Speed of Dark Blog

So this is a more than useful web page. For anyone out there playing with a quadrature encoder.

http://letsmakerobots.com/node/24031

I finally decided to update my MPLAB IDE to the newest version, X, and decided to try installing it on my linux machine (Fedora 14 on a Dell Inspiron 9100, 2GB RAM 2.8 GHz Prescott P4, 256MB Radeon 9800).   I was confronted by a *.run file.  Being a Linux user and not a Linux guru, I stumbled about a bit trying to get it to run.  (Ironic, yes?)

Here are the steps:

• Download the almighty *.run file from Microchip
• start up a terminal
• become superuser
• go to the directory of the downloaded file
• chmod +x <filename>
• ./<filename>

Done.  One very important note, something I had forgotten a couple years back but was reminded of by way of iron fist: The “./” is not optional.  Ever.  Linux is incapable of making simple assumptions that one familiar with DOS (or even CP/M) would expect.

MPLAB X is based on NetBeans, which I’ve used in the past and found to be a very user-friendly and functional.  Hopefully I’ll enjoy this upgrade, and anticipate much better integration with open source compilers/etc.

Xterm on the touchpad

I discovered that hackers had taken control of the sidebar on my Anion OS web page, some digging discovered that the page is not protected by the same password all of the other System pages are, and so I had to put in a sitewide password for editing.  Now that that’s done, I shouldn’t have many more issues with hacking/etc.

Since tech is a huge part of my daily life and interest, I figured I’d write a short blog on the sad fate of WebOS.  I was an early adopter, buying a Palm Pre shortly after their release and holding onto it until only a few weeks ago, moving off of my beloved Sprint network to get the HP Veer, a WebOS 2.1 device. 

Then it happened.

HP slapped all the loyal WebOS community members right in the face and discontinued its flagship mobile devices.  I luckily found out only 12 hours after it happened and was able to snag a Touchpad tablet before they were gone for good.  I’m writing this on it, actually.

Well, unless you’ve used WebOS you’d not believe anything I said concerning the awesomeness of its interface and the ease of use.  The truth of the matter is, a better and faster hardware dev cycle would yield the greatest group of devices ever conceived.  The OS is not yet dead, so let’s see how stupid HP can really be in losing everything from their 1.2b acquisition of palm.  Fools.

Lone_wolf of Anion OS has constructed a USB bootloader utility for hobby OS’s.  The loader will load a file from a FAT16 partition into memory, compliments Alexei Frounze.   http://alexfru.chat.ru/epm.html.  The utilitymakes it possible to use bootprog ainlessly from your USB flas drive, provided, again, it’s formatted FAT16.

Link:  http://www.dex4u.com/Anion/AnionUSB.zip

Anion OS is a new operating system being developed by the former members of “Team DexOS”,  which no longer exists as a community and has been claimed by a sole proprietor.  Anion OS is a new operating system from the ground up and shares no copyrighted code with DexOS.  The architecture is markedly different, and the goals are to provide a programmer friendly environment regardless of language preference.  Anyone is free to join and contribute.  Ideas are always welcome,  and opinions are always free.

It’s been a year since my trip to Yuma AZ with EcoCAR, and I thought I’d stop by the lab to have a look.  Other than being a messy working lab, not bad.  Lots of exhaust on the floor, a partly assembled interior, and some unlabelled switches I’m unfamiliar with.  

The car is going for inspection today, a few things need to be sealed off before it’s ready for shipping.  Let’s see how they do this year.

I stumbled accidentally upon a set of airplane engines that, in my opinion, would be fun in various other applications.  The interest comes from the design, they seem similar to another design I looked at, and have the kind of fuel economy to power ratios you’d expect.

http://www.ulpower.com/engines/ul350iS/index.html

High torque motors with a reasonable amount of HP, ideal for small aircraft.  I think they’d be fun in a small automotive application, 3L of displacement making 237 ft-lbs of torque at a low rpm would be extremely drivable, even fun.

The aircraft covered in the blog section of the site is capable of 600 nautical miles on a single tank of gas using the UL260iSA, which has some fancy oil system additions to be able to run upside down.

While not an “alternative energy”, the real focus of science and engineering should be into architectures like these, where the current fuel options are conserved and efficiency is improved.  What we’re seeing in the current hybrid crop is a group of vehicles who are only marginally more efficient in the face of immense collateral environmental impact.  On the same note, an improved engine uses the dame materials and chemicals as a conventional, so the manufacturing and disposal would be something the industry is well acquainted with, unlike the current pushing of Compact Fluorescent (CFL) light bulbs (mercury) and hybrid vehicles toting multi-kilowatt Lithium and NiMH batteries, which, if disposed of incorrectly, can contaminate thousands of gallons of water.

My hats off to these people, they’ve made some good products.

{$ x=\frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}  $}

I decided I wanted to have the same functionality found in Google Docs on my site, and not have to make equations there and move them to my server and embed them as images.  So I did some digging and found mimeTex, and and a simple recipe for wrapping the cgi into PmWiki for use there.

I like it.