- Michigan is better than Ohio, according to yet another study
Duh! - Kevin Spacey Says New ‘House of Cards’ Is Among ‘Best’ Done
…just you wait. Just you wait…
No! I can’t wait!
- Christopher ‘Big Black’ Boykin Dead: ‘Rob & Big’ Star Dies
He was hilarious on the show. It’s been years since I’ve watched anything on MTV, but “Rob & Big” was my favorite. - How to shoot on iPhone 7
Apple created a whole bunch of short videos with quick tips on getting the most out of the iPhone 7 camera. Something for everyone here. - YouTube Audio Library
Need some music for your video? - COBOL Tutorial
I took 2 or 3 COBOL classes in college as part of my Computer Information Systems minor. It seemed like such an old way of doing things even then, 15+ years ago. I can’t believe this is still a thing. - COBOL Is Everywhere. Who Will Maintain It?
Speaking of which.About 95 percent of ATM swipes use COBOL code… and the 58-year-old language even powers 80 percent of in-person transactions.
- Moom removed from sale—hopefully temporarily
Damn, this sucks. I’ve been using Moom for years to restore/reset application positions. Wishing them luck! - Trump thinks that exercising too much uses up the body’s ‘finite’ energy
Doesn’t surprise me at this point. It’s pretty clear he lives in a world that exists only in his mind. Is there anyone alive who disregards facts and science more than this fucking bozo? Yet, somehow he convinced enough people to elect him our President. - AliExpress.com – Online Shopping for Electronics, Fashion, Home & Garden, Toys & Sports, Automobiles from China.
I’d heard of Alibaba, but just have come across AliExpress recently. All of the searches I’ve done on the site have come up with options much cheaper than I’ve seen anywhere else. Since items ship from China, shipping will be slow though. If you’re worried about safety, apparently protecting the consumer is really important to AliExpress, so it is safe to use.
Month: May 2017
Going to Bulgaria
Heading to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, for a team meetup. It’ll beat out Budapest, Hungary as the farthest east I’ve traveled.
There is a 7 hour time difference from the Eastern time zone, so it’ll be interesting to see how jet lag affects me. Since it’s a +1 day trip, I won’t be going to bed (maybe a nap or two on the flight across the pond) until Wednesday night local time. Usually staying up through the travel night and all of the next day helps to reset my internal clock.
Wire Jungle
Phone Keypad Hacking: Part 3
In parts 1 and 2, I walked through my journey of repurposing the keypad out of a phone from 1980. I learned that a more modern keypad matrix doesn’t exactly function (behind the scenes) in a way I’d expect. I wanted to understand it better so I set out to recreate a 2×2 keypad (kept it simple to make wiring easier) that would function the same way as something you can buy today. It would be a success if it worked with the Arduino Keypad Library.
From my earlier looks through the code I knew it pulsed power out to a column pin and then read in each row’s key from that column before switching to the next column and repeating the process. I figured that should be enough for me to wire this up and try example programs without going back to look at the library’s code again.
I don’t know why I was thinking this would be more complicated and at least a little more exciting, but it was unbelievably easy. I guess I should be celebrating I understood how it worked. Literally all you do is connect one side of every button in a column to a pin and one side of every button in a row to a pin. No need for connections to power, or ground. No pull up/down resistors.
It immediately worked with the Arduino Keypad library examples, even the MultiKey one. I guess being able to detect multiple key presses at once is where the advantage to this implementation comes in. It worked flawlessly when pressing 2 of the 4 buttons, but when you get to 3/4 there are too many connections to distinguish the keys.
Just to be sure I had it figured out, I added a 3rd column to make it a 2×3 grid and it was just as easy.
I love the beauty of how simple this is. I’ve added Fritzing for both of these to my phone-keypad GitHub repo (2×2 & 2×3). If you check this PDF, in the How it Works section it has a really good explanation and shows the row and column connections exactly like I came up with.
Naturally now I need to do a part 4 and attempt to recreate the keypad implementation I ended up with from the old phone. Due to how it mechanically makes the electrical connections I think it’s going to be a bit more complicated than this was. We shall see…
Update: Read part 4.
Sandpaper is Dangerous
Screw
I wonder who decided this was necessary.
Muffin Bowl
What is the ideal way to eat a large muffin without creating a huge mess? They are too big and crumble too much to eat like a cupcake.
In a bowl with a fork worked well.
The OA…The End
I’d been limiting myself to no more than one episode of The OA per night, which has allowed me to enjoy each episode more I think. Last night I was watching episode 8 and then all of a sudden, season 1 is over. What the fuck just happened?!
I hadn’t looked at the episode list, but was fully expecting 5 more episodes, which is typical for a lot of Netflix shows. Even towards the end of #8 I didn’t expect the end was coming. So much shit happened in that episode and now I have so many questions.
I’m hoping there was already a good plan for season 2 because the sudden end completely threw me off guard and it feels like a rush job.
9V
Link Dump – 2017/05/09
I’m going to try something different with these link dumps. I’ll write a little about each link. Might be a sentence or it might be a paragraph.
- Dashcam Footage Shows Tesla Autopilot Predicting Surprise Crash
This is incredible. Can’t wait to get a Model 3 next year. - 100 Days of WTF Just Happened Today?
I’ve had to stop my daily reading and following of so many things Trump. It was too consuming. “The disbelief is steady.” - 100 days of Trump claims
The lies continue well into this presidency. His supporters respond, “who cares.” How can you not care? This man is “leading” our country. If you follow him on Twitter, at least once a week it’s like listening to a 5-year-old throw a temper tantrum who didn’t get their way. - Why Adults Can’t Squat Like Babies and Should Stop Trying To
A lot of good data on the differences between babies and adults that contribute to how we squat. - Programming as a Way of Thinking
I’ve been tinkering a lot with Python on Raspberry Pis and Arduino (set of C/C++) on microcontrollers. Working with Arduino reminds me of how confusing it was to learn how to handle things like strings in my college C++ classes. Python code is fun to write, easy to understand, and forgiving in it’s structure. - You’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you
Really good explanation of how our brains try to protect our beliefs, even when provided evidence against those beliefs. It’s a psychological behavior called the backfire effect.…remember that your worldview isn’t a perfect house that was built to last forever.
The mind can’t separate the emotional cortex from the logical one.
- Pi-hole™ 3.0 Is Here Featuring Our New FTL Engine
This is a huge improvement to an already great piece of software. - It looks like Amazon’s Video app is finally coming to Apple TV this summer
I always forget about Prime Video because I have to fire up my Xbox One to access it. If a video service isn’t on Apple TV, it’s pretty much dead to me. - Agree and Commit, Disagree and Commit
Good life lesson here, not just for business. Share your thoughts and debate, but once a decision has been made it’s time to move on. - Why Can’t You Use Your Phone on a Plane?
Like we all thought, it’s bogus reasoning. They have never proven electronics cause an issue.
Nick Momrik 