Well.. Its been nearly two years… I’m getting great at this whole writing frequently thing.. Anywho.. I’m at the University of Washington now.. Applying to the department of Electrical Engineering for spring quarter.. Hopefully that will work out well. Finals are next week so im basically studying. Chem, diffeq, Greek.. its all great stuff.
Well I finally figured out how to get Serial devices to work as virtual keyboards. Turns out there is a Userspace app called kbde that works great for this exact purpose. Took lots of googleing to find it but it let me breath new life into an old device.
This could also be used for taking signals from embedded computers (ardinos anyone?) and using them as HID-ish devices. The following command seems to work best for me:
sudo kbde –delay 3 -i /dev/ttyUSB0
A delay of 0 seems sort of unreliable from my limited testing and anyway, whats a few milliseconds between friends? The default delay of 300ms is sort of annoying though.
When installing, make sure to use the version from CVS. The latest release on sourceforge has some compatibility issues with Ubuntu 9.10.
Well.. Its been quite a while since i posted. Recently i have been working through a number of books including The Promise by Chaim Potok, and The Turning Point By Malcolm Gladwell. There has been plenty of extra time in the last while.
I got back from Atlanta a couple weeks ago, and came home with 3rd place in Cyber Security at the National FBLA competition. (basically a security+ type exam.)
Im leaving soon for greece, and ill be blogging about the books i read on here. I recently remembered the book “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” If you have not read it, I encourage you to. It is a great coming of age novel, and i found quite a few things I could relate to.
Since im going to be away for so long, I am going to keep posting to my blog, to let you stalkers/friends/foes know what im up to, and mostly because ill probably be bored out of my mind.
At the ubuntu booth at linux fest NorthWest this year, we gave out around 450 cds, many of them 8.04 cds. We had quite a good time helping out and seeng the interest. i think overall, we did quite well this year.
I got to see Matthew Craig again this year, who visited from the East coast saying that people at other such conferences “just dont get it” and commented on their iPhone toating ability.
I also got to meet the author of Hackett and Bankwell, a comic that introduces people to Linux, GNU, and ubuntu, and explains how to do some basic things. I highly recomend it to anyone who is trying to get family members on board. you can order it at http://hackettandbankwell.com/ .
p.s. Im going to post my slides from both toorcon seattle and LFNW in the coming weeks when i get some extra time.
Linux Fest North West looms closer and closer. It will be the 26th and 27th of April, thats the weekend after this coming one. I will be at the ubuntu PNW booth as well as giving a talk about Using FOSS in Public libraries, with a focus on open-ils.
Ill put slides online afterward.For more information about linux fest northwest, go to http://www.linuxfestnorthwest.org/ .
Pablos, a friend of friends, has found how to “hack a RFID credit card for $9″… Very interesting on boing boing…
Seeing an in person demo blew me away to the possibilites. I hope this causes the credit card companies to actually think about what they are doing.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/19/bbtv-how-to-hack-an.html
Well… As some of you may know, Ill be going to Ontario, CA for the Greek Orthodox Folk dance Festival in a bit… Im still getting used to all the practices…
On another note, Bob has been sick for a bit, and had a hurt hind leg. The Vet says he is going to need to go under the knife so that the thing can heal.
Anyway… on to boreing life…
On a tech nerd thing, a couple weeks ago, i had some fun at the PNA trying to freeze water with an electric field… it appears that it didnt work, but we were getting a lot of arcing.
I just upgraded to Hardy Heron Alpha today, and cant see much of a difference, it was painless.
Well… i have had the new design up for a while now. It was created by Andreas Viklund.
I recomend anyone looking for a website template to look at his designs first, and then go to opendesign.org, openwebdesign.org, and oswd.org in that order. (the later being a bit outdated and not getting all the new designs).
Life has been sorta busy after christmas break, with everything takeing up time. One of my new years resolutions was to blog more, so here i am. There should be a lot more philosopical stuff on this blog, so if that makes you mad, dont read it. Plain and simple. Also i would like to point out the blogroll that should be up in a few min.
After watching the movie Romero, we were asked to refelct on it in an artistic way. This was my response.
http://paulbartell.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/dsc_01212.JPG
http://paulbartell.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/p1010012.JPG