Tom Waits
Neil Young
Amy Winehouse
King Krimson / Fripp / Eno
Rammstein
Pink Floyd
jazz, classical, etc.
Lots of old folks...
16 June 2009
Psychological entertainment
I very much liked Fight Club, but you have to watch it a few times.
I enjoy House, which is about a technical expert who thinks folks lie.
I recently caught Mental, which is the same. Also Lie to Me, again, same abstract theme. Experts who see through people.
And Bones is similar.
I also enjoy the Simpsons (which got me back into TV a few years after it came out; I had abstained for over a decade previously) and King of the Hill which is actually more sophisticated comedy.
I've most recently read Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin.
I enjoy House, which is about a technical expert who thinks folks lie.
I recently caught Mental, which is the same. Also Lie to Me, again, same abstract theme. Experts who see through people.
And Bones is similar.
I also enjoy the Simpsons (which got me back into TV a few years after it came out; I had abstained for over a decade previously) and King of the Hill which is actually more sophisticated comedy.
I've most recently read Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin.
12 June 2009
A good deed
So I returned a preteen girl's cell phone tonight. This is the second cell phone I've found and returned. The first was lost by a mountain biking guy up on Santiago peak, it was just lying on the trail (I had driven up there with my son in my Subaru). It was charged and a little bit of snooping found his Dad. I left the phone in front of my house (not wanting to wait around to coordinate meeting), he left $20, which I gave to my son. He bought us all pizza with it one night.
This phone was trickier. I found it on a decorative pillar on the corner outside my house. It would only briefly power up. I measured the (3.7v nominal) battery at 2.87 volts (and got the polarity of the contacts that way too). Eventually, tonight I played around with powering it up from a Li-ion battery charger (4.2v) that I had, and wired the phone into the charger with some wires, no battery needed. It was a nice phone --Java, GPS, bluetooth, 1.3 MP camera, color screen, downloadable music, PacMan, Ms PacMan, Tetris, 16 MB internal RAM and quarter-Gig memory card, a Samsung with Sprint & web service. Service was disconnected though. But again, some snooping revealed the owner's landline and name (and friends, school, photos, fact that she has dances classes and braces, and texted once to a friend when her mom thought she was in bed at 10pm). Her dad came over and picked it up. I don't think he appreciated the research effort, though he might when she tries to turn it on and it doesn't work.
I still use a very basic monochrome Nokia 3310 with T-mobile prepaid and I have an address/landline sticker on the back. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3310 I got this around 2000-2001. Works for me.
This phone was trickier. I found it on a decorative pillar on the corner outside my house. It would only briefly power up. I measured the (3.7v nominal) battery at 2.87 volts (and got the polarity of the contacts that way too). Eventually, tonight I played around with powering it up from a Li-ion battery charger (4.2v) that I had, and wired the phone into the charger with some wires, no battery needed. It was a nice phone --Java, GPS, bluetooth, 1.3 MP camera, color screen, downloadable music, PacMan, Ms PacMan, Tetris, 16 MB internal RAM and quarter-Gig memory card, a Samsung with Sprint & web service. Service was disconnected though. But again, some snooping revealed the owner's landline and name (and friends, school, photos, fact that she has dances classes and braces, and texted once to a friend when her mom thought she was in bed at 10pm). Her dad came over and picked it up. I don't think he appreciated the research effort, though he might when she tries to turn it on and it doesn't work.
I still use a very basic monochrome Nokia 3310 with T-mobile prepaid and I have an address/landline sticker on the back. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3310 I got this around 2000-2001. Works for me.
11 June 2009
Firmware Engineer
Today I got something very cool to work: you press a button and
a motor turns on.
The button was read by an electrically isolated RS485 two-wire interface between an ARM7 system on a chip and an 8 bit PIC. The PIC monitors the switch for gunk, and if gunked (saline or blood) indicates an error. It also expects to be queried by the host ARM periodically, if not, it errors. Using a built-in ADC. There are also watchdog timers on the PIC itself. And it checks its own checksum at boot. Also checks for stuck switches and multiple switches.
The PIC detects a switch closure by thresholding an analog input channel. If a good closure is found, it tells the ARM when queried. The ARM then closes an opto isolated relay to supply power to the tool. Only yesterday was the relay correctly mapped via a CPLD glue chip. It was inverted; upon powering up, the tool turned on. I had the EE in charge of the CPLD flip this, for safety. (The ARM could shut it off at boot, but if the ARM was bad, its hazardous to have the tool turn on.)
So at the end of the day, the switch turned the tool on. Safely.
This is why medical devices cost more than consumer devices, and why folks infrequently die from med devices. At least in the US.
The FDA is poised to own nicotine. Some wanker on the news said tobacco is neither safe nor effective. What crap. Its obviously effective.
In fact, I've read an article in a psychiatric trade magazine that said that permitting psych patients to smoke is OK, since its theraputic and they're not likely to pick it up while in the hospital.
Look up nicotinic receptors. You have muscarinic (central nervous system) receptors too, but tobacco doesn't hit them.
Anyway, getting a motor to turn on when a switch is pressed via all this isolation, software, and comm bus stuff is pretty rewarding, even if a trivial implementation is, well, trivial. Doing it safely is not.
a motor turns on.
The button was read by an electrically isolated RS485 two-wire interface between an ARM7 system on a chip and an 8 bit PIC. The PIC monitors the switch for gunk, and if gunked (saline or blood) indicates an error. It also expects to be queried by the host ARM periodically, if not, it errors. Using a built-in ADC. There are also watchdog timers on the PIC itself. And it checks its own checksum at boot. Also checks for stuck switches and multiple switches.
The PIC detects a switch closure by thresholding an analog input channel. If a good closure is found, it tells the ARM when queried. The ARM then closes an opto isolated relay to supply power to the tool. Only yesterday was the relay correctly mapped via a CPLD glue chip. It was inverted; upon powering up, the tool turned on. I had the EE in charge of the CPLD flip this, for safety. (The ARM could shut it off at boot, but if the ARM was bad, its hazardous to have the tool turn on.)
So at the end of the day, the switch turned the tool on. Safely.
This is why medical devices cost more than consumer devices, and why folks infrequently die from med devices. At least in the US.
The FDA is poised to own nicotine. Some wanker on the news said tobacco is neither safe nor effective. What crap. Its obviously effective.
In fact, I've read an article in a psychiatric trade magazine that said that permitting psych patients to smoke is OK, since its theraputic and they're not likely to pick it up while in the hospital.
Look up nicotinic receptors. You have muscarinic (central nervous system) receptors too, but tobacco doesn't hit them.
Anyway, getting a motor to turn on when a switch is pressed via all this isolation, software, and comm bus stuff is pretty rewarding, even if a trivial implementation is, well, trivial. Doing it safely is not.
07 June 2009
Animals in Translation (T. Grandin is a saint)
Reading Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin, who I was first introduced to in Oliver Sacks' Antropologist from Mars. Amazing book ---everything can be read as a metaphor or unconscious comparison to humans, instead of animals.
And the animal behavior, cognition, empathy, reason are right on.
And the animal behavior, cognition, empathy, reason are right on.
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