Chris Moates’ adventures in the land of Mox

My Arduino Mega arrived in the mail today. With any luck, I’ll have time to mess with it a bit this evening. That means, though, that I need to come up with artificial test cases, to learn the hardware.

For those playing along at home, my ultimate medium-term goal is to control a pinball machine with the Arduino. Probably a Williams Contact to start with, but maybe something fancier down the road. I guess it all depends on how hard/easy it works out to be.

Based on my referrer logs, a lot of visitors come here looking for icoconvert, a tool I wrote years back to convert ICO files to PNG. I’m going to see if I can dig up the source code for you all, and post it here soon. If this is important to you, leave me a comment so I know that it’s worth my trouble.

How on earth have I been on the net for 20 years and never seen this? I laughed until I cried.

http://www.pmichaud.com/toast/

Picked up a Family Guy pinball machine this afternoon. This was a “must have” for Maggie, so I happened to see one locally and surprised her. She’s thrilled to death. Here’s a picture:

Family Guy pinball machine

I ran across this article last night while killing some time:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/08/how-much-does-smoking-cos_n_184554.html

I’d like to take some time to follow up on their sources and verify the information, but it does propose interesting questions and points. I really can’t wait until it’s not profitable to demonize the smokers anymore, and the zealots turn their attention to the fat people. Oh wait, the zealots ARE the fat people. Pot, meet kettle.

I’ve been using Mashed Life for awhile now, and I’m happy with what they provide. It’s not for everyone; you’re storing authentication data on their servers. But today, I noticed that they now offer Yubikeys for $9.99, plus $3 S+H. This contrasts with Yubico’s price of $25 each, plus a bit of shipping. This is a great deal, good enough that I’m tempted to pick up more now. I have no idea if this is a limited time offer; Mashed Life used to sell their keys for around $35 apiece.

I decided to switch to a G1 today. The openness of the device vs the Sidekick really can’t be argued. There will likely never be an AIM application for any phone that is as good as the Sidekick, and I really do like my AIM. But nothing else about the phone is great. And lots of other things about Android are great.

I’ve just been playing around a little, so I don’t have anything significant to report yet. Except that the Nagios app crashes when I try to run it. So I guess I’ll be learning how to diagnose crashes soon.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t buy from buy.com very often. So infrequently, in fact, that the last time was over 6 years ago, as they had my old Atlanta address in their system. However, they’ve been around awhile, seem to be reputable, I guess, and occasionally have good deals on things. Hence my run-in with them this morning.

I decided to finally buy a GPS for the car. I’d held off for a number of reasons, at different times. The technology used to be pretty bad. They didn’t have error correction (if you miss a turn, for example). They were prohibitively expensive. They were very closed systems. The list just seemed to go on and on, but more to the point, the list kept getting worked on. The only thing really holding me back became, “I only drive locally, so don’t need a GPS.” And I really don’t need a GPS, that’s true. But I borrowed Chuck’s car the other week and used his, and I have to admit, it beat the pants out of trying to read numbers on buildings as you cruise by them at 45mph, in the dark.

So, one of my favorite deals sites, Ben’s Bargains has a number of units listed, including a Garmin at $250 (http://bensbargains.net/deal/97917/). I know they are available much more cheaply, but I figured the Chinese knockoffs can’t be as nice, right? And Chuck’s was a Garmin, very similar to this, and was pretty darned nice. I continue to poke around, looking at an $80 unit (http://bensbargains.net/deal/97877/) when I see this in the comments:

The NAV740 is built better, uses a faster processor, is more easily hacked – so easy anyone can do it, has better navigation software (iGO), brighter screen, better battery life, you don’t void the warranty by accessing the SD card, accepts SDHC, etc, etc.

err… did someone say hacked? I’m a sucker for hacking on bizarre things. I quickly google around for a little information, and indeed, apparently the thing runs Windows CE and is easily hacked to add Windows Explorer, which of course opens up all kinds of possibilities. I’m in, it’s only $90, after all! (http://bensbargains.net/deal/96984/)

So, I’m sure you’re wondering what GPS has to do with haggling, anyhow. I’m checking out at buy.com and the price is $89.99 plus $5.99 shipping for 2 day shipping. Not bad, but I don’t really need it in 2 days, so I decide to see how much it costs for the low end shipping instead. I click on the 7-9 day shipping and they “offer” to lower the 2 day shipping price to $2.99. Cool, and I decide to take advantage of the offer, but it really pisses me off that you have to pretend like you’re cheap to get a deal.

So, after over a year of planning for a complete set of implants in my upper jaw, I finally had the implants and teeth placed today, using the Nobel Biocare “Teeth in an hour” product. Basically, you do lots and lots of prep work ahead of time, and when you finally get the implants, etc, it goes in all in one sitting, and takes around an hour. Compare that with at least 3 sittings, and at least 3 months of recovery time, and 3 months of no teeth at all, under the older approaches.

It’s been about 18 hours since I had the surgery. They placed 7 implants in my upper jaw. I have no swelling. I’m not on any pain medications. The teeth don’t hurt at all. It’s almost creepy. But having this done, I’d highly recommend it to anyone in my situation. I’ll have more to say on this in the coming days, as I get used to the new teeth.

Maggie and I will be married 7 years on April 6, 2009. So we’re off for the weekend to celebrate. I’m not entirely sure where we’re going but I know it’s only around an hour away, and there’s no kids. That’s good enough for me. It’s a little early, but next Friday I have my dental surgery to have all new implants and teeth in my upper jaw. I didn’t figure I’d be in the mood to celebrate our anniversary 3 days later.

On that note, I’m going to have to quit smoking on Monday, in preparation for the surgery. It’s necessary, probably good for me, and all that, but it doesn’t mean it’ll be easy or that I won’t miss it. I love to smoke, and I always have. Some people say that I only believe that because I’m addicted, and they might very well be right, but that doesn’t mitigate the fact that I enjoy smoking tremendously.

It’ll be a big adaptation; you get used to doing something one way for so many years, and suddenly everything you do is different. Taking breaks from work won’t be the same, heading out on a Friday night won’t be the same either. But in today’s environment, where we are hostile towards personal rights so long as it appeases the masses, it’s become harder and harder to be a smoker anyhow. Restaurants and bars are forced to be non-smoking against their will; taxes on tobacco are oppressively high. I am accosted on a regular basis for being a smoker both by people I know and strangers. My only compensation is that they will have one less thing to feel superior about.

But what does that bring? I can only imagine that once they’ve “conquered” smoking that it’ll be something new and different.

And while I’m on my soap box, let me say something else that seems somewhat related to me. I am ashamed that my country still notices the color of skin. Every time I hear “first black president” I am apalled. This shouldn’t even be noteworthy. Why do we feel the need to point out the pointless? And whether he succeeds or fails, I fear that it’ll be the same thing: “It took a black man to save America,” or “We elect a black man and look at how much worse things got.” Be wary if you’re within striking distance and you utter some silliness; you may not like the consequences.