Volcano.Newts.Org

I bought a Garmin Oregon 400t to Geocaching and using when I travel outside of the US. Google maps are great and quite convenient when you have a cell signal but I needed something better for travel to Europe and Asia.

I settled on the Garmin Oregon as a good model to download maps to. The trick now is to find maps.

Here are some sources:

Continue reading "Source of Garmin GPS Maps"

The link on how to use GSAK to get nifty stats on your geocaching.com profile:


http://geo-valley.com/how-to-hints-and-ideas/gsak/installing-gsak-macros-for-generating-stats

One of the moderators invited people to complain about the delay in fixing the bugs and upgrading the Samsung Moment so I obliged with a small rant. I didn't think it was that bad. Apparently I said something they didn't like:

Continue reading "HELP HELP! I am being OPPRESSED!"

I wanted a better camera than my pocket point-and-shoot and but I am wary about spending tons of money to get back into the SLR game. Back in the film days I found I rarely used my SLR in favor of a point-and-shoot so I didn't that to happen again. At the same time I do want some aperture control and better zoom and video capabilities.


I recently discovered "bridge" cameras...
Continue reading "New Canon SX20 Camera"

@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.

Finished. Hilarious at the end when he meets Oscar Wilde and Sherlock Holmes.

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"

You can Google for the specs but this new batwing fone appeared to be the best merger of the Sprint and Nextel. A cross between a Razr style and the iDen durability. It was enough I decided to replace my Sanyo SCP-7050.


The Sanyo was my first non Nextel CDMA phone for many years and I figured Nextel was being absorbed, I wasn't using Direct Connect any more and the first and only Bluetooth phone at the time, the i610, didn't play well in Hands Free mode with the Prius I would try a Japanese phone. Like the iDens 7050 was Mil spec for dust, vibration, etc. It was supposed to be faster for data and I traded off a larger more crisp display for one of the few sunlight readable displays out there.


The 7050 has been a great phone and works with the Prius and most other devices. The battery life is amazing with about two days normal use before charging even though I normally charge it every night. Even after 18 months of daily use the battery is not showing any signs of age. The audio was crisp and the display was bright and readable although not as good in the sun as the i600 was. The only real deficiency was the inability to transfer pictures with bluetooth except as part of a contact.


The GPS worked great with the Sprint Navigation which I used for one vacation and several smaller trips as well as checking traffic and stuff. It actually worked well for a small device.


And speaking of pictures it has no camera. Not that the cameras are that good but everyone else has one and my plan includes it but I couldn't use it.


So now enter the Renegade V950. Bluetooth, rugged, GPS, nice display, flip and a 2 megapixel camera. It also does Sprint TV and radio and plays MP3s. Looks like it has everything and the reviews were good although several mentioned the battery life sucked although there is a larger battery available. It also has a micro SD chip and micro USB for pictures and music.


My first impressions are very favorable. It has a lot of features and the speaker quality for the MP3s is better than expected. The size is great and it feels very nice in the hand. Audio quality is good. The Cons include some problems downloading apps and it hung up once and had to have the battery removed (is there a reset sequence?).


Oh yeh, to the comment about the battery life sucking I would add "On Ice!". It has so many features it really does suck down the juice. I can't get a get a full day out of it with normal use where normal use is maybe 5 minutes talk, a dozen texts, some browsing for a couple minutes and maybe a picture. Add video and MP3 and watching TV and it is much worse. I have bluetooth and Direct Connect on which uses more power but still, it is not acceptable for normal use with the current battery.


Some more specific comparisons:

Feel: 950 feels nice although I like the 7050 as well. In general I prefer "real" handsets over smaller toy phones.

Browsing and Download Speed: The 950 is MUCH faster. 3G really is nice.

TV, Radio: The video quality kind of sucks but it works and with the free content it is fun. I like it but I haven't been tempted to get premium shows.

Music: It plays your MP3s well and you can buy music very quickly and easily. It has a 2.5mm headset jack so you need an adaptor for normal headphones. This is a fail but I either use it with the speaker for convenience or bluetooth which works well.


Now for the specifics on the Renegade:

Continue reading "Motorola Renegade V950 Review and Comparison to Sanyo 7050"

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.