Wednesday, February 15 2012 10:03:19 PM
Put together a PIC programmer kit and made a simple LED blinker demo. Next, an EEPROM programmer.
Tuesday, January 10 2012 02:40:43 PM
Something funny happened to me on New Year's Eve. I'll tell the story, and I promise it's OK for you to have a laugh at my expense.
The last day of the year was sunny and warm, unusually warm even for Texas. It was a great day to work outside, so I tackled a honey-do (honey, could you do this for me?) which I had long posponed, replacement of a leaky outside spigot. When I was a kid, people actually repacked valves on faucets, but I find it easier to get out my soldering torch and replace the whole thing. A frequent problem when soldering pipes is that water continues to drain out of the line for some time, and if the shut-off valve is leaky, the water drainage never stops. Plumbers have a nifty trick to deal with this – they stuff pieces of bread into the line which holds back the draining water a few minutes, just long enough to solder the joint properly. When the water is turned back on, the bread is easily washed out of the line. The trouble is, my wife wasn't home, my hands were filthy, and I didn't want to stick them into the bag to grab a couple slices of bread.
Looking for a substitute, I had the brilliant idea to substitute toilet paper for bread. Stuffed into the water line, it would work at least as well as bread to stop the persistent drip which was cooling off my solder joint. The toilet paper went into the line, it stopped the drip, and everything was great. The line was completely dry, it took be 45 seconds to solder the new spigot onto the line. I congratulated myself on my ingenuity, and turned toward the water cutoff valve at the curb. At that moment, something burbling just under the surface of my self-congratulatory thoughts came directly to my attention.
There is something about the human mind, some sort of blindness maybe, which can invent delightful mechanisms and procedures which at last result in humiliation. My stupid brain, which just a minute ago was congratulating itself on being so resourceful, was now not so smug. It had had made a misjudgement about the relative natures of toilet paper and bread crumbs, and only now did my brain decide to let the rest of me know.
Turning the water back on, I discovered my suspicion was correct. The water was on, but the plug of toilet paper held fast. No water spewed from the faucet. Returning to the faucet with a probe to dislodge the plug, I began to work. The water was still on, to push the plug at the same time I pulled and poked at it from my side. Because the spigot is in a corner, the only place to stand is directly in front of it. And because the spigot had the valve removed, the opening wasn't pointing down, it was pointing up towards my face. At this point, I'm sure you can see exactly what what was coming.
When the plug dislodged, it burst out all at once, driven by the considerable force that the pumps of Austin's municipal water system do provide. Despite my attempt to evade the spray, I was wetted from head to toe and speckled with hundreds of bits of toilet paper. The force of the water ejecting the plug had shredded and atomized the toilet paper, depositing most of it on my clothes, in my hair, and on my face.
Once the toilet paper was no longer plugging the water pipe, it was but a minute's work to screw the valve onto the troublesome spigot and return it to service. I did have to wear the toilet paper for several more hours as I still had more work to do.
Sunday, January 08 2012 11:28:16 PM
http://www.raspberrypi.org/ Raspberry Pi is going to be released in a couple weeks. 25$ single board computer running Linux with enough horsepower to be useful.
Sunday, December 18 2011 03:56:34 PM
Tomorrow morning marks the annual automobile trip to Michigan.
Thursday, December 15 2011 11:28:23 PM
Hitchens is dead. I can recommend "Hitch 21" and "Arguably."