Silicon Valley Redneck

Progress, of a sort.

My mother is out of the hospital...

...and in a nursing facility.  Not the upmarket one she wanted; apparently they didn't have space this time.  It's a less-upmarket one, where she spent a couple of weeks last year, but now it appears to be under new management (or at least it has a new sign out front, with a whole new name), and things maybe aren't as organized yet as one might wish.  The doctor says she'll have to stay there for at least six weeks, and she's not at all happy about that.

Nothing to do there... not that she'd be in any shape for volleyball, nor even shuffleboard, but it's a place to lie in a small room and watch TV.  She had one of the Fully Official Propaganda Channels on.  Segment: talking heads telling each other how totally fake the Planned Parenthood videos were (no specifics; just they're totally fake, because the head of Planned Parenthood said so).  Commercials.  Segment: the super-moon brought flooding to parts of Florida, and this couldn't have happened just a few years ago; it's all because of sea-level rise.  (Pop quiz: by how many feet has the sea level risen in the last few years?)  More commercials.  And so on.

Then I had to make my excuses so I could run sundry far-flung errands and still get home at at hour consistent with waking up at 0400 tomorrow as usual.  Another visit tomorrow afternoon.  (Morning: walkies, grocery run, stuff the first side of a batch of little SMT boards, lunch.  Afternoon: drop off some hardware at a client site up north, visit mother, stuff the second side of those boards.  How's that for a scattered schedule?)

Mars is moist?

Apparently so.

And there's evidence of perchlorates.

Anyone got some stage tree seeds?

Did I mention things aren't holding still?

Yeah, so...

Got a call from my father Sunday evening: my mother had fallen down, again, and been rushed to the emergency room, again.  Late-evening update: X-ray seemed to show nothing broken, but for not having anything broken she was in an unreasonable amount of pain with regard to her right shoulder.

So, today after morning stuff and very early lunch, it was off to the hospital for a visit.  My father had just left in search of his lunch (plus tending the dog, etc.), and I arrived just in time to say hi before she was hauled off for some diagnostic procedure or other.

I waited around, and helped her order lunch when she got back (before the nurse came in and said NPO until further notice, in case surgery was called for).  Then more waiting.  Then my father arrived, followed shortly by food and then the doctor.  The good news: she could have her lunch, and there was nothing more serious than a fractured collarbone.  The bad news: her collarbone is fractured, and will take quite some time to heal.

The doctor was very emphatic that she shouldn't be trying to live in the ancestral home any more, with my father trying to take care of her, falling behind, and getting all worn out himself in the process.  He said something about three serious falls since July being a subtle indication that the status quo wasn't entirely acceptable.

There'll have to be a Family Meeting, soon, to discuss strategy.  Just in case life wasn't already complicated enough.

Groan.

Family gathering yesterday involved, among other things, vegan chocolate cake.

I think I shouldn't be having cake at all.  Nor chocolate in any form.

And I have to suspect that vegan cake is extra-sugary, to make up for the lack of real ingredients like butter and eggs.

Got a crippling headache this morning, among other symptoms.  Metabolism definitely out of whack.

Maybe I need to consume a big pile of hot animal protein to get back in balance.

Ah, the selflessness of tech tycoons

The Zuckster is calling for internet access for everyone, everywhere.

This is necessary to combat global ills, and not in any way related to the fact that his business depends on the masses being able to connect to his servers.

Ayup.  And a car in every garage, and a paved road to everyone's home, are also universal necessities which society must provide.  A top Chevron executive assures me that this is the case.

Family day

Started with heading out fairly early (though later than my usual weekday morning-walkies early) to head over to UC Santa Cruz to pick up the offspring for a day with her mother and my parents.

Turns out she'd woken up early, but then gone back to sleep, so while I waited for her to wake up again and notice the string of messages I'd sent to her phone, I pondered a next-generation, networked parking meter.  This took two paths:

Good: Meter is networked, and has an NFC pad, so you can pay with your phone... which sets a reminder on your phone for [selectable] minutes before the meter runs out, and also creates a temporary association between your phone and the meter so you can top up the meter from the restaurant if you're running late, instead of having to go back to the meter in person.

Evil: meter is networked, and has a camera looking at the front license plate of the car parked in front of it.  When it expires, if there's still a car there, it saves a photo of the license plate and also summons the meter maid.  If the car leaves before it expires, it resets itself, so the next person to park there can't benefit from the unused time.

Anyway... eventually she did wake up, and I got some reports en route to the grandparental residence.  Her orientation activity, a backpacking trip up in the mountains, was highly challenging but fun, and she now has plans for future backpacking outings.  Classes so far are going well (based on two days of classes so far).  She's getting settled in and making friends, and maybe even making an impression (making a lasting impression on people is often a good thing).

Lotsa running around, and hanging around the ancestral home.  No actual work done today.  Probably not much tomorrow, either; got Sunday morning chores, and... well, maybe I'll accomplish something in the afternoon.

Friday evening...

Must be time to wind down from the week.

Let's see: I got one project to a handoff point on Monday.  On the project with the FPGA, I managed to sort out (near as I can tell, so far) two, or maybe it was three, iterations of Issues related to product integration and the ever-evolving spec.  I have all the parts on hand (but not the rudimentary fixturing done, yet) for a build of several SMT boards to wrap up another project.  And, I made preliminary introductions with a new startup company that may need some hardware-design assistance with an interesting new product concept (which might become an excuse to learn about some tech for which I have other uses).

So it's definitely time to rest.  It's also time to catch up on the other behind-schedule work (such as figuring out a proper way to test the latest iteration of that FPGA logic).  And it's time for a weekend filled with Family Stuff.

So, um...

Anyone got a spare week lying around, that I could paste into my calendar disguised as lanthanides?  So, like, I could have 8 days of Monday the 28th (World Rabies Day) before Tuesday the 29th rolled around?

(Oops, wait.  An extra week pasted onto the last Monday of the month would be actinides, wouldn't it?  What would be the half-life of such a week?)

Wrong German?

Seems a Russian team has created a robot cockroach.

Oddly enough, this was done at Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University.

Kant wasn't the German who sprang to my mind.  Don't they have a Franz Kafka University for this sort of thing?

Are There Marsupials Among Us?

I randomly followed a link to this video of opossums eating bananas.  Rather pointless, really.  Not recommended for those who dislike big ugly might-as-well-be-rodents.

When it finished, I was presented with the usual 4x3 array of suggestions for what to watch next.  All involved opossums, except this.  Is there a connection?  Is Anne-Sophie Mutter a closet marsupial*?  (Rummages through memory for reference to urban opossums and James Tiptree Jr.)  Was Felix Mendelssohn an opossum?

And have you ever noticed that if you type the word "opossum" too many times, it starts to look misspelled?  There should be a word for words like that.  What's more, shouldn't "misspelled" have an umlaut (OK, diaeresis) over the second "s"? "Miss̈pelled"? No, I guess that doesn't look right either.

Oh, well. The voices say I need to get back to work now.  Doomsday machines don't build themselves.

* Wikipedia says nothing about her eating eucalyptus leaves nor carrying her young in a pouch, but apparently she's Woody Allen's ex-stepmother-in-law by divorce.  Celebrity relationships are more confusing than Russian novels, and written in an even more foreign language.  And before blaming this on the younger generation, have a look at the famous composers of the 19th century.  And the 18th.  And....

Antique Neanderthal checking in...

In today's Bloom County, Opus finds the signature issue for his Presidential campaign.

I find myself on both sides.

Yes, I still type two spaces after a period.  'Tis the way I learned it, back when typewriters (and even daisywheel printers) were monospaced, and manually creating the extra whitespace after a period was the only way to get the correct spacing.

But, nowadays, everything (other than code) is rendered in one proportional font or another, and the software automagically makes the space after a period extra wide.  So the double-space-after-period convention is unnecessary, and makes the computer work harder trying to discern whether you meant .%20%20 or .%20  when you put two spaces there: should it render your text as one wide-space-between-sentences, or as a wide space plus an explicit extra space?

Whew.

One of those three behind-schedule client projects, the most time-critical of them (because there's a shipment pending), I finally managed to get in shape over the weekend.

How badly did I hold up the parade?

As it turns out, someone else is holding it up even more.  I just released the new improved firmware for the client's pre-shipment testing, but it turns out the hardware is still at the factory having an assembly error corrected.

So, that project is out of panic mode for me, for now.  Once the evening cools down enough for me to get productive again, I need to get parts ordered for the second project (which isn't time-critical, but the client does want it more sooner than later, and finishing it up so I can get paid is an appealing prospect).  Tomorrow, gotta make progress on the third project.

And there are a coupla other things I need to get around to: returning the client materials for a defunct project (so I can get the dang boxes outta my living room), and following up on a potential new opportunity*.

If only the world will hold still for a few days while I try to catch up....

* Update: Two potential new opportunities.  The world just doesn't hold still, does it?  Well, I did get those parts ordered... which means that sometime in the next couple of days I should mill a few slots in some random flat heat-resistant object in support of assembling a dozen and a half little-bitty SMT boards (components on both sides, because putting them all on one side would make it too easy, and of course no tooling holes, because the boards are tiny).

Oh, well.  Time to get min my brain back in grar gear and make a phone call or two.  And then get back to fiddling with that FPGA.

Well, that's bloody useless.

It came to pass that I was about to send a text message to someone who, as it happens, isn't in my contacts list.

Well, I could add him on my phone, but wouldn't it be more convenient to cut & paste the details from his email .sig into Gmail contacts?

So... Gmail, contacts, add, paste his name: oh, he has a Google+ profile.  Add that.

But there's no contact information in that profile.  Click the little pencil, and... the spots for adding things like phone numbers and email addresses are kind of inactive.

OK, delete that profile from my contacts list, and start over with creating a new contact.  Nope.  I can add a photo, but no contact information.

Try editing an old entry in the contacts list.  Nope.  Can't add contact information.

Is this something to do with Iceweasel?  Sign in on Chromium: same deal, or lack thereof.

Hello, Google?  There's this thing now called alpha testing.  Ever hear of it?

Or maybe the complete lack of functionality is supposed to be a feature of the new contacts rollout?  I dunno; I skipped over the shiny-new-features powerpoint.

Update: I can add fields from my phone.  Just not through the web interface.  Wunnerful.

General Napier must be spinning in his grave.

U. S. troops are under orders not to interfere in the quaint local customs of our nominal allies.

I. Have. Not. The. Words.

So, that other candidate...

You know, the one who isn't a bison.  The one you like.

P. J. O'Rourke explains why Ben Carson has no business running for President.  TL;DR: he has a real job; politics is for people who have no aptitude for anything useful.

My thoughts?  Well... I wish I lived in a world where Dr. Carson as President made sense.  But in this world?  Send him to Washington, and he'll promptly be eaten alive by the resident weasels.  And those are our weasels, that are supposedly on our side; there are also unfriendly foreign weasels (and weasel riders, even).

Yes, surgeons need a fair amount of management aptitude (see The Mythical Man-Month), but that's with regard to a small, professional team, not a vast, bloated hierarchy rife with lying, backstabbing, and blatant criminality.  And rival surgical teams rarely attack each other with clandestine terrorist squads, never mind nukes.

On the other hand: are any of our other options really any better?  No one can actually do what the job has morphed into.  The guy currently on the throne doesn't even pretend.  Why not try electing someone who's actually smart and decent?

On the gripping hand: whoever's in the White House a couple of years out will be the fall guy when the Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.  Since Bill laid much of the groundwork for the impending collapse, would it not be fitting to have it happen on Hillary's watch?

(Yeah, sure, the Republicans always get the blame for the failures of the free market, even when they're out of power and there's no sign of a free market.)

What can you do with a $50 Android tablet?

Or $250 for a six-pack?

Amazon has it in the works.

And, yes, putting one in the doghouse might almost make sense.

What it needs is a wall-mount frame (choice of portrait or landscape mounting), incorporating strain relief (and choice of routing) for the AC adapter cord.

Load an app and leave it running.  Master control panel for home automation.  Skype, on a unit that's at eye level for a dog (or cat, or chicken).  Video game a dog (or cat, or chicken) can play.

That's before asking whether it can be rooted.  A $50 tablet that could be easily converted to a generic Linux panel computer?  That's be extra nifty.

Assuming Amazon doesn't mess it up in an attempt to lock it to approved content, I see considerable potential here.

Update: Amazon product page here.

Frazzle

Not much posting... not for want of subject matter, but there's been a lot of secondhand stress of late, and lack of sleep, and too much caffeine, and I'm behind on at least three kinds of work, so time and focus for writing even semi-coherent blog posts are in short supply.

On one work front, I had a series of minor breakthroughs the past couple of days.  Got an application on a Cortex M3 MCU, currently maintained and debugged using the Armstrap flavor of the Eclipse IDE.  For production, it needs field update capability.  This calls for a bootloader to handle the annoying detail of copying a stored update into the part of MCU flash where the application lives, and all the attendant fiddly details.  Anyway, I got a handle on building two applications (the real application and the bootloader) as different build configurations of the same project (and relying on optimization to make a lot of un-needed code go away).  Then, defining different flash address ranges for bootloader and application.  Then, launching the application code from the bootloader.  Finally, verifying the stored image and copying it to MCU flash, with error checking.

This got Interesting, especially when trying to debug the transition from bootloader to application.  The debugger gets unhappy about this.  Very unhappy.  But, eventually, I got it working.

Now I need to do some cleaning up, and release it to the client for further testing and distribution.  And order some parts for another project.  And address a couple of sticky issues on the third project.

I'm not really spending all that much time gainfully employed these days; I'm just scattered and not doing anything very efficiently.  Got to get things under control enough to take a break and get sane again.

The tinfoil is strong with this one.

I was loitering in front of the public library for a while this afternoon, for reasons I don't care to explain, and a crazy-looking guy came up to me.

He was bothered by the fact that the sky wasn't blue anymore.

Um.  We have these things called "seasons".  Even around here.  It's a week to the autumnal equinox.  Eventually, it may even be rainy season.  Think that might have something to do with it?

Nope.  Can't be the turning of the seasons.  Chemtrails!  That's what it is!  You've seen them crisscrossing the sky!  And then they fall down like rain!

...Exactly like rain, one might think, given that contrails have the same composition as those "cloud" things we get from time to time, whence come the rains.

And cars!  You think those were designed by humans?  No!  They were designed by aliens, in Area 51!  You know where Areas 52 through 56 are?  Area 56 is in a military base in India!  And skyscrapers and cellphones were designed by aliens too!  No way humans did that!  And the city government is run by Germans!

At this point, it was (for unrelated reasons) time for me to leave, quickly.

You don't suppose the city employs him to discourage other loiterers...?

We already have President Goldman Sachs

As Insty refers to the incumbent.

If we elect Ted Cruz, we'll have First Lady Goldman Sachs.

But what's this about Bernie Sanders being BAE?

Golly, "green" rocket fuels!

Another from El Reg: alternatives to hydrazine.

And what, may I ask, is wrong with hydrazine?  I mean, apart from not being radioactive; other than that, it's the perfect HAZMAT, innit?

Hydrazine is natural.  Monomethylhydrazine, a fairly good propellant, can be extracted from wild (or organically cultivated!) mushrooms.

How much "greener" can you get?

That self-destructing chip...

The one DARPA is working on.  Yeah, that one.

Coulda used that back in the late 80s, for a couple of things.

There was, of course, the perennial software-lock dongle; since we were working on high-dollar software for minicomputers, it was worth putting a bit of money and effort into the magic key.  What we actually had was a simple logic circuit, cast in a block of epoxy, that responded to a specific (and rather simple) pattern of operations on the backplane.  A PAL22V10 would have been a major improvement, had such things existed back then; a brittle, reverse-engineering-proof PAL, even better.

Then there was the secure communication link for ballot counting, not that we actually got that contract.  The occasional client's customer was ready to adopt electronic ballot counters, but wanted a secure way to communicate the results from the precincts back to the main office.

The concept we came up with - keep in mind, this was before the Internet and public-key crypto became ubiquitous - was a leased line from each precinct to HQ, and paired modems; each precinct/HQ modem pair would share a crypto key not stored anywhere else and not in any way retrievable even if someone managed to intercept one of the modems on its way to the precinct, and each modem would be capable of communicating only with its mate.

We had lots of fun pondering how to protect the key against access; RDX was out, but maybe we could get away with thermite?  Now, that's where we needed the self-destructing chip!

Come right down to it, our hyper-secure concept might have been the reason we didn't get that contract; the end customer was a jurisdiction not exactly noted for honest elections.