Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
The Token Windows box (which runs the few programs that don’t get along with Linux) doesn’t get a lot of attention, but a recent update changed their stylin’ graphic CPU meter to something a bit less, mmm, smooth:
Our Larval Engineer reported that her camera, which is my old Casio pocket camera, has begun fading away, so we’re getting her a shiny new camera of her very own. Being a doting father, I picked up a pair of Wasabi NB-6L batteries (and a charger, it not costing much more for the package) so she’s never without electrons, and did the usual rundown test on all three batteries:
Canon NB-6L – 2014 OEM vs Wasabi
Fairly obviously, the Wasabi batteries aren’t first tier products, but they’re definitely better than that bottom-dollar crap from eBay.
For some unknown reason, one of the very rare updates to the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS infrastructure (for LinuxCNC 2.5.3 on my Foxconn D510 box, driving the Sherline mill) stopped supporting the system board’s built-in NIC: networking stopped working. The only symptom was that the NIC didn’t respond and all the usual tricks were unproductive.
After some fruitless searching, I took the easy way out:
NIC added to Foxconn D510 PC
That’s the backside of an ancient NIC using the classic Tulip driver. It used to have a full-size bracket, which I chopped off, bent, and filed to suit, much as with that one in the D525.
Fired it up, the kernel automagically picked the proper driver, and networking Just Worked again.
I did five minutes of standup comedy at yesterday’s MHV Lug meeting, pointing out some of the more interesting ways to compromise a PC when you have an infinite budget for development and consumables.
You don’t get my patter with the PDF (unless you had access to the room’s bugging hardware), but the links may come in handy in the unlikely event you haven’t been following the story closely.
If you have a security clearance or are in line for one, you probably shouldn’t click on the link, because it contains copies of pages from the leaked NSA catalog:
Just like fire extinguishers and bike helmets, you never know when you’ll need to use this thing in a hurry… then it’s too late to clean out all the crap that accumulates on any flat (or concave) spot.
Not that I’m completely innocent, of course.
The DSC-H5 had been outdoors for a few hours, hiking with us at 25 °F, so the lens fogged instantly when we walked through the greenhouse door.
When I ordered this carton of paper, I specified “pick up at store” because I knew this would happen:
Ruptured paper carton
A carton weighs so much that everybody, myself included, grabs it by the straps and slings it around. Unlike them, I put it down gently, because it’s my paper… but now it’s too late.
Inside the carton, the impact shattered the paper wrapper on every one of the ten reams:
Split paper reams
In the last carton I bought (admittedly, quite some time ago), Staples used plastic wrappers that gave each ream a bit more protection against abuse and the elements, but that’s been cheapnified out of existence.
I also ordered a ream of fancy heavyweight paper that pushed the order over the “Free Shipping!” threshold; I missed the fact that they auto-checked “Free Delivery!” for the whole order. Of course, that ream shipped separately and it’s now delayed by a week or two…
I could take it back, but the paper from that bottom-corner ream seems to be no more than somewhat bent, so I’ll live with it.
Mary volunteered me as a “white glove” helper: we walked the show floor for a few hours wearing cute aprons and white knit gloves.
Rule Zero: nobody touches the quilts. When people wanted to see the back side, we did all the handling. This worked out quite well; pretty nearly everybody understood what was going on, although we all agreed that fine quilts exhibit a magnetic attraction to fingertips.
Pro tip I: when the sign at the entrance says NO DRINKS, that means your coffee isn’t allowed in the exhibit area. You may be a special person, but you’re not that special. We’re not picking on you.
Pro tip II: when you bring your brat to a quilt show and let the kid dive under frames holding quilts representing thousands of hours of painstaking work, don’t act surprised when I haul him out by the feet, reprimand him, give him back to you, and expect you to get your act together.
I obviously had the wrong chromosome loadout for the mission.
Mary’s Butterfly Flower quilt nailed First Place in the Appliqué Wall Quilt division!
