Linux Screen Tutorial
If your a SSH, or command line user and haven’t used screen before be sure to look into it. Ever been transferring a file or running a program in a command line interface and accidentally close it or disconnect? The result will be a termination of the running application and possible loss of work. When Microsoft released Windows 3.1, the world was wowed with the fact that you can just open another window and run multiple applications at the same time. Well, you can easily do this on the command line as well. By launching each application or command in a screen session, you can...
Read MoreSpeaking at FITC Screens 2011
I will be doing a presentation at Screens 2011 this year on the jQuery Mobile framework and how we used it on the new Jam3 website. I will be speaking to the pro’s and con’s when developing for mobile and also share some of the interesting things we found out while working with this framework. Presentation Deatils Screens 2011 will be hosted in Toronto Ontario this year on November 14th and 15th. More information here. See you...
Read MoreSimple XBee Communication with Arduino
Call me blind but there just isn’t an easy to find tutorial to understand how to use XBee wireless modules with your Arduino micro controllers. I imagine it is because once you realize how simple it is, you wouldn’t think there would need to be a tutorial. Well I have had enough people ask me about this, so I figured I would post a demo. Over the couple years I have been using Arduino’s, I have embedded these wireless modules to many of my projects and found out many interesting quirks, mostly from trial and error. In this post I will be showing how to wirelessly control...
Read MoreSimple Automated Backups Using rsync
rsync is a software application for Unix and Windows systems which synchronizes files and directories from one location to another while minimizing data transfer using delta encoding when appropriate. If your are on a Unix based system here is a simple snippet of code for crontab to automate backups or duplicate drives on or offsite. I sometimes refer to this as fake RAID0 as it keeps perfect replication of one drive on another and if you set a quick timer interval for backups, it almost is always duplicating your data for backup. Pending your second drive was offsite, this is a very safe way...
Read MoreToronto Mini Maker Faire 2011 Review
May 7th and 8th 2011 was a weekend packed with tons of amazing DIY work showcased at the Toronto Mini Maker Faire. I figured this event would be a great chance to finally get my FI-AUAV out in public to see what the general impression was. After two days and a couple thousand people, I can easily say – I can’t wait until next year! The event was hosted in the Evergreen Brick Works, which was a great venue for this type of show. There were tons of makers with great things to show off. From crafts to robots, the Maker Faire seemed to have something to keep anyone interested. As...
Read MoreTap Madness in the BlackBerry App World
A simple game I wrote for the upcomming BlackBerry Playbook has been accepted today. Tap Madness is a simple touch based game written in ActionScript3 and published with the BlackBerry Tablet AIR SDK. The current public version is 0.4alpha and I have spent about 3 weeks working on 0.5alpha which is close to completion. More details will be posted soon! More information on Tap Madness can be found...
Read More