#robotic arm flashbacks

i remember programming this machine with a apple 2 clone, when i was quite young. it was a educational robotic arm i had access to in a laboratory in the early/mid 80's.

 

it had pretty good mobility, small error margin and it could lift up a kilo or so. here is a sheet photo where you can see some Tesla ICs and a voltage regulator:
image

--

#android 4.2.2 and RSA encryption

i was doing some testing recently with the "Android Debug Bridge" ADB, but the device was refusing APK upload. it appears that the recent JB 4.2.2 has a security update:
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2013/02/security-enhancements-in-jelly-bean.html

which means that you will need to update your Android SDK and copy / use the adb.exe (and all dependencies from "/platform-tools"), which should be version >= 1.0.31 as of this point.

--

#bulls and cows: open source game in ANSI C

here is an open source "bulls and cows" game written in ANSI C:
download

pre-compiled win32 executable included.

i wrote that after a simple challenge proposed by some of my friends, and now apparently they even play it from time to time.

if you are a C programmer, try guessing out why the 0xDA special case happens and how volatile it is.
--

#starling framework video tutorials

here are a nice set of video tutorials by +Hemanth Sharma to get you started with the starling framework:
http://youtu.be/RTvhZ8wbJaQ

if you don't use proprietary software like "flex builder", mind that you can set everything on the command line using the flex tools "mxmlc", "adl", "adb". i'm sure there are examples on how to do that online. flex is open source as is now maintained by the "apache software foundation".

--

#CFG2 - an INI-like parser

i wrote a simple INI-like parser some time ago called CFG2.
it's released in the "public domain" with source code at http://github.com/neolit123/cfg2.

--

#clipboard managers

i've been using ClipX on windows for quite some time, but it seems the latest version (which haven't been updated for quite some time) has some bugs, or perhaps it's windows 7 with something installed or used at the moment.

from time to time it did not catch all the "ctrl + c" events from text editors, so a couple of months ago i've moved to Ditto, which has much more features, yet at the same time can remain quite simple when in action. it can store a very large number of entries in a database that can be cleared any time and is still quite responsive when retrieving something (perhaps slightly slower that ClipX).

on the linux side of things, the only one i've tried is parcellite, which apparently to a majority of users is the best one out there.

perhaps future OS's will have native implementations of clipboard (history) managers pre-bundled.
--

#windows 8 micro rant

i haven't seen or tried it yet, but i've seen some posts that people do not like the windows 8 new looks and mobile-like utilities. this new version seems like windows 7 with some mobile + touch screen extras, people say. what i'm sure however is that some of that can be disabled. here is an example for disabling the metro-ui:
http://techmell.com/how-to/disable-metro-ui-windows-8/

so things like metro-ui should not be the only reason not to get a certain peace of software, because there may be an option to disabled such. perhaps the price itself can be a reason - which is around 30euros.

i cannot say more about the OS itself as i haven't read something drastically negative yet...
if you a are a windows "fan" and simply don't like the number 8, stick to 7.
but if you are concerned about the price or anything else certainly try linux instead

--

#RIP Nilz

i'm almost one year late, but RIP Nilz.

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Nilesh+Patel?anv=Nilesh+'Nilz'+Patel
"He was a highly-regarded mastering engineer at The Exchange, London."

you have probably heard music mastered by him!

--

#Sound Toy presets

last month i've send a couple of presets to  InogoQuilez's online sound generator - Sound Toy.

presets are named "FM1...FMx".

enjoy

--

#nightly builds of subsurface for windows

subsurface is a mulitplatform dive log application that is written mainly by linus torvalds and dirk hohndel.

it's website is at:
http://subsurface.hohndel.org
and with a mailing list at:
http://lists.hohndel.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/subsurface

for quite some time i have the program set up with all the required libraries for building with mingw on windows. i will be uploading regular updates of binary packaging at the following github repository:

http://github.com/neolit123/subsurface_win32

--