another entry from the “what a geek” chronicles..

So, I’ve always been interested in those houses at christmas time that have a sign out front saying “tune to channel 105.9″ and they’re broadcasting christmas music and have their christmas lights flashing in time with the tunes. There was a guy in Raymond, NH that had this setup that I’ve been out to see a few times over the years. He also had a website that told the “basics” of how he did it. Never did he completely divulge the details.. but I did notice that along the bottom of his page he had a little graphic that said “powered by Light-o-Rama.” Upon further research, I found out that they [Light-o-rama] do have pre-built boxes that you purchase (for several hundred dollars) to do the light flashing from a PC.

Not wanting to spend hundreds of dollars yet not knowing how to turn on and off AC power from a PC (and with me being me), I set out to find an I’ll-build-one-myself alternative. This is the first entry of many to come that catalogues my learning process and my progress.

The first question I had to answer was “since a PC only has 12V and 5V DC power, how do i flick 110VAC power on and off?” The answer is: “There are a few ways.. optocouplers tied to triacs and solid state relays, being the most common.” So I turned to google and found many sites like this one and this one that offered up a million leads and a few million more questions. But at least now I knew how to get from DC to AC.

The next problem was that PC parallel ports only have 8 data lines.. and I want to individually control (the world!) many more light strands than 8. My friend at work suggested I look at an i/o expanding chip such as an MCP23009. That uses an I2C (eye-squared-see) interface to program the output pin states. I didn’t quite understand the I2C protocol when I read up on it, so the hunt continued. I eventually found a site by a guy who was using 74HC595 shift register chips and could handle MANY channels of output. I was so elated to have found a chip whose logic and control I understood and whose function would serve my purpose, that I bought 10 immediately. They’re very cheap, btw.. $0.52 per chip!
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=MM74HC595N-ND

Lesson learned, I should have kept researching before buying. Yes, those would work.. but better solutions exist and I have explored some of those already. I’ll talk more about those soon.

techno-house

So psyched! A friend from work lent me an RJ45 crimper and a 110 tool, I bought a half-roll of 500ft cat5e from someone on craigslist, and I bought a contractor’s pack of wall plates and rj45 jacks from Lowes. So I have wired internet throughout the house now. Charley couldn’t care less, she has her wireless and that’s all she cares about. I wanted wired for two reasons.. 1) even at 100Mbps, it’s way faster than 802.11n.  2) Linux, as much as I love it, is still not so good with wireless WPA(2).

So to make matters even better, I bought a 1U server online. The thing has dual 64bit AMDs, 4GB ram and 120GB drive, 3 gigE ports, ugh ugh ugh. Fedora 10 is installing on it as I type this.  My plan is for it to offer up DHCP to the house, and NAT w/ filtering to the outside world.  Overkill? Maybe..   Fun?  Oh heck yeah!

By the way, that friend that lent me the crimper and 110 tool.. I blame him fully for me buying the server. He bought one first! I suppose that deal was screamin’ didn’t help either

between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion

I can’t explain its origins, but I’m so interested in cryptography it ain’t even funny. Problem is, I don’t have the time to devote to developing the skills. Sometimes though, I learn of unsolved ciphers and immediately start dreaming that I’ll be the one with such an outlandish point-of-view that I’ll solve what the pros couldn’t… pseudo-fame be mine. For example, the last of the Zodiac ciphers remains unsolved. I actually spent quite a bit of time looking at it without even realizing it. I could see myself getting lost in it and being completely consumed by it, so I intentionally pushed it aside. Time goes by and then I learned of the fermilab letter. “This will be the one I crack!” I said to myself (yeah, in all my extra time!). It was clearly some sort of binary, which is right up my alley. I concocted some ridiculously convoluted scheme that I was sure made perfect sense and turned out to be so far off the mark I can’t even tell you. I don’t know how crypt-analysts do it. I start down some path and find a fork, and another fork… and another.

Maybe I don’t have the patience for it anyhow. My undoing usually comes from fantasizing about designing my own algorithm. I have lots of ideas, but will pursuing those take up any less time than sticking with cracking the unsolved ones that catch my interest? This stuff goes so much deeper than the Jumble or Crypt-o-grams in the newspaper. At least Dan Brown found a good outlet for his crypto-musings. I just burn cycles quietly mulling over the impossible (by me anyways) and dream of coming out on top.

So Sanborn deliberately included misspellings. The misspellings are part of the solution to further deciphering. Now that’s just downright cool. Even my most creative ideas (by my own standards) don’t compare. There’s quite a collection of unsolved ciphers out there just calling my name. I find myself often visiting Elonka’s “list of famous unsolved codes and ciphers” and can’t help but get enthused. Now only if I had the skills, extra time, patience and determination.

I know what you’re thinking… “god what a geek” or “yeah, just what we need.. more 1337 haxxorz in the world”. I know. I just can’t help it!

4, 10, 13

Death Sentence

I love my kids. I’d do anything for them…

My wife and youngest daughter Logan were out cruising and passed a yard sale that also happened to boast a “free kittens” sign. I am severely allergic.. (allergic with a capital F) to cats, but I saw how badly she wanted it. This is also exactly how we ended up with our two golden retrievers Olivia and Buddy. It only takes one moment of weakness and apparently I have those moments a bit too often.

She named the cat “Sally” before we even got to the car. She’s all gray and looks like she’ll be a long-haired kitty. Anyhow, I’ve been sniffling and sneezing a bit recently due to seasonal allergies. So now every time I sneeze Logan gets upset, afraid I’m going to say the cat has got to go. It’s not just the allergies give me trouble, it’s the asthma  also. Sneezing sends me into broncho-spasm fits, making it nearly impossible to breathe. Having the cat in the house just may kill me, but seeing how happy it makes her somehow trumps my self-preservation instincts.