| 1 | Auto | I suppose automatically choose all settings |
| 2 | Landscape (on dial) | I suppose this focuses far. Flash is off, shutter is slow (1/8s) ISO is set up/td> |
| 3 | Close up (on dial) | I suppose this focuses near. Flash is off, ISO bumped up. |
| 4 | SCN/Self Portrait | I suppose this focuses at arm's length... Flash is on |
| 5 | SCN/Backlight | I suppose this readies the camera to try to overexpose a bit... to capture dark subjects due to a light source behind the subject. Flash is on aut/redeye |
| 6 | SCN/Night Portrait | Thi can allow long shutter mode and defaults to Auto flash |
| 7 | SCN/Portrait | This is the fairly fast shutter mode with large aperture for taking stills of people. Flash is on auto/redeye |
| 8 | SCN/Sport | This is the fast shutter with flash on and high ISO |
| 9 | SCN/Children | This probably tries to keep both shutter fast and aperture small to have great depth of field to keep memories of the moment... I suppose ISO is sacrificed? Flash is on auto/redeye |
| 10 | SCN/Party | I suppose this readies the camera for dark, indoor shots. Flash is on auto/redeye reduction |
| 11 | SCN/Beach | I suppose this readies the camera for high light areas |
| 12 | SCN/Snow | I suppose this readies the camera for high light areas, but also have special whitebalance for snow reflections. |
November 6, 2013
I found that ouka had died. Looks like dead battery syndrome. Replaced the
CR2032 and all is up again.
November 4, 2013
I submitted my ballot for tomorrow's election... Please out of state people,
donate but don't try to influence.
November 3, 2013
Found a broken Kodak C633. Its battery door was torn off. I tried putting
batteries in and shorting the open end but it didn't work. I found the
interlock switch and defeated it with a piece of foam and tape, now putting
in batteries works.
The camera is fairly ho-hum compared to others I have. It unfortunately does
not support any manual modes and does not have an autofocus lamp. It however
does have one of those USB-8 like my Nikon, and supports PIMA 15740/PTP
over usb much like the Canon and Nikon.
Onwards to thinking about how to make a new battery cover. Don't I wish I had
the 3D printer or perhaps even a CNC router will do the job.
October 30, 2013
Well, the wee hours of the morning it's thundersleeting. Nasty weather.
Perhaps there won't be any kiddos trick-or-treating this year...
October 22, 2013
Got a SI3BG Geiger-Mueller tube. These aren't really sensitive but are cheap
tubes. Working voltage 380V-460V 260-330V change, 15-20µA working
current, 8x56mm. Hacked up a 555 (astable, 1k/10K/0.01µF) to a
3.25mH inductor switch mode boost converter,
seems at around 16V input I can get around 380V output with a 2SC2979 switch.
Need to get some radioactive test sources...
October 20, 2013
Well, Dollar Tree sometimes has some good deals on USB stuff, oddly enough.
Stuff that you'd probably get through Meritline or Dealextreme, and maybe even
cheaper to boot, and of course, instant gratification.
| USB car charger - 1x5V@1A (white) They also have a black version. | I think this uses a mc34063, at least the 2-port version uses it - but this chip really is being stressed at 1A. I bought a couple of these when they were offering 2 output receptacles but they've dropped to 1. The 2-output version was nonstandard and probably tailored to iPhones - at least the "A" port. The B port, which only has +5 and GND connected, I modified by solderring the D+ and D- pins together. This made it compliant with a standard "dumb" USB charge port. Modifying the "A" port requires quite a bit more work - have to isolate the D-pin that's shorted to +5V. Supplying 1A to the "A" port and 500mA to the "B" port will likely kill the supply, but the 1-port version can't have this issue... |
| M-USB A to M-USB A (white, 5') | I have no idea what this is for, it is a nonstandard cable |
| M-USB A to F-USB A (white, 5') | USB Extension cord. |
| M-USB A to M-USB B (white, 5') | Standard USB cable |
| M-USB A to M-mUSB B (white, 5') | Mini USB cable |
| M-USB A to M-µUSB B (white, 5') | Micro USB cable. This probably tends to go OOS very quickly as it's used ubiquitously. However I found the charging quality of the cable to merely be OK at first but degrades rapidly. |
| M-USB A to M-mUSB 8 (white, 5') | I was wonderring about this one for a long time, and finally found out - this is used on some Nikon, Pentax, Minolta, and Panasonic digital cameras. |
| M-USB A to M-mUSB B (black, 4' retractable) | Mini USB retractable cable |
| M-USB A to M-mUSB B (black, 2") and M-USB A to F-USB A (black, 2") | Well, not sure what this was targeted for either, but at least it can be used for Mini-USB |
October 19, 2013
Well, I just stepped into the world of SLR cameras, specifically digital.
I got a Nikon D5100. It's quite a bit different than my P&S cameras, and
its sensor is quite a bit "cleaner" than my Olympus - no funny speckles at
high ISO/long exposure times. I haven't totally gotten used to the menus,
it's quite a bit different than my Canon, with no doubt.
The local water district/water company replaced my water meter with an electronic meter. I don't understand why. It's wireless read, which probably is their main focus to reduce the number of meter readers... Even worse, the meter has a 20 year expiration date. It's made of plastic (which isn't that much different than the old one) so I suspect the chlorine in the water may affect it.
October 14, 2013
Finally setup RAID scrubbing on the new server. Also set it up during the
wee hours of the morning on Tuesday to least interfere with usage.
October 10, 2013
Looks like Subaru's motherboard, a Gigabyte EP43-UD3L, died. It's very flaky
and tends not to boot anymore. I was hoping that swapping the CMOS battery,
which was dead, would fix it... but it didn't.
In a rush I ripped up Fujiko and used the Core i7 to use for Subaru.
Currently I've decommissioned the Radeon 5770 and the
Core2Quad 9550S, but thinking about putting the Q9550S into Ouka the PVR,
along possibly with the two 2GB PC2-6400 DDR2 DIMMs. Boxed up the EP43-UD3L
and wonderring what to do with it now. It's easier to deal with obsolete
machines that break, but since the C2Q was an active machine, this is most
troubling.
On the positive side, the Core-i7, when idle, tends to use less power than
the Core2Quad now because I'm not using the Radeon 5770 graphics accelerator.
The onchip IntelHD 3000 graphics is sufficient for many things.
October 7, 2013
Updated Subaru to 3.10.7-gentoo-r1 ... I might as well after having to
disconnect the UPS whose batteries don't have the oomph to run Subaru.
| Machine | Arch | Class | Kernel | UDEV Upgrade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doujima | KVM x86 | Server | 3.10.7-gentoo-r1 | Done |
| Chii | x86 | Netbook | 3.8.13-gentoo | Done |
| Fujiko | x86_64 | Workstation | 3.7.10-gentoo-r1 | Done |
| Geode | x86 | "Server" | 3.7.10-gentoo | Done |
| Hinoki | x86 | Laptop | 3.2.12-gentoo | Done |
| Kei | x86 | Dev Workstation | Done | |
| Mikuru | x86_64 | Ultrabook | 3.10.7-gentoo | Done |
| Mimori | x86 | Workstation | 3.5.7-gentoo | Done |
| Mughi | ia64 | Test Server | 3.10.5 | Done |
| Ouka | x86_64 | PVR | 3.7.9-gentoo | Done |
| Rukia | x86 | Laptop | 3.8.13-gentoo | Done |
| Subaru | x86_64 | Server | 3.10.7-gentoo-r1 | Done |
| Tornado | x86 | Test | 3.5.7-gentoo | Not Done |
| Trinity | x86 | Dev Workstation | 3.2.12-gentoo? | Done |
| Yuri | x86_64 | Spare | 3.2.12-gentoo? | Not Done |
| r.jajcs.net | KVM x86 | Server | 3.10.7-gentoo | Done |
| Peorth | x86_64 | Disk1 | 3.7.10-gentoo-r1 | Done |
| wd205a | x86 | Disk1 | 3.7.10-gentoo-r1 | Done |
| Kotoko | armel | Phone | 2.4.28-kp52 | N/A Maemo |
| WWWA | mipsel | router | 2.4.32-OpenWRT | N/A DD-WRT |
| actiontec | mipsel | router | 2.4.17-mvl | N/A MontaVista |
October 4, 2013
Got the so-called now-possible but always has been available power report.
I got #9 of 100 this time of least power used. Once again trading off water
for power consumption though I need to run my AC a bit to make sure all the
seals stay supple and intact. I suspect that the "upgrade" on Doujima will
increase power somewhat, but on the converse side - I have one less machine
turned on. But if I decide to use Fujiko more...
September 24, 2013
I was wonderring why my dining area light was so dim. Turns out one of the
CFLs burned out - the first one I've ever had burn out. It was a Commercial
Electric 14W CFL. The fixture has five bulbs in it, which I had two 14W CFL,
two 20W CFL, and a 25W incandescent "ballast" (so I can use remote control).
I've replaced the "ballast" a couple of times, and suspect the current one
is about ready to be replaced too, but so far so good.
I replaced the CFL with a 13W Greenlite branded $1.00
(or more recently, $0.50) Dollar Tree CFL. It says it's 12000 hours...
And we begin, how long will this really last.
September 18, 2013
I found my DECstation came out at 89W with its external CDRW drive.
September 17, 2013
I measured my refrigerator's power consumption. I measured around 1.1kWh over
12 hours, extrapolating to 2.2kWh over 24 hours in moderate temperatures
(around 70F in my house). 1.1kWh/12h is about 92W. This comes out to about
800kWh over a year.
This seems on par with some sources I see coupled with the age of the unit.
When the compressor is on, I was getting from 150 to 180W thus the duty cycle
is around 50% to 66%.
The power consumption is actually lower than I thought,
but the duty cycle is higher. Assuming that the price of electricity is about
$0.10 per kWh, this would mean it costs about 2.2kWh/day * 30 days/month
* $0.10/kWh equals $6.60/month on average. This is about the same or possibly
less than a computer that I leave on 24/7. So this doesn't totally account
for my monthly power usage, still something uses a lot of power...
September 16, 2013
I was a bit surprised at the Volts*Amps numbers and the real Watts consumed
by my devices. More data as it becomes available, but the first overnight
test I tried charging my Nokia N900 phone from ~ 60% to full.
It couldn't measure anything at all! While it was charging it got up
to 2W but after the overnight stint, it didn't measure even 0.01 KWH. 1KWH
costs about $0.12 or so it was less than $0.01 to charge. This was with the
counterfeit "Apple" A1265 wall charger which I think is somewhat deficient of
a charger.
Currently I'm testing to see how much my refrigerator contributes to my
electric bill.
September 15, 2013
I bought a P3 P4400 Kill-a-Watt for fun. I noticed that HFT had reduced its
price on the display in the store to $20 and I had a 25% off coupon. But
it seemed the computer did not have it updated for some reason. A manager
verified the price. Anyway I would not have bought it at is normal price of
$30 even with the 25% coupon, so this was the only way... This thing would
never pay for itself - it merely was for curiousity.
So far this thing is pretty slick, it seems to do its job correctly.
I mainly bought it to measure power factor which I don't have
a method of doing so.
September 13, 2013
This week had been innundated with rain. Massive flooding around here in
Northern Colorado. This Friday the 13th many bridges were closed due to rivers
overflowing. Even I-25 was shut down due to its multiple crossings with
several rivers like the Cache La Poudre, Big Thompson, and Saint Vrain. The
St. Vrain completely cut off Lyons, Colorado, making evacuation difficult.
September 6, 2013
I transitioned doujima as a virtual of subaru, as well as r.jajcs.net is now
a virtual of subaru (instead of doujima). Both now have huge speed increases
from the faster CPU and cores, though I haven't decided what ram allocation
they will have.
After some NFS flareups, I think all the fires are put out and most
things are working once more. Please notify if not.
The major things that need to be addressed: UPS, and disk logging. I will
probably convert the old Doujima hardware into a JBOD server and try to make
it consume as little power as possible while keeping disks up. Need backup
space...
I need to remember not to shut down Subaru now, hosting 3 machines (itself
as one) now.
August 23, 2013
Well, a bit of backdating as I'd like to detail a bit of my Eico 555 that I
started looking at again. I had picked this up in the DRC 2009 Hamfest.
I thought I had fried the meter trying to deal with
the static problem but this summer with the humidity up, the meter seemed to
be free of static issues. It also seems to work - I was able to measure DC
voltage and low DC-amps. But I couldn't get resistance and AC voltage to work.
I searched once more for documentation for this old meter to no avail. But I
did find one website that supposedly had the schematic - but 404'ed. I mailed
the site's owner, Ken Kaplan, and luckily he responded and fixed the link.
With the link fixed I grabbed the schematic. The usage of the batteries were
quite nonintuitive but nevertheless found out how to reconnect the batteries
(1xD and 4xAA) to get resistance working, sort of, once more.
But it wasn't accurate and AC still was not working.
Doing a little debug I found that the half bridge AC rectifier was fried and
shorted - replacing it with two 1N34A diodes fixed that, and I found an
11.5Ω 1% resistor was measuring 30KΩ in the resistance measuring
stack... bad. Not having a 11.5Ω resistor (who has these
strange values on hand?!) I substituted it with a 10Ω and a 1.5Ω
resistor in series - but 5%. With these the resistance meter appeared to work
once more, though not perfectly accurate - very close however. Can't expect
much from 5% resistors... After 4 years, this project is now finished, more or
less - and now I have one 20KΩ/V analog meter. (I do have a small
pocket analog meter as well, with no probes... only 2KΩ/V however)
August 18, 2013
Went to the Denver Radio Club hamfest (DRC, which cracks me up because DRC also
stands for Design Rule Check). Nothing really great there either but picked up
some freebies and some non-freebie crap...
A 8-port 10/100 switch with no PSU, and a bunch of RJ45 Cat5 cables. The
Ethernet switch has no fan, and it looks like the 7.5V PSU from my 5-port
that has a fan... ahh silence. Works.
A b&w vidicon security camera with NTSC output. RCA MC1501. Darn that BNC connector. Works.
A pile of obsolete flash memories (CF: 64M, 2G, 4G; SD: 1G, 4G SDHC) and two CF readers (PCMCIA and USB). The USB CF reader doesn't work in all USB2 ports.
A new mirrored scale meter which I thought had a 1/x scale for ohms but was
wrong (it was 1-1/x... details, details...) It's 2KΩ 50µA
movement
A 4" Harman-Kardon 28W LF speaker driver element. Seems newish.
and a Sony Vaio Pentium4-M PCG-NV170 (PCG-9D6L) laptop. (dead)
This is a "fake luggable." It's huge. It has 2x256MB DDR2
and a 30GB IDE HDD. The HDD can be quite useful...
though it has bad sectors.
I also swiped 2GB of RAM from Ouka and stuck it in Subaru. The PVR didn't need that much ram (and if I decide to move the PVR backend to Subaru anyway...) and having 6GB in Subaru helps with VMs.
August 9, 2013
I got the next installment of "Power usage in my neighborhood."
Nope, I didn't get #1. I got #11 most efficient this time around somehow.
I love using power...
August 8, 2013
I finally updated Mughi's udev and kernel for DEVTMPFS.
Such bitrot on that machine :(
| Machine | Arch | Class | Kernel | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doujima | x86 | Server | 3.5.7-gentoo | Done |
| Chii | x86 | Netbook | 3.8.13-gentoo | Done |
| Fujiko | x86_64 | Workstation | 3.7.10-gentoo-r1 | Done |
| Geode | x86 | "Server" | 3.7.10-gentoo | Done |
| Hinoki | x86 | Laptop | 3.2.12-gentoo | Done |
| Kei | x86 | Dev Workstation | Done | |
| Mikuru | x86_64 | Ultrabook | 3.8.13-gentoo | Done |
| Mimori | x86 | Workstation | 3.5.7-gentoo | Done |
| Mughi | ia64 | Test Server | 3.10.5 | Done |
| Ouka | x86_64 | PVR | 3.7.9-gentoo | Done |
| Rukia | x86 | Laptop | 3.8.13-gentoo | Done |
| Subaru | x86_64 | Workstation | 3.9.2 | Done |
| Tornado | x86 | Test | Not Done | |
| Trinity | x86 | Dev Workstation | Done | |
| Yuri | x86_64 | Spare | Not Done | |
| r.jajcs.net | x86 | "Server" | 3.0.1 | Not Done |
| Peorth | x86_64 | Disk1 | 3.7.10-gentoo-r1 | Done |
| wd205a | x86 | Disk1 | 3.7.10-gentoo-r1 | Done |
| Kotoko | armel | Phone | 2.4.28-kp52 | N/A Maemo |
| WWWA | mipsel | router | 2.4.32-OpenWRT | N/A DD-WRT |
| actiontec | mipsel | router | 2.4.17-mvl | N/A MontaVista |
August 1, 2013
I decided I will downgrade Subaru (for power reasons - no need for the
RadeonHD 5770 to suck up so much power) and make it host Doujima, my main
server, as a virtual machine.
The physical machine that's running doujima will get loaded in HDDs,
WoL enabled, and made into a JBOD/RAID backup server
which only holds disks -- and spun down most of the time.
Workstation will be Fujiko as planned, which will get the RadeonHD 5770...
The big problems now is how to deal with the UPS (since Subaru has the RAID,
Subaru needs the power protection) as well as the new sharing plan
for the portage tree. To save VM hierarchy traversals I think Subaru
will have to host portage and doujima will mount and sync to it, to save some
reconfig headache. Also may need to put more RAM into Subaru - though the 1GB
to 4GB bump was significant, the VM that was running in Doujima
could use a virtual upgrade too. Also not to mention other VM's may be
attached to Subaru...
July 28, 2013
Found someone to take some of my old hdds and ISA equipment off my hands and
trade for a 500G SATA HDD. Once again I have a spare for the 500G SATA x 4
RAID5 instead of using the 750G PATA as a spare...
Also got two 2T SATA disks to make a RAID1... Really need to decommission the
120G PATA x 4 RAID array...
July 7, 2013
I finally tested and reassembled my Mastech 8229 digital multimeter, with an
addition: RS232 logging. After making a huge mistake trying to adapt the photo
diode in the reference schematic I finally got a
3-wire solution to hook up the
meter to a serial port. Having the transistor wired backwards of course
made it not work - it was RS232 inverted - following no protocols.
There were plenty of websites like
EEVBlog and
HW2SW that tell about how to add this feature...
As for the software side I swiped a few examples and wrote my own in perl for
Linux, used in text mode. I had weird issues with why the code just wouldn't
work, except when I finally noticed that when doing a bitwise AND of 0xf is not
the same as doing a MODulus of 0xf... Fixing that, and the numbers started
coming out of the meter and into my computer.
June 25, 2013
Ugh. I fried my bench PSU. The TIP42 blew when I tried to draw 3V at 3 amps
for a minute. That TIP42 had to dissipate around 30W of power! The heatsink
is woefully inadequate for that much power, I'd say 10W max. ZAP!
Another part for the dust bin. The B-E junction burned up as the 49 Ω
resistor had so much current going through (due to the C-E junction not passing
enough current) that it burned out the base.
June 18, 2013
Looks like rfcomm tty handling in bluetooth is kind of not right...
June 16, 2013
Got fed up with the bluetooth problem: You can crash Linux 3.8.X and newer by
setting up a bluetooth dialup network and tearing down the connection. It
seems to completely make Linux go bonkers. This entry is just to make some
notes for myself: http://padovan.org/blog/2013/02/bluetooth-changes-linux-3-8/
June 1, 2013
Upgraded Subaru to 64-bit Gentoo Linux.
This was a bit trickier than I expected. I ended up having to build a more
static kernel because I didn't want to hack up a new initrd for 64-bit that
can handle 64-bit modules (my initrd is 32-bit...)
Yet another Peorth install (as a stage 4).
And make sure my USE flags and world file is on my new install... Yeeks.
| Machine | Arch | Class | Kernel | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doujima | x86 | Server | 3.5.7-gentoo | Done |
| Subaru | x86_64 | Workstation | 3.9.2 | Done |
| Fujiko | x86_64 | Workstation | 3.7.10-gentoo-r1 | Done |
| Mikuru | x86_64 | Ultrabook | 3.8.13-gentoo | Done |
| Ouka | x86_64 | PVR | 3.7.9-gentoo | Done |
| Trinity | x86 | Dev Workstation | Done | |
| Tornado | x86 | Test | Not Done | |
| Hinoki | x86 | Laptop | 3.2.12-gentoo | Done |
| Yuri | x86_64 | Spare | Not Done | |
| Kei | x86 | Dev Workstation | Done | |
| Mughi | ia64 | Test Server | udev197 not marked stable for ia64 | |
| Chii | x86 | Netbook | 3.8.13-gentoo | Done |
| Mimori | x86 | Workstation | 3.5.7-gentoo | Done |
| Rukia | x86 | Laptop | 3.8.13-gentoo | Done |
| Geode | x86 | Server | 3.7.10-gentoo | Done |
| Peorth | x86_64 | Disk1 | 3.7.10-gentoo-r1 | Done |
| Kotoko | armel | Phone | 2.4.28-kp52 | N/A Maemo |
| WWWA | mipsel | router | 2.4.32 | N/A DD-WRT |
| actiontec | mipsel | router | 2.4.17-mvl | N/A MontaVista |
May 20, 2013
Installed a 80GB disk into Rukia when my parents came to visit. Kernel upgrade.
May 6, 2013
Strange issues happening with Subaru... I was running an emerge and WoW at the same time, which it should do just fine, but it decided to choke after a few hours... hope it's just a side effect of apparently buggy bind mounts with a chroot...
May 4, 2013
I updated Fujiko, my Core-i7 2700K computer, to 64-bit Linux after updating the
scratch disk, Peorth, to latest. Now up to three maintained x86_64 Linux boxes
(Fujiko, Mikuru, and Ouka), one scratch disk (Peorth),
and the P4 (Yuri) which I'm not entirely sure if I'll ever use
(it's my only Windows XP machine)... The
Core2Quad (Subaru) is probably next on the update list, I suspect running 64-
bit apps will be less pressure on the VM system as it reaches full allocation
of RAM - namely running World of Warcraft as it fills up the whole 4GB address
space (though it only uses around 2.25GB around that point.)
| Machine | Arch | Class | Kernel | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doujima | x86 | Server | 3.5.7-gentoo | Done |
| Subaru | x86 | Workstation | 3.5.7-gentoo | Done |
| Fujiko | x86_64 | Workstation | 3.7.10-gentoo-r1 | Done |
| Mikuru | x86_64 | Ultrabook | 3.8.8 | Done |
| Ouka | x86_64 | PVR | 3.7.9-gentoo | Done |
| Trinity | x86 | Dev Workstation | Done | |
| Tornado | x86 | Test | Not Done | |
| Hinoki | x86 | Laptop | Not Done | |
| Yuri | x86_64 | Spare | Not Done | |
| Kei | x86 | Dev Workstation | Done | |
| Mughi | ia64 | Test Server | udev197 not marked stable for ia64 | |
| Chii | x86 | Netbook | Done | |
| Mimori | x86 | Workstation | Done | |
| Rukia | x86 | Laptop | Done | |
| Geode | x86 | Server | 3.7.10-gentoo | Done |
| Peorth | x86_64 | Disk1 | 3.7.10-gentoo-r1 | Done |
| Kotoko | armel | Phone | 2.4.28-kp52 | N/A Maemo |
| WWWA | mipsel | router | 2.4.32 | N/A DD-WRT |
| actiontec | mipsel | router | 2.4.17-mvl | N/A |
May 3, 2013
Watched Iron Man 3 with my employer.
April 17, 2013
Gentoo Udev upgrade status
| Machine | Arch | Class | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Doujima | x86 | Server | Done |
| Subaru | x86 | Workstation | Done |
| Fujiko | x86 | Workstation | Done |
| Mikuru | x86_64 | Ultrabook | Done |
| Ouka | x86_64 | PVR | Done |
| Trinity | x86 | Dev Workstation | Done |
| Tornado | x86 | Test | Not Done |
| Hinoki | x86 | Laptop | Not Done |
| Yuri | x86_64 | Spare | Not Done |
| Kei | x86 | Dev Workstation | Done |
| Mughi | ia64 | Test Server | udev197 not marked stable for ia64 |
| Chii | x86 | Netbook | Done |
| Mimori | x86 | Workstation | Done |
| Rukia | x86 | Laptop | Done |
| Geode | x86 | Server | Done |
| Peorth | x86_64 | Disk1 | Not Done |
Of course the non-Gentoo Linux machines are exempted.
| Machine | Arch | Class | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Actiontec | mips | Modem/Router | Qwest Firmware |
| Madoka | mips | Router | DD-WRT |
| Miyuki | mips | Router | DD-WRT |
| Kotoko | arm | Cellphone | Maemo |
| Zugzug | x86 | Workstation | Debian 2.2 |
April 15, 2013
Happy tax day? And I wrote out several checks for out several thousand
dollars worth of taxes that I need to pay...
April 8, 2013
Got another installment of the question to the electric company: "You already
knew this information, why did you use it as an excuse to install a
smart electric meter." I slipped a few notches on the
most efficient least electrical power consuming household.
So f***ing what?
April 6, 2013
Went to the LARCFest. Unfortunately went there way too late. But I did find
some interesting goodies, like an 80 watt ATX DC-DC converter that I could use
on my Geode to allow it to run off a single 12V supply. They also had some
Via micro-itx boards but I decided against them, though probably faster than
the geode, they probably eat more power.
Also chanced upon a micro usb charger for the n900... Though it sources 700mA
max, it seems to charge full rate.
February 28, 2013
Finally figured out what's going on with my N900 - turns out that the microusb
cable connector sometimes becomes more resistive and won't charge at high
speeds because not enough current can go through. I still don't understand
why, but these connectors are way too small to experiment on. Will need to
try to get more of these connectors to play with.
February 21, 2013
Normally I wouldn't write about how I'm feeling on this blog but really this is a public diary and I feel
compelled to add this entry. I'm having the worst time of my life right now. It's all about work and the
current turn of events there. Though nothing truly changed for me (yet), everything did... I'll have to leave
it at that, under NDA I can't disclose more (also in respect to those relevent to this entry) but things
suck and not getting better... Sometimes I wonder how I'm staying sane. Is there bottled up frustration?
How much: I don't know myself... I hope writing this defuses some of it but it can't get all of it.
February 17, 2013
NICE! Subaru updated udev without a hitch. That would be really annoying if it
didn't work, just like Doujima - due to the root on LVM on MD RAID5 layering.
February 13, 2013
If I increase the voltage a bit, I can get it to draw more current and
charging goes faster. Also it
seems power consumption by the radios (wifi, GSM, not sure about FM but suspect
it too) as well as CPU affect charge speed.
In any case this N900 is fun. I don't know if I would have spent the whole 600
or so when it was new but it's worth it at the reduced price when it's now no
longer the newest phone out there.
I hacked the $1 cigarette charger lighter from the dollar store to dump 5.35
volts which is still within 10% but will supply more current to charge by
adding a 330 ohm resistor to the feedback loop. Hopefully it will be able
to charge the n900 in a reasonable amount of time.
February 3, 2013
Sigh. One of the 500G Hitachis decided to go belly up :(
February 2, 2013
Found the N900 draws at most 200mA at 5V, which seems awfully low...
But it's correct... Which means it will take a while to charge.
To completely fill the BL-5J, it will take a few hours.
I guess that AC-10C 1.2A charger is overkill, I measured it about 5.15VDC
which is in spec of USB unlike the AC-8U 0.89A charger for my Nokia 5230 which
measured around 8VDC. The 5230 used to charge faster than the N900... Now it
won't charge in an eternity...
January 31, 2013
Ugh. My 8GB MicroSD card kicked the bucket - no longer detectable :(
Lost a few files that I haven't backed up in a while... *sigh*
I suppose I have to RAID everything, might have to make my N900 to auto rsync
to my RAID.
January 26, 2013
Finally got my Nokia N900. This is pretty nice if it weren't for its power
consumption. Maybe I'm judging it too much because there was a voltage app
that I could detect as it goes down. I didn't count for repository.maemo.org
to be down and it was tough to bootstrap but now Opensshd is installed as well
as a bunch of other applications.
January 25, 2013
Hmm. My N900 should have came today but USPS delayed it a day...
I rebooted Doujima and it didn't come up right. Network was borked due to
having multiple adaptors. That /etc/udev/rules.d/80-net-name-slot.rules ...
January 24, 2013
Well, the Gentoo switch to udev 197 broke a lot of machines. I'm still trying
to update all. Doujima was updated but untested.
January 16, 2013
I ordered a Nokia N900 through eBay to replace my broken Nuron. Being shipped from China so it will take a while to get it, but hopefully won't have to deal
with charging the battery externally anymore. Not exactly the newest phone but
it has the features I want...
January 10, 2013
Well, for almost the past week I had a really awful pain in my lower back,
couldn't really walk. It hurts more when I stand straight or lying on my back.
It was not too bad at first and after a few days
it got painful to move around. I'm sure I definitely looked like I was in
pain... Today it subsided a bit and hope to get better. Not sure if I should
have taken some ibuprofen or something to speed healing, but not sure what
caused the problem in the first place.
January 5, 2013
I extracted my Smartblue 350 and opened it up. This device is actually an
SL350 which uses an UC3844 like the SP300 instead of the KA7500C like the
SP400. I found a really bad capacitor C8 in the SL350 and replaced it, and
the PSU started working like new once more.
January 1, 2013
It's a new year. Happy New Year. For me it's probably same old same old...
No I didn't get my 2012 new year's resolution solved. I guess it carries on
to this year. I still don't think it will get resolved... probably happiness
will not return until then.
