This has not been a fun night. While working on the chain link fence, I had a major round of skipped heart beats (well, actually they’re extra heart beats). It was about as bad as the episode I had in February that caused me to go to the hospital which prompted all the doctor visits from that point forward. I can definitely say I’m a bit shaken at this point. Hopefully, it won’t get worse as I already have a cardiologist appointment tomorrow to make sure everything is good before I go into surgery to remove my gallbladder.
Are just awesome! And I’m not really an iPod person as I don’t have a large music collection.
Apple held a special media event today where they released pretty much an entire new iPod line including new Nanos and Touches. The iPod Nanos are the thinnest iPods ever with a really nice curved glass screen. They even come in a multitude of colors. Though, I must say the dark gray aluminum with the black click wheel is my all time favorite iPod design ever. It even matches my blog! Then to top it all off, the new Nanos have a built in accelerometer just like the iPhone and iPod Touch. I must say that this is a really great improvement.
Now for the iPod Touch, it got a few new things. Not only was it thinned out and curved like its sibblings, it now sports an integrated speaker and Nike+ antenna. These were unexpected additions to the Touch that are quite nice. However, I would have liked to seen a built in camera instead of the Nike+ antenna as I think that would serve a larger purpose. Plus I would have bought one right then and there. I wonder if there’s a camera accessory for the Touch…
My big project for the next few days is to put a chain link fence around a growing garden in our backyard to stop our dogs from getting into the fruits and vegetables. So far it has been somewhat difficult as I’m in major limestone country. After struggling with the fence post holes, I then went up to local home improvement store and bought a load of fence parts. Hopefully it all comes together tomorrow. Keep an eye on my photoblog for some pics of the fencing process.
So, you got yourself an old m68k Apple Macintosh and you want to install Linux or some *NIX OS on it. But, after looking around at some of the tutorials around the web, you find to your surprise that you still need a Mac OS install to boot Linux. This is because the only option to boot alternative operating systems on these old macs was to first boot Mac OS and then hijack the boot process with a custom Mac application that acts as the Linux boot loader. Until now.
I did some searching for alternative boot loaders for m68k Macs and stumbled across EMILE, Early Macintosh Image LoadEr. It’s a real boot loader that doesn’t require a Mac OS install to boot. It takes advantage of boot blocks on the Mac’s hard drive or a floppy disk to trick the Mac ROM into thinking it’s the rest of the Mac OS. It’s an awesome development in the Linux m68k Mac port that I hope to contribute some time to help further development. So if you got an old Mac, check this out.
Note to self: Don’t use a random orbital sander for more than 30 minutes at a time or you really start getting some weird affects. When I hit about an hour’s worth of time sanding a chopping block/shelf I’m building, my hands began to tingle. After a break, I then went back and sanded for another half hour, and now I’m finding it difficult to type this.
As you have probably read in past posts, you know I’m a fairly strict vegan. I got started eating vegeterian over a year and a half ago before switching to vegan about six months or so ago. I did this primarily to lose all my, well, ‘sitting in front of a computer all day’ weight. Over this time, I lost about 90lb and can finally say I look thin for probably the second time of my life (first being when I was really young). And really, I quite well enjoy eating the way I do as it’s another step to making myself different from everyone else, which has been something I’ve done all my life.
So anyway, besides fitting into the ‘standard’ vegan profile of not eating any animal products, I also tend to avoid most heavily processed foods and prefer that the food is certified organic. I still eat some stuff that comes in a box, but I make sure the ingredient list is as small as possible which will tend to let you know how processed the food is. So while shopping at the local health food store, I stumbled across a really nice snack. It’s a small package of dried organic mulberries made by Kopali. I’ve never had a mulberry before, but I must say they’re quite tasty. And they’re packed full of nutrients compared to your standard raisin. They even make the list of the 15 most healthy berries. So go out there and try some dried mulberries, even if you’re a cheese pizza loving geek. It may help you later on.
Over this past week, I’ve purchased 360 Atmel AT49F002-70JC (2Mb flash chip), 1000 IDT 71024S15Y (1Mb sram chip), and 140 Motorola MC68030RP25C (old m68k processor found in old Macs and other computers) in large lots on eBay. Now when you add them altogether, what do you get? Something big…a supercomputer. Well, ok, maybe not a supercomputer of today’s standard since I got ancient processors, but it will still prove a concept. And this concept will be based off the work I’ve done previously with my PComMS project and off two other things.
One is based on the way the early Mac OS was built. Originally, most of the operating system was built inside the ROM on the Mac’s motherboard. User programs would call functions based in the OS using the m68k’s trap/illegal operation ability which would basically allow you to create ‘custom’ instructions.
The other is based on an older piece of technology meant to fix the original megahertz plateau in the late 1980′s. It was called the Transputer. The Transputer processor was a fascinating system that had built in serial links to allow each processor to talk with another. Coupled with a programming language like Occam, you could easily build a distributed system in a single box.
My idea here is to create a ‘boxed’ distributed system that can be upgraded by just adding more processor cards that contain the basics: the CPU, RAM, and a bit of ROM to boot the processor. So no more replacing the RAM or the CPU in your computer to make it faster. With this, you’d just stick in another processor card. I’ll be posting more details about this project in the coming months.
Alright, so you’re trying to film a scene that has some depth to it, like a fairly distant background with some stuff in the foreground. However, you really don’t want that background to be shown in the scene as it’s too busy and doesn’t help portray your message. So you try just to focus your digital camcorder on the foreground hoping the background will be blurred out. But, to your horror, you find everything is still in focus even if you zoom in on just the foreground.
This effect is really all to common in lower end digital camcorders (actually even low end prosumer models have issues with this). The problem is caused by the physical size, not pixels, of the CCD chip inside the camcorder. The larger the CCD, the greater your ability to shorten the depth of field which will blur out anything not in focus. This is why in movies you see this great shallow depth of field because either they’re using really expensive, and I mean expensive, digital camcorders or 35mm movie cameras. The 35mm movie cameras obviously use 35mm film which has a much larger surface area that the picture is captured on compared to cheaper digital camcorders’ CCD.
However, there is a fix for this, and it doesn’t even involve ripping apart your $2000 camcorder to replace the CCD. You can build an adapter that allows you to take lenses from 35mm SLR still cameras and attach it to your camcorder. There’s a couple of different styles documented around the internet, but they all are based on this basic principle. You take the 35mm lens, set it the proper distance from a ground glass, and then focus your camcorder onto the picture displayed on the ground glass.
The style I’ll be building is documented at Daniel’s 35mm Adapter site. I’m going for the static version, as my Canon GL2 camcorder isn’t HD. So far, I got an old Canon FD lens, an achromatic lens to allow my camcorder to focus on the ground glass, a Nikon ground glass, and some parts from Daniel’s site to hold it all together. Keep an eye out for further updates on this project as I get the rest of the parts.
Microsoft decided to hire Jerry Seinfeld to do a batch of television commercials for Windows Vista. Here’s the first of the series:
The commercial shows Jerry Seinfeld in a shopping mall going past a “Shoe Circus” and spotting Bill Gates in the store. After meeting with him in the store, they talk about the shoe Gates is trying on and about wearing clothes in the shower. Once done with that, Gates buys the shoes and heads out the store with Seinfeld. Now finally in the parking lot, Seinfeld asks Gates if Microsoft is going to come out with a computer that was like ‘cake.’ Then at the end, the words “The Future” are displayed followed by “Delicious” before the Windows Vista logo.
Now here comes my critique as both a filmmaker and a television commercial producer (and probably quite biased as I’m not a MS fan and a co-owner of an independent shoe store). The commercial has some major issues concerning its message. Seinfeld, being who he is, was used to draw the audience to the plot as he’s well known. Once the audience takes notice, Gates is shown. Gates is synonymous with Microsoft so the audience is expecting a message about something to do with MS. Unfortunately, there’s a long and cumbersome story line to go through before a single thing about computers is even mentioned. This story line about the shoe store and the shoes is drawn on too long making the audience think that somehow their previous assumption was wrong and that this commercial was actually about the shoes. Then as the plot finally gets to talking about computers, nothing is mentioned about any actual product, just Seinfeld’s wish to have computers that are edible. And once his questioned is finally answered, we get to the final few scenes with the Windows Vista logo being shown for only a few seconds. By that point, any person watching this commercial is probably confused as to what the commercial was about.
What needed to be done was to edit the commercial down to at most a one minute slot, removing much of the babel at the shoe store. Also, mentioning a real product instead of a conceptual one may help get a stronger message across. And maybe having a voice over at the end with the words and logo will help garner attention from the part of the audience that may not be visually focused on the TV at the time of airing.
The Zipit 2 is a really neat handheld instant messaging device that I bought a while back. It currently runs a really stripped down version of Linux. That inspired me to hack the device to make it run a totally new and improved Linux OS. And that’s what I’ve been working on at my Zipit 2 System project site. My goal is to not only run a completely customized Linux OS on the device but also to build hardware modules that will expand its capabilities. This includes a camera and even a GSM module so you can get internet access anywhere you have cell phone reception.
So far, with some help from others, the serial and JTAG ports have been found which have allowed me to try out customized Linux kernels directly on the hardware. With this, I’ve also tested the USB device port that has been brought out to the back connector which will eventually allow you to directly connect the Zipit2 to a host computer. I hope to be able to get back to work on this project soon.
