Something Unimportant

Arduino Nixie Tube Bar Graph Control With TLC5628CN

Check out these tubes, pretty bad ass, don't you think? With the help of Daniel Naito's amazing project and the TI TLC5628CN 8-bit serial DAC I've managed to get my Arduino controlling an IN-13 tube. I've got simple 3 wire serial communication working with the TLC5628 (thanks Ogi Lumen), ...

Steampunk Here I Come

As my previous posts show, I've been working with an Arduino and some Nixie Tubes. Don't get me wrong, they're pretty cool, but they don't come close to IN-13 Bar Graphs. Yeah, neon tube bar graphs that glow orange, don't even try to deny the badass nature of these. Check out ...

Some Arduino Photos and a Better Film

I gave a brief Lightning Talk today at work. It went well and the audience seemed genuinely interested and engaged. I've posted a 30 second youtube video of the device running on my desk and showing off a few of the commands over the serial port. A few people have mentioned ...

Playing with the Arduino

I might have mentioned previously that I recently bought an Arduino Duemilanove. It's pretty damn cool and I'm amazed at the amount of power you can get for such small price (and form factor). My first month or so was spent hooking it up to LED's and the Ethernet Shield. I ...

News Groups :(

Oh news groups, we really have a love hate relationship. Why do many people chose never to send a final correspondence to let the others in the discussion know how things turned out? It's really frustrating to try to offer help and have no idea if you were useful. Also, why ...

Rails Bug Found while Streaming Output in ActionController Tests

Last week I stole a ticket from my boss. It's an interesting one involving streaming of XML data to another application. There are some issues with the concept and process, but it's a legacy system and we can't change it (other teams are busy building a replacement). We've also recently ...

Get My Patch Added to Core

Help me out here. I came across what I think is a bug in Rails core. It's a really small issue, and an even smaller patch. Seriously, it's only two lines of code, and three new tests -- as you can see in the Lighthouse Ticket. Oh, you want a description? ...

Am I about to become famous?

Nah, probably not, but I do have a little something to brag about. A certain Rick Olson has kindly accepted a second patch of mine. Like the first couple of commits he merged, this new one is pretty small. It's a simple update to the MasterFilter class in his Masochism ...

Economic Troubles Hitting Close to Home

Tuesday, December 2nd my company laid off about 10% of its employees, 13 people. It was a hard day for everyone, we watched a lot of great people leave. To make it ever worse 2 of the 13 were fellow developers, both highly skilled (as some would put it, ninjas) ...

Rails Defaults I Like to Change

When working on larger projects the RAILS_ROOT/app folder structure can be a little restrictive. Lately I've taken to adding more sub-directories into RAILS_ROOT/app like, observers, mailers and presenters (check out ActivePresenter and Presenter Pattern if you've never heard of it). It's a simple trivial addition to the folder structure that ...