Recent blog entries for nelsonrn

Been forever since I posted. Mostly posting on my blog these days. Looks to me like Advogato's trust model is broken, in that idiots are trusted on the Master level. Said idiots should feel free to consider me an idiot as well. The fact that nobody can tell which is the idiot by consulting Advogato's trust model says that there is something wrong with it. Either that, or the criteria for trusting someone is wrong. Or my understanding of it is wrong. In any case, I've been spending a LOT LESS time reading Advogato lately. -russ

Discovered cool accounting (General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable) software, SQL-Ledger. Now to see if I can convince my customer to use it so that I can add grain accounting to it. Then to publicise it and crush at least one horrifically-priced vertical market.

w00t w00t! Our club (the Grateful Oars rowing club) beat Ottawa and Montreal last Saturday at the recreational rower's sprints up in Ottawa! I was at State Fair helping my kids compete in 4-H events. Eric took second place in public presentations on the state level! So as a consequence, I wasn't in the race boat, even though I trained alongside them.

Teaching CS450 at Clarkson. Haven't scared off too many of the kids yet, so I must not be doing something right.

Finally got a domain name for pyGPS. Was using the Pretec CF GPS with my iPAQ CF sleeve, but the Navman GPS sleeve is FAR sturdier. It also has a CF slot of its own, so you don't lose your only CF slot. My catch is getting better. Actually, I'm pretty satisfied with it right now. I've got other things that need cleaning up, like arms away, and coming out of the water square, and not wobbling the boat. If I improve enough, I might be in the race boat up in Ottawa this year. Dropped my iPAQ, screen-down. $242 later and I basically have a new iPAQ, given that they replaced the motherboard as well.

Did I say that I won an iPAQ for my pyGPS application? Very handy to have two -- now one can be stable (and usable) and the other subject to the whims of jamey, a7r, dc, and others. Got tinyx running on my Tuxscreen. Found my first geocache. Gonna create my own as well.

Lost my iPAQ earlier this month. Sucked big-time. Went out and bought another. The old one had 32M ram / 32M flash. New one has 64M ram / 16 M flash. Also got a pcmcia sleeve, so now I can do wireless. Got myself two Linksys access points. I'm using them as access points now, but I'm expecting to use them to hook up my neighbors by putting them in bridging mode.

Another beautiful day on the water. I'm getting better at the stroke. The catch is the hardest part for me right now. I either get in the water too soon or too late. It's got to be spot-on, within about 50 milliseconds. Anything else and you slow the boat down.
-russ

Many moons have passed since last I diarized. Linux iPAQ (LiPAQ) now has CF sleeve, and CF Ethernet card. It's cool to run x2x. Move the cursor down below the screen, and it appears on your handheld. Enough about me, let's talk about you. -russ

Finished Goblet of Fire a few weeks ago, so I can resume normal life. No, I'm not going to tell you who dies. Got a Kinesis Contour keyboard, in an attempt to address my RSI. It's nice to use my thumbs for backspace and enter, but I don't like the way I have to reach with my thumbs to hold ctrl and enter. The perfect keyboard has not yet been invented.

I've got a Compaq iPaq on order, along with the PCMCIA sleeve. Looking forward to the GPS and camera sleeves, although they're still deep in development. Yes, of course, I'm going to reflash it with Linux. I suppose the Microsoft crap doesn't suck so very badly, but I know there'll be an itch I want to scratch, and no way is it worth learning Microsoft tools in order to do it.

I wish electronic design was easier. I wish that someone made a digitally-controlled motor. I want to tell the motor "Go here and take X ms to do it." It could make a lot of neat hacks much easier to do. Another hack I'm closer to actually doing is to take a PIC or 8051 with an A/D converter, and hook it to a hobbyist servomotor. I'll generate the pulse needed to control it, and measure the motor drive signal with the A/D. When the motor gets driven, I'll command the motor to run in that direction. That way, I could position something by hand, and yet also instruct the computer to move it back to that position.

In my copious spare time, -russ

Diary entry?? You must be kidding!! I haven't finished Boglet of Fire yet!

Sometimes I feel like I'm never getting ahead with the money. First we bought another 143 acres, then we paid our taxes (both cost about the same). Now it's a new car (Subaru Outback), and taxes again!

If I could ever get ahead, just for a few months, I could do *everything* I've been dreaming about doing. Write the qmail book. Write a CORBA interface to qmail. Write a ui to the CORBA interface.

There's a bazillion thing I want to do. I've just gotta quit fooling around and become wealthy, so I can do the things Russ wants to do, not the things my customers want me to do.