Comments for Bret Kuhns

Comment on Free Day For All! by Tracy

Tracy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:37:50 +0000

This is really interesting, You’re a very professional blogger. I have joined your rss feed and stay up for in search of extra of your great post. Additionally, I’ve shared your web site in my social networks!

Comment on ChromeOS and Me by Bret Kuhns

Bret Kuhns — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 01:43:52 +0000

My boss at my last job started playing around with extension development and it certainly looked interesting. I’ve read up on Native Client and have been tempted to write my own NaCl extension, but I’m honestly not sure what to make. Are you saying to run PHP as a native binary, or to make a more webpage-esque extension that runs PHP from a remote server? I can certainly live without FireFTP… love my Filezilla.

Yep, I’m an avid Ubuntu fan but I’m not familiar with your problem. I stopped using the Chromium releases for that reason, I prefer the stable tested releases from Google’s Chrome PPA. I’ll be switching back to Chromium to make my FOSS heart warm and fuzzy once they start releasing more stable builds of Chromium.

Comment on I Love My Summer Tires by Bret Kuhns

Bret Kuhns — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 20:21:51 +0000

I’ve learned you can never trust the “all season” branding on some tires. There are a handful of all-seasons with the large circumferential channel (or usually two channels) in the center like your Goodyears. As you said, this is terrible in snow and on ice. The RE-01R is specifically a summer tire and would never handle even light amounts of snow, so the channels work.

I have a set of unstudded General Altimax Artic snow tires which were bafflingly cheap and provide as good performance as my Blizzak WS-60’s and Nokian Hakkapelitta 2’s did in the past with my other cars. One important aspect to a good snow tread design is to never introduce longitudinal grooves of any length for the snow/ice to creep into. You’ll notice the majority of top winter tread blocks form diagonal patterns for that reason. Throw in some good siping with soft & jagged tread blocks and you’ve got yourself an awesome snow tire. Can be a bit squirrelly on dry pavement at highway speeds, but you wont’ be flinching in the worst of lake-effect storms we get in Ohio.

Comment on I Love My Summer Tires by Volomike

Volomike — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 06:30:42 +0000

I used to have some Goodyears once that had this large groove down the middle. Notice they don’t sell those anymore? Yeah, the advertising said that they took rain into that groove and displaced it rather well. Sure, it did that and all was fantastic.

And then it snowed. And when it snowed, it locked ice in the middle groove. That meant I was sliding all over the place. Lousy tires.

Comment on ChromeOS and Me by Volomike

Volomike — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 06:25:38 +0000

Sweet! Tell Google to send me one too! :)

I’ve already started messing around with Google Chrome Extension building, and it’s fun if you know jQuery/AJAX, and can interact with a PHP backend for even more power. It’s certainly a heck of a lot smarter in design than the lousy way Firefox rolled out extensions. In fact, I wish all browser extensions used the Chrome model because it’s brilliant. The only thing I wish GCEs would add is some FTP APIs because we really need a FireFTP Extension (or App) for Chrome really bad.

Oh, and I think you said on Reddit that you were an Ubuntu user as well. So, what do you think about the recent problems in Chromium. On mine, about 3 days ago after Chromium did an update, I started seeing a horiz. scrollbar appear on several sites (like 1 out of 10 sites). As well, I used to have a Gmail Notifier extension that was a toolbar icon, but then Google did the dumb thing of creating this new popdown extension menu, hiding my icons, and not giving me a preference to choose which one I want. I posted a bug report on the first issue, and made a desperate feature request on the other. I hope Google listens to me.

Comment on CakePHP JSON Response Data in Headers by Sam

Sam — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 05:25:14 +0000

Man- I wish I could’ve found this article a few hours ago. I just ran into this same problem today… just a few days after a site launch. The X-JSON header was so large that firebug was showing a null response from the server- even though everything worked fine in Chrome. Additionally, the issue only showed up on the production server- the dev server didn’t have enough data to cause the problem. It took a few hours before I figured out(by accident) that it was the headers.

Comment on Google Apps aren’t ready for Chrome OS by Bret Kuhns » Blog Archive » ChromeOS and Me - Programming, Cars, and Life

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 18:44:00 +0000

[...] for another blog post to go further in depth on that subject so I can better elaborate. I already expressed my concern that Google’s lineup of web apps aren’t ready for the concept of ChromeOS, so [...]

Comment on Hyperterminal Replacement For Linux by dreddor

dreddor — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:34:07 +0000

I jump between minicom and GNU screen often. They are both slightly different takes on the same problem.

I use it to communicate with my Bus Pirate. Handy little tool, that.

Comment on I Love My Summer Tires by dave++

dave++ — Sat, 15 May 2010 13:32:42 +0000

I’m always hearing talk about summer and winter tires. I take it the market isn’t so hot for Spring and Fall tires?

Comment on Flashing OpenLog Firmware in Ubuntu Linux by Bret Kuhns

Bret Kuhns — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:36:34 +0000

If by serial connection, you mean via an RS232 port on a computer, I can't really say for sure. I do know the FTDI breakout board mentioned in my post creates a virtual serial device on your computer, so the software end should be no different than if you were to use a USB line. RS232 is not the same as UART, however, which is how OpenLog talks (different signal voltage levels) so I'm not sure if a direct RS232OpenLog connection would work. I would either ask on the SparkFun forums, message Nate (the creator) on GitHub, or post in the comments section on SparkFun's OpenLog product page.

Comment on Flashing OpenLog Firmware in Ubuntu Linux by Camp0s

Camp0s — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:02:05 +0000

Hi, saw your post, may I ask if you know if it’s possible to reflash the unit via serial connection only? tnx.

Comment on Google Apps aren’t ready for Chrome OS by Marc Henessy

Marc Henessy — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:13:01 +0000

i installed Chrome OS on two of my netbooks. the Chrome OS works great and its loading time is very fast too.

Comment on 8-bits of Processing Goodness by Bret Kuhns

Bret Kuhns — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:10:30 +0000

Yep, they’re fairly similar platforms, PIC being the older “tried and true” option, but there’s a lot of community and buzz around AVR including (and possibly thanks to) the Arduino. The full bells and whistle Arduino boards usually over $30, but that’s for quick and dirty prototyping. Less convenient options are available that drastically reduce the price if that’s a concern for you.

I never explicitly disabled it… I just unchecked the option to require logins to post comments. If you know how to enable both, let me know how (I’m pretty new to Wordpress) and I’ll set it up.

Custom PCB’s aren’t that expensive if you look in the right places. http://www.batchpcb.com will do it for $2.50 per square inch but have a lengthy wait time. http://www.expresspcb.com is $51 for three boards, and have a much faster turnaround. For a single prototype, that’s not horrible.

Comment on 8-bits of Processing Goodness by Ben

Ben — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:32:47 +0000

Yeah, I am sure it is 6 to one, half dozen to another. Probably should look at using an arduino board though. That way I could bounce stuff off you. Sometimes it is just easier to talk to somebody else doing it.

I don’t know how many do, but I like it. Also, you do have it disabled :)

Getting PCBs printed ain’t going to be cheap bud. Not unless you order like 1000 of them. How big of a board are you looking at? I’d consider making the template up and etching them yourself. That will be many times cheaper in the short term.

Comment on 8-bits of Processing Goodness by Bret Kuhns

Bret Kuhns — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 03:22:06 +0000

Well, at a comparable chip level, you can get an ATMega328p with the Arduino bootloader for $3-4. The full Arduino board just makes it simple to program and prototype with. Within minutes of receiving the board, I was already running code to blink LEDs. Once I get a stable prototype running, I intend to ditch the standard Arduino package and get my own PCB printed and use an SMD ATMega328 which should cut both cost and size of the hardware significantly.

I threw the Meta widget up for you, I didn’t realize people actually like to register for blogs :-P

Comment on 8-bits of Processing Goodness by Ben

Ben — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:28:55 +0000

Funny story, definitely looking at a PIC uC. http://81.134.141.187/epages/Store.storefront/?ObjectPath=/Shops/Store.TechSupplies/Products/AXE007M

I mean right now all I care about is one in and one out. Code is really stupid simple from what I have seen. Chips are pretty cheap too. I can get one for about 1/4 of the cheapest Arduino. Not that there is anything wrong with those. The UAV project looks stupid cool actually.

The no preview might be the theme. As far as the registration all you have to do is throw the meta block on the sidebar. I could probably just browse to the log-in/register url, but I am lazy.

Comment on 8-bits of Processing Goodness by Bret Kuhns

Bret Kuhns — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:45:55 +0000

Hey Ben, yeah, your wife showed me a Nerd Kits project for pulling OBD data off a car. I’ll probably be working off that project quite a bit when it comes time for it (I’m concerned with GPS and acceleration first, anything further is just icing). What uC/platform are you working with? I started looking into PIC stuff, but the learning curve was more than I felt like bothering with. Arduino/AVR was so much easier to dive into.

No idea why you can’t preview, maybe it’s the theme I’m using. I never specifically disabled registration, I just don’t require it since I hate having to register on blogs just to post comments.

Comment on 8-bits of Processing Goodness by Ben

Ben — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:27:52 +0000

Have you looked at Nerd Kits? They have some good info and stuff on there, and some decent videos. I have a couple projects I want to look into, on involves a uC and some RFID stuff. I just need to find some time to play with it! Btw, how come nobody can register and there is no preview for the comments?

Comment on PHP Recursive Strings by Bret Kuhns

Bret Kuhns — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:39:42 +0000

Hey Noah! I came to the same conclusion and you’re exactly right. That’s how I solved the problem. I guess I should’ve mentioned that here, huh? I must have gotten too used to compiled languages for a while and PHP’s line-by-line interpreting threw me a curve ball here.

Comment on PHP Recursive Strings by Noah

Noah — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:32:38 +0000

This is what I would guess is happening:
1. PHP creates $a.
2. The initializer creates $a[0]. When it does this, $a[1] has no value since it has not yet been assigned, so “test {$a[1]}” evalulates to just “test “.
3. Same with $a[1].

If I’m right, then you can actually use this as you intend, but by doing this:
$a = array(
2 => “argh”,
1 => “blah {$a[2]}”,
0 => “test {$a[1]}”
);