Arduino and Mile High Con

I will be at Mile High Con this weekend. I'm not on any panels or doing any readings. For the second year in a row, I'm just going as a fan. It just worked out that way. I wasn't sure enough I'd have new fiction out to sign up for anything when the deadline came...and went. But I'll be around, so if you have a copy of something I wrote and want it signed, hit me up.

 Some thoughts on Arduino: When I was writing Junkbox Arduino, I did not realize how much I was taking the Arduino IDE and compiler for granted. There are better microcontrollers out there, most notably the NXP LPC1114, a 32 bit ARM device capable of running at 50MHz, and available in a DIP package. It sounds great until you try to get a development environment for it. Just try, I'll wait. Waiting... You can get the non-free one from NXP, windows only, you can get the GNU suite (a big install, whole separate compiler and everything) or you can diddle Clang/LLVM to generate code for it... but libraries? Documentation? It's all fragmentary, and much of it seems to be unfinished. For better or worse, Arduino puts all of that in one convenient glob. (I hope they keep doing that. There's talk of a web based tool, which I can't get behind at all.)

 It's worse if you want to get into programmable logic. There, you're either stuck with closed source, licensed stuff (free as in beer in some cases, but still) or stuff that's reverse engineered and of questionable legality (to say nothing of the fact that it could be weeks or months before API changes are caught up with) Even with old ICs like GALs, the tools are either antique (DOS based) or good but undocumented (Palwiz), and all the programming devices are reverse engineered. If you're wondering why I haven't started a new technical book, this stuff is why. The proprietary BS is on my nerves in a bad way, and I have a lot of questions whether I even could write about these things without stepping on someone's IP if it's not in the datasheet. I got a taste of it with the PATA/IDE project in Junkbox Arduino, and while the ANSI folks were very kind and helpful, (full props to them) I still didn't like it.

 I may have to go back to software books. I can, at least, write about open source projects with impunity. Meantime, I'm starting to make some headway on Brass and Steel: City of Glass, the second installment of the Brass and Steel trilogy. All I can say right now is this: airship collisions are complicated. :)

 -JRS

Brass and Steel: Inferno is here.

I got word from Amazon this morning that Brass and Steel: Inferno is available in both formats: DRM-Free Kindle and DRM free paperback.

It's 1895. Business is good.

Out in the wild part of the country; where the wave of post-war prosperity washes up on the dust of the Old West; a million dollars worth of silver has gone missing. It's a routine case for Marshal Dante Blackmore. But there's nothing routine about Perdition, nor the mine, nor especially about Inferno, a mystical club that rises like a shining idol into the bloody sky. Blackmore will have to risk all the humanity he has left to unravel the case, find out the truth behind the Doppelgänger war, and his own dark secrets.

I've been saying for a long time that my short story Brass and Steel, originally published in Science Fiction Trails magazine had enough implicit story to be an entire novel, perhaps a trilogy. This is that novel. My first novel-length foray into Steampunk, it tells the story of a town locked in the final conflict of a long-dead war; of the man whose job it is to solve a crime there; and the hornet's nest he kicks over in the process. Very, very little is as it seems, not least of which Dante Blackmore, the hero of the story. It's finally in print, wrapped in cover art by the always awesome Richard Bartrop.

Inferno is Coming

Brass and Steel: Inferno is coming.

I've pulled the trigger on both Createspace and KDP. There's no buy link on my web page yet because Amazon hasn't generated the URLs yet.

Tip for Apple Airport users:

Check your WAN ethernet settings. If you have modern cable modem, you want gigabit Ethernet. Just switched mine, and got a /big/ speed boost.

-JRS

Junk Box Arduino - updates in my website

I just updated the website to list Junk Box Arduino. The cover price is $34.99, although as usual from Amazon, you never pay full list. Also, I noticed something in the book. If you buy the hardcopy, which quite a nice book, by the way, you can get the ebook for $5.00.  Full details on the last page of the physical book, or on the website it points you at, which is here: http://www.apress.com/companion. Cool. I didn't know about that.

-JRS

Remember that technical book I was writing?

So I got an email from my publisher today. My review copies of Junk Box Arduino: Ten Projects in Upcycled Electronics are on the way.  Hokey smokes, I've got a new book in print. :) Apress seems to be spreading the word far and wide too, There are even (allegedly) torrents of it. While that's bread off my table, still, I've never had a project big enough that anyone's stolen it before. I'm back in the saddle, hanging on for the ride.

Of course, this means my part in this project is pretty much done, so I've been tinkering with some new ideas for the next book. Presently leaning toward programmable logic - start with TTLs and work my way up (perhaps) to FPGAs. Here's what I want to be able to do next. I want to build a computer, from scratch. Not from boards sourced in China. I've done that. Not from boards sourced in Oregon, and parts sourced from everywhere and solder. I've done that. I'm still doing that, and it's still fun. But I want to design one myself. I'd like it to have ICs that don't require a microscope to work with, but that's really impossible once we get to the FPGA world. They're creatures of the modern era, and thus, SMD. I don't know how this project is going to look yet, whether it will be a breadboard monstrosity (the current model) or stripboard or perfboard, or even wire-wrap (probably not.).  If I make good on my FPGA threat, it might wind up designed and built inside a single pre-made board, although that smacks of magic again, and I really don't like treating electronics like magic.

Anyway. Book in print good. Review copies coming.  I have a list of people I've promised review copies to, so expect to hear from me soon.

Woohoo!

-JRS

PS: the book link is here: https://www.amazon.com/Junk-Box-Arduino-Projects-Electronics/dp/1484214269

Replace Chrome App Launcher in Xubuntu Linux

So Google has announced that the Chrome App Launcher isn't cool enough, and it's being discontinued. Since I was one of the eight people who actually used it, I was a little annoyed by this, so I set out to replace it with a plain old launcher.

First, kick off Chrome, right-click on the bookmark bar, and tick "show apps shortcut." You need this.

Next, go ahead and delete the Chrome App Launcher from the usual panel.

Now right-click on your panel where all your other launchers are (yes, I came from the Mac world and my panel #1 at the bottom of my screen looks remarkably dock-like,) click panel, add new items, and select Launcher. Then click on Add.

Right-click your new launcher and select "properties."  Click the plus button to add new items to the launcher. Search for Chrome first, and add it. So long as Chrome remains the first item in the list, the icon will remain Chrome, and that's really what we want.

From your Chrome window, click the apps shortcut at the far left of your bookmarks bar. This will list all your apps.

Right-click on each chrome app and select create shortcut. You can put them in your applications menu if you want to, but the one that's most important is a desktop shortcut. Do all the apps you have.

Select all the google app shortcuts on your desktop and drag them to the Chrome launcher properties window. Then close the properties window. You can delete the shortcuts off your desktop, too.

That's all there is to it.  Now, if you click-and-hold the icon, or click on the little up-arrow beside it, you'll get the menu. Click on one of those, and Chrome will launch with your app running. If you just click on the icon itself, you get Chrome.

Now I just have to figure out how to make this happen in Raspbian, although at the speed Chromium for Raspbian is updated, I should have another decade before Chromium launcher goes away.

-JRS