The Walking Dead season 2

I’m pretty disappointed with season 2 of The Walking Dead. Some important, “difficult” characters have lost their personalities… weren’t there rednecks you loved to hate in season 1? Very resourceful rednecks you hated but had to respect for their abilities?

And some very, very important details have slipped past the characters–for example, if a church has bells you can hear at great distances, and then you’re disappointed to discover it’s not real bells (that the person you’re looking for might have been ringing), but rather an electronic PA system playing a recording… someone in the group ought to be excited about how it’s powered! Maybe some redneck who thinks it’s dumb to waste all this time looking for a dumb kid who ran off on their own.

That’s the kind of thing that happens on the show I want to watch. It just doesn’t happen on The Walking Dead, no matter how much I yell at my TV.

The Walking Dead on AMC

Upstairs Bookcases Finished

N & I needed more space for books, and though the upstairs hall was wide enough to allow a row of bookcases. Are there ever enough bookshelves?

We brainstormed for ideas at IKEA, but the height was a problem. The wall was too short for most half-height media shelves (which are shallow enough) and the hall was too narrow for most half-height bookshelves (which are short enough). Because our rental walls are so dark, we also wanted white to brighten the hall a bit. N scoured the internet for solutions. We found $1200 units, $20 units, and no middle ground. We weren’t happy about it, but settled on four $20 units from Walmart. I wanted to save the $26 shipping cost, so arranged for (free) in-store pickup. I hope I never have to choose to use Walmart again, but if I do, I’m not sure whether the free in-store pickup is worth having to deal with a Walmart store.

Hallway bookcases facing bedroom

Hallway bookcases facing office

To get around the baseboard trim, make it easier to clean, and for easier browsing of the bottom shelf, we built bases to lift the units up about 3.5 inches. These cost around $15 in wood, nails, and paint. Another $20 went into hardware to secure the shelves to the bases, wall, and each other. The total project cost was around $120 and took about 9 hours over 3 days (excluding the delay from ordering 1 bookcase to check it out before committing to the other 3). This would be a Saturday project except for waiting for paint to dry between coats on the custom bases.

Close-up of custom base

Close-up of bookcases over trim

G-code tools

Links for further investigation:

• ShopBot Command Reference
• dxf2gcode program
• MCAD tools via Twin Cities Makers
• GCODE tools via Twin Cities Makers (great info!)
• RS274NGC G-Code Programming Basics
• EMC (Linux CNC controller software and good reference)
• List of free CNC-related software

ShopBot CNC at the TechShop

I took the ShopBot CAD/CAM and SBU at the TechShop on Sunday. Here are too few pictures of the fun.

I really wanted to build a box with tabs and slots, but was rightly convinced to scale back my expectations by the instructor, Matt Santelli, president of Exhibiments. (Incidentally, his company makes the tap handles for Fullsteam. He was great!) So, I just cut out some names.

Obviously, it’s incredibly cool to cut through stuff using computers and servos to move a 1/4″ piece of sharpened metal spinning at 12000 RPM. If this is not cool to you, please step away from the blog.

But for me, beyond the obvious coolness of CNC tools and equipment, the really interesting thing is called the toolchain, or “how do I get from concept to automating stuff?” At one end of the chain is you/your idea and at the other is the CNC mill/router.

Many CNC tools use a programming language called G-code for automation. The TechShop’s ShopBot PRS Alpha 96 does, too. But raw G-code reads like assembly.

G21 G00 Z1
M03
G04 P2500
N50 G00 G90 G53 X14.326 Y22.226
N60 G43
N70 G01 Z.1 F.3
N80 X14.67 Z.082
N90 X13.083 Z-.001
N100 X14.67 Z-.084


So, we use some other tool(s) to create the G-code that runs the machines. This is the toolchain. There are a bunch of options, and almost none of them are free.

We used ShopBot’s PartWorks ($795 bundled with others) for class, which is a rebranded version of Vectric’s VCarve ($599).

Either program will import a variety of vector graphics formats. So, without any additional research, money, or effort, I can create ShopBot/G-code designs by using something like Inkscape to create drawings at home (though it lacks many CAD features). Then, import those drawings to PartWorks and generate toolpaths at the TechShop. And finally, cut on the ShopBot.

Need I say that I want to find alternatives for generating G-code?

Spotted my Music in the Wild

I stumbled across someone people using music by me on Youtube. Thanks for the attribution/credit.

What’s really far out is somehow Google knows “mghicks” is associated with these even though it’s not visible in the pages (unless I missed it). Nor do they seem to be linked from the ccmixter page for the song. Now I’m curious how that’s done, and I need to put the YouTube APIs and Tools Developer’s Guide in the read later pile.
Aha! I found the linkage!

In Yahoo! Pipes how can I return a single value from a loop that’s built with values from every item?

For example, I have a list of items and each item has a name. I want to build a single string that contains a comma-separated list of all the names. In most programming languages, I would loop over the items and append to a value outside the list/array. But, I can’t figure out any combination of Yahoo! Pipes modules to do it. Maybe I’m missing something obvious, but I also find nothing relevant from Google.

How do I append loop item values to a single value outside the loop?

Or how can I return a single value from a loop that’s built with values from every item?

Or what is the correct method to accomplish this in Pipes if it’s neither of those?

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Update: The best method I’ve figured out is to emit the results in one pipe, then include that pipe’s output in a 2nd pipe to concatenate the output as desired.

See also,

• In Yahoo! Pipes how can I return a single value from a loop that’s built with values from every item?.
• How can I return a single value from a loop that’s built with values from every item?

Monitors won’t sleep (power management) if synergy is running

Similar question to Monitor won’t enter power save mode, however I only experience the problem under synergy. Screensaver settings work, but the monitors never go to sleep. When synergy is not running, monitors go to sleep at the interval set in Power Mgmt Preferences. I’m running synergy under my user account. Dell Desktop, Ubuntu 11.04, standard install video drivers (installing the proprietary drivers causes many errors.)

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Turns out, this behavior is caused by screenSaverSync=true and the fix is screenSaverSync=false. Pic shows the windows GUI placement.

See also,

• Monitors won’t sleep (power management) if synergy is running
• Synergy client disable screensaver on linux ubuntu
• Bug #1092 – Screensaver sync prevents display turning off

I love the classic dodge in the bug report:

Closing this bug report since it is more than 2 years old. If this is still a valid bug, please request that it be reopened on the mailing list.

USB Boot Error [Solved]

A USB key I’d used on several other computers was suddenly having “Boot Error” problems right out of BIOS on another PC. I was surprised to find that like this post by x13es my problem was also solved by formatting to FAT32 and reinstalling with unetbootin. Does anyone know why a USB drive would work on some PCs and not others before (re-)formatting?

Development Environment Software on Ubuntu

Here’s the list of dev stuff I install on my Ubuntu box. It’s just for my reference, but maybe another would find it useful. Some of this should be installed out of the box, but it doesn’t hurt to list them.

Builds and Source Control

apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake gcc gcc-doc binutils
apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`
apt-get install git gitg git-doc git-man

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email you@yourdomain.example.com

Apache/MySQL/PHP+Perl
Yes, I still love Apache and the LAMP stack.

apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client mysql-admin libmysqlclient-dev mysql-query-browser
apt-get install apache2 apache2.2-common apache2-doc apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-prefork-dev apache2-utils libexpat1 libexpat1-dev
apt-get install php5 php5-common php5-mysql curl php5-curl php5-dev php-pear libapache2-mod-php5
apt-get install perl perl-doc libapache2-mod-perl2 libapache2-mod-perl2-doc libapache2-mod-perl2-dev libdevel-symdump-perl libxml-libxml-perl libxml-libxslt-perl libwww-curl-perl

Configure CPAN next. Pick a local mirror.

perl -MCPAN -e shell
cpan> o conf urllist unshift http://a.local.cpan.mirror/CPAN
cpan> o conf prerequisites_policy follow
cpan> o conf commit
cpan> quit

Then install a bunch of Perl modules.

cpan CPAN
cpan Module::Build Module::Install Module::Starter Module::Pluggable
cpan LWP POE YAML PPI 
cpan Apache::Test Devel::StackTrace Perl::Tidy
cpan Algorithm::Loops List::Util List::MoreUtils XML::Twig
cpan Test::Simple Test::More Test::Pod Test::Pod::Coverage 
cpan Log::Log4perl Log::Dispatch
cpan JSON::XS Package::Stash::XS Moose DateTime DateTime::TimeZone
cpan Template Template::Plugin::Stash 
cpan DBI DBIx::Class DBIx::Class::Tree DBIx::Class::Ordered
cpan Catalyst Catalyst::View::JSON Catalyst::Plugin::Session Catalyst::Plugin::StackTrace Catalyst::Plugin::Session::State::Cookie Catalyst::Plugin::Session::Store::File
cpan WWW:Mechanize WWW::Mechanize::Firefox Test::WWW::Mechanize Test::WWW::Mechanize::Catalyst Catalyst::TraitFor::Request::BrowserDetect

Eclipse

apt-get install eclipse eclipse-pde

I should be able to migrate my Eclipse settings with a backup of ~/.eclipse. Just in case, I’ll export my update sites.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<bookmarks>
   <site url="http://e-p-i-c.sf.net/updates/testing" selected="true" name="EPIC"/>
   <site url="http://perleclipse.com/TTEditor/UpdateSite/" selected="true" name="Perl TT Editor"/>
   <site url="http://dadacoalition.org/yedit" selected="true" name="YAML editor"/>
   <site url="http://pluginbox.sourceforge.net" selected="true" name="EasyShell"/>
</bookmarks>

Other Settings and Software for Ubuntu

This is some other random stuff I like to install on Ubuntu.

apt-get install docky pidgin pidgin-plugin-pack chromium-browser graphviz gparted p7zip-full openssh-server

To migrate Pidgin settings, I can backup the ~/.purple folder.

I don’t see docky settings in ~/., but I use a pretty simple setup.