The Blag of The Ffejery

Hiatus

Jeffery MacEachern — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 05:31:31 +0000

School and Life have taken up all of my time. I will eventually find my way back here to blog, but not for a while still. In the mean time, I have taken up photography as a way to relieve stress when the lab is destroying my mind. If you’re interested, please check out my gallery at https://secure.flickr.com/photos/ffejery .

Until Later,

– Jeffery

Filed under: Uncategorized

Here is a thing that I made

Jeffery MacEachern — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 05:56:52 +0000

NyanCat: 555 Timer Edition! Derived from the original while waiting for friends to make dinner. You’re welcome, Internets. You’re welcome.

Please Share and Enjoy!

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: 555, cat, chip, ic, nyan, nyan cat, poptart cat, pulse, timer

Oh look, a blog post

Jeffery MacEachern — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 07:21:31 +0000

I have been quite busy with courses for months now, and haven’t had much time or content to post here. However, I have recently decided to start pretending to be a photographer, and to that end, I purchased a new camera. My old one, a Canon Powershot A430, was actually a graduation present from high school, which dates it just a bit. It wasn’t all that bad, actually, but it certainly wasn’t good, and it didn’t have enough knobs to to twiddle for my liking, or as much zoom as I wished for. I picked up a Canon Powershot SX 130 IS on sale for $215, and I’m quite happy with it. Although I didn’t consider this much when purchasing it, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the video mode. I was also rather amused by the suggestion in the quickstart guide that if your computer was too old to play back 720p video, you should transfer it back to the camera and watch it there. From the phrasing, I assume that the intent was to stop people from thinking their camera had malfunctioned if the video playback stuttered and dropped frames all over the place.

If you’d like you can check out my gallery over at Flickr, although as I write this I realize that only one photo yet posted there was actually taken with the new camera.

That’s all for now. Hopefully I can come up with some more “normal” posts later.

- Ffej

Oh yeah, and P.S. regarding the footnote two posts back, I did finish off the code for the KFilePlaces* Activity support, but unfortunately due to being swamped with school, it didn’t make the freeze, and is in fact still sitting on ReviewBoard. But it works!

Filed under: Uncategorized

Filters Woo

Jeffery MacEachern — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:13:26 +0000

Woo

Our Oscilloscopes can’t measure the response over about 9000Hz, hence the garbage data. -160dB/Decade rolloff – Woo! 23 hours without sleep – not so much Woo.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Death to the LightBox!

Jeffery MacEachern — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 08:22:13 +0000

Just a quick note here, as I’m swamped in classes. Pro-tip: If you can’t stand the new Facebook lightbox – especially on your phone – then just hit Ctrl+R, and it will load the old image page as usual. This works great on the N900, making browsing galleries sane again.

Update: On a tip from a friend, I tried out this Greasemonkey script, which not only allows you to kill the Lightbox permanently, but also adds a heck of a lot of good functionality and anti-annoyance features to Facebook. This can also be used on the N900 through the Greasemonkey port to microB (or whatever they call the stock Maemo browser these days). I think the package is in Extras-devel.

On an aside, I hear rumblings of KActivityConsumer & Friends moving to kdelibs/experimental, which would mean I could finally get my patch for KFilePlaces finished off and shipped. This would let you show Places that are relevant to your current activity, while conserving space when not needed. Yay!

Filed under: KDE, Uncategorized

KNotify Plugins (Or, “What I’ve been working on, now with details”)

Jeffery MacEachern — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 09:54:52 +0000

I didn’t say much in my last post because I was still working things out. Now I’m pleased to say that support for notification plugins has hit KNotify in KDE trunk as of last week. The whole thing started when I was talking with some friends about an idea I’d been tossing around to forward notifications from my laptop/desktop to my N900 over the LAN, so that I wouldn’t miss important events when away frm the keyboard. Aaron Seigo pointed out that the behaviour I wanted could be done nicely with KNotify, but that it currently required notification actions to be compiled in. With a lot of help from him and others, I got going, and managed to get it done before the freeze. I still have done no work towards my original idea, but I had some realizations while working on the code. For one thing, notifications on the G15 keyboard’s auxiliary LCD are darn cool. For another, it occurred to me that as KDE technologies move to the mobile world, and other non-traditional form-factors, there will be devices with blinky lights (OHAI, N900) , vibration motors, and who knows what other hardware that someone might want to utilize for notifications. Now a vendor or developer can write a simple plugin and ship it for a specific device or use-case.

However… there is a caveat, and that is that there is currently no UI support for the extra plugins. This means that for now you will have to enable plugins for each event individually by mucking around in configuration files. I’ll be working on resolving this for 4.7.

If anyone wants to try writing plugins, it’s quite straightforward. Start by taking a look at the example code here.

The important bits:

Derive from KNotifyPlugin, and link to libknotifyplugin
Implement the pure virtual KNotifyPlugin::optionName() method, and set it to return an identifying name for your plugin. This is what will go in the “Action=” field in the config files
Implement KNotifyPlugin::notify(), and do whatever the heck you want to – it’s that simple. If you want to make a robotic bunny jump up and down every time you receive an e-mail, do so – and send me a picture.
Make sure to include the macro at the bottom: e.g. K_EXPORT_KNOTIFY_METHOD(g15message, NotifyByG15Message), where “g15message” is the library name, and “NotifyByG15Message” is your plugin class name.
Once your plugin is installed, edit any fooapprc.notifyrc file in $kdeprefix/share/config, and add the name (as mentioned above) to the “Action=” field, optionally using |’s to separate multiple actions.

Comments appreciated, especially if you write any plugins. Code is also appreciated at the Gitorious link above; the G15 plugin is rather rudimentary right now, for example, and could use some love.

Cheers!

P.S. If you like this, there’s a very lonely Flattr button sitting in the sidebar. *wink*

Filed under: GNU/Linux, KDE, projects, Software Tagged: kde, knotify

What I’ve been working on…

Jeffery MacEachern — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 03:45:17 +0000

Birthdays == shiny new gadgets

Jeffery MacEachern — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 06:28:57 +0000

Today was my birthday, and while unfortunately it was a work day, I nonetheless had some fun. Also my house didn’t burn down, which helped keep me in a good mood. I’ve been quite busy this summer with my work term at university, but that will be finishing up in August, and hopefully I’ll have more free time (ha!) soon. One of the highlights of today was receiving a present which several of my friends bought for me. I’ve always loved gadgety watches, and successfully convinced my mom as a kid to buy me “programmable” watches from Casio. These models cost around $50, and could be “programmed” with a whole *30* phone numbers. That seemed pretty cool at the time, but not so much anymore. Conveniently enough, while in the company of said friends, I came across Texas Instruments’ eZ430-Chronos watch-based development kit on Hack a Day. This is truly Programmable – in C – and has Open Source firmware available. I think they got the hint after the third time I had to mop up the drool from my keyboard.

The eZ430-Chronos looks very interesting in terms of hardware, boasting a 915MHz RF transceiver, a 3-axis accelerometer, a temperature sensor, an air pressure sensor, and a 20MHz TI SoC. What surprised me, though, is that the devkit is actually usable as a watch day-to-day. It certainly does not qualify as a fashion accessory, but it’s not monstrously large either.

Anyhow, it’s Late O’Clock, and I’m moving in two days, so I won’t get much time to play with it right away, but I’ll try to post some further impressions next week.

- The Ffej

Filed under: Gadgets Tagged: Chronos, devkit, eZ430, hackable, open source, Texas Instruments, TI, watch

New Laptop!

Jeffery MacEachern — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 09:32:40 +0000

I recently received a new laptop, along with a laser printer, and a few other goodies. This was much-needed, as my poor dual-core Atom desktop was in its death throes (after only a bit over a year), and… well… it was a dual-core Atom… ‘nough said. Because I was being given the laptop, I didn’t get to choose the model, however, it worked out perfectly. I have a shiny new Dell Latitude E6500, with a pretty decent configuration, and an epic warranty – and in terms of Linux compatibility, it’s amazing. By “amazing”, I mean that it was up and running out-of-the-box (except for the internal mic, which I haven’t bothered looking into yet) with a pre-release of an Alpha of a LiveCD of Chakra (and while that is kind of the point of Chakra, they’re a new, in-development distrolet, so I was impressed). The laptop is in Dell’s mid-range business line, so it isn’t flashy or very sleek, but is quite capable. My configuration was around $1400 CAD, and includes the following:

2.53GHz Core 2 Duo
2GB RAM (upgraded to 4GB after sale)
160GB SATA HDD
nVidia Quadro NVS 160M graphics
1440×900 LCD (it’s a nicer panel than most, too – crisp and bright)
Intel WiFi Link 5100 / Wired Intel Ethernet / Broadcom Bluetooth
Webcam/ExpressCard/PC Card/SD reader (apparently supports SDIO), smart card reader (contact-less as well)/eSATA/4xUSB (one USB port is combo with eSATA)
VGA/DisplayPort video outputs

All in all, pretty decent. Out of that list, the only things I haven’t tested are the SD reader and eSATA, which shouldn’t be an issue, the DisplayPort output, which is useless to me, and the smart card reader, which apparently should work if I had a card to test it with. Everything else works fine with Arch Linux/Chakra, including the webcam, which was a nice surprise. In my fairly standard 64-bit installation, it was detected and working automatically in both Kopete and Skype. The ports are sensibly placed, although the optical drive’s eject button is not; I regularly eject the drive when moving the laptop off of or onto my lap. The dual-pointing (touchpad and nub) is a nice option to have, although the gap between the touchpad and the upper set of mouse buttons is a cruft-magnet, and probably will need a good air-dusting periodically. There are no media buttons aside from the Volume controls, which is a bit frustrating, coming from a G15 keyboard on my desktop, but that’s to be expected with a business-class laptop. While chunky, it is nicely built, with a brushed-finished (plastic) lid, and a single easily-removable access panel on the underside. The BIOS setup has a lot of useful options, and is a new-fangled type that allows mouse naviagation (Ooh! Shiny widget hover effects!). One in particular is the ability to provide power to the USB port(s?*) even when the computer is completely powered down, and also to cut off that power at a specified battery level, so as not to kill your battery. This is a convenient feature for people who are travelling or otherwise away from power for long periods, and don’t have a charger for their mobile devices with them. (* It didn’t specify explicitly in the settings if it worked for all ports, but one of the four has a raised lightning bolt icon beside it, so I’m guessing it’s just that one.) I haven’t actually gotten this working yet, but I haven’t looked into it much, either. If anyone knows anything, please let me know. This model also comes standard with a three-year on-site warranty, which I got upgraded to a four-year, NBD on-site warranty with accidental damage coverage.

For anyone looking for a reasonably-priced, Linux-friendly laptop for university, I would give it a thumbs-up – in fact, the standard-issue units my university loans out at the library are the same model in a lesser configuration. Just make sure you don’t get Broadcom wireless, or any other nasties.

As for the printer, it’s a basic B/W Brother Laser model, the HL-2140. It prints nicely enough, and with my light usage, the starter toner cartridge – rated at 1000 pages – should last me several years. However, I wouldn’t recommend this for use with Linux. It does work properly, but I think the feature set is limited in comparison to Windows, and the installation may be painful, depending on your distribution. If you install it wrong, it may just spew blank pages at you for a while, or do other fun things. Also, while Brother provides a driver, it requires a wrapper for CUPS, and the driver itself has a rather odd license, which essentially says “do you what you like with it, but we’ll make it hard for you”. I am grateful to Brother for releasing a driver, and for testing it with as many distros/releases as they have, but they could make the process a bit cleaner and less confusing.

Odds & Ends

- I may have some interesting bits to share soon regarding a gadget I picked up last week, but I’ll have to see how much time I get to play with it between assignments, exams, and research – not to mention looking for a job and housing this summer.

- I’d like to give a plug to this album by Rob Costlow and allMeadow, which is an awesome collaborative album mixing soothing piano melodies from Rob Costlow with the electronic music of allMeadow. It makes nice coding music for when you need something low-key, and is available to stream on Jamendo (linked), or to buy on Magnatune.

- A big Security Fail in a promotional product from Staples (via Schneier \o/). This reminds me of another product, although at least that one was a bit more subtle.

Cheers,

- The Ffej

Filed under: Gadgets, GNU/Linux Tagged: allmeadow, archlinux, brother, dell, e6500, hl-2140, laptop, linux, linux compatibility, music, piano, printer, review, rob costlow, trance

Research Project, and Fresh Code…

Jeffery MacEachern — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 02:20:56 +0000

This is just a quick post before I run off to dinner (yes, I will be running). If I didn’t previously mention it, my N900 is on extended loan from my university, through a gracious donation from Nokia for our research project. (Thanks, Nokia! ) I can’t currently go into too much detail about the project here, but it involves a nifty little sensor board connected via Bluetooth to the phone. The sensor in question is the VectorNav VN-100, an AHRS which combines an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer (all 3-axis) with a controller that handles communication and processing, all in a tiny surface-mount module. What’s nice about this product is that while it can output raw data if needed, it can also perform many useful operations internally, ranging from calculating attitude and heading, to compensating the magnetometer for known ferrous objects in the vicinity, to coordinate transformations of output to account for mounting orientation. Most of these can be configured by simply fiddling with a few registers; this can done over a UART or SPI interface (or on the dev board, RS-232 or USB through an FTDI bridge chip). VectorNav is quite a new company, but their product is promising, and they’ve been very helpful and accommodating in my dealings with them. Check them out!

Mmmm…. Code….

The first part of our work (or rather, that of one of our team members, Mark) to be released is a C library called libvnsupport, which implements the UART communication protocol used by the VN-100, allowing programmers to easily control the VN-100 and read various data from it. A basic test program is included, and you should be able to get up and running with the device fairly quickly. This library is almost complete, and can be found on SourceForge, under the LGPLv3 license. As noted on that page, it should work on any POSIX-based system, including Linux, Mac OSX, BSD systems, and also Cygwin or MinGW on Windows. The code was developed primarily on Mac OSX, and is being tested on an ongoing basis on Windows, Mac, and Maemo.

If and when we release more code or information, I’ll post it here. For now, hopefully someone finds libvnsupport useful.

- The Ffej

Filed under: GNU/Linux, Life, maemo, SFU Tagged: ahrs, code, imu, libvnsupport, linux, n900, open source, research, vectornav, vn100