Working on software for a second system

As regular readers (if any exist) know, I am slowly developing a better bike light for my own amusement. Said light will have 3-10 watts of LED light, meaning 3-10 1-watt power LEDs, at an incremental cost of $10 per LED, so it will actually provide a useful amount of light. One of the hurdles to cross is programming an embedded processor, in particular one with interrupts, because some events (wheel spins) will happen whenever they will. I am using CrossPack AVR to develop and download code. I got my starting code from Instructables, and an 8 pin AVR development board (not necessarily necessary, but sometimes I do make a time/money tradeoff) from Sparkfun, and USBtinyISP programmer (made from a kit) from Adafruit (this was much easier than dealing with the finicky Windows-centric programmer from Sparkfun). An 8-bit board is suitable for an ATtiny13 and ATtiny25, 45, and 85; that had been my original plan, but now I think that ultimately I will use a larger chip. However, all the hard (i.e., “new”) stuff can be tested with this setup.

I added an LED (with limit resistor) to pin PB4 on the development board:

LED+resistor detail:

Backside detail (notice the LED wire end wrapped over to ground):

Global warming

It was obvious to me that something was up in 1993 or earlier, because I remember thinking (when we bought our house) “this is high enough to be dry even if Greenland melts”.

Whole Foods Vegan Sugar, not so good for Biscotti

The sugar crystals are just enough larger that they don’t dissolve fully into the batter, and then they melt and run out and caramelize when cooked. This might not matter for anything else.

Behringer iAxe393 USB Guitar, does not work with Mac

AKA “ThinkGeek – Ticket #BPT-31853-141″

Snow Tire Review

I’ve tried Nokian Hakkapeliitta W106, Schwalbe Marathon Winter, and Schwalbe Snow Stud.

Boa Technology FTW!

I love my winter biking boots, but they were damnably expensive. A lace broke yesterday, I figured this was a necessary repair. Local Bike Store had no repair kits, I figured I would look online. Landed at their LIFETIME GUARANTEE WARRANTY SITE, entered my info, selected my problem, selected my product from the pictures, asked for two sets of laces, it said “hey, second one’s not free”. Fair’s fair, asked for only one, selected zero-cost shipping, and bang, done.

A warranty, that they clearly mean to fulfil. I feel a little less grumpy about all the money I spent on those wonderful shoes.

Bug report, various web servers

I’m trying to get graphics handled nicely (for at least Safari and Firefox), and it appears that web servers are behind the times.

Second system effect

I’m pretty happy with my bike light, but gosh darn it, it could be better!

Yeah, right.

“Don’t worry as its completely SAFE…”

Light photo

Playing with my bike, playing with my camera.