the aj blog

The traffic on theajblog.com and aj-software.net since January 1. The spike is the result of being featured on hackszine.com.

What?

You heard me right. Due to time constraints, just to name one of many factors, I have decided that it is in the best interest of my own health to discontinue the frequent use of my blog. I may still blog occasionally, but not anywhere near the every-other-day it has been. To my understanding, there are currently 13 readers who have subscribed to my RSS feedburner feed. To them, I say this: thank you. Thank you for taking part of your valuable time to read what I have to say and my opinion in this world.  Thank you for listening. Each and every one of those 13, you encouraged me. Much appreciated. And to the 1.2 thousand visitors since the beginning of the year, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I intended.

The Previous Saga

So, there’s a story behind everything that’s happened so far. Almost three months ago, I began to read the book How to Make Money With Your Blog (ISBN 0071508570). One of the most critical factors there, along with getting good links in, was to blog frequently. I decided to do an experiment, and post every other day, monitoring visitors with Google Analytics. Extremely little change for about a month. One day, of course in the shower, I imagined a relatively wonderful idea for watermarking. So, I wrote about it, and then, I submitted it to hackszine.com. They were very nice. I was up there, and got almost 500 people to click through to my blog from the example provided. The sad part, however, is that that resulted in very little. As my page fell further and further down into the archives, so did my traffic. Right now it hovers around 30 peeps/day. Worst of all, I have made not a single cent off anything on this blog. Sure, someone clicked an ad, but it never accumulated to the minimum $100 payout. In the last week, my mind has been very stressed on ideas. I’m actually planning to work on a rather large other website project, hosted somewhere secretive right now.

The Future

I may blog occasionally. But for me, money from my blog is impossible. It’s no longer fun, and I spend important time writing for this when I could be doing other things. This new project is huge. It will eat my life. I’ll do it, but I can’t do it and this simultaneously. It’s like rubbing your stomach, patting your head, and playing a piano. At once.

Sorry, 13 readers. Sorry 1.2 thousand visitors. Sorry friends.

It was nice while it lasted.

An image released days before the game, hinting at it. Copyright Zach Barth, used without any known permission.

Who’s Zach Barth?

Zach Barth is the creator of zachtronicsindustries.com. He was most widely known when hackaday.com published a quick article about his awesome reverse engineering game, Ruckingenur II. That was also when I discovered his site. Unfortunately, I managed to defeat the game in less than a day. But it was still cool, and I also loved the music. So, I decided to scan his page with an RSS reader and wait until something new came. After that, he introduced the Ruckingenur Challenge. The Ruckingenur Challenge was a competition to design and code a level for a new Ruckingenur game. I did so, which’ll remain a mystery until it’s published in a complete form by Zach himself. It involved the infamous OMISSAT, which is (partly) based on a real hack.

Russian? WHY?

Well, I don’t actually know why the title’s in Russian. Everything else is English. It’s about creating chips, like those inside your computer. No potatoes. Although they’re good too. You get a goal of a signal to reproduce, and make little transistors on the grid to work with and manipulate the stuff. It’s so cool. Best of all, it’s flash, unlike Ruckingenur which was written in .NET limiting it to Windows. Great stuff so far!

An Ubuntu console, with an ICMPTX client running.

ICMPTX?

ICMPTX is a mostly linux software project to permit tunneling IP packets across ICMP pings. Why do this? To bypass restrictions. Ever go to a seemingly free hotspot, only to open your browser and discover the hotspot owner’s site, rather than your target? You can get around this if, like almost all hotspots, pings are permitted. Your computer, with the help of the software, will redirect all your internet traffic through the ping port in the form of a ping, and the server at the other end will return everything you requested. The biggest problem in my case with this was my OS and a server. One of my nicer, shared hosting plans had some decent control, but of course, I couldn’t superuser it. That doesn’t work. So, I had to go to a home-hosted server concept. I would simply install Ubuntu or something onto an old box, get ICMPTX going, maybe some router tweaks, but it would be simple. Wrong! Ubuntu on its own took me well over an hour to get going. Then, I still haven’t been able to properly configure the tunnel. I think there may be some issues further down the pipe, along with my own already. So, there I was, spending hours on hours trying to get a really cool thing working when I probably should’ve been studying for a test. Oh well! Trial and error.

Skype, as seen in a gloomy room. Classifiable as "blah photography."

Skype - Awesomeness

Skype has existed for quite a while. So this is truly nothing new to majority of the world. However, I’m really actually sometimes skeptical about technology, and had refused to bow down to it. Then, one day, I had to collaborate with a friend who also used Skype. That was when it all started. They really got me with that free phone call. Of course, I called my house, and that really stunned me. Mostly it the fact that I had pressed a button on my computer and managed to cause all the phones around me to start to ring. I tried it again, and it replied to say that I needed to buy “skype credit.” Buy? Nope. And that was the way it stayed for a few months. I used it here and there, nothing big. Not enough to buy anything. One day, out of curiosity, I checked out the pricing. Again, I was stunned. Only ~$2.50/month for unlimited US/Canada (real phones)! I jumped onto the Skype bandwagon from there onward. Purchasing a subscription, I then called my house again. And again. And again. It worked, and cost nothing beyond the monthly fee. It worked! The only downside was that finding a local area code was nearly impossible for an Online Number. Even finding one in my state was hard! And, getting a number is like buying another subscription, after the discount, money-wise. So, I didn’t. But now, my skype forwards to my cell, and I am very happy. (Hopefully not) the end!

An application I created to control a USB7 from a computer's serial port.

The USB7

Quite a while ago, I discovered the USB7. It wasn’t until recently I actually thought I would have a use for it if I were to buy it. I was working on a website project due at midnight on a particular day. I was thinking how awesome it would be if I could have a bunch of LED 7-segment displays counting down the days, then hours, then minutes, then seconds, and finally hundredths of seconds. That was when I remembered it, the USB7. The USB7 is a relatively inexpensive, usb-controlled kit with six 7-segment displays. I haven’t seen many popular projects for it, though, so what does one do when there’s a need for something but it doesn’t exist? You make it! I bought a kit online, so it’ll arrive sometime later.

The Programming

Turning to Visual Studio Express 2008 and my brain’s Visual Basic abilities, I created this super-simple application that continually updates the display with the time remaining, fitting as much data as possible. For example, it can show up to 99 days, 24 hours, and 60 minutes when there’s more than 24 hours left. When there’s less than that, but still more than an hour, it’ll display a 2-digit hour code, a 2-digit minute number, and a 2-digit second number. Once you’re down to minutes, it shows minutes, seconds, and hundredths of seconds. Down to seconds, it’ll drop the minutes. Finally, once the timer’s up, it plays a crazy alarm sound and flashes constant zeroes all across the display. Now just to wait until it arrives!

Visual Studio is a non-free environment for the Visual language series.

It’s Good to Know

I had no idea about the differences between languages when I started to program. At first I learned HTML, then I went to Visual Basic. That was the mistake. Visual Basic is only available on Windows. After that, I seemed to want to continue to step down to lower and lower-level languages until I got to the base of it all. I’ve nearly succeeded, and went to C++, tried some Assembly, then turned to chip languages. I’m so far at Arduino/Wiring and some C. So, I want to give a ultra-quick comparison between common programming languages.

Visual Basic

Based off of original BASIC, Visual Basic is Microsoft’s .NET version. Compiled programs will only run on Windows or emulating environments, such as WINE. It’s a very simple yet powerful tool that can produce very nice GUIs.

Java

Cross-platform, Java is slightly slower, requires a JRE on target machines, is harder than most to learn, and requires skill to produce neat GUIs.

C++

Pure C++ has no built-in UI functions. Usually, OpenGL and other libraries are used. Very powerful, unmanaged code requires you clean up your memory mess or else the used RAM is not usable until reboot.

Python

Another powerful scripting language. Very popular, simple.

Lua

This is a very minimalistic language. I’ve only seen it used in odd little places like World of Warcraft addons and game scripting interfaces. In both cases, special functions are introduced to do other things in different languages. Lua interpreters can be integrated in many places where simple scripting is required.

Processing

Processing is very commonly used to create mathematical art, due to the easily accessible drawing functions. It is also used for interfacing to serial port devices and graphing or manipulating the data they send back.

Synopsis

From a job perspective, you should learn what the market seems to need at that particular time. For hobby things, use whatever you can do and think you’d like. You can almost always learn something different later!

A common household drawer module combined with a label maker makes for a very organized parts system.

Organization is crucial in almost every aspect of life. One of these aspects, as a tinkerer, is being able to find parts easily. I must admit that my floor where I work on projects is littered with failed, partial, or abandoned experiments. For example, one of the things I lie among is a pencil sharpener with four wires coming out to an ominous control box. I often lose parts, only to find them months after the intended project is over. So, I turned to a drawer thingy like in the photo, and just labeled all the drawers accordingly. I have everything from “scavenged little things”, “screws”, and “alchohol swabs” to “chips”, “relays”, and “piezos”. Unless the drawers get really full, they all pull out easily and I can see what’s inside before that even. I want an LED for my Arduino, I pop open the top left drawer and fish around for a good one. Being my geeky self, I get a similar happiness as if each LED was a candy and I was a kid with some spare change to spend. This system has paid its self off in the time saved not looking everywhere and digging everything up in a search.

The Weller Portasol is a piezo-ignition, butane powered, portable soldering iron.

Why Butane?

The main choice of a butane soldering iron over a standard electric one would probably be somehow related to portability. A bottle/internal container of butane is portable, your house’s electrical system is not. I also noticed it has a much greater range of heat than my ~$20 Radioshack model, and they’re almost the same price. The butane iron claims it can go “from 25 watts to 75 watts!” which is adjusted with a discrete knob controlling the amount of butane that flows. It can get very hot. The ignition system is piezo based, much like a spark plug in my opinion.

Exhaust

The “exhaust” from this thing is also very hot. The combustion is very complete, with very little smoke from the butane its self. What I mean is the very hot stream of air that comes out of the side of the tip. You truly need to be careful with it, when I was working on the hacked amplifier, I burnt and deformed the plastic case with it. Then, intentionally, I used the heat on part of Project SteaDIY to melt a skate bearing into some PVC (coming soon). It hurts. It will char paper.

Summary

This is great if you’re travelling (although not permitted on air), and is very easily refillable with a standard butane lighter refill. It heats up to temperature in about 10 seconds, and I sometimes even just use it for convenience when I could have access to a corded iron. Just plain awesome, and about $30 after discounts on Amazon.

My pizza box laptop case with vacuum formed shell.

Not My Idea

This has been commercially done and covered. I merely made my own DIY version. Please don’t sue me. Glad that’s over.

Why?

Very few thieves are willing to break into a car to steal a pizza. But who knows whether there’s actually pizza in that box? Who knows it isn’t a laptop, say? The answer is, “if done right, there is no way to tell.” I often take trips to NYC with my laptop, and as with any big city, I have to hide it. Beneath a seat, coat, blanket, anything. I will no longer have said problem! This very quick design would look a lot nicer with some paint, but I’m worried about dissolving the awesome urethane foam I used.

Authentic Pizza Box

To increase realism, and the chances it will be accepted as nothing more than pizza, I went to a local pizza shop. I asked the guy for two slices of pizza, and a separate box for a project, to which he happily obliged.

Vaccum Formed Shell

To make my laptop fit perfectly, I turned to vacuum forming. Unwilling to spend mucho money on a professional former, I settled for a “kitchen floor” version, as can be found in MAKE. It’s called “kitchen floor” as you basically are stuck there, using the oven as a heat source. My first attempt catastrophically failed, sticking to the oven rack. Messy. The second try, I successfully got it out in time, then right on top of my laptop. Vacuum on. Wait 10 seconds. Done. As a precaution I had put greased foil on top of any stickers just to be safe. I trimmed this mold down until it fit the box in the way I wanted. I also drilled out a hole so I can discretely put a power jack in and charge without giving anything away. This got affixed to the box where I wanted it with lots and lots of Great Stuff (expanding sticky urethane spray foam).

Cord Portholes

To permit simple and secretive cords to leave the box, I cut a few three-sided rectangles out of the bottom (basically leaving them hinged). I extended the already existent ventilation slots for the same purpose.

Padding

I looked around for the quickest soft thing I had. It was a strange pile fuzzy fabric, an unattractive greenish. Almost half a bottle of contact cement later, bottom of box lid and fuzz were one. This pads the laptop in case the strap is not used or fails. It also probably makes it hotter (not good).

Strap

Reuse is the first of the 3 R’s. I had a laptop bag that after years of service was covered in holes. It had a nice laptop strap. Best of all, it was free. A seam ripper made short work of the binding stitches, and the strap was free. I dug two little holes in the foam where I wanted to mount the strap and squirted some Gorilla Glue in. Put the strap in, duct tape temporarily in place, and more foam. I don’t know whether it was the glue or the foam which holds it in, but it’s stuck in there for good.

Conclusion

On the inside, it looks like junk. It’s screaming for black paint. Regardless, it actually ended up costing me nothing, having all the materials on hand. There is room in back of the laptop for any other small gadgets and a modern power brick. Finally, the real goal has been achieved, to build a case which no one will want to steal while containing something they would.

A vaccum forming disaster, now considered "art" and hanging from my bedroom ceiling.

The new foam waterbottle handle combined with a skate bearing and bolted to the plate.

The Handle

On the weekend, I made a much easier to hold handle out of one of the most commonly found household items: a water bottle. Combine (more specifically, inject) that with the slightly less common Great Stuff expanding foam and you’ve got a handle. The foam is very light, extremely sticky, expands, and makes the handle firm without adding much weight. Originally intended for sealing gaps, it’s wonderful for many other projects where a carvable, lightweight plastic foam is needed. Since it’s sticky, you can also use it for a kind of flexible glue at the same time. Best of all, one can runs at only about $5.

Skate Bearing Stabilization

After being inspired by both the concept, content, and music of this awesome YouTube video, I went out and bought a box of skate bearings from a specialty skateboard shop in town. I got 8 “precision, high quality, china-manufactured to our specifications, ultra-performance” skate bearings for $16. Not bad considering ordering just one online at $.60 each would incur $10 shipping. I went about looking for something the bearing would fit into, which is when I noticed it nearly fit the water bottle. But it didn’t. What do you do when something doesn’t fit? Make it fit. A couple seconds with a lighter warped the plastic enough to jam the bearing in, already attached to a bolt. In this configuration, the bearing now provides rotational stability. What it needs now is the gimbal configuration to give it full three dimensional (rotation, x, and y) stability. Also from the same video I learned one method was to use Traxxas replacement part #1951. Off to Google I go. A quick Shopping search for “traxxas 1951″ proved it to be around $5. Five seems to be rather magical today. Then I got obsessive, comparing retailers not against product price but against total price after tax/shipping. I settled with A Main Hobbies, saving a buck or two and wasting 10 minutes. Based in California, it’ll probably arrive by Friday. How is a modal car part going to solve anything? There are two plastic and two aluminum shafts (I think) that come in the package, along with four “metal universal joints”. The joints look almost like jacks. Pop one into the two holes on the shaft, and connect it to another shaft. Then, they’ll turn on both x and y axis. Gimbal! Hack into submission and enjoy!