Spending $700 billion to bail out the financial industry is about $2300 per US citizen.
So, the US government wants to spend $2300 of my money (probably more) to clean up the financial mess left by greedy and stupid people. We're letting the people who knowingly arranged and sold bad mortgages off the hook. We're also (presumably) letting the people who knowingly walked into mortgages they couldn't afford off the hook.
I now feel really stupid for working an honest job and living within my means. Our government seems to be largely in the business of making sure that the unscrupulous prosper.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
ATMega168, i2c/twi
I changed by AVR circuit to use an atmega168 rather than the attiny2313. The primary reason is that I'm trying to use the i2c code from the Procyon AVRLib in order to talk to a DS1307 real time clock, and avr-libc doesn't seem to have the required register definitions for the attiny2313. I don't know why - the attiny2313 is supposed to support hardware TWI (really i2c).
Here's a snapshot of the new circuit, taken again with the world's worst digital camera:
My program successfully loads and runs on the atmega168. Next step: actually try to talk to the DS1307.
Here's a snapshot of the new circuit, taken again with the world's worst digital camera:
My program successfully loads and runs on the atmega168. Next step: actually try to talk to the DS1307.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Powered by Ubuntu sticker
When I got my new Thinkpad X61 tablet, I (naturally) removed the "Designed for Vista" sticker and threw it away. That got me wondering whether anyone has made a "Designed for Linux" sticker. And of course, the answer is yes, and they're free:
The sticker actually says "Powered by Ubuntu", but that's good enough for me.
http://system76.com/article_info.php?articles_id=9Double w00t!
The sticker actually says "Powered by Ubuntu", but that's good enough for me.
Getting Eclipse to work on 64-bit Linux
Back at the beginning of the summer, I was experiencing strange Eclipse crashes after an upgrade to 64-bit Ubuntu. My solution at the time was to switch over to Netbeans, which worked out very nicely.
Since students here at YCP are using Eclipse for Java development, I thought I'd take another stab at getting things working.
As it turns out, there is an easy solution: use the IBM JDK. Instructions are in a comment in the following blog post:
W00t!
Since the problem seems to be in the Sun JVM, and not Eclipse, I have to wonder why Sun has let this bug linger for such a long time.
Since students here at YCP are using Eclipse for Java development, I thought I'd take another stab at getting things working.
As it turns out, there is an easy solution: use the IBM JDK. Instructions are in a comment in the following blog post:
http://dmartin.org/weblog/eclipse-on-ubuntu-linux-for-amd64Basically, you grab the RPM for the IBM JDK, use alien to install it, then use the -vm Eclipse switch to launch it using the IBM JVM.
W00t!
Since the problem seems to be in the Sun JVM, and not Eclipse, I have to wonder why Sun has let this bug linger for such a long time.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Improved Blinkenlights
My AVR-fu is slowly improving.
I'm now using the AVR-PG1B programming cable I ordered from SparkFun, along with a DB9 cable and a breakout board that adapts the 10-pin AVR ISP header to a single-row 6 pin header, which then plugs into my breadboard with a cable and gender changer from Digilent. Very nice, works like a champ. (Note: avrdude calls this programmer "ponyser".)
I constructed a circuit interfacing the attiny2313 with an ICM7212 7-segment LED driver. So far, I only have 2 of the 4 supported digits wired, but it works nicely. Here's a photo (taken again with a very crappy camera) of the whole mess:
There's still plenty of room on the breadboard for another IC and a few switches, which are needed for my crazy top-secret project.
I'm now using the AVR-PG1B programming cable I ordered from SparkFun, along with a DB9 cable and a breakout board that adapts the 10-pin AVR ISP header to a single-row 6 pin header, which then plugs into my breadboard with a cable and gender changer from Digilent. Very nice, works like a champ. (Note: avrdude calls this programmer "ponyser".)
I constructed a circuit interfacing the attiny2313 with an ICM7212 7-segment LED driver. So far, I only have 2 of the 4 supported digits wired, but it works nicely. Here's a photo (taken again with a very crappy camera) of the whole mess:
There's still plenty of room on the breadboard for another IC and a few switches, which are needed for my crazy top-secret project.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Blinkenlights success!
I couldn't wait for my AVR programming cable to arrive from Sparkfun, so I decided to build a parallel cable.
Long story short: it works. I used the pinout suggested by http://www.bsdhome.com/avrdude/, which in avrdude is the "bsd" programming device. Although that site suggested 1K resistors in series with the signals from the parallel port (to protect it from current flow from the AVR circuit), I couldn't get the device to program successfully with them in place. So, I just used wires :-)
For the cable, I soldered 5 wires of an 8-wire ribbon cable to the DB25 connector, and crimped a 16-pin socket-style connector onto the other end. I don't know exactly what those connectors are called, but they're designed to fit into an IC socket. That makes them nice for breadboards, which can't really accept dual row (IDC) headers directly.
For the program, I used the code from Elliot Williams's excellent (no, inspiring) piece on cheap AVR programming. I didn't build his development board/programming cradle (did I mention that I hate soldering?), but I used the same circuit.
Here's an amazingly crappy digital photo of the circuit and the programming cable:
Dave Babcock and Greg Link helped me put the whole thing together. It's really nice working with actual engineers :-)
Long story short: it works. I used the pinout suggested by http://www.bsdhome.com/avrdude/, which in avrdude is the "bsd" programming device. Although that site suggested 1K resistors in series with the signals from the parallel port (to protect it from current flow from the AVR circuit), I couldn't get the device to program successfully with them in place. So, I just used wires :-)
For the cable, I soldered 5 wires of an 8-wire ribbon cable to the DB25 connector, and crimped a 16-pin socket-style connector onto the other end. I don't know exactly what those connectors are called, but they're designed to fit into an IC socket. That makes them nice for breadboards, which can't really accept dual row (IDC) headers directly.
For the program, I used the code from Elliot Williams's excellent (no, inspiring) piece on cheap AVR programming. I didn't build his development board/programming cradle (did I mention that I hate soldering?), but I used the same circuit.
Here's an amazingly crappy digital photo of the circuit and the programming cable:
Dave Babcock and Greg Link helped me put the whole thing together. It's really nice working with actual engineers :-)
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Where to buy LEDs
While on the subject of electronics, here are some good places to buy LEDs:
MPJA (www.mpja.com) - you can get 100 LEDs (red, green, or yellow) for $1.95. But, there is a $15.00 minimum order. I bought a breadboard from them recently, and the order was filled quickly, so they seem like a pretty reputable establishment.
Jameco (www.jameco.com) - item number 334052 is an orange LED that is $2.20 for 100. Other colors are more expensive, however. I've bought stuff from them in the past, and they're reputable, but their website is kind of a pain to use.
The discrepancies between what different places charge for an LED - a plain vanilla component if there ever was one - really amaze me. At Sparkfun, you pay $0.35 for a green one and $0.50 for a red or yellow. That's right, more than 10 times more expensive!
MPJA (www.mpja.com) - you can get 100 LEDs (red, green, or yellow) for $1.95. But, there is a $15.00 minimum order. I bought a breadboard from them recently, and the order was filled quickly, so they seem like a pretty reputable establishment.
Jameco (www.jameco.com) - item number 334052 is an orange LED that is $2.20 for 100. Other colors are more expensive, however. I've bought stuff from them in the past, and they're reputable, but their website is kind of a pain to use.
The discrepancies between what different places charge for an LED - a plain vanilla component if there ever was one - really amaze me. At Sparkfun, you pay $0.35 for a green one and $0.50 for a red or yellow. That's right, more than 10 times more expensive!
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