Tralfaz

Author: geoffand

  • Waking up at 3AM is getting old

    Ok, this is getting old. Waking up at 3:00 AM and not going back to sleep. Argh.

    The reason: Tate, one of our Greyhounds, goes out to relieve himself. He has been doing it at 5-ish, but lately that has become 3:00 AM. Alas, since he has a fecophilia vibe, he generally will turn around after defecating and wolf his own feces right down.

    Yuck.

    So, when I hear the swish/swish of the doggie door, I start monitoring him. When I see him pacing, I know it is time to get the sweats on, and be ready to scoop up the tootsie-rolls of poop before he munches them down.

    But then I am awake. Sure, I try to return to sleep, but that is a fruitless endeavor. Then I will go snuggle with Tate on the couch, and try to read. Sometimes I can put a few pages on my Kindle behind me, and I doze off. But, after 6 hours of sleep (9 – 3), it is almost impossible to nod off.

    Sigh. Finally about 4:30, I give in, get up, make a pot of coffee, and start reading the Times.

    Suckage. About 3:00 in the afternoon, I get a bit of tiredness, and fade. If I am lucky, I can take a short cat-nap, but not always.

    Yep, this shit sucks.

  • Project 2 – Variable LED flash timing

    This project builds upon the flashing LED of the first project. If you were motivated, you could change the frequency of the flashing, by adjusting a constant in the program, a “delay” value that was used to turn on and off the power to the LED.

    This circuit instead brings in the concept of analog versus digital circuits, something that is worth explaining.

    In the digital realm, a signal is “on” or “off”. It is “binary” in that there are solely two states, represented by the values “0” and “1”. An awful lot of the modern world can be reduced to such simplicity. (more…)

  • Merry Christmas – 2015

    Merry Christmas – 2015

    It is Christmas day in the Beck/Anderson household. The day started well, I slept until almost 5:00 AM, not bad for me lately, some fresh coffee, and about 6:00, I was lobbied hard for a walk by Tate. Today, Garrett didn’t join us, so Tate got a 3.2 mile walk in. That should tire him out!

    Since the boys aren’t too kind to trees, we don’t do a lot of internal decorating, and we never really got into the habit of really hanging lights when we lived in Arizona. However, we finally have a house, in a neighborhood, and it already has hooks, and an outdoor outlet for lights, so we did some decorating. (more…)

  • First project – Flashing LED

    The Sparkfun Inventors Kit arrived, and I have to admit that it was better than I expected. Packaged in a nice box, it has plenty of goodies, and projects to play with. There are enough parts that I am sure I can go well beyond the scripted projects.

    Last night, I did the (really minor) assembly, but didn’t dive in. However, this morning, I dove right in, and did the first project.

    As one would expect, it was a pretty simple introduction, probably more to ensure that the software was setup and the hardware is functional.

    The goal was to blink an LED at 1 second intervals, and to accomplish this you need to download the Arduino developer’s kit, download the sample source files from Sparkfun, and finally to install the USB->FTDI drivers. Nothing too difficult, but the process is documented well enough that a grade school kid should be able to do it.  (more…)

  • Hobbyist Electronics

    I am sure I disappointed my dad growing up. He tried mightily to get me interested in electronics, even building many Heathkit projects with me. I remember an AM radio, and a few others, but for me it was boring, and as a pre-teen, I just didn’t get into it.

    He had a Heathkit oscilloscope, and had built our hi-fi system from Heathkits, among many others. We had a B&W TV that often needed new tubes, and I recall taking tubes to the tester at the local K-Mart back before it became white trash shopping. But the bug never bit.

    (more…)

  • Showing its age – or is it

    My main computer since 2013, has been a rocking MacBook Air. It is the first generation of the system based on the Haswell chipset, and it has been awesome. It came with Mountain Lion (10.8), and has been upgraded thrice now, recently to El Capitan.

    When I got it, one of the huge benefits was the battery life. The data sheet said 12 hours, and it easily beat that. I often went several days between charging the battery. I think my record was 14 actual operating hours, and I still had ~ 10% of battery left.

    Of course, as time has gone on, I use it more and more, but until the upgrade to El Capitan, it was still rocking the great battery life.

    I held off on the El Capitan upgrade as long as I could, but in a moment of weakness, I hit "ok" when prompted.

    Unlike many of my friends, my upgrade went smooth and frankly, it was the easiest upgrade, and for Apple, that is saying something. Two entries of passwords (I have different iCloud and Apple Store accounts, a long story, don't ask).

    The changes were fine, no issues, and since I don't use Apple mail, there wasn't any re-index.

    However, there is a downside. The battery life seems to be about 1/2 what it used to be. Of course, the laptop is 2.5 years old, so the battery might be wearing out. But I doubt it is that drastic. El Capitan really appears to be a battery hog.

  • Project Time – Step 1 The Raspberry Pi

    A few years ago, I got a wild hair up my hind-side, and bought a Raspberry Pi to mess with. A small, fully functional computer, running a Linux variant, built around an ARM SoC, it was a pretty nifty bit of kit.

    I connected it to my monitor, wired up a keyboard and mouse, added a wifi USB dongle, and had some fun. Did a lot of learning to program Python on it.

    But then the move happened, it got chucked into a box, and ignored. With the move done, the house bought, and the project bug biting me again, I have resurrected it.

    The first challenge was to actually FIND it. Alas, it was hiding in my monster box of cables and other items. Still connected to the powered USB hub that I had for it.

    (more…)

  • A “new” streaming contender – Pandora

    Early on when I began to listen to streaming music, I got a Pandora account. Probably 2011 or 2012. At first, it was the only solution, and I listened, but I found that the depth of their catalog “felt” weak. Radio stations would repeat songs often, and it just fell off the radar.

    Spotify, and then the Google / Apple offerings came along, and I was satisfied. So I seriously hadn’t even fired up Pandora in a long time. Like in two iPhone refreshes (that is 4 years).

    But, a few days ago, I was cleaning up my iPhone’s apps, and I saw that the Pandora app had just refreshed. I figured “what the f*ck” and fired it up. (more…)

  • Saying goodbye to an old friend

    Today is a sad day, but also a hopeful day. It is time to say goodbye to an old friend, my Fender Telecaster guitar. It is going to a good place, it will be under the tree for a friend’s high school aged son, who wants to learn to play guitar.

    Still, it is not without some reflection of my past, that is now going away.

    It isn’t particularly rare, or exciting. It started life as a new guitar to augment my, at the time, well aged, and slightly abused Charvel that I bought in 1986. I bought it in 2002, and it came from The Musicians Friend. A “Made in Mexico” Tele, it was a true Fender, not a Squire. At one time the “Made in Mexico” meant an inferior product, but those days are long gone. It was nearly the same quality as the “Made in the USA” version, but about 1/2 the price.

    (more…)

  • Let the Holidays Commence – What to do

    Let the Holidays Commence – What to do

    Today, at noon, we started our holiday shutdown, so I am off work for a whole week. I am going to do plenty of reading, maybe some bicycling, fawn over my boys, and in general relax.

    However, I have the itch to do a project. Since our little Oregon Scientific weather station is getting a little tired, and the replacements all seem to suck, I am going to make a little weather station.

    Plenty of instructions and guidance on the web for this, but I have some learning to do first. I never really had an electronics bug. Sure, I know the mathematics, and what the components do, but wiring shit up? Not really. (more…)