It’s an 8×8 red+green LED Matrix, driven by three shift registers driven by a Bare Bones Board Freeduino by Modern Device Company.

Before the meeting I just had it flashing fun patterns based on odd bit-math equations. During the meeting, I was urged to add some code to make it controllable by the Wii Nunchuk. So, I wrote a simple program that takes the X and Y of accelerometer and plots it on the matrix.

I drove the LED Matrix with three shift registers: One 74HC595 8-bit register gave power to the rows of the display, and one Maxim-IC MAX6969 sank current for the columns to the display. To turn on row 1, column one, you shift “B10000000” into the row register, and “B10000000” into the column register:

  1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0  
1 x o o o o o o o
0 o o o o o o o o
0 o o o o o o o o 
0 o o o o o o o o 
0 o o o o o o o o 
0 o o o o o o o o 
0 o o o o o o o o 
0 o o o o o o o o 

Altogether, it was about 30 lines of code to drive the matrix with some fun patterns.

I’m psyched. I have some projects I want to do that these boards will be perfect for.

You blow the center pole towards one side, and the LED shuts off. To turn it back on again, blow it the other direction. It’s a circuit known as a bistable multivibrator, or “flip-flop”.

I do like that it’s so simple and cheap, though.

My parts list is simply:

2 – 10k ohm resistors
1 – 1k ohm resistor
1 – 220 ohm resistor
2 – 2n3904 NPN Transistors
1 – LED
3 – AAA batteries (this thing’ll last forever!)

Not including the batteries, this thing costs less than 15 cents in parts. If I could work out the “blow” mechanism a little better, I think this would be a marketable product.

Okay, now for some photos:

On the breadboard:

Before being shoved in the pill bottle:

I had originally wanted to be able to shove this thing into a fat straw, like you get with a bubble tea, so I made it as small as possible, and soldered the pieces together straight rather than using protoboard:

Next: Brighter LEDs!

Powered by Jott

Source code: Freqin’ Wii

Hook a speaker to the output pin (defined below, 13 by default), and hook the Wii adapter up to analog pins 2-5, preferably using the Wiichuck adapter. Tilt the wii from side to side to adjust the tone, and tilt forward and back to adjust  the octave.  Push the joystick forward and back to adjust the length of the note.  Push the Z button to play the note.

I’m trying to think of what else I could do with this.  There’s just not a lot of data out there that can use three dimensions of acceleration data and two dimensions of joystick data.

This little thing is a great way to get started with electronics. You hook some electronic component to it, write a little bit of C, upload it to the board, and “tada!”, you’ve invented some new Gizmo.

Prepare as per box instructions. Yum!

• vegetable oil

  Saute the onion until soft, then add the carrots, red pepper, and mushrooms. Saute for a few more minutes. Add tomato chunks. Let it simmer for a few minutes. Add the vegetable broth, canned chicken, potato slices, rice, and spices. Cover and let simmer on low until the rice is cooked (20-30 minutes).

  ]]> http://www.laen.org/2007/09/19/vegetable-pilaf-with-chicken/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2007/04/23/rpcipc-and-messaging/ http://www.laen.org/2007/04/23/rpcipc-and-messaging/#comments Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:23:33 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2007/04/23/rpcipc-and-messaging/ Advanced Message Queuing Protocol
  ..An open protocol for messaging systems.

  Some implementations of AMQP:

  • Apache QPID
  • RabbitMQ
  • OpenAMQ

    And some more information about it:

  • http://www.amqp.org/
  ]]> http://www.laen.org/2007/04/23/rpcipc-and-messaging/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2007/04/23/potentially-relevant-jeps-to-the-system-management-project/ http://www.laen.org/2007/04/23/potentially-relevant-jeps-to-the-system-management-project/#comments Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:08:45 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2004/10/25/potentially-relevant-jeps-to-the-system-management-project/ 0142 – Workgroups
  This is for sending messages to roles. Several entities may join a Workgroup queue, and other entities may request chats with the workgroup (which then routes to the different entities when the chat is accepted by one of them). So, for alerting, we can send to the “alerting” workgroup, which will route to an appropriate AlertAgentBot.

  0095 – Stream Initiation
  For setting up a binary stream between two entities. This is cool because it could let us push all system checks to the nodes over the JabberNet. So we have a core stub ManagementAgent on each managed node, and it just logs on, and bootstraps itself.

  0137 – Publishing SI Requests
  For publishing available binary streams (using pubsub). So now our binary distribution nodes can publish available code, and our ManagementAgent stub can see what’s available for pulling.

  0135 – File Sharing
  Provides a way for entities to publish files to other entities. This looks kinda like what 0137 does, except farther evolved.

  Combined, a bootstrap would be something like:

  • Agent starts
  • Agent checks local cache for code, loading what’s necessary.
  • Agent receives pubsub list of available code
  • Agent downloads (and caches) what it needs.

    0136 – Message Archiving
    For using the Jabber server as a persistent message store. Provides a method of adding, updating , and removing items from the store. This could be used as an audit log for the Agents.

    ]]> http://www.laen.org/2007/04/23/potentially-relevant-jeps-to-the-system-management-project/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2007/04/09/patch-check-advanced-solaris/ http://www.laen.org/2007/04/09/patch-check-advanced-solaris/#comments Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:51:52 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2007/04/09/patch-check-advanced-solaris/ Solaris patching is, frankly, a pain.

    Patch Check Advanced makes it less painful—even pleasant.

    It’ll automatically download the patch list from Sun, correlate it against what you have on your system, and present you with a list of what needs to happen. You can tell it to install all recommended patches, all security patches, or all the patches that don’t require a reboot (saving those for special occasions).

    Extremely cool tool.

    ]]> http://www.laen.org/2007/04/09/patch-check-advanced-solaris/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2007/04/09/new-photos/ http://www.laen.org/2007/04/09/new-photos/#comments Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:47:01 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2007/04/09/new-photos/ Two new photos, both taken from my living room window.

    
    
    
    Not photoshopped. Just a fortunate reflection:
    
    

    ]]> http://www.laen.org/2007/04/09/new-photos/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2007/01/08/fog/ http://www.laen.org/2007/01/08/fog/#comments Tue, 09 Jan 2007 04:19:18 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2007/01/08/fog/ At dusk today, the fog rolled in.

    

    ]]> http://www.laen.org/2007/01/08/fog/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2006/10/09/conserver-and-sun-x4100s/ http://www.laen.org/2006/10/09/conserver-and-sun-x4100s/#comments Mon, 09 Oct 2006 22:51:11 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2006/10/09/conserver-and-sun-x4100s/ X4100s have a pretty cool integrated lights-out management card, but it doesn’t have an easily integrate with Conserver.

    To fix, I created an expect script named “ilom-connect” like this:

    #!/usr/bin/expect -f
    expect { 
    "(yes/no)?"    {exp_send "yesr"; exp_continue; }
    "password: " {exp_send "r"; }
    }
    expect "\-> "
    send "cd /SP/consoler"
    send "startr"
    expect "(y/n)?"
    exp_send "yr"

    Then, in conserver:

    console x4100 {
    include sun-ilom;
    exec ssh -l admin x4100-m;
    type exec;
    initcmd "/usr/local/sbin/ilom-connect";
    }

    ]]> http://www.laen.org/2006/10/09/conserver-and-sun-x4100s/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2006/10/09/slashfood/ http://www.laen.org/2006/10/09/slashfood/#comments Mon, 09 Oct 2006 20:24:44 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2006/10/09/slashfood/ Slashfood is a delicious food blog, full of delicious looking food porn.

    Yum.

    ]]> http://www.laen.org/2006/10/09/slashfood/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2006/09/27/grilled-vegetable-and-goat-cheese-roulade/ http://www.laen.org/2006/09/27/grilled-vegetable-and-goat-cheese-roulade/#comments Wed, 27 Sep 2006 19:41:20 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2006/09/27/grilled-vegetable-and-goat-cheese-roulade/ ..This is a veggie wrap from a place I used to eat at in Florida.

    1 eggplant, thinly sliced
    1 yellow squash, thinly sliced
    1 green zucchini, thinly sliced
    1 red pepper
    1 green pepper
    5 ounces goat cheese
    1 ounce sour cream
    2 large spinach tortillas

    Lightly grill eggplant, squash and zucchini. Blacken peppers on grill, place in paper bag for a few minutes, then remove the blackened skin, seeds and slice. On a sheet of plastic wrap layer eggplant, zucchini, squash and peppers. Mix goat cheese and sour cream and spread a thin layer on top of vegetables. Roll in a spinach tortilla. Refrigerate for up to two hours. To serve, slice into 1/4 inch pieces.

    Yield: Serves 8

    ]]> http://www.laen.org/2006/09/27/grilled-vegetable-and-goat-cheese-roulade/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2006/09/27/zuppa-toscana-soup/ http://www.laen.org/2006/09/27/zuppa-toscana-soup/#comments Wed, 27 Sep 2006 19:39:52 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2006/09/27/zuppa-toscana-soup/ This is an approximation of the “Zuppa Toscana” soup they serve at Olive Garden. It’s sooo goood, and really easy to make.

    1 lb. spicy Italian Sausage – crumbled
    1/2 lb. smoked bacon – chopped
    1 qt water
    (2) 14.5 oz cans chicken broth
    2 large russet potatoes – cubed
    1 medium onion – sliced
    2 garlic cloves – crushed
    2 cups chopped kale or swiss chard
    1 cup heavy whipping cream
    salt and pepper to taste

    In a skillet over medium-high heat, brown sausage, breaking it into small pieces as you fry it.  Drain and set it aside.

    Do the same with the bacon.

    Place water, broth, potatoes, garlic and onion in a pot. Simmer them over medium heat until the potatoes are tender.

    Add the sausage and bacon to the pot. Simmer for 10 minutes.

    Add kale and cream to the pot.  Season it with salt and pepper.

    Serve.

    ]]> http://www.laen.org/2006/09/27/zuppa-toscana-soup/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2006/09/26/nexenta-gnusolaris/ http://www.laen.org/2006/09/26/nexenta-gnusolaris/#comments Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:41:26 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2006/09/26/nexenta-gnusolaris/ I spent the weekend loading Nexenta on my two home PCs.

    Nexenta is basically Ubuntu on an OpenSolaris kernel.  This gives you all the awesomenes of Ubuntu (apt-get, gnome, kde, GNU tools), with all the awesomeness of OpenSolaris (zones, ZFS, DTrace).

    Some cool things:
    

    
    
    • The opensolaris packages are available via apt-get.  I wanted to set up some zones, so I did an “apt-get install sunwzoner sunwzoneu”.
    
    
    • “zoneadm -z zone1 install” fires off debootstrap and creates a Nexenta Zone.
    
    
    • The install is super-easy.  Just boot off the CD and answer a few questions.
    
    
    
    So, now I have two Nexenta boxen, with about 1TB of storage online.  Which brings me to why I did this in the first place:  ZFS.

    I really hate Linux Software RAID.  I hate it so much that I don’t use it.  This meant that my home storage was more or less unprotected, which sucks.  I don’t have anything irreplacable on these servers, but still, it’s good form to RAID.

    Creating a mirror is as easy as:

    1. zpool create -m /storage zstorage mirror c1d0p0 c2d0p0

       Adding another mirrorset to this pool is as easy as:

    2. zpool add zstorage mirror c3d0p0 c4d0p0

       ..Which gives me 560GB of RAID10 storage with two commands.   Now I have room for a complete nightly backup of my laptop, including incrementals (thanks, ZFS snapshots!), plus a backup of my “every photo I’ve ever taken” directory.

       ]]> http://www.laen.org/2006/09/26/nexenta-gnusolaris/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2006/03/23/solaris-bsm/ http://www.laen.org/2006/03/23/solaris-bsm/#comments Thu, 23 Mar 2006 19:05:43 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2006/03/23/solaris-bsm/ I was having a problem with Solaris’s Basic Security Module. I’d make changes to the audit_control and run “audit -s”, but it didn’t look like it was having an effect. Or at least it wasn’t taking effect for every process.
       

       It turns out that each process’s audit flags are set at process create time, and that each process it forks off inherit the parent’s audit id.

       You can see the audit details of a process by using auditconfig:

       1. auditconfig -getpinfo 23161

          audit id = rold(25038)
          process preselection mask = lo(0×1000,0×1000)
          terminal id (maj,min,host) = 0,41352,gto(192.168.1.98)
          audit session id = 23161
          ..And you can change the mask using auditconfig:

          $ auditconfig -setumask 25038 ex,lo,fw,fc,fd

          Which enables auditing of execs, login/logouts,file writes, file creates, and file deletes.

          ]]> http://www.laen.org/2006/03/23/solaris-bsm/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2006/02/01/python-overriding-site-prefix-for-things-that-use-setuppy/ http://www.laen.org/2006/02/01/python-overriding-site-prefix-for-things-that-use-setuppy/#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2006 00:05:20 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2006/02/01/python-overriding-site-prefix-for-things-that-use-setuppy/ So, I wanted to play with a python package, but I didn’t want to install it into my primary python distribution tree just yet. I couldn’t find out how to override “site-packages”, though.

          Finally, I found this:

          Create a file called “setup.cfg” in the directory that has your “setup.py”. In it, put:
          [install]
          install_lib = /var/tmp/test-blort/lib
          install_scripts = /var/tmp/test-blort/bin

          Run your setup.py, and away you go.

          ]]> http://www.laen.org/2006/02/01/python-overriding-site-prefix-for-things-that-use-setuppy/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2005/11/26/learning-ruby/ http://www.laen.org/2005/11/26/learning-ruby/#comments Sat, 26 Nov 2005 07:01:23 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/?p=24 Okay, valuable things when learning ruby:
          • ri – This is like “perldoc”. Use it to view the live ruby documentation.
          • irb – Interactive Ruby. This is like the perl debugger.
          • IRB Tab Completion—Use this to view every available method on every object.
          • gems – A packaging system and source code repository (kinda like CPAN)
          • RubyGems
          ]]> http://www.laen.org/2005/11/26/learning-ruby/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2005/11/15/cups-request-entity-too-large/ http://www.laen.org/2005/11/15/cups-request-entity-too-large/#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2005 19:26:51 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/?p=23 If you get this CUPS error, it may mean that you don’t have write permission to your CUPS spool directory (/var/spool/cups, by default).
          ]]> http://www.laen.org/2005/11/15/cups-request-entity-too-large/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2005/11/07/building-gcc-for-solaris-9/ http://www.laen.org/2005/11/07/building-gcc-for-solaris-9/#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2005 19:50:25 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/?p=21 Here’s the build flags I used for building a 64-bit GCC for Solaris 9 (using Sun’s Forte C compiler). This uses the GNU binutils ld and as.

          export GCC_EXEC_PREFIX=
          export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=
          
           cd build;
                  test -d gcc-4.0.2 || gtar -jxvf ../src/gcc-4.0.2.tar.bz2
                  test -d objdir && rm -rf objdir 
                  mkdir objdir
                  cd objdir
                          CC="cc -xarch=v9" ../gcc-4.0.2/configure  
                                  --prefix=/apps/gcc/4.0.2 
                                  --enable-languages=c,c++ 
                                  --with-ld=/apps/binutils/stable/bin/ld 
                                  --with-as=/apps/binutils/stable//bin/as 
                                  --enable-threads=posix 
                                  --disable-shared 
                                  --enable-multilib
                          while ! gmake -j16 bootstrap MAKE=gmake BOOT_CFLAGS="-g -O2 -m64"; do
                                  true;
                          done

          ]]> http://www.laen.org/2005/11/07/building-gcc-for-solaris-9/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2005/11/07/ruby-and-openssl/ http://www.laen.org/2005/11/07/ruby-and-openssl/#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2005 19:48:54 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2005/11/07/ruby-and-openssl/ Since this isn’t documented anywhere in the ruby install docs that I can find… If you want your Ruby build to have openssl support, you’ll need to compile with—with-openssl-dir=, pointing at your OpenSSL build.

          It seems kind of basic, but it doesn’t show up in a ./configure—help, and it’s not anywhere in the docs that I can find.

          ]]> http://www.laen.org/2005/11/07/ruby-and-openssl/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2005/09/01/jet-lagged/ http://www.laen.org/2005/09/01/jet-lagged/#comments Thu, 01 Sep 2005 20:58:11 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2005/09/01/jet-lagged/ I’m jetlagged. It’s not what I expected.

          I thought jetlag was primarily a sleep disorder. I thought I’d just have a tough time getting to sleep because of the time difference. This I can understand. You were going to bed at 2300 GMT, now you’re going to bed at 1400 GMT. It’s understandable that the body would go “huh? It’s the middle of the afternoon!”. I thought that I’d just be tired today.

          Instead, it’s just bizarre. It’s not that I’m tired, because then I think I could deal with it better. I feel well rested, but fatigued and disoriented. I feel slow, like the rest of the world is travelling very fast. My thoughts aren’t well organized, and my coordination is…. off. It’s has all the symptoms of being sleepy, without actually being tired.

          ]]> http://www.laen.org/2005/09/01/jet-lagged/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2005/01/30/to-my-endocrine-system/ http://www.laen.org/2005/01/30/to-my-endocrine-system/#comments Sun, 30 Jan 2005 14:48:57 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2005/01/30/to-my-endocrine-system/ Dear Endocrine System,
          I feel I owe you some of you an apology. While you’ve been working so hard to keep my body in balance, I’ve been undercutting your efforts. To those of you I’ve inconvenienced tonight, I’d like to apologize individually.

          Pineal Gland. You may be wondering why it is that it’s 6 in the morning and we haven’t gotten a wink of sleep. You may be wondering what the hell is happening to all the melatonin you’ve been pumping into blood all night. You may even see this all-nighter as a personal failure. Don’t feel bad. It’s not your fault. While you’ve been squirting the melatonin, I’ve been chugging the coffee drinks.

          That’s also the reason you’ve been working so hard, Pancreas. For all the caffeine those drinks have, they have a lot more raw, adulterated sugar. You’ve been a real champ, pushing out all that insulin. I appreciate it. You’re my favorite gland. Now could you please, PLEASE cut it out with the stomach acid? Isn’t 7 hours of heartburn enough?

          Adrenal Glands. No apology for you. You guys freak out at every little thing, and frankly, I’m sick of it. The sudden drop in blood sugar is just the pancreas doing their job. It’s really, REALLY, nothing to worry about. The adrenaline you’re releasing is doing nothing more than wigging me out, and breaking down into more sugar, making the poor pancreas work even harder. Shame on you. Whoa! Whoa! Calm down! That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I’m not attacking you. Just calm the hell down, and cut it out with the fight-or-flight.

          Pituitary? Hypothalamus? I don’t know what you guys are doing up there, but I have a sneaking suspicion you guys are the only ones keeping this boat together. Good work guys. Oh, and pituitary? Keep them endorphins coming. They’re awesome.

          Finally, Kidneys. Although you’re not always seen as a member of the Endocrine team, I want you to know I appreciate your work the most. You’ve been pulling double duty, removing all this crap from my blood, while doing your very best to keep my blood pressure down. How have I repaid you? By not drinking enough water. My apologies, friend. Have a drink on me.

          Your Boss,
          -Laen

          ]]> http://www.laen.org/2005/01/30/to-my-endocrine-system/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2005/01/16/oregon-coast-2/ http://www.laen.org/2005/01/16/oregon-coast-2/#comments Sun, 16 Jan 2005 09:03:52 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2005/01/16/oregon-coast-2/ I don’t know how I feel about this photo.

          The original was really plain and uninteresting, so I messed with the levels a bit in an attempt to cut through the fog and get some detail. Not very sucessful. So I went the opposite direction, shifting the histogram down just mask out the foggy bits. That had the side effect of accentuating the water, which I really like. It also gives it a kind of “twilight” feel.

          Overall though.. Does it work?

          

          ]]> http://www.laen.org/2005/01/16/oregon-coast-2/feed/ http://www.laen.org/2005/01/16/so-cold-so-very-very-cold/ http://www.laen.org/2005/01/16/so-cold-so-very-very-cold/#comments Sun, 16 Jan 2005 08:49:52 +0000 Laen http://www.laen.org/2005/01/16/so-cold-so-very-very-cold/ An ice storm rolled through last night and coated the city in a thin layer of ice.

          

          ]]> http://www.laen.org/2005/01/16/so-cold-so-very-very-cold/feed/