Listening to: Bass Drum & Snare [Roots Remix] (Featuring Patrice) - Lightning Head

Previously I specified a structure like:

Product Name/
	bin/
	bom/
	src/
	tmp/
	usr/
		assembly/
		make/
		use/

After a sleepless night I realised that it should be:

Product Name/
	bin/
		software/
		fabrication/
	bom/
	src/
		software/
		design_files/
	tmp/
	usr/
		assembly/
		make/
		use/

Product Name/bin/software
An optional compilation of embedded device code.

Product Name/bin/fabrication
An optional translation of the design files into CNC code such as G-Code or SBP code. Some CNC type code is more efficient than others - so there is value in being able to distribute ‘binary’ versions of the cutting or disposition instructions.

Product Name/src/software
Source code for embedded devices.

Product Name/src/design_files
The design files for the product.

This is to account for products that have a software component. Imagine you were specifying an Arduino powered device such as this ‘game boy‘.

Listening to: Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic - The Police

Well bugger me… if it doesn’t rain it pours. After singing the praises of my little MacBook I got home and the thing was as dead as a door nail. It’s a $1600+ type problem to get fixed (a new machine is about $1700). So after some cursing and swearing yesterday I am back running my Mac world from an external hard-drive. Not a long-term thing, but surprisingly effective.

Listening to: Basement Home - Jesse Malin

Toyota announced their PT device the Winglet. It is, apparently, the love child of their usual fare and the recent acquisition of the Sony Robotics division (all praise what ever deity that enabled that match to occur - I was gutted to see Sony axe that group and I am glad that it went to such a good home). Anyways, for your viewing pleasure:

And then this video sums up my thoughts:

Listening to: Paradise - Icehouse

From BBC World:

Security expert Bruce Schneier said: “As bad as the damage is from publishing - and there probably will be some - the damage is much, much worse by not disclosing.”

Listening to: A Wonderful Life - Carl Craig

For my own notes: Developing iPhone applications using Ruby on Rails and Eclipse

Listening to: Don’t You - Simple Minds

After getting my bash-scripting-fu on I was able to load my own content on the display:

Image Load Test 2
Originally uploaded by flash5.

Eventually I am going to have to recompile the OS of this puppy (it won’t do a DNS lookup for instance - let alone not having Perl or Python on board)… but I am going to try and put it off for as long as possible.

Listening to: Not Enough Love In The World - Don Henley

They sold out the first shipment of iPhones… seems they got their pricing bang on. Well played.

Listening to: No Names (Black Debbie) - Dangerdoom

I was going to give up being an Apple Fanboi. But then I upgraded my iPod Touch to version 2.0 of the OS and installed the iTunes Remote Control. Very cool. Next Lent I guess.

Listening to: Belfast Child - Simple Minds

Ok having nutted out how to talk to my dev board using the USB-serial connection… I then wanted to use the USBNET connection. Again this required some new drivers - but it was basically done by following the instructions outlined here.

The biggest hassle was setting up USB Ethernet on the Mac. You don’t have a comparable ifconfig call to make as you would under Linux. You need to install the USB drivers (additionally this if you’re running 10.5.x), wait for OSX to do it’s stuff and then set up the network connection in the ‘Network’ prefs panel. Once you’ve done that you can execute the relevant ifconfig call via the serial connection and then ssh using the OSX terminal.

Listening to: How We Operate - Gomez

I have started playing with the e-ink dev kit (it uses a Gumstix as the controller). The first problem was talking to the dev board using the usb-serial connection and OSX. I got it working ok last night using my XP virtual machine. This morning I got it up and running using OSX. The key steps:

1. Install the USB drivers for the serial port.
   I needed to install the FT232R drivers - which you can find here.
   You will need to reboot your Mac and then when you plug the USB into your machine you will be treated to a new tty under /dev (in my case /dev/tty.usbserial-A1002bao).
2. Install ZTerm
   I couldn’t get an intelligible connection using ’screen’. ZTerm allows you to set up the serial connection correctly.