2013: The Year That Will Be

In the novel Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes, a man named Charlie Gordon with an IQ of 68 is selected to have an operation to increase his intelligence following a similar surgery on a laboratory mouse.  The surgery works but the results turn out to be only temporary.  The story is told through the diary that Charlie keeps as his intelligence shoots up, only to later fade away.

This was one of those books that I was assigned to read in grade school, and it is one of the few that really stuck with me.  It has played on my mind more and more in the last few years.  I am at the age where my mind and body are not quite where they used to be.  I have worn glasses since I was around 10 years old but recently had to go to progressive lenses.  I sometimes have trouble putting a sentence together because the words just don't come (oddly enough, this seems to be restricted to nouns: persons, places or things).  My memory is terrible.

I am stronger than I have ever been but I realize that that won't last forever.  At some point I will go from gaining strength, to maintaining it, and then to losing it.  Aches and pains now stick with me longer.  I think I might have a touch or arthritis in a joint or two.

What to do?  Well...

“The path I choose through the maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being--one of many ways--and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.”

The key in the quote above is "The path I choose...".  Every morning when you wake up gives you the opportunity to make a new and better choice.  I think I let a few too many years just kind of slide by.  A friend of mine likes to say that "Youth is wasted on the young."  Indeed.  But no more.

"I'm like a man who's been half-asleep all his life, trying to find out what he was like before he woke up."

I now regularly challenge myself both physically and mentally.  I want to use my time to reach my goals and get things done.  I love the internet for letting me expand my horizons into areas I never knew existed or thought I'd be able to do.  For example, I was never much of a cook but thanks to Sous Vide and a little motivation, I can whip up a pork tenderloin or turkey breast that is better than any restaurant in town.  And with a few simple techniques, I can serve that with a slice of bread so good it would make you cry...

... Like This Blue Cheese & Toasted Sesame Seed Bread

Now more than ever, I feel at the top of my game.

“I'm living at a peak of clarity and beauty I never knew existed. Every part of me is attuned to the work. I soak it up into my pores during the day, and at night—in the moments before I pass off into sleep—ideas explode into my head like fireworks. There is no greater joy than the burst of solution to a problem. Incredible that anything could happen to take away this bubbling energy, the zest that fills everything I do. It's as if all the knowledge I've soaked in during the past months has coalesced and lifted me to a peak of light and understanding. This is beauty, love, and truth all rolled into one. This is joy.”

Accomplishment.  That is now where it is at for me.  I want to learn new things, make things work, and get things done.  My biggest problem now is finding the time for all of the things I want to do.  I have to force myself to focus instead of taking off on a dozen different tangents.  I realize that I'll never get good at anything new if I spread myself too thin.  I also have some upcoming obligations that will dig into that time even further.

In my last post, I reviewed the goals I set for myself in 2012.  I worked hard to try and hit those goals, and the ones I missed weren't for lack of effort.  The list itself was an excellent motivator.  Given that, it is time to set myself a new list for 2013.  Note first, however, that these are not resolutions along the lines of "I will quit smoking next week."  I wrote last year how resolutions of that type just show that you suck.  If there is something you want to do, and you can do it right now, then why aren't you doing it right now?

Working Out

I set a stronger squat as one of my goals for 2012 and this is a very worthwhile goal to carry into 2013.  It lags well behind my deadlift that I am quite happy with.  The squat is one of those standard strength markers that people measure themselves by.  Like I realized last time, I must continue to build up my bottom position strength to achieve some decent gains here.  I'll carry over the same goal that I set for myself last year, which was...

Goal #1: Squat 280lbs for a single rep below parallel.  285lbs - 290lbs would be even better.

I posted this video last year, and it is no less awesome this year.

 I get mistaken for Tom Platz all the time

I'm happy with my Military Press but I have a fairly crappy Bench Press.  I'll continue to work on the latter, but really it is the lift I care the least about.  It can also be pretty tough on my shoulders, so I'd rather maintain good shoulder health instead of trying to wring a few extra pounds out on this one.

Work

I mentioned last year that work isn't really something I talk about on this blog so I will continue not to do so for the most part.  However, it is worth mentioning that I am often called to put in substantial amounts of extra effort as required.  This leaves me with less time to play around with the stuff I talk about here.  Hopefully things won't be too crazy this year in that respect.

Hacking

One of the things I wanted to get done last year was some basic home monitoring set up.  If I head off for a weekend in the wintertime, it would be nice to know that my furnace is still running without having the neighbor to check in on it daily.  I have myself a couple of JeeNodes that I have been playing around with but I haven't had enough time to really dig into them and get them talking back to, say, my router which could then push the data out to someplace like Cosm (nee Pachube).  So this goal remains the same as I set it last year...

Goal #2: Get some basic home monitoring going by 2013.

For some time I have also been playing around with my Davis weather station.  I wrote a little while ago that Davis is actively working to close off this platform and prevent me from getting at my own data.  I wasn't very happy about this.  Their actions have made me even more determined to implement my own alternative receiver.  My current platform is a Pretty Pink Pager, and while the cool factor in this approach is off the charts, it isn't a solution that lends itself to widespread use by others.  I want to take an approach that is more accessible.

I'm mulling over a couple of different options for an alternative receiver.  Right now I'm liking PanStamps.  These are Arduinos with an on-board radio receiver chip compatible with that used in the Davis console.  They also seem to have a very nice low level library that would let me work with the radio chip at the level I need.  Another consideration is using a Ciseco Eve Alpha.  This has the benefit of being multi-radio capable but they aren't calling it "Alpha" for nothing.  Either way...

Goal #3: Reverse engineer the Davis frequency hopping algorithm and implement it on an independent platform.

and while I'm at it...

Goal #4: Get a skeleton driver for the Davis console into MESS.  This one won't make much sense unless you've read my earlier post on the subject.

I consider #4 to be like a KickStarter-like "stretch" goal.  It would be great to get this done, but it will take a lot of work to make it happen.  The AVR emulator in MESS right now will need some enhancements to work with the specific chip used in the console, and I'll have to implement a sufficient level of functionality within the emulation to make it worthwhile submitting.  However, doing so would enable a lot of other people to dig into the console and figure out what makes it tick.  It would also be fun to be part of the MESS project itself.

Wrapping Up

That should do it in terms of goals but I won't be restricting myself to just those.  There are still a lot of other things I want to get done this year, such as

• I have a bunch more landscaping I want to get done around here.  There is an area around our walk-out deck that needs to get finished up that is going to take a ton of work.
• I want to grow more of our own food out here.  We have a great garden that we get a lot of wonderful fresh vegetables from.  Last year we planted some grapes and kiwis and are looking forward to their fruit this year.  This year I'm thinking strawberries and more haskaps at a minimum.  Deer, rabbits, and other critters remain our nemesis.
• I'd like to learn a little OpenGL and maybe play around with more emulation stuff.

These things lead me to the same goal I set myself last year.  I met this goal, but it is a goal that can never be considered complete.

Goal #5: Keep this blog going, share the adventure, and enjoy the ride.

“Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed. A short while ago I foolishly thought I could learn everything - all the knowledge in the world. Now I hope only to be able to know of its existence, and to understand one grain of it. Is there time?”

And I also want to re-read this book.

2012: The Year That Was

Today is the first day of 2013.  I sit at my kitchen table in front of my laptop with a compile of MESS going in the background.  Like many people today, I sit here finding myself thinking back over the last 365 days.

Certainly, the biggest thing that stands out for me was the passing of our dear dog, Abby.  She was a constant and faithful companion for her eleven and a half years, and was a far better dog than we could have hoped for.  I think about her all the time.

Abby:  January 2001 - August 2012

We now have Buddy in our lives.  Buddy is quite a different dog than Abby was, and certainly a lot more will be written about him in the days and weeks ahead.  He has scared us with some health issues and he has entertained us with his puppy-dog antics.  I look at him each day and wonder what kind of dog he'll turn out to be.  The one thing we learned from Abby is that this is pretty much impossible to predict.

Impossible, Except To Say That He Is Going To Be Trouble

Anyhoo, I sat down and set some goals for myself in 2012 around this time last year.  This was actually a very useful thing to do.  I like to cross things off my TODO list, and I found that putting this list out there was a pretty strong motivator in getting me off my butt.  I need to mull this over a bit still, but I certainly want a new list going in to 2013.  In the meantime, why not take a look back while waiting for the compile to finish to see how I've done in 2012?

Working Out

Goal #1 Hit: "Deadlift 405lbs for a single rep. That's four wheels a side. This goal should be doable. I just have to do it."

It wasn't long after I wrote this that I wrote some more about how much it sucked to have written that in the first place.  In a nutshell, why was I talking about something I could do rather than just going and doing it?  So I went and did it, and made it with pounds to spare.  The year went by and my deadlift continued to improve, culminating with this bad boy.

435 lbs, Baby

Goal #2 Missed (barely): "Squat 280lbs for a single rep below parallel.  285lbs - 290lbs would be even better, as this would be 2x bodyweight."

This was a case of "close, but no cigar".  I hit a 275 lb squat in May, a weight that was indeed 2x my bodyweight at the time.  But 275 lbs is not 280 lbs, so I did not reach this goal.  It wasn't for lack of trying though.  I hit that 275 after several runs of Sheiko, an extremely high volume routine designed to bring your numbers up.

This is a worthy goal to keep shooting for.  Unfortunately, a long stint in Mexico has caused my strength to drop off sharply and my squat seems to have been hit the hardest.  It is coming up again since my return, but a second trip is on the horizon and back down I'll go.  Such is life.

Hacking

Goal #3 Missed: "Get some basic home monitoring going by Christmas 2012."

I put some considerable time into this one but didn't hit it either.  I ran into a couple of snags.  First was the aforementioned  long stint in Mexico.  Second was that my WRT-54G router decided to start acting flaky as I sat down to implement some of this stuff.  The idea was to hack the router so I could plug a Jeenode into it to act as a receiver to other remote Jeenodes around the house.  I added the serial port and SD card mods, but my attempts to get Optware installed on the thing were randomly failing and I couldn't figure out why.  I had suspected bugs in the custom firmware and kept trying various options to see if that would make the problem go away.  Then the router fell over altogether so I bought the mighty Asus RT-NT16 to replace it.  That router now runs Tomato by Shibby with Optware installed just fine.

Again, this is a worthy goal to keep pursuing in 2013.

Goal #4 - Hit: "Get a standalone receiver picking up the transmissions from a Davis outdoor sensor suite by the end of 2012."

I hit this baby back in April and was pretty psyched at having done so.  After that I had to spend a bunch of time figuring out what those transmissions actually carried.  First I sorted out rain and followed that up with outdoor humidity.  The deciphering of all the weather related parameters is now laid bare on github.

This Took Forever To Get Right

I want to keep plugging away at this stuff going into 2013.  I wrote last time about how Davis' recent antics were making me pretty grumpy.  It is my data, and I don't want people trying to take it away from me.

Goal #5 - Hit: "Keep this blog going, share the adventure, and enjoy the ride."

I put up 25 posts in the past year.  Not incredibly prolific, but far from abandoned.  I wrote some stuff that made people laugh, and I wrote some stuff that made people cry.  The goal of this blog was never just to put something out there.  If it wasn't going to be interesting or entertaining, it wouldn't be worth the effort.  Hope you think that it has been.

Have a good 2013 from all of us here at Mad Scientist Labs.  Enjoy the ride

Making

I mentioned last time round that I blew out my Davis Weather Station VP2 wireless console.  A new one should be here by next weekend, and I really am being held up on my alternative weather station console in the meantime.  What I need to understand is the preamble sent by the ISS before real data is sent.  I have a rough idea what this is, but there are enough permutations and combinations that just guessing my way through it would not be fun.

There is, however, other stuff to do.  But before I get in to that, here is an aside for ya.  A lot is being said these days about "Making".  Make Magazine is the poster child for the movement, and the Arduino is that child's favorite toy.  Sites like Instructables (make your own Light Saber!) and Hack A Day show you how to do stuff.  Places like Adafruit and Sparkfun are places where you can get stuff.  I remember the days of Radio Electronics and Byte magazine.  They had articles showing you how you could make a television descrambler or a taser.  But every project had at least one part that was impossilbe to buy (usually an inductor).  There was no Internet and I had no credit card, so I would mail a hand-written letter with a post office money order inside and hope for the best.  Now it is different.  Anybody can get almost anything, and almost all of it is ridiculously cheap.  An Arduino kit costs $20.  My first computer, an Apple //e, was something like $3000, and the Arduino is arguably much more powerful.  I really believe we live in a great time for stuff like this.

Case in point: item #3 on my list of goals for this year is getting  some basic home monitoring setup going.  I mentioned the plan to use some JeeNodes from JeeLabs to make this happen.  I had ordered these from Modern Device some time ago.  It was time to crack the box open and start playing with software.  There was only one problem.

Some Assembly Required

Time to break out my handy dandy Hakko FX-888 that I picked up from Solarbotics late last year.  This thing is great.  It was pretty quick work to go from that to this.

Wireless Goodness

But Making isn't always about electronics stuff.  Not to me anyway.  I want to make great food.    Try #31 of Tartine Bread, for example.  This bread has nothing in it besides flour, water, and salt, and it is fantastic.

I Love Carbohydrates

I am still searching for the perfect combination of a crispy crust and open crumb.  I now seem to be getting the crust right, but the big open holes I used to be able to get in the crumb have deserted me.  I'm baking this bread once a week now and I try a few different things each time in my search for perfection.  Once I get it, I plan to put up a page on this blog that will basically serve as "Tartine Bread: The Missing Manual."  While Chad Robertson has written a fine book, it is sufficiently vague in enough spots to leave a bread-baking noob like me up shit creek.  I hope to fix that.

Try #31 got served along with a Sirloin Butt Beef Roast cooked in my Sous Vide rig for 15.5 hours at 58C.  This was honestly so good that it was unfair to anybody else who ate something today.

I Love Protein

We seasoned it very simply with kosher salt, pepper, and rosemary.  We seared it in a smoking hot cast iron pan for a minute per side to finish it off.  It was so tender it was almost falling apart, yet the texture was absolutely fantastic. You could be served this meat in any fine restaurant, after which you'd go looking for the chef to give him a big sloppy wet kiss in appreciation.

That was lunch.  And then it was time for supper.  Keeping a sourdough starter going as we do gives you a bunch of discard that you've got to use up.  So we gave these sourdough waffles from the gang at King Arthur's Flour a shot.  They were good.  Really good.  Stupid good.

I Love Waffles

A couple flavor combination I can heartily recommend:

• Plain yogurt, Saskatoon berries, and chocolate sauce
• Cottage cheese, bananas, and chocolate sauce
• Pretty much anything and chocolate sauce

Not a lot of headway in the hacking department this weekend, but things got made nonetheless.  And I had a great weekend doing it.

Pretty Pachube Plotting Progress

Edit: January 4, 2012. My Pretty Pachube plots seem to be showing up only part-time. I suspect that there is some throttling going that I need to get a grip on, perhaps because the feed data I am plotting is not my own. Please leave a note in the comments if you have an idea of what might be going on.

In my last post, I wrote about motivating myself for 2012.  Goals #1 and #2 had to do with working out, but I felt like a bucket of crap on the first day of the New Year and had little energy and less motivation (thank you very much, rhinopharyngitis).  I just felt like lying around like an inanimate carbon rod.

The Only Thing Keeping Me From "Employee of the Week"

But NO!  I have things I've gotta get done, so I thought I'd work a bit toward Goal #3.  Goal #3 was to get a basic home monitoring system set up, and one of the ideas I had was pushing that data out to Pachube to act as a repository for the data I would collect.  I'm not actually pushing out any data just yet, so I thought I'd dig into the presentation side of it.

Searching around on the Pachube web site, I came across the  Zoomable 30 day graph documented on the apps section of their site.  There is a nice little setup there where you can set up the graph's basic configuration online.  Give it a feed and datastream ID, a few parameters on size and color, and it spits out some code to cut and paste into a blog entry or web page.  Simple, eh?

Don't use it.  It has a couple of limitations:

1. It can't put multiple lines on the same plot
2. It doesn't work.

It actually does work until you try and plot more than one graph on the same web page.  The script doesn't handle multiple instances properly, and you end up wasting a bunch of time before finding this out.  Ask me how I know.

The link above does, however, include the following comment:

Note: if you are looking to combine multiple datastreams on the same graph, either by summing them or displaying them separately, see this post in the community forum for a solution. 

That is almost a solution, but it doesn't work with non-numeric data stream names.  What you really need to use is the script pointed to in this link.  This works great, and here is a summary of getting it to work on any web page or blog post.

First of all, you need these two lines of script before trying to show a plot:

<script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script src="http://thecodergroup.com/store/pachube/pachube_multi.js" type="text/javascript">
</script> 

Once you've done that, you can follow the examples in this forum post for the Javascript needed for the plots themselves (if you want to see the Javascript behind each of the examples below, just hit Control-U to see the source of this page).  These examples use data collected from a bash script from this page running on a DD-WRT powered router. 

Let's start off simple.  First, here is a plot of the uplink datarate.
Next, a plot of the downlink datarate.
Let's geta little fancier.  How about a plot of the uplink and downlink datarate on the same graph?
Or the sum of the two values plotted as a single value?
Pretty cool, I'd say.  There is one thing to be careful of here though.  The "div name" that is the first parameter to the script needs to be different for each of the plots you use.  This keeps the data behind each of them separate.  Weird things will happen if you don't.

There are other ways to present Pachube data.  I could just look at the data right off the Pachube web site.  Look here for the Pachube version of the plots I presented above.  Nothing fancy, but not bad.  There is yet another method of plotting data out there using the iGoogle Pachube Gadget and the associated method of publishing to a web page discussed here, but I found that to be a lot less flexible.

Despite taking a little longer to sort out than I anticipated, I'm pretty happy with the flexibility of this presentation. But wait, there's more!  There are more apps, such as ones that will send SMS alerts or Twitter messages when a particular condition is reached.  I haven't dug into these yet, but it is on my list of things to do once I've got my own data going in.