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.
Saturday, December 21, 2002
.:8:17:27 PM:.
I'm cautiously optimistic. Or you might say I'm cautiously jubilant. Upon reading many more 'me too"s post on the YAMP forum, I've found out that I'm not the only one with the problem! This doesn't help much but I've downloaded ponyprog after twiddling with some of the setup I got it to successfully probe by changing it to "Avr ISP I/O", "LPT1", and by checking "Invert SCLK" and "Invert Reset". This doesn't prove much except that I should use AVR ISP I/O and LPT1, the latter two options can be checked and unchecked at anyone's whim and Ponyprog will still not be able to detect it.
In reading more of the posts I found that people seemed to have no problems if they were using Win 98 but they were having problems if they were using Win XP. Since I'm using Win 2000, which is basically Win NT, the same core as Win XP-I believe this has some kind of affect on the programmers. The easiest solution would be to find a computer with Win 98 nearby, unfortunately I have none :(. I could try and do a dual installation of Win 98, but I'm reluctant because of space and of losing all the stuff I have on Win 2k. Changing or installing OSs is like changing houses. Going back to Windows 98 is like going back to your old busted Ford-you know it'll get you there but in the process you have waste so much gas and it might be faster if you walked... might.
I've been puzzling over something that a friend of mine had asked me last week. On my website I mentionned that I would be using my engineering skills for good and not for the dark side. I have to admit I was writing it more as a joke-I could never imagine turning to the dark side... I AM THE DARK SIDE :P just kidding. Seriously though, what is good and what is evil? Without getting into a giant philosophical/religious/mathematical debate maybe a simple reasoning would be that doing something good will benefit many which may or may not include yourself. Vague? Yeah, but I think that's where I (God willing) would like my life to be headed. I would love to help people out however I might be able to. In case you haven't read, one of my friends and I, we named an instant in time as a guava moment. This is the time when everything becomes suddenly clear-the mysteries of the universe (or your current assignment, problem, bug, etc.) becomes trivial and you can solve it-IF that moment lasted forever, but it doesn't. What does this have to do with anything? Well personally I would love to help people have guava moments. I would love to enable them to discover things through stuff that I helped to develop or build.
Of course someone could go: "Dan, look, this could all happen on the dark side as well. A heat seeker that you built to detect people in fallen rubble could be used to direct evil-overlord-X's evil-death-thing-a-ma-jig." Yes, well of course they could. Anybody can take something created by man and change it to their own purposes because it was created by man. This however doesn't apply with Jesus, it doesn't work. I know whatever I build, whatever I do, is nothing compared to what God has done. I can only try and do what I can to honour and glorify God and that is what I mean by using my skills for Go(o)d.
Brace yourselves... change-is-a-comin'
Tuesday, December 17, 2002
.:11:52:32 PM:.
Whoops in my window closing craze, I accidentally closed the blogger window as well. So I discovered most of the answers surrounding the STK200 connector. The 1N4148 is indeed a diode, in fact its a fast switching diode. I found out that the bubble on pins 1 and 19 on the 74HC244 indicate that they are inverted. This should have been apparent on reading the datasheet-what confused me was whether it was just a reminder that the outputs would be inverted or if it was signifying some additionnal inversion. Which doesn't make much sense now that I look back on it but still, if you knew that inputs were going to be inverted then you wouldn't really need to put in the bubbles. I changed the diode and tried to detect the chip yet it still fails to detect anything. I'm not the only one with the problem though I have found someone else on the YAMP board with similar problems. Which is nice considering for a while it seemed as if no one else experienced the same difficulties. This doesn't mean I've solved the problem yet but I'm highly suspicious of my AVR chip.
Some of you might be aware that I normally do a lot of "multitasking". Its a habit I picked up during my undergrad years. I think it started with doing multiple assignments and labs and it just kept on building up from there. On average I have four windows open, I use putty and keep a constant connection for my normal e-mail, then I run phoenix (an offshoot of mozilla used for job searches. Mozilla is cool because you can do what's called tabbed browsing, meaning you can open links under different tabs all in the same window. It makes for pretty efficient browsing. Then I have the Word running for my resume tweaking, and Access to update my database. And there you go, four windows already. Its not like I work on each one simultaneously, its more like cycling through it while one is lagging. So what does all this have to do with anything? Well, I think this tells a lot about who I am. I like to do a lot of things, keeping busy with looking for work, the mp3 player, other web stuff. Its part of my nature but there are also times when I like to totally focus only on certain things. Like during devotions: I try really hard to remain focused on God and just to keep on praying and sometimes its really easy, other times not as much.
.:1:23:19 AM:.
So by now, you're probably thinking-what happened to the mp3 player Dan! And if not, I'm going to tell you anyways :P I built the STK200 dongle I didn't use a 1N4148 I used a regular diode which I believe should work fine and there were these two "bubbles" on pins 1 and 19 of the 74HC244 chip. I'm not exactly sure if they mean that you invert the inputs or perhaps it signifies that it is the falling edge of the signal. In the end I decided to connect the cable without any inverter in front of the pins. I tried to detect the AT90S8515 but it still didn't work. This leads me to two possible conclusions: 1) my parallel port is screwed up and therefore can't properly detect chip OR 2)the AVR chip the AT90S8515 is broken, somehow during my initial testing I may have broken it, bent it or done something. So, current ways of eliminating option 1 is to get another computer or terminal with a parallel port and run the detection program see if that works-if it still fails to detect the chip on either connection then I can probably say it was the chip and not the port. To eliminate option 2 the easiest way would be to get a new AT90S8515 chip and test that. I'm trying to set up the ATmega161 chip, its taking a lot longer cause the leads are so small and so close together. The chip itself weighs only a couple milligrams at the most in contrast with the AT90S8515, which weighs a couple grams.
I went to a surprise birthday party on Sunday night. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't mind having a surprise party, but I would be happy if my friends showed up. Not that they don't but just the mere fact that they do is well-enough :) I'm pretty easy to please. Anyways, going back to the party. There was so much food. Combine that with the pre-Christmas feast we had on Friday and I was stuffed. Fortunately with the lack of snow we've been having its perfect for running.
So we were trying out these wire puzzles at the party when I suddenly realized the whole point of the puzzles. Yeah, you have the challenge of trying to figure it out, but its much more like knowing a good card trick (or in my geeky-engineering case a math trick:P) its not that you can do it-its that others haven't can't. Its part of this sick, twisted, competitive side of us which compels us to say: here try this out cause I can do it, nyah! Well maybe we won't go as far as the "nyah!" but it could be implicit. The trick is to realize what is a distraction and what is a tool. I guess that's like all things in life. Obstacles are what you see when you're not focused on the goal.
Sunday, December 15, 2002
.:1:49:03 AM:.
I went to my first pre-Christmas party on Friday. Twas lots of fun, with a lot of people showing up at the fellowship. God does answer prayers-really, he does. I had been praying for a group of Christian friends for some time and its not like I wanted a replacement. I love the people I know, some of my friends date back to the days of kindergarten (its a wonder we haven't whacked each other yet) some other really close ones I started and bonded through my years at University. Yet there's something that drives me to get to know more people.
Its sort of funny because I think I usually come off as an introvert-at least if you're new. There's a buffer zone to warm up and then it starts to be fun. Thinking back to the old days, I used to really dislike public-anything, from public speaking, to presenting in front of parents, even recitals. I'm not sure why but I always ended up doing them. I think that's when I first knew that God was really there. I mean, really there-like right behind me got-your-back style. Way back in the day (I'm not that old, but elementary was a pretty long time ago ;) ) we had to do these concours oratoire, French public-speaking contest. For some strange reason, my teacher had picked me. I know I wasn't a great public speaker, in fact I probably was the last kid you'd pick to do something like that. This wasn't your regular run of the mill in-front-of-the-class thing, this was a school-wide competition with judges and all that. This other student and I; we had to practice, and practice, sort of like piano now that I think about it. The only thing was, we didn't practice in front of anyone except for each other. So the day came, and I distinctly remember a whole chain of events happening. First I lost my "cue cards" we were told to write down our entire presentation on them but I guess in my rush, I forgot them in class. So for a kid, this is pretty traumatic. Then there were the lights, man the lights are the worst. You can be blinded and yet see everyone looking at you. So I remembered praying, earnestly. For the first time, this wasn't any regular prayers that you memorized for the food-this was a straight conversation with God. I asked him to please protect me, and I asked it over and over and over and suddenly it was my turn. So I walked up, a few tears (mine) and a couple minutes later it was all over. The amazing thing wasn't that I won, but I remember feeling comforted, I knew God was there, beside me, around me. Everywhere and yet very near.
Fast forward to five years ago. A young Dan was just getting ready to go to University. Completely unaware of what Engineering really was like or what University life was really like. Then a bomb dropped-I lost touch with one of my friends for an entire summer. I hadn't even realized it until he told me certain things had happened and I was blown away that he didn't tell me. Then everything started coming up. Maybe my summer job wasn't going to be enough to cover tuition-and books! I had no real idea the impact of the cost of tuition-who really does until you pay and realize it all disappeared in a split second? I remember not knowing who would be in my classes-if there would be anybody I knew. That worried me. So, I prayed-I prayed a lot. I remembered apologizing to God for not being able to see how it will work out-who I'll know. I remember praying so hard that night. Now that I look back at it God was so faithful and true.
Fast forward to now and the story is just getting started.
