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Some stuff on Paypal
I’ve been using Paypal as the payment-handling service for my trance vibe project, and overall it’s not too bad. I can even print my own postage for domestic shipments, sticky on a label and not have to drive to the post office to send out an order anymore. But there are a few things about…
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Assembler Interpreter for microcontrollers – sane?
I’m thinking of how much work it would be to write an assembler interpreter in PIC assembler. Probably sounds like the dumbest idea in the world, right ;-) I’ve been toying with this idea lately for sort of futureproofing microcontroller-based designs, and adding some new possibilities for specific applications (polymorphic / self-modifying code, security applications,
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Fixing Dell Precision T3400 USB not working
This is an update to a previous rant about the mysterious Windows XP “Dee-Dunk” error (and the novel concept of presenting an “error message” when an error condition exists), possibly in conjunction with broken or intermittent USB functionality. This post is mainly for Googlers – my friends are more than welcome to skip it. I
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Fun with High Voltage & Plasma
The other night I picked back up playing with insulated gas discharge tubes (IGDT), better known as plasma globes. The basic idea is to pump a sealed chamber filled with a noble gas (or air, in a pinch) down to low pressure (1s to 10s of Torr), and apply electricity at high voltage (a few
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Railway Supply Institute expo 2008, Chicago
I was there to demo my self-powered wireless brake health monitoring system at the FRA’s Advanced Concept Train booth. Despite the final assembly of this and the other 29 units occurring only a couple days before (and passing through the TSA’s loving hands), everything went perfectly! (Murrphy’s Law might have a surprise or two for
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Worst User Agreement, Evar
And the winner goes to… The Terms & Conditions for use of the Hampton Inn’s complimentary WiFi. Weighing in at 47.4KBytes* and a whopping 90 screens (scrunching it all into a tiny browser text box did not help in this regard), this is quite possibly the longest, and most unilaterally evil, user agreement I have
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Beer! (pt. 2)
So, a week-and-change ago Kr* and I picked up some basic homebrewing stuff and started a batch of English brown ale. Since this is our first ever beermaking attempt, we purchased a ready-made ingredient kit with all the stuff pre-selected and measured into labeled baggies, idiot-proofing the process as much as possible. This Sunday we
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Daily Windows Rant
Error messages, people. Error messages. When an “error” occurs, it should be accompanied by an “error message”, which informs the user a) that an error did occur; b) what that error was. It does not even necessarily have to be understandable to mere mortals (although this would be really nice), because understanding it is the
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And these points of data make a beautiful line…
(and we’re out of beta, we’re releasing on time… Err… deliverable code freeze will happen monday morning, or wednesday afternoon (due date), or before 50% of the devices are sealed up for delivery with the code already on them, whichever comes before the last bug is found. [Especially if the bugs are discovered in hardware,
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Deep Session Control – proposed browser feature to increase privacy
As you probably know, a Web cookie is a small bit of information (typically a server-generated ID number) a Web site can store on your computer to read back on any subsequent visits, even years later. Currently, the major browsers support making all cookies “session-only” (even if the site sends them with an expiration date
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NorrisolideFacts.com
Ok, so apparently this is pants-pissingly funny to chemists* :-) NORRISOLIDE FACTS Norrisolide does not dissolve in water. It pounds the water into a pulp and bathes in where its blood would be if water had blood. Norrisolide does not get metabolized. It gets even. Norrisolide consists of x carbon, x hydrogen, x oxygen and
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Comcastic!
So, Friday morning I’m doing some prep for our Cape Cod camping trip online, and I notice a Comcast truck parked in front of the neighbor’s house, and the Comcast guy putting a ladder up against the telephone pole. I go to take a leak, and when I get back, the truck is gone, and
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Beer!
I’m contemplating picking up some homebrewing equipment this week. Anyone else interested in making (+ drinking) some homebrew beer?
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[meme] The Omnivore’s Hundred
The Omnivore’s Hundred is a list of foods the gastronomic Andrew Wheeler thinks everyone should try at least once in their lives. The rules of the meme: 1) Bold those you have tried 2) Strikethrough those you wouldn’t eat on a bet. 3) Italicize any item you’ll never eat again. 4) Asterisk any items you’d
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Eggcorn, or possible computer-spellcheck-gone-wild?
Saw this in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal and it made me snerk: “In the case, Leegin Creative Leather Products Inc., a maker of womens’ purses and accessories, was sued by Kay’s Kloset, a Dallas retailer, after Leegin cut off shipments to Kay’s. Kay’s had been discounting Leegin’s wears.”
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smallfish@tech
So yeah, that particular work project just keeps getting better. Today I got this in my email from the manufacturer of a critical component, reaffirming my personal “If it’s not in-stock on Digikey, I do not specify it in my design” policy. […] The <display> is on hold. There are no technical reasons but it
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WinLIRC stuff
Yes, it means I’m hacking around on a MythTV setup again. LIRC is Linux Infrared Remote Control, a program for receiving keypresses from a remote control (TVs, etc.) on the computer, and/or blasting out simulated remote-control keypresses. WinLIRC is the same thing, for a Windows box*. Its documentation is a bit lacking however, so this
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IT Groaner
Q: What’s the last thing you do when you know your hard drive’s about to die? A: Read its last writes…
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It’s a mean old bitch and it has stupid name, bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch
So, I got an email back today from a contractee, whereupon I learned: 1) A technology I created, which I envisioned as having significant pro-consumer subversive uses, will instead be used as a carrier for evil (“hey, can it collect usage data to sell to credit-card companies every time they use it? That would be
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Haulin’ Gluteus, and maybe kickin’ some!
So, this weekend was the weekend of much furniture and other Stuff hauling, helping Kr* move into the World’s Tiniest Apartment in Waltham. Here is where our childhood Tetris addictions paid off. Budget Rent-a-moving-truck was supposed to have the 10-footer we reserved, but, whoopsie-doodle, didn’t. So the options were either a smaller van, or a
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- Das Blinkenlichten – wearable lighting
- Goldmine Electronics LCD pinout (mini-teardown)
- Mosquino: an Arduino-based energy harvesting development board
- Pick and Place Project
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