Stocktake preparation. Joy. It warms to think about the possiblilities surrounding the loss of a set top box from in the back storeroom. Not. I'm just going to dissapear the person that took it when I catch them, no red tape, no bullshitting around. I'm getting tired of getting slapped for losing shit from my storeroom.

Probably, since it is a storeroom, something with that theme. Maybe just stuff them in a cardboard box and tape it shut for a while. That'd scare them.

FOUL MOOD. 

Australia Day. Burning the flag should be a SHOOT ON SITE offence, 'nuff said.

I am getting impatient waiting for my PIC programmer kit, so I started digging around on the net and found an easy to build PIC programmer. It's sitting there ready to go now, just waiting for the PIC-C Compiler to download. I found some software called PonyProg2000 for programming them that seems to be compatible. I have read the chip now (empty) without error, so we will see what happens.

I made the hardware part of it on a breadboard. I also cut up an old serial cable and made a "break out" cable to some header pins to plug straight into the bread board.

Hi-Tech PIC-C and HI-TIDE are taking ages to install... It was a 40 meg download to start with, that's OK.

8:53 PM: 

I've been mucking around for most of the day with the PICs I bought. I got impatient and made the programmer as above. So at the moment I code in PIC C using HiTIDE, Dump the C-File into Microchip's MPLAB which gives me my Assembler code (.ASM) and a compiled HEX file. Then, Using PonyProg2000 I load the HEX file onto the chip. Voila. Of course, if I had *paid* for a propper version all the steps would occur in the one suite of software. But, as I wanted it NOW and well, not like I'm going to buy $300 worth of software to "Experiment With"... I used 3 product trials...

CRW_1652	Programmer
LED Chaser	Serial "Breakout"

I did some work on the drive train and steering rack.

Arm1	ujoint
topdrive	InnerBearingFrontShaft

frontdrive

Mmmmmmmmmmm Bacon and Eggs. Cooked bacon, eggs and toast all on the BBQ thismorning. Yummy.

You have raised at cooking (124) *shakes head* too much WoW now I am thinking in WoW terms all the time =) I need to buy another stack of eggs, two stacks of bacon. Um... punnet of eggs and 500g of bacon. Bugger. Did it again.

Well, off to buy more bubby stuff and shopping today.

On friday I bought some of these from David Reid (Altronics Reseller) for a sweet price. I can't wait to try them out. I also bought a few RGB (Red, Green and Blue) LEDs - it's an LED with 4 legs that contains Red, Green and Blue LED elements inside. I also can't wait to try them, however, I think I left them at work.

6:30 PM:

I started experimenting with my 433MHz RX and TX modules. I will have to rig something to do it at range soon! I have set up an experiment to test the units sending a ~1 kHz 2v square wave through it. It works! It will work at up to 2800 baud. See photos:

RX	TX
Setup	Traces

More Photos 

As you can see, it works. The bottom trace is the 1kHz 2v DC square wave for calibration. I haven't built a function generator yet. It's been running stable now for about half an hour at 4.0vDC. As shown in my image of the big power supply, the analogue meter is out on it. The CRO also says that it's out indicating 4.0V (4 vertical boxes from the centre line at 1V/div) =) 

Edit: Measured the CRO output it was 1.012kHz, ummm, close enough

Ah, the weekend at last!

Playing World of Warcraft at the moment. Jumped out for 10 min just then and now there's a queue of 400 odd. 20 min to get back in. Khaz'Goroth is the server I play on. I have a level 15 Rogue who is a cook, skinner, fisherman and herbalist. Mainly a harvester than a manufacturer type character, I collect herbs and stuff for my Guild and they give me stuff to use or assistance with quests in return. Sweet deal really. I just learned a whole heap of recipies and got my cooking up to 120 since I had nearly 100 of a reagent that was needed for this one recipe because I had been grinding fishing up past 100 too, lots of fish to cook! I cooked all of them and some other harder ones and now my skill is nearly 120. Sweet. I can now cook all sorts of weird dishes. I think the coolest (not by stats) is Westfall stew which contains Stringy Vulture Meat, A Murloc Eye, A Gore Tusk Snout and some Okra (herb). The next two that I want to do is "Gooey Spider Cake" and "Blood Sausages" =)

The last few times I've been on I haven't leveled far or made much XP, I have been concentrating on trade skills. That way I can make some cash! Buy some descent daggers!.

Hrm, still 15 mins and 220 people in the queue. Goody. What else can I write about?

When I *finally* do get on, I am off to Westfall to see a fisherman about a recipe =P He sells a recipe for cooking slimey mackerel, I don't know how to cook them yet...

More baby stuff to buy tomorrow. Prams and cots, other goodies and their various accessories - Bubby has to be fassionable and modern now doesn't it! This Bub has more sets of clothes than Kel and I do combined! We have got clothes from everyone! It's terrific.

I bought some Carlton Black yesterday to try it, it tastes great, almost as good as OLD but not as bitey or bubbly (unfortunately... bite == good, bubbly == not so hot). Ah well, they tried, they really can't compare to OLD, but they were close! I'll deal with the extra bubbliness! I'm going to finish off this six pack over the week, it's a nice drop! 

Damn, I haven't blogged for quite a while.

Not much has changed. Major IT crisis averted. It seems that the Power Supply was at fault, well not at fault yet more like under way too much load... Then, you'd expect that with a P4 2.4 with Three optical drives and four hard drives on a cheap 400W PSU. It chews some power. I also wouldn't expect the PSU to be throwing out a full 400W anyway being a cheapie. The primary master and primary slave drives (Western Digital 80GBJBs) started to give false (I hope) "death 'tinks". Where the head bangs into it's park position. This only started happening when I connected the fourth drive (Seagate ST3200822AS 200GB SATA) which told me the PSU wasn't hacking it. So, with this replacement things seem to be running more smoothly. I really DO NOT want to deal with 560GB of lost data because the PSU was under-powering the drives and causing head crashes.

Ah, work. What a fulfilling enterprise.

I built a second Ubuntu Linux box yesterday. Had trouble initially, installed Ubuntu 5.10 "Breezy Badger" left it over night. Changed my mind and reinstalled with a GUI in the morning, it's burbling away now re-configuring it's packages. It  did the bulk of the install while I was in the shower, I set it running when I got up. So, hopefully, it will be at a stage where I can SSH into it from work before I can leave to finish off the installation. 

W00t, Red Dwarf series VIII (8) will be coming out March 5 in .AU!!!!

There is also a new StrongBad Email out.

Mmmmmmm. Work. Stocktake preparation must be the second most tedious task there is. The most tedious is doing stocktake. It seems Stocktake and it's various tasks are ALL surrounded with a thick dark aura of multiple-hour-long tedium...

Work...

I have started playing World of Warcraft on one of my friends accounts. I made a Human Rogue. I got level 5 in 2h.

WoWScrnShot_010406_224510

I know how he feels!

CTRL+ALT+DEL

It's sooooooooooooooooooooo damn hot!

I added some extra fans to my system because it was too hot. Unfortunately I only had some happy glowey fans, the only ones that had molexes already on them. I really didn't feel like heating the room further soldering. In these images you can see my 150mm CCFL mod to make the front glow green.

CRW_1599	CRW_1602
CRW_1603	CRW_1605

It's now 2006 and it's bloody hot! My computers are cooking themselves! I am reasonably happy with my workstation though. Only +22.2°C above ambient (34.2°C) under load. While I'm editing this text it's dropped down to 49.0°C. The 56.4°C was shot just after jumping out of Counter Strike:Source and starting up Autodesk Inventor 10, both heavy CPU time chewers.

House Temps

Workstation Tem

Server Temp:

The CPU temperature of 25.5°C is definately inaccurate because intel put their thermal diode away from the CPU core, often in one of the corners of the die. It's probably in the order of 35-45°C in reality. The server isn't very loaded, I am happy that the server case is only sitting about 7.8°C above ambient! All those quiet mods and 7v fan mods have paid off with slow quiet airflow. The HDD is cooking though understandably. I should really fit a heatsink to it as it does generate a fair slab of heat and is not in contact (thermally) with the case.

as99127f-i2c-0-2d Adapter: SMBus I801 adapter at e800
M/B Temp: +42°C (high = +105°C, hyst = +0°C)
CPU Temp: +25.5°C (high = +100°C, hyst = +92°C)

hddtemp: /dev/hda: ST340014A: 50°C