Stuff Michael Meeks is doing
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This is my (in)activity log. You might like to visit
Collabora
Productivity a subsidiary of Collabora focusing on LibreOffice support and
services for whom I work.
Also if you have the time to read this sort of stuff you could enlighten
yourself by going to Unraveling Wittgenstein's net or if
you are feeling objectionable perhaps here.
Failing that, there are all manner of interesting things to read on
the LibreOffice Planet news
feed.
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Browsed mail, and events variously. Amazed, and disappointed
to see Microsoft attacking
one of the totemic 'Cloud' vendors (in the hype-jargon of today).
Threats supposedly started in 2009 (shortly after the launch of Azure).
Is it possible that winning Salesforce to Azure was a cherished pipe-dream ?
Interestingly they appear
to use (or have used) Linux on Dell. In that context, perhaps it is
somewhat positive, that this is not (on the face of it) a TomTom style
attack on Linux per-se.
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Prodded at file-system layout a little, how can a hard-disk
cloning system subtly change only some of the layout ? odd. Prodded a
new & interesting bootchart2 bug.
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Lunch; cut my micro-controller code down to the very bone for
testing the stepping extruder; apparently connecting the other stepper
controllers to the main-board 'causes' the extruder controller to
glitch and die, urk. At times like this, one needs a friendly local
hardware company with spare storage scope around to decipher the
entrails after the event; hmm.
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Back to Evo issues, creating a meeting without mail being
setup is rather a problem it seems. Well pleased by
Petr's hat-trick. Amused by Fridrich's suggestion to normalise all
time keeping to a uniform 'milliseconds-since-creation-of-universe',
hmm.
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Meeting with Intel; Dinner. Lydia & Janice over in the
evening, chatted with them, and poked with the RepRap electronics,
learned several useful things, most of which probably should be
obvious.
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If you accidentally touch the crystal (or whatever
it is) when trying to see if the micro-controller is
overheating you will glitch/stop the clock. This has the
unfortunate side effect of making everything seem flakier
than it really is.
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A cheap 12V laptop power-supply is under-powered to
drive four NEMA 17 stepper motors, unless you adjust
the stepper controller pots carefully to the minimum level
necessary to drive them. Doing that hugely reduces the
(inferred) voltage spikes killing the extruder controller
cpu.
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Grounding everything vigorously is good; adding a
meaty ground line direct from the USB connector housing
to the PSU ground improves live measurably.
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The reprap controller firmware has a toggle button
marked 'Extrude', don't be fooled - what it really appears
to mean is "extrude for a bit, then stop" (at least, I
hope so).
My content in this blog and associated images / data under
images/ and data/ directories are (usually)
created by me and (unless obviously labelled otherwise) are licensed under
the public domain, and/or if that doesn't float your boat a CC0
license. I encourage linking back (of course) to help people decide for
themselves, in context, in the battle for ideas, and I love fixes /
improvements / corrections by private mail.
In case it's not painfully obvious: the reflections reflected here are my
own; mine, all mine ! and don't reflect the views of Collabora, SUSE,
Novell, The Document Foundation, Spaghetti Hurlers (International),
or anyone else.
It's also important to realise that I'm not in on the Swedish Conspiracy.
Occasionally people ask for formal photos for conferences
or fun.
Michael Meeks (michael.meeks@collabora.com)
