ssmith's blog

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What's better than one event? Two! We will now be roller skating on Friday
and bowling on Saturday. Here's updated info:

-- EVENT 1 ---------------------------------------------------------------

What: Roller Skating

Where: Roller Kingdom
515 E 7th St. Reno, Nevada

When: 01/19/2007 7:30pm

Other: The skating rink charges by session, which are apparently 1.5hrs.
We'll meet at the rink at 7:30pm so that we can skate during the
8:00-10:30pm session.

URL: http://www.rollerkingdom.org/sessions.htm

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- EVENT 2 ---------------------------------------------------------------

What: Bowling

Where: Grand Sierra Resort

When: 01/20/2007 5:00pm

Other: Apparently the lanes begin crowding around 3:00pm. If we arrive at
5:00pm we can reserve lanes, then go eat/drink.

URL: http://www.grandsierraresort.com/activities/recreation/bowling/

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Something to do this Saturday! This event is open to everyone. Feel free to bring friends (preferably 21 or older).

What: Bowling

Where: Grand Sierra Resort

When: 01/20/2007 5:00pm

Other: Apparently the lanes begin crowding around 3:00pm. If we arrive at 5:00pm we can reserve lanes, then go eat/drink.

In the custom Player 2.0.3 ebuild, if library build problems occur, make sure that make is using only one job.

And... stop being dumb! Write your solutions down!

I've solved this problem about 25 times, and forget how I solved it at each new encounter:

The robots have a 16550A UART onboard with four total serial lines. For some reason Gentoo sets two of the lines to the same IRQ. You need to modify the /etc/serial.conf to set /dev/ttyS2 and /dev/ttyS3 (or others) to different IRQs, then add the serial init script to start at boot.

I couldn't find the package that contains the "merge" command on Gentoo. It turns out that you can merge two files using the "sdiff" command, which is loaded on all Gentoo systems AFAIK.

I spent the last couple of days testing the robot image I've created. I've been trying to resolve a weird problem at boot. My /etc/issue file keeps getting overwritten with an error message stating that important devices are missing from /dev, and to run several commands to clean up the system. After fooling with it for a couple of hours, I can't seem to figure out what is missing and there are no logs that are helping me. According to documentation only /dev/null and /dev/console are required to boot (which are both present with proper permissions/etc), but I need to validate that with Gentoo's startup scripts. Whatever is missing isn't _critical_ because the system is operating normally (as far as I can tell).

I'm backending compilation to a server in the lab for maintaining a single, working robot operating system image. I chose to use Portage to synchronize the robots with the build server. Fortunately, this was a good choice, as Portage is very easy to configure for this type of setup. I simply threw up an rsync server to act as a portage mirror and an ftp server to act as a binary host, then threw two lines in /etc/make.conf on the robot and I was syncing portage and binaries in minutes. Well... after accidentally deleting contents of the package repository, then repackaging them (but that only cost me about an hour... thank you quickpkg).

I've merged the testing branch of sys-apps/dbus (a system-wide message bus) onto my laptop so that I can use the newest version of Gaim. Unfortunately, it's giving me problems. I had it working fine last night, but a revdep-rebuild borked the system by merging the stable version of dbus and removing the testing branch. Sometimes Gentoo's automation is retareded, but my system has been running for over two years with little headache so I can't complain too much.

I finally went snowboarding for the first time this Sunday with the usual group. As expected, I spent much of the day either cruising out of control or lying on the ground. Regardless, I had a great time. Austin has several videos that show off my 1337 skills. I'll post them if CS can afford enough storage space.

I updated my laptop the other day, but didn't update some critical libraries. I spent about two hours this evening diagnosing and fixing that problem. Turns out it was an easy fix... unfortunately it resulted in a recompilation of kdebase, which takes forever. It always makes me happy to have to recompile that package.

I've been working on a package/configuration/full-operating-system repository for the robots. I think I finished the image today. If testing goes smoothly tomorrow I'll try syncing the configuration to the other eight. I'm crossing my fingers it won't brick them like it did the first one I attempted.

Other than that, I've just been hanging out with friends -- having a good time.

The semester ended, the holidays passed and 2007 almost rolled around since my last post. *woooo* where the heck have I been?! In all truth... I really don't remember.

The last few weeks of school were... well... horrible. I don't think I slept more than five hours a night during those last few weeks. The combination of changing to a survey paper on neural networks and a midterm and final test in numerical methods was a horrible experience. In retrospect I should have finished my experiment rather than switch to a survey in artificial intelligence. In reality I was confused as to how to finish the experiment, and the reading I did for the survey paper greatly assisted in clarification. Oh well.

I spent the holiday in Winnemucca with my immediate family. I arrived on the 24th for dinner at my grandparents house. Then, spent the 25th at my parents and returned to Reno on the 26th, as my sister had to work. I received a lot of great gifts (many of which I'm still unpacking). I have a tendency to get bored when I go home, as I no longer know anyone and the lifestyle in Winnemucca is a bit, well... low tech. I had fun this trip and did't suffer from boredom, but I did only stay 2 days.

Oh... before the holiday we moved the robotics lab. We have now split from the virtual reality research group; each group now has there own lab. We are now located in room 246 of SEM. There is a ton more space, windows and it isn't a sweltering... moving on up.

Anyway, after I returned from Winnemucca I settled into the new lab for a couple of days and began work on the robots again. We're using Gentoo on all of the Pioneer 3dx robots. For the last couple of days I've been developing and testing custom ebuilds for some of the software we use in research that isn't already in portage e.g. Player and OpenCV. I've also configured a portage and binary repository so that the robots can be easily updated from my workstation. With all of this in place, I expect the remaining eight robots to be operational by Wednesday next week (I'm crossing my fingers at least).

We're going to use Linksys WRT54GL wireless routers running OpenWRT in ad-hoc mode to provide wireless communication on all robots. This configuration is much simpler than the OpenVPN tunnels through UNR wireless to the robotics lab gateway, so I imagine we'll have full wireless access to all robots by the end of next week (provided OpenVPN software updates go smoothly).

What else?! I've been playing Enemy Territory: True Combat Elite a little. [CoW] TaYpworm hasn't lost his killer instincts. I wish there were more maps for the game though because it gets boring really quick. More weapons would also make it more fun.

I haven't met with many of my friends lately. Perhaps next week...