Author: W. Smith

W. Smithhttps://sesquibits.wordpress.com
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Arduino fun

an X-ray of my Arduino board

an X-ray of my Arduino board


Last night I started playing with my Arduino that I bought a long time ago. I’m programming it on my second laptop. That system is running Windows XP and off the network so I’m using a good bit of sneaker-net with it.

I installed a few things – Perl, Eclipse, the Arduino suite, the current version of Java, Visual Studio re-distribution kits. Although Java gave a warning, the only thing that refused to install was the Atmel studio. I’m doing Cygwin now…. I don’t know what to do without grep and find…

I also installed “shycis” which is a program that draws a little ripple around the cursor when you click. I like the visual feedback

I don’t really like the laptop. It’s old and the fan is noisy. The benefit is that it was free and I’ve got another desk to set it up on so my hardware mess on the desk doesn’t clutter up the software mess on the other desks.

So, my first program was pretty simple. Flash the Arduino LED at a increasing and decreasing pace. It’s pretty cute. Blinky lights are always nice to see–getting immediate, physical feedback for the code is a little intoxicating. It’s a couple levels beyond regular software development on the “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” scale.

I’m comfortable using wire wrap for semi-permanent prototypes, but also am looking for PCB manufacturers. Four that I know about:

http://www.pcbway.com/ Cheap PCB Prototype Manufacturer in China
http://dirtypcbs.com/ Dirt Cheap Dirty Boards
http://dev.dangerousprototypes.com/store/pcbs Dangerous Prototypes
https://oshpark.com/ OSH Park

I don’t have experience with any of these yet so I don’t know which are best.

If you’re interested… here I am on Hackaday https://hackaday.io/projects/hacker/95124

I’ve got one project I’m actively pursuing… The Mars Distance Calculator. Don’t have a good name for it. It’s supposed to keep a dynamic display of how far Mars is from your current location, updated as rapidly as the system can calculate it.

Original image: arduino-placement. By westfw [Image license ]

Recovery Words: Self-Castigation

Self-castigation: attacking oneself with severe criticism, reproof and punishment.

Before recovery, this can be a way of life. The shame of letting your family down again. The regret of losing a job by acting out at work. Everything is your fault and you can’t get out of it.

It seems that the people around you are not as hard on you as you are to myself. You see all the lies and secrets and know how badly you’ve really been doing. The family is ready to forgive you and your friends just hope you’ll get better. You’re out on your own in your own head and that makes it all worse.

After a while, the self-castigation can become as bad as the effects of the substances or not having them when you need them. If you’re so bad that you can’t even control it when you want to, your shame and guilt don’t have an answer. One conclusion is that punishment and criticism are the responses that make sense.

Once this attitude has taken hold, it takes a long time for it to go away. When you make a small mistake, it reminds you of past big ones. You get support from your friends and you’re glad they’re in your corner. It’s almost as if you have a resentment against yourself and can’t let it go.

It was a big relief when this attitude isn’t your first way to respond to your own mistakes. You talk to people who understand you and believe them when they say you’re doing well and that they are glad to see you or hear from you.

When you’re alone, it’s hard to find a balance, but with friends and people who care giving you support, you can get closer to self-acceptance.

Self-acceptance: To be contented with, appreciate and respect oneself.

Finding a piece of history

I was looking at the shelves next to my stereo tonight. Unexpectedly, I found a Mini Disc with some music on it. Of course, I don’t have a mini disc player so I can’t listen it.

Here is a picture. The disc was a promo sent out by Rolling Stone magazine. The copyright on the disc says 1994 so that’s been hiding on the shelf for 21 years without me realizing it! Online resources say that it was released on June 30, 1994. [For example Soul Asylum]

The outside looks like a 1/2 size floppy disc. The disc inside looks like a CD–silver and reflective.

I see people selling it on ebay in the $5 – $10 range.

Pictures of Rolling Stone Mini Disc

The Icosahedron

I’ve been planning to build a tensegrity icosahedron all summer. I’ve got all of the parts prepared and started putting it together today. Here are a couple of work-in-progress photos.

I build one small one several years ago out of thin wire and wooden sticks. This time I’m making something more permanent and bigger with steel pipes and wire ropes.

partially assembled sculpture

Icosahedron I

partially assembled icosahedron

Icosahedron II

Partially assembled Icosahedron

Icosahedron III

The third image is after I discovered that I have the cables tangled up. I’m having to disconnect them three at a time and then make each triangle not cross each other. This last one has 2 of 8 triangles corrected. I’ll make more progress tomorrow.

You can find more pictures: http://sesquicentennial.deviantart.com/gallery/10350831/Math-art

Autumn is drawing near

I was in the neighborhood today. The trees were tall and proud. Some were revealing a hint of their autumn splendor. Their leaves were blazing from their original green into oranges and reds.

The trees’ discarded leaves will cover my home soon. The yard will need to be raked—I enjoy the exercise. A gas-powered blower only pulls me away from my beloved nature. I relish the fresh breeze and cold sky.

The shining moon has changed each day this week. I saw it once more tonight. Soon the sky will be full of its glowing orb. I love the moon’s light and the silver sheen that comes from its celestial desert.

The trees are harbingers of a new season. Soon the sky will turn gray and cold. I will explore the world less. Eventually the moon will rise over a new season again. I will be waiting for the crocuses to return.

Climbing the Stairs

In the morning, I saw the sun rise over the neighbor’s house. It was a beautiful golden sun. I welcomed its warm glance into my window.

As I left the house for another day of my journey, the sky laughed into my ears. I heard a cricket symphony and I watched the breeze. Every time I turned, I saw another glorious vista. Each word I thought could not be set free. I was running across the sky and it was time to land in the waves.

A small light filled my room. I remembered that the darkness is gone forever. A word in the book was enough to open my eyes. I was in love and I could never forget where I have been. The walls breathed my voice and the dust fled into my shadow.

I am in today. I am in this hour. I am in this now.

Why Bad Things Happen to Good People

The perspective of faith says that if God is all good, how could He allow something bad to happen to people? This can lead to the spiritual challenge that how could God have let X happen, he must not be there or may not love me or I can’t have faith in Him anymore. "God is good, All the time" David Woo

However, a different understanding on the classic question “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People?” is that bad things don’t happen to good people. It’s that undesirable things happen to good people–just like undesirable things happen to anyone. It’s not easy (not promising I can always do it), but the events aren’t bad unless the participant calls them bad.

I may not want to have cancer, wreck my car or lose a family member, but that doesn’t mean that having those things happen is bad from the perspective of faith. When I had my heart attack, that certainly wasn’t something I wanted, but it’s led to many other good things. The perspective on the first day after the heart attack has evolved into a more accepting attitude. Since then I’ve been filled with gratitude. Also I’ve developed deeper relationships with my family and friends.

From a post-modern perspective, things are what we call them. If I say I’m depressed, I may be magnifying the problem when I’m just having a sad mood. I can get clinical depression, but if I don’t have any ambition on a given day, it may be just part of the ebb and flow of my life. The words I choose can give me the empowerment to overcome the difficulty with my own resources.

I’ve heard people call themselves lazy when, to my perspective, they are just procrastinating and labeling themselves unnecessarily. If they call themselves lazy, then they don’t have to challenge themselves because “that’s just the way I am” instead of working to break out of a pattern.

If I would call my child “shy,” that’s going to cement in my mind and in the child’s mind, that he or she is going to react to new situations a certain way. Then, these become self-fulfilling prophecies. The child folds up like a fan and stops exploring social possibilities and new experiences.

So along those lines, I’m not harmed unless I believe I’m harmed. Bad things don’t happen to me, undesirable things happen to me. Bad things don’t happen to good people. Life doesn’t always give me what I want, but I can move beyond anything that I face.

Original image: God is good, all the time. By David Woo [Image license]

Scoping out the neighborhood

I’m getting interested in some digital hardware projects. I’ve got plenty of supplies from over the years.

To really get into it, I need to repair my oscilloscope. I believe it will cost about $1000 to repair it and calibrate it. I used to work at a company that has calibration and repair as one of their core services, so since they’re close, they’d be a good place for it. I’ve also got a USB logic analyzer. The manufacturer doesn’t exist any more and it only runs on Windows XP. I can run the XP in a virtual machine, but I might be able to get a dinosaur laptop that could be more convenient.

I’ve looked around and a comparable scope is a lot more than $1k. There are some scopes less than $1000, but they aren’t nearly as capable as what I have.

I’ve got a few different things I can do. One of thing in my toolbox is a Xilinx FPGA starter kit. I haven’t really done more than open the box and play with the design language. I also have an Arduino that is idle, a temperature gauging chip and a few other Atmel AVR processors.

On an unrelated topic… I’ve been wanting to clean my house’s gutters. I was texting a friend and found out that he and his dad have started a gutter cleaning business. My friend said that they would come by soon to give a quote.

There’s more than enough ways to spend money….

Taking over and other notes

I went out and looked at my morning glory today. It’s taking over my dome. I just wish it would start blooming. It’s got gorgeous big leaves. I took some pictures but haven’t looked how they came out. The leaves were wet so that might help the images seem a little more interesting.

I’m thinking of buying a Moto X2. I have to decide whether the $300 is worth spending to get a better GPS. The specs say that the Moto has more GPS standards that it supports than my Galaxy S3. I need to look at more reviews, but one forum and people criticizing the S3 and praising the Motorola phones. Some of the people in the forum were confused and thought that the question was to find a more accurate GPS which doesn’t make much sense, but other people understood correctly that he was asking about reliability and not accuracy. I’m not able to trust the old phone for going on trips because it drops signal way too easily and takes forever to get it back. I’m hoping to keep my current phone in my car without a SIM for the purpose of its camera. Nobody has anything good to saw about the Moto X2’s camera.

I was trying to edit the previous Journal article on deviantArt to fix a few typos but Fella woouldn’t let me. I send a support request, so hope it gets solved soon. Here’s my main gallery: http://sesquicentennial.deviantart.com/gallery/

Tomorrow is the first day of me not taking any classes. (In other words, classes start tomorrow and I won’t be taking any.) I’m not sure how long the library access will stay live.

I was listening to a cooking program on NPR this afternoon. It was striking how much the show host was including wine as an ingredient or giving the type of wine that goes best with the dish. It was really enjoyable to see how enthusiastic she was and swift on her feet to answer questions and describe fairly intricate dishes from memory.

I’ve got 7 containers of crushed tomatoes in my freezer last night. I put up about 15 tomatoes yesterday. There are 7 or 8 on the vine that are close to being ripe, so I might harvest a couple more tomorrow. I haven’t made soup in forever and the tomatoes would be a good ingredient, or perhaps to make pasta sauce too. I was thinking today to go searching thru the local libraries’ catalogs to find some new cookbooks. The radio program inspired me to get creative. I have a PLAC card so that I can borrow books from any public library in the state.

I had an incident yesterday. I was leaving the gym and when I got out I had a tire that was completely flat. At first I didn’t think I could take off the lug nuts but I thought about a better way and took off the lug nuts. A guy that was exercising outside came out and helped a little. I had a problem getting the tire off the axle. I ended up calling the roadside assistance service from my insurance.

The service guy pulled up on a motorcycle and had an electric drill to quickly tighten the lug nuts. He showed me that I could have fixed the tire without his help… I just needed to bang the flat tire’s rim with the spare tire. It’s an example of me not thinking outside of the box to figure out how to use the tools I had to solve a problem. Today I had dad show me the right place to put the lift for the car. Yesterday I was too close to the wheel and broke a plastic clip on part of the fairing below the wheel. Now I know where to put the lift next time.

So, several good things happened yesterday that seemed to be God’s help. I parked the car facing north, which I usually don’t do. This meant that while I was waiting for the service call to come, I wasn’t baking in the sun. Also, because I was parked that way, the tire was immediately visible as flat and I didn’t have to start driving off to realize the tire was flat and possibly damage the wheel or tire worse. In addition, while changing the tire, I saw the screw that punctured it and it was in the middle of the tread which should be an easy place to repair.

Where is Trump going to send his immigrants

For some people, Donald Trump’s promise to deport all of the illegal aliens sounds like a great idea. Their thought is that these people are criminals (if only because they’re here illegally) so why not send them back to where they came from?

I’ve been thinking about that, the idea of deporting 11+ million illegal immigrants. It seems completely an un-fulfillable promise shot down by the simple question “Where will these people go?”

Suppose we determine (not sure how) that, say, 2.8 million of these people came from Mexico. Do you really think that Mexico would allow us to drop off that many people at the Juarez and Tijuana border crossing and welcome them home? Any country that could be the destination for the deportations would be foolish to allow them in. Mexico doesn’t have room for all of these people. Guatemala doesn’t have a place for all these people. Any other country that we would try to deport them to isn’t going to let them in either.

It seems to me that the realistic outcome of deporting all of the illegal immigrants is that they immediately transition from being immigrants to being refugees. Where will they go? I can imagine big internment camps. Instead of feeding themselves, they’ll be the responsibility of the state and federal governments to feed. Instead of being responsible for their own medical expenses, suddenly, they’re not responsible for anything.

The proposal doesn’t stand up to even the simplest attempt at logic.

Where are these people going to go?