Insane in the membrane!

Updates

2008-04-24T08:43:00.002+05:30

I have been attending a few interviews, and most notably the ones from Limespot LLC, yes, the guys behind LimeWire P2P client. Also from Cable and Wireless as a Tier2 tech. Well, I understood that for the past few years a lot of things has changed and a lot of new standards, applications etc came into the picture. I am getting a little rusty here feels like a mammoth in present time. So, for the past few days most of the time was spent on reading up on new technologies, and missed out parts of some industry standard applications etc.

Most notably the ones I came across are, like LVS, RedHat GFS, Bind Views and Dynamic DNS updates using ISC DHCPd. I am simply posting some links here so that you can understand where to go in case if you need help regarding this also as a future reference for me.

For a starter you can find ALL types of DNS records here. and a few additions here. I hope this will come in handy.
Here is the link to setting up a LVS cluster using CentOS or RHEL and you can find instructions for a redhat clustersuite based cluster here.
Information on setting up GFS (Global Filesystem) is available here and the process of integrating it with GNBD is here.
Information on the Views feature of Bind can be found here with easy examples.
Integrating ISC DHCPd and Bind for setting up a Dynami DNS update method could be found here. This link was especially useful because the man pages and other documents do not touch this area deeply.

So, I guess thats it for now.
Ciao!

Info about relationships in general

2008-03-29T18:23:00.003+05:30

These are some websites i came across today, most of them from the digg feed. All about relationships and behavioral responses etc. Have a look. I feel they are giving quite good insight.

First one, a very hilarious post about marriage and relations in general by kids.
An excellent post of advices received by people during their wedding.
Fighting with your spouse can actually increase your lifespan!!!, Find the details here.
Views about monogamy and polygamy based on nature and evolution can be found here.
Find about what do super happy couples do most of the time.
Reasons for men going for younger women and women going for elder men can be found here, Very insightful, especially the comments.
Ahh, and finally some guides for newlyweds going at it.

Well this post was just a buncha links but be sure to read them and enjoy.

Blind kid uses Echo Location to do just about everything!

2008-03-29T02:38:00.003+05:30

Check this video of a kid who can use echo location, like dolphins, to avod obstacles, and even play video games. He was not born blind, his eyes were surgically removed when he was 2 years old due to cancer. An amazing accomplishment!

Back to Linux

2008-03-28T22:34:00.003+05:30

For the past 2 years or so, I was using mostly windows for my desktop applications. In the meanwhile I had tried to switch to Linux a couple of times, and it never worked fully. Reason, I was trying to roll out a custom version for my use. Lost interest in half way. Last one i tried a couple of weeks ago was Gentoo. It was coming up nicely until my experiments with emerge finally fucked the system over to a totally unusable state. All those hours of downloading and building went out of the window by a stupid decision I made about a conflicting package.

Yesterday, I decided I need to get away from the dreaded windows platform because its been a really long while I have worked with Linux on my desktop. I am losing that experimental nature slowly. So, a switch might help me catch up on what was left out. So, I got Ubuntu Linux and installed it, So far I am feeling good about it, everything is working the way I want. All required software are there etc. Had a little trouble with flash player because I am using a 64bit system and adobe doesn't have a 64bit flash player yet. But, Ubuntu took care of it nicely, so far, I am enjoying Synaptic, the package manager. I was using Google docs for my basic word processing, spreadsheets, so no issues about it. Was using pidgin in windows, so my IM sessions are fine too. Almost all of the required software are there. As per what I am seeing now, Linux is ready for desktop use.

Now, it is just a wait and see game for me :)

South Park to Offer All Episodes for Free Download

2008-03-26T22:10:00.003+05:30

By John Scott Lewinsk

South Park fans will soon be able to watch any episode of the seminal animated show free online, thanks to a deal between show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Comedy Central's parent company, Viacom. According to Comedy Central reps, Parker and Stone are the driving force behind South Park Studios, the series' new online HQ offering free viewing of all 12 seasons of South Park. Currently in its beta format, the site and its episodes are ad-supported, but require no additional fees to view as many episodes as a fan's heart desires. In an appropriately glib statement, Parker and Stone said they were inspired to start the site when they got "really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time. So we gave ourselves a legal alternative." New episodes will appear on the site soon after airing on Comedy Central and will remain available for one week. After 30 days, the new episode will return to the site permanently. Parker and Stone insist that the new service won't affect DVD sales as hardcore fans of the show could still want to own the episodes in "hard copy" form. There's no word yet on whether other genre shows will follow South Park's new model.

(Article from Wired blogs, Image courtesy of South Park Studios.)

RHEL Vs Sun Solaris

2008-03-20T13:07:00.003+05:30

Today, I received a mail from Sun Micro systems promoting Solaris 10. It is a web cast, and the link is here Check it out. Nicely done web cast, but i am a little skeptical about how Solaris would shine against Linux which most of us geeks are more familiar with. Yes it might work for organisations, but when individual users are taken into account, the learning curve is a little higher than learning Linux.

OBDII in indian cars

2008-03-19T23:00:00.003+05:30

I was interested in an OBDII sensor for our car here and wanted do buy a ScanGuageII for it. The compatibility information available at http://www.scangauge.com/ was inadequate as it mainly dealt with cars made in USA. While searching for compatible cars in India, I came across these posts at Team-BHP and there really are a few cars with OBDII interfaces. From what I read there, it seems none of the cars made by Maruti Autos work with standard controllers even though they claim to have it and even feature a port for the same. So, in a nutshell, if you have a car from maruti autos, don't even dream about a OBD2 controller as its gonna be a waste of money. There are claims that most of the cars by GM, Honda, Ford all work with OBD II. So, choose your next car wisely if you wanna sport one of these geeky gadgets ;)

Taste of failure

2008-03-04T21:33:00.005+05:30

Today, I tried to build a PCB of a programmer for PIC micro controller 16F628. I wanted to use an easy prototyping method and I decided to go for the method specified here and here.

Soon, I went out hunting for Ink jet photo quality glossy paper in a few shops, and they all were out of stock. Then i remembered a friend who owns a Image / graphics studio and he gave me 2 A4 sheets and did not take money for it even though I insisted a lot. His site is here. Those sheets were high quality Epson ones. Next trip, to my friend who has a high quality Laserjet Printer. I installed the Cadsoft Eagle software in his system and took a couple of printouts.

Once I had the printed sheets, came back home, and did the standard procedures, like cleaning the PCB, cutting it to the required size, not a clean cut, but I had a crude cut using a BIG hacksaw. I didn't have acetone (Thinner) here, so i cleaned my PCB with some Zippo Lighter fluid. Got my Clothes Iron and started ironing it, and the problems started. one layer at the back of the paper started melting, so I kept a backing paper behind it and continued ironing. And soon the backing paper got stuck to the photo sheet. First reaction was, so what?

Made a trip to the kitchen, and started boiling water for cooking my PCBs till the paper came out, but unfortunately, even after 30 minutes of continuous boiling torture, the paper wouldn't move!, and I let it stay there for another 30 minutes, and i finally removed the paper and found, that the toner did not get transfered fully. I had some partial tracks here and there. Which was not useful for me. Repeated with the other circuits and all of them failed.

I am unsure what made the process fail, was it the paper? the Zippo fluid? or an over heated Iron? I have no idea, But I guess I will try it again tomorrow. Will update this post with further findings and failure stories (hope not!) and observations about this comparatively easy trick. Making me insane thinking about what went wrong anyways.. so, lets see how it goes tomorrow.

Good night!

AT&T Text-to-Speech Engine

2008-03-02T03:01:00.002+05:30

While searching for a nice attendant voice generator software for making some good IVR prompts for my voice mail, I came across the test to speech engine from AT&T. Its named AT&T Natural Voices. And I found its capabilities are quite good to some of the other Text to Speech APIs I came across. And I made the required voice sample using their demo interface too. A very nice site if you like to use the same for your IVR prompts etc. Make sure that those voice clips are used for personal purposes only as they have explicitly prohibited the use of any sample made from that site in any commercial applications.

Grandcentral closes user invites

2008-03-01T18:58:00.004+05:30

Not sure if this is old news, But when I checked today, my Grandcentral account had the entire user invitation area removed. To any of you who don't have an account yet, use this link to get an account. I had it tested by a couple of friends in USA and it worked fine. So go ahead and give yourself some Grandcentral love :) Btw, if you are in USA / Canada, click on the Call me link at the bottom of this page to call me for free.

Boycott Trend Micro

2008-03-01T18:36:00.005+05:30

Join FSF and the ScriptumLibre.org Foundation in boycotting all products and services sold by Trend Micro.

The proprietary software company Trend Micro has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Barracuda Networks. They claim that Barracuda is violating their patent by distributing the free software antivirus program ClamAV.

We should avoid using any proprietary software, but companies that use software patents for aggression are the lowest of the low.

Lawsuits like this are a threat to the entire IT community, and to free software programmers in particular. There is little that can be done to stop patent trolls from exploiting the patent and legal system for financial gain, until we put a stop to the patenting of software altogether. But there is an immediate opportunity to punish and deter trolls like Trend Micro.

Let all of Trend Micro's potential customers know that by doing business with Trend Micro, they are supporting this attack on all creators of software works, including the entire free software community, and that the strongest message they can send to Trend Micro is to publicly boycott all of their products and services.

Parents punk kid into thinking he got an Xbox 360

2008-03-01T06:00:00.005+05:30

This sucks, poor kid got scammed by his parents... You can find the videos of the kid unwrapping his present here. Engadget has a story on this. Check it out here.

Views about Pakistan, More Bombers!!

2008-03-01T05:42:00.003+05:30

In another news, Suicide bomb in Pakistan kills at least 35, A suicide attacker blew himself at a funeral Friday for a slain policeman in Pakistan's volatile Swat Valley, killing at least 35 people including the officer's 16-year-old son.

These people has to learn a lesson, oh wait, I think they have already learned it, these people were originally programmed to create uncertainty in India, to spread terrorism in India and now they are getting back at the masterminds of all these. I would drink to a day when all these guys would burn to dust by some one's nuke!! What i don't get is that what why would they kill their own people, time to think eh? Does Allah reward you for killing other Muslims?

Kashmir walks free on Monday

2008-03-01T05:33:00.004+05:30

Here is some new I came across today... they think they did a great thing by releasing him, but did they? the truth is, they took 35 years off some one's life... Those bastards!!!

Islamabad, February 29

Indian prisoner Kashmir Singh, who had spent 35 years on death row in Pakistani jails, is expected to walk free on Monday following the approval of his mercy petition by President Pervez Musharraf.

After the approval of the petition of Singh, who was arrested in Rawalpindi on espionage charges in 1973 and sentenced to death by an army court, by Musharraf yesterday, it was processed by the Prime Minister’s secretariat today, caretaker human rights minister Ansar Burney said.

“The matter is now with the interior ministry and all the paperwork related to Kashmir Singh’s release is expected to be completed by Monday. I will also get in touch with the Indian High Commission to get his travel documents prepared so that he can go home expeditiously,” Burney said.

He revealed that Musharraf was initially not convinced that Singh, now in his sixties, had spent so long on death row but readily agreed to consider the mercy petition after he was presented with the facts of the case. — PTI

IrDA interface for your mainboard

2008-03-01T04:22:00.004+05:30

Many modern main boards have an IrDA connector on board, but the required transceiver is often missing. if you can't find the exactly fitting module for your main board, you can probably use a module from another main board if you connect it in the right way. just see the main board documentations (or search the web) and compare the pinouts. irda modules normally need 4 signals: gnd, +5v, rxd and txd.

or you can build your own IrDA module! All you need is a IrDA transceiver and some resistors and capacitors.

The original article could be found here.

There is also a Silicon Chip Australia project on the same topic, using the same components. Their PCB layout surely looks better too.

Images below.

PCB Layout is here.

Have fun building it.

50MHz 500Watts Linear Amp Using IRF510

2008-02-29T17:43:00.002+05:30

I came across this site with a super design that uses 16 cheap IRF510 power transistors to get 500 Watts of RF power. Now, this is an Ideal amp for hams in India as these transistors are available very cheap over here.

Here is the link to the site. You can find the entire PCB layout, Schematics etc there.

http://frenning.dk/OZ1PIF_HOMEPAGE/50MHz_IRF510.htm

I have put this in my to-do list and in the mean while, i hope you like building it.

Linux Kernel 2.6.24.3 released

2008-02-27T06:45:00.005+05:30

The latest stable of Linux kernel is released yesterday. The latest stable release is 2.6.24.3. Just some minor bug fixes. Nothing huge.
Full download is here and the Changelog is available here.

Bitx20 Version 3 from VU3SUA Construction Notes

2008-02-26T01:54:00.007+05:30

I have been building this board from past few days and was searching for some help regarding the tuning parts of various sections. And I asked Sunil to help me with some images, notes and he updated his blogs with a couple of pictures. His blog is available here. When I looked closely, I found that those images and tutorial work was actually done by Leonard L Leeper (KC0WOX). His home page is here. The complete set of instructions he wrote is here. Great job Leonard!!.

Update on 05/03/2008

I couldn't access Leonard's site most of the times for checking up information, So I am just copy pasting the information i found in leonard's page along with the images so that the visitors can see them, basically a mirror.

Here goes,

Bitx20 Version 3

After building a Far Circuits Bitx20 and a Hendricks's QRP Kits bitx20a kit, I decided to build another bitx after seeing this posting:

A new batch of Bitx PCB, in glass epoxy ,masked, roller tinned and with
component place-ment is in ready stock for delivery world-wide.
Also available is the pcb for Avala 01 Sdr monoband tcvr.

I am giving a very special discount on the pbc's. To know further about
the discount, kindly send me a mail at suillakhani123@ gmail.com

I sent off my email and received this back:

Dear Leonard,
The Bitx Version 3 PCB is for $10 PCB +Coils+1 No 2570 transistor.
The Avala sdr pcb is for $5.Shipping is extra $ 10.

I looked at this web page to get an idea what the Avala sdr was and decided that I couldn't pass up a deal like this.

After a trip to paypal, the boards for the bitx and the avala were ordered. Soon I received a package in the mail. In it was 3 pcb's. This was the bitx board along with some of the specialized parts. The other boards were the PA board and the Avala board,

There was enclosed, a schematic, a component layout, and a few other pages of documentation.

After examining them, I decided to make an "exploded" layout drawing using a section-by-section approach to the assembly and testing. I will function test each section as it is assembled. This will almost insure that the board will function when everything is completed. I already had an head start on the project as this would be the 3rd Bitx I had built. I already knew what the signals should look like in each stage.

Bandpass filter section

RF Driver stage

VFO Section

Bandpass filter section

I decided to start with the antenna end and soon I had the following parts placement diagram for the bandpass filter section.

Next I assembled it and connected a sweep generator to the input and my oscilloscope to the output.

After a little tweaking, this was the final result. The scope is displaying from 10mhz to 20 mhz. Each division is equal to 1mhz.

Rf Driver Section

Following my plan to work from the antenna back, the next section was the RF driver stage. It was the next logical section of the board to populate also.

With the drawing done, the next step is assembly, then add a little power, no smoke, that's good, and a signal input.

Then on to test with the scope. 100mv 14.2mhz in, 1.5 volts out. That was open circuit and we probably won't get that when we hook to the PA, but for now, thats a gain of 15. On to the next stage!

VFO section

The VFO section stands on it's own and will be easy to test so I choose that as the next section. A transformer was furnished with the boards but it would have to be rewound as the VFO needed about 9uh's of inductance and the transformer maxed out around 5uh. Depending on the variable capacitor you tune with, the turns on the inductor may have to be adjusted but 50 should be plenty and then you can remove some to adjust the frequency up. My test capacitor tuned from 15-377pf and the VFO had almost a 500khz tuning range so setting the frequency shouldn't be really critical. I didn't tweak the range on mine as I will do that when I install it into a case.

Next I assembled it and connected my oscilloscope to the output. You can see the power connection for the test

I checked it out with the scope. A little over 3.5 volts. This will be less when the transformer is hooked up due to it's loading. There is some distortion of the sine wave so we know there is some harmonic content.

A quick look with the spectrum analyzer to see what the 2nd harmonic looks like.

1 Mhz/div horizontal. The left is 0hz and the right is 10mhz. Each vertical division is 10db. It looks like the 2nd harmonic is down about -25db.

Time to drink a cool one and then pick a new section to do next.

First Mixer section

This section is a little harder to understand. I've included a picture to help show the diodes placement. The colors below are the wire color connections if you use red, brown, and green wire. If you use different colors, substitute them for mine.

We need to wind the trifilar transformers. Use the small binocular cores and wind 13 turns of trifilar wire onto the cores. 1 turn is a trip through both holes ending up where you started. We need 2 transformers. I had red, green, and brown #28 wire. The cores aren't big enough to use larger wire. The original drawing called for #32 but the size doesn't make much difference as long as it will fit into the core. The different colors make keeping the windings straight easier. When pulling the wire through the holes in the cores, be careful not to scrape the insulation off. The binocular cores can have sharp edges. When you are done, it should look like this.

Now you can place them on the board as shown above. The final placement should look like this.

Notice the direction of the bands on the diodes. Make sure the leads don't short together.

2nd IF Section

Before we start installing components, now is a good time to install all of the wire jumpers on the top of the board. It will make testing easier as we will connect to the rx or tx line plus the 12 volt line to power the appropriate circuit during test.

This section is almost identical to the the RF Amplifier section so it shouldn't present any difficulties.

I found a board problem on mine. On the left picture, notice there is no right hand hole for the 100 ohm resistor in the lower left corner. It's easily fixed simply by soldering the right lead of the resistor to the wire adjacent to where the hole should go.

Your board should now look like this.

Lets test it!

Testing the receive side is a problem as there are many frequencies present after the mixer and when looking at them with a scope, it is confusing. Lets look at the receive side using a spectrum analyzer.

Here's some of the frequencies at the input to the crystal filter. It's a good thing that most of these will go away because they won't go through the filter. Part of the reason there are so many frequencies here is because we are overdriving the antenna input circuits with 10 millivolts input. Lets look at what happens when we reduce the input to the mixer. This is normally done by decreasing the RF gain, either with a manual control or agc on the rf amplifier.

This is a reduction of 10db of input signal. That made a big difference. The VFO harmonics are still there but a lot of the mixer products are drastically reduced. Remember, each vertical division is 10db and a reduction to 1/10th of the power. Lets reduce the input another 10db.

That almost eliminated all of the excess mixer products. This is a 20db reduction from the first picture. 20db is 1/100th of the original power or 1/10th of the original voltage so we now have 1mv input at the antenna connector. Under normal operation, that's still a big signal. Our receiver should see signals down to around .3 micro volts.

Linear Amplifier section

The version 3 linear amplifier board has 2 very nice additions. The first, the RF signal is switched between rx and tx by relays. This cures a problem I found with the Far Circuits board that I cured by adding relays. The other main addition is an AC power supply. It is setup to accept an AC input and has a rectifier and voltage regulator on board. This allows 13 volts to be fed to the bitx board for it's supply voltages and a higher voltage unregulated to be used on the IRF510. Above is the original board setup.

I made a few modifications to the board. The board looks like this. Power supply on the right and the IRF510 lower left on the big heat sink.

I wanted to use a 22 vac transformer that I had so I needed to use a 35 volt capacitor. I had a 6800 mfd at 35 volts in the junk box so I used it. I had to move the 2 - .1 ufd capacitors to get room for the big filter cap so I put them on the back of the board using some chip caps I had. The spacing worked out just right. Just to the right of them is the original pads for the 2 electrolytic caps.

I used 3 amp silicon diodes so I had to drill out the holes a little and then stand them up vertically. The 6800 ufd cap was hot melt glued to the board after soldering the wires for it into place.

After hooking up the power transformer,, I measured 30 vdc for the IRF510 and 13.6 volts for the bitx. The next step will be to test it after I complete the bitx. I'll be interested in the power out with the higher voltage.

Grandcentral open for Blogger users!!

2008-02-24T09:05:00.004+05:30

Two days ago Grandcentral opened up its doors for Blogger users. All you need to do in order to get a Grandcentral account is to click on the Blogger invite link here and signup at Grandcentral. Please note that this offer is still available only to the US users, so, you know how to do ;) hint: proxy!! And you must also have a US based phone number to make use of the services. One trick is to have a free SIP forwarding number in USA if you are a VOIP user, or use a number like Skype-in, also there are many other providers in USA who provided free incoming numbers with their plan. With this method, you can make free calls within US and Canada too..

Enjoy!!

Bitx20 Kit from VU3SUA

2008-02-22T23:31:00.006+05:30

Yay!!, I received my Bitx20 kit from Sunil Lakhani(VU3SUA) today. I was jumping with joy as i received it. The postage + the time in transit was very normal. And he had included Front end coils, Balun Cores, Dumbbell cores, and a transistor that is a little difficult to obtain in local shops. He also sent me a free Frequency Counter PCB!!! I love this guy!!.

The boards were of excellent quality, some spacings are some times a little large and some time a little short, but its okay since it is totally designed here. The PCBS were all plated and masked. Very well made I would say.

Here are the contents.
1. 1x Bitx20 Main Board,
2. 1x Power supply and Linear Amp PCB,
3. 4x Front end Transformers (Already wound),
4. 7X Balun Transformer Cores,
5. 2x Dumbbell transformer cores,
6. 1X 2SC2570 Transistor.

The packing was excellent, he had taken utmost care to pack them properly with a polythene cover, then a paper cover (had a contents listing), and a thermocol protection around this cover and then all these covered in the standard cloth based packing used for Speedpost. Yes, I did spend a lot of time unpacking it :).

I will post the photos of the PCB as well as the contents of the kit in this post as soon as I can arrange a digital camera.

So, I am back to building the kit now, have fun :), and hang in there for more.

Vista 32-bit vs. Vista 64-bit - Benchmarked

2008-02-22T05:27:00.001+05:30

Vista 32-bit vs. Vista 64-bit - Benchmarked by ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes -- My benchmarking marathon last week seemed to generate more questions and requests for further benchmarking. A popular request from you, Constant Reader, was to see Windows Vista 32-bit benchmarked against Windows Vista 64-bit.

Yaesu FT-101ZD cosmetic restorations

2008-02-22T05:19:00.002+05:30

A good post about the restoration of Yaesu FT-101ZD. Nothing deep in there, just cosmetic details only. Here is a link.

http://www.electricsoftware.co.nz/Default.aspx?tabid=141&EntryID=25

Microsoft opens APIs and protocols to all

2008-02-22T04:43:00.001+05:30

Microsoft responds to European demands with “Good Steve” day by ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn -- Is this an honest change of policy, or is this just a bow to political pressure, pressure which lobbying and campaign contributions might some day remove? I can't answer that definitively. The problem is, neither can anyone else.

Dissecting SSL Technology

2008-02-21T14:00:00.007+05:30

Yes, I know that SSL technology is around from a long time, yet, I am adding an excellent work on the topic from my best friend Cyrus here. He is explaining the importance of security in our day to day communications over the internet and how to protect your resources and data in this project work he has done. Please note that this work is his intellectual property and is provided just for your reading pleasure. Any other uses of this document is strictly prohibited. Please visit his blog at http://www.extremeunix.com

Recent Movies

2008-02-20T13:37:00.003+05:30

I saw 3 movies recently, they are 1. "El Laberinto del fauno", 2. "Le Scaphandre et le papillon" and 3. "Into the wild". The last two are based on true stories.

Out of these the one that really moved me was "Le Scaphandre et le papillon". It deals about a man (Jean-Dominique Bauby)who got paralysed and and got locked in to himself, he can see and hear you, but he cant talk, or move any body parts except his left eyelid. And by using his left eyelid and a helper, by blinking at the correct alphabet when spoken in the order of most used, he wrote a book named "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", this is the English name of the movie too. Quite well taken and makes you feel the pain of the person who is locked in. It is a must watch.

The other movies , El Laberinto del fauno and Into the wild are good movies too, but the first one is a fantasy based one and the second one is based on a man named Christopher McCandless who left home and friends and hitchhiked his way to Alaska and died there by starving. The irony is that he had donated all his money to Oxfam (an organisation deals with poverty)and he himself had starved. When I saw the movie, I felt great about this man, and then later after i read more about him, i learned that he didn't even have a map of the area where stayed till his end, makes me conclude that he was a fool to even attempt something like this without at least a map of the area. He starved within 20 miles of the highway!! Its a shame he wasted his life this way.