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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Fri, 20 Jan 2012Basically since getting back from all the end-of-year holiday madness, I've been trying to buy a Kobo Touch e-reader. I was initially all set to buy one from Kobo itself, but discovered that they charged tax on top of shipping when you buy it from their website. I'm not opposed to paying sales tax necessarily, but it feels silly to pay sales tax and shipping on an online purchase without a pretty good reason. I figured there had to be a cheaper way. So, I hit up Amazon, of all places. There I found a used Touch from what looked like a reputable company, for $105, with $4 shipping. Ok, that's a deal I can get behind. I placed the order and waited. What arrived was a Kobo Wifi, which I'm pretty sure is an entirely different model. I contacted them the same day and got a return authorization -- the Wifi model would have been acceptable if I just wanted an e-reader, but for a variety of reasons, I had my heart set on a Touch. Fortunately, they were easy to deal with, immediately apologized for their incorrect listing, and I moved on. What I would have preferred was to buy a used one. This comes from both price and resource-wastage perspectives. On the one hand, $150 is more than having one of these things is worth to me (the new price from Kobo including tax and shipping). On the other hand, buying a used one means one less thing headed for the landfill. So, I hit up Ebay. What I found was a lot of people selling this thing for $140-200. Now, it costs $129 from Kobo, at least that's the listed price. You can also run down to your favorite Target or Best Buy and get one for the same price. I'm not sure why Ebay sellers think people are excited about paying more than full price, but there it is. I looked around, until I found one that was available for the surprisingly (suspiciously) good price of $85. At this point, I should mention that Kobo sells two models: the Kobo Touch, and the Kobo Touch with Offers. The difference is, like the Kindle, you can get one with or without advertisements, and you have to pay more to avoid ads. I personally abhor advertisements, so I was uninterested in the "with Offers" model. Without thinking too hard about it, I ordered the $85 one from Ebay, through a seller who had a lot of them he was selling off for a charity. It occurred to me about 20 minutes after I'd placed the order (I have no idea why it didn't occur to me to check this before hitting the button) that it was too good a deal, and I'd probably ordered a "with Offers" model. I double-checked, and indeed. Fortunately, it was so shortly after ordering it that I was able to cancel, to the consternation of the seller, who didn't understand why I was so unhappy. They had listed the item as a "Kobo Touch." No mention of Offers. Although when I double-checked the model number they listed, the results that came back were overwhelmingly "with Offers." So, lesson learned, thought I. Suspiciously good deals are suspicious. I looked around some more, and found one for $115, which made no mention of Offers, and the model number checked out: N905-KBO-B. If you look that up, you'll see a page of full-price Kobo Touch readers. Awesome, thought I, and pressed the go button. It was a bit more than I wanted to pay, but I figured I was avoiding the scourge of Offers. That one finally showed up, and I happily unpacked it, and started playing with it. All good, fun device, well built, etc. That evening, I sat down to get it registered, as apparently you can't use the wifi feature without registering it. That finished up, and I had a twinge of unhappiness as I saw the Recommended for You list that had suddenly appared on the home screen. That was ok, though, there was a way to turn it off, and just show books you already own. I was mostly hopeful to use this device to read PDFs of scripts, and to read classic novels, which are freely available via Project Gutenbert and Archive.org, so that worked out fine. However, I turned it off, and what should appear on the screen, but an advertisement! It was supposed to show the cover of the book I was reading. Nonplussed, I called up Kobo customer support, and talked with a sympathetic young woman, who explained to me that unfortunately the Recommended for You section was non-negotiable, and received my (polite but plain) ire with aplomb, and promised to forward my complaints to the development team. Key point that I missed in that phone call, due to the rage and whatnot: she was talking about the recommended titles list. She didn't once mention advertisements on screensavers. So I reloaded the thing to factory firmware, and determined that I would simply live without wifi, but I was pissed. I wrote a scathing journal entry (next one down from this, which I've since removed as being incorrect and unfair), and contacted a couple of websites about this: Kobo was forcing advertisements (the key differentiator between the $100 and the $130 model) on people who'd paid the extra fee to avoid ads! If it had been true, I believe it would have been the downfall of the company -- you can't steal 30 bucks from thousands of customers and laughingly tell them to suck it up. However, as my glowing resentment slowly cooled, I started to get hints, possibly delivered via sledgehammer, that I had been too hasty. Finally another call to Kobo delivered the true result: I'd purchased a "with Offers" model, without knowing it. There is no indication anywhere on the box that this was a "with Offers" model. There was no indication in the model number (which had been different, in the $85 listing). It was only by combining the information from call #3 to Kobo that my model was "affiliated with Target" with the Target website (where the only black-colored model like mine I could find was the ad-supported version for $99, with, damningly, the exact same model number as the full-price versions in different colors) that I finally got the hint that was confirmed in call #4. Fortunately, my ire is fungible, and was immediately redirected on the Ebay seller, who finally agreed to a full refund under threat of negative feedback (and what would have been an equally scathing diatribe here). I'm sending that thing back today, ads and all, and they're welcome to it. $115 for a $99 device doesn't sound like a particularly good deal to me, even if I decided to live without wifi. So, what is this lesson I've learned? One I already knew, of course, but have to re-demonstrate to myself every once in a while: people are deceitful bastards, and will cheat you any way they can, particularly when it's via an anonymous, faceless transaction on Ebay. I found lots and lots of "Kobo Touch" listings, and not one of them included the words "with Offers." Care to wager how many of them were actually the ad-free, full-price model? Me neither. Posted at 09:16 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 17 Jan 2012I've removed my post on this, in which I incorrectly assumed that Kobo was forcing screensaver ads upon non-ad-supported readers. After working with Kobo to figure out what the problem is, it turns out that I was duped by a false Ebay listing. I apologize to Kobo for my harsh words, they were unwarranted given the full facts in the case. Posted at 20:24 permanent link category: /misc Fri, 16 Dec 2011
The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Or, How Apple Cost Me a Week)
If, like me, you prefer the Apple OS to the Microsoft OS, you might also be a super-duper Unix nerd like me. That means that you're going to install Mac Ports, and then you're going to beef up Lion's stock of Unix commands. One of the commands I use a lot is Having installed Mac Ports, you just type in But what's this? My install failed halfway through. I tried invoking Ports on the specific package that failed, but no luck. That package, as it happens, is one called pkgconfig. I had never heard of this program before, but there's a lot of software that just comes on a computer that I've never heard of. Now, I should say at this point that I'm using a new computer (thanks, employer!), with a brand new, fresh install of Lion on it. This is not an upgrade from Snow Leopard (10.6). I think that caused all the ensuing trouble. So, pkg-config (as the program itself is called, no idea why Ports calls it pkgconfig) repeatedly failed to build. I went and tried to build it manually, and came across the following bit of beauty:
Ok, so, what does that mean? Well, it references this line in the
So what? I hear you saying. Well, so this: $PKG_CONFIG should be set to the path of the pkg-config binary. In my case, it was set to "false," since apparently Apple decided that pkg-config didn't belong on their fancy new OS. There's a test command three lines back that should have taken care of this little problem for me, but for whatever reason, it didn't. The
That is, check to see if pkg-config exists, and if it does, go on to use it to set some variables. If it doesn't issue a warning that -- wait for it -- pkg-config isn't installed! Now, follow along with me here: I'm trying to install pkg-config, and pkg-config is complaining that it can't find pkg-config. Or, as I put it on Facebook, in a fit of concise frustration: Wassup dawg, I herd you like installing software, so I made it so you have to install the software before you can install the software I, of course, had no clue how to set GLIB_CFLAGS or GLIB_LIBS --
it's been ages since I've actively dabbled in open source software
builds, and I have far more important things to do, which my employer
is paying me to do. They are not paying me to debug someone's faulty
Long story slightly shorter, I found and downloaded the previous verison of pkg-config (0.25, in my case), configured it, built it, and installed it with no problems. The 0.26 version, as I discovered with a ridiculous amount of digging, suffers this problem I ran into in a variety of situations, and the developers respond with scorn to the idea that the problem might exist. No mention was made of the problem in 0.25, so I gave it a try, and it worked a treat. So, with my slightly out of date version of pkg-config installed, I was suddenly and miraculously able to install pkg-config. My installation of ImageMagick continued, and I went on to other, less fixable gripes about Lion (they took away Spaces and replaced it with the gratingly inferior Mission Control -- I know how to manage my virtual desktops, Apple; been doing it since you were a moribund company making shitty Mac SE knock-offs that ran a 5 years out of date operating system). All told, this move from 10.6 to 10.7 has caused me a bunch of grief, and no particular joy. I don't care about any of the new features. Unfortunately, in the computer game, you can't simply squat on an old version and hope to remain victorious. The world moves on, and happily leaves you behind. Running as fast as I can... Posted at 10:12 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 22 Nov 2011Every once in a while (perhaps every year or so) I find myself in a situation where I want to hand out a business card, or something like it. A card with my contact information on it. I have some business cards through my work, but I don't usually meet people outside of my company, and no one trades business cards internally. Anyway, those cards are from about 10 years ago, and I didn't have a cellphone at the time (just a pager). So I decided to look into getting some more current cards. I came across moo.com, and about $25 later, I have some cards that are much more like me than some generic cards from my employer:
As I said on Facebook, "Now with beauty on the back." I stand by that. Posted at 18:07 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 08 Nov 2011
An Argument in Favor of the Metric System
Ok, so you're sitting around with your friends, right, and bragging about this and that, and you let drop, "Just the other day, I was doing 100 down the freeway!" Your friends gasp in awe at this preternatural feat of speedliness. 100! Wow! Of course, you have snookered them, for you were using the metric system! 100 km/h is about 62 mph.
You're filling out your online supervillain profile, and you get to the "height" section: 185, RAAAAAR! Fear me and my toweringness! Centimeters, of course (about 6'1"). But a hundred and eighty five of them! Holy crap!
Or look at the reverse kind of situation. You're filling out your online dating profile, and the site very inappropriately has a "weight" item for you to fill out. You casually fill in "100," which is of course true. 100 kg. You know, about 220 lbs. Doesn't it sound better in metric?
And imagine how much less your electricity bill will be when you can set the thermostat to 20° instead of 68°! That's a whole 48° less! And the thermostat monitor (every house has one) will smile their beatific smile and say, "Oh, what the heck -- let's crank that sucker up to 21!" And again, snookered! Each Celsius degree is worth almost two Fahrenheit degrees.
As for the rest of that crap, Joules and Pascals and whatever else, who cares? Scientists are the only ones who care about that stuff, and they're already working in metric anyway. Don't you owe it to yourself to be taller, thinner, faster and warmer! Go metric! Posted at 16:42 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 07 Nov 2011A friend just pointed out the following video series to me: Machine Shop 1 10 videos, each about 40 minutes long. The machinist nerd in me is giggling in silly anticipation. Go MIT! Posted at 17:20 permanent link category: /misc Sat, 05 Nov 2011Ok, so this picture is kind of cheating. It's a Japanese Maple, which has bright red leaves for as long as it has leaves each year. Still, I think they get a bit brighter and more unbelievable in the fall.
Even as garish as this picture is, it doesn't do justice to the reality of Japanese Maple leaves in bright Autumn sunshine against a brooding Douglas Fir and a baby-blue sky. Posted at 16:01 permanent link category: /misc Wed, 05 Oct 2011
Oh, the Terrible Temptation of New Toys
For what probably spans the last 20 years, I've had a vague desire to own a manual typewriter. There's absolutely no reason behind this -- I do all my writing on a computer. I cannot jusify the space or expense of buying even an inexpensive typewriter. I think the mechanisms are kind of neato. And yet, here we are. I found a decent deal on a Hermes Baby Featherweight (Internet evidence suggests it was produced in 1937), and couldn't resist. This is the tiniest, cutest typewriter I've ever seen, yet it's clearly and completely not a toy. Made in Switzerland just before the outbreak of WWII, this is clearly a well-thought-out tool with one purpose in mind: converting thoughts to words with the fewest possible impediments in the way. This particular typewriter model dispenses with such fancy amenities as an automatic platen advance upon returning the carriage, tab stops, or the numeral 1 (but to be fair, this is last one is pretty standard for manual typewriters). I picked it up today, and of course what I needed to do when I got home was not to play with the new toy. I needed to do some graphics work for an upcoming show at Annex (c.1993 (you never step in the same river twice)). Amazingly, I was able to do my work, but it was only a few minutes after finishing and turning in a draft that I pulled out my photo-ma-jig and set to work.
It needs some help, of course. Previous owners have clearly been smokers (a quick wipe-down with a dry piece of tissue paper pulled up an astounding amount of black goo; it's hard to imagine what I'm going to get out of it with proper cleaning). The number keys and several of the peripheral, less-used keys fail to retract after hitting the platen. Several of the keys are missing some or all of their inlaid paint. The Hermes logo on the left side is missing a chunk from the middle. The platen is heavily marked where years of typing have slowly broken down the rubber of the roller. But for all that, it appears to work remarkably well. It even came with a spare ribbon, and (somewhat to my amazement) it looks pretty likely that I can trundle down to my favorite office supply store and pick up a brand new ribbon for $5. Apparently, in a flush of the kind of sanity which is impossible to imagine today, typewriter manufacturers standardized on one kind of ribbon from about 1920 to about 1970. One interesting thing is that, according to one website I found, the "known" serial number range goes from 107xxx to 125xxx for this model, but I definitely have 102432, so I'll have to send in an email and a link to the photos I took tonight. If that site is correct, this machine was made in 1937, probably in Spring or Summer. Overall, I'm very pleased to own this thing, and am really looking forward to getting it cleaned up. I don't know that I'm going to do a whole lot of writing with it, but between this, the Eagle desk lamp you see in the pictures, and the black bakelite pulse-dial desk phone I've got kicking around, I have a killer vintage desk set in the making. Posted at 21:01 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 30 Aug 2011
At Long Last: Jurisprudence, part 5: Deliberation
If you've been following along for years, you may remember that I had jury duty (part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4), way back in 2009. I never actually got to the final and potentially most interesting part: deliberation. My memory of all this, being now 2 years old, is necessarily vaguer than I would prefer, but I'll relate what I can still remember. We got our instructions from the judge, and filed into the jury room. We were to choose a foreman, and come up with a guilty or innocent decision on the two counts before us: Attempted Rape, and Theft in the Second Degree (I think it was second degree -- theft, in any case). The judge read out the definitions for those two charges. I was interested in the theft definition, which specifically excludes the use of force. If force is involved, then it's Robbery. After some brief discussion about the foreman, I admitted that I would be interested in doing it, and everyone thought that would be fine. No one else seemed at all interested in the job, so it was more like everyone taking a step back than me taking a step forward. The process was initially somewhat chaotic, as we weren't sure what order we should do things in. After 20 or 30 minutes of random discussions (I think there was a certain amount of "that defense attorney was a jerk"), I tried to get everyone to settle down and tackle the charges one at a time. We started with Attempted Rape. This was a sticky one to me: Larry's story didn't include it, unless you count his improbable child-like boasting that Danielle was bound and determine to fellate him to within an inch of his orgasm-filled life. Danielle's story included attempted rape. The testimony of everyone else we heard from basically didn't mention it one way or the other, except as a second-hand story from Danielle. In other words, it was him against her. We didn't take a very long time to figure out Attempted Rape. We needed to decide beyond a reasonable doubt in order to give a guilty verdict, and only one or two people were convinced that strongly. Under our own amateur cross-examination, they gave up, and we decided to give him an innocent verdict on Attempted Rape. I don't think anyone on the jury was convinced he didn't do it, we just weren't 100% convinced that he did. I was about 80% sure he did, but again, not beyond a reasonable doubt. As we were discussing all this, there was a lot of reconstructing of testimony. I'd taken meager notes (I'm not a very good note-taker, although I tried), some had taken none, and a few folks had pretty good notes. Larry's testimony had been so very different from what Danielle and the police had said that it left a lot of us somewhat confused. I'm sure that was the point. My description in part 4 really is vastly clearer and more coherent than his actual testimony, and I only came to it after having weeks to think about it. In the jury room, less than a day after his testimony, it was a lot more jumbled in my head. So, we reconstructed his story, as near as we could tell. We made up an approximate map, to get his path of travel. We had actually sent several requests for clarification back to the judge, but every one came back with what amounted to, "There's nothing more I can tell you" as the reply, so we gave up. We all wanted a copy of the map the state attorney had referenced in the first day (but which had not been entered into evidence), but decided that even requesting it was a waste of time given how all our other requests were denied. It turned out, after we were done, that the judge probably would have allowed us to have the map, had we requested it. We got an approximate time-line of his story and Danielle's story hammered out. I think we actually made the innocent determination on the Attempted Rape charge after that, but I remember we came to the decision pretty quickly and easily, despite our misgivings. The Theft charge, however, proved to be much more difficult. I personally thought it was a slam-dunk, and much clearer than the Attempted Rape charge: he was found clutching her purse and a $50. Ignore the $50 bill, and the fact that her purse didn't contain anything of real value -- he had her purse. That is a fine literal definition of theft. He had something of hers without her consent. Theft. However, one of the jurors, who was an older woman, obstinately disagreed with this. Unfortunately, I can't remember her objection clearly, but I think it boiled down to, "I don't like it." We couldn't enter a guilty verdict (which I and several other jurors felt strongly was the correct verdict) without getting her to agree. I laid out the definition of theft, and the facts (much as I did in the previous paragraph) to her, but to no avail. She didn't think it counted as theft. There may have been some element of her personal definition of theft being different than the judge's. We did eventually sway her, although it took far more time and effort than I ever would have expected. By the end, it was everyone on the jury working on her, trying to find some way to change her mind, as the other 11 jurors all agreed that he was guilty. Finally she relented, and we signaled the judge that we were ready. The judge didn't make me stand up and do the "We the jury find the defendant... GUILTY!" routine, which was fine with me. Larry looked like the kind of guy who might come to blows if prompted, and I was actually somewhat worried that he might recognize me in Fremont some day (he lived there, I work there) and do something stupid. It's never come up, fortunately. Instead, she read the verdicts, giving him innocent on Attempted Rape, and guilty on Theft. His reaction was mostly one of disbelief. I'm not sure what part he didn't believe, whether it was that his stellar testimony didn't convince us he was 100% grade-A (drug-addicted) boyscout material, or that we would actually have the temerity to accuse him of something he didn't do. He was led out by a bailiff, and that was the end of the trial. After it was all over, the judge and two attorneys invited those of us who were interested to hang out and talk. They wanted to hear from us as much as we wanted to hear from them, I think. The post-trial discussion was quite revealing. The state attorney had evidence that she'd been legally prevented from entering: Larry had been convicted twice in the 80s for doing exactly this: attempting to rape a woman, then running off with her purse. I forget what it was that prevented her, but there was some new law that was fresh on the books which would have allowed it if he'd said some key thing in his testimony. He came close, but in the judge's opinion didn't actually say the right words to "open the door." Another surprising thing was to learn that the defense attorney -- who seemed roughly as competent as Lionel Hutz from the Simpsons -- was a regular in this courtroom, and was not in fact fresh from 3-hour mail-order law school. He and the sharp state attorney seemed to be friends and respect each other, and came up against each other frequently. Having learned that Larry had been convicted for doing this twice before, the jurors who'd stayed behind shared a certain amount of, "Oh jeez, if I'd known that..." He would have been found guilty of Attempted Rape as well. I wasn't entirely clear on this, but I had the impression that this was some kind of a three-strikes deal, and that Larry was headed to prison for his misdeeds. I hope that's true, although that invites a lengthy discussion of the punishment system we have in place, which I'd rather not get into. After it was all done, I realized that it really was a case of the stupid vs. the stupid. Both Danielle and Larry had basically acted contrary to every instinct I have when it comes to self-preservation on the street. Their behaviors seemed to me to invite all the bad things that eventually happened. From what I could tell, both of them had had similarly bad things happen before, yet they didn't seem to learn anything from life's painful little lessons. For all that, I found the jury process to be interesting, and one I'd willingly do again. I was actually called for jury duty last year, but when I asked for a different time due to a schedule conflict, I got a letter back saying that I'd been removed from the pool since they had too many jurors anyway, and I'd served the year before. I was a bit disappointed by that. If you find yourself called for jury duty, keep in mind that it's a fascinating insight into the justice system, and bears only a partial resemblance to all the TV courtroom dramas. Just pray that you don't get selected for a civil suit, unless you really like watching bozos spar over who was at fault for tripping on a rug. Posted at 13:29 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 15 Aug 2011With my renewed interest in biplanes comes a renewed interest in getting that tailwheel endorsement, so I'm, you know, legal to fly in something like a biplane. It'd also be handy to know for real (vs. in the simulator) whether I can stand swerving around to see where I'm going on the ground. So, I called up a local FBO to talk to them about getting some instruction in their tailwheel plane, an Aeronca Champ. I was transferred a few times, and ended up talking to one of their office folks. The wrinkle in all this is that I'm heavy to be getting into these old planes -- probably 220 lbs fully dressed. Fortunately, I'm no pudge-pot, but mass is mass, and you can't fool physics. The plane in question is capable of holding 407 lbs total (including any fuel we might want to have on board), so we need to find me an instructor who weighs in at 150 or under. This shouldn't be a huge problem, except that apparently it is. I've now called twice. The first time, I spoke to the office person, and she said she'd get one of the instructors to call me back. He never did (two weeks on). So, I called back. This time, I was routed to a person who wasn't there (different person than last time), and was eventually asked to leave a voice mail. So, the point of this whole entry? If you're a small business and someone calls you asking how they can hand you a bundle of cash (particularly when every business in this sector is reducing hours and cost-cutting as much as possible)? Maybe don't pass that potential customer around as if they don't matter. I have a lot of patience and few options, so I'll keep trying, but getting this attitude that I'm too much trouble to deal with is getting old. Posted at 15:49 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 04 Aug 2011We were setting up for taking some headshot style photos at the theater, and I needed to test the lights. Sometimes things get a little out of control. Possibly zombies get involved.
Posted at 20:32 permanent link category: /misc Sat, 23 Jul 2011I took some cool flower pictures about a month ago, and only now got around to reviewing them. This one, due to its shadows (which are pretty much as-shot), thoroughly reminded me of Citizen Kane. Despite the fact that it's a picture of a buttercup, I find myself calling it "Rosebud!"
Posted at 19:52 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 19 May 2011A while ago, I was working on this Arduino project, an Air Data Instrument. It kind of languished for a while as theater took over my life (this happens every month or two). When I last left the project, it looked like this:
Well, theater has released some of its hold on my life, and I was able to make some progress on the ADI. My next logical step, once I had the wire-infested prototype working, was to make it a bit more compact, so I could bring it with me on, for instance, a motorcycle, and see what happened under real-life conditions. So, I ordered some protoshields (basically little prototype boards which are shaped like an Arduino, and allow one to build up a little circuit which sits atop an Arduino board). I pondered layout for a bit, then just kind of went for it. The protoshield isn't quite what I would have chosen in terms of how it's laid out internally (not enough chunks connected together for my tastes), but it was good enough. This is what it looks like now:
A slight difference. I'm using the red LCD screen I want to eventually use in the final version. The whole thing is very compact, barely larger than the Arduino board itself. This still isn't anywhere near its "final" form, which will be packed up in a waterproof case, with a separate head containing the display and the three buttons. I've even got a spare PWM pin, and could make the LCD's contrast software-controllable (eliminating a potentiometer, and making it a bit more customizable from the menu). I'm pretty pleased. The next step is to get the thing hooked up to a motorcycle's power system and try actually moving through the air, to see if the ramair measurement is anything like sensible. It'll probably take me another few months to do this, if the pattern holds, but hooray for progress! Posted at 22:52 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 12 May 2011
A Secret Note for Android Developers
I'm the more-or-less happy owner of a Droid X and I don't want my calendar data to live in the cloud. I want it to live on my phone. The reasons for this are many, but I just wanted you to know that this desire exists. I've tried j2cal, and I've tried ancal (which is, as far as I can tell, an older and less-developed version of j2cal). I'd love to see something like the old Palm built-in calendar, which includes complex repeat (yes, I want something that repeats on the first Friday of every month; it shouldn't be that hard), and having two alarms on the iPhone was pretty cool. "Write it your own damn self." Don't think I haven't thought about this. I just don't have time. I don't have time to learn yet another development environment, yet another widget set, etc. I certainly don't have time to develop the full-featured calendar app I want. What I don't want is another calendar that "leverages" Google's cloud services. It should work when I'm in another country (my phone is US-only). It should work when I'm on the airplane, without any access at all. It should just work, and I shouldn't have to share my calendar data with anyone. After I learned I'd have to keep my precious, juicy data on Google's servers with the new phone, you know what I did? I went out and bought a paper calendar. I'm still using it. I'd love to ditch it, but not if it means I have to go to a cloud-based app. For now, I guess I'm going to continue the dead-trees route. Posted at 13:27 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 24 Mar 2011So, flush with my millions of tax-refund pesos, I decided to reward myself with a bit of hipster-approved Apple flash. I sauntered over to the Apple website, and boldly placed my order. I as much as called out for "one of your finest, barkeep!" No longer flush with pesos, I was now flush with excitement: my new toy would be arriving tomorrow! Oh, no, wait. Oh, I see. It'll be shipping tomorrow. Well, that's ok. I felt slightly deceived -- "Ships within 24 hours!" sounds a lot like "Overnight shipping!" Anyway, I could suffer through that. Even ground shipping from California only takes a few days. I checked on the tracking number Apple had sent to me. No actual package yet, just the number in UPS's systems. Ok, fair enough. It takes a little while sometimes. UPS is not to be blamed for having a shipping order without an actual thing to ship. The next day, however, the flush started fading. UPS still said "we're waiting for your package, kemosabe." I put it down to excitement over a new product, and waited patiently. This went on for a few days. To clarify the timeline, I placed the order on Monday, the 14th. By Friday, the 18th, I was actively unhappy with UPS's continued insistence that they hadn't received a box. I called Apple's customer support line, and got a very nice woman on the line, who explained that there had been some kind of a mistake, and apparently the order hadn't been picked up in the warehouse. She would, she said, escalate the issue, and I would receive a call in three days -- "Business days or calendar days?" quoth I; "Oh, business days," quoth she -- said call indicating that my eagerly awaited, hipster-approved toy would be on its way to me, overnight-shipping this time, due to their mistake. Huzzah! Then it occurred to me, the following Monday (the 21st, if you're keeping score at home), to wonder: why should I be penalized three days with diminished hipster cred just because Apple had messed up? So I called to see if I could wriggle an answer out of the kind customer support operator. This time, my CustSuppOp was not so kind. No sympathy, no empathy. He seemed, instead, honestly rankled that I had bothered him with this petty query -- I had been told 3 days, why was I offending his ears with my voice before that time? The call ended with no progress on my part, although I did learn that my "three business days" had started that day (Monday) instead of the Friday I'd called, as I had expected (it being Friday morning when I placed my first call). So, I patiently bided my time until about 3 pm on Wednesday, when I could contain myself no longer. I called the number again, and was again greeted by a pleasant female voice, who pleasantly and female-ly explained to me that the first pleasant female I'd dealt with had somehow flubbed the escalation process: I would have another three days to wait, while Apple laboriously tracked down the doubtless drunken and shunned ethnic minority they'd hired for beer money, who had sloughed off his divine and most-holy responsibility to deliver unto UPS my shiny white- and/or metal-colored, lozenge-shaped hipster widget. (The pleasant female voice made no such intimation about our drunken worker, I'm merely extrapolating.) I was informed that, should I so desire, I would be welcome to spend an indeterminate amount of time on hold, listening to their hold music, waiting for a Manager to take up the banner of my crusade. I elected to so hold, in part so I could perfect my description of the hold music (I eventually decided that it sounded like a 32 kpbs MP3 being played through a greeting-card speaker, which was picked up by a phone handset separated from this aforementioned greeting-card speaker by a moderately dense pillow and a somnolescent puppy's tummy). A mere 8 or so minutes into my poetical musings about the sound-damping qualities of various digestive tracts, the pleasant female voice broke in and informed me that my best bet was, in fact, to cease waiting on hold, and await some variety of communique. I confirmed that she had a valid phone number for me, and delved back into the much more workaday reality of my day job. Perhaps half an hour later (this is still on Wednesday, the 23rd, you understand), my phone jumped merrily about my pocket (it's not an iPhone -- perhaps that's the problem; Apple has noted my dismissal of the iPhone, and is preferentially shipping my order to a more worthy buyer). I answered, and it was the PFV again: Management had seen the error of their ways, and would be seeking the drunken no-good-nik on their own time, shipping me my order at the earliest opportunity. Huzzah! I clarified exactly what the PFV was offering, and we settled on the following set of facts: I would not be receiving a phone call regarding this latest development; I would be receiving an email detailing the particulars of my shipment; I would not have to wait the aforementioned three days. I was left with an impression, an inference, if you will, that I would receive this joyous email on the following day, Thursday. It being, as I inscribe these words into the firmament of the all-knowing global online internet, 5:14 of the aforementioned Thursday, I can virtually assure you that the previously promised joyous email has not arrived. There has been not the least hint of anything joyous out of Cupertino this day. Of course, the whole thing is a trifle silly, and qualifies as among the more obnoxious first-world problems ever. Oh goodness, I spent more-or-less free money on an object of techo-lust that I don't really need, and it didn't arrive in the promised three days! I will now prance about, casting blame and aspersions on any and all who venture near me! Bring me Steve Jobs, that I may viciously attack his private parts with some variety of blunt object! I will not rest until I have received satisfaction, you thieving cyber-bastards! Still, I think I'm going to give them another call and see what's up. 'Cause really? 10 days is a lot of time to not even be able to pull a box out of your warehouse and pass it off to the professional shipping company that drives a massive truck up to that same warehouse at least once per day for exactly this mission. Update: Within minutes of completing this little literary adventure story, I dialed Apple again, for my next dose of pain. Whatever had been promised the previous day, this day did not see any progress, according to them. Apparently the customer support staff are uniquely unable to perform escalations, in the eyes of other customer support staff. Nearly every call has included a variation on the theme of, "The last person you talked to didn't really escalate this correctly, but I've gone ahead and made sure it's escalated right." The practical upshot of the latest conversation is that I have now been promised that by approximately 5:45 pm Friday, I should have a shipment notification, and that this shipment will be of the next-business-day variety. I remain, alas, skeptical. Posted at 17:21 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 17 Mar 2011If you're a masochist, and want to see what an in-progress programming project looks like, I've updated the Air Data Instrument page: It now contains not only photos, but also a link to the video, and a tarball of the source code as it stands right now. As the page says, there are bugs and missing bits, but it's mostly there. Knock yourselves out, internet flame throwers! Posted at 00:41 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 13 Mar 2011I shot a short video of my Arduino Air Data project: Enjoy! Posted at 16:41 permanent link category: /misc Sat, 12 Mar 2011I decided to take a few pictures of the Arduino project (which I think I'm going to call the Air Data Instrument). I've started a new location on the website for the project, which I hope to document to some extent: It's just pictures for now, but I'm going to expand it with a text description, and I'll likely post schematics and source code before too long. Despite the photos, the schematic is actually quite simple, with the only discrete components being a handful of resistors and one potentiometer for LCD contrast. The real work on this project has been the programming. The source code is around 1100 lines, most of it written from scratch (not that this is a particular feat for me -- it's what I do at work every day, after all). One of the greatest challenges was simply getting my head back into writing C/C++, which I haven't done since the scanner control project years ago. The Air Data Instrument is far from done, but it's reached an excellent milestone: all the features are present and seem to work as I want them to. There are definitely problems to overcome: the circuit is quite susceptible to noise (turning on a flourescent lamp actually cycled it through a bunch of menu settings and left it in need of a reboot). The keys still occasionally bounce a bit, despite the debounce code. Obviously getting it packaged for use on a motorcycle is going to be a task all by itself, as I'll probably end up building my own housing for the display (which will live in a separate box from the computer), and finding a good static pressure source on the bike is much more about aeronautics than it is about electronics. I'm planning on building my own pitot tube, although that's just a pipe that faces forward, so it shouldn't be too much of a challenge. Next steps on this are probably to build it up on a protoboard, and try to gather some real-world data -- take it up in a plane, and see if the vertical speed measurement matches up with the airplane's instruments, compare altitudes, that kind of thing. I won't be able to get airspeed in a plane (unless I hang my hand out the window with a tube), but I can do that on a bike or even with a fan. I have a feeling that tracking down noise and quelling it is going to be a lot more work than I initially thought. In all, I'm incredibly pleased with how quickly this whole thing is coming together. I never imagined the Arduino was this easy to work with, and now my only regret is that I didn't pick one up ages ago. Posted at 22:33 permanent link category: /misc Fri, 11 Mar 2011I had a free evening recently in San Jose. I was down for work, and decided on a friend's advice to look for a surplus electronics store, San Jose being smack in the middle of Silicon Valley, and presumably rich with cool stuff for a nerd like myself. I settled on a place called Halted Specialties, which is a short hop from San Jose on the train. I really had no idea what to expect, although from their website, I'd gathered that it was going to be technical, with individual components availble. That really wasn't preparation for what I found. It wasn't a large building, as these warehouse spaces go, maybe 150 feet on a side, maybe 200. But packed into that space was a massive and bewildering array of stuff. I regret that I didn't take any pictures. My eyes got wide, and my neck quickly started to hurt from snapping my head around as yet another cool thing caught my attention. First thing, I found a cart full of LED seven-segment displays, all sort of jumbled together. There was the massive shelf area full of SMT components (unuseable to me, but good to know they're there, in case I tool up for surface mount soldering). There was the area full of vacuum tubes, with four shelves, each about 9 feet tall and 12 feet long. Technical reference manuals. 19" racks. Bulk wire. Tools. It was overwhelming, and my breathing was actually coming in short bursts, I was so excited. (Dear god am I ever a nerd.) I had left work as early as I felt I reasonably could, and caught a Caltrain train to the nearest station, Lawrence. I arrived at Halted around 6, which left me with only an hour to browse the whole store. That was part of the quickened breath -- I wanted a day to wander this place, not an hour. I had really only two specific things in mind: I wanted an LCD display module (I have some on the way for the airspeed project, but they're coming from Hong Kong, and I expect them weeks from now), and I wanted some header pins. Neither are things I'd have any problem getting from dozens of online sources, but I was there, and wanted to see if I could get it done. I ended up coming away cheaper than I expected. The most expensive thing I got was a nice ratcheting crimper with jaws for red, blue and yellow insulated crimp connectors (something I've been wanting for years now). I also picked up some 7-segment LED displays, some cool 5x7 dot-matrix LED displays (same size as the 7-segment), header pins, header sockets, two LCD modules (one either 16x2 or 20x2, and one 40x2), and some voltage regulators. Nothing spectacular, but oh so much fun. I left behind a sweet-looking Tektronix 11201A oscilloscope and a half-dozen logic analyzers (both being things I'll want if I get properly into this Arduino business). I felt like a shopping spree winner as I was finishing up, though. I didn't make my first pass through the store completely until after they'd called the 5-minutes-to-closing warning over the PA system. I was walking up to the counter as they called store-closed. If I could have spent another few hours there, I gladly would have, and saying I'd take a day to go through it is not particularly hyperbolic (I'd probably want to stop after about 5 hours, honestly). In describing it to a friend after the event, I called it nerd-vana, which she said was the best-ever neologism. I wish there was something comparable in Seattle. Posted at 10:06 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 07 Mar 2011I figured you might be interested to see the messy little prototype I've been working with.
Thrilling, huh? Not shown are the three lever switches (the nearest switches I had to hand) which are acting as temporary SET, + and - switches. Posted at 23:05 permanent link category: /misc Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. |
