For a unknow reason, Google decide to drop this website from there index. Currentlty only 19 pages are know by Google. Last week, it was 59 know pages.. anyways it should be something like 260 urls.
I checked Google sitemaps, but this seems to be fine. Last check 1 hours ago… 258 urls in.
This is a really bad news, since I take me a long time to achieve the 6 level page rank, and at this level I will fall around 3 for the next Google Dance.
Bye bye ..
This is a bit funny, but all is on the GoogleMasterPlan . As you can see to hire Guido, they decided to send spam. Hum, really happy to find Python on this stuff :)
I was looking for a simple way to listen some good music while I’m not in my living room (hum, I’m mean in the bathroom). There is a lot of small MP3 players right now, the only issue is that most of them cost a lot of money if you want to put a great amount of mp3 on..
Another way, perhaps look at wifi powered mp3 player like the one made by Roku. But you know, this cost a little money (around 200$), just a bit too much for the bathroom ;)
So, I decided to look at FM transmitters, but I read on most websites that they don’t perform really well. Ok, let’s go for a DIY way, after a little search on eBay, I found a small (really small) FM transmitter pair for 15$ from Sure Electronics.
Hum, let’s give it a try:
And this little stuff, is really working great !! I haven’t test the range right now, I have a clear listen all around my home.
/Enjoy Neighborhood
As severall people, I run into issue with some spammer using my comment system to spam, and post backlinks. (Even using some funny stuffs)
I ‘m already using a good email spam filter: SpamBayes, so I decided to test bayesian filtering for the spam on this blog too.
I decided to give Reverend a try:
from reverend.thomas import Bayes
SPAM_DB='spam.bayes'
guesser = Bayes()
# load the spam DB
try:
guesser.load(SPAM_DB)
except IOError:
print "Creating a new spam filter database"
guesser.save(SPAM_DB)
def train_spam(text):
guesser.train('spam',text)
guesser.save(SPAM_DB)
def train_ham(text):
guesser.train('ham',text)
guesser.save(SPAM_DB)
# try to guess the spam / ham ratio of a text
def guess(text):
spam = 0
ham = 0
value = guesser.guess(text)
for o in value:
if o[0] == 'ham': ham = o[1]
if o[0] == 'spam': spam = o[1]
return (ham,spam)
Small, and really simple module no ? The next step, simply add a ‘spam’ and ‘ham’ attributes on your comment post. And add two methods to train the comment as a spam or a ham.. And of course, only display comments which have a good ratio ( >1) ham/spam. This took me about 1 hour to implement…
After a week, of train, this is working very fine, not a single false positive, and it filter every spam since the first trains. As I get around 20 spams post per day, this is quite a good news ;)
Enjoy Bayesian ?
I was looking for a atheros mini-pci for a while. I want to remove the broadcom from my laptop. You can find some mini-pci wireless card in special shop, but they’re a little pricey.
A week ago, a friend give me a WG311 (FS version I think). After 1 min, I decide to remove the metal stuff of this PCI card. And, I discover this:
This looks like a Atheros mini-pci no ? Ok, it’s time to unsolder no ?
Take 2 seconds, a good iron and that’s it. You have now, a nice Atheros mini-pci.
The only issue: This card has only one antenna connector, but this don’t really matter in fact, I think.
Bye ..
As everybody knows the mozilla team just released the latest version of Firefox (ver: 2.0). This will take a little time until, it will fall in the Debian. But you can find an optimized build for here called Swiftfox in debian package. So let’s go ;)
And last, but not least the optimized version, go quite really fast ;)
Enjoy
In the previous article, I have study the way to power this large VFD, now we gonna take a look closer at the logic itself. We need to drive a lot of bits (8+9) at ~40v. After a little googling, I discover that Allegro still sell some VFD drivers, but they are really hard to buy, and only provide a small amout of outputs (in DIP package).
Ok .. so I decided to use a Maxim VFD driver: the MAX6921:
The main issue is that it only exist in a SO package, so I need to use a little adapter to use MAX6921 on a veroboard .. (I bought this at my local store, but they cost twice the price of the MAX)
The next step, is the clock itself. For my nixie clock, I tested several stuff like 50hz (mainlines) sync, or external oscillator but this isn’t accurate enought. This time, I decided to use a plain old DS32kHz crystal oscillator. I’m pretty sure this won’t loose a second in a week ;)
To finish the clock, I need a micro-controller, as I need a really little amout of IO (2 for buttons, 4 for the VFD driver, and 1 for the oscillator), I decided a ATtiny2313 could do the job perfectly and give me the enought room for other stuff (like a LDR for automatic dimming)
So, here the final schematic:
It’s the first time I used the ATtiny2313, but AVR-GCC is a great tools so.. To program this little stuff, I used the in-circuit programming, check out tuxgraphics doc for more infos about the whole stuff.
Hum, yeah ! ;)
Here the (quite) finished product
And if you look closer at the VFD:
After my nixie clock, I decided to build a new one based on a old VFD vacuum tube. In fact, the brother of a friend (which live in Ukrainia) give me a bag of tubes. Beside I already have a little set of this kind, I discover the IV-18. This one, is really big, and perfect for a clock.
Here a little pic of this big guy:
As you can see this is quite large, and really nice looking. I spent a little time to figure out, how to make it working (reading russian isn’t really easy). After sending a mail to the NeonNixie group, Chris help me to fix my issue.
So here the IV-18 pinouts:
And the values:
The first step was to build the PSU
I want to build a small clock which feet in a small box without the use of a wallmart (external) transformer. So I went to my junk box, and found a small 2x6v – 350mA transformer. Hum, after a little test, I found that using this with a voltage doubler, I can get around 40v. Beside I should use 50v in muxed, I discover that 40v is far enought, and It will save the VFD life. (even if this kind of VFD should live at least 10 years without issue)
That fine.. but I need some 5v too. My first thought was to simply plug a 7805 in the middle of the voltage doubler… That works fine, except the 7805 is really hot, and need a large heatsink. So I decided to use a switching PSU based on a LM2575.
Here the final power supply. (as you can see, I added a diode the filament PSU to avoid it to glow too much)
Here’s a pic:
You can see
Check out the next article for the finished product :)
Since a while I have a lot of spam comments on this blog. This method is a bit funny this time. A spammer (a guy or a bot) create a lot of account on Plone websites. And in his personnal page (for this account) he put a redirect to a viagra vendor..
Little example of link:
Update: Hum a little variant now, I get the same w/ bloglines ..
http://www.kaotonik.net/zope/thk/portal_memberdata/portraits/mv#viagra http://www.bloglines.com/blog/harrison
This is a kind of free hosting ;) So the next stuff is to post a link on blogs to this page. Now why are he doing this kind of hack ? I guess this avoid to be blacklisted by some antispam rules on certain blog software and allow to play with the Google Rank …