School Stuff

Embedded Systems and Real-Time Programming are done and surely passed with a quite high grade I think. Let's see when they are gonna put them in WinhaWille. Statistics and Coding Theory is passed also without any troubles. I think so. Embedded Systems Project continues as well as Advanced Java which I'm still participating but usually not present at as my software is ready since September and just requires proper documentation and presentation. Now we continue Digital Signal Processing by starting Digital Filtering course. Seems quite interesting. At least we have computers in a classroom, not just pen and paper.

Comments Number

I switched from RSS to Atom and modified Magpie's parser source code a little bit as it doesn't actually support many Atom features and link title is one of them. This attribute is just being ignored but this is the place where Blogger Atom feeds have number of comments stored. Three lines of code, and some small modifications to the page code and voilà, number of comments are seen on the page. The date is in different format now incomprehensible for regular humans but it's not a big deal parsing it.

Can It Get Even Worse? Surely It Can!

Today I told my mum that I’m sick of my job and I’m thinking about quitting and turning into a sponger for awhile until a better opportunity will crop up but she told me really bad news. I think this is the worst one I was ever told. Nobody ever died in my family except my great-grandmother when I was seven which I don’t remember that well and my father’s aunt last spring which I wasn’t close to at all. And my mum told me that doctors suspect she has cancer and asked me not to quit this job until I have another one because it’s gonna take hell a lot of money and being a sponger is not an option right now. I was driving home from work and I couldn’t stop tears coming. I started to really fear for her and I still do. She’s gonna know for sure on the 6th of November. I hope everything is gonna be alright with her.

Friday

The rest are in my album at Flickr.

Finnish Advertisement

Click to zoom.

Tuna Junkie

And I still can't quit tuna. For three days I've been eating tuna tortillas which are absolutely amazingly delicious and I will eat them tomorrow. My condition scares me. How to treat tuna addiction? What if I get an overdose and die? I don't wanna be a tuna junkie! Somebody save me!

Easy Geotagging

This week I'm going around Lapland with a truck, GPS-navigator and Seppo picking old car accumulators which we put in special containers and send to Germany for recycling. I've been going around, watching landscapes, maps on GPS-navigator and thinking a lot cause it's the only useful to do while going from one place to another as it takes most of the time. I was thinking it would be nice to have a camera with me as there's really something to take pictures of. It might be boring but still picturesque. Omg, I know such a word! And I was thinking about geotagging, placing the pictures on map where they've been taken, particularly about that on on Flickr. And I was thinking that using a GPS-navigator I can put them on a map quite precisely. And suddenly a wonderful idea came to me!

Alex has a camera with Wi-Fi which is quite useless. He never uses Wi-Fi. Why not to make a camera with GPS? I would surely use it. It could store coordinates in EXIF and services like Flickr could place the photos on a map automatically. Travelers would love it. I guess. At least I would love it for sure. Make the community love the product or create a community around it and it will be successful. You can easily keep track of places you've visited and remember what you've seen there.

I shared the idea with Ruxi. She needs something for Business Enterprise Project. I hope when she's gonna go to Hawaii she's gonna take me with her.

Somebody To Blame

It didn't actually quite work out. Instead of feeling cozy and safe in a caterpillar's cocoon I had some kind of claustrophobic attack and just couldn't breath. It's all YOUR fault!

I'm Being Avoided

One just doesn't answer. The other just went to sleep as soon as I said "hi". Fuck it. I don't care. I'll wrap myself into a warm blanket tight enough to feel myself a caterpillar turning into a butterfly and dissolve in my own little caterpillar world where the only thing I care is about is how wonderful will I be when I'll be free the next morning being a butterfly.

Orbital

— Mum, I wanna pierce my nipples.
— Go on, do it.

It was last May in Thailand where we went together. I was quite surprised to get such an answer cause she was totally disapproving my both ears being pierced though last summer when I was visiting my home town she wasn't complaining that much. I had the idea to pierce my nipples for awhile until I saw an orbital ear piercing and completely fallen in love with it from the first sight. Now I want this one.

I Want

I want to blog about something significant but my head is thoughtless and empty. I want my heart to burst with feelings but it's just beating in a regular rhythm. I want my belly to disappear but I can't quit eating. I want to cycle more but I can't quit driving a car. I want to draw but I just can't. I want so much but I can't so much. My life is sad.

28 Hour Day

Could be the perfect one for me.


http://xkcd.com/320/

Ballmer Peak

If I come from a night club and start programming it means I'm on the Ballmer Peak. =)

http://xkcd.com/323/

Pidgin-Audacious

This is how it looks like.


Don't get confused by Winamp skin. It is Audacious.

Less Dirty Using Dbus

Unfortunately, Audacious doesn't support dbus yet which will be supported in the upcoming 1.4. That's why audtool has to be used.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import dbus
import time
import commands

try:
   purpleObject = dbus.SessionBus().get_object("im.pidgin.purple.PurpleService", \
   "/im/pidgin/purple/PurpleObject")
   purple = dbus.Interface(purpleObject, \
   "im.pidgin.purple.PurpleInterface")
except dbus.exceptions.DBusException:
   print "Unable to connect to Pidgin! Make sure it is running."
   exit(1)

class Track:
   __message = ""
   def setMessage(self, message):
         currentStatus = purple.PurpleSavedstatusGetCurrent()
         currentStatusType = purple.PurpleSavedstatusGetType(currentStatus)
         currentStatusId = purple.PurplePrimitiveGetIdFromType(currentStatusType)
         accounts = purple.PurpleAccountsGetAllActive()
         saved = purple.PurpleSavedstatusNew("", currentStatusType)
         purple.PurpleSavedstatusSetMessage(saved, message)
         purple.PurpleSavedstatusActivate(saved)

   def update(self):
      if commands.getoutput('audtool playback-status') == 'playing':
         artist = commands.getoutput('audtool current-song-tuple-data performer')
         title = commands.getoutput('audtool current-song-tuple-data track_name')
         message = artist + " - " + title
      else:
         message = ""
      if self.__message != message:
         self.__message = message
         self.setMessage(message)

track = Track()

while True:
   time.sleep(1)
   track.update()

Hail Tuna & Pidgin

Yes, tuna! My tuna posts made Ruxi buy tuna which she hates and eat it. Tuna helps me to influence people.

Btw, do you know a way to put track title from Audacious to Pidgin status message? I do! Quick and dirty but works for me.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os
import time
import commands

def update():
   status = commands.getoutput('audtool playback-status')
   if status == 'playing':
      artist = commands.getoutput('audtool current-song-tuple-data performer')
      title = commands.getoutput('audtool current-song-tuple-data track_name')
      os.system('purple-remote "setstatus?status=available&message=' \
      + artist + ' - ' + title + '"')
   else:
      os.system('purple-remote "setstatus?status=available&message="')

while True:
   time.sleep(5)
   update()

Tuna Again

Omg! I'm turning into a tuna junkie! I'm eating tuna again. There's something really weird going on with me. I have to refill my supplies.

Tuna

This morning I had a terrible craving for tuna. It's so not me. I hardly ever eat in the morning. A cup of coffee and I'm done. I feel too sick for anything else. But this morning after sleeping for only five hours I made two toasts, opened a can of tuna and put its contents on the toasts. And ate them with great pleasure. What's going on with me?

Here It Is

I Did It!

I was too focused on the problem of rising the oscillator frequency and making both serial interface and LCD screen work that I completely forgot that I can just lower the baud rate of the RFID scanner. I did and now it works perfectly fine! Video is coming soon.

Some Complaints

I'm completely stuck with the board I'm working with, microcontroller's internal oscillator, serial interface with RFID scanner connected to it and external memory interface with LCD display. It's either scanner or display because if I make oscillator frequency 1 MHz the serial interface error rate for the baud rate I need is too high and 8 MHz is just the right frequency for the serial interface but LCD is too slow for that and doesn't work at all, even with the wait state enabled. And the problem is that I need them both! And the worst thing is that in response to my questions I was just sent to read the fucking data sheet with my questions remaining unanswered. I hate such method of teaching. I agree that it's good to figure out stuff yourself without getting ready solutions but there should be a certain limit for that. I don't want to give up but I doubt that I'm gonna figure out some solution myself this time.

CarFix

The work they've done is definitely not worth 160€ spent but it was worth to make sure that our car care is the best in the area. So I took the Opel to Keminmaa to CarFix, to our main competitors. They make customers pay through the nose! One hundred sixty euros for washing, polishing and basic inside cleaning! No engine or textile washing included. And they didn't even do what they were supposed to! We do car care starting from 96€ for the basic program which is much more than they did.


So what did I get for 160€? Seats covered with dust and hair. Their vacuum cleaner never touched them. They take additional 70€ for washing the textile but for those 60€ for inside cleaning they could at least vacuum them! Not in CarFix. They didn't open the trunk either which is still covered with dust. Ten minutes worth customer's satisfaction. Not in CarFix. So for 60€ they washed the rugs, vacuumed under them and left some stains on the panels. Is it worth 60€? I don't think so.

The frame under the doors was quite dirty before and became even worse. It was covered with stains and they added quite a thick layer of polishing dust. It's hard not to notice such so they just didn't bother to clean it. All the gaps outside are filled with dust and polishing paste leftovers. They didn't bother to clean them either. Bumpers seems untouched and it's still dirty around the gas tank cover. Too low to bend to wash and polish probably. The windows weren't just left dirty. They were covered with stains after polishing and waxing. They didn't bother to clean even them. Is it worth 100€? I don't think so.