Category Archives: Development

camera dead

Posted on by
Reply

You might have noticed that my last few posts have been image-less. This isn’t because I’m protesting visual communication. I love it – in fact, I’m downright jealous of what most other bloggers pull off with the visual design of their sites!

My camera died. Yeah, the “new old” Olympus C-5050 I bought broke. I only have myself to blame. The camera was on my kitchen counter. I reached for it, but scooted it off the counter, dashing it on the floor. The damage could have been worse – only the mode dial came off. I can’t just reattach it using the screw hack someone posted, because the impact on the floor cut through traces on the flexible PCB. And they’re too fine to bridge easily. Besides, disassembling to the point where I could even consider repairing that damage ended up cracking a couple of very delicate plastic tabs, ones designed to hold the whole thing together. I could try and glue all of it together, but…

Someone on eBay has the entire mode dial assembly for $39, plus $8 for shipping to Canada. Soon I’ll have a working camera again, and by then the studio should be warmer, so lots more pictures and music for everyone.

Oh, and I’ll have my first actual honest to goodness conference submission done by then too (deadline: Dec. 18th). It’s been a long time coming but it’s good to have actual research data and prepare it for publication again. YES!

howto fix mackie onyx firewire under osx 10.5.5

Posted on by
16

After upgrading Waynemanor Studio’s Intel-based Mac to OSX 10.5 (10.5.5), I was unable to get the Mackie Onyx 1640 FireWire interface to stream audio successfully to/from the Mac. When playing audio from the Mac to the Onyx (just from the System Preferences Sound panel, selecting the Onyx FireWire 0838 output for system sounds and clicking the Purr sound – no DAW software), I’d get the spinning beachball for ~10s, then stuttering, clicking, popping sound would come out. Actually running my DAW made things worse; the application would hang, and Force Quit didn’t help. (Power cycling the Onyx allowed the Force Quit to work.)

Mackie lists this audio driver rollback (PDF) on their website, but the first try at it didn’t work. Here’s how I managed to finally get everything working correctly under Apple OSX 10.5.5:

  1. Sign up for an Apple Developer Connection account. It’s free, and required to download the software you need.
  2. Download both the FireWire SDK 26 for Mac OSX and the FireWire SDK 24 for Mac OSX.
  3. Mount both image files and install the package files from both (FireWireSDK26.pkg and the confusingly-named FireWireSDK23.pkg). This will create directories under /Developer on your system drive.
  4. From /Developer/FireWireSDK26/FireWireComponents, install the Leopard Final drivers. Reboot.
  5. From /Developer/FireWireSDK26/FireWireComponents, install the FireWireAudio 2.4 drivers. Reboot.
  6. Select Software > Extensions on the left-hand browser. Look for AppleFWAudio, and make sure it is version 2.4.0.
  7. From /Developer/FireWireSDK24/FireWireComponents, install the FireWireAudio 2.0.1 drivers. Reboot
  8. From the Apple menu, select About this Mac, then click the More Info button to start System Profiler.
  9. Select Software > Extensions on the left-hand browser. Look for AppleFWAudio, and make sure it is version 2.0.1.
  10. Go to the System Preferences > Sound panel and try sound output to the Onyx Firewire 0838. It should sound clear as a bell.

I don’t know why installing the latest SDK FW base drivers and the FireWireAudio 2.4 drivers first was required before the 2.0.1 drivers would correctly fire up, but it was. One warning: do not install the Leopard FireWire (not FireWireAudio) drivers from the 24 SDK. This caused my machine not to boot correctly, and I had to repair it using another machine.

Here’s hoping this helps someone out in the wild. I’d post it to the Mackie forum, but the moderators there have yet to enable my posting rights. :(

plurk

Posted on by
3

Well, if you’ve visited my website in the last day, you’ll see I’ve added my plurk widget to the sidebar. I’m finding plurk altogether more motivational than twitter. A recent comparison of the two services I think was unfair to plurk, mostly due to overhyped twitter features that aren’t even working correctly half the time.

Even if Twitter solves their reliability concerns, plurk just feels more alive. It’s not a single thread with everyone’s crap mixed in (and hacks like #hashtags). It’s a threaded timeline: part web forum, part IM, and part IRC. And yes, a bit twitter, too. I like the fact that it’s Web 2.0 enough for my friends who won’t get on IRC (still my #1 place for synchronous) and that the web layout is attractive. The “get more points to get more features” thing is a pain, but I’d rather have that than some sort of “pay us $$ to get more features,” I think.

I moved over to plurk when some of my friends followed Leo Laporte over. I’m not a personality cult-er, but I do like keeping tabs on my friends. And I’m finding that plurk’s interface encourages more synchronous collaboration (read: chatting) than twitter ever did. In about 48h on the service I’ve managed 15 “plurks” (microblog entries) and 38 responses; I never hit that level of engagement with twitter.

Once they add some sort of SMS interface (I can’t get their IM interface to work…) it’ll be a sure fire hit, I think.

So you twitter types out there: would you miss me from twitter if i semi-abandoned it?

ms. “maytag” repairman

Posted on by
1

Tonight I had to repair my own dishwasher. After weeks of dishes coming out dirty, and after reviewing some references, I decided I probably had a bunged up inlet valve. HG Service Engineer for Dishwashers After much disassembly, reassembly, and testing, I discovered:

  • that even modern dishwashers still come with service technician notes behind the kickplate, though they no longer include exploded parts diagrams,
  • that, if a chopstick breaks in half in the washer, it will melt partially, then drop into the chopper assembly, further mangling things,
  • that rocks in the chopper assembly are also bad things, though the built-in plastic guard prevents them from becoming horrible things,
  • that the rubber valve assembly in the tube that feeds the middle and upper spin arms is horribly specified, and easily sticks open,
  • that by turning said valve assembly upside down, you can prevent a large leak (by mating the stuck-open hole with the normal position of the upper drawer – high or low),
  • that increasing numbers of parts inside dishwashers are now plastic, grrrr,
  • that plastic inlet valves are fragile, and moving them even the slighest bit for purposes of service can cause them to start leaking a bit during inrush of fluids (fixed for now with old absorbant facerag on floor),
  • that someone had rearranged most of the hand tools in the basement (shakes fist), and
  • that the built-in diagnostic mode for the dishwasher is fun to use.

I am waiting for the Good News that should come when the dishwasher ends its normal cycle in about 90 minutes, I open the door, and the dishes and utensils are actually clean.

joanbits 2008.03

Posted on by
1

As the snow finally melts away, I start to get busier and busier. Here’s what I’ve been up to the past week:

  • Work: supporting new projects as usual, writing position papers, working on newsletters, technical enablement, beta testing.
  • House: cooking every night (pasta from scratch, ramen from scratch, gourmet hamburgers…will try and post some pics soon), planning garden, staring at wall that needs repairing and trying to motivate to fix it, regular cleaning, indoor gardening…
  • School: Developing axiology, epistemology, methodology for design research approach. Gave guest lecture on internal Wikipedia politics.
  • Other: Dealing with horrendous migraine. Developing novel database application. Attended One Of A Kind show with friends and got fabulous clothing, jewelry, housewares. Reverse engineering synth. Looking at motorcycle today. Petting cat to deal with stress from everything else i listed.

thing-a-day 2008 over

Posted on by
2

Here’s a photo collage of the most photogenic things I made for this year’s thing-a-day. Edit: If you can’t view the video below, the original is here.

I’d recommend thing-a-day to anyone who is looking to push their comfort zone and prove to themselves that they can be creative, and can produce something a day. It was eye-opening for me.

steampunk workspace

Posted on by
Reply

There’s been a lot of blog linkage recently to steampunk computing modifications – steampunk keyboard one-offs, commercial keyboard offerings, laptops, R2-D2s, etc. I love the aesthetic, but I don’t really have the time (or cash) to fully modify my computing setup. Instead, when it came time to soundproof my 2nd story home office, and I had to remount my Ergotron laptop/monitor/keyboard arms, I decided to add some “steampunk” appointments.

Behold the steampunk Ergotron pole mounts:

More pre-construction, fabrication and glamour shots are available. Details after the jump.
Continue reading →

wohbits 2007.12

Posted on by
Reply

some neat tidbits from the past 24h:

fixed lj-pic comments

Posted on by
Reply

If you’re a LiveJournal user, and you want your LJ picture to come up when you comment on my blog (and don’t have a Gravatar), enter your email address as <lj-user>@livejournal.com. This will display your LJ default picture instead of asking Gravatar for your picture/avatar.

If you’d rather use your real email address, you should head over to Gravatar and register, uploading your pic there.