Sweemeng's Blog

Long Lost Musical Instrument

sweemeng — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 06:25:00 +0000

Not quite tech related, but this is stone age technology, believed to be used in hunting and herding during that time. Which later evolved into a musical instrument.

This is Xun, though this I bought from souvenir shop in China long time ago. Still I think it is pretty cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xun_(instrument)

RFID On Arduino

sweemeng — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:06:00 +0000

So I got myself an Arduino powered Android Accessory Development Kit, not long ago. The kit have quite a lot of sensor, one of them, an 125kHz RFID reader. Which is cool except, the kit doesn’t comes with the tag necessary.

So I finally got the tag(s) which is compatible. The reader from seeestudio have 2 ways to interface with the arduino, one is via Wiegand Mode, the other via UART, i.e Serial.

I just use UART, because one the board is actually a Arduino Mega, so I got enough hardware serial to use. And I am using the extension board, so It make it way easy to use the extra hardware serial. But if you are just using an arduino, the Reader is actually pretty easy to use via Software Serial using NewSoftSerial library. Easier if you are using the UART version of this

Originally I thought of just forwarding the ID from the tag into a serial without any translation. From the docs, there is a checksum that we can use. It do make using an arduino as a middleman not so wasteful. It also define an header and ends, which can also be used to track error etc.

From the docs, I have create a reader, the code is in https://gist.github.com/1626692

This is just a very early version, hacked within 15 minutes. So it don’t check the checksum, etc.

You can check the result using the serial monitor, it just output the code as I swipe it on the reader itself,

This reader can read one tag at a time unlike the commercial one, where the tag have random delay to make reading multiple tag possible. This is a pretty cheap, like 13USD, cannot really compare with the really big commercial one. And the distance is short too, like 8 cm.

Despite that, it can be a fun toy to play with, not quite sure what I am going to do with this though. More to come(?)

Bill Watcher Update

sweemeng — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:50:00 +0000

Just a little update, since the last post. The project is pretty much finalized, just sorting out the infrastructure, we got a server, but need a little setup. Since last post, have switch from 960gs to twitter bootstrap. A few extra page. Many UI stuff is done, though need to add social media button and disqus.

One more thing to think of now is Localization, which this project have a fork for Malay version, still thinking of ways to make things easier…

Main Page

Content Page

2011 in review: The Year It Get Too Close For Comfort

sweemeng — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 12:12:00 +0000

For a long time geeks like me tend to hide behind the scene when it comes to politics, unlike the US there is no law like the DMCA in Malaysia. We Malaysian don’t see often see a law pass that directly affect IT industry here. Until this year, suddenly we have Computing Professional Board bill.

Which you can find a lot more online, but in short it is about regulate programmers that involve in Critical National Information Infrastructure. Which the list provided is too vague for comfort.

So what I hope to do next year, involve more somehow. What this year have shown us, ignorance and apathy can bite. Not all law have an open day that we all know, like the CPB. So law can be passed under our nose, and it will bite, and bite hard.

p.s Not including my own post on the Computing Bill, because it have quite a lot of inaccuracy

2011 in Review: Awesome Book

sweemeng — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 02:00:00 +0000

Books I have read in 2011

Makers by Cory Doctorow
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Make Magazine not book, but still
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson, have still a whole set of Baroque Cycle, still try to finish it
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Anathem, Neal Stephenson
Javascript the Quick Reference, Douglas Crockford
Make Magazine
Arduino Bots and Gadgets, that actually belongs to hackerspacekl

2011 in Review: Achievement Unlocked

sweemeng — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 02:15:00 +0000

Just a list of stuff being done in 2011

Python on android with SL4A
Programming the arduino for The Great Hackerspace Challenge
Scraping govt websites for hoping to the Open Data Project
Writing software for a robot
Pickup a new python web (micro)framework
Opening up data with scraping knowledge
More linux skills on diff and grep
using android for work
rooting android and use cyanogen
know why pdf is evil
and use elasticsearch(which I didn’t blog yet)

Some of the cool one anyway.

Copy and Paste on GNU Screen

sweemeng — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 03:31:00 +0000

So recently I finally found out how to do copy and paste on gnu screen, previously I just do a drag on a mouse.

So copy and paste on gnu screen,

- ctrl-a [

- move to the first character of the string to copy, press enter

- move to the last character of the string to copy, press enter

- now to paste, press ctrl-a ]

p.s kina ashamed that it take me so long to figure out =.=

Rooting HTC Desire HD on 64bit Linux Mint

sweemeng — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 06:28:00 +0000

One reason why I have been resisting rooting my phone is because of the old way of rooting the HTC Desire HD. Best illustrated by the wiki on cyanogen mod. Essentially a many step process, of copying file, downgrade, copy file, reboot, and reboot.

Recently I have discovered Advanced Ace Hack Kit, basically these guys already automate everything as a 1 step process, if the firmware need to be downgrade it, will do it. But here is the big catch, it is a 32bit binary, and I installed a 64bit linux.

Thankfully mint, which essentially built on top of ubuntu(which in turn debian) have ia32-lib, which have 32bit version of library for 64bit OS. Just install it.

And read the manual, it is inside the package along with all the tools needed, unzip, and read the manual inside it. It covers everything, you need. There will be a quiz in the end

sweemeng — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 05:59:00 +0000

A little adventure on the bill watcher on the pdf part. One I am hoping to able to attach comment to a section on the pdf, then have a script that compile the comments, and email blast to the MP’s

So a few thing I am trying

Loading pdf into iframe,

It is actually a pretty standard approach of handling it. Except I am linux now, and i am lazy to install a plugin.

Also iframe height is a problem, it is hard to get it work well across browser.

I don’t know ways to have javascript to access the text inside the pdf. So I don’t know how to attach jquery on it.

Use pdf.js

Work well on firefox, but not anything else. Also this is also a very new library.

While there is a text layer for text, it don’t line up well in text in the bill document . I suspect it is because of badly form pdf.

Javascript should work well on it though, as it have a text layer div.

Convert pdf into html

Have jquery to use .load(). It work across browser, until the layout gone wrong, could be because of bootstrap(the css library). Pdftotext work very well, the html generated can be processed pretty easily. The layout on the other hand….

javascript should work well too.

load converted pdf’s html into iframe

It does not solve the height problem on iframe, but javascript should able to use it. It is a bit of a pain though. Because the pdf generated is pretty well formed. Solved the issue of layout gone wrong because of css library though.

New Toy for christmas

sweemeng — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 11:21:00 +0000

Before Unbox

After Unbox

It is an arduino based board for android accessory development FYI. Expect new stuff coming this coming soon.