Archive for April, 2007

Whisper Aire 2000 whisper quiet

Sunday, April 29th, 2007

Some of you may remember how at the same time I started this site, I also installed the Whisper Aire 2000 whole house fan. In that post I complained about how it was a bit nosier than I expected it to be. Well I’m able to tell you now that the fan is so quiet you wouldn’t even know that it was on.

Well, that could be that it’s just not working. I used it about a month ago without any problem and now it doesn’t seem to do anything at all. I’ve contacted the company but their website doesn’t even list the product anymore. That’s not a good sign. It makes it seem like they’ve had so many problems with this product that they just want to pretend that it never even existed. Or, at the very least, that they had nothing to do with it.

In any event, I am currently cranky about the whole thing. I went up into the attic and made sure there were no visible problems with the wiring and what not. It’s on the same circuit as my internet so it must have power. I even flipped the thing off, waited and flipped it back on to see if maybe some breaker needed to be reset. The thing is still dead.

Posted in Rants and Raves | 7 Comments »

The joys of interlaced video

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

So the world is moving from SD television to HD television.  There are now several different video formats available to broadcasters incuding 480p 720p and 1080i.  Many people wanted to move away from interlaced video completely and only support progressive scan video. But, our government, in its infinite wisdom, standardized everything at 1080i.  I don’t understand that at all.  Interlaced video creates all sorts of interesting challenges, espcially in the era of digital content.

I have a problem at work right now that is specific to interlaced video that I cannot figure out how to overcome.  My problem is that I need to draw basic primitives to the overlay channel.  These primitives aren’t supposed to obstruct or detract from the video but are generated based on user defined areas and the video’s content.   These overlays have to be drawn on coax (via NTSC/PAL), or a S/VGA display.

The VGA output is non-interlaced while the coax is interlaced.  What this means is that my primitives look absolutely beautiful on VGA but have a very annoying flicker over coax.  For those of you unfamiliar with interlaced versus non-interlaced video it is because a VGA monitor draws the entire screen every time it paints.  A video monitor (TV, etc) is interlaced and draws every other line and then goes back and draws the lines that it skipped the first time.  These two different draw periods are referred to as fields.

This means that if you had a horizontal line that was one pixel wide, it would be drawn in  one field and not drawn at all in the next field.  This causes the line to disappear, only to be drawn again.  That is where the flicker comes in.  Just doubling the thickness of the line would likely result in having two lines flickerin on and off right next to each other.

Well, I don’t have a problem with my horizontal lines, but I do with diagonal lines.   What I am doing is this.  If I am going to turn on pixel (x,y) then I would also turn on (x,y+1).  I’d then paint pixels (x,y+2), (x,y+3), (x,y-1) and (x,y-2) with the gradient color.  That way every field will have one pixel for the line and one pixel on each side of the line for the gradient color.  That combined with the persistence of the phosphors in the previous field should blur everything to the eye and make it look more consistent.  At least, that is what I would think.

I’m still getting flicker, however.  Not only am I getting flicker, but it also seems to be worse on lines where the slope is greater than 1.

I’m absolutely perplexed by this and I can’t figure out how to resolve my flickering issue.  I’ve tried to decrease the intensity of the colors that I am using by half and that makes the flicker less noticable but does not remove it completely.

I’m completely stumped.  I’m going to go talk to one of our senior hardware engineers to see if he has any idea.  He knows analog video very well.  If he has any thoughts, I’ll be sure to share them.  Otherwise, please give me any thoughts you have.

Posted in Programming, Technology | 1 Comment »

xargs + sed

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

I always forget how to chain xargs w/ sed. I use it so rarely that I always have to look it up again. Here its an example for future reference. Note that the command is `sed -i single quote single quote` not a double quote.

find . -name Makefile | xargs sed -i ” -e ‘s/–parents/-p/’

Posted in Programming, Technology | 2 Comments »

Tips to Help Avoid Road Rage

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

I spent a lot of time on the road this weekend and had the opportunity to share it with some rather good and mediocre drivers.  I’m not the type of person who would try and cause any sort of harm to any of my fellow drivers, but I do get kind of upset when people do things on the road that don’t make sense to me.

I’m offering some tips on things people can do to make themselves better drivers (at least in my eyes).  These tips may not be legal, may not be safe, yada yada yada.  Follow them at your own risk.  If you disagree, please feel free to post a comment.  I’d love to know what others think is better.

  • Don’t drive in the left most lane on the freeway.  Even if it is only a two lane freeway, you really ought to stay to the right unless you are passing someone.  Of course, if it is bumper to bumper traffic, this rule doesn’t apply.
  •  If you are going faster than the car in front of you, do not wait until the last second to move over and pass the car.  Look far enough down the road so that you have room to speed up or slow down in order to merge with the traffic next to you. If you have to slow down to the speed of the car in front of you, wait until you will not cause more “aware” drivers to suffer for your inability to look a safe distance ahead.
  • When you are changing lanes, MERGE with the traffic next to you.  You are not merging with traffic if you are going significantly slower than everyone you pull in front of.  You are stopping traffic.
  • If you are only going a few miles an hour faster than the car in front of you, don’t make other people slow down significantly so that you can take a decade to pass that car.  It causes people to slam on their brakes and may cause an accident.  It also causes people to label you with terms that are not nearly as polite as “inconsiderate” or “thoughtless.”
  • When driving on a down hill stretch, do not brake in every turn.  It is hard on your brakes.  You are also far more likely to lose traction if you brake while turning.  Instead, use cruise control when possible and set the speed such that you don’t need to brake at all.  If there is an especially sharp turn, then brake before the turn. It is safer and will instill more confidence in those around you.
  • Don’t get all over someone’s bumper just because you like to see another car in front of you.  I can’t tell you how many times I had someone get all over me and then not move an inch forward or backwards after I get out of their way.  Worse is when they move forward just enough so that I can’t get back over to pass someone in my new lane.
  • When making a right hand turn, turn into the right most lane when possible.  If you’re not driving a semi-truck and you can’t turn into the right most lane, you are driving a car that is too big for your driving skills.  If there is a gap in another lane that is safer to turn into given the conditions, feel free to do so.
  • Do not make everyone behind you wait for you to turn right into the left hand most lane. I don’t care if you want to make the next possible left.  It is inconsiderate, selfish, and bad for the environment. Just think of all the pollution created by those people who are stuck behind you unable to move because you want to make a quick left into a grocery store.  Not only that, but if the traffic is so bad that you have to wait 10 minutes to make that turn, you could have gotten to your destination faster by making a U-turn.  Your car produces almost as much pollution sitting there idling as it does moving.  At least you are getting somewhere when you are moving.

If I have any more tidbits, I’ll add them on after this point.  If you’re guilty of any of these offenses, don’t worry, I don’t hate you.  Just go and sin no more.  With your help, we can help curb road rage and make the roads a better place.

Posted in Automotive | 2 Comments »

Mac OS X unintelligent when dragging files from removable media

Friday, April 13th, 2007

Last night I wanted to copy some files off of several CDs and burn them onto a single CD. I popped them into my Mac, highlighted the folders I wanted, and dragged them onto a folder in my desktop. Mac OS decided to make shortcuts of those files in the folder. Now, I know that there is some key combination I can use to tell it to move or copy the files instead of create shortcuts, but I can’t remember what it is.

Anyway you slice it though, that seems like the behavior is incorrect. In general, why would I want to make a shortcut to some file on removable media? I know that people sometimes run applications off of a network share but I think that in most cases people are going to want to copy a file in that instance instead of create a shortcut.

Of course, I come from a Windows world where dragging a file like that would result in it being moved, or just copied if it were on removable media. But at the same time, a shortcut to removable media is only useful if that media is attached/inserted.

Posted in Technology | No Comments »

Unable to empty the trash in Mac OS X

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007

Ok, so we use Surrond for source control at work (I know I know, it sucks but I didn’t pick it). Well, I checked out some files and then ended up deleting them all. Well, sort of. I moved them to the trash. Tonight I decided it was time to empty the trash (it was up to over 2GB). Lo and behold the Mac wouldn’t let me empty the trash. Why? Because some files were locked. So, I opened the trash, selected all of the items and opened the info (command-I). I then tried to unlock everything. It failed.

The next thing I tried was to go into my trash and do it from the terminal. Your trash is located in “/Users/username/.Trash/” . There, I tried to recursively set the permissions again (“chmod -R 700 *”). That failed because I lacked permissions. So, I tried using “sudo chmod -R 700 *” and was rejected again.

So, I went to Mac’s website and they recommended that I use the command “chflags -R nouchg ” and then list all of the file names I wanted to modify the permissions on. As it turns out, you can open the finder and drag files into your terminal window and it will automagically add them to the command line (very nifty). Anyway, I go rejected by that as well.

So I went back to Mac’s help page. As it turns out, you can hold down “command-option” while emptying the trash and it ended up deleting everything for me.

So why is ths so absurd to me? Because, how can the OS let me delete those files by holding down two characters while emptying the trash if I cannot modify the properties on those files using sudo? How can you have any file on your filesystem that you cannot modify with sudo? Seems like an OS bug to me.

Posted in Technology | No Comments »

P0171 Check Engine Code on 2000 Toyota Corolla

Monday, April 9th, 2007

So the P0171 check engine code seems to be a rather popular code. I’ve searched the web quite a bit and most people who see the “Check Engine” light come on their Corolla have this code. It seems that this code usually comes up after the car has been driven 70,000-80,000 miles.

Common advice on the internet suggests that you clean the mass airflow sensor and see if that fixes the problem. The problem could also be caused by a faulty oxygen sensor or a vacuum leak. The corolla has two oxygen sensors. I haven’t looked to see where they are located but one is probably in the exhaust manifold and the other is after the catalytic converter.

So what is the cause of my P0171 error code? I don’t know. The ODB-II reader I used was one that is only capable of checking engine codes. I’m thinking about buying this reader because it should allow me to run the engine and actually look at the output of each of the sensors. I’ve tried listening for a vacuum leak but I don’t hear one. Of course, that doesn’t mean that one doesn’t exist. I just hope I don’t have to replace too many sensors, they are about $100 each.

Posted in Automotive | 6 Comments »

Switching ISPs again + 1500 visitors a month!

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

Well, it’s that time of year again. My special rate with my current ISP expired a while ago but I haven’t had the time to switch over. I now have a second high speed internet connection and I just need to switch the cables going into my router to finish off the job. I don’t anticipate switching ISPs again. My new ISP has promised me a very good price for a very high speed. It isn’t supposed to increase, even after my contract expires. They are also giving me months 4-6 for free!

This site is now also averaging 1500 visitors a month. Thank you to all you spammers out there who are artificially inflating my visitor count! I appreciate having to deal with all of the stupid comment spam you put up. You guys should really get a clue though and teach your scripts not to bother. You haven’t gotten a single comment up. Learn your lesson, get on with your life, and leave me alone. No one wants to buy your fake cialis. At least, I hope not because they’ll probably get sick and die. Not only that, but because they DO look at your ads, you are encouraged to continue sending me junk! So my hat goes off to all those people who are foolish enough to click on spam links.

Posted in Rants and Raves, Technology | No Comments »

Shadowrun Beta for Xbox360

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

Well, I found out last Saturday that I was accepted into the beta program for the game Shadowrun.  I was away from home, and away from my xbox so it was a few days before I was able to try it out.  After waiting for a few hours as I downloaded the 800MB game followed by the 1GB patch, I was able to run all the training missions and play a few matches over Xbox Live.

I don’t know exactly how much I’m allowed to talk about at this point but from the game website you can see that there are some very unique and rather cool abilities in this game.  One of the worst things about playing a game like Rainbow Six over Live was the fact that in a survival game there would always be someone camping.  I think camping is the most boring thing in the world and people who do it either have an unhealthy compulsion to win, like to be bored, or feel like they need the upperhand.  Anyway, if you’ve looked at the site you’ll know that it won’t be easy to camp.

As your game progresses you can acquire technology and magic that will help you not only find campers but also completely bypass their ambush.  If their not using similar technology to look out for you, you could get the drop on them and completely annihilate them.

I’m not going to say anything more about this because I’m sure I’m not supposed to go into gameplay and what not.  Especially since they are still working on bug fixes and the like.  But I do  believe that this looks to be one of the best first person shooters ever and is definitely a blast to play.  I’m sure it will look amazing once they finish polishing the graphics, too.

Posted in Video Games | No Comments »