Richi's blog

Category: Software

  • We have been using passwords for too long

    Every time I have to register to a website using a password, I grow more annoyed. Passwords were fine when you only had one, to log in to your corporate mainframe. But these days, computers are better at cracking passwords than humans at remembering them. It only gets worse with the more sites you maintain […]

  • an ultrabook for developers

    My old netbook still runs, but it shows signs of senility. I have been thinking of a replacement for a while, but as it still worked, that was constantly postponed. When I first read about project sputnik, I thought this is great news and I want one. The device that followed looked very nice, but […]

  • Pimp my miner

    For a while now, I thought about mounting a simple display somewhere that shows the most important parameters of my BitCoin miner. First I started with an AtMega equipped with an Ethernet module. But parsing json without any library support became too cumbersome quickly. So I copy pasted together a small python script, and used […]

  • revisiting enable_if

    It was roughly 2008, when I wanted to make a template function for serialization, only available to container types. Template stuff can become complicated at times, and from reading the documentation boost::enable_if seemed to be just what I needed. I didn’t get it to work, and I blamed Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 for not being […]

  • trading agents

    I always considered finance and accounting as the most boring things you can do with a computer. And while you can earn big bucks, working for a Swiss bank, I have always preferred topics with a more physical background. But BitCoin got me interested in how some aspects of the established financial systems work. Looking […]

  • sniffing i2c with the BusPirate

    I received my BusPirate v4 a while ago, but didn’t really use it so far. That’s a cool analysis/debug tool for serial buses such as uart, spi, i2c and the like. For me i2c is the most interesting. From time to time, the communication doesn’t work as it should, and so far, I worked it […]

  • The crapware platform

    I complained many times that there is no standard package manager on Windows, and that installations and especially upgrading software on that platform is an unholy mess. On my office computer there are probably close to ten different mechanisms present to keep different software packages up to date. Some lurk in the system tray, and […]

  • AtTiny Advent Wreath

    An advent wreath in late spring, you ask? Yes, the timing is a bit off, and that’s not just because the coldest spring in ages has not finished yet. While browsing for the topic of my last post, I discovered a nice little one-evening-project: Geeky advent from tinkerlog. I had all the required parts here, […]

  • AtMega breadboard header

    A while ago, I ordered some AtTiny breadboard headers from tinkerlog.com. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any boards for AtMega’s left. The ones for the AtTiny’s are very handy, and I used them whenever prototyping something with an AtTiny. In fact, I used it almost whenever flashing an AtTiny. Many times I wished I had one […]

  • Jumping ship as google is getting evil

    For many years google stood out of the big IT enterprises as an example of respecting their users and embracing open standards. Sadly, they are drifting away from that, and it looks as if they want to get as insidious as the others. Gone are the times of “do no evil”. Just recently, I wanted to […]