www.rolfje.com

Script: Text-to-NATO-spelling

2013-05-27 rolfje No Comments

In my morse training adventure on lcwo.net, I hit a slight bump in the road. At Koch lesson 33 (of 40 lessons total), I can’t seem to copy with 90% accuracy, which is the criterea for moving to the next lesson. See my downward trend here. It is partly because of gradually speeding up the Farnsworth timing from 10wpm to 12wpm so I can be on 20wpm at lesson 40. It is also because of shorter, less focussed daily training sessions, I must confess.

I experimented a bit, and it seems I can recognize characters easily at 37wpm, but I can’t form the words and recognize letters at the same time. More accurately: I can’t seem to be able to remember 3 to 5 characters, form a word and listen to new characters at the same time.

Fun

BaseCamp Import problem [fixed]

2013-05-03 rolfje 2 Comments

On Mac OSX, when installing Garmin BaseCamp 4.1.2 from the Appstore, there is a chance that importing downloaded routes in gdb or gpx files from your local machine will not work. The error you’ll get is “[filename].gdb not found”, in a popup much like the one shown here. If you open the console app, you’ll see the following error in the logfile:

sandboxd[28092]: ([27931]) Garmin BaseCamp(27931) deny file-read-data /Users/rolf/Desktop

This means that the OSX Sandbox mechanism does not allow Garmin BaseCamp to read files in that folder. I have briefly searched documentation on how to grant BaseCamp the rights to read files there, but I couldn’t find anything that would work. I did find a way to work around this problem though: Garmin BaseCamp does have rights to read your Garmin device. So here we go:

Temporarily copy the files you want to import in Garmin BaseCamp onto your device (or in my case: the extra SD card in the device).
Start Garmin BaseCamp, and select “File” -> “Import…”.
Browse to the Garmin SD card and select the gdb file to import. Voila. That will get it into BaseCamp.
Delete the gdb file from the Garmin. We don’t need it anymore, the Garmin was just a place where BaseCamp could read the file.

From here on, everything should work as normal. This is just a workaround. If anybody finds out how to really fix this problem let me know.

Software

Morse Code is not dead (yet)

2013-04-09 rolfje 1 Comment

Not everybody understands why I am trying to learn morse code on lcwo.net. Maybe I’m not even sure myself. But most people seem to think morse code is absolutely dead. I could tell you that’s not the case, but it is far better to find out for yourself. To be able to do that you need access to a radio which can receive CW (continuous wave) signals somewhere between 8MHz and 15MHz. This is the place where HAM Radio Operators hang out and try to talk to eachother. Morse code is still used there, mainly for DX-ing.

So how do you do that? With the power of the internet and a few very enthusiastic people in Dwingeloo, you can now receive radio signals right on your computer using radios all over the world. Lots of links in this article, have fun!

Uncategorized

Open letter to Keith Lang about Skitch

2013-01-03 rolfje No Comments

Dear Keith,

I read your letter about Skitch and would like to respond to all that has happened from my end-user perspective.

I am a long-time Evernote user and fan. Evernote changed note taking by being truly searchable. I can confidently drop all the websites, receipts, todos and ideas in there, and clear my mind of the “I must remember that” burden. The OCR of Evernote works beautifully on photos of whiteboards, making even my whiteboard notes searchable.

In 2010, I discovered Skitch. The simplicity and razor sharp focus on anotating a screencapture and share the anotated image by dragging it anywhere was sheer brilliance. My daily work includes making annotated screenhots and mailing them to team members to discuss improvements. Skitch changed this ugly capture-save-edit-save-attach-send cycle to pure poetry in motion. Dragging images into Evernote even made my screenshots searchable. It instantly became second nature and my go-to image tool.

Apple

Why you should not use SOAP Headers

2012-12-24 rolfje 3 Comments

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In the project I am working on right now we use apache XCF and Spring to provide a SOAP service to our customers. As part of the messages, there is a userid/password combo telling the application which user sent the request. I struggled with that today because I think that userid/password info should actually be in the SOAP Header, cleaning up my API, enable me to implement different authentication techniques in the future and generally be more “compliant” to the SOAP standard. Boy was I wrong.

Software

Make your buildserver talk

2012-12-16 rolfje No Comments

Jenkins talking Have you ever started a shell script which takes a while and you keep monitoring that window because you really need those results? If you are working on a Mac, you can use the Mac’s power of speech to tell you a command is finished. Here’s how:

./yourreallyslowbuild.sh; say &quot;really long build is finished&quot;

With a little curl and shell scripting magic, I told my Mac to constantly monitor our Jenkins buildserver, and bug everybody in the office when the hourly build is failing:

Apple, Fun, Software

The world is not a Green Field

2012-12-02 rolfje 2 Comments

Devoxx 2012 was nice. 3400 nerds invading Antwerp to talk about new frameworks, languages, and geek out over a set of RaspberryPi‘s. But it also confirmed a new “pet peeve” this grumpy old architect is developing.

Uncategorized

Steve Jobs’ yacht launched, named “Venus”

2012-10-28 rolfje 3 Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZh4aSszD5k

Today Steve Job’s yacht was launched from a dock a few miles from my house. I went there with some friends and we shot some awesome footage of this incredible ship. Through the glass, we could see the 7 iMacs which are used to control the ship. There are also large doors on the side and the back, I suspect these will be used to launch boats or jetskis into a nice warm Mediterranean water.

Apple

Shoot salt at flies

2012-08-07 rolfje 1 Comment

Lorenzo had a great idea. In stead if being one of those “having fun at the bar” ideas that never actually see the light of day, Lorenzo followed through. Did you ever have that urge to just take a gun and shoot that fly that is constantly buzzing around your head or food? Well now you can. Check out his invention at www.bugasalt.com.

Seeing his gun, I remembered making pea-shooters at high school from a roll of tape and a party balloon. I adjusted the idea for flies (smaller nozzle), and it works beautifully. It only holds one shot, and it looks not nearly as cool as the shotgun idea of Lorenzo, but if you can’t wait to start shooting those flies, here’s how to make your own low-budget, one-shot salt shooter. Enjoy!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjI9rTNCRqs]

Fun, Hardware

Toyota (Corolla Verso) iPhone Bluetooth connection

2012-08-04 rolfje 24 Comments

My sisters in law bought a beautiful 2006 Toyota Corolla Verso. They could not get the iPhone to pair with the car’s Bluetooth system. The dealer told them that this was an iPhone problem, but after some fiddling, it turns out there is a simple workaround. If you want to pair an iPhone to your car, and the car says “pairing failed” as soon as you tap on your iPhone, this simple trick might help for you. This article contains detailed steps for the Toyota Corolla Verso, but on other cars this might work too.

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Apple, Hardware