Saturday, July 31, 2004

Roasting maniac

I successfully made my first roast today. I picked up a beef top roast from Publix today and followed some simple instructions I saw on food network... the outcome?

Stupendous, rave reviews all around.

Booya Emeril, booya.

J

posted by Jae @ 8:43 PM 2 comments

Friday, July 23, 2004

Serial Port program 'final' release

I was able to rig up my own config window so that I didn't have to use the one that came w/ the .dll

The config basically just picks the baud rate of the port, all the other settings are hard-coded (8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, etc...) .

If you want more configurability use the previously posted program.

Here are two zipped files, the first is the actual program and the second is the C# code for the program.

[Program] [Source Code]

If you want to learn more about the .dll that I used, check out http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/DotNetComPorts.asp

PS: I decided I am too lazy to actually comment the code, so you'll have to grind through it.

J Out

posted by Jae @ 12:03 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

80% chance of having same birthday...

Yesterday at dinner my friends told me that if there is a room with 40 people in it, that there is an 80% chance that two of them have the same birthday.  I was initially skeptical as most would be, so I did the math...

Now those that of you that haven't seen counting theory in a while may find this hard to swallow but...

a = 365^40 is the total number of combinations of birthdays that 40 people can have.

b = permutation(365,40) are the total number of combinations of birthdays where no two people share a birthday.

the mathematical formula for that permutation is 365!/(365-40)!.

so our final formula for the percent chance that two people share a birthday is expressed as follows:

pretty amazing... J out

posted by Jae @ 5:17 PM 0 comments

The History channel knows all

Is it just me or do you believe everything that the history channel tells you no matter what?

Today it told me that George Washington didn't really have wooden teeth. They said no dentist has ever made wooden teeth in America; it was done in Japan.

Now I know that somewhere down the road someone is going to talk about our first president and say that he had wooden teeth and it will be my job to step up and say otherwise. Of course once my argument is backed up by, "I saw on the History channel that..." they will have no recourse but to agree.

God bless you History channel and all your splendor.

Jae izout

posted by Jae @ 11:29 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Comments

I just realized that I wasn't allowing comments from un-registered users.
 
This has been changed and anyone (that means you) can post comments.
 
Just keep in mind that I will eat your first born child if I do not approve of your comments (j/k but not really).

posted by Jae @ 2:35 PM 0 comments

Memory access bytes the big one

I have determined for all intents and purposes that writing a controller to access memory is the worst job on the face of the planet.
 
I want to interface my serial port program on the hardware side with a device that will store received bytes into memory and then, upon receiving a trigger, will write back the whole stored buffer.
 
It is not that it is hard, but it is just a pain in the ass.  You are having to put so much thought and planning to interface something that you did not design.
 
For instance, the board that I am using has 4 banks of 64kx16 RAM.  The initial problem is that I only want to do byte access...  So I have to device some clever way to fool the RAM into giving up bytes out of the 16 bit data that it stores.  Luckily the RAM has byte-high and byte-low read and writes.
 
I could just use one of the bytes and leave the rest be for now, but then I would only be using half of the RAM.  This would be similar to twisting your oreo and only being able to eat half (I know you'd choose the cream side but imagine that one time when there is half cream on both... oooh I knew that would get to you).
 
The next problem is that if I decide to use all 4 banks of RAM then I need some way to multiplex the data busses and address busses because -- of course -- they each are connected to the FPGA separately.
 
I think after considering this I will just access one of the RAMs, this gives me 64Kx16 or 1,048,576 bits of data that I can store in my buffer, this would be equivalent to 131,072 characters (which is more than I have ever written in my life except maybe for this post).
 
Well I suppose I better stop wasting time complaining and get back on the ball...
 
Will post back with schematics when the time is right.
 
Jae reluctantly out

posted by Jae @ 2:19 PM 1 comments

Saturday, July 17, 2004

bar rules....

I find myself very reluctant to relinquish my seat at the bar to others (even if I have no intent on drinking anymore). It is a seat of power. You control access for anyone who wishes to order drinks from that area....

Yeah I know, I'm an ass.

An ass with control of the bar, mwahahahahahah

Anyway, I know I'm not alone in this thinking...

posted by Jae @ 8:35 PM 0 comments

Thursday, July 15, 2004

a lull

I hate that annoying time between finishing one project and starting another. It is way too tempting to not start another. Now I know that I haven't "officially" finished my program because I have to document... but when you write it and it works and you know how to use it, you consider it done (am I wrong?).

Anyway I guess my next move is to test the boards that Jose got made for us, if I can get a picture of them I will. They are pretty badass.

I also need to finish up the hardware side of the serial communication scheme. Right now whatever the board receives it sends back, but I'm going to make it store its received characters into a buffer instead (since this is much more useful).

Sorry for the boring post.

Jae out.

posted by Jae @ 12:28 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Program complete!

It is completely functional. I had to use the configuration window that was used in the SerialPorts dll because the members were declared private (so I couldn't make my own settings window).

Anyhow the settings window w/ the dll is pretty good.

Click here to download program

Now I need to clean up the code and document it (I hate commenting).

You will probably find this program pretty useless unless you actually have something to connect to your serial port. Nevertheless I consider it a great success.

posted by Jae @ 2:15 PM 0 comments

Eureka

A breakthrough! Turns out the problem with receiving as things come in stemmed back to the configuration that I was not willing to play with yet.

The default config has the receive immediate turned off (bastards). So I will now begin tweaking the configuration section as this will, in turn, solve the receiving problem.

posted by Jae @ 12:04 PM 0 comments

Yahoo or Google

Today I had to make the ultimate decision... install the Yahoo toolbar or Google toolbar in IE. I went with Google but somehow feel that I am missing out on something.

Yes I know it's stupid but I can't help it. I normally don't use IE at all but since the new spyware software I use prevents spyware from being installed only in IE I figure I better start using it again.

If anyone has used both the Yahoo and Google toolbars and can tell me a reason that the Yahoo one is better let me know.

I only used Google because of the BlogThis! button.

-Jae out

posted by Jae @ 9:07 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Progress report

Sending and receiving now click here for program. Not the full functionality that I would like to see (You have to click a button to read in the buffer instead of it just reading it in as it receives it). Will still have to work more at it and still haven't messed with configuring yet.

All to come...

Jae out.

posted by Jae @ 4:55 PM 0 comments

It's alive!

Yes the moment you all were waiting for... It sends!

Nonono, get up. There is no need to bow, anybody could have done this. It still doesn't receive and the configuration is limited to a standard 9600bps 8 data bits 1 stop bit config.

So there is still much work to be done, but I am happy.

posted by Jae @ 3:27 PM 0 comments

Program update

I am the man. Not really. Program is coming along pretty well. You can download a copy of what is done so far here. I am running into a problem because the device I want to communicate with has a fixed clockrate that does not match up with the "normal" serial port rates. So I have to figure that problem out before I can finish with the "Configure" menu.

Damn I'm hungry...

posted by Jae @ 1:02 PM 0 comments

Monday, July 12, 2004

Windows App

Sweeeeeet...

Started work on my first real windows application. It will interface a laptop and the Altera APEX DSP Development Kit through the serial port.

So far is going well, will post again w/ links to download the app and code when it gets done.

posted by Jae @ 10:19 PM 0 comments

Saturday, July 10, 2004

Eso

I feel it is time to make my dog famous. Though she is much larger now I don't have any new photos so this will have to do.

Introducing Eso...

posted by Jae @ 2:30 PM 0 comments

CollegeHumor

Here is a list of websites that help pass time:

CollegeHumor
I-Am-Bored
Homestarrunner
Penny-arcade

posted by Jae @ 1:48 PM 0 comments