Thursday, April 28, 2016

Kowloon Walled City

Fascinating, some links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City

http://www.metropolismag.com/Point-of-View/April-2014/The-Architecture-of-Kowloon-Walled-City-An-Excerpt-from-City-of-Darkness-Revisited/

Monday, April 18, 2016

Tadpole links

Saved research results from the tadpole project:

This is the first page that came up when looking up what pH I should be trying to regulate to. It has a lot of generic info, but does seem to cater to really serious frog breeders with talk about running 'algae tanks', and several separate breeding tanks. This page mentions pH, ammonia, nitrates as water quality issues, and has a section on food but that section is mostly about breeding your own algae: http://www.pollywogsworldoffrogs.com/Text-html/tadpole-care.html

From trying to figure out if there was a fungal problem with our tadpoles:

The antifungal that was at the pet store was something called Acriflavine. I tried doing some googling for that and whether it was compatible with frogs and didn't get much useful information. Strangely what is available are mostly scientific studies; what that most likely indicates is that the manufacturers of the supplement are not advertising it for use on tadpoles.

Here's a forum thread where somebody had a problem with established frogs getting white fuzz. The situation also included ammonia and nitrate buildup; one of the comments pins the blame on nitrates and has a link further explaining a "nitrate cycle". http://www.fishlore.com/fishforum/amphibians/117897-dying-frog.html

Not any real info here about fungus, but a very nice story of a tadpole that made it to being a frog, with lots of beautiful forum support for the nice lady that was raising it: http://www.fishlore.com/fishforum/amphibians/152646-froglet-tail.html

I was sent or found a few links for generic tadpole raising hints and tips.

This is a cute little guide with nice pictures. It has instructions for making your own tadpole food by boiling lettuce, something I've seen elsewhere. http://www.wikihow.com/Raise-Tadpoles

This guide is also nice. It seems to show the same level of crowding that we had, but has a lot of cautions to do frequent tank cleaning which is probably where we went wrong. http://www.wikihow.com/Care-for-Common-Frog-Tadpoles

Here's the guide that Beth sent: http://exoticpets.about.com/od/frogsandtoads/a/tadpoles.htm

And some advice that Beth sent about a high-protein diet for later tadpole stages: http://www.mumsnet.com/.../pets/978641-My-Tadpoles-are-dying







Monday, April 11, 2016

Debian how to enable pcf8563 in device tree

Clearing browser tabs from an old effort to try again to get the pcf8563 RTC chip to install into my Debian OS using Device Tree. I was never able to figure out how to get the chip installed this way, instead I got the driver module compiled. These links mostly don't make sense to me but I'm saving them for future reference if I eventually grow to understand Device Tree better.

An email or forum thread from somebody who made some changes to the commonly available driver for some reason associated with Device Tree interfaces. I'm not sure what lkml is though: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/18/241

Another message from the same thread from somebody who made changes to the driver because of Device Tree needs: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/18/241

A list which seems to indicate that the pcf8563 is "trivial" and supported by Device Tree. But I have no idea how that helps: http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/i2c/trivial-devices.txt?v=3.14

More about Device Tree and I2C, in this case for Raspberry Pi. This should help somehow with the pcf8563 which is an i2c device. This document seems to show how to enable RTCs including the pcf8563, and may actually work but I couldn't figure it out: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=97314

This seems to be a tutorial on how to write Device Tree overlays, and mentions the pcf8563 but again I wasn't sure what to do here: https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/blob/master/boot/overlays/README





Wednesday, April 6, 2016

DoubleCAD XT 5 flatten

So, for some reason DoubleCAD XT is free and I've been using it until I can find my old AutoCAD CD. DoubleCAD is so like AutoCAD it's eerie.

I need to make fiddly official drawing files of my Front Panel Express panels. No problem, Front Panel Express exports to DXF. I can open the DXF file in DoubleCAD just fine. Just select all, paste into a drawing border in paper space in a drawing file and done, right?

Unfortunately not. The result looks fine, but after saving and reopening, all holes and standoffs on the panel come up painfully rendered with thousands of cross hatches apparently an attempt to show the holes' depth. It seems that Front Panel Designer exported the front panel as 3D DXF which is admirable but for some reason when I paste those 3D objects into my flat drawing in DoubleCAD, DoubleCAD it wants to do something special for me.

No problem, just flatten the DXF from Front Panel Designer, right? No, for some reason DoubleCAD XT 5 doesn't have the "FLATTEN" command like AutoCAD does. On the TurboCAD forums this feature is frequently requested, and although TurboCAD, DoubleCAD's parent company, gives the illusion at least of being a lot more sensitive to their customers than say EagleCAD, there is still no Flatten command. So customers post their favorite workarounds in the forums. There may be some trick to using the "place on workspace" command, but most workarounds that I've found so far involve editing the panel in Model Space, which is 3D, exploding all blocks, selecting everything and doing a cutclip and then pasting into paper space which supposedly flattens the exploded objects.

Sometimes this doesn't always work they way I expect however. Sometimes when I think I've flattened the model, I save it and reopen it and it shows the depth rendering still. My present theory is that I need to use the "explode" command several times. The last time I got it to work, the process seemed to be that I selected everything, used explode several times (which can only be done in Model space), then manually set the SizeZ for the entire group to 0, then cut everything and pasted it into Paper space and then back into Model space to verify that SizeZ stays 0, then saved and reopened to verify that SizeZ was still 0 and there was no extra rendering.

Here are a couple of forum threads where folks suggest their methods for flattening drawings. Many writers seem to agree that using a third application, ProgeCAD, is the easiest answer but I really wanted something that would do the job entirely in DoubleCAD.

This thread mentions ProgeCAD, talks a lot about something called pick-point hatch which I don't understand, somebody proposed the cutting and pasting into Paper space to flatten, and somebody else mentioned needing to use explode first if there are 3D blocks. Manually setting Z=0 is also mentioned, also a different command to change the elevation although the command syntax is not clear: http://forums.doublecad.com/index.php?topic=446.0

Here is another forum thread where setting Z=0 is mentioned, although it also mentions using the "place on workplane" command after that which never seemed to help me. ProgeCAD is also mentioned: http://forums.doublecad.com/index.php?topic=684.0

Here's how to do it in AutoCAD: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-to-flatten-a-drawing-so-all-linework-is-at-an-elevation-of-0.html

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

full spectrum light bulbs aquarium

The pet store employee that Lisa bought the plants for the aquarium from recommended that we get a "full spectrum" light to help them grow. Many aquariums have simple fluorescent tube lights for which it is a simple matter to buy the "full spectrum" tube. Our yard-sale 10 gallon tank however has two Edison-base incandescent bulbs instead that are unconventionally tube shaped. There were two options for replacing these bulbs.

GE makes a line of incandescent bulbs under the "Reveal" brand that they sometimes market as "full spectrum". They seem to be simple regular incandescents that have a special type of glass that filters out a lot of yellow. These can be bought either frosted or clear. Here are some links that could be used to order these:

https://www.lightbulbs.com/product/ge-48709/?source=GooglePPC-ProductAds&gclid=CJ683Yzb98sCFcNehgodNd4Ing

http://www.homedepot.com/p/GE-Reveal-40-Watt-Incandescent-T10-Tubular-Clear-Light-Bulb-40T10RVL-CD1-TP6/100306393?keyword=GE+Reveal+T10

http://www.elightbulbs.com/GE-48707-40T10RVLCD1-Daylight-Full-Spectrum-Light-Bulb&replace=yes

Apparently this tube shape bulb is a type T10.

I bought a couple of the Reveal bulbs at Home Depot, and they got blisteringly hot and one burned out after three days.

Fortunately, there turns out to be a CFL version of the bulb, in a perfect T10 exact replacement package. The color spectrum is 65K which is advertised as "Daylight" which should be good for plants.

http://www.bulborama.com/7-WATT-TUBULAR-T10-CFL-65K-SUPRA-LIFE-COMPACT-FLUORESCENT-LIGHT-BULB-p963.html?AdID=13820cm00cm0F00102&gclid=CNu76Kzc98sCFcdehgodj-0Ouw
.

I got two from Bulborama and they are working great. The aquarium plants are growing like weeds under their light. Interestingly, this bulb can be bought from a variety of sources, and also comes in a "warm" 27K version.

Here it is at Amazon. Note the incredible array of alternate products also available in the T-10 shape, from LED to "vintage" incandescents: http://www.amazon.com/TUBULAR-DAYLIGHT-FLUORESCENT-INCANDESCENT-REPLACEMENT/dp/B00171OTU8





Power Point turn snap to grid off

It was fiendishly difficult where to find the option to enable and disable this setting. Uncharacteristically, the support page from M$ had very clear instructions that helped:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Turn-the-snap-to-grid-and-snap-to-object-options-on-or-off-424ef04b-63c0-4815-b0ad-821d2e9b3c2e#bmppt

Excel conditional formatting if cell equals previous cell

Setting a column of cells to each show a color if it matches the previous cell in the column is a very quick way to check for doubles. In the versions of Excel that I am using, mostly 2013, this is done by selecting the first (or second) cell in the column, clicking the "Conditional Formatting" button on the ribbon, selecting "New Rule", "Use A Formula", where it says "Format values where this formula is true" enter a simple conditional like "$A2=$A1", click the format button and select a color fill. Then select the cell you just formatted and hit Ctrl-C, select all the other cells in the column and using right click do a "Paste Formatting".

This link has this procedure:

https://www.ablebits.com/office-addins-blog/2014/06/10/excel-conditional-formatting-formulas/

Here's a slightly more involved example:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16175007/excel-conditional-formatting-based-on-cell-and-adjacent-cell-values

Here's the syntax if you want to the conditional formatting to show if two cells on the same row are not equal:

http://superuser.com/questions/637073/excel-conditional-formatting-if-one-column-equal-to-another


Sunday, April 3, 2016

BlueStacks App player Error: Controls created on one thread cannot be parented to a control on a different thread

Having just performed a fresh install of Bluestacks 2 on an machine that never had it, it's running like crap. There are two or three error messages on startup, including the one from the title.

A search on the title error message, got only a few hits, and oddly the one that was most related to the problems that I am seeing was in a M$ knowledge base:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-windows_install/bluestacks-2-not-working-help/0bfcd762-a16f-4f20-bc53-d8dc918d7d0f?auth=1

PDF to DXF converter

There are a lot of options for converting PDF to DXF. Many are online, meaning you upload a file to some site and ask them to return you a DXF. Creepy! Or you can download a (probably malware infested) app. I tried one of them, and it seemed to work okay. Oddly, for the PDF of the DXF drawing that I was trying to convert, it produced both an image and a DXF, and the DXF was a mess and was too big for my viewer until I saved it as a very early version of DXF, then reloaded it and selected all the lines and set the pen to .002". The result then looked basically identical to the original drawing!

The app that I used is this one. It had a 30-conversion free trial. It's normally $180.

http://www.aidecad.com/pdf-to-dxf-converter.html

This one looked nice, although it seemed a little bloated. It has monthly licensing which is insane, but supposedly had a 14 day trial with no features disabled.

http://www.scan2cad.com/pricing/