Frabjous Dei

Users own the problem space, developers own the solution space

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:45:00 +1100

Also mentioned on the Macworld Less Than Perfect Apps panel was how to request features. Users should not say, “I want the software to do x”, but should instead say, “I have a problem x, which the software in its current state does not solve.” The latter form is infinitely more helpful to a developer than the former; most of our work is not programming, rather it is attempting to work out what the real problem is that we’re trying to solve. A large number of software projects fail by solving the wrong problem perfectly.

In addition, a particular solution might work for one case, but a statement of a problem could be used to inspire a general solution for a whole class of problems. The developer (who, as we discussed earlier, is being paid to know the internals of the software intimately) might be aware of an easier way to solve your problem, or even of an alternate solution that already exists—either within or outside of the software in question.

In some circumstances it may be helpful to describe a particular solution you have in mind in order to better illustrate the problem, but insisting on a particular solution will almost never get you the best outcome.

The corollary of this is of course is that developers should never insist they know better than the users what the users’ problems are.

What not to say to a software developer

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:33:00 +1100

At the end of the Less Than Perfect Apps panel at this year’s Macworld the panel took to discussing how to communicate with developers about making their apps better. Two points that came up were well made and personal bugbears of mine.

Any sentence from a non-developer beginning with “It would be easy to…” immediately inspires vivid fantasies of LART-ing said non-developer into submission with an IBM Model M. If it is “so simple”, they could then extract said keyboard from their forehead and add the feature themselves.

The reason you engage a developer to write software is because you lack the skill, experience or time to fully understand the complexity of the software in question. Therefore those other than the developer are by definition the least qualified to make pronouncements about the difficulty of adding features. To suggest otherwise accuses the developer of incompetence or at the very least indolence. So do not say anything of the sort unless you mean that.

Protip: if you want to experiment with running a seven-segment...

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 02:31:00 +1100

Protip: if you want to experiment with running a seven-segment LED display off an Arduino or other microcontroller without using all your digital I/O pins, buy a cheapie electronic counter kit. Fifteen bucks gets you your two-digit display, two 4543 BCD-to-7-segment-LED latch/decoder/driver controller chips (socketed, so you can appropriate them for your real project), the right number of the correct value current-limiting resistors and other passive components *plus* a neat circuit diagram and an easy-to-hack prototype when you’re done. And all this with only one trip to the shops!

(This is the initial experiment for version 2 of the Technocolour Dreamcoat; next step is to get the Arduino to read values off a rotary encoder, which I’ll use to select which numbered animation to show. Stay tuned…)

I’ve put my Burning Man 2011 photos up on Facebook....

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:28:35 +1000

I’ve put my Burning Man 2011 photos up on Facebook. There’s some daytime art, the Man burn and final the temple burn. Enjoy.

Learning Man

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:45:00 +1000

So how was the Burn? Great, as always, and also an evolution of my experience. As always.

So what worked? We did! Packing the truck and trailers from the storage unit in Vegas, putting up a 32’ air conditioned dome, the kitchen dome (including fridge and freezer), showers, the dance floor shade sails, dance platforms, stripper poles, scaffolding et al was one hell of an effort. I worked (and then slept) harder than I have for a long time.

The Hexayurts were a massive win. I could sleep through the heat until 10 or 11am easily. I like the Playa Staples too, and next year I’m definitely going to go the yurt bondage tie-down method, I think we got lucky with the tape anchors because the weather was very calm. The 6’ stretch model I made was plenty of space for me and my stuff and was very easy to erect. I had to make one little modification to add a flap in the roof for cross-ventilation, but that was easy enough.

The LED bike underlights I made turned out awesome too. Hooked up to a 4.5Ah sealed lead acid battery we had maybe four hours of really intense, bright under-bike light any bogan/ricer/ah beng would be proud of. Looks like they were sealed well enough to not get any dust in them too, so they’ll ride another year.

And finally, the Technocolour Dreamcoat performed above and beyond expectations. For something that only came together so last minute (I didn’t have the battery in hand until I got to Vegas!) it worked really well, with no flaky solder joints or software glitches or anything. And, I was getting almost four hours of runtime from the battery which is at the upper end of what I’d hoped. I got heaps and heaps of compliments from wide-eyed psychonauts and fellow LED-enthusiasts and I even managed to meet Cubatron Mark, who was very patient as I had a total fangasm and bent his ear on software techniques for an hour and a half. I’ve got so many ideas for next year’s version(!).

We also won exodus, with a world record 1.5 hours from driving off in the packed car to hitting the bitumen. We have a secret and I’m not telling the Internet what it is.

And what would I do differently next year? Well, one of the things we got for the hard labour of setting up the camp was a really comfortable chill space I used for maybe four hours over the course of the week. Another was two massive and elaborate meals per day. Mmm, bacon. But this is a double edged sword: the four of us in the car on the way back agreed that the week seemed to fly by, and this might have been because of the rhythm imposed on the days by set meal times. And maybe the physical exhaustion due to setting all that stuff up sapped my energy for the rest of the week—I slept a full nine nights out of the ten I was there. Unheard of!

So basically it was very hard work for a lot of grand infrastructure that I didn’t use very much. Our small cluster of tents and yurts around Damian’s monkey hut was where we spent most of our time. This might have been different if we were presented with a few days of 12 hour dust storms of course, but the weather was the best I’d seen it over the four years I was there. There were only a couple of cold nights even.

There were a couple of minor things too, like my lack of a stein, breaking a plywood bike rack with my right arse cheek on Monday night and almost running out of beer on Tuesday, but they just go in my “notes for next year” file, all easily solvable.

Another difference in my experience this year was what I spent my time doing. I’m much more used to seeing a guy ride by on a tiny bicycle, or getting a lift home on a fluffy bunny rabbit whose soundsystem was pumping bluegrass, so instead of wandering the city agape at that kind of thing I spent more time in talks and workshops.

A particularly interesting one was led by one of the new Burning Man Project non-profit board members. I wouldn’t underestimate the symbolism of the Man’s stride or the importance of the CORE project. Now the playa is full, the Org seems to be making a deliberate effort to spread the ten principles out to the world via the regional burns. As always, it will be fascinating to see how the event evolves to meet its new challenges.

Photos coming soon, I promise!

Pro tip for anyone who is trying to mount an Arduino Uno project...

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 19:47:00 +1000

Pro tip for anyone who is trying to mount an Arduino Uno project inside an Altoids tin: put it in upside down! The centre point of the power socket is quite tall on the board; mounting it upside down allows you to bore the hole toward the bottom of the tin and thereby avoid needing to gouge a chunk out of the lid to allow it to close flush.

You can see my first attempt in the background, before I clued in to the fact that a little patience with the tapered reamer goes a long way. I’ve lined the bottom of the tin (and will line the lid) with cardboard so it doesn’t short and I might even stuff a couple of sheets of bubble wrap in to keep everything snug.

Now what the hell am I going to do with all these Altoids?

This took me a few days to get right and is a good example of...

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 13:46:19 +1000

This took me a few days to get right and is a good example of where the lack of vertical resolution kills me, but it’s cute enough. Next, text :-)

Check out my snake! Ahem. So, as you can see, the hardware is...

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 01:08:00 +1000

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Check out my snake!

Ahem.

So, as you can see, the hardware is fairly much done. All I need is an enclosure/belt pack for the battery and Arduino and to hook everything into the jacket, which my wonderfully generous and talented friend Lizzie is helping me out with.

The software bit is kicking arse too. This “snake” pattern only took me a couple of hours soup-to-nuts and I spent much more time actually writing useful code rather than struggling with my ignorance of C++, which was a nice change. ~~Don’t tell anyone who one day plans to employ me about the fall-through in the switch statement that stops the snake running off the top and bottom of the display.~~ C++ is a great language and I’m getting to be able to write really clean, idiomatic code!

More hardware today: cut up and soldered one and a half more...

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 22:17:12 +1000

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

More hardware today: cut up and soldered one and a half more reels of LEDs. Looks like I’ll have less horizontal resolution than I originally planned, it’s just too much work *and* I don’t want to have to buy another strip (not to mention wear another half a kilo of battery.)

One thing I did confirm was that tapping in power every six strips or so got around the voltage drop that had been causing a steady drop-off of all but the red channel after four or five strips.

The warnings on the LiPo batteries (DO NOT LOOK AT BATTERY PACK SIDEWAYS, IT WILL EXPLODE AND TAKE A LIMB WITH IT!) are starting to scare me, I might go with two NiMh packs instead of one big LiPo.

Starting to get real now! I originally wrote a small prototyping...

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 02:00:55 +1000

Starting to get real now! I originally wrote a small prototyping framework in Java so I wouldn’t have to think about memory leaks and C++ arcana while trying to get my head around the graphics stuff. But I’ve ported the basics and a few of the patterns to C++ and as you can see, they’re now running live off the Arduino. Hopefully I’ll get to catch up with my seamstress extraordinaire this weekend, and maybe cut and solder another third of the LEDs.

Everybody yurts, sometimes

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 01:44:24 +1000

I had the option of going to the gym or making something tonight, and creativity won. The latest Jack Rabbit Speaks newsletter had a link to a new wiki on Hexayurts for Burners. One of the suggestions was to make a model first so you can see how it all fits together. So I did.

I couldn’t find any foam-core board (not even at Mustafa Centre, fail!) so I made do with half-inch polystyrene. It wasn’t entirely suitable as tape doesn’t stick to it particularly well and the thickness was significant compared to the size of the panels, but it was enough to get the idea.

The wiki is excellent; I watched the videos a couple of times each and then went for it, with the aid of the illustrations. It’s surprisingly easy and all the gotchas are clearly described. I can see how everything would be a bit more unwieldy at scale (you’d definitely need two people to assemble one out of 4’x8’ insulation panels) but at the end it’s amazingly neat, despite my awkward cuts and haphazard taping job.

The cleverest thing is how it’s engineered to stack a neat 12-panels high for storage and transport, wrapped in a tarp. Now you see it:

Now you don’t:

Thanks to the awesomeness of the Hexayurt Project, I will have somewhere cool, dry and dust-free to stay on-Playa this year. I’m going to need it, as apparently we’ll be out early with the Black Rock Syndicate camp and I could be on-Playa for up to 12 days! Daunting, but awesome at the same time.

Test pattern! So this is the LED strips, all hooked up to the...

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:43:00 +1000

Test pattern! So this is the LED strips, all hooked up to the Arduino with my own code running a test pattern. Tricky part was the little algorithm that turns an x, y coordinate into a linear address. I was just incapable of doing it without writing a test and there’s no “Arduino Unit” so I took five minutes to play around at work while I was waiting for something late this evening.

Out of this process I’ve now learned two things: all of the pixels aren’t individually addressable on these strips :-O. They’re in groups of three, which means I have a third the resolution on the Y axis as I thought I had. Oh well. Secondly, the strips farther away from the power source get “redder”; I think this is because of voltage drop (I wasn’t able to get the heavier gauge of wire I really wanted and I think that has something to do with it.) I’ll need to plumb in power every five or six strips I think.

On the bright side, I won’t need nearly the memory I thought I was going to, so I can do with an Arduino Nano or Mini which is nice.

Productive day! This is the first of my (now possibly four!) 5m...

Sun, 01 May 2011 20:15:00 +1000

Productive day! This is the first of my (now possibly four!) 5m strips of leds, cut into 15-led sections and wired with connectors. Miraculously they all worked first time! Left to do on these is put heatshrink stuffed with E6000 over the ends and double the wires back, secured with more heatshrink, for strain relief.

The reason this is a breakthrough is I now have a working, “square” display I can start coding for.

I’ve put my Angkor Wat/Cambodia photos up on Facebook.

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 02:47:59 +1100

I’ve put my Angkor Wat/Cambodia photos up on Facebook.

I bought some toys on the weekend :-)

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 23:49:35 +1100

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I bought some toys on the weekend :-)

Waaaay back at the start of December I had a friend in town from...

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 01:43:00 +1100

Waaaay back at the start of December I had a friend in town from the UK, so we went to Jurong Bird Park. I only just got around to sorting through the pictures.

Airlines are cabbagetards extrordinaire

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 13:39:00 +1100

To protect the reader’s delicate sensibilities, all profanity in this article has been replaced with vegetables.

So I just booked a weekend away to Cambodia and Thailand, going in and out on two different Asian budget carriers. The total price shown when I selected both flights adds up to SGD$249. So how can these carrotsuckers get away with charging me $315?

You can shove your $6 “convenience fee” for paying by credit card up your potato. How the turnip else am I meant to pay, in sacks of rice? And one site in particular made an extreme effort to trick me into buying their travel insurance—you are in a maze of clicky Javascript popups, all alike, some of which will end up costing you an extra $10. Also, zucchini the direct currency conversion you also tried to trick me into using. I’ve worked in that business and I know what a scam it is.

On top of all that, form input validation on airline sites sucks festering pumpkin. In Singapore, “#” is a valid character in an address (“#42-04” is how you say “floor, unit” parsnipholes) and “+” is a valid character as part of a phone number. It just onioning is, look it up. And also one of the sites in particular is annoyingly (though non-fatally) broken in Safari.

I don’t have the patience for this bulltomato, which is why I normally outsource it to Flight Centre.

Waku Ghin

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 13:40:10 +1100

Terrine of Duck and Foie Gras

Marinated Botan Ebi with Sea Urchin and Oscietre Caviar

Taiheisan Tenko Nama, Hunmai Daiginjyo, Aita Prefecture Japan

Slow Cooked Tasmanian Petuna Ocean Trout with Witlof and Yuzu

2008 Jean-Claude Catelain Pouilly-Fumé Sauvignon Blanc, Loire Valley, France

Alaskan King Crab with Lemon Scented Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2007 Marc Kreydenweiss Kritt Gewürztraminer, Alsace, France

Braised Lobster With Tarragon

2007 Domaine Leflaive Mâcon Verzé, Puligny-Montrachet, Cote D’or, France

Japanese Wagyu Roll with Maitake Mushroom

2006 Cantina Vietti Tre Vigne, Barbera d’Alba, Piedmont, Italy

Australian Blackmore Steak with Wasabi and Citrus Soy

2007 John Duval Entity Shiraz, Barossa Valley, SA, Australia

Consommé with Rice and Hirame

Gyokuro

***

Musk Melon with Sauternes

Ghin Cheesecake

2005 Domaines Schlumberger Cuvee Christine Late Harvest Gewürztraminer, Alsace, France

I can’t solder to save my life. I’ve just proven...

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 21:34:22 +1100

I can’t solder to save my life. I’ve just proven it.

So after some more advice, I went out and bought a new tip, some tip refresher and a brass “sponge”. After forty-five frustrating minutes I’d managed to fuck up half the joints I attempted, destroy the brand new tip and give myself a headache from inhaling the fumes.

Clearly, I need to find another solution. The FCI “Clincher” connectors look good except for two things: to get a good crimp, you need about 1cm of of the cable inside the crimp part housing. The exposed solder pads of the LED strips are 1cm long in total, so for every usable length I have to sacrifice three LEDs. Second, the crimp tool costs over USD$2000! Buying one’s obviously right out, and god knows where I can rent/borrow/steal one in Singapore.

Solutions on the back of a postcard please…

I’ve finally got the RGB LED strips I bought from Sim Lim...

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 17:27:00 +1100

I’ve finally got the RGB LED strips I bought from Sim Lim the other week to work. The secret? The damn pads are labelled wrong. For future reference, if anyone else is having fun and games trying to get these strips working (the only marking on them is “ZJ168”), this is the pinout:

Di = +12V (Arduino pin Vin)

Ci = MOSI (+5V, normal logic level—Arduino pin ~11)

St = Clock (again, +5V—Arduino pin 13)

Li = GND (Arduino GND, obv.)

The 12V and ground are on the far sides of the strip, with the data and clock lines in the middle (as I thought made sense originally.) They’re LPD6803-based and work great with the Fast_SPI library written by Daniel Garcia who’s been graciously helping me out via email.

Next steps are cutting this little strip up into a “demo” display (maybe t-shirt mountable) and writing a little code to transform 2D coordinates into a linear pixel address. I’ve also learned a little bit about soldering technique and, armed with a new tip, will reconsider my options for putting everything together (maybe using 0.1” header sockets rather than Clincher connectors.)