Volcano.Newts.Org

@infinitesummer is the twitter feed for the Infinite Summer project to get lots of people to read David Foster Wallace's tome Infinite Jest. There is a rough schedule as a guideline to keep people moving along and allow discussion of the book without too many spoilers for others.


I plan on hosting several meetup tweetups to hang out with like minded readers to read and socialize. Since I live near Greeley Park and it is an ideal location I suspect most of them will take place there.


We will be using the twitter hashtag #infnashua while the general hashtag is #infsum


So get thee to a bookseller and pick up a copy of Infinite Jest and follow @infintesummer on Twitter.


Oh and one more thing. Feel free to use the #infnashua tag to make your own readup tweetup. I will try to be there.

Like @catdoor I wanted to tweet access to the house for humans too like I have for the cat. Schlage has a new line of Z-wave enabled locks and deadbolts.





Continue reading "@humandoor micasaverde Z-Wave enabled Schlage lock on twitter"

Simple concept, put an RFID chip on your cat and a reader by the door. Tweet whenever the cat uses the door.


The reader is a APSX 15.56MHZ RW-210 reader. The RFID is a Sakymat LOGI TAG aka "laundry tag". The server is a Hush mini-ITX machine with a 32G CF chip instead of a hard drive. The code is written in Python running on Fedora Core 10.


Pictures will follow, the code is below:


Continue reading "RFID @catdoor for Twitter, Phase 1"

To get the slots and the screws just right I used a Sherline tabletop CNC milling machine to cut the screw slots and openings. Only a little rework and it came out pretty good.



Being new to machine a g-codes and also being a programmer I cobbled up some python to calculate the angles and emit the g-code used by the linuxcnc program. The code is shown below:


Continue reading "Machining Mars Etek Backplate with Python"

The problem: I have some Windows clients in Borland C++ and Python 2.6 talking to a server (in this case Borland C++ but it shouldn't matter as this seems to be a client issue). The client opens a socket to the server, sends some data, gets some data back. Fine. But if it does this very very fast or there are several clients running at once it will soon FAIL with

WSAEADDRINUSE 10048 "Address already in use"

A page for Pyro has this to say along with a very simple program to replicate the problem:

There seems to be a problem (bug? feature?) in the Windows TCP stack that makes your program crash if it creates a lot of socket connections to the same location. Or maybe even just socket connections. I have no idea what is causing this, but it can be easily reproduced by the following code:

Continue reading "Windows Sockets Error 10048 and TIME_WAIT"

I needed to automate some lab tests involving current measurements with a Fluke 187 meter and thought I would share my results. Since the other half of the code I was interfacing with was in python the best way to get the current from the meter is with python. I have an original RS-232 cable and also a newer USB cable with with a Fluke 289 meter. The code is below but to summarize my results:

• Serial works fine.
• I could never get the USB to work. The driver installs it at COM17 and I can open the port but then I get portNotOpenError when I try to talk to it.
• Fluke 187 baud rate is 9600
• Fluke 289 baud rate is 115.2K (they say you need the USB to work but I had no problem with my limited testing)
• On Windows you need to install pyserial.
• The string format is a little different on the 289.

Source code:

Continue reading "Interfacing to Fluke Meters with Python"

From sears.com description for a slow cooker:

Rival Round CrockPot Slow Cooker features a one telephone dial turns to heat up settings, low-toned, high-pitched, and stay fresh warm up in opposition to serving, and a ruby short indicates the force is on. The sonorous stoneware earthenware jar lifts come out of the warming immoral in quest of leisurely cleanup acknowledgments to a stick-resistant finishing, and is prepossessing plenty to do from right-hand at the tabularise. While the earthenware jar is whole with a view to habituate in the z


Rival 6-Quart Round CrockPot Slow Cooker is ideal in quest of a big fellowship or a dinner party company, this round CrockPot from Rival is in a clean neat manner intentional and unsubdivided to run!

This was maybe a half-dream. At the time I thought I was awake but now that I am really awake (at least I assume I am awake, if you are reading this then I really am awake) I realize that I was probably dreaming.


The dream was the mechanical design of my El Ninja electric motorcycle. In particular I came up with the idea of welding captive nuts to the ends of the box stock for the cross members. Also to separate the two frame members and perhaps make the top one a turn-buckle even.


And the amazing thing I think these are still good ideas in the light of day.

Now that the bike is in my garage I can finish stripping it. I also mounted the new sprocket and cleaned some things up. The big hurdle now is figuring out the lower frame and motor mount. Once there I just need to get a new chain and I should have all the parts. Oh and I should also get some new cotter pins. No sense re using the one on the axle.




Here's a pic show the difference between the new and the old rear sprockets:


Continue reading "Almost Done (not)"

My original design was to use 1" angle iron to make a cage to hold two layers of two batteries each. It would be made structural as it fills the place where the motor was which was also integral to the structure of the bike since there is no lower frame member. The Lectra is very similar to what I was thinking:



Continue reading "Frame and Battery Mount"

http://www.electricmotion.org/

this place is odd sometimes. I had a Bladerunner moment the other evening. first the air is filled with smog and chinese dust. that makes the sky look like a tv tuned to a blank channel. then coming out of a restaurant the other evening they had an ad truck (truck with video advertising and blaring audio) drive by as a helicopter flew low over the buildings. totally like a scene in Bladerunner.


the factory I have been visiting is brand new and super modern looking. in a retro way. in the cafeteria on the top floor the whole place has glass walls looking out over the valley and mountains and the decor is like 50's future with pastel yellow and lime green furniture and the workers in the cafeteria in matching uniforms. with the chinese dust the sky has a strange hazy colored look to it so it felt like the mars base from total recall.

The Goal: I have a linux based embedded appliance that I need to find and configure on a typical automatic DHCP network.

The Solution:Universal Plug and Play. If it all works correctly you can have an icon representing your appliance or device magically pop up on Windows "Network Places" in about 20 minutes.


Basically you download the pupnp.lib package from sourceforge and configure/make/install it and try the sample devices. When that works, modify the appropriate XML and HTML files.


And there you go! But... things are never quite that easy...
Continue reading "MAKE UPnP FAST"

This video

is very close to what I am doing. He has a bigger Ninja and maybe larger batteries. And a more powerful motor. But a great video and it looks like he did a great job.