Where does this wire go?

I had a problem setting the variables to point to the jython path. I thought the jython path was the same as where jython.jar was. I was wrong it was the /usr/share/jython and not /usr/shar/java where jython.jar is.

speechlion is having problems understanding my commands. I’m going to see if I can train sphinx to understand me better.

This isn’t a problem with the touch screen, but with a mini keyboard that has a built in touchpad. When I moved the mouse left or right the cursor went up and down. Going up and down did nothing. Clicking the left mouse button moved the cursor right a few pixels.

What I had to do was to edit /etc/modules.d/blacklist.conf and blacklist usbmouse and uncomment usbhid

I’m not sure if it is going to make the touchscreen stop working though. I’ll have to wait a few days to try it out. I took my system out of my car while the mechanics have a look at my transmission.

One of my amps in my car literally went up in smoke. I’m not sure what caused it, it could just be overheating or something, but it was pouring out smoke. I’m not sure what I’m going to do to replace it. I don’t have that kind of money anymore.

I uploaded my udev rules that I use so that my gps receiver and Elmscan get created with their own devices 100% of the time. It creates /dev/gps0 and /dev/elm0.

Without this either device would be ttyUSB0 and the other ttyUSB1 during initilization.

The link to the file is 50-myrules.rules

It had a small crack in it which allowed watter to drip down the handle and follow the cord under the sink. It wasn’t a lot of water at once, and leaked so slowly that you couldn’t even see it. The watter ran down the hose and dropped off the hose where it bent and on to the cabinet floor under the sink. This caused the floor to sag with the weight of cleaning products and a constantly damp floor.

The fix was to get a new handle from homedepot which cost about $8.00.

Even after a year of living in our new home we are still finding stuff to fix. I guess it is like children. You never stop having to care for them.

Today I’m trying to figure out how to make one of my systems drain properly. It is filled with sand (and it is supposed to be.) I have a hose going out the bottom. I put a sponge covering the opening of the hose to act as a filter.. I’m not sure if this is going to work out or not yet.

Anyone have any ideas how to allow drainage from a bucket full of sand?

I was playing with the google maps api and created a traffic map. I will incorporate this into my car so I can see where the traffic is around me. I might try to see if I can find a way for it to alert me to upcoming traffic conditions even if I don’t have the traffic screen selected.

*WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* Before reading this post see the link at the bottom of this post and watch some videos of the dangers of Lithium Polymer batteries when warnings aren’t followed.*WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING*

Okay. I’m a VERY STUPID. It says on the battery “Do not disassemble or mistreat battery.” Well, I’ve never mistreated the battery, in fact I’ve never forgot its birthday and never raised my voice to it once since I’ve owned it. All kidding aside though, I should have listened to the do not disassemble part. The battery apparently overheated and bulged out popping the cover off my wireless broadband card.

So, what do I stupidly do? I take the battery out and remove the protective wrapping. Maybe they should use titanium wrapping to prevent stupid people like myself from tampering with the battery and ignoring their clearly marked warnings. Next I took a small flat bladed screwdriver and poked a hole in the inner wrapper. Then POP a cloud of white powder erupted from from the small package and I got a lung full.

I’m hoping I’m not going to suffer any major damage. I don’t know the real complications of inhaling this stuff but I’m sure it isn’t something beneficial to my health.

Well, anyway. DON’T MESS WITH BATTERIES OR ANYTHING ELSE THAT SAYS DON’T OPEN. You never know what surprise you will get.

Edit: After watching some videos and reading more about li-polymer batteries I will be disposing of the battery as soon as possible.

Kids, do not try this at home. Here is what can happen. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=lipo+explosions&aq=f

I have a homelite cordless electric lawn mower similar to the Earthwise 60120 20-Inch 24-Volt Cordless Electric Bag/Mulch/Side Discharge Lawn Mower
I don’t know if it is true with the earthwise, but my lawnmower deck is a tad to thin. Last year I ruined a chassis because a bolt holding down the motor tore out a chunk (about an inch square) of the deck. It wasn’t dangerous but required that I buy a new deck. Well, this summer the chassis cracked. Fortunately it was a crack and no missing pieces.

What I did was to go to home depot and buy a few washers to kind of reinforce the chassis at the cracks. I tried out the mower and it seems to be holding so far. But I’m sure over time the nuts are going to loosen up (I replaced the screws and nuts with new ones since the old ones were stripped) The bolts if anyone else is having this problem and is interested are 6mm.

One thing to know is that I am merciless with this homelite mower. I think I posted about it earlier, but as a reminder, I use it to cut down small saplings to size (trunk size of the saplings are about 2″.)

There are only 2 things that are not great about the mower, one is the thin metal of the chassis, If you abuse your mower like I do, then I highly recommend putting washers behind the nuts on the undercarriage that connected the motor to the chassis. Note, I don’t know how safe this is, so do this at your own risk.

The other is that the other is the fact mine doesn’t have a removable battery. The irony is that the charger isn’t made for outdoor use!?! Since it is recommended that you charge the mower once a month when not in use (i.e. over the winter) you either have to park it somewhere sheltered outside with a 110 outlet, or bring it inside to charge it. I put mine in my basement for the winter and charged it as recommended. The battery seems to have made it through winter fine.

So, despite my minor surgery on the Homelite, I’m very happy with the mower. I hope I can find a permanent solution to the cracking chassis.

If anyone has any ideas I’d appreciate hearing them.

I’ve been playing with this program for about a week now. I came across it looking for something to build openstreetmap routes and while it doesn’t do that, it does allow you to keep logs of your trip and use the data from your odb-II port and gps any way you see fit. The author mentions exporting the log to a google earth kml file (which he includes a utility to do.) Also, another utility lets you export to CSV which you can load in your favorite spreadsheet.

What I really wanted was a set of gauges. Wouldn’t you know it, the author has included an application for that. I use it for throttle position, oil temp, and a few other things. I’m limited to what the obd-II port of my car will report, but I’m sure I’ll find other interesting stuff to add as well.

I was working with the developer on adding a compass as a gauge, and by tweaking his code I got a basic compass done. Using the gps for this is a nice addition to the gauges displaying the obd-II data, and fits in nicely with the whole idea of obd gps logging.

While his code still in its early stages I’m sure with enough people encouraging him he will continue to flesh out his code which I think would benefit many of us using linux for a carpc.

You can find more information about the obdgpslogger program at the authors website http://icculus.org/obdgpslogger/