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Rover Mark II – Codename: Ironhide

18 Aug

Hello folkes, geekes and geekettes. (yes, the extra “e”s are intentional).

Preamble

Last December, I gave you Rover, my first autonomous vehicle / prototype. My dreams for him where very very many, like, for starters, removing those blasted bumpers (tactile sensors) and replacing them with sonar ranging. Unfortunately, time and money wouldn’t permit. I got held up with other things and then realized that programming sonar range-finding in Assembly is not the same as programming simple input/outputs. Also, I didn’t have any sonar modules to work with.

Eventually, I got so busy I never even stepped into the lab for almost 5 months. Until recently.

I recently discovered (and fell in in love with) the Arduino. I realized it could relieve me of a whole lot of headaches since it was; cheaper, easier to program (the Arduino / Processing language is a variant of C/Java, which I had never learnt, but was much simpler than Assembly), the programming board was cheap, the chips were cheap and best of all, it had a vibrant active community. A true tinkerer’s dream.

The thing with robotics or embedded electronics is you have to worry about mechanics, electronics, and software. It made a lot more sense for me to be able to code in a higher level language than working at a lower abstraction level where I was moving bits around. It’s cooler yes, but it’s a level of complexity I don’t need (yet).

About a month ago, I finally got the Arduino, and after learning its basic functionality, I shelved it away for about three weeks. During the past week however, after relocating my lab to another more spacious room and moving the home office into the former lab, I unshelved the Arduino and starting tinkering again, with more determination. Here’s an update.

Building Ironhide

First, Rover Mark II is code-named Ironhide. Yes, transforming robots rule. Also, Transformers messed up my young tinkerer mind completely.

12th August 2010 – Building the Arduino Module

I wasn’t too keen on frying the $25 Arduino Deumilanove development board, and I needed something (inexpensive) that I could plug directly into my projects, while also being able to exchange it between different projects. I’d ordered for an extra Arduino bootloaded ATMega 328p and a 16Mhz oscillator, so that was enough to build one. Started building the Arduino controller board on 12th August, was done by 13th August. This is what it looks like so far. (Sorry, these pictures are much fuzzier than the others).

Arduino controller board next to Deumilanove

I’ve put side by side comparisons with the professional board to show you how crappy mine is, but it works like a charm. I also want to add an in-circuit serial programmer of FTDI USB chip to allow me to program without moving the chip from the board or from Ironhide. (more…)

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an ode to boring (and the bored)

10 Aug

Do you like boring?

Boring is safe and guaranteed. Boring is conventional and unchanging. Boring is bureaucratic, ridden with fail safe policies and guidelines chiseled in stone, locked away in a bullet proof glass cage. To be seen and followed, but not touched.

Boring is following protocol and standard procedure. Boring is looking at your friend’s boring car and thinking how nice and good it would be to have one just like that.

Boring is when you’re being evaluated and you know that the passing score is 75% and you aim for 76%, because it’s easier.

Boring is accepting that “that’s just how things are, so it’s aight!” following rules that don’t make sense because, heck! that’s what everyone has always done, and that’s what you’re going to keep doing.

Boring is a steady, dull 9-5 job. Yes, it gets the bills paid, puts food on the table. But it’s boring! Boring is being scared of change, of a destabilization of your status quo, of the sheer panic that grips you when you realise that your salary is going to be a few days late and you’ve queued up bills.

Note: [ Actually, the scared-shitless mindset is predictable and boring, but the panic, my goodness! is not. I like panic. ] (more…)

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MTN 3G+ Usage Scenario Review and Orange vs MTN

5 Aug

Disclaimer: This is NOT a paid review. No one buys the Rogue King’s opinion!

A few weeks ago, I received a request from MTN, asking if I’d like to take one of their new 3G+ Modems for a test drive. Now, I don’t know whether this was because of my rant on Facebook about them disconnecting me without my notice, or simply because people think I know these “IT things”, but either way, I wasn’t going to turn down free internet.

So, giddy with excitement, I picked up the modem from MTN towers, happily went back to the office and gave away my Orange modem. For a while at least. I wanted an unbiased, no-backup experience with the modem.

I’ll get this out of the way first:  The test modem I received is shaped like the Jabulani World Cup soccer ball with a very short USB cable, so it’s very inconveniencing both when carrying and using, as it gets in the way of other USB ports both on my laptop, and my workstation at home. It looks like this:

I believe the consumer modems look as sleek as the ones on the billboards.

Setup is extremely simple. Plug in the modem, Windows discovers a series of devices, asks you to accept a few things, installs them and you’re good to go. The only glitch I got was my modem refusing to connect, but it turned out it simply hadn’t been activated yet.

So I’ve been using the modem for three weeks now and as promised, I want to share my experiences.

Overall, so far, I can comfortably say I do not miss my Orange modem.  We are starting to get closer to our broadband dream.

I’m a relatively heavy internet user, I’ve so far used 14GB of the service in the last three weeks, and of that only about 3GB were torrents. My typical daily usage scenario is as follows:

  • Simultaneous viewing of video tutorials online while
  • Downloading huge videos (average 300MB),
  • Downloading source files and smaller videos (average 20-50MB). At any given time I have almost 5 such downloads running on Download Accelerator and a hundred more in the queue.
  • Uploading heavy files (about 8GB in the past three weeks excluding torrent data). We’re talking FTP, Photoshop attachments, image uploads, zipped document uploads, etc.
  • The average website I visit is very heavy on images (like http://www.africandigitalart.com/2010/08/coker-character-design/)
  • I’ve hit maximum download speeds of about 630kbps (not consistently though), my average is 200-400kbps.

Note that the above usage is in moderation because I’m afraid I’ll get cut off from over-stressing a free sample product… also, I don’t know if the test modems have data caps.
(more…)

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no more fiction

18 May

Hello, Reader Dearest.

After doing many funny brain things, I have decided that I will no longer write fiction on this blog. The reasons are many, the deliberations were long and tedious, but I have made a decision.

In summary;

  1. I want this blog to go back to its original theme. Life, Design, Business, Technology.
  2. Much of what I write here is heavily misconstrued as being true, even when clearly labeled as fiction.
  3. I like to keep things separate, helps me focus better.
  4. I want to write better, with more thought and meaning to the process, not a hurried scribble in one sitting.
  5. I can’t really write some of the stuff I want to write, for fear of content dilution, misinterpretation, or very simply, professional image.

So, no more fiction, on this blog at least.

I’m working on another blog, which will be strictly fiction under a different name. And it will be no no-holds barred, no reader-friendly censoring and no politically correct BS. It will be light and funny, dark and gritty, sad and contemplative or whatever I fancy. I will write anything, everything and nothing.

And maybe, just maybe, you may like it.

I’ll probably lose many readers here, but it is necessary.

This blog will not die, so stay tuned, I’ll be posting a link in a few days. Maybe. Because it may be a closed, invited readers only blog, I don’t know.

In any case, I’ll see you on the other side.

With much sincerity.

The Rogue King.

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Alea iacta est

19 Apr

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus,  a Roman equestrian and historian, is famous for writing a series of biographies on Roman rulers, especially Julius Ceasar.

In his work, Vita Divi Iuli (The Life of the deified Julius), Suetonius tells the story of Julius Ceasar’s famous crossing of the Rubicon River. The Rubicon divided the Roman Gaulish Province of Cisalpine from Italy. A Roman law to protect the republic from internal military rebellion prevented the crossing of this river by a general leading a legion. To do so was to declare war on the Roman Empire.

Which, of course is exactly what Julius Ceasar did in 49 BC. It started what eventually led to transformation of Rome from a republic to the Roman Empire.

Suetonius famously writes that as soon as Julius Ceasar crossed the Rubicon, he uttered the phrase:

“Alea iacta est.”

The die has been cast.

The phrase is now more commonly used to denote a “point of no return”, in which a decision and an action has been taken that cannot be revoked, rescinded or otherwise back-tracked.

In many, many ways, for me,

Alea iacta est.

—

Offtopic: It’s good to be back.

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epic fail: chrome black-listing google.com

11 Jan

Google and Chrome not playing nice

Google.com and Google Chrome not playing nice. Click image for larger picture.

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TEDx Kampala, with Sir Tim Berners Lee

16 Nov

If you’ve heard of TED, then you know it’s a big deal. A very big deal. It’s an annual event.

ted_logo

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.

On 23rd November 2009, Kampala will be hosting a local version of TED, called TEDx

TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading.” The program is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.

At TEDx events, unique talks given by live speakers combine with TEDTalks videos to spark deep conversation and connections. TEDx events are fully planned and coordinated independently, on a community-by-community basis.

The TEDx Kampala event is being facilitated by the Linux Users’ Group and the main speaker will be Sir Tim Berners Lee. For those outside the techsphere, Sir Tim Berners Lee is widely known as the inventor of the World Wide Web.

Yep.

The inventor of the World Wide Web is going to be in Uganda, sharing his wisdom with us mere mortals.

Honestly, I’m excited beyond belief, a fact that is frightfully compounded by the realization that I have been asked to speak at the event as well.

So come show some love, will ya?

More information here.

—

Rogue FM: Fernando Ortega – Lord of Eternity

—

Offtopic:

“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.”
- Louisa May Alcott

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Massive Geek-out! a.k.a this is how mad-scientists get started.

5 Oct

Howdy, world. Apologies for a massively neglected blog. I bring you tidings from the world of dastardly dangerous dragons and deadly delectable damsels in distress (more commonly known as business and life).

I have been doing a little too much running around for my own good, but hopefully, things have achieved a semblance of calm and the chaos has subsided somewhat.

Disclaimer: I think on some subliminal level, I’m trying to make up for the weeks without blogging. a.k.a this post is LONG. You’ve been warned.

Now, having thus dispensed with the niceties, I shall let you in on the single most momentous occasion in my extremely faceted life ( we’re talking about the geek-facet of me this time).

First, though, a little history. Okay, it’s not so little, but bear with me, aight?

As a kid, I loved taking things apart to see what made them tick, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering father. It didn’t matter if it was wooden, plastic, metallic, electronic…  If I could reach it, it was going apart. And of course I’d try to put it back together, and most times, it would fail to work again.

As I grew older, I began experimenting more with making my own stuff. That made life a little easier for dear old dad, but the neighborhood suffered in turn. See, these things I was building needed parts, and the parts they needed most were wires. The kind of wires that chain-link fences and barbed wire are made of. So my cronies and I would traverse the neighborhood, roaming far and wide, armed with pliers, all sorts of metallic accessories, and most importantly, teeth. In our wake, we left countless homes defenseless and property owners seething with righteous indignation. (more…)

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Ugandan Riots – Citizen journalism comes of age

16 Sep

If there is one thing that we have learnt from the Buganda riots over the past weekend, it is this:

In a country where the mainstream media is at the mercy of its government, or is oblivious to what’s going on, or does not have the tools or facilities to report real-time, 24 hours a day, during a crisis, there is a serious need for unhindered, unfiltered, on-the-ground citizen journalism.

During the worst parts of the riots, there was a massive media blackout, and TV and radio stations were courting irrelevance. I could not believe that at a time when a country was burning itself to the ground, most TV stations were showing music videos, foreign news and Spanish soaps.

Some of us decided to fill in the gaps by tweeting and sharing what we were seeing and experience on the ground, and the steady Twitter stream [ #Kampala ] helped keep the world informed. Our simple and humble attempts did a much better job of providing realtime news updates than the mainstream media could. Tumwijuke [ Twitter - Blog ] and Uganda Talks [ Twitter - Blog ] especially did a fantastic job of verifying rumours and provide the in-depth journalistic expertise that citizen journalism often lacks. Rhino gave us some fantastic photos, and the Ugandan blogsphere shared their views and opinions as events unfolded. Tucked away in a tiny room at UTL, coding furiously, The 27th Comrade gave us the tools to tweet free of charge, via uganda telecom [ Twitter ].

It was scary, it was fun, it was deadly, it was beautiful. (more…)

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you. yes you. you’re a wuss.

17 Aug

Yes. You are.

Allow me to explain.

First, the general description of a wuss is; “a person who is physically weak and ineffectual”. It has been used more recently however, to derogatorily  describe a man who is weak, ineffectual, effeminate and wishy-washy, especially when it comes to the ladies.

Some friends and I have a long running joke about wusses, sometimes even dissing ourselves in the process. Don’t sweat it, it’s a guy thing.

So, couple of days back, at the week-long peak of this joke, we’re in an informal meeting discussing a way forward on some project and because someone was being indecisive about a certain action, we jokingly called him a wuss. We laughed it off and eventually forged a way forward.

That night however, those same words came back to torment me during my quiet moment of self-reflection, and the reality hit me hard;

I realised that I was being a (business) wuss in so many ways.

It was a very painful blow to the gut. (more…)

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