Older blog entries for andrewmuck (starting at number 18)

--Disclaimer-- kind of late at night following may be gibberish.

After bouncing emails with xoom.com it seems my website was pulled because of a breach of TOS, don't know exactly what was the problem but after looking over geocities TOS they don't like linking to a non-geocities page.... HUH?? I am hoping to clarify with them what they are aiming at there.

Of course I am pro-DeCSS and open source as well as a touch of religous content so who knows why.

ZX-180 I think new prototype is ready for power up (will do that after sleep), hopefully some progress soon.

goSub I was starting to believe everyone that was saying I was crazy but then I found and joined a webring of others doing this sort of thing, so now I feel happy :) Contemplating bolting myself in a chunk of steel to go underwater makes me feel empathy for the Russians in trouble now. Got a pointed reminder of that when I came back into the office today to find a photocopy of the newspaper on my PC with headlines screaming 'WATERY GRAVE' and artists pictures of a sub taking up most of the page.

Other stuff too tired, gunna sleep now, I have been trying to fix up some cgi scripts that used to manage patch panel wiring documentation, does anyone know if there is something like this available? If so I'd like to grab it, if not I can turn my scruffy code loose and maybe someone else can make it grow to a better than stunted life.

ICANN I have nominated myself in the Australia/Asia/Pacific region so if you are an At Large Member in that region, feel free to vote for me ;) Overall I have some doubts about ICANN taking notice of individuals but they have made noises (yet another committee) and they wont listen if we don't make noise; so if you are a member don't waste your vote on their flunkies, pick someone with the net itself as their main focus.

Sleep perchance to dream...

Please forgive me, it has bee a week since my last diary entry.

web site After 48 hours off the air I got back on but with freeservers who seem to enjoy bombarding people with doubleclick adds :( Have things pointing to webjump now and working, they are not as obnoxious.

Sub still have not figured out where the money is going to come from, but will leave that up to God. Did some more measuring on it total length is 7m diameter is 1.25 hatch is .6 (arrgh need to loose an inch off my waist!) Bit of a worry about that Russian sub sitting on the ocean floor. Will be flipping the presure vessel over on the weekend to open the hatch and inspect inside.

ZX-180 I keep thinking of too many changes to the code at once and not making any. Wire wrapped version to be fired up soon then will probably make changes a bit faster both in hardware and software.

Life far too busy, did about four months worth of claims for work the other day as they were going to not pay them (I really hate paperwork!) so next pay should be significantly huge [I wonder if some of that could be squirelled away for the sub without my darling wife getting upset? {If your reading this Dot, I love you!!}]...

I am not happy, my primary site hoster has been spluttering lately and is on a bit of an extended offline (xoom), while my backup site (webjump) seems to be paranoid about frame and proxy access, so I am trying re-directing.

Needless to say I am now doing some looking around for some better quality hosting.

Not happy, not at all....

Very hectic day.

Somehow I beat my wife home, so I cooked up pollo parmigana and vermicelli, very yummy, nice romantic dinner.

Just closing off some of my call details now (19:40) before a cronjob sends reports off (20:00) then my SO is taking me out on a date (daughter off at the in-laws).

Well been looking at boat trailers :), looking through recent diary entries I see that flawed has concerns about my sub crumpling, must admit I have thought the same thing but it is half inch thick steel so I just have to remember not to go too deep! My first estimates on diving depth would be about 20m, that would mean 300psi and seems reasonable as to what I can assemble and test. Any deeper than that and it would start to feel dangerous if something went wrong.

Work

Someone has changed the proxy setup again so am forced to use internet exploder, Arggghh....

Software

No time spent... very sad.

gotta go, feel lots more to write just no time...

Well have started a Build-a-Submarine HowTo it has some pictures of the pressure vessle up.

Have shifted my domain to point to my backup website as xoom.com have been a bit wobly today, hopefully not too many links are broken.

Going to try and get some more ZX-180 work done tonight, been slack and watching babylon 5 videos lately.

Just a quick entry while waiting for an autoresponder to gimme some data.

Last night involved some excitment due to a high speed car and the bend in my road, some poor sole kindly donated his leg, future insurance premiums and his car to redecorate my neighbours house and do some panel beating on his cars. Consequently my roll of film is now full so some sub pictures should be going up tonight.

I hope the meeting does not go to slow as I am tending to be a bit sleepy this morning...

What a long day, did not win any door prizes, but bucket loads of brochures, data sheets and CDROM's will take a while to go through. Seems I may have to conceed that DSP is better than gate-array for Vorbis decoding, looks like a suitable one is about $10 ! pitty I don't have over a grand for development software/boards.

Nothing magic has turned up to save the Sub, looking grim.

No chance to work on ZX-180 today, tomorrow holds meetings and reports so thats probably a gonner as well...

*Sigh*

It looks like the Sub has sunk, I can not get $500 together to buy the pressure vessel (I had been planning on getting it for much less, with money to go towards fitting it out). As this was the sort of project that can't happen overnight, it seems wrong to try and scum money off anyone else (esp. as it does need to stay non-comercial for licensing reasons).

If you want to help me you can send me $50 and I will paint your name on it, come on just Ten People! or make it $10 and 50 people, I don't know, it does not look good.

ZX-180

got the prototypes scanned in so the project page looks a little like something has happened.

Life

Day off work tomorrow to attend maketing blurb, here is the schedule

We will present selected Information and Roadmaps on the latest Technology that will give your company a competitive advantage for the future.

Registration at 8.45 then, starting promptly at 9am : -

  • Hitachi 8, 16 & 32 bit Risc Flash Microcontrollers.
  • Atmel, 8 bit Risc Flash Microcontrollers, and 32 bit ARM Processors.
  • Analog Devices DSP, MicroConverters and leading edge Analog.

Lunch Provided at 12.30pm, Then at 1pm:-

  • Xilinx, FPGA's from 5k to 2 million gates. EPLD 32 to 288 Macrocell and Ultra Low Power EPLD. Introduction to Xilinx Software Tools.
  • TI, DSP's from low power fixed point to 1Giga FLOP floating point Plus Flash Based Ultra Low Power 16 Bit Microcontrollers.
*** Atmel STK200 Starter Kit and Xilinx Foundation Base Door Prizes***
Guess who wants a door prize? I should get some decent ideas from all that as to the best ways to implement an Ogg Vorbis portable player, personaly I am leaning towards a gate array but there is a dissenting opinion on the vorbis list so gotta keep an open mind...
ZX-180

Wilf Rigter is going to try out my code so may get some development pushes from there (he did the ZX-97) Most of the wire-wrapping is done for the next prototype (addr, data, power done; just those pesky control signals now)

Sub Took some photos this morning so will develop/scan soonish, I am a bit worried that I am too fat for the access hatch :( that would be a mild safety concern. Approx weight looks like 2 ton so should be OK to transport as a trailer.

cost may be an issue. Seems I need about $500 to buy and still going to have to pay $45/hour to shift initially ($100-200?) Will have to find some inspiration to work around this obstacle.

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