chhhhildren's day!

dude, i just remembered! :D
this is june 1st, children's day! happy happy joy joy
and one or two days ago was something like... international anti-smoking day
i told my friends to smoke a cigar in celebration
maybe on international aids-fighting day or whatever it's called (here in romania we hear names translated in romanian, and translation is often times sloppy)
...maybe on anti-aids day i'll just unplug my computer so it's unable to connect to the "@home" grid and compute anti-aids molecules
well, what can i say
it's children's day
i'm not happy, cheerful or gay
but at least it's not valentine's pay :D

bluecrap

i've recently bought two of the cheapest usb bluetooth modules i could find. the purpose was to a) hack into the pcb and use an uart instead of usb or b) use the usb whole and build a host in case (a) fails. and presto, cheap bulltooth for embedded projects.

what i've got:
btw, you also cannot change the MAC/BD addr. I mean, you can edit it, but it won't change. Which is understandable, because after all that's a virtual net adapter over the bluecrap device. But you also cannot change that from anywhere else. That's right. All devices have the same 11:11:11:11:11:11 address, which of course makes them noninteroperable. Fun.
Note that one can compile the bdaddr that comes with blueZ and use that. Problem solved.
FYI, IVT makes the driver and application, and the hardware is pretty common: ISSC chips, the pcb is identical to the one (currently) seen on wikipedia (the one with a lot of unpopulated parts) and it just has a different plastic cover.

Rants aside, I think the picture perfectly exemplifies the concept of designing software and writing code with one or both hands inside one's underpants, a concept that I am trying to raise awareness towards. That is the sole reason I posted it.

42x0rn355

it is certainly possible to squeeze out every bit of performance from some given hardware, but, even though cute, it is most certainly wrong.
it takes too much time, it's prone to bugs, it darkens the mind, poisons the body and soul, and kills the spirit. so does not following the methodology agreed upon from the start.

this being said, following in no particular order are some of the nicest moments from this years' Suceavean Hard&Soft contest.

- having to lean over the window to catch 802.11 signal
- rum chocolate, chili, bitter and beer
- blackscreening the macbook
- le compteur des coups de foudre (or smth like that)
- ... which remained zero even after two heavy thunderstorms
- >:P lightning flash counter!!
- i'm donald duck in space. now i'll just swipe this rfid card over hereah, and now i'm a metallic alien and i will conquer ... i will... conquer ... this hallway! yeah. that's right.
- can you ctrl-alt-del a mac? no. why? simple. cause there's no delete key.
- gimme some potato soup please, and some potato mash with fried potatoes
- now i'll just put this teaspoon in my mouth in order to decrease my impedance
- the more times i do it, the more time it takes for the application to respond to my keystroke!
- a PA system! cool! let's throw RF at it!
- they got a great signal, but they cheated.
- i should've installed linux on it.

sincere thanks and congratulations to the organizers, sponsors and jury.
it was great. i'm so sorry it's over. hope they keep organizing it for many decades to come.

tzatziki falafel sarmale*

*food items.
So I have to design this circuit that allows you to select an ADC's input range. After iterating through 4 topologies and twiddling some resistor values, I managed to get the 1 volt scale right, but instead of 5 volts full scale on the other setting, I got, you guessed it, 6.66.
Update: after one more hour of calculations, it finally works on 3 out of 4 settings. But when I apply a 1V input, I get, you guessed it, 666mV instead of 2.5V output.
Update: no problem, I've since mathematically proven that none of my topologies would have worked, and found one that kind of did.

nightmadness

Last night I dreamt I was out on a boatride with the Pope. I was rowing the small boat on a quiet, shady forest lake, and we were talking. But then they started charging. We had to run. We got out of the boat and started running. The sun had set and we were still running. We were running downhill through the forest, then through some sand, and finally I reached a town. It was dark and cold in the railway station. I met with some friends, we were accomodated in a crowded, but welcoming room, where we made even more friends, and then we started discussing the tasks ahead. Then I phoned someone to tell another friend to move his ass over (by means of a train). Then I tried to accelerate the heating of some food by burning gas in a bowl.
I know. I'm deranged.

happy sad

singles awareness day, feb. 13th.
gives you somewhat more perceived freedom.
unlocks the animal in thee
i'm deranged.

pigasus

Q: what do you get when you cross-breed a flying horse with a pig?
A: swiss cheese spliced with chalk, and a beard.