The Misadventures of Dan
Peer into the mind of Dan as he tries to build an MP3 Player for his PDA and searches for the next thing in his life be it an electrical engineering job or graduate school.
Thursday, December 12, 2002
.:7:33:02 PM:.
I have to remember to post these blogs and not just let them sit while I get an idea. My computer was rebooted and I lost today's entry-oh well time to revise and make it better :)
Progress on the STK200 is coming along, I'm concerned about the power supply required for the 74HC244, I'll have to remember to check the datasheet for that. The good news is that my ATmega161 came in today. I went to Arrow with my dad and got it, what surprised me was that it was the 1 centimetre squared ic and not the larger rectangular 40 pin IC was used to seeing. Thankfully my dad was on hand and recommended that I get a pen that has this conductive ink. With the pen I can "write" out all my connections without having to solder anything on the tiny little chip. Its really cool that its so small but I'm pretty afraid I'm going to break it or something.
So my friend tells me that Marvel is coming out (ha! get it?) with an "openly gay character". For those of you who don't know Marvel from DC, Amaze from X41ZZK3-don't worry I don't either :) Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe Stan Lee, the man responsible for Spiderman and The Incredible Hulk is associated with Marvel and Superman, and Batman are DC Comic heroes. Now according to Marvel, they are releasing it in order to tap "...stories that are relevant today" and yet they are going to do a trial run and see if there is any "interest in it". Translation: we're going to see if we can sell any more comics. This is the problem, its "selling out" and this serves no one-not whoever's cause or rights, nor the readers.
There is a fundamental divide between comics that people read for entertainment and what happens in real life. That's why they're comics. People don't read comics to learn about social skills and how to deal with life. If they did, everyone would be trying to unleash some hidden-super-secret-super-power to combat their evil-archnemesis X who also has some super-secret-super-power. Was Spiderman popular because of the story of him as a photographer? No, they read it for the action. My personal views aside, I don't think this does any good for anybody. People don't read comic books to learn how to interact with each other: people read it because they enjoy the stories, they always have-if they want to learn about "relevant issues" they talk to someone, think it through. The stories sold and were read because it was an adventure-how relevant is a story about travelling back in time or going into the bowels of the earth to meet up with some ancient lost civilization/ None, but its a good story.
A comic book character cannot talk to the reader and the reader doesn't normally talk to the character. Why? because the problems are completely different. How can it possibly be relevant? Why on earth would you want it to be? I think its sad that things are bending left and right because everyone is so afraid to offend someone that they begin to censor themselves; I think its sadder still that a company is willing to forego the entertainment in place of the almight buck, what made you famous in the first place? Was it being "relevant" to the modern day-afraid that you're going to offend someone or was it because you shared stories that were entertaining and thrilling? Create good stories because they're good and don't settle for stories that are horrible because they're relevant.
Monday, December 09, 2002
.:10:14:16 PM:.
So my brother comes up to me:
"Dan, you doing anything?" I looked down at the 74HC244, it wasn't going to be done today.
"No, what's up?"
"Make this phone light up, I want it to light up instead of ring," and he walked away. He had finals to study for. I now had a phone. It wasn't a glamorous phone, it was one of those old ones. Simple, touch-ton-nothing in particular. So an idea popped into my head and I went back to bother my bro.
"Yeah, just do it," I opened my mouth and was about to comment on something when my brother continued. "Don't be the why guy, if you want to make gadgets you can't be the why guy."
I think that was an allusion to a scene in "I Spy" which I have yet to watch. Its true though, gadget guys never ask why they have to build stuff, they just do it and move on to the next thing. Two hours later, I emerged with a phone, which blinks instead of ringing.
I'm hoping I'll be able to do the same with my mp3 player. I really have my heart and mind set on producing one and have convinced myself its not that difficult. And really it isn't, mostly its about getting my mind around the small little problems in front of me. They aren't really that big but they're bothering me like a splinter in your finger when you're playing the piano. Experience teaches that you can do one of two things: play on and live with the pain or stop and try to pull the splinter out.
This programmer is bothering me, I'm pretty confident that I'm not an isolated case. That my avr chip is probably faulty and somehow I shorted it. I'm getting the ATmega161 on Thursday and will decide what to do from there on. I have a splinter to pull.
.:3:21:17 PM:.
Brace yourselves for shock. I actually bought something useful at Active! Shocking I know but hey, it had to happen sometime. I was looking for parts to build the STK200 dongle courtesy of the YAMP project. I naturally went to Arrow first since they had supplied me with the appropriate parts for the first simple programmer. I was slightly disappointed when they didn't have the ATmega161 nor did they have the 74HC244 octal 3-state non-inverting buffer I needed. They offered to order the 74HC244 for me but only if I would get twenty of them. Twenty! I only need one! and if it works that'll be it. In a lot of ways I sort of wished that I could get a development board but I don't think it would be as fun. Ten dollars later I got all the parts I need and will be assembling it later tonight. Hopefully this programmer will work.
I'm not saying that Active is horrible-far from it. It's just that up to this point I had yet to buy a part from them that I couldn't get at Arrow. Why is that important? Its not, but it just goes along with the whole everyone-has-a-purpose line of thinking.
As a side note, I came across this page by some Torontonian named Joe Clark. He seems to be some sort of standards/accessibility buff who also weblog. Anyways this page "deconstructs" an article written by a New Yorker reporter on the whole blogging concept. (You can find all the subsequent links on that page if you want). Without further dredging the subject to death I'm only going to say this: I started this weblog under the assumption that it was my log. It was and is my intention to write all the developments of my projects and endeavours in order that I can keep track of what's going on and what happened on which day. Sometimes it includes writing about activity, D, with person, A, and what not because I felt it was a good thing to share. Its the whole "apple pie" concept: say you, person, N, comes across this restaurant, R, and tries their awesome apple pie, O. Since it was such a great pie, you naturally want to share it with the next person, C, who orders a new slice of pie, K, and tries it out. If it proves to be great, then the whole thing will perpetuate to the next person, S. ;)
So in keeping with all of that, sometimes, I know that I can overthink things. Its partially due to my weird nature to consider all the possibilities and try to predict the best outcome. I found out last Thursday how bad that can sometimes be. I was hoping a friend would come back and we would be able to try out this cool jazz place in Edmonton. I had never gone and neither had my friend. The only thing was that she left for Hong Kong for a long vacation. We had made an agreement to try it out since we're both into music and experiencing new things. I guess I couldn't help but to check things out and the more I checked out the place the cooler it seemed to be. Finally the day came when my friend was expected to come back, only I found out that she decided to stay for an extra two weeks. No problem, I thought, I'll just wait some more. So now, I'm in a paused state. Eight days is small compared to four years...
.:1:36:08 AM:.
My family and I went to Hotel Macdonald's Empire Ballroom for brunch today to celebrate my Dad's birthday. I've never been to the Empire Ballroom, let alone Hotel Macdonald before so this was my first time at this upper class place. First of all the food was awesome. They had all your usual hot foods and then some! There was this great salmon that was perfectly moist and tender. They also had chefs which could cook an omelette for you (nothing new) and crepes which is a stop-the-presses new thing. Needless to say, the crepes were great as well. This causes Hotel Mac's brunch to be listed in my top two places for brunch buffet. I think class often gets confused with snobbish, anyone can be snobbish but not everyone has decorum. I think the way someone with a certain amount of class should make you feel comfortable and not as if they were condescending. The ability to do that in most if not all situation is what I think is class. Chilvary and being nice is a form of class. The great waiters/waitresses that serve you and make you feel comfortable has a certain class. A gentleman or lady who knows what to do, has class. Its not associated with finance, at least not to my belief :)
I still cannot get the programmer to work. Throughout this entire time I've been trying to get the YAAP to recognize the chip, yet everytime I plug it in an alert pops up telling me that the Initiation failed and asks me if its powered. I check and yes, I have supplied the required voltage (4.0 to 6.0). Today, the adapter was outputing 5.65VDC which is within range. I attached an LED and resistor parallel to the programmer to indicate that the power is flowing in the right direction and so far have had no problems with lighting the LED.
A very weird thing happened while I was trying to power it up through the use of the parallel port's voltage supply. I found out on a webpage that pin 14 of the parallel port was the power sink capable of supplying 5 Volts at a max of 10mA. I thought well maybe I could try and use that power instead. Maybe the problem was that I didn't have a common ground between the cable and the power supply so there was no reference. I read further that pin 17 could be used as a ground and so thought that I could attach the AVR's ground pin (20) to pin 17 of the parallel port and pin 40 the VCC of the AVR to pin 14. I decided to connect the ground pin first when immediately after I plugged in the pin the LED lit up. I checked the voltage and found that there was approximately 2.3V between the unconnected VCC pin and the ground pin. When I tried to connect the VCC pin as well, the voltage didn't raise to the expected 5 Volts. Instead it stayed at the 2.2 mark.
I am guessing that the chip is not functionning properly, somehow there is a short between some dataport line and the VCC. I will try and see if that's the case by sequentially examining the effect on the VCC of each dataline. I've also decided that I'm going to try and build the STK200 dongle cable while trying out the ATmega161 chip. This should not add any extra work since the avr-gcc will compile for that chip and the programmers are compatible with both AVRs.
Still not much luck on the USB front. I find it strange that there's not a lot of information or documentation for sending data. It does not seem to be too hard to do, only I just wish there were better examples. I believe that since this part is the most difficult, I may ask for a donation à la shareware when the Palm side of the project is done. It'll be mainly for developpers who want to work with USB examples or just simply to make the player work. This goes against the whole Free Software notion but the hardware is available and open source. People have put an effort into their work and research and I think they should be compensated. I'm thinking of a symbolic dollar as the suggestable donation... but that's only if I ever finish it.
I installed the new versions of Mozilla and Phoenix its my little contribution to alternative non-MS software. I like Mozilla because of the standards and I love Phoenix for the fact that its faster and it uses the Mozilla engine so I get my standards and can eat my cake too! The only problem I have is that I'm never sure what will happen to my bookmarks. See with phoenix I have to install a new profile which means a new set of bookmarks and its a small hassle. I can see why a person might not take the extra effort to install a whole new application for something they have already. That little effort is definitely worth it though. The ability to see webpages the way they were meant to be seen. To support people's effort in trying to find a better way to do things. All of that is definitely worth checking out alternatives. If you don't take a moment to observe, how will you know what you really have?
Sunday, December 08, 2002
.:3:46:15 PM:.
For some strange reason, whenever I try to add the code for a counter, blogger.com changes the template and takes out all my ID tags. Without my ID tags defining which DIV is which for the menu the whole webpage doesn't look as nice. Its still works (yay Stylesheets) but not the way it was intended to. This is fairly strange. I also found out that all the counters I've tried so far use a cookie. For this I apologize I'll be trying to find a new counter that doesn't use any.
Why the sudden obsession to find a counter? Because I want to know who you are, I want to know the types of cookies you eat, the sushi you love, and the type of pen you disklike :P I want to know it all!!! Seriously, I just want to get an idea of when is a good time to post and how much of a load this server is taking on :) A few people have already dropped me a line to say hi-don't stop :)
Quick update: I've installed a counter from dataplain we'll see how well this one holds up.
