META: Part 1 describes the problem I’m trying to solve here.
I need a way to monitor water flow through my water filter over several days, and I don’t want to sit and watch it.
So - I took a Raspberry Pi I’ve got and a little Python and hacked a solution together. The basic idea was that I’d position a plastic cup below the output stream of the waste water, I’d put two wires into the cup, I’d put a voltage on one wire and attempt to see the voltage on the other.…
META: This first part is about the problem that caused me to build the solution. Part 2 is about the solution.
My new place has an awesome feature that was disabled when I moved in - a reverse osmosis water filter! It’s not a whole-house hookup, it’s just for the refrigerator and a dedicated tap on the sink. We definitely wanted to use this thing! At first, I just turned it on and it seemed to work fine.…
I’ve wanted to have a VPN setup for a while - I’ve never been entirely comfortable when using public wifi, even secured public wifi… Open wifi? I feel a little crazy every time I connect. But I usually console myself that I’m not a target, I can make sure important connections are encrypted, and I can just avoid doing some things while on public wifi.
A VPN though, that could make things much easier!…
This is one of those Saturdays where I’m finding it hard to focus on what I want to focus on. Ok, so that’s a pretty regular problem for me on Saturday. I’m trying to focus on programming for this volunteer activity I’m supposed to be leading in September. I’ve got to build some software for the event, and make some decisions, and wrap it all up at some point. It’s not too far from being done, and I guess this is the first time I’ve had to just sit and think a bit this week, so maybe that’s why I’m not too concerned about being unproductive, and I’m just letting my mind wander.…
This article proposes a pretty crazy sounding idea - remove the Van Allen Belts.
Simplified Explanatory Summary: The Van Allen Belts are a natural phenomenon, electrons and protons flying around the Earth at high speed. Electrical current is essentially electrons moving around, so when astronauts or satellites pass through these regions the effect is shocking. Passing through the proton regions is even worse because they’re comparatively mass-ive. Electrons and protons are normally flying around in space, but these ones are trapped by Earth’s magnetic field.…
This article in The Economist summarizes most of the issues relevant to this whole Edward Snowden debacle. Their attitude is that the amount of secret surveillance going on in the US, as suggested by the current news cycle, makes democracy difficult. It’s worth a skim just to make sure you’re not missing some chunk of the debate and recent history. The Economist is about as much a disinterested third party as I can think of.…
A wooden stick with a rubber cone on the end can solve so many problems.
When the toilet’s on the fritz, But you’ve really got the shitz, You’ve got to plunge it. You’ve got to plunge it.
That cat clogged the toilet. PLUNGE HIM.
When your dinner’s in the pot, But your sink has got a clot, You’ve got to plunge it. You’ve got to plunge it.
Apply plunger to dinner.…
Apparently San Antonio has a hackerspace now. Up until a few minutes ago, this image was alongside the rest of their “About Us” page. I think that by observing the page I changed it, so perhaps it’s a quantum webpage.
Leia’s going to cut her tongue if she’s not careful.
Anyway, these are a bunch of nerds interested in ham radio, building hardware and software, and talking about all these things.…
Oh, LaTeX acronym package, you won’t automatically alphabetize my list of acronyms? Strange… Let’s see if Unix will…
$ echo "\acro{SCADA}{Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition} \acro{PLC}{Programmable Logic Controller} \acro{RTU}{Remote Terminal Unit} ..." > toSort $ for i in `cat toSort |sed "s/.*\\acro{\(.*\)}.*{.*}/\1/" | sort`; do grep "{$i}" toSort; done \acro{ADC}{analog to digital converter} \acro{API}{application programming interface} \acro{APT}{Advanced Persistent Threat} \acro{ASCII}{American Standard Code for Information Interchange} ... Unix, you rock my world.…
Somebody gave this post on BuzzFeed the title, “How to Date Anywhere in the Country,” but really it should be called, “How to Have an Awesome Weekend in the Biggest Cities in the Country”. That’s not as catchy I guess. For San Antonio it mentions the Flying Saucer, Ranger Creek Brewery, the Japanese Tea Gardens, and Candlelight Coffee. Chicago - Millenium Park and the Art Museum. Cleveland - Great Lakes Brewery… Austin - Zilker Park, the Drafthouse……