Goodbye Nelson and Welcome Nida!

20:00, 1/8/2016

Well it has been a while since my last post and a lot has changes. Just return from a trip to Nelson, New Zealand with the family. A much needed break and also to send my son off to new school and a new beginning. All the best Nick!

On returning, Nida was there to welcome me! How nice! First day back to work and there a typhoon and a big one as well. Typhoon signal number 8 was hoisted from 8:45, 1/8/2016 and guess what, the announcement came like this:

"The typhoon signal will be hoisted between 8:00pm to 10:00am"

Uh?! When to starting hoisting I could understand, but when to lower the signal? Does it mean they will lower it come what make? We will see!

06:40, 2/8/2016

Ok, it landed at 4:00am this morning, but to be honest, I think Nida just getting started, even if the met. office say she is breaking up. I just have to look outside and tells you she still got plenty of it. In fact I think the wind/rain was even stronger now (08:00am) than when I first wake up at 6:40am!

All hell broke lose at the airport as well. Nothing is leaving or entering Hong Kong! So thank God we landed yesterday morning and not later. In fact I think we race pass Nida on our way!

So we are off in the morning and let see it goes the same with the afternoon. We will be so lucky!

Here is somthing completely different..................

Here is something completely different........

Well, it is been a long time since my last blog and there are a lot happened. As the title of this entry say, here is something completely different. Political comment was not my interest nor my strong point, but from what being happening lately in Hong Kong, everyone and their dog have a view, so here is mine.

Universal suffrage for Hong Kong? Dream on!

No I am not opposing universal suffrage, nor do I think democracy, well the western kind of democracy works for Hong Kong, let alone China, but that's another topic for another day. What I am saying is, this was never on the menu, despite what the so call join declaration or the so call basic law say. China cannot afford it! Let me explain, which is rather simple really, if  universal suffrage happen in Hong Kong, and even with the even smaller chance that it actually works, ie. we actually elect an Chief Executive that do good for Hong Kong, that will look real bad for China. Lets be frank, what China don't have, Hong Kong have no chance of having. This is a simple truth.

So what this leading to? Well there are lots of for and against on the Pro-universal suffrage and the Occupying Central movement. I would like to do a balance view on each side in turns:

The Against:

1. It is disrupting Hong Kong's peace
2. This will drive Beijing away from even talk about universal suffrage. Beijing will not come to back to the table if we push them too much
3. It will scare away investment from Hong Kong

Here is what I think:

1. Who peace is it disrupting? I will challenge anyone who can find a more peaceful protects and match in the world. There is no riot, no one injure. People are out there to express their view and to exercise their right. Until the day Beijing say Hong Kong is not allow to protect, people should continuous to do it. The police was there to keep the peace and enforce the law. I think the peace was kept and if there are laws that are broken, they shouldn't just charge 5 people, cause there are 500K or whatever number of people there and they should all be charged.
2. That view is based on Beijing give a shit and really want to talk. I mean when Beijing publish the white paper, what it really saying is clearly that China own Hong Kong, doesn't really matter what Hong Kong say. So for those who think China give a shit talking to Hong Kong about universal suffrage, think again.
3. The only thing that scare away investment are lawlessness, corruption and lack of regard for regulation. These are the core values of Hong Kong. Loss these, Hong Kong is finish. Guess what, China don't share these values. I think the world need to do business with China, but do they really want to? But I am sure they are more comfortable with Hong Kong, for now anyway.

 The For:

1. We will force Beijing to the table on universal suffrage 
2. To exercise people right to protect and to share the people's view

 Again my two cent:

1. Dream on. See 2. above.
2. Ok, now you exercise it, so what next? or so what? Nothing really. I think this is more educational than a mean to an end. If people are serious about democracy, they should know how to exercise their rights, not that it matter what the outcome is. It also shows not just to us, but to our next generation, what kind of government do they want to live under? So when you still have a choose, please use it. 

Well, that's my two bits. I have try to keep it balance, but that's is my view, you might or might not agree, but like China, who give a shit.

So till next time, here something from Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins:

“But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.” 
 

Update: 4/8/2014

I have heard lately from the newspaper that some stupid police spoken person say all police can sign the partition in support for the anti-occupy Central movement, if they are off duty. Now I feel really sorry for the police as this will make their job even more difficult.

Lets look what the job of the police are, which mention before: Keep the peace and enforce law and order. It is not a political force, it has no side and should not take any. The only side they should have is law and order, not political view. If they do, they cannot do their job, which is to impartially keep the peace. It is stupid to think that at this time just because the occupy Central movement is perceive to be on the wrong side, that one day the anti-occupy Central movement won't. If one day they turn disruptive and you need to keep the peace, you would put the officer who sign the partition in a very difficult position.

If this is indeed what the government want, ie. all civil servant should take side, then a government can no longer function impartially. I hate to think what will happen next, political persecution, secret police etc.

The more I look at this government, the more I think they have no idea what they are doing. They have no political knowledge let alone sensitivity. The more they do, the more Hong Kong is tearing apart and try to create a "Government vs. occupy Central movement" does not help only shows how stupid they are.


Bench

New Toy: EEVblog µRuler finally arrive

hi all,

Some new toy finally arrived:

Although we are in theory closer to Oz land than Singapore, it still arrive later. It properly gone half way round the world. May be Oz->Sweden(?!)->Hong Kong. Oh well better late than never!

Well done and thanks Dave!

Something to share and not everyday you run into something worth sharing.............

Hi,

Here is a page where I try to share what I find on the net that is worth sharing. To start with try this:

9$ Arduinio - Do not go there, this is a Crowd Fund Scam! Sorry about that.

US$9 for an Arduino compatible is a steal! Ok, consider the org. is only about US$20, still when you are a student or low/no income, US$20 is still quite a lot. I am not saying I totally agree with under pricing someone else product, but to be fair, the design is OpenSource and in theory anyone can make one, even if they do profit on it.

I also wonder, what is Arduino? Is it a name, a concept,a brand,a standard or even an IDE? Up till now, no one has "copy" the design of the board 100% (not legally anyway) and sell it, most just say it is compatible and each design has it own "tweet" to make it different, which is good. To me this highlight even more to question of what is Arduino:

Is it a concept - Yes I suppose, since it already got product, it no longer just a concept.

Is it a brand - Yes, unfortunately. One would like it to be less of this, since this will ultimately leads to brand protection etc. which is no good for anyone. I suppose one could argue  it is there to ensure all "Arduino" do follow the quality, standard and also to protect the end user from getting rubbish from clone maker. But that is no stopping anyone from making one and call it "compatible" and still sells it.

Is it a standard - Yes, that is part of the value being and using the Arduino. It represent a standard for interfacing between the user, the micro-controller and the real/physical world. It is less of a technology than a standard, since Arduino does not own the under lying technology, ATMEL and PIC and who even make mcu does, but Arduino define how they could interface/interact with the user and the real/physical world. This in itself has more value then having mega bit hardware running at Tera hertz. You can be pretty sure your Arduino program will run on almost any platform, as long as there is a Arduino version of it. This make porting to different platform a breeze!

Is it a IDE - Yes, and part of the reason why it is successful. Not everyone need or know Eclipse,  however powerful it is.There is no one size fits all for IDE. If I just want to blink a LED, I don't want to spend weeks just to learn how to use the IDE. But then you might not want to use the Ardunio to write a real OS, then there are people who wrote thousands of line of code with it.

So there, this is my two bit for sharing and I hope this will be useful to anyone. Till next time.

Ben
31/7/2013

Update 6/9/2013

It has arrive!
 

  

BTW the case is not part of the kit. It just happen I have one lying around.

Update 9/9/2013:

You might be interested with this too. Good thing they are doing for the education of Arduino:

Ardunio Basic Connection Book 

Update 11/11/2013:

Some more goodie from the same guy: Scam!! Don't go there! Sorry about this!

Desktop Bus Board

Desktop Bus Board

I final had enough! Plugs, wires, usb etc. surprising how much things you can plug into your computer and soon you find there is no space left on your desk and it looks a mess!

So I decided to create a Desktop Bus Board,where everything "hangs" on  rather then occupying  precious desk space.

So here you goes. It looks like a lot of things, but at least they are all out of the way and on the same plane, which is a lot better then before. I can see wood on my desk now. Not much I admit, but at least it is there.

OK,things that got "hung" there:

1. Power bar x 2
2. Power supply for Monitor
3. Power supply for Computer
4. Power supply for USB CDROM
5. Power supply for eSATA Harddisk
6. Power supply for bedroom AP
7. Power supply for External USBHarddisk
8. 100M Switch  

Image all these used to occupy  the desk and thank God for zip tie and now they all hangs on the wall!

Now if I can the same thing with the other side of my desk.........

Random thoughts on My Home Network

Things I would like to have or already have:

1. Android TV for:
1. Games
2. Internet Browsing
3. youtube
4. low priority media player
2. BT downloader
3. NAS file server
1. File dump/archive
2. Media Server
4. Network Media Player
5. VM server

1. Android TV:

I really want to have something on my 42” Sharp LCD TV, it would be so awesome web surfing, reading your email etc. Purr to all these 7”/10” punny tablet. There are a couple of ways to go about this:

• Building one. I already have in my blog mentioning the Android x86 project, which I have install onto my EEEPC-701. Now this has a VGA output, which in theory could be use on the Sharp LCD TV. One would have thought VGA was pretty mature standard and it would be a simple plug and play. But reality is just that much different. I have try with success using Linux outputting onto the TV using the EEEPC, but android is a different kettle of fish! After finding a possible boot up setting, which re-direct the output onto the external VGA, but then the resolution/sync was not what I specify and guess what, the TV couldn’t sync. I have try and try, even with a normal VGA monitor and to no avail. I have try putting the problem to the net as well as the developer site. The answer is the same as I have done and it didn’t work. So I have given up for the moment.
• Buy one. That should be easy. The MK802II and Mele A1000/2000 look good. There is even dual core (?!) version, but that’s using a CPU know to have a very close architecture. I must say, the MK802II seems a good solution, although not very powerful, it will do what I want plus it is HACKable. Yes, you can run Linux on it and the Mele have all the interfaces/ports you even wanted (SATA, VGA, SDPIF, HDMI, Coax-Colour, SD and if you prepare to open the box, some GPIO and SPI/I2C). The down side it the Mele only got 512M, which is ok if you are running a headless server, but if you want any graphic, the GPU will take a large chunk of the 512M. So it all depends on what you want to do. For Android TV purpose, the MK802II looks like a better bet, with 1G RAM. They both can play some media file, but as Android support for these isn’t very good, it isn’t on the top of the list.

2. BT downloader.

I already have this running, sort of. I have a printer/usb network server (if you can call a embedded board with 48MB/400Mhz CPU running linux with network and two usb a server), similar to this:

http://dx.com/p/standalone-bittorrent-bt-client-usb-nas-ftp-samba-printer-upnp-sharing-network-lan-server-26320

Mine a different model, but I think the gut is the same. Anyway, it is now running Snake OS with transmission as BT Client:

http://code.google.com/p/snake-os/

It isn’t a bad setup, as long as you keep your expectation low, ie. don’t expect it to run too many download session and services togethers. It can even runs a mini upnp server call MiniDLNA and samba, FTP etc. but not all at once. One thing I like about it is that it runs Linux. You just have to love it! One more step for Linux in conquering the world!

3. NAS file server

Now I did have a NAS, with 2x1TB Storage, but the stupid Intel itx motherboard (with onboard celeron) just die. I haven’t/couldn’t figure out what’s wrong with it. The power light comes on and the HD spins up, but no beep/display, just nothing. Anyway, it wasn’t a very good board (only got two SATA and 100baseT) and I was think of replacing it. I did have an old AMD2 board, which at one time I was running as a VM Server with 2G RAM and 4xSATA Disk. Yes I know, very old board, but it does the job, and even runs a few VM on it. The only problem is, it is BIG, I mean full size ATX, in a really big tower case. Ok the case can house about 6-8 disk and has plenty of fan/vent/space inside. But it is big, noisy and general does not blend well with the rest of the furniture.

So what’s the solution? One solution is if I get rid of the case and have everything “nake” .
I have a  cupboard where I was suppose to put all my “server” equipment in at the sitting room. This is  where the broadband router sits  as well as the network for the house terminate. If I stripe the PC “nake” and just “place” all the component on a shelf in the cupboard, that would be ideal. The only problem is cooling; there isn’t going to be any, unless I starting cutting holes in the cupboard and I don’t think the wife going to like this much. So unless I can figure this one out, I am stick.

4. Network Media Player

This is solved or has some kind of solution. I did bought in a heat of a moment a Media Player. It does the job playing from SD, SATA HD and USB, it even as a UPNP player and does handle 1080i. Apart from it being a “close” box and properly dead end product (no hope/chance that it will even get any update/upgrade to the firmware). The GUI is a load of rubbish but then it does play all kind of media files. My alternative is the Raspberry Pi, at this moment load with RASPBMC (xmbc Raspberry Pi version), which is very good. The GUI is top notch, the only thing is that I need to control it through either the keyboard/mouse or Android or iPad/Pod XBMC remote apps., hence the kids can’t easily control it. One thing to watch out on the Raspberry Pi is that the ethernet controller can get very hot, due to a board mistake which wire it onchip 1.8v reg. with the board’s 1.8v supply. Mine get very hot, even with a memory chip heatsink on. Although all sources confirm it all within spec., but still high temperature cannot do good to longevity of any chips. The fixed mean doing major surgery to the board (cutting tracks and lifting pin), which I am not comfortable to do, unless I have another board to play with.

Update 16/10/2012:

Just heard from element 14 that a new version of Raspberry Pi board, with 512M memory compare with 256MB in the old one, same price. Most important, they fixed the 1.8v power supply problem and loads of other fixes as well. So I order one and should be on its way end of October I hope.

5. VM server

Now this would really be good, if I have:

• Space to put it
• Money to buy it

Since memory is now dirt cheap (8G DDR3 <HK$300). But then...............................

Glass Jar Speaker

Hi again,

Been busy at work and at home lately (no Phil. housemate any more and I have to do the washing up, take the trash out etc. ;-( ), so a small project, which in theory should not take long might just be the right.

I brought two 8ohm, 3W speakers a while ago. Looks a bit like tweeter to me, but for speech and light music, they should be ok. I am was looking for something to house them. 

The original idea was to use them as the speaker for the FM radio I was building, but thats' taken me longer to get the software right (just can't get it to auto scan, manual tuning is ok). Anyway, I have also order a small 3W Class-D amp. like this one:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-Channels-3W-PAM8403-Class-D-Audio-Amplifier-Board-5V-USB-Power-/190723806259?pt=US_Home_Audio_Amplifiers_Preamps&hash=item2c68065433

Could be power by an USB port. You will be surprise how small it is, well I am anyway. So may be I will put them together and make a pair of small powered speaker. I know you buy them dirt cheap, but whats' the fun in that?

Anyway on with the search for an enclosure. I saw this a while ago on the net:

http://sarahpease.com/audioJar

and thought I might do something similar. So on to the HK$12 shop and I found these candy jar, just right for the job! I one each with different colour cap, so I can identify which is left and which is right channel.  So on with the job. Now I already anticipated that most mechanical task will be cutting holes (thats' why I thought it will be a short project). Now cutting holes on the cap for the speaker is easy, just happen to have the right size hole cutting and there you go:

a bit of hot glue and it is looking nice!

But cutting hole in glass is another matter. I know you can do it, from the above website and there are special bit to do this, but I just never done it before. I started using very small engraving bit from my Dremal tool. Now, my advice is, if I was to do this again, is not to use a Dremal tool. They are far too fast! A normal drill with variable speed is a much better choose and you want to go real slow. Second, wet the place you going to drill before. This  serve two purposes; one it keep the drill/glass cool, so less chance of  it cracking, second, it remove the dust when you drill, glass dust in lung is not good! And the result:

Just one more thing, for those of us who is blessed with the marital blaze, do the drilling when the wife is not around. Glass drilling noise make wife nuts!

Here the finished product, the speaker side anyway.

Ben