It’s not much of a contribution, it’s more a photo than anything. In fact it’s a photo of a battery from my 17″ MacBook Pro. The Apple website indicates that it’s a Lithium-Polymer battery, however the battery itself indicates it Li-ion.
Regardless, it continues to grow:
It’s come to my attention, that the little battery chargers that came with the various helicopters, might not be working up to par. Taking longer than I want to charge is one thing, but not charging properly is another entirely! A recent visit to the hobby shops indicated that it’s common for them to fail. But, they should be easy enough to test to see if they are applying a full charge by the simple use of a multi-meter.
Thus, I dug up my trusty Fluke (it must be over 25 years old now), put in a new 9v battery and started some testing.
All batteries here are Lithium-Polymer (Li-Po) 2-cell 7.4v batteries. 2 of the batteries tested are for the Blade CX3, the other for the Madhawk 300. Here is a link to the chart I created to document the batteries I’ve used.
E-Flite Battery Charger |
ExceedRD Battery Charger |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Exceed-RC 7.4v 1000mAh |
8.4v | 8.4v | ||||
Tenergy 7.4v 900mAh |
8.43v | 8.43v | 8.43v | |||
E-Flite 7.4v 800mAh |
8.43v | 8.38v | 8.43v | 8.43v | ||
| Hyperian VGX3 #1 | 8.43v | |||||
| Hyperian VGX3 #2 | 8.43v | 8.43v | 8.44v | |||
Testing so far indicates that the chargers, although slow, are doing the job. One battery, the E-Flite 800mAh seemed a little down on power during the 2nd cycle of the test. It might already be suffering some degradation of performance. If that’s the case, it’s pretty pathetic. I plan to run each through at least 3 charge cycles to get a decent dataset.
It’s been, almost a decade since I picked up an X-Acto Knife and built a styrene model. This weekend changed all that.
The reasons are many, some I can’t even go into. The ship was picked for 2 reasons. Price (about $10) and it had below waterline detail. That’s all I was looking for and this fit the bill. What turned out to be serendipitous fortune simply makes the project that much more poignant.
The Blücher was a German Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruiser. The Kriegsmarine’s newest ship at the outbreak of World War II, having been in commission for just over six months, she was sunk by Norwegian shore defenses at the Battle of Drøbak Sound on April 9, 1940, the first day of the invasion of Norway (Operation Weserübung).
It took approximately 4 hours to formulate the plan for the build, and the first plastic was cut on Saturday night.
12 hours later, the final result. And I’m quite pleased with it. Moving some of the parts did not require much skill at all, but moving the starboard side screw was, well, a several hour effort. In the end, a fair bit of plastic welding was done, and body filler applied to completely conceal the original location. I hope you can see the final result in the side shot.
I wish I could say more about it. 🙂
It came up in one of the discussion boards I frequent, the question of personalized plates.
Over the years, I’ve had a few. Most of them long gone, and mostly forgotten, but there is one that I did keep.
This plate was on the first new motorcycle I ever purchased. A 2000 Honda VFR (aka RC46). Yellow of course! Not long after the purchase of the bike, I registered the domain name RC46.COM. I long let it lapse. It was picked up by someone else about 8 years ago. Now it’s parked at sedo.com a domain auction/resale site.
What was fun, is that I did find it captured in the ‘Internet Wayback Machine‘. Here are a few snapshots.:
I don’t think I’ve had any personalized plates in WA. Maybe I have and I’ve simply forgotten. I do run LEM plates on my cars and motorcycles, but they are not really ‘personalized’. I do this for many reasons. One of which is that they are very easy to remember when filling out hotel registrations. 🙂 When on a road trip, not having to run outside to check a plate is just one little thing that makes life a bit easier.
Some of the sebsites of my past.
It would be short work to grab the current observations from the local station’s file, then grab the full projected forecast from the Zone’s XML formatted data file (example for Bremerton). I checked the full forecast XML, and unfortunately it does not include the local current conditions. In the grand scheme, this is not a big deal since I’ll need to grab three forecast files already. One more file for current observations is not that much more of a burden.
This section contains the Maximum Forecast Temperatures, covering outlook:
<temperature type="minimum" units="Fahrenheit" time-layout="k-p24h-n7-1"> <name>Daily Minimum Temperature</name> <value>40</value> <value>45</value> <value>43</value> <value>44</value> <value>43</value> <value>43</value> <value>42</value> </temperature>
This section contains the Minimum Forecast Temperatures, covering outlook:
<temperature type="maximum" units="Fahrenheit" time-layout="k-p24h-n7-2"> <name>Daily Maximum Temperature</name> <value>59</value> <value>61</value> <value>60</value> <value>61</value> <value>61</value> <value>60</value> <value>60</value> </temperature>
Also in the file is the projected percentage of precipitation:
<probability-of-precipitation type="12 hour" units="percent" time-layout="k-p12h-n14-1"> <name>12 Hourly Probability of Precipitation</name> <value xsi:nil="true"/> <value xsi:nil="true"/> <value xsi:nil="true"/> <value xsi:nil="true"/> <value xsi:nil="true"/> <value>30</value> <value>30</value> <value xsi:nil="true"/> <value xsi:nil="true"/> <value xsi:nil="true"/> <value xsi:nil="true"/> <value xsi:nil="true"/> <value xsi:nil="true"/> <value xsi:nil="true"/> </probability-of-precipitation>
The XML also is kind enough to include the image names. Based on this, the actual visually rendered page is a style sheet applied to the XML data, providing a human readable web page <i>(something I need to get more familiar with)</i>.
<conditions-icon type="forecast-NWS" time-layout="k-p12h-n14-1"> <name>Conditions Icon</name> <icon-link>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/weather/images/fcicons/nbkn.jpg</icon-link> <icon-link>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/weather/images/fcicons/sct.jpg</icon-link> <icon-link>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/weather/images/fcicons/nsct.jpg</icon-link> <icon-link>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/weather/images/fcicons/bkn.jpg</icon-link> <icon-link>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/weather/images/fcicons/nbkn.jpg</icon-link> <icon-link>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/weather/images/fcicons/shra30.jpg</icon-link> <icon-link>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/weather/images/fcicons/nshra30.jpg</icon-link> <icon-link>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/weather/images/fcicons/shra.jpg</icon-link> <icon-link>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/weather/images/fcicons/nshra.jpg</icon-link> <icon-link>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/weather/images/fcicons/shra.jpg</icon-link> <icon-link>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/weather/images/fcicons/nshra.jpg</icon-link> <icon-link>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/weather/images/fcicons/shra.jpg</icon-link> <icon-link>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/weather/images/fcicons/nshra.jpg</icon-link> <icon-link>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/weather/images/fcicons/shra.jpg</icon-link> </conditions-icon>
Design and coding of the file downloads, processing and construction of the status file is the next step. One thought I have, is to download and store locally, all the images. This will keep my page off of their webserver’s request log. External includes of images can be a burden on a remote server, if you start to abuse it. No sense in being a bad netizen. The question that I need to answer is, <i>CAN I</i> get a list of all the potential images (and there are <i>many</i>) and automate the download to system I plan to run this little product upon.
Automation of the XML downloading and parsing, will be handled by PERL (at least in this first tool, it may be converted to JAVA on a second iteration, once I’ve performed usability testing of this first iteration).
Additional binary libraries are required first:
apt-get install libxml2-dev
So, here is the skinny. First, have to move into the location where CPAN unravels the packages:
cd /root/.cpan/build
Next, move into the directory for XML::LibXML and manually build with these steps:
cd XML-LibXML-1.70-OucP9U perl Makefile.PL make make install
Next build the XML::Atom package:
cd XML-Atom-0.37-pcVvAG/ perl Makefile.PL make make install
Next, a few PERL modules must first be installed. NOTE: the XML::SAX modules are suggested, to provide a big boost in XML parsing performance. You might be surprised at how much processing power the typical XML parsing packages require. XML::SAX and XML::SAX::Expat provide a better code for XML parsing.
cpan LWP::UserAgent cpan HTML::TokeParse cpan XML::Feed cpan XML::SAX cpan XML::SAX::Expat cpan Data::Dumper cpan XML::Feed cpan XML::Atom
NOTE:
As hard as I tried, CPAN would not install XML::LibXML nor XML::Atom. So, I had to get down into the muck and manually build the packages. The trick was getting the libxml2 package talked about earlier.
One critical required step, if you are going to write and use custom PERL libraries, you need to add the following line to a shell initialization file. I’ve been using bash, for lack of any reason to use other shells. Thus, I added this line to my ~/.bash_profile
export PERL5LIB=$HOME/plib
Once that is done, you’ll need to source the updated config file, or logout/login to gain the benefits of the change.
The process of finding the desirable data sources, can be a challenge. I already know which of the 5 day forecast sources I want to use.
Maybe I’ll add this one too, just to so I’m reminded of what I’m missing in CA:
Next is a page that contains the CURRENT and HIGH / LOW temps. In the past I have located some text based data files on the NOAA.GOV website. I’ll have to dig up my notes one this. From time to time NOAA moves those files and changes the format, so those notes might not end up being that helpful. It is somewhere to start.
This page here, has a pile of nice detailed information (see compressed screen shot) but does not contain everything I’m looking for:
XML DATA!. XML is something I know more about, than I really care too, but it is a portable, easily parsable and text data format. I’ve not yet investigated the contents here, but it does look promising!
What is a “Weather Reader”? Well, it’s like a “News Reader”, but it’s purpose is to check the web for local weather conditions and display them on a computer screen. For this project I’ve revived an old Averatec laptop, installed Ubuntu 9.10 on it and started to write some PERL.
Where to get the weather data? Personally, I like to go to the source. The public source at NOAA.gov. This is a government agency, paid for by my tax dollars (and yours too if you’re a US tax payer.. of which only 53% of working people in the US are, but that’s another story. So, free for the taking as far as I can tell, and am concerned. Which is good, because the real heavy work is up to me. Finding a URL is one thing, using it for something productive is another thing.
To see what I’m looking at as a source without clicking a bunch of links, here is a screen shot of my indented HTML victim:
Now, the only part that I’m interested in is this one:
I’m sure some of you are asking, “WHAT’S THE POINT!?!?!?”. Well, I have several, not all atop my head. As an avid motorcyclist, weather is almost as import to me as mariners and aviators. Weather might look good for the moment, but around here anything can happen. It’s good to know what the forecast is. And not just in one location. Since I transit two area micro-climates commuting to work, knowing that weather will be at the end points of my journey are are a minimum requirement. Plus, I’m lazy. Not so lazy I won’t write a program to do this, but lazy in the larger sense, of I just want to hit a button and see all the data I want, not have to wait for the Weather Chanel to decided it’s ready to dispense it’s forecast, or hunt around on various local news sites. Nor, frankly, have to click on TWO hyperlinks to see what weather will be like HERE and THERE. Nope, I’m just too lazy for that, so I’ll spend 8-32 hours figuring out a way to save myself 2-3 minutes a day (I didn’t say I’m always smart, but always lazy). Remember; “Laziness is the father of invention!”. Digressing….
The plan is to use PERL, run every 30 minutes from 5 AM-> 1 AM, and grab the weather page shown above. Parse out only that which I want, and then re-construct my own page on my own server. It’s a basically a mashup page of what I want to see.
Checking the source code of the page, I see that, ugh, NOAA did not supply and useful DIV markers that I can use. So, this will be a rel brute-force process to detect, select, extract and re-construct the page of my dreams. Yes, I can be easily entertained.
<table width="100%" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr valign ="top" align="center"> <td width="11%"><b>Tonight<br></b><br><img src="/images/wtf/nshra50.jpg" width="55" height="58" alt="Scattered Showers Chance for Measurable Precipitation 50%" title="Scattered Showers Chance for Measurable Precipitation 50%" ><br>Scattered<br>Showers<br>Lo <font color="#0033CC">45 °F</font></td><td width="11%"><b>Tuesday<br></b><br><img src="/images/wtf/shra50.jpg" width="55" height="58" alt="Scattered Showers Chance for Measurable Precipitation 50%" title="Scattered Showers Chance for Measurable Precipitation 50%" ><br>Scattered<br>Showers<br>Hi <font color="#FF0000">54 °F</font></td><td width="11%"><b>Tuesday<br>Night</b><br><img src="/images/wtf/nshra30.jpg" width="55" height="58" alt="Scattered Showers Chance for Measurable Precipitation 30%" title="Scattered Showers Chance for Measurable Precipitation 30%" ><br>Scattered<br>Showers<br>Lo <font color="#0033CC">44 °F</font></td><td width="11%"><b>Wednesday<br></b><br><img src="/images/wtf/bkn.jpg" width="55" height="58" alt="Partly Sunny" title="Partly Sunny" ><br>Partly<br>Sunny<br>Hi <font color="#FF0000">57 °F</font></td><td width="11%"><b>Wednesday<br>Night</b><br><img src="/images/wtf/hi_nshwrs30.jpg" width="55" height="58" alt="Chance Showers Chance for Measurable Precipitation 30%" title="Chance Showers Chance for Measurable Precipitation 30%" ><br>Chance<br>Showers<br>Lo <font color="#0033CC">46 °F</font></td><td width="11%"><b>Thursday<br></b><br><img src="/images/wtf/shra30.jpg" width="55" height="58" alt="Chance Showers Chance for Measurable Precipitation 30%" title="Chance Showers Chance for Measurable Precipitation 30%" ><br>Chance<br>Showers<br>Hi <font color="#FF0000">59 °F</font></td><td width="11%"><b>Thursday<br>Night</b><br><img src="/images/wtf/nshra30.jpg" width="55" height="58" alt="Chance Showers Chance for Measurable Precipitation 30%" title="Chance Showers Chance for Measurable Precipitation 30%" ><br>Chance<br>Showers<br>Lo <font color="#0033CC">46 °F</font></td><td width="11%"><b>Friday<br></b><br><img src="/images/wtf/shra.jpg" width="55" height="58" alt="Chance Showers" title="Chance Showers" ><br>Chance<br>Showers<br>Hi <font color="#FF0000">59 °F</font></td><td width="11%"><b>Friday<br>Night</b><br><img src="/images/wtf/nshra.jpg" width="55" height="58" alt="Chance Showers" title="Chance Showers" ><br>Chance<br>Showers<br>Lo <font color="#0033CC">46 °F</font></td></tr> </table>
Snagging that out of the documents for 2-3 locations will get me what I want. It should look something like this, but the example here does not have any stylesheets applied, it’s a direct rip and mash.
There are a couple of problems with that page though, it’s going to take up too much real estate on the final page. Here, it’s almost too large to view on my laptop’s main screen. So, some embedded CSS is in order. This hear overloads the td type, making any text found within anytd rendered at 80% of the normal size. This also overloads creates a style named headish that I is applied to the section titles:
<style>
.headish {
font-weight:bold;
background-color:#CCC;
font-size: 1.2em;}
td { font-size: 0.8em; }
</style>
The result of that very small change, gives me a smaller visual footprint, and formatting at little more pleasing to my sensibilities:
A little more hammering around in the stylesheet, and adding a CURRENT and High/Low temps forecast for the day. A little closer to the desired mockup. I still need to locate a suitable news feed to process:
Getting the gearmand deamon running. Should be simple work, yet, as with a lot of thing in the software world, it’s not quite that simple. My first attempt to start up gearmand failed with the following error:
Corsa-3:~ root# gearmand
Error creating socket: IO::Socket::INET: Address already in use
Corsa-3:~ root#
Now, I’m not sure why that would be the case, since I checked the system process list and did NOT see any other instance of gearman executing (if you are not sure what you are looking at, the only thing found matching gearman, was the grep against the process list itself, not what I’m looking for)
Corsa-3:~ root# ps -ealf | grep gearman
0 33324 32942 4006 0 31 0 2425520 168 - R+ 5bb5a80 ttys000 0:00.00 grep gearman 0:00.00
A check of netstat did not reveal a listener on either of the known gearman ports (7003 or the new official port: 4730 ).
** TO BE COMPLETED **
Square Root of 225:
More on the way!