11.26.06
More project Ideas
More project Ideas:
Z-10: Like X-10 but with zigbee rather than mains.
Home Diagnostic System?
Neural Network Speech recognition
11.12.06
Fixed the SWLPT-54125 Pause doesnt connect Problem
Fixed the wireless card problem with the SWLPT-54125. When it installed, it wouldnt connect even though the network was there, it would “flash” the name of the network, go mad and show nothing again. In the mean time the processor went to 100% and paused all other processes for a split second. It was more than annoying. To get rid of it, I had to either disable the card or remove it completly.
It came to the time when the tech support where no longer responding because they didnt have a clue either, so I just tried it one last time. Removed the card, uninstalled the software, rebooted, installed the software, clicked restart, and before it did restart, put the card back in. Install the card automatically and boom. It worked.
I think it might have had something to do with a possible dodgy PCI slot. It felt like it wiggled about a bit too much in there. But hey, what do I care, its working and I dont have to connect to my partners laptop anymore.
Project Ideas
Im just putting some of the project ides up here for future reference, so I dont forget (I do that a lot).
- EBook Library Management
- Active Filter designer Software
- Layered (coded) data storage
- Simple BCI (Body-Computer Interface)
- AV Sender (Coding)
- Time Stamp Website
- Time Spend Monitor
- Phased Array Ultrasound
11.09.06
Random Rant of the week: Islam and Do-Gooders
Just read a post here about muslims and I was compelled to post a reply, It went on for so long, I thought I might as well post it here too!
Damn thats a good article, It just caught my eye and im glad I read it. I fully agree with what Ziauddin is saying but when taking the danish pictures as an example, I would like to put my perspective accross.
Firstly, I am the first to admit that I do not know anything about Islam! Now this is not because I was/am ignorant, this is because I was brought up in a small east yorkshire town that didnt have 1 muslim living there.
Secondly, the expression “deliberate misconstruction of Islam” is greatly overemphisised. This article was presumably written as a more elequent version of protest to the danish cartoons. Since his (I say his, but for all I know, she could be a woman) argument was not to stereotype all muslims into a catagory where they hate everyone else, the above statement is essentially hypocritical. You ask why?
Well from my point of view (and I know that the cartoons where not directed at me) the cartoons are exactly what they are. CARTOONS!
He thinks this is a form of racism, and yes there definatly are people that are obviously wrong and downright discusting about racism, but this is most definatly not!
Its just someone having a laugh!!
For example, take a look at some recent british sarcastic comedy on TV. Pretty much all the comedy is based upon someone taking the mick out of someone else, be it against chavs, alcoholics, M.P’s jews, christians, catholics or yes, dare I say it, MUSLIMS!!
If a black american took the mick out of white people because they cant dance as well as we can, I wouldnt get offended, but, and heres the thing,
if someone wrote and I quote:
“Massacre those who malign the Prophet” or “Butcher those who mock Islam”
Then I WOULD and DO take offence.
The exact same argument sprung up between catholics and the Monty Python staff about 30 years ago. If you have seen any Monty python, you will understand. All that happened then was a few priests and ministors took to TV chat shows, and had a good old fasioned debate. The came to the conlusion that they where having a laugh!
These days, catholocism is still here and the Monty Pythons Life of Brian, (yes they really are saying that jesus was a coincinental fluke) is a classic!
Now, bear with me here, imagine that you are like me, like any other “normal” (debatable :D) white, christian/catholic/atheist living in a small market town with hills and cows and some cool new invention called the internet, and you first see a CARTOON (i stress the word cartoon) and then see
“Butcher those who mock Islam”
Which one appears to be more offensive?
So all these people living in this market town will now have some small irreprible predjudice that ALL muslims think this, not because they are angry, bad, rascist people, but because that is all they see.
To take another example, which is the other way round, was the world cup flag scandle. Thanks to a few muslim do-gooders, it got all over the news that all muslims where offended by putting british flags on their cars!! Do you know what I said when I heard that? “You have got to be kidding” because its natural and a lot of people leave it at that adding yet another prejudice, then I realised, pretty much all these muslim fella’s ARE british, and theyve probably got a flag in their bathroom saying “GO ENGLAND” (even though we know that they will undoubtedly loose :D)
Unfortunatly, we live in a world where bad news makes good news. You will never see a young muslim lad helping a white granny accross the street in the same way that you will never see a white lad helping a muslim granny.
So we have to confide in the fact that in the middle of all these not very nice people (I had to delete a swearword) there are a lot, and I mean a lot of normal, nice people and unfortunatly there are going to be people that go way over the top with their anti-offence morals (we call them do-gooders), so just chill, take a step back and concider all the good people that you have met and stop worrying, because at the end of the day, its not worth it.
SCUM wil always be SCUM, you can bleach it, but it will always come back.
Oh and by the way, just for the record I have no affiliation to any religion whatsoever. Muslim, hindi, christian? Whatever floats your boat.
Cheers,
Phil Winder
XP Installation Problems
Had a problem when reinstalling windows, it would BSOD at 34 minutes. I fixed it by pressing Shift+F-10 during install and making a copy of setupapi.log in the windows folder. It described that the last thing to install was some ati inf file, so i deleted the incriminating file (atiixpag.inf inside the windows\inf\ folder) and shazam, worked like a dream.
Start of the ZBot
Basically want to create a cluster of robots using a mesh’ed ad-hoc network. This will be done using zigbee, but the problem is that I havent created any robots before so I will have to go through the motions before I get to the zigbee part.
So far I have created a primitive IR proximit sensor with some 10F PIC’s. I have a few problems with the PIC’s themselves, for example: If you connect the pic back up to the ICD2 before turning off the main power, the PIC will burn itself out. Secondly, I had a load of problems with trying to program the damn thing, I think it was due to inproper driver installation. (Make sure you preinstall the drivers for the ICD2 FIRST!!)
Next I am going to start on the actual motor control using some schematic I found on the net.
