It seems I will speaking at FOSDEM next year in the bsd devroom. I will be presenting " Transport Evolution on top of the BSD's ", whatever that means :D. I also have another talk in a similar vein submitted to the Real Time Communications devroom, it looks like my first FOSDEM will be a busy one.
Reading: Nemesis Games, Idoru
— Archillect (@archillect) December 11, 2016
It is Sunday, so that makes seven days of writing .
Reading: Nemesis Games, Idoru
Yesterday I finally got sick of windows 10 and installed Ubuntu 16.10 on the HP Stream 7. There are load of instructions out there to install earlier versions, but nothing up to date.
Intel created a world of pain when it introduced 32bit UEFI for 64bit machines, the Stream 7 is one of many Baytrail devices that have this ridiculous boot firmware configuration. Linux distros have completely ignore this boot combination and 3 years after these devices started appearing haven't started to ship the bootia32.efi files on the install media.
Thankfully there are people spinning builds with the correct media and a whole load of drivers to help support silly little Intel convertible tablet things. I used Linuxium's Ubuntu 16.10 build. I flashed it to a USB stick and used my awesome little otg usb hub to connect the install media. I did have to disable secure boot in the bios to get the media to boot.
I needed a separate keyboard for the install, but the touch screen and WiFi worked out of the box. The hardware support is okay, there is no screen brightness control out of the box and suspend is missing. I spent a while setting up the on screen keyboard onboard , it looks like I am going to have to create my own layout to get a split keyboard.
The install was painless, much much easier than the Baytrail device I tried to use ubuntu on in 2014. It does still baffle me that distros don't have boot support for these devices on the installers.
Reading: Nemesis Games
Congress is coming, 18 days to go!
The whole point of sharing my plans yesterday was to make sure I actually do them. Easiest on the list is to set up the UDP controlled blinkenlights panel. I am going to attach this to my bag or something, there must be cool blinkenlights everywhere I go.
The panel is a 8x8 Addressable RGB pixel array made from the super popular WS2812. Control is a NodeMCU board running micropython, the NodeMCU board is a ESP8266 broken out in a sensible way, it means I can get this cool little project on the network.
I have some pieces of clear acrylic and foam sandwiched together to diffuse the light, all held everything together with some bolts. Here is the small test script I have put together so far:
import machine
import neopixel
import time
pin = machine.Pin(14, machine.Pin.OUT)
np = neopixel.NeoPixel(pin, 64)
skull = [
0,0,1,1,1,1,1,0,
0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,
1,0,0,1,0,0,1,1,
1,0,0,1,0,0,1,1,
0,1,1,0,1,1,1,0,
0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,
0,0,0,1,0,1,0,0,
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,]
while True:
colour = uos.urandom(3)
for x in range(len(skull)):
if skull[x]:
np[x] = colour
np.write()
time.sleep(1)
I am going to accept any 8x8 RGB frame (any 192 byte packet) that is sent and take any other shorter packet and use it to set the colour on the skull. I will include a timeout to change the colour so it isn't just a static panel.
If I find a load of spare time between the sofa cushions I will throw together a web interface.
Reading: Virtual Light
The most important twitter account counts down the remaining days to congress. Today there are just 19 days left until a hole opens in the universe and excellent people appear to keep the base going.
Ignoring the large amount of realwork™ I have to do, there is a lot of important stuff to be prepared for congress. I have tried to avoid committing to doing anything on my holiday, but I plan to bring the following three ideas:
Only 19 days left until #33C3
— Waiting for 33C3 (@c3daysleft) December 8, 2016
Reading: Virtual Light