The company that is currently distributing Arduino in Spain, Libelium, organized 2 months ago an Arduino Contest. And I force myself to compete with something. I decided to improve my first MrPotato Robot adding voice, led eyes a thermometer, and of course using the new MrPotato Maximus Prime. It took a great effort, I finished the hardware stage, but I couldn’t end the software one. Anyway, I sent it to the contest, competing in the Art Hack section. more »
Developing SysAdmin task on Windows Operating System seems to be a kind of hard, not anymore if you are properly equiped. Here I recommend a set of cool tools to make your Windows usage&control experience easy peasy.
Some coworker told me that there was a way to navigate your filesystem using the windows explorer and opening a windows console from there. And today I found some time to search the solucion. CmdHere.
If you are using Windows Vista, the CmdHere is a builting feature. The only thing you need to do from your windows explorer is to Shift+Right Click at the directory and choose from the context menu option open command prompt here. For more details, MaximumPcguides
If you are like most of the world that is still using Windows XP you need to download and install XP PowerToys. If you don´t want to install anything, follow the instructions of this article or this one in PDF.
I have to admit that I wasn´t very proud of my matplotlib code to represent the temperature values I was gathering with Arduino. It was pretty complex, and too slow. Meanwhile I´ve been facing several issues that requires data representation and searching for alternatives I came across a nice solution, flash charts. I found two projects, one open source, Open Flash Charts, and another commercial, but with a free distribution, FusionCharts
I´ve spent some time thinking how to backup the data I´m currently storing in my linux server. First of all, I faced the problem of coding the script to backup and then configuring the cron services to execute it daily. When all was working I had to decide where to put those backup files, because leaving them in the server hard disk wasn´t a solution. So I bought an USB hard disk and from time to time I move the backup files there. I was more or less happy with the solution. But some months ago I talk to a friend and co-worker who was starting to use a gmail account as a backup storage. I thought that was a great idea so I started to find a python library that helps me to send all my backups to my auxiliary gmail account, and I found it, libgmail . more »
At the beginning of this year I set out to take control of my expenses. To do so, I wanted to automate this annoying task as much as possible, to be aware of my expenses without spending too much time. I started gathering data from my bank using the Norma43 format, then adding this info to a database and so on. After all this, I needed to create reports, and I thought that OpenOffice spreadsheets could be a great place to store them.
To create your procedural spreadsheets you can use csv(coma separated value) files, but you loose the ability to set format configurations like font color, column width and so on. With the ooolib, you can use Python to to create procedural OpenOffice spreadsheets easily and without pain. It doesn´t support all the format options you have in Calc, but the main ones. Definitely enough for me.
Ok, you have an IPod Touch, and you’ve seen that the iPhone comes with some applications that haven´t been already deployed for iTouch, and you want them so badly. Take it easy, here I post the iPhoneApps.zip file, copy the content of this file on the same directories in your iTouch using WinSCP and after a reboot you will enjoy:
Mobile Mail
Stocks
Mobile Notes
Weather
Maps
Of course, this will only work on a jailbreaked iTouch with openSSH installed or using the iBrick
The iTouch as it is after you buy it doesn´t worth the money it cost, but after some work tunning it, this nice device begins to blossom. But keep something in mind, without wifi connection to internet your iTouch won´t evolve. more »
In Spain, all banks has an unified file format to supply statements of account, this format is known as Norma43. The first version of the format was released May 1982 and it’s quite simple to parse. Almost all bank’s web supplies Norma43 files with your account info. If you want to process this info, inserted in a database or whatever software treatment, this file can be very helpful. I’ve implemented a python class that parses this file format and fill in an array with all the registers in the file and its field values.
Do you want to edit files on your remote linux server from your windows desktop using your favorite editor (Crimson Editor may be)?
Have your linux server already an SSH server properly configured?
Is your linux configuration mana low?(WOW addicts will understand this question)
If you have answered YES to all the former questions, this blog entry may be helpful for you.
After several internet searches I found that the free software, WinSCP, the one that I use to copy files from/to linux, currently support this feature for any editor and also works great with Crimson editor, enabling remote editing almost transparently. When you edit a remote file, it opens one temporary file in your local machine and monitors the file status, updating the remote file when any change is detected. more »
