Craftsman Hambs

Pork Kebab 2 With Proper Skewers

2010-08-23T18:39:00.015-05:00

Same cooking as in "Pork Kebab on Big Green Egg" but using proper skewers which I finally have got from Amazon. Same cooking as in "Pork Kebab on Big Green Egg" but using proper skewers which I finally have got from Amazon. As expected the skewers were a little bit shorter than necessary for a medium size BGEso I straightened out the handles.The skewers came blunt

Motorola i1 Phone - Some Accessories

2010-08-08T21:19:00.019-05:00

I'd like to make a list of some accessories for Motorola i1 phone which I find useful. i1 comes with 2 GB SD card. I decided to replace it with 8 GB:They are available at many shops, I've got mine from Amazon: If necessary i1 can be extended with SD memory card up to 32 GB.Some protection for screen and body does not look superfluous to me. There are many products

Goodbye Palm, Hello Android

2010-08-07T07:35:00.016-05:00

Switching to one device which would have all the features I need on the way was a long time idea. Palm m515, I have, is a good gadget but missing cell phone; no WiFi or BlueTooth connection either. iPhone, been a very good product in general, has too closed policy: installation of third party applications needs a special hack, Development for iPhone requires approve and $99/year fee. So Android

Pork Kebab on Big Green Egg

2010-07-10T18:15:00.050-05:00

Big Green Egg is not a kebab kind oven, but if you like meat on skewers why not. Pork is very easy to deal with in this case. Big Green Egg is not a kebab kind oven, but if you like meat on skewers why not. Pork is very easy to deal with in this case.Cooking is straight forward. For this time I've got 4 pounds of boneless pork rib ends:Wash it and cut into 2 inch cubes:Peel a couple of onions and

Eclipse Verilog / VHDL Editor Plug-in

2010-06-05T12:17:00.014-05:00

veditor is a Verilog and VHDL editor for Eclipse SDE. It is an open source plug-in with very nice set of features. First, some words about other VHDL and Verilog editors. They can be found integrated into FPGA IDE as QuartusII from Altera, for instance, or ISE from Xilinx and no doubts - they are very good. Each has a free version of IDE (Web Edition or WebPack). This is how QuartusII IDE looks

Eclipse IDE - Add Python

2010-05-30T14:46:00.009-05:00

PyDev is a very good and popular Python IDE plug-in for Eclipse SDE. Adding it to Eclipse is straight forward: just follow "Quick Install" in the download page or detailed instructions from Installation section of PyDev manual. I chose the installation via Update Manager:Start Eclipse and set up Python Interpreters in menu Windows/Preferences:by clicking "Auto Config" or "New..." button.For

Eclipse IDE - Starting Up

2010-05-23T11:19:00.023-05:00

Eclipse SDE (Software Development Environment) is a great foundation for different languages IDEs (Integrated Development Environment). Eclipse functionality can be extended with plug-ins and there are plenty of them available for different purposes. Many of plug-ings are free of charge, some other are under commercial licensing. My personal interests lie in the field of programming with C/C++

Free Screen Recorders for Windows

2010-05-09T14:26:00.039-05:00

If picture is worth a thousand words then video might be worth a million… In many cases, for instance, in order to explain how to use a program, it's easier and faster to make a video record than describe that step by step. This is the short list of screen recorders I found useful.CamStudio from http://camstudio.org is a simple in use program, open source, comes with efficient lossless codec, can

Weider Adjustable Dumbbells SpaceSaver 100

2010-04-22T20:23:00.014-05:00

After some research I decided to get a set of adjustable dumbbells from Weider. Weight of each dumbbell can be selected in range from 10 to 50 lbs by 2.5 lbs step, the set comes with a convenient stand, customer reviews are very positive, price is reasonable - practically all I need from dumbbells is there. My expectations about it were pretty much satisfied: hand grip is convenient; all

Mepis 8.5: ATI Driver on Dell Inspiron 4000 Laptop

2010-04-17T18:32:00.012-05:00

I had a regular hang up problem with Mepis 8.0 on my old Dell laptop, so when the next version 8.5 got released I gave it a try. Installation went through smoothly and the previous hang up problem seemed to be resolved. The only inconvenience with the new Mepis was that the display GUI option to install an ATI driver was stripped out.Mepis has a web-page describing how to Install ATI driver.

Dust Particles Inside LCD Screen - How To Fix

2010-04-04T10:07:00.017-05:00

After moving my LCD monitor to a new place and turning it on I noticed some dark dots located closer to the lower edge of the screen. Because of the dot sizes and their sharpness my first thought was that they were dead pixels. However, simple dead pixel tests revealed the truth: they were some dust particles between LCD screen layers. Figuring out that they were not dead pixels was pretty

Win XP Explorer Context Menu: Open and Run in CMD

2010-03-20T14:49:00.021-05:00

From time to time I still have to use software running in DOS command.com-like window. If such a program was started from Explorer, the cmd window would disappear with all the information as soon as the program has ended. To avoid that it is necessary, first, to start command window by running cmd.exe, then change directory to the one you need to run the program from and finally start the program

COM Port Connection Automation - Python and CSharp

2010-03-06T14:45:00.020-06:00

Many control and measurement devices support RS232 serial interface for communication what easily allows automation. It is pretty convenient when software can find out on its own what device is connected to what COM port. It is the case especially when the port is not a physical one with a fixed number, but a virtual representation in system and its number may change from one connection to

Check DirectX Version

2010-02-14T08:39:00.003-06:00

To check DirectX version run "dxdiag" from Start/Run.

Agilent U1251A/U1252A/U1253A DMMs - Connect To Computer

2010-02-08T20:21:00.026-06:00

Similarly to Fluke 189/289 DMMsAgilent U1251A/U1252A/U1253A DMMs can be connected to a computer too. The Agilent DMMs need IR-USB U1173A cable for that. Check U1251A/U1252A User’s and Service Guide for details. The same as with Fluke DMMs connection to the Agilent DMMs is represented as a COM port on system level:Agilent provides its own software, Agilent GUI Datalogger, for measurement

Fluke 189/289 DMM - Connect To Computer

2010-02-01T20:21:00.026-06:00

Some of multimeters as Fluke 189 or 289, for instance, can be connected to a computer. That allows easily to setup communication with such a device and automate measurements. Fluke 189/289 needs Fluke IR189USB cable for that. While it is USB port physical connection it's represented as a serial COM port on operating system level. Has to be mentioned that Fluke provides its own software to

Scheduled Chimes in Windows XP and Vista

2010-01-24T10:59:00.023-06:00

I like quarter of an hour chimes - they give a good reference of the course of time. There are some computer programs available which do the task, but it's a pity I was not able to find a nice one for Windows XP which would be free of serious disadvantages. Some of the programs I tried made latent attempts to connect to unknown internet IP through FTP port for unknown purpose - thanks to Comodo

Formatted Code - Internet Explorer's Copy Issue

2010-01-17T11:57:00.010-06:00

Not a new thing but just for the record: copying formatted text from a web-page in Internet Explorer to plane editors as Notepad or Notepad++ leads to a problem - all line breaks and/or indentations are lost in spite of preserving them with <pre> </pre> tags. A way around is to paste it into WordPad first and then copy from WordPad to any other editor you want. There is no such a trouble when

Source Code Syntax Highlighting for Web Pages

2010-01-16T10:03:00.040-06:00

Highlighting code syntax has become a common way to improve the code readability and is used broadly in different programming language editors. There are some approaches how to show highlighted code in a web page. I would divide all of them into the three categories:If the web-site is on ASP (Active Server Pages) or PHP (Personal Home Page) host and all the files and the web page generating code

Web-Site Statistics - Free Stand-Alone Services

2009-12-27T12:47:00.027-06:00

As web-design gurus suggest: keeping an eye on what is going on at your web-site is the must. What information is of the most interest, what part of the world your visitors come from, how long they stay on a particular page, etc. I've had some of such web analysis services in use for a few months and would like to make a note on that. The main idea behind stand-alone analysis service is pretty

Palm m515 Sync to MS Outlook 2007 - Free Solution

2009-12-12T09:22:00.014-06:00

The original installation for my m515 included Palm Desktop and Chapura's PocketMirror providing conduits for synchronization between Palm and MS Outlook. Migration to Microsoft Office 2003 brought the sync problem for the fist time and Chapura released the free of charge update PMStdUpdate3171.exe to address the issue. Now after upgrading to MS Office 2007 a similar problem appeared again - Palm

Getch in Python - Read a Character without Enter

2009-11-21T14:00:00.031-06:00

Sometimes it is more appropriate to read from keyboard without waiting for Enter to be codessed, for example, when choosing from a menu. The raw_input("Prompt String >") always waits for Enter, so a function similar to getch() in C is needed and there are some solutions for that in Python. There is getch() equivalent for Windows environment in library msvcrt:import msvcrt result = msvcrt.getch()

Getting Out of The Python's Loops

2009-11-15T12:17:00.050-06:00

Python is a great language - I used it many times for measurement automation. The only thing I stumbled on from time to time was a simple control over long time or infinite loops. When the loop is running it should check for a key or a button been pressed without stopping and waiting for input. Such stopping and waiting happens, for example, when a function like getch() is used. The case in

Doorway Chin-Up Bar Modification

2009-11-08T13:01:00.065-06:00

A sound mind in a sound body... Keeping it that way is a big job especially for those who spend most of the time working with computers, but I'm still kicking. About a year ago I bought a doorway chin-up bar which had some imperfections I found possible to fix. The exact item I bought at Amazon.com is not in stock any more, but there are many other similar pull-up/chin-up bars available from

Zimbra - Perfect E-Mail Client for Perfect People

2009-11-07T13:49:00.025-06:00

It is common to use a separate e-mail account for each separate activity: work, home, hobby, web subscriptions, etc.. So happened that some of accounts I have at Yahoo and others at Google. Neither Yahoo nor Google allows simultaneous access to multiple accounts. So I've been thinking for a long time how convenient it would be to have alive connections to all my web e-mail accounts from one