Thursday 31 May 2007 at 10:09 pm
10" laptop. Runs Linux.
(image borrowed from the below, who "borrowed" it from palm. bandwidth not borrowed, however)
more info here
5 hours battery life. Runs Linux. 1024x600 screen. Bluetooth and WiFi. Headphone socket, SD and CF sockets. Looking good so far...
Costs US$499!? That's good for a normal laptop, but hang on, this thing is a PDA with a big screen and keyboard... a little overpriced? Given the specs, maybe not.
And no touchscreen? As if you can't flip the screen round, and use it as a tablet. Considering it's from Palm, that qualifies for a real WTF.
And it's got one of those pointer things that are on the keyboard. No way. Trackpad all the way for me, considering I can use one as well as I can use a mouse (lots of practice = perfectly natural :) ).
Interesting device. But I think I'd be happier with a N800, or a Zaurus.
I might revisit
linux on my palm at some point in the future, it's gotten significantly better since last time I used it. Suspend now works, so you can power it off and on, and there's a bluetooth driver. Wifi drivers are in development somewhere else, that will be awesome, when the unit's fully functional.
Wonder when I can get the sound out working (it's supposed to work. Haven't been able to make it behave yet)...
Because overall, the TX is a great unit. Running Linux on it would expand the possibilities dramatically.
Wednesday 30 May 2007 at 11:16 pm
New type of thing to build. A restaurant. Only one type so far, and only one frame (still not finished...).
Coming next: the restaurant actually opens, and it can be more or less popular.
Then I guess it's transport.
It really is fun trying to think of the best way in which something can be stored, manipulated and implemented. Depending on the task (some tasks are very straight forward and easy. zTower is neither...), a small part of the job of a coder is to know and write the language. A larger part is to actually work out how to go about the task, and the most efficient way of going about it.
My language of choice here is raw C and SDL. Fast (except that SDL is spending most of it's time in SDL_BlitSurface :) ), and not particularly hard to code (or is it just that I know it well? It really is not that difficult a language...).
Sunday 27 May 2007 at 09:54 am
Note the black status bar. It's not clickable to select the tool (that will come next, and is trivial). Oh, and we need more tools :)
To come:
Automatically build floor behind something when building something that doesn't have floor behind it if possible.
Don't draw an office when the pointer is moving around, draw an outline.
More stuff to build:
- Transport (quite important - elevators, stairs etc etc)
- Food / Resturaunts
- Housing/Hotels (maybe?)
- Server rooms
- Parking
- External decorations (billboard or two? Placing them over someone's windows gets them annoyed...)
I've got too much work to do here... so this could be a while.
Oh, and there's stuff coming for kismac too. I might pull GPSTool out of hiding as well...
Monday 14 May 2007 at 6:13 pm
Click to view flickr version with notes.
Coming soon: Higher gain antenna.
I'm organizing a bulk purchase of antennas at the moment. If anyone wants a 7db RP-SMA antenna for an accesspoint, or a 5.8GHZ omni antenna for a rooftop, contact me, and tell me. I can get you one for a cheap price.
Monday 07 May 2007 at 10:54 pm
• r100 stumbledrone
• rewrite voyage init scripts for init-ng - faster boot
• newer version of aircrack-ng in kismac -> ptw attack supported
• U3 flashdrive payload
... if only i had more time here
Monday 07 May 2007 at 9:36 pm
Hmm, no updates for a while. Time to do one.
Disclaimer: Be careful if you try to do this yourself. I am not responsible if you end up touching 240v wires, or you solder wrong and blow your expensive machine up etc etc or anything else bad happens, either directly or indirectly caused by you reading or not reading this.
Oh, and sorry for the fact that this post is probably quite unreadable. I don't have much time...
Anyway, my power brick broke. More specifically, it broke where the cable goes into the power brick.
Course of action... hmmm... what if we cut the lead, say, 5cm after the break, and solder it back into the inside of the power brick?
But, I hear you saying, you can't get to the inside of the power brick, because like most power bricks, it's moulded shut. Well, not unless you have one of these:
:D
Anyway, cut all the way round the edges:
and lever it apart (it's all glued together, it's VERY strongly built. I hear someone ran one over with a car, and it survived with no damage...)
Cut the wire, strip the centre conductor (it's coax), and solder the cable and ground down to the PCB, after desoldering the previous wires (which were broken.) (Didn't get pictures. My hands were full enough soldering).
Put it down on the table, connect the AC power cord, plug it in and switch it on. (Don't touch it if it hasn't got the plastic case on...). Basically, check to see that it doesn't explode :). (It shouldn't, but if you soldered wrong, or cut through something you shouldn't when you were cutting it open...).
Then double-check with a multimeter. It should have the negative end at the shield of the coax, and the positive end at the centre. Ensure it does, and that the voltage is more or less 24 volts.
Now you have two choices. Glue the case back together, or duct-tape it. You can guess which one I'd pick.
Yep.
Finally, take a deep breath, and plug it into your laptop. And hope it doesn't kill anything. It seems to have worked fine for me...
