess that makes sense.

karts have a reverse gear, that's cool since they help you get out of a tight spot without external help.

All in all it was different but still fun :)

Jennifer is still lacking a bit of the aggressive spirit necessary to push people around who are blocking you, and making a spot where there isn't one, but her fastest clean lap wasn't that much slower than mine. She did well :)

Much Improved Pebble v2 Aiko Demo Code

2012-01-24T16:00:00Z

TL;DR: Get code here: https://github.com/marcmerlin/aiko_pebble_v2

Note, you will need the LiquidCrystal_SR_LCD3 driver from the NewLiquidCrytal Library.

You will also need the Aiko Library: https://github.com/geekscape/aiko_arduino .

Pebble v2 requires at least the IDE 0.23 (untested) but 1.0 or better is recommended. The code is of course arduino 1.0 compatible.

At the LCA 2012 Arduino Miniconf, we got to build a new toy, a Freetronics Pebble v2 (schematics here). This was a refresh of the Pebble V1 (schematics here) which was the target of the very first arduino miniconf I missed in 2010.

This new Pebble had even more hardware to program against and was a much more compact design due to the use of a bunch of SMT parts (actually there are 2 arduinos on the board, one is dedicated to usb/serial communications, removing the need for an ftdi chip).

Like good hacking projects and conferences, the design and software were improved until the last minute, and Andy worked all night before the conf to get us his demo code (along with bits from Luke and others).
Andy wrote the very cool aiko event handler for arduino. You give it a list of callback functions and it'll do its best to call them on the interval you gave it (interval in milliseconds). For arduino folks, with Aiko, code looks like this:

void setup(void) {
  Serial.begin(DEFAULT_BAUD_RATE);
  // Call LCD init early so that others can write to it.
  lcdInitialize();

  Events.addHandler(clockHandler, 1000);
  Events.addHandler(lightHandler, 1000); // Aim for 250 ms
  Events.addHandler(rotaryEncoderHandler, 100);
  Events.addHandler(serialHandler, 30); // Sufficient for 38,400 baud
  Events.addHandler(temperatureHandler, 1000); // Aim for 250 ms
  Events.addHandler(touchPanelHandler, 250); // Aim for 50 ms
  Events.addHandler(rgbLedFadeHandler, 10); // Can run slower.
  // Call LCD last so that it can display variables that just changed.
  Events.addHandler(lcdHandler, 1000); // Aim for 100 ms
}

void loop(void) {
  Events.loop();
}

So Andy got us working code to test our hardware, but of course it wasn't fully optimized (hell, code never is). So, that gave me a chance to do some arduino programming to see what could be improved. It was a good learning experience.

After a bunch of work, here is what I was able to do:

I happened to have RGB LED demo code I had taken a while to write over Xmas (nice transitions that I went through the trouble of writing so they would work with an Aiko event handler), so I did a bit more hacking to refine the code and plugged it in.

The rotary button was being polled every millisecond to catch which was it was turning. First I figured that every 5ms was probably enough, but thanks to sample code from Brett Downing, I was able to write a handler using hardware interrupts on input pin state changes (something I knew nothing about, so it was a good learning experience).

Then this brings us to the LCD handler. I had some grand view of writing a popup menu that would let you configure the code at runtime, but that meant a lot of LCD code. I knew arduino had a nice LiquidCrystal library, but it did not work with the shift register setup in the Pebbles. Long story short, I wrote a plugin for the Pebble/LCD3Wires shift register setup in the Pebble. This demo requires this new library (LiquidCrystal_SR_LCD3) to do its work.

Here is the end result:

Again, the code: https://github.com/marcmerlin/aiko_pebble_v2

Here's a quick man page :)

The 4th line shows the color that the RGB LED is changing towards

LED 6 means that the color change delay factor is 6 (lower means faster color changing)

3 in LED 6/3 is by how much the color brightness is reduced (clips the color values so that they arne't too bright, mostly useful in dark rooms or when taking pictures).

LCD 80 is the analog PWM value for the LCD backlight (higher is brighter).

A few custom characters are displayed to show use of the custom character support brought by LiquidCrystal_SR_LCD3

pop up menu with selection cursor

backlight menu

LED color change delay menu

Note that I as read on http://www.circuitsathome.com/mcu/rotary-encoder-interrupt-service-routine-for-avr-micros and have seen with multiple decoding errors in my rotary encoder test code (shown below), it is probably a good idea to add a couple of small caps around the encoder's feet:

And that's it folks, that was fun :)

Oh, actually I also made a repository of small demo code I wrote for the Pebble v2: https://github.com/marcmerlin/pebble_v2_demos .

Full_LiquidCrytal_Demo: This is my NewLiquidCrystal demo code writing for the 20x4 LCD on the Pebble V2.

InterruptEncoder_test: This is the standalone/debug interrupt code I used to test the rotary button interrupt code.

LCD3WireExample: This allows using the deprecated http://arduino.cc/playground/Code/LCD3wires library with the Pebble v2 (this was just to try it out, there is no reason to use this library, you should be using NewLiquidCrystal's LiquidCrystal_SR_LCD3 library instead: http://marc.merlins.org/perso/arduino/post_2012-01-23_LiquidCrystal-driver-support-LCD3Wire-hardware-_pebble-and-others_.html ).

performanceLCD: This is a port of Fernando's LCD example for Pebble v2.

See more images for Much Improved Pebble v2 Aiko Demo Code

LiquidCrystal driver support LCD3Wire hardware (pebble and others)

2012-01-23T16:00:00Z

TL;DR: Get code here.

All the code is arduino 1.0 compatible

After coming back from the Arduino Miniconf at Linux.conf.au, I ended up with a freshly soldered freetronics pebble v2.

Like the Pebble V1 (schematics here), it uses MC14094 8 bit shift register to drive the LCD using only 3 wires instead of 6 or more.

The Pebble designers thankfully used the same shift register wiring than shown on the LCD3wire page on arduino playground. However, the code that came with it only had limited functionality for talking to the LCD, and the code on the LCD3wires page is also limited in functionality (on top of being incompatible with arduino 1.0).

So, I ended up finding Francisco Malpartida's cool work on virtualizing the stock arduino LiquidCrystal library (very featureful and optimized timings). In turn, Ragnar used that codebase to design his own shift register library for 2 or 3 wires.

Ragnar's wiring and code is somewhat complex because it exploits some interesting hacks:

it is designed to work with cheaper non latching shift registers.

it can be made to work with just 2 wires instead of 3 for non latching shift registers.

because of the design, the code is less obvious and exploits some tricks, but it sure works :)

his code can work for latching shift registers, but I do not recommend using the more complicated wiring and code if you can afford 3 wires and a shift register. Just use the LCD3Wires wiring and the code from this page.

In other words, if you have a non latching shift register, use his code and wiring. If you have a latching shift register, you should use the code from this page and the more widespread LCD3Wires wiring.

So, where does this bring us?
I used Malpartida and Ragnar's work to make an LCD3Wire hardware driver for the NewLiquidCrystal Library. This brings full library support to the pebbles as well as other folks who use the reference wiring from LCD3wires.

I called the new library NewLiquidCrystal in the hopes that it will become the new de facto library in standard arduino one day. My code is here: https://github.com/marcmerlin/NewLiquidCrystal and includes the new LiquidCrystal_SR_LCD3 driver I wrote. To be clear, all the code came from Francisco Malpartida's work, I built on top of it to write my LiquidCrystal_SR_LCD3.cpp driver for LCD3Wires compatible hardware.

I also wrote an extended LiquidCrystal Demo which should work on all liquidcrystal supported devices (baring the character count).

Here is a demo of my popup menu code that works with a rotary button (cursor showing what is currently selected if you click on it)

I'm now working with Francisco to get my code included in his tree, and if we're lucky that code may eventually get included in the standard arduino libraries as a faster and more flexible LiquidCrystal replacement. See more images for LiquidCrystal driver support LCD3Wire hardware (pebble and others)

Pictures from CDG-SFO Flight

2012-01-09T16:00:00Z

On my flight back from Paris, we had an interesting flight path that was just at the edge of the sun coverage of the earth. As a result we skirted the line of sunrise for about 30mn over very northern canada, and it yielded some great pictures, even if they were a bit hard to catch through a plane window:

Back in SFO:

See more images for Pictures from CDG-SFO Flight

French Goodies

2012-01-09T16:00:00Z

Return from France and luggage download successful :)

See more images for French Goodies

Google Logos

2012-01-08T16:00:00Z

I've been collecting pictures of Google Logos framed in various offices I've visited over time. Here are my favourites since I've been at google:

See more images for Google Logos

Another Yearly Dutch Family Gathering

2012-01-07T16:00:00Z

Jennifer had to go home early due to work (which then became a small surgical procedure), but I stayed in Paris and worked at the office there so that I could be there for our yearly Dutch family gathering. Most people made it, it was nice to catch up:

The next morning, we stayed at the same bed and breakfast we have been staying at these last years:

I swear, this picture looks just like the same than last years :)

for old times' sakes I went to catch one of her farm chicken

Sneak Peak at the new Google Paris Offices and working from Paris for a week

2012-01-03T16:00:00Z

Like last year, I worked out of the Paris office for the first week of January (waiting to go to Holland for the following weekend). Unfortunately the new Paris office, while announced, wasn't quite open for business yet: we had some people there, but the building is still being worked on heavily, so most people have not moved yet.

I went for a quick visit and took a few pictures:

After that I spent the rest of the time in the 'old' office:

main cafetaria is still small, but very nice

people hard at work :)

hard at work, still :)

on friday we did gallette des rois

See more images for Sneak Peak at the new Google Paris Offices and working from Paris for a week

New Years with Francois et Martine

2012-01-01T16:00:00Z

Since we were obviously starving by now with the very limited food we had been able to get so far :), François and Martine had us for New Year's lunch.

yeah, she won! :)

Champs Elyses Car Displays

2011-12-28T16:00:00Z

When walking up and down the Champs Elysées, we went to see all the displays from car manufacturers:

Renault:

Toyota:

Peugeot:

Mercedes:

Citroën:

the many year winning WRC champion car, cool

That was a good match for Sébastien I had just met :)

See more images for Champs Elyses Car Displays

Video Games Expo at the Grand Palais, Paris

2011-12-28T16:00:00Z

We happened to be around when they had a Video Games expo. We only had 45mn to go through it before it closed, but it was quite cool to see so many vintage games I used to play with way back in the day. Great trip in nostalgia land :)

ok, doesn't get older than that :)

I remember playing this

Looks like Jennifer may have played this one before :)

Arkanoid, I was good at this!

Out Run, that used to be the game I thought was so cool and pretty back then

I actually finished Super Mario 64 in 1997

Good times... See more images for Video Games Expo at the Grand Palais, Paris

Lunch with Tata

2011-12-27T16:00:00Z

Since we were obviously starving between all those meals that were enough to feed you for a day and a half each :), Tata invited us for lunch:

Pictures of Paris over Xmas 2011

2011-12-24T16:00:00Z

The first day, Jennifer and I went to visit a somewhat park in Bagnolet where I grew up just outside of Paris. It's not an awesome park, but for there, i's pretty good still :)

they had a stargate :)

When then took advantage of great sunny weather and unseasonably high temperatures during the winter to visit Paris:

Jussieu, one of Paris' main universities is being rebuilt from the ground up to remove all the toxic asbestos. Doesn't look shabby right now:

We then went towards Sacré Coeur to see if we could climb to the top this time, something I had tried 3 times already but failed due to chronic Xmas absentees, preventing staffing for ascent to the top. It was beautiful weather:

The views from the top were great that day:

Sainte Chapelle

Grand Palais and La Défence

After that we headed to the Panthéon, which I had never seen inside (bad me). Lots of famous people are burried in the crypt, and the foucault pendulum is cool:

[rigimg:1024:302"]

and we then went through the jardins du luxembourg towards tour Montparnasse:

We unfortunately got to the top a tad late, just as the sun was setting, but we raced to get some pictures while the light was fading:

Pont Alexandre 3 and Grand Palais

Notre Dame

La Défence in the background

Louvre and Jardin des Tuileries leading to l'obélixe

Centre Georges Pompidou and Tour St Jacques

The next day we went to the Musée des arts forains and Court St Emilion

After that, we walked the Champs Elysées from the Obélix up to see all the little Xmas shops, and then went to see some of the displays in the last section:

Vin Chaud, Yum!

Piggie!

We then went to the Grand Palais to see a computer game expo and the faire in the main hall:

and finished the night with Duck Choucroute and foie gras

A few days later, with another nice day, we went to the Sacré Coeur for some great clear views of Paris and seeing their own Xmas shops:

Centre Georges Pompidou

More piggie!

We then went to the nearby Place du Tertre:

Yet another day, we went to Musée Grévin:

Then, we walked through Passage Verdeau, Jouffroy, and Passage des Panoramas, and we finished at the Louvre's shopping gallery:

That's all folks. 'till next year. See more images for Pictures of Paris over Xmas 2011

Xmas eve, dinner with Dad's friends, and New Year's eve

2011-12-24T16:00:00Z

this is one of the things I found for my dad

early Xmas gifts for the kids

pour moi? :)

let's not screw around here, there's some cooking to do :)

foie gras soup, yum!

oui-euh!

Jennifer, trying out for Cabaret :)

We were then invited by friends of my dad's:

Jennifer enjoyed holding their rabbit (which didn't enjoy it nearly as much :)

Yum!

Just a few days later, it was time for more of this for New Years Eve. It was tough to keep up with the food :)

gifts time!

Spending time with Mom over Xmas

2011-12-23T16:00:00Z

We went to see my mom first this year, and due to the horrible weather last year, barely making the flight to Paris tha was half shutdown by weather, and almost missing Xmas eve, we arrived on the 23rd. Turns out weather was the best it's ever been in years.

We had a nice Xmas lunch:

Birds thought it was spring already :)

Re-Visit of Kleenspeed

2011-12-19T16:00:00Z

They invited us again to tell us about their progress since last time we stopped by. They are now expending and looking for investors.

the electric bike

the scooter had plenty of pull

they still have their race car

They definitely have good technology, I hope they do well in helping spreading electrically powered vehicles to the consumer. See more images for Re-Visit of Kleenspeed

Droids, they breed at night :)

2011-12-18T16:00:00Z

And the new children look bigger :)

Zeo Raw Library Simple Callback Example

2011-12-17T16:00:00Z

The MyZeo folks definitely deserve credit for releasing open firmware and instructions on how to interface with their bedside Zeo device via a custom made serial port: http://zeorawdata.sourceforge.net/starting.html

Since I had been working on arduino, I happened to have one of those 3.3V FTDI USB-serial converters, and was able to make a cable that connects my bedside Zeo to my server closer via a custom cable going through my existing Cat-5 wiring.

The example code they gave is however, while very fancy, not that simple to borrow from for a more simple application that simply needs to keep track of the sleep stage.

So, after finding the relevant info, I compiled the code below, which I'm posting for others to use (you can also download it here: zeo raw data code sample).


#!/usr/bin/python

# This is based off the Zeo Raw Data Library at the bottom of
# http://zeorawdata.sourceforge.net/starting.html
# This script is a much simpler version of how to log basic data than the cool
# and pretty GUI_Viewer from http://zeorawdata.sourceforge.net/examples.html
# This script is an easier example to steal from for simple logging/integration.

# By Marc MERLIN <marc_soft@merlins.org> / 2011/12/17
# License: GPLv3.

#gandalfthegrey [mc]$ ./logsleep.py
# 2011-12-17 12:19:10: HeadbandDocked
# 2011-12-17 12:19:15: HeadbandUnDocked
# 2011-12-17 12:19:22: Sleep state: Undefined
# 2011-12-17 12:19:52: Sleep state: Undefined
# 2011-12-17 12:20:22: Sleep state: Undefined
# 2011-12-17 12:20:52: Sleep state: Undefined
# 2011-12-17 12:21:22: Sleep state: Undefined
# 2011-12-17 12:21:52: Sleep state: Undefined
# 2011-12-17 12:22:22: Sleep state: Undefined
# 2011-12-17 12:22:52: Sleep state: Undefined
# 2011-12-17 12:23:22: Sleep state: Undefined
# 2011-12-17 12:23:52: NightStart
# 2011-12-17 12:23:52: Sleep state: Awake
# 2011-12-17 12:24:22: Sleep state: Awake
# 2011-12-17 12:24:52: Sleep state: Awake
# 2011-12-17 12:25:22: Sleep state: Awake
# 2011-12-17 12:25:52: Sleep state: Awake
# 2011-12-17 12:26:23: Sleep state: Awake
# 2011-12-17 12:26:32: HeadbandDocked

# System Libraries
import time
import sys

# Zeo Libraries
from ZeoRawData import BaseLink, Parser
from ZeoRawData.Utility import *

# User customizable variables
port = '/dev/ttyUSB0'

class Callbacks:
    def logtime(self):
	return time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S: ", time.localtime())

    def SliceCallback(self, slice):
        if slice['SleepStage']:
	    print self.logtime() + "Sleep state: " + slice['SleepStage']

    def EventCallback(self, logtime, version, event):
	print self.logtime() + event

if __name__ = "__main__":
    link = BaseLink.BaseLink(port)
    parser = Parser.Parser()

    callbacks = Callbacks()

    # Add Callbacks and Start the Link
    link.addCallback(parser.update)
    parser.addSliceCallback(callbacks.SliceCallback)
    parser.addEventCallback(callbacks.EventCallback)
    link.start()

    # Infinitely loop to allow the script to run continuously
    while(True):
        time.sleep(5)

Let is snow for Android

2011-12-16T16:00:00Z

This year has been quite low on snow in California, probably the first year in quite a while that I won't have gone snowboarding before Xmas. Shame...

Android team took matter in their own hands, and brought snow to their building.

It was kind of cool to see how huge blocks of ice were turned into something that mostly looked like snow :)

The end result:

A few days later, it was mostly gone, as expected, but still, it was a fun stunt :)

See more images for Let is snow for Android

Interesting Stanford Sleep Study and comparing data with Zeo and personal SPO2 logger

2011-12-14T16:00:00Z

My sleep has definitely improved this year. I do occasionally wake up for no good reason, or have nights that are shorter than they should be (wake up without an alarm and can't fall back asleep), but I would say that my issues of having 8H of sleep and waking up tired the next day are mostly gone.
This is good news from the OSA standpoint.

Now, because I need to wear a retainer every night anyway after I got my teeth moved, I figured I might as well get a sleep appliance again (think of a retainer with hardware that forces your bottom jaw forward) and improve my airway and room for my tongue when I sleep, just in case that helps further.

I was due for a sleep study at Standford, so we did a split night, first half withe sleep appliance and second half without it. While it's true that my sleep is not the same at the begining of the night vs the end, my sleep is usually deeper at the beginning of the night.

Apnea results

Long story short, my sleep was clearly worse with the sleep appliance than without. My AHI/RDI was 15.5 along with SPO2 drops with the appliance (That counts as apnea), while it went down to an almost normal 9 without SPO2 drops without the appliance.

So, there are 3 possibilities:

My sleep wasn't as good at the beginning of the night than the end, maybe because I wasn't doing well with all the wires and unnatural sleeping position (I remember dreaming a lot, which I never ever do in my first hours of sleep). My Zeo and the stanford report both showed I was in and out of deep sleep, and hit a good bit of REM around midnight. This means that if we had done the sleep study the other way around, the results could have changed. Still, the first part of the night does show desaturation and more SPO2 drops than the second part, both on the stanford graph and my own SPO2 recorder, and the stanford sleep graph really shows a bit of apnea (not hypopnea) for the first part of the night.

My sleep appliance *really* makes my sleep worse. It's unclear as to how since it's meant to do the opposite, but maybe my tongue isn't as happy with the little extra space it takes in my mouth.

However stanford computes the apnea score isn't that accurate or relevant to apnea. I don't think that's the case, their data looks very accurate and mostly matches the data I took separately from them. While I am pretty convinced by now that the Stanford test does influence the results, my own SPO2 sensor also seems to show that I may have gotten more consistent better SPO2 readings than they did. I'm not sure if their tech correctly excluded each and every reading abnomaly on their graph vs my own recording which was much more consistent.

So let's have a look at the stanford graph, knowing that I removed the appliance around 03:00 but took almost 30mn to sleep again after that (and got up once to drink around 03:20):

Clearly, things get better after 03:20, although my sleep was so disturbed around 03:00 that it shows a lot hypopnea without the appliance on, supporting my guess that the test itself is also messing with the results in my opinion.

Stanford vs Zeo

I brought my Zeo sleep monitor and the tech allowed me to wear it on top of their sensors to record the night on my phone while they were recording it themselves.
Let's compare the two (note that the Zeo monitor which consolidates stages 1 and 2 as light sleep, and 3 and 4 as deep sleep):

Having a quick look the Zeo does a reasonable job, even if not perfect:

it does consolidate data compared to the stanford graph, but for a home appliance, that's good enough.

it did however miss some period of awakeness at 02:30.

it also claims I was in REM around 03:10, but stanford's better sensors say I was in light sleep bouncing back to awake (which Zeo picks up afterwards. Generally Zeo is known not to do a super good job between light sleep and awake at times).

at 05:30, Zeo says I was in deep sleep for quite a while, Stanford disagrees, I apparently just barely touched stage 3 a few times.

Zeo has a quick explanation on their consolidated stages of sleep, and what each means and more articles on sleep stages.

Verdict for Zeo? I'd say it wasn't bad considering, especially since it is designed to smooth and average data, while Stanford is meant to show raw data.

Stanford vs Bluetooth Pulse Oximeter CMS50EW

This brings us to my SPO2 saturation. I used a CMS50EW finger clamp SPO2 monitor which actually worked a bit more reliably than the stanford sensor which dropped signal a couple of times during the study.

The drop around 03:20 is because I god unhooked, but the drops at 03:00 (to 60%?) and later around 06:00, look like monitoring issues. It seems that the tech who did the report did reject them as such.

Here are the dumps from my own monitor for that night:

My graph, first part of the night, with sleep appliance

Stanford graph

My graph, second part of the night, without sleep appliance

Comparing the results, my monitor did show the drops at 23:35, 00:55, but it missed 01:25 and 03:00. I'm not sure who's right there, you'd think Stanford obviously has more sensitive equipment, but I also think it might be too sensitive. I think their sensor might show big drops when it'd bumped wrong, or the analog plug is touched.
At 03:20, I was unplugged so that drop is expected. After that, the big drops around 06:00 seem to be bad data which my own minitor did not record.
Because my own recorder was built in and did not rely on wires that would be messed with when I move, I actually think I got better SPO2 readings than they did. Too bad it's soo uncomfortable to wear and requires a good amount of tape to make sure I don't have it drop off my finger, or move enough to affect its readings.

Verdict?

My study is still very perplexing. While I am not fully certain that the stanford data recording was 100% accurate, at least for SPO2, I still agree that the data shows that the first part of the night was worst than the second, which is the wrong way around compared to expectations (I should have had less apnea the first part of the night with the sleep appliance/mouth piece).

The Zeo monitor did well enough compared to what I expected out of it. It gets a pass :) (and actually gets better than pass if you consider how unobtrusive it is).

The CMS50EW did really well. If only I could get its data wirelessly from linux, but its drivers suck so badly that it can barely talk to windows. What a shame...

I am feel like schrodinger's cat, being observed at stanford definitely influences my night and therefore the results. They really should reconsider their apparatus for something simpler depending on what needs to be measured. If I'm only here for apnea, give me just the sensors for that and use a much smaller device (which should be wireless) and let me sleep on my tummy and turn around freely.

what a mess :)

I'm not sure if I can fully consider that my AHI/RDI is now under 10, but if so, great! :) Actually if stanford counted those SPO2 drops around 06:00, and they were wrong, then my score gets even a bit better. But really, it's hard to say. I feel like there could be a variance of up to 5 points doing the same study 3 nights in a row. That's not very feasible though since Stanford is the most expensive hotel I've ever slept at :)

This is why I've been working on my own recording at home so that I can get as much data as I can over several nights and average that out.

Steve Job's Biography at the Computer History Museum

2011-12-13T16:00:00Z

This was a 'sold out' event where the members took all the spots within hours of the Email announcement. Walter Isaacson gave us a summary of the biography he wrong on Steve.

I had already read a fair amount about Steve, but I was still impressed by the details of how Steve would believe in something that seemed unachievable strongly enough that he would manage to convince his engineers that it was achievable, and they would often make it happen.

I also didn't know that all Apple devices were not upgradable, or even meant to be opened, because Steve believed they were works of art that should not be disturbed since they were perfect as is :)

I never was a Steve fanboy, but I do admire the guy for some of what he did, and all in all, it was a quite interesting evening.

GCC-AVR-4.5.3-2 Breaks Arduino NewSoftSerial

2011-12-12T16:00:00Z

Dear Google, please index this.

TL;DR: gcc-avr 4.3.5-1 breaks Arduino NewSoftSerial on 328p. I had to downgrade back to 4.5.3.

Full story:
I had my arduino mobsendat board (328P based) working fine and after uploading some changes, it startsending a few of my characters over my Xbee, mixed with garbage. Most characters actually seemed lost.

https://github.com/lukeweston/RocketInstrumentation/blob/master/RocketInstrumentation-board.png

https://github.com/lukeweston/RocketInstrumentation/blob/master/RocketInstrumentation-schematic.png

In other words, I got less traffic than I should, a few were original characters, and some were garbage on a board and Xbee that were sending traffic at 38,400bps just fine for the last year.

I used my xprotolab to decode the sending pin on the xbee directly to rule out RF issues, and I see the garbage there too. If you want to know what I mean, look at the last picture on http://www.gabotronics.com/product-info/xprotolab-pictures.htm

So I was bit confused. The Xbee worked fine separately from the board and the serial bits getting to the xbee pins were damaged before they were sent on a simple program like this:

#include <NewSoftSerial.h>

const int XBEE_SLEEP          = 8; // pin 14

NewSoftSerial mySerial =  NewSoftSerial(2, 3);

void setup(void)
{
  Serial.begin(38400);
  mySerial.begin(38400);
  // Switch pin to digital mode with pullup.
  pinMode(XBEE_SLEEP, OUTPUT);
  digitalWrite(XBEE_SLEEP, LOW);
  while (1)
  {
    Serial.println("AB12");
    mySerial.println("AB12");
    delay(1000);
  }
}

void loop(void) { }

Arduino IDE is 0.22ubuntu0.1 on ubuntu oneiric. I thought that maybe an update to the arduino IDE broke it when I went from ubuntu marverick/natty to oneiric, but that wasn't it.

Then I thought that maybe I damaged my hardware (maybe the clock/crystal is messed up, but then I suppose serial over USB wouldn't work either, and it does work), or if upgrading ubuntu recently broke NewSoftSerial in some subtle way, but I verified I had NewSoftSerial 10, and upgrading to 11 beta did not help.

This is where it got wild: if I listened to the serial traffic going to the xbee from NewSoftSerial (I had version 10), and if I used the RX UART decoding pin of my Xprotolab, it could see the traffic ok. If I used the TX pin on the Xprotolab, then the same traffic mostly looked like garbage (actually most characters were lost). Putting 2 stop bits did not help.

I talked to Gabriel Anzziani who made the Xprotolab and he said 'The RX and TX decoding are done differently in the Xprotolab. The RX is done by the XMEGA hardware, and the TX is done in firmware.'

So clearly, there was a timing issue in what NewSoftSerial was doing at 38400 even though it had worked with the same NewSoftSerial library for about a year and NewSoftSerial 11 did not help.

So, out of desperation, I took the nfs backup from my laptop before I upgraded from ubuntu maverick to ubuntu oneiric. While it was a bit hard to get the arduino IDE to work over an NFS chroot, I eventually got it to run, compile and upload my same Hello world serial program. And it worked!

From there, it took a binary search to pin this down to the gcc-avr upgrade.

gandalfthegrey:/var/local/src/arduino# dpkg -i gcc-avr-4.3.5-1.deb
dpkg: warning: downgrading gcc-avr from 1:4.5.3-2 to 1:4.3.5-1.

Yes, that really was the fix :(

My guess is that the new gcc-avr changes some compilation timings/optimizations in a way that NewSoftSerial breaks :(

Company Group Offsite to the Crucible

2011-12-11T16:00:00Z

We went there to learn blacksmithing, glass flameworking and glass ladling. That was some interesting learning.

this was what I made

the glass blowing was interesting and hard

See more images for Company Group Offsite to the Crucible

2011 Company Xmas Party

2011-12-03T16:00:00Z

We dressed up for the annual Xmas party, and met a few friends there. The first 2H or so were actually pretty nice, we had a chance to talk and enjoy the good food, and then it happened, again, the dreadful stupidly loud music that mostly ruined the rest of the evening by making sure that you couldn't talk to anyone without shouting a few words at a time in their ear.

To be honest, I'm getting tired of this 'without loud music to drown out the entire room and dancing or nothing'. It's the same thing every year :( It's really too bad because it was otherwise a nice party.

Some went to hide in the small room next door, the scotch bar, but it was way too small for the number of people wanting to hide there.

Since talking was mostly impossible at that point, Jennifer wanted to try some fake gambling, so we played some blackjack where I 'won' ten times my original bid before we had enough of the noise and just went home.

See more images for 2011 Company Xmas Party

Amazon Extreme Fail

2011-11-30T16:00:00Z

The Email I sent them is probably a good summary. But basically Amazon has gotten so big and corporate that you can't report fraud to them without an account and when I did they closed my account instead of the one I reported and it took hours of wasted time (and over a week of waiting) to get my account unlocked. Pathetic Amazon...

This issue started because you do not publish an Email to receive concerns or in my case a fraud report without me being logged in from my own account.
As a result, likely some underpaid overseas employee who clearly doesn't understand english closed my own account as opposed to the one I was reporting for fraud while thanking me for my report and telling me the issue was now taken care of.
A few days thereafter, I started experiencing problems with logging in, and reset my password successfully a few times, but could not log in. You guessed it: your rep had locked MY account while leaving the bad one active and worst: your login page says nothing about my account being locked.
Then after I spent >1h on the phone to explain the problem, your reps agreed it was a mistake but they told me they had no way to fix it and had to escalate to a fraud review board. Really?
They promised a reply in 48H and assured me I would get called and it'd get fixed. No one called me and no one fixed the problem.
I called again for another >1H conversation and finally your supervisor fixed it instead of throwing the hot potato to someone else. Note that I had to effectively steal the account at amazon.co.uk that used my Email adddress for him to believe me.
He was so embarrassed that he gave me a $20 certificate for my time which doesn't begin to compensate for what I went through and how you "thanked" me for my help. He promised he'd try to do better and I'd hear back for something better due to the extreme way you underperformed in this matter (at least an amazon prime membership, or more). I have yet to hear back of anything better.
Moral of the story, if someone is stealing money from you and I find security flaws in your web site (I found one of each this time), I'll make sure not to report them to you.

Oh, and you want the best part? The account I reported for fraud is still being used for fraud now and I'm still getting Emails of new purchases that are being declined. Great job Amazon!

Miracle on Hudson with Captain "Sully" Sullenberger

2011-11-30T16:00:00Z

Captain Sullenberger came to google to tell us about his famous flight where both engines of his plane died after they hit a flock of 7lbs canadian geeze, and he had to land in the water. The crew performed admirably and the captain demonstrated superior airmanship.
It was a pleasure to have him talk to google about that day and his general thoughts, and he answered my questions on why can't you just put grills in front of jet engines to prevent big objects from getting sucked in (apparently it spoils the airflow going to the fan) and what he thought of the airvbus fly by wire system in that situation (in his opinion it prevented him from putting a bit more nose up before touching water, but otherwise it worked ok in that unexpected siutation).

What was interesting in his story was when he said his resting heart rate stayed at 100 bpm and his blood pressure at 160 for quite a while after the accident day. Also, he had terrible time sleeping for a long time after, despite how well everything went.

But if you go to the video below, you'll see how much they went through in barely 2mn, they went through their checklists, tried to restart the engines, looked at what they could glide to and then made the best choice to end up in the water. All pilots still applaud the crew's superior performance.

This is the best video showing what happened, an NTSB reconstruction with the inside cockpit conversations and warning annunciations from the plane computers (they were kept running by the APU, backup generator, they started right away when both engines died:

If while it's less accurate, someone made a simulation of the flight. It's still nice to see:

See more images for Miracle on Hudson with Captain "Sully" Sullenberger

Going to High Negative Tide at Half Moon Bay

2011-11-26T16:00:00Z

One of my coworkers told me about the forecast for We parked a bit far since I did not forsee any close parking being available that late, and we used the pocket bikes I had just bought to get to the reef. We had a nice little ride by the sea to get there:

We however got there quite late, not much before sunset:

After sunset was quite nice, forever brief it was:

We got there way too late to see crab, the few that got stranded were picked up by the many people who came that day, but there were plenty of defenseless mussels which Jennifer made sure to pick up :)

After sunset, people left quickly with the little twilight we were going to have, but I had brought my 4000 lumen firesword and made daylight out of a moonless night for us to enjoy the tidepools a bit longer:

We got a few bonus craps with the mussels we brought:

And got a nice dinner out of it:

See more images for Going to High Negative Tide at Half Moon Bay

IBM Watson talk at the Computer History Museum and Jeopardy Game

2011-11-15T16:00:00Z

The Watson team came to give a talk at the computer history museum, and it was interesting to learn about how it was planned and the challenges they faced.

After the talk, they had Watson play a game, and it kicked ass. Despite severely helping the humans (see the video below), it won by a lot.
It was also interesting to see the top choices that Watson had found and its confidence level for each answer it gave:

A few pictures and video of most of the game:

See more images for IBM Watson talk at the Computer History Museum and Jeopardy Game

Recent Power Monitoring and Misterhouse Talks

2011-11-11T16:00:00Z

For the benefit of my linuxha blog, I should add a couple of links about relevant talks I gave this year.

At linux.conf.au 2011, I gave a talk on Saving Money with Misterhouse: Running Your Lights and HVAC system, and other home automation tricks.
The video can be seen here.

Later, I gave a talk on Power Monitoring with Linux (including how to use the ECM1240 and graph its output with cacti) at Linuxcon 2011.

3rd Coworker Organized Track Day at Thunderhill

2011-11-03T15:00:00Z

We had no idea how the weather was supposed to turn out today. Forecasts were not encouraging, and in the end calls of thunderstorms in the bay area for the afternoon/evening dissuaded me from flying: while I could likely have made the return flight ok, it looked like potentially too much hassle, so I just rode up with Bill who was driving anyway.

We had all kinds of interesting skies, but in the end only got a tiny bit of rain and the track never really got wet, so it was a great day.

This was my first time with Toyos R888, so I was anxious to see how they'd do since they sure sucked on the street when they had not been heat cycled yet. Well, my first session was quite of bad as they warmed up, but after that they did quite well. I got many laps under 2:10, and several 2:08s, which is good for me.

On the minus side, I drove the car much harder and first got the diff fluid too hot (although that's just a warning), and then found out that I toasted my front rotors on my last session as I ran through my brand new track pads and wore them to the plates on the last session, doh! (they used to last at least a day, so I didn't check them carefully enough after each session).

argh, this is going to cost me...

Anyway, good time was had, everyone drove home, and despite the upcoming service bill, it beats a kick in the nuts :)

See more images for 3rd Coworker Organized Track Day at Thunderhill

Halloween at Google

2011-10-28T15:00:00Z

Yet another year, another halloween. I didn't have much time for it this year, but I still went to check it out for a little bit.

See more images for Halloween at Google

Visitting the Google Chelsea/Port Authority Building

2011-10-10T15:00:00Z

It had been a whole 7 years since I last visited NYC and our building there, so I was way overdue. I had been waiting for a business reason to go, but ultimately it was Jennifer going to nearby DC for work that gave me an excuse to fly to NYC and meet her there. I spent the beginning of the week there at work, hosted by Daniel (thanks Daniel).

Quick report on the office: it is nicely located in Manhattan's Chelsea district. Google bought an entire city block, which still has existing tenants. The decors and work put into those buildings are quite nice, they beat MTV in some ways.

Here are a few chosen pictures:

They definitely won on the meeting room front. I love the Harry Potter rooms:

They also have really cool legos:

One of the cafes had an ice cream truck that had been lifted up there:

SREs have a tough job, and it leads to drinking :)

and I'll finish with their nice local computer history museum:

All in all, it was quite nice, I wouldn't mind working there. See more images for Visitting the Google Chelsea/Port Authority Building

Visiting New York 7 years later

2011-10-08T15:00:00Z

It had been 7 years since I last went to New York City. Back in 2004 I was able to go for 2 weeks of work in NYC and visit the building we had back then. I did spend the time to visit but of course hadn't seen it all back then and for the last years I had been trying to find a reason to see my friend Daniel who had since then moved to NYC.
In the end, it took for Jennifer to have a conference in DC for us to use this as an excuse for us to go to NYC after that. I went to spend the weekend with Daniel in Brooklyn where he hosted me (thanks Daniel).

Daniel and I went to visit the local Brooklyn Transit Museum, History Museum, and Botanical Gardens. The transit museum had the history of subways in Manhattan, and that was pretty cool.

the old ads were fun to see

We went to see the Brooklyn Bridge at night

I then worked at the Google office for the beginning of the week while Jennifer was in DC and we met up and used the rest of the week to visit Manhattan after she was done working. One evening before she got there, I went to see the new show from Blue Man Group: the new show was a nice refresh although it was significantly shorter than the old one I saw in 2004...

On thursday, Jennifer and I went for our touring. We did midtown first

Grand Central Terminal

Radio City Music Hall

and its rockettes

St Patrick's Cathedral nearby

Steve Jobs had just died

We had a nice dinner at Buddakan that evening and went to see Spiderman which was entertaining.

The next day, with clear forecasts of rain, we went to visit the Natural History Museum and the Metropolitan Museum (each of which take more than a full day to see entirely).
The Natural History Museum has an insane amount of things to see. Along with the special expositions, it's tough to do it in one day, never mind half a day, but we got the highlights:

who knew that birds come from dinosaures?

We then crossed Central Park to get to the MET. The MET is another insane place that is impossible to see well enough in one day, never mind half a day, but we did the best we could and at least saw their impressive Greek and Egyptian collections:

They had plenty of other things though:

That evening, we had a really good tasting menu at Boulet:

nice little desert to finish it up

The next morning, we went to the Southern Tip (Battery Garden, Wall Street, and World Trade Center) but we started with Union Square Market:

and then went down to Battery Park:

line of people going to the statue of liberty

We are the 99% were still demonstrating at Zuccotti Park

And we went to see the new WTC being built

After that, we moved on to Central Park where we rented bikes and went around:

Cathedral of St John the Devine

It's huge inside

Columbia University

That evening we had dinner at Asiate Restaurant, which was supposed to have a great view of Central Park, but due to a strict dress code that wasn't clear to us, they "nicely" seated us far away from where we could see anything and the food on its own was between average to disappointing depending on the dishes and considering the view-less price.

That evening, we went to see Addams Family at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. It was entertaining, and we walked around Broadway after that:

The next morning, we went to walk on the new High Line park. It's a nice elevated walk between buildings.

After that, we went to the Rock to enjoy a nice panoramic view since the weather had finally lifted and cleared up for nice views:

I tried a couple of panoramas with my ICS phone

While I'm at it, a couple of other pictures I took from the google buildings:

After the Rock, we went to Greenwich, Little Italy, and Chinatown

This looks like a practical car for NYC

So is this one

the old St Patrick's

Little Italy is still there next to Chinatown

Chinatown was next

... and it was time to go back to the airport and go home. Despite the so so weather, we had a good visit. See more images for Visiting New York 7 years later

2nd Coworker Organized Track Day at Thunderhill

2011-09-29T15:00:00Z

This was the day that wasn't meant to be more than once. First, I had gotten sick with a pretty bad cold and it didn't look like I was going to recover in time, then there wsa the issue of my car that was still being worked on since last track day (among other things, it had a cylinder 5 misfire which they couldn't figure out).
I wasn't quite sure if I'd be recovered enough from my cold that day, or rested enough, but in the end, against all odds, Ferrari SF fixed my engine that morning, shipped the car to Los Gatos where they put the last pieces together, and a coworker nicely drove it to TH that night. The next morning, I was feeling well enough (with a little help of caffeine) to fly to TH and do the track day.

My first student was a first timer, and hadn't quite grasped the fact that you had to brake before turns. I saw several turns where I felt "you're not going to make it", and sure enough he braked way too late and we were only saved by the traction control :)
My personal laps were ok, but not stellar, my new tires are just not worth the money and hassle, as my times have gone down despite better brakes and more consistent driving from me (best times were around 2:10 when I've done 2:08 before).

another coworker took his 360

and Andy's 430

The more fun part was at the end of the day when I coached Hugo in his borrowed 458, and was able to give him the one tip that unlocked more than 10 seconds per lap in the one session we did together: if your foot is not already on the gas by the turn cone, you braked too late and you'll be slower. That was easy for me since were driving pretty similar cars, and he became so much faster when applying this. At the same time, I was very impressed how we got down to 2:14 in just a few laps and he was driving the car in street mode and automatic mode (i.e. the car was doing gear shifts). The computer in that car is pretty impressive.

I then got to drive the 458 for the last session, and while I had already driven them on the track, I was just so wanting to know what lap time I'd do in it at TH. I started in the 2:09-2:08 range with traction control on street, and 2:05 (best of 3 laps) with traction control in race mode. I'm pretty sure I could have gone down to 2:04 or 2:03, especially with fresher tires. This is to say that the new car does a lot better than mine (5-6 seconds faster a lap, which is huge). Oh well...

It was fun, great times were had, especially for a day that I never thought would actually happen. Thanks Attila, Marcin, Dave, and everyone else!

Here's my session in the 458 (sorry, filming from inside works better in my car since it's convertible):

To compare, that's a session in my 430:

See more images for 2nd Coworker Organized Track Day at Thunderhill

Visit of Pagani Factory

2011-09-06T15:00:00Z

The next morning, on our way out of Maranello and Modena, I had made an appointment at the Pagani Factory. It was by far the smallest of the 3 of course, they hand build a few cars every year (to this date, only about 120 Zondas have been built, they take 9 months each, many parts each relying on a single person to get done).

They don't officially do tours, but I was able to get one through some sheer luck and asking. The receptionist (who is actually much more than that, she probably had 5 jobs combined and was a jack of all trades), gave us a very nice 1H presentation and history of the company, and backstage tour.

On top of obviously being cars with impressive performance, admittedly the fastest barely road legal car out there (around a track that is, it's not built for ultimate speed in a straight line), and they do have stunning looks, especially the blue titanium lined carbon fibre body.

nice reception, of course, it's better just behind you :)

blue and gold does it for me.

the lining is a beautiful work of art

the track only nurburing champion car

it means business :)

grr!

We caught a car outside, going for a test drive. It was idling outside with no one inside. Soooo tempting ;-)

Inside, we got to see how they were making their unique titanium laced carbon fibre. It is super strong and the entire frame of the car only weighs 200kg. That's super light for a car that size (it is no elise in size, even if it also only takes 2 people).

This was an awesome way to finish our visit of the area before leaving Bologna. See more images for Visit of Pagani Factory

Visiting Italy Day 4-5: Bologna, Modena, and Maranello

2011-09-06T15:00:00Z

It was difficult for me to go across Italy without stopping at the Lamborghini and Ferrari factories by Modena and Maranello (and went to see Pagani while I was at it). Jennife was a good sport and tagged along :)

So, after seeing Milan, we took a fast train to Bologna and I have a different page on the supercar factories and museums.

However, Maranello and Modena had plenty of other things to see. Thanks to the fantastic folks from Hotel Locanda del Mulino who set us up with a visit of Parmigino Parmesan Factory, Da Clara Balsamic Vinegar, and the Castle Rocca Di Vignola.

On the 2nd day, after seeing car factories all day, we started the with a thorough visit of the Parmigino Parmesan Factory, and learned everything about how they make Parmesan from milk:

impressive!

We then got a tour of the very small Da Clara Balsamic Vinegar producer. Vinegar is moved to every smaller containers when it becomes denser:

and since we still had some time left, we went to see Castle Rocca Di Vignola:

Morning Visit of Lamborghini Museum n Factory

2011-09-05T15:00:00Z

Planning the car factory part of our Italy tour took a while. Lining up a visit of the local factories and museums was challenging, especially when the Italian labour force decided to have a strike on the second day, which caused the Lamborghini Factory to close (but not the other 2), and a bunch of trains to be cancelled.

Anyway, after arriving bright and early in Bologna and picking our rental car (it's a slightly longer drive than Maranello, but there are many more fast trains going to Bologna, so it was actually faster stopping there and getting a rental car).

The bull bar across the street is where the engineers eat and where you can rent cars for a fun drive.

We started with the factory tour, which was a bit rushed (busy day), but still quite interesting. The factory actually wasn't that big (I was surprised to see how much smaller Lamborghini was compared to Ferrari, the difference wasn't even funny). I did like the part where since they don't have their own racetrack, they just test drive their cars in the neighbouring streets with the police turning a blind eye of course, since it is Italy :)

I was nice to see a smaller factory though because you got to see the entire line, including the people who were processing cow leather, and trying to fit all the parts necessary for each car around the imperfections in each leather piece (10 cows for a car by the way).
They had two assembly lines, one for their "cheaper car", and one for the newer 700HP aventador. The newer car is actually sitting on a plate that is moved in the line using magnetic induction. They can get 3 cars out per day with 3 days for a car from beginning to end (not bad).

We then visited the fairly complete museum they have, nice collector pieces there.

this would fit nicely as a drop-in in a prelude, right? :)

3.5: 710HP V12 from 1991, impressive power for then

sucks when you get that one in your rear view mirror :)

that makes a nice wall ornament :)

they had some rare cars

I feel inadequate with my 300s when they have 335s :)

It was a nice visit, plenty of supercar p0rn and rare models that I never got to see elsewhere. See more images for Morning Visit of Lamborghini Museum n Factory

Visit of Ferrari Museum n Fact

2011-09-05T15:00:00Z

After the Lamborghini Factory, we headed to Maranello aka Ferrari-town. Boy, what a contrast it is in size. Ferrari is not a building down some road like Lamborghini, it is almost an entire town (at least city blocks' worth).

nice company car :)

The factory is not a couple of buildings, it's an entire city block. Then you have the store, the museum, and let's not forget the entire racetrack, and nearby racecar handling buildings and race team with huge semis that can take your very own racecar and crew anywhere you'd like to go (for a few dollars that is :)

Several places next to the museum rented ferraris for short drives:

We then went to the museum to sign in for and wait for our tours:

All the ferrari staff wears work uniforms, red for builders and white for engineers

Ferrari cafe has lambrusco you can buy

We were lucky to get a long tour of the Ferrari factory (something otherwise not open to the public), and while it was as thorough a tour as they could give us, I feel like there was so much we didn't see (including the then secret 458 spyder), merely because of how big the factory is. Of course, they have to weigh how much they can show us vs not losing company trade secrets.

We started by a guided tour of the museum:

the 458 has a beautiful mean look :)

Interesting factoids I learned at the factory: workers all wear the same red uniform and the engineers wear white. Each car is made on its own building/floor. Contrary to Lamborghini, you can only chose from a few approved colors (Lamborghini will paint it pink or hello kitty if you pay for it :).
I saw engine pieces being fit together with a robot that dipped metal pieces in liquid nitrogen to shrink them just a bit so that they fit nicely without a hammer :)

Once the long tour was over, we saw the race team and a lap of their track, of which I got a lap but unfortunately in a van that I wasn't driving :)

I want to get paid to do donuts on their skidpad :)

It was a busy day and a great visit. See more images for Visit of Ferrari Museum n Fact

Visiting Italy Day 3: Milan

2011-09-04T15:00:00Z

We spent our 3rd day in Milan. One day was barely enough, but we got to see most of the sights, starting with the very impressive Duomo di Milano which roof you can climb to and visit:

the crypt

We then went around a bit, and saw the Teatro Alla Scala:

and since the weather turned to worse after that, we saw the Da Vinci Museum:

the last supper

and we finished the day to visit the main pedestrian shopping street and Castello Sforzesco:

and we grabbed a night picture of the Duomo:

See more images for Visiting Italy Day 3: Milan

Visiting Italy Day 1 and 2: Lake Como: Bellagio, Varenna, Lenno

2011-09-02T15:00:00Z

As soon as we arrived, we got our "grand" rental car, I used my old trusty garmin and tried offline routing with navdroyd, and it got us there :)

just to be safe, I used double routing :)

After a pretty drive next to the lake, we got to the panoramic hotel I found. It wsa not walking distance from downtown (but ok since we had a car), and it had a fantastic view.

nice view from our hotel room :)

After checking in, we drove down to a parking lot (easier said than done) and walked to downtown, where we grabbed a boat to Varenna. We grabbed some lunch and hiked to the top castle.

it was more than time for lunch

yum...

We then went back to Bellagio for more touring, and had dinner by a nice vista point:

The next morning, we had a nice breakfast on the "porch" :) and we took a Ferry to go to Villa Balbianello:

After lunch, we headed back to Bellagio for some hiking around the top of the island (it unfortunately was not that great a trail with so-so views compared to the trail length and difficulty in places.

When we were done, we drove back to Milan where we spent the night. See more images for Visiting Italy Day 1 and 2: Lake Como: Bellagio, Varenna, Lenno

Linux 20th Anniversary Picnic

2011-08-27T15:00:00Z

While SVLUG is smaller nowadays and les volunteers to help organize things, there was still a core group (mostly old timers I've known for 15 years now) who organized the event. I had missed most previous ones since I was away, so it wsa nice to go back and reconnect with old friends I hadn't seen in a while.

that's cute :)

See more images for Linux 20th Anniversary Picnic

Visiting Vancouver

2011-08-17T15:00:00Z

Welcome to Vancouver Airport

I went to get a few pictures from Prospect Point at sunset. The only problem was getting a ride back to downtown was hard since cabs didn't quite want to come there to pick me up, but oh well, the view was worth it.

Jennifer was supposed to join me friday night for the weekend, but unfortunately United screwed up with her plane, so she never made it. As a result, I went to visit stuff on my own during the weekend, and started with Capilano Park and then went up Grouse Mountain.

they're known for their long suspension bridge

they also just finished a fully suspended path on the clifside

I then took a quick cab to the bottom of Grouse Mountain, and instead of taking the gondola up, I climbed up the grind in about 1h, which is a respectable time I'm told (but it does kick your ass, it's pretty straight up).

the top

Grouse Mountain is a ski resort during the winter, but they have lots of attractions during the summer, which are worth the visit (on top of just the view of course):

They had a nice bird show:

Their bears seemed pretty happy:

Their lumberjack show was quite good too, those guys knew their stuff and competed on multiple skills for our amusement :)

their tree climbing skills were impressive too

balancing on a log until the other guy falls off

When I was done, I took the fun way down, parasailing. It was way way overpriced (a lot of money goes to the mountain for the privilege), but it was definitely fun and a great view.

then it was my turn

we landed in a park in the end

From there, I took a bus back and a ferry across back to downtown to have dinner at the Top of Vancouver revolving restaurant.

you can see the restaurant

I got day and night shots while having dinner

The next morning I took my rollerblades to go around downtown's waterfront path via Stanley Park.

They had a nice little aquarium in the park, so I went there.

I then continued the rollerblade tour:

went to the Grandville Island Market:

back to downtown:

and on my way to the airport, I went to see the very nice Bloedel Conservatory, which was small, but a lot of fun:

I love the colors on that one

And just like that, the packed 2 day weekend was over, and the tram back to the airport.

That's all folks... See more images for Visiting Vancouver

Linuxcon 2011

2011-08-17T15:00:00Z

This year linuxcon had moved to Vancouver, making it a north american (not US) conference, which considering that Craig Ross is from the fine country of Canadia, isn't too surprising :)

Vancouver if a nice city to go visit, so that was not a bad thing at all :) and I was invited this year to talk about power monitoring. Outside of a small issue where I was so busy before the conference that I forgot which day I was suppose to fly there, and missed my flight to Vancouver, I got there the next morning on some very early flight and things worked out (putting aside the resulting poor sleep).

My talk on power monitoring, while having taken way too long to write, went well. Here is the link to the slides on the Power Monitoring with Linux talk.

A few keynote pictures:

A couple of random slides:

The 20 year party I was very underdressed for :)

And the random picture:

Despite the travel mishaps, it was a good conference. See more images for Linuxcon 2011

Visit of the Computer History Museum 12 years later

2011-08-12T15:00:00Z

In May 1999, Dave Babcock, back when we were at SGI, was nice enough to give me a private tour of the computer history pieces other volunteers and he were able to gathered, and that were stored at Moffett/NASA back then. I had a crappy camera back in that day, but still got some pictures which are fun to see for posterity (in picture link at the bottom of this post).

Throughout the years, that collection moved to visible storage in the Computer History Museum, and through the help of many volunteers, eventually turned into the current Revolution exposition that has now been available for display for almost a year. I use the opportunity that my dad was visiting to take a good tour of it with him. Obviously it's an impressive improvement from where it was 12 years ago.

It's impossible to give it justice in just a few pictures, but if you're interested in the field, hopefully those few will wet your appetite until you can go yourself.

eh, I had one of those intel bunnies and most of those CPUs too

the real first micro computer, which was french, was the micral not the altair

plenty of european micro computers, including the Amstrad CPC 464 we used to have

They missing the MO5, but they had the TO7

I had a NeXT cube for a while

Ok, I never had a PDP-1 :)

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Hacking a Lipo Voltage Meter on a Ladyada Breadboard Power Supply

2011-08-05T15:00:00Z

Ok, maybe this is my first successful project (not counting flashing LEDs in sequence off an arduino). The Ladyada breadboard power supply sorely lacks a voltage display when in adjustable mode.

I found a device called 'LED 1s-6s Lipo Battery Voltage Indicator Checker Tester' on Ebay. Here are links that might work in a few weeks still :)

http://www.aliexpress.com/fm-store/603538/210478792-433940875/1S-6S-Lipo-Battery-Voltage-Indicator-Checker-Tester-free-shipping.html

http://www.tradeoy.com/products_1553322.html

http://www.sell123.org/products/detail/95220.html

It is a better choice than the more expensive 1-8S tester with low battery alarm because it will work in 1S mode without flashing voltages. Now the trick it is powered by the voltage it's measuring, but the voltage cannot drop below 3V it won't work.
You can however measure down to 1V (or maybe even less) if you apply 3V or more on one other pin, but you don't want to apply that voltage to the other pins before the unit has initialized. If it 'boots' with only one voltage, it will nicely just display it and then you add voltage to pin 3 and it will measure pin 2 voltage down to low values without shutting off. You just don't want it to boot with voltage on pin 3 or it will alternate between showing voltages on pin 2 and 3, which is what you want for a lipo battery, but not for this application.
Maybe I could have done something complicated with a capacitor or a timer, but I just put a switch that turn off and only turn on to apply power to pin3 when I need to measure small voltages. It's a bit hackish, but it cost $5 for the digital voltage meter, which is hard to beat :)

End result pictures below:

measuring just 1.42V

Weather Monitoring with Oregon Scientific WMR968

2011-08-03T15:00:00Z

A fair amount of people get weather info (wind, rain, and others) using 1-wire equipment, which is a pain both for having to run 1-wire to places outdoors (although I already was doing that), but more specifically because the mast the wind sensor is on is a lightening rod which has fried many people's home computers and networks.

The simplest way to avoid this problem is simply to go wireless so that lightening does not reach your inside computers and networks. As a side note, the WMR968, while far from perfect, is cheaper than 1-wire equivalent solutions (only $200). The equivalent functionality with 1-wire is about $500

The kit comes with solar panels that recharge your device batteries, so they're supposed to run forever (i.e. until they eventually die), and you get:

Indoor temp / humidity / baro pressure

Outdoor temp / humidity

Wind speed / direction

Rain gauge

wind sensor on the roof with the portable receiving console

rain sensor on top and hygro/temp sensor in the shade under the roof

little 'hack' to make the rain sensor more sensitive

The main thing that is nice with that kit outside of the fact that it's cheap, is that you can buy more receivers than there are in the kit (like multiple indoors BTHR receivers to get humidity in different rooms) and while the main console will not receive more than one, the rfxcom receiver I have plugged in my PC can receive as many as you can have (even your neighbours' :) ).
This allows for having the console in the kitchen for instance, and not have to run a cable to your computer in the closet by having it use its own receiver with a bigger antenna and processing ability for many more devices (see list).

Here is a link to all the WMR 968 graphs received from the rfxcom via XPL, with a couple of samples below:

The only caveat is that it's a bit cheaply built, some of the outside sensors are not super water proof, so I slightly modified mine to make sure I had good water seals, and so far so good: can't beat the price and it hasn't failed for me yet :) Not having to climb on the roof to change batteries every so often is a nice bonus :) See more images for Weather Monitoring with Oregon Scientific WMR968

Quick tour of Eaa/Oshkosh Airventure 2011

2011-07-29T15:00:00Z

Due to a badly scheduled track day on thursday in the middle of Airventure, I ended up taking a hellish red eye from SFO to Chicago (arriving at 03:15 my time) and then a connection to nearby Appletown. I ended up arriving on friday morning at 09:30 and 10:30 at the door due to horrible traffic with very little sleep, and went around the grounds as quickly as I could to see as much as I could before sunday afternoon, where everything would be over.

Considering the tough trip and little time on hand, thanks to having been there before and knowing where things were and how to best optimize, I managed to see several interesting talks, see virtually every exhibit, and most of an air show (unfortunately it was stopped half way due to weather). I also had a lovely dinner with my friends at Seattle Avionics (food was kind of opportunistic since I had neither the time to get proper food, not that there is much proper food on the EAA grounds anyway. I had the worst cheeseburger in my life ever).

Anyway, let's get to the pictures:

new avionics

nice to see a full size turbocharged engine

there were lots of nice sims to try

Lots of planes to be seen as always:

the 787 was here for display and visits, line was way too long though

burt's boomrang

harrier

rotocopters

you don't want to be probed by this guy :)

huge engines, payload capacity, and fuel tanks

Terrafugia was back with their V2 design:

It's a bit of an improvement over the areocar :)

Visiting the insides of the B29 Superfortress was cool too:

Someone also tried to sell me a pipistrel. Nice little plane to fly around, but eh I'm used to slightly faster planes with nice things like autopilots :)

Like every year lots of collectors bring their own fighter planes:

The other half of Oshkosh, is the aviation museum. Its displays are still good, but the best part is the talks that some world famous aviators give there:

new section on RC planes

voyager, the plane that flew around the world non stop

kind of cramped inside

But the best part is Dick Rutan telling the story of his flight around the world in Voyager built by his brother, Burt. It's a thrilling story:

Saturday evening, while waiting for the night show, Ford had a nice Blues Brothers Show:

they were actually quite good

And this leaves us with the pieces of airshow I caught:

weather turned bad quickly, rest of airshow was cancelled for that day

And just to make things interesting, they started doing a night airshow the previous year:

And that was it. after 3 days of mostly bad food and running around to make it with the time I did have, it worked out pretty well in the end. At the Appletown airport, before leaving, I tried the heart attack food they do there, fried cheese curds, and fries smoltered with cheese and bacon :)

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