starlight

arduino mega and multiple hardware serial devices

2012-01-20T19:16:00.000+01:00

For a project I use an arduino mega (Atmel AtMega1280 8-bit micro-controller to be precise) to access multiple other hardware devices via hardware serial.

I'm running the Arduino stack on the hardware, more specific the arduino 1.0 release.

Now the atmega1280 (or atmega2560) has 4 hardware serial devices (called Serial, Serial1, Serial2, Serial3 in arduino) so using multiple serial devices is easy eh?

Not really.

For one use case I have a device connected on Serial1 at 57600 baud.
I want to be able to route serial traffic from that device to the Serial device connected to the PC.

Sounds easy enough, the follow arduino sketch does the job:

void setup(){
  Serial.begin(57600);
  Serial1.begin(57600);}
void loop() {
    // from external device to serial console
    if (Serial1.available() > 0) {
        byte incomingByte = Serial1.read();
        Serial.write(incomingByte);
    }
    // from serial console to external device
    if (Serial.available() > 0) {
        byte incomingByte = Serial.read();
        Serial1.write(incomingByte);
   }
}

Thing is, for short messages this works fine. However for longer messages only one direction is stable, the direction from the external device (Serial1) to the serial port (Serial).

I could run the serial port (Serial) at a slower speed then the device (Serial1). However then the other way around will start to drop bytes!

Let's have a look at HardwareSerial.cpp as provided in the arduino distribution.

It seems to work with an RX and TX buffer for each hardware serial device.

#define SERIAL_BUFFER_SIZE 64

Maybe that buffer is not large enough. The AtMega1280 I'm using has 8K SRAM and thats quite some more then I need. Let's double the buffer.

#define SERIAL_BUFFER_SIZE 128

Surely the behavior is somewhat better, but it is still dropping bytes in one direction.

Let's have a look at the write function.


size_t HardwareSerial::write(uint8_t c){
  int i = (_tx_buffer->head + 1) % SERIAL_BUFFER_SIZE;
   
  // If the output buffer is full, there's nothing for it other than to 
  // wait for the interrupt handler to empty it a bit
  // ???: return 0 here instead?
  while (i == _tx_buffer->tail)
    ;
   
  _tx_buffer->buffer[_tx_buffer->head] = c;
  _tx_buffer->head = i;
   
  sbi(*_ucsrb, _udrie);
 
  return 1;}

Look and behold:

while (i == _tx_buffer->tail)
    ;

it's a busy loop! If Serial1's transfer buffer is full the entire micro-controller will block and this keeps happening all the time.

The solution I introduced is only move data from one serial device to the other when both are ready. One should be readable (available() in arduino jargon) and the other should be writeable.

A writeable function is not available in Arduino so I added the following method to the HardwareSerial code:


bool HardwareSerial::writeable(){
  int i = (_tx_buffer->head + 1) % SERIAL_BUFFER_SIZE;
  return (i != _tx_buffer->tail);}

The loop from the sketch now looks like this:

void loop() {
    if (Serial1.available() > 0 && Serial.writeable()) {
        byte incomingByte = Serial1.read();
        Serial.write(incomingByte);
    }
    if (Serial.available() > 0 && Serial1.writeable()) {
        byte incomingByte = Serial.read();
        Serial1.write(incomingByte);
   }
}

This helps in the sense that it smooths the flow between the serial devices.

No more dropped bytes!

X with xmonad without KDE/gnome, continued

2011-07-18T17:49:00.000+02:00

This is the setup I settled upon in the end, it's working great. It has heavily based on this wiki page.

The .xsession file:


#!/bin/bash

# Load resources

xrdb -merge .Xresources

# Set up an icon tray

trayer --edge top --align right --SetDockType true --SetPartialStrut true \
--expand true --width 10 --transparent true --tint 0x191970 --height 12 &

# Set the background color

xsetroot -solid midnightblue

# Fire up apps

xscreensaver -no-splash &

if [ -x /usr/bin/nm-applet ] ; then nm-applet --sm-disable & fi

if [ -x /usr/bin/gnome-power-manager ] ; then sleep 3 gnome-power-manager & fi

#xset b off

eval `gpg-agent --daemon`
eval `ssh-agent --daemon`

setxkbmap -option compose:caps

exec xmonad

In order to have X execute the .xsession isof starting the window manager itself, choose the "System default" as session type in gdm or kdm.

This is my .Xresource file:


# red cursor Color, looks great in combination with xmonad
xterm*cursorColor: red

# save tons of lines
xterm*saveLines: 100000

# triple click like in konsole/gnome-termimal
xterm*on3Clicks: regex [^ \n]+
xterm*on4Clicks: line

# use fancy terminus font
xterm*FaceName: terminus-10

This is the .xmobarrc file:


Config { font = "-*-Fixed-Bold-R-Normal-*-13-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"
, bgColor = "black"
, fgColor = "grey"
, position = TopW L 90
, lowerOnStart = True
, commands = [
Run Weather "EBDT" ["-t"," C","-L","64","-H","77","--normal","green","--high","red","--low","lightblue"] 36000,
Run Cpu ["-L","3","-H","50","--normal","green","--high","red"] 10,
Run Memory ["-t","Mem: %"] 10,
Run Swap [] 10,
Run Date "%a %b %_d %H:%M" "date" 10,
Run StdinReader
]
, sepChar = "%"
, alignSep = "}{"
, template = "%StdinReader% }{ ancalagon %cpu% | %memory% * %swap%    %date% | %EBDT%"
}

ancalagon is the name of my laptop.

Finally, this is the .xmonad/xmonad.hs file:


import XMonad
import XMonad.Hooks.DynamicLog
import XMonad.Hooks.ManageDocks
import XMonad.Util.Run(spawnPipe)
import XMonad.Util.EZConfig(additionalKeys)
import System.IO

main = do
    xmproc <- spawnPipe "xmobar"    xmonad $ defaultConfig        { manageHook = manageDocks <+> manageHook defaultConfig
        , layoutHook = avoidStruts  $  layoutHook defaultConfig
        , logHook = dynamicLogWithPP xmobarPP
                        { ppOutput = hPutStrLn xmproc
                        , ppTitle = xmobarColor "green" "" . shorten 50
                        }
        --, modMask = mod4Mask     -- Rebind Mod to the Windows key
        } `additionalKeys`
        [ ((controlMask .|. shiftMask, xK_z), spawn "xscreensaver-command -lock")
        , ((controlMask, xK_Print), spawn "sleep 0.2; scrot -s")
        , ((0, xK_Print), spawn "scrot")
        ]

With big thanks to John Goerzen for providing the excellent information.

configuring X with xmonad without KDE/gnome

2011-07-10T12:41:00.000+02:00

While configuring X11 to use the xmonad tiling window manager instead of the more usual KDE or GNOME, some things were somewhat less then obvious, and I document them here.

.xsession configuration

These are settings that all can be made permanent by adding them to the
.xsession file in your home directory.

disable CAPS, enable Compose

setxkbmap -option compose:caps

Now you can use the Caps Lock key to compose special characters. E.g.

<Caps> 'e gives é
<Caps> e= gives €
...

... and as a bonus you can't accidentally press the Caps Lock key any more!

disable beep globally

xset b off

start gpg-agent on startup

eval `gpg-agent --daemon`

start ssh-agent on startup

eval `ssh-agent --daemon`

other things

dmenu

Install the suckless-tools package for dmenu among things.

Just use <alt>-p to quicklanch apps with dmenu.

xterm

I want to use plain xterm as terminal emulator as the tabbing of gnome-terminal and konsole is rather pointless in combination with the tiling.

The default font size was to small. To solve this I did a dirty hack like this:

update-alternatives -config xterm and change it to uxterm to have an UTF-8 terminal by default
edit /usr/bin/uxterm and change the last line by adding -fn 10x20 to it.

email

At the moment I'm still using kmail as email client (and accidentally akregator as RSS feed agregator). I'm still thinking about switching that as well.

... to be continued ...

one month with a makerbot thing-o-matic, some musings

2011-07-01T09:34:00.000+02:00

I've been meaning to write up more about my learning experience with the makerbot thing-o-matic 3D printer, but for now a short summary is already better then nothing:

construction

I bought the printer as an assembly kit from robosavvy.co.uk. It took me about 12 hours spread over about 10 evenings to build the printer. Had to redo a few steps, some steps were not very clear. Should've made notes of that but didn't. Guess I was to eager to finish!

shortage of wire

One issue I had is that some cables were to short to fit comfortably and be able to survive the movement of the printer platform. I extended them with some wire I had lying around.

printing

Finally after finishing the construction I installed the software, did basic calibration of the machine and did a first print. It actually somewhat worked already!

calibration

After some playing around I noticed the Z axis motor got really hot, soo I did a full calbration as described
at http://wiki.makerbot.com/thingomatic-doc:calibration . This solved the heat issue.

ABS & warping

I started printing with the roll of black ABS supplied with the printer.
These are the relevant settings:

platform temperature: 125°C
heater temperature: 225°C

Printing goes fine but the plastic warps really easily. This is due to the ABS getting solid again really fast as it cools down.

PLA

I ordered some PLA from german supplier 2printbeta. PLA is a compost-able plastic that is made from corn waste and has some interesting properties. The most important one is that PLA doesn't get solid as fast as ABS as it cools down. This seems to avoid warping all together. PLA also comes in beautiful transparent variants.

These are the settings I use for the PLA I bought, but be sure to check the recommendations of the vendor:

platform temperature: 75°C
heater temperature: 195°C

PLA and higher temperatures

Some people recommend using PLA at way higher temperatures like 235°C. This is really dangerous as the PLA will become liquid all the way up into the plastic transport part of the printing head and could bond to the plastic up there. I had to re-assembly the head after I tried that.

plastic not moving anymore

One of the most common issues is that the plastic is no longer pushed down in the head. This could be because the nut got loose due to excessive shaking of the printer, but I also had another issue:

Z-axis calibration

This is vitally important. The Z axis should have a correctly configured max height.

The issue I had was that the max height was slight altered due to moving the machine around a lot and this caused the head to start printing too close to the platform. This causes pressure to build up in the head and the stepper-motor starts skipping. If this happens to you be sure to check the Z-axis setting!

white plastic

For some bizar reason both the white ABS and white PLA I have causes the stepper to skip at times. I don't know why yet but for now I'm not using white plastic anymore.

modelling

Of course in the beginning it is fun just to print the calibration cubes and stuff found on thing-i-verse but after a while I wanted to start making something myself.

It was quite a bummer to find out that google sketchup doesn't work under Linux. Then I found openSCAD, which is a declarative programming language for constructing objects. It works quite ok for simple things.

conclusion

I still have a lot to learn about 3D printing. Documentation is quite sparse still.
It is fun and I already made some items that are in use.
The thing-o-matic printer requires a willingness to maintain the machine or it will give issues.

bread maker hints and tips

2011-04-08T08:55:00.000+02:00

Since a couple of years I have the excellent Panasonic Automatic Breadmaker.
The quality of bread it produces easily matches and with some help surpasses the quality provided by the bakery. Here are a few hints that help make the experience better.

Use more water!

A 1kg bread based on 600g flour typically requires between 360 and 380 ml of water. I always use 400ml. This makes your bread a bit stronger and it'll dry out less fast.

Use less salt

You can easily get away with 4-5gram less salt then the recipe requires and it'll still taste great.

Ready-made flour mixes

There is nothing wrong with using ready-made flour mixes.However in my opinion they tend to contain to much salt and tend to produce bread that is quite light in structure. I prefer stronger bread.

The solution is adding some other non-mixed flour like rye. For example I typically replace 600g of mix with 150g rye and 450g mix. It's not needed to add any extra salt or yeast. The bread will still rise fine.

Pizza!

The bread maker also makes dough and the pizza dough is highly recommended. It only takes 45 minutes in the machine to make a nice dough. That being said, if you have more time I recommend making the dough earlier and letting it rest a while in the fridge.

Enjoy.

young deer,early morning

2011-04-06T10:20:00.002+02:00

debian, grub2, booting the "other OS"

2011-04-06T09:58:00.001+02:00

Recently my debian installation switched to grub2 and the boot menu no longer showed a working entry for booting my old XP partition.

The solution is simple:

sudo apt-get install os-prober
sudo update-grub

From now on grub2 will automatically detect and add to its menu all other OS partitions on your local disks.

blog moved

2011-04-05T19:10:00.001+02:00

I my blog moved again, looks like some posts got republished to planet grep, my apologies for the spam.

Joost

digicorder and recording subsequent programs

2010-08-22T08:19:00.000+02:00

Digital television is getting the norm in Belgium, and typically people rent a "digicorder" from the TV provider. This allows you to watch television and also record programs for later consumption.

In practice my family only records a few programs and watch them later. It's very convenient not to be bound to a specific schedule. (On the other hand it would probably be cheaper to just buy the DVD boxes of the series we like instead of having television at all, but that is another discussion :) ).

In general, the digicorder works fine, I have one big gripe with it though: recording of subsequent programs.

Lets say we're recording subsequent programs A and B from channel 0. Let's assume there is some advertisement in between programs. This gives as timescale something like this:

Now, there are three ways the digicorder can record the program, not counting the completely faulty ways when timing goes all wrong.

Both programs want to record a time-slice before and after their program, but this goes wrong in the middle, and only one recording ends up with the middle part.

correct

The correct recording is with the break point in the middle like this:

I presume there are not some kind of markers in between the broad-casted programs on commercial television because it makes their advertisement store even worse.

Therefor, in practice you typically end up with one if these two:

B in recording 1

This is problematic because if you don't remember not to erase recording 1 after watching program A, the start of program 2 will be lost.

A in recording 2

This is even worse. Lets say you want to watch program B first.

You first have to open recording 1, fast forward all the way to the start of program B, start watching and after a few minutes switch to recording 2. This will also leave recording 1 marked as "watched" even though you didn't watch program A yet. More confusion!

A simple solution

In the end this is a simple technical problem with an even simpler solution: record the overlap in a separate file and make it part of both recordings. Visual:

If you watch recording 1, you get recording 1 + X. If you watch recording 2, you get X + recording 2.

If you erase recording 1, X stays. Only if both recording 1 and recording 2 are erased, X gets deleted.

More in general there will be X areas both in front and at the end, etc...

Would be nice if the biggest TV provider of Belgium could implement this. If the digicorder was open source I would've done this already months ago...
I guess I'll have to look into some kind of MythTV like setup one day.

morning vs evening

2010-08-14T08:59:00.000+02:00

Morning (dew)

Evening (rain)

young tomato

2010-07-21T10:13:00.000+02:00

From 2010

valeriaan

2010-07-21T10:12:00.000+02:00

From 2010

arduino-0018, avrdude and usbtiny programmer

2010-07-17T20:38:00.000+02:00

For some reason the avrdude binary that is shipped with arduino-0018 has no support for the USBtiny programmer which I use to burn bootloaders on blank AVR atmega328 microcontrollers.
On Debian the workaround is simple: first install avrdude via apt-get/aptidude and then enter the hardware/tools directory in the arduino-0018 dir and replace avrdude by a softlink to /usr/bin/avrdude like this:


$ cd arduino-0018/hardware/tools
$ mv avrdude avrdude.old1
$ ln -s /usr/bin/avrdude .
$ mv avrdude.conf avrdude.conf.old1
$ cp /etc/avrdude.conf .

After this burning a bootloader via the menu in arduino works fine again. A similar approach will probably work on other Linux distributions.

digitalis 2

2010-06-07T20:41:00.000+02:00

digitalis 1

2010-06-07T20:40:00.000+02:00

papaver

2010-06-07T20:37:00.000+02:00

check my coachwork

2010-06-07T20:34:00.000+02:00

amavisd-new clamav crashes tmp files

2010-05-07T16:30:00.000+02:00

Since I still run my own mail infrastructure, I also run anti-spam and anti-virus on it.
Today I noticed that free space on my server running lenny was ALOT less then usual. Turned out that clamav was crashing all the time causing lots of temporary files in /var/lib/amavis/tmp.

An upgrade of clamav also stopped the crashes.

While at it I also disabled quarantining virus mails, I never had to retrieve any mail out of there anyway...

Nokia N82 Bluetooth + GPRS/3G

2010-02-12T07:39:00.000+01:00

A few months ago I did an interesting discovery about using my cellphone to go on the internet via bluetooth. I had this strange situation before where it just stopped working, and after revisiting all configs it worked again.

What really happens is that my cellphone somehow crashes, after which I power cycle it by removing the batteries. The phone then boots again, but here is the twist: the service channels in the phone are re-allocated and apparently in a random order!

This implies that the RFCOMM channel configured in the /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf file is possible wrong now!

Solution: just browse the services again with sdptool browse, adapt the file and it should work again!

Ochtendzon, Grote Nete

2010-01-31T07:50:00.000+01:00

Ochtend zon aan de Grote Nete in December 2009.

Morning sun, grote nete

2010-01-31T07:46:00.000+01:00

December 2009, Morning sun at the Grote Nete.

Grote Nete, december 2009

2010-01-31T07:35:00.000+01:00

how to set a serial port at MIDI speed in linux

2009-05-30T10:52:00.000+02:00

Linux serial ports only work at standard speeds by default. MIDI runs at 31250 baud, which is not a standard speed. However there are tricks to get custom speeds, but documentation is quite fuzzy. This is a simple recipe that worked for me with an FT232 USB-Serial board.

Check the baud base of the device:

$ setserial -g -a /dev/ttyUSB0
/dev/ttyUSB0, Line 0, UART: unknown, Port: 0x0000, IRQ: 0
        Baud_base: 24000000, close_delay: 0, divisor: 0
        closing_wait: infinite
        Flags: spd_normal low_latency

As you can see the baud base is 24000000 here.
Next calculate the divisor by dividing the baud_base you see here by the speed you want.
In my case 24000000/31250=768.

Apply the new setting:

$ setserial -v /dev/ttyUSB0 spd_cust divisor 768

Next start your serial application, you might want to make sure it is already set to the correct speed before you do the above changes else it might destroy your settings. The correct speed is 38400 baud, which is now aliased to 31250.

With minicom just use the menu (CTRL-A Z) to change the settings.

Screen can be used like this:

screen /dev/ttyUSB0 38400

Exit screen by pressing CTRL-A CTRL-\

Sweet.

resistence is futile

2009-05-09T22:47:00.000+02:00

From public

nikon d300 - tamron 17-50 f/2.8

usb tiny isp programmer / user accessible

2009-04-28T23:10:00.000+02:00

To make an usbtiny programmer usable directly as user from avrdude or the arduino toolkit, add the following line to a new file in /etc/udev/ :

ATTRS{idVendor}=="1781", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0c9f", MODE="0664", GROUP="plugdev"
I created a file called /etc/udev/joost.rules with this line.
Reload udev with /etc/init.d/udev reload

arduino toolkit on x86_64 linux Debian/Ubuntu

2009-04-28T10:20:00.000+02:00

Update:

I received an email from Ethan Bisset with a much nicer solution: just use the debian provided serial library instead of the one provided with the arduino software.

This is his recipe:

1. Get arduino software
2. apt-get install sun-java6-bin binutils-avr avr-libc gcc-avr librxtx-java
3. Untar arduino software
4. Delete <arduino>/lib/librxtxSerial.so
5. Done!

(below is the old entry:)

Download the linux 32-bit arduino toolkit from the arduino toolkit download page and untar in a directory.

Install the avr tools: apt-get install avr-libc binutils-avr gcc-avr

Install "ia32-sun-java5-bin". ( apt-get install ia32-sun-java5-bin )

Adapt the "arduino" startup script script and replace java in it by

/usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-1.5.0-sun/bin/java

Execute the "arduino" startup script. It works just fine now.

Thats all.

Many thanks to the Debian java packagers for providing this 32-bit compatibity jvm!

De Post - volmachten

2009-04-03T12:13:00.000+02:00

Blijkbaar heeft De Post een nieuwe melkkoe gevonden: de kleine zelfstandige.

Vandaag stond de postbode aan mijn deur met aan pakketje voor de firma. Hij vertelde me doodleuk dat het niet mag afgeven worden, want ik moet hiervoor een volmacht hebben.
Deze volmacht kun je gaan halen op de post en kost elk jaar geld.

De postbode gaf zelf toe dat dit puur geldklopperij is.

Je bent dus gewaarschuwd: zorg dat verzendingen met de post als geadresseerde je privé gegevens bevatten en niet je firmanaam. Of werk met een andere firma dan De Post.

Ikzelf hang er nu al aan voor dit jaar.

Gelukkig is het zalig weer :)

grote nete, sunset

2009-03-30T09:58:00.000+02:00

From public

tomato

2009-03-25T20:39:00.000+01:00

From public

glibc 2.9 - maradns

2009-03-01T09:17:00.000+01:00

As Debian has been released my "unstable" box recently upgraded to glibc 2.9.
This caused DNS resolving to mysteriously fail in some applications.

Turns out that only IPv6 enabled applications suffer.

Apparently libc now fires both an IPv4 and IPv6 DNS resolving request in parallel. It looks like some DNS servers don't handle that correctly and answer an error on the IPv6 request before the IPv4 request even has time to resolve further in the internet.

In my case it was my local NSLU2 running Debian lenny causing the trouble, more specific the maradns local DNS server and DNS proxy running on it.

I manually upgraded maradns to the latest version (> 1.3.10) and things are "back" to normal.

Another solution is to disable IPv6 systemwide but I prefer not to do that as I use IPv6 occationally for testing.

I fear that this will cause more trouble for alot of people with routers doing DNS proxying.

Grote Nete

2009-02-15T12:59:00.000+01:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • tamron 17-50 f/2.8 • © 2009 Joost Yervante Damad

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openMSX 0.7.0

2009-02-07T18:26:00.000+01:00

A new version of openMSX has been released!

Important new feature is save-states. This gave me the means to finally finish the very first game I bought as a kid: Konami's Nemesis 2 for the MSX computer.

In these times games were usually hard. Nemesis 2 is even harder. The only way to play it without save-states is not dying all 15 levels. Given that Nemesis 2 is a shooter this is VERY hard :)

Each one of those red bullets and grey stones is fatal :)

But save-states wasn't enough. I also enabled "old-people" mode, meaning running the emulator at 75% speed of the original MSX computer.

After more then an hour of hard labour playing using alot of save-states I finally managed to finish the game.

Only 22 years late ;-)

P.S.: I checked with my MSX friends and no-one was able to finish this game without some form of cheating....

dell precision m6400 power brick

2009-02-07T11:57:00.000+01:00

I'm really happy with my new Dell precision M6400.
The only thing most people complain about is the size of the power brick, and I can't agree more. It's a huge 200 Watt thing and it's really as large and heavy as a stone brick.

Luckily I still have a spare power brick of my old Dell precision M65: a 90 Watt PA-10 family power brick. It has exactly the same voltage (19.5 Volt) so I decided to try it.
I've been using it now for a few days when at customer sites and it works fine.

(Try at your own risk!)

icy little

2009-02-05T20:27:00.000+01:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • 70-300 vr • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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bones

2009-02-05T20:12:00.000+01:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • sigma 300 f/4 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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a month

2009-01-19T09:33:00.000+01:00

Last year I even did it for longer then a month, but this year I want at least to redo a minimal effort, thus I'm going for a month of sobriety, as a kind of cleansing :) (and no, I'm not religious).

These are my 5 daily checkpoints:

smoothie for breakfast

This is something which we (me and my wife) do already anyway, have a fresh fruit smoothie for breakfast. Currently our favorite mix is 4 blood oranges, freshly pealed and parted, a seep of Sea-buckthorn elixir, and a couple of frozen strawberries (or cranberries). Mix all in the blender, long enough to don't have any parts left. It is extremely tasty, and gives a serious vitamin boost for the winter. The idea is to have it for breakfast and then don't drink or eat anything else for at least 1.5 hours, to make sure it's (almost) fully digested.
< 4 coffee

This is a hard one; people who know me will know I'm a serious coffee lover. I have a special espresso machine, and typically serve single origin or special blend coffees. It's hard to resist :)
exercise

Just a walk with the dogs already counts.
no sugar

This is usually not so hard for me, as I'm not into sweets anyway.
no alcohol

This is tougher. I'll have to stick to coffee, tea and fruit juices.

This is all as much a physical as a mental exercice :)

brussels

2009-01-14T20:57:00.000+01:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • tamron 17-50 f/2.8 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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ducks taking off

2009-01-06T20:34:00.000+01:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • tamron 17-50 f/2.8 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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misty afternoon

2008-12-23T20:35:00.000+01:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • nikkor 50mm f/1.4 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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DIFTAR, geen oplossing

2008-12-17T09:05:00.000+01:00

Twee maanden geleden zat er een briefje in de brievenbus, met uitleg over het nieuwe afval system, DIFTAR, en een formulier dat ik ingevuld moest ophangen aan de brievenbus, om te kiezen welke afval bakken ik wil hebben. Nu doen we zelf aan compostering en de rest wordt door de kippen verwerkt, dus een groene bak heb ik niet nodig. Formulier ingevuld, klaar.

Niet dus.

Een paar weken later staan er twee bakken aan mijn huis, een groene en een grijze. Ikke gebeld, uitgelegd dat ik die groene niet nodig heb, en er ook niet voor zoek te betalen. Geen probleem, men ging een afspraak maken om die komen halen.

Niet dus.

Gisteren een rekening gekregen voor de twee bakken.... zal toch nog maar eens bellen...

Los van al die opstart perikelen blijf ik het een zeer slecht systeem vinden.

Uitgangspunt is als ik het goed begrijp mensen laten betalen voor de hoeveelheid afval die ze produceren, om zo aan te moedigen van minder afval te produceren.

Probleem is dat mensen met veel geld het niet voelen, voor hen maakt het geen verschil, dus die hebben geen reden. Mensen met weinig geld daar en tegen, en zeker de oudere generatie vinden dat ze ineens veel geld moeten betalen voor hun afval.

Ik ben er zeker van dat dit alleen maar sluikstorten en stoken in de hand werkt. Op een mistige of regenachtige dag als vandaag ruik je soms gewoon de geur van verbrand plastic.
Proberen aan die mensen uit te leggen dat dit slecht is is praten tegen een muur...

Volgens mij is de enige juiste oplossing de ophaling van restafval volledig gratis maken.
Nu bestaat "gratis" uiteraard niet, en betalen u en ik er dan evengoed voor, maar via indirecte belastingen. Volgens mij is dit psychologisch gezien een veel betere aanpak.

Wat dan met al die verpakkingsafval problemen... Ook hier kan volgens mij alleen een tax op de verpakking bij aankoop maar werken. Een product met minder of biodegradeerbare verpakking zou op die manier een prijs voordeel kunnen krijgen.

(near) winter

2008-12-14T11:19:00.000+01:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • tamron 17-50 f/2.8 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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linus / composition

2008-12-14T11:14:00.000+01:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • nikkor 50mm f/1.4 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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Linux, Debian & Bluetooth

2008-11-29T13:21:00.000+01:00

I was getting sick of all the wires on my desk, and I needed a new keyboard anyway,
so I bought a logitech bluetooth key and mouse (mx 5000). It's supposed to work just fine.

The keyboard comes with a bluetooth dongle, but it's rather silly not to use the bluetooth build in my laptop, so i never tried the dongle.

I was running linux-image-2.6.26-1-amd64 on my laptop and it had serieus issues with bluetooth. It was very hard to get the device to pair, it imvolved alot of manual probing/forcing.

This morning I upgraded kernel to 2.6.27.7 from kernel.org and it all started working flawlessly...

P.S.: might be fun to see if I can find a way to have it's LCD display work in Linux ;-)

first snow (meme)

2008-11-25T23:14:00.000+01:00

Since everybody is posting pictures of the first snow of the year, I can't stay behind. Quickly popped out this morning to make this snap of my favorite habitat, the valley of the "Grote Nete":

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • tamron 17-50 f/2.8 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

Intel® Matrix Storage: software raid?

2008-11-15T09:48:00.000+01:00

It's still unclear to me if this is software raid or not.
It might depend on the chipset. My chipset is "Intel® ICH9M-E SATA AHCI/RAID controller hub" which seems to hint that it is hardware RAID.

Dear lazyweb, anyone know how to find if this is software or hardware raid?

solder

2008-11-01T20:37:00.000+01:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • nikkor 50mm f/1.4 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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duvel, eyes

2008-10-31T21:59:00.000+01:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • nikkor 50mm f/1.4 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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RC-Bugs / Debian Bug Sprint

2008-10-30T07:16:00.000+01:00

The Debian Lenny release has still quite a big list of Release Critical bugs, and as Debian developer I feel that I should do my share, and at least look at the list of bugs and see if there's any I could do something for.

Almost always though, I find that I won't touch the remaining bugs in the list.because of one or more of these reasons:

a package I really don't care about
hugely complex package or might also use something obscure like cddb
it seems like people are already looking into it
it requires a political solution, not a technical one

As part of the effort to get Lenny released, Joss Mouette started the Debian Bug Sprint.
This is really a cool concept, and it is a shame not more people participated.

The reason for me it is cool is that it forced me to break the rules I mentioned above, because I got a bug which fitted 1 and 4 of my list above!

Turned out this bug is really a border case in interpretation of Debian policy.

The package is perfectly usable without any extern dependencies, hence it is currently in the main section of Debian. However it doesn't end there. The package also has a download script that can fetch firmware images for certain printers. It appears for people with these printers the package is NOT usable without external files.

Aparantly though, the current, as one person involved in the bug calls it, "spirit" of Debian is to tolerate this, as it is good enough that it is usable without external dependencies for SOME persons.

However the bug submitter doesn't agree, and thinks this is a case that needs addressing withing the Debian project.

I suggested splitting up the package and moving the download script to contrib, but this was mostly dismissed as idea.

The end result is that the maintainer decided to escalate the problem to the Debian CTTE.
This means it probable won't be solved by today, soo I will have to bake cookies for someone :)

getaddrinfo V4MAPPED

2008-10-28T20:51:00.000+01:00

When writing an IPv6 enabled server, using the AI_V4MAPPED flag to get IPv4 addresses as IPv6 mapped addresses also somehow requires the AI_ALL flag or it doesn't work.

This conflicts the manual page and also the opengroup docs.

Update: the above is on Debian GNU/Linux sid with glibc 2.7-15.
Just tested it on opensolaris and they DO provide the correct behaviour. Time for a bugreport

adobe flash 10 in debian unstable

2008-10-23T10:50:00.000+02:00

Because I see a lot of very complex tutorials, I'd like to point out that it can be done much easier:

add deb http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian experimental main contrib to your /etc/apt/sources.list (replace nl by your favorite mirror)
aptitude update
aptitude -t experimental install flashplugin-nonfree
done :)

That's all.

linus, cleaning

2008-10-19T18:19:00.000+02:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • tamron 17-50 f/2.8 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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allium

2008-10-18T11:56:00.000+02:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • nikkor 70-300 vr • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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spagetti pompoen

2008-10-17T23:35:00.000+02:00

Een van mijn favoriete groenten is de pompoen. Niet in het minste omdat het een plant is die met mijn zeer extensieve teeltwijze toch meestal een deftige opbrengst geeft.

Dit jaar was een bijzonder goed pompoen jaar bij mij. Eindelijk ben ik er ook in geslaagd van spagetti pompoenen te kweken. Ik zou zelfs durven stellen dat de spagetti pompoenen mijn tuin veroverd hebben. Ze lagen overal tussen de rest van de groenten (onkruid?), en het leken wel drakeneieren :)

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • tamron 17-50 f/2.8 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

Het bereiden is simpel: gewoon een uurtje in de oven op 175 graden celcius. Wel wat gaatjes in de schil maken zodat de druk er af kan. Na ongeveer een uurtje testen of je makkelijk door de schil gaat met een vork en dan is ie gaar.
Gewoon in tweeen snijden, pitten eruit (achteraf roosteren!) en dan het vruchtvlees uitscheppen met een lepel. Het lijkt eerst nog op gewoon pompoen vruchtvlees, maar als je er dan wat op duwt valt het uiteen in spagetti-achtige slierten.
Smaak is redelijk neutraal en zeer lekker te combineren met bijvoorbeeld een tomatensaus op basis van overrijpe tomaatjes bij de buren uit de kas.

Samen met de courgettes was dit de revelatie in mijn groententuin van dit jaar! Die gaan zeker volgend jaar terugkomen, als het weer een beetje meezit.

welcome, Autumn

2008-10-17T23:28:00.000+02:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • nikkor 70-300 vr • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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grote nete, sunrise, mist

2008-10-08T20:27:00.000+02:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • nikkor 70-300 vr • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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drunken swallow

2008-10-07T22:48:00.000+02:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • nikkor 50mm f/1.4 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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Dandelion

2008-10-06T20:27:00.000+02:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • nikkor 50mm f/1.4 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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Guardamar Del Segura - sunset (thorny)

2008-10-05T13:58:00.000+02:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • nikkor 70-300 vr • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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Guardamar Del Segura - sunset

2008-10-04T22:02:00.000+02:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • tokina 12-24 f/4 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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Guardamar Del Segura - bench

2008-10-03T19:31:00.000+02:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • tamron 17-50 f/2.8 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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market - guardamar del segura - sales

2008-10-02T00:11:00.000+02:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nikon d300 • tamron 17-50 f/2.8• © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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ebay / channeladvisor / big sellers

2008-10-01T23:33:00.000+02:00

I sometimes buy things on ebay, always went fine. Find item on ebay, pay with paypal, done.

Lately though there is this new trend where large sellers use a sort of third party to manage their sales, like e.g. channeladvisor.com. Not only does this add an extra step to buying it also adds an extra step that can go wrong.

On one auction I get mails from channeladvisor to pay for an item I already payed via paypal, yet didn't receive.

On another auction I was sent along to a totally confusing german only third party site, causing me to accidentally pick the wrong payment method, which turns out I can't use, and I can't change it, thus I can't pay.

Don't bother to send a message to the seller, because for them you're just collateral damage. One negative feedback on thousands of sales.

I won't be buying from indirect sellers on ebay anymore...

Lokerse feesten 2008

2008-08-10T15:46:00.000+02:00

(click on the image to enlarge)

nokia n82 • zeiss tessar 5.6 f/2.8 • © 2008 Joost Yervante Damad

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Echinacea purpurea

2008-08-10T13:36:00.000+02:00

Clouds

2008-08-07T18:48:00.000+02:00

hulshout city center

2008-08-02T17:08:00.000+02:00

Gentse feesten 2008

2008-07-27T00:20:00.000+02:00

Gent - Facade

2008-07-26T16:43:00.000+02:00

using the wiimote as joystick/mouse for openmsx under linux

2008-06-22T12:38:00.000+02:00

You will need a working bluetooth system on your PC or laptop. I won't describe how to do that :)

cwiid

This is a library for wii interfacing via bluetooth. It allows to map wii axes and buttons on the X mouse or buttons via a userspace input driver called "wminput". This driver is controlled via a simple configuration file. It works with a set of plugins that provide various forms of translation of wii bluetooth events to axes and key/button events.

1) wiimote sends an event via bluetooth
2) a wminput plugin (as configured in the config file) handles the event and translates it to an axis or button/key event
3) the config file specifies how to map this axis or key on a mouse or joystick or button

evening sun, leaf

2008-06-20T00:50:00.000+02:00

f/5.6 leaves, sunset

2008-06-20T00:16:00.000+02:00

erlang parse simple config file

2008-06-07T19:05:00.000+02:00

In erlang there is a simple way of making config files, just use file:consult/1.
It parses a file that contains erlang terms terminated by a dot.

Given this input file:

{hello, world}.
foo.
42.

It can be used like this:


file:consult("test.txt").
{ok,[{hello,world},foo,42]}

neat eh?

last.fm rocks!

2008-06-07T13:10:00.000+02:00

I already wrote a review (also in Dutch) of last.fm some time ago, but I have to praise it again as it works so amazingly well!

I've been listening to my Loved Track Radio the last two days and it just makes me so happy listening to one super song after the other.

If you haven't tried it yet, be sure to give it a try. I'm not a big fan of flash but the flash player on the website works just fine.

sluimererwten? suikererwten!

2008-06-03T22:05:00.000+02:00

Van de week de eerste gestoofde sluimererwten gegeten. Altijd heel lekker.
Ik heb ooit eens geprobeerd van erwten te zaaien van Aveve, maar dit was geen succes. Dit zijn duidelijk erwten gericht op zo veel mogelijk opbrengst op zo weinig mogelijk tijd.
Als hobbyist is dat niet ideaal.

Neem dan de suikererwten van De Bolster veel liever. Dit is een erwten soort met een oogst die veel toleranter is van tijd. De erwten zijn ook nog lekker als ze al iets langer hangen, en ze komen ook veel meer verspreid over de tijd aan de plant! Als bonus zijn het ook nog eens biologisch-dynamische zaden.

Een aanrader.

evening sun grote nete (HDR)

2008-06-03T14:33:00.000+02:00

wii fit muscle table & combination table

2008-06-02T18:08:00.000+02:00

Those of you who have wii fit will know that the game shows which muscles or parts of the body are trained by which exercise. However if your memory is as fine as mine, especially when exercising, this information doesn't really stick. Same with the suggested combinations of exercises.

In order to make this information readily accessible, I made two tables for your download pleasure:wii_fit.pdf.

neigh_drv

2008-05-30T17:41:00.000+02:00

neigh_drv is an Erlang driver for neighbour manipulation (arp cache). You can find it here.

tomaten kokos saus

2008-05-25T23:10:00.000+02:00

ingrediënten:

1 halve kop geraspte kokos
2 tomaatjes
2 teentjes knoflook
1 ui
1 rode peper
1 groene peper

Laat de geraspte kokos een uur of 4 weken in zuiver water, of gebruik anders kokosmelk.
Stoof de ui met de geperste teentjes knoflook en de pepers in stukjes gesneden tot ze zacht zijn.
Voeg de kokos met het water toe. Snij de 2 tomaten in stukjes en voeg toe. Laat een 10 tal minuutjes doorkoken en voeg eventueel wat water toe om het vloeibaar te houden.
Laat dan beetje afkoelen en mix nog eens door met de staafmixer.

Warm voorzichtig op vlak voor het gebruik.

foliage CA

2008-05-25T12:08:00.000+02:00

brussels, vosseplein, clean team

2008-05-24T14:29:00.000+02:00

star wars expo brussels

2008-05-24T14:23:00.000+02:00

brussels, vosseplein, waste picker

2008-05-24T13:38:00.000+02:00

lilly

2008-05-21T23:56:00.000+02:00

virtualbox 1.5.6, 2.6.25 and debian sid

2008-05-14T21:38:00.000+02:00

I use virtualbox (the non-free version) to run Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
I had some new photos to import, therefor I tried to start Virtualbox.

I first tried version 1.6.0, however this version locked up my PC the hard way, without any clue what happened, therefor I quickly moved back to version 1.5.6 (accidentally the last non-Sun version) as this one worked beautifully before.

The kernel modules had to be regenerated, but a simple
/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup fixed this.
However it turned out that virtualbox didn't start at all. There was a problem with one of the shared libraries it uses. Downgrading libxalan110-dev and libxalan110-dev by use of snapshot.debian.net fixed it for me.

See also this bug for more details.

mijn blog is verhuisd

2008-05-14T07:54:00.001+02:00

Werk a.u.b uw agregators of bookmarks bij.
Het nieuwe adres is http://damad.be/joost/blog/

my blog has moved

2008-05-14T07:52:00.001+02:00

Please update your agregators or bookmarks, this blog has moved.
Find the new blog at http://damad.be/joost/blog/

sesam ijs

2008-05-12T10:41:00.000+02:00

Doe sesam zaad in een glas, en vul met water. Laat dit een nachtje weken.
Giet het water af en spoel de zaadjes nog wat af.
Doe de zaadjes in de keukenmachine me S-vormig mes.
Voeg een paar dadels toe voor de smaak.
Voeg wat water toe.
Mix dit alles lang genoeg tot je een dikvloeibare vloeistof hebt. Voeg eventueel extra water toe als het te dik is.
Voeg Bevroren bananenpartjes toe en mix door tot je een mooie ijsstructuur hebt zonder bananenstukjes.

Ik had wat schrik voor de smaak, maar dat viel 100% mee, iemand die van sesam houdt, gaat dit zeker lusten!

purple

2008-05-11T23:02:00.000+02:00

fresh tea-free earl grey ice-tea

2008-05-11T15:49:00.000+02:00

This hot weather calls for a refreshing and tasty beverage.

Take some fresh leaves from Bergamot mint (Mentha citrata) and poor boiling water over it. Leave it like that for a night. Next morning, remove the leaves and put in the fridge.

When you're thirsty, put some ice-cubes or crushed ice in a glass and poor the cold tea on it.

Tasty!

temporary neighbours

2008-05-10T22:58:00.000+02:00

Wii Fit - play speed

2008-05-07T19:48:00.000+02:00

I'm a big fan of the wii fit, and today I passed the 10h training limit.
What I was quite annoyed at is the sluggishness to change extercices, etc..
However after the 10h reward the exercises seem to start faster, soo just keep on training!

garden art

2008-05-03T19:37:00.000+02:00

linus

2008-04-27T19:53:00.000+02:00

depth experiment

2008-04-18T09:19:00.000+02:00

cold morning dew

2008-04-16T09:26:00.000+02:00

future cabbage

2008-04-13T12:45:00.000+02:00

seagull bokeh

2008-04-05T12:49:00.000+02:00

beach house

2008-04-04T13:08:00.000+02:00

lasagne van tomaatjes, peterselie en kool

2008-03-30T18:26:00.000+02:00

Dit recept is zeker interessant, maar er is nog werk aan, het viel iets te droog uit en de witte kool smaakt wat sterk door.

ingredienten:
- lasagne vellen
- witte kool
- olijfolie
- peterselie
- tomaat
- zeezout
- peper
- citroensap of vincotto
- ui
- knoflook
- evt. wat kaas

bereiding:
Smeer de ovenschotel in met wat olijfolie. Snij tomaat in plakjes en beleg er de bodem mee.
Eerste laag lasagne vellen erop.

Maak een sausje van peterselie, 3 eetlepels olijfolie, snufje zout en peper, 1/2 tomaatje, 2 teentjes knoflook (geperst) en wat citroensap of vincoto met behulp van de keukenmachine met het S-mes.

Doe dit sausje op de lasagne vellen. Dek af met de 2e laag lasagne vellen.
Snij terug tomaat in plakjes en doe op de lasagne vellen. Dek af met de 3e laag lasagne vellen.

Maak een mengeling van wat fijngesneden ajuin en 2x zoveel witte kool en 3 eetlepels olijfolie, met behulp van de keukenmachine.

Doe dit sausje over de lasagne vellen. Eventueel nog wat kaas erop als laatste laag.

hazelnoot-kokos-dadel snoepjes

2008-03-16T12:59:00.000+01:00

ingredienten:

- hazelnoten (1 beker)
- kokos schilvers (1/2 beker)
- dadels (zonder pit!) (~ 1 beker)

bereiding:

Mix de hazelnoten fijn met behulp van een keukenmachine met S-mes. Voeg de kokos schilvers toe en meng. Voeg de dadels toe en mix voorzichtig door. Als het niet plakkerig genoeg van structuur is, voeg nog een paar dadels een voor een toe.

Maak van de bekomen massa bolletjes, en bewaar in de koelkast.