Coder's Talk

For any reason, you may need extra memory on your ts-7260 SBC but the build in RAM is only 28MB. In my case, it get rebooted when I'm running few programs that continuously reading the input from the DIO. As this system is running linux, we can use swap memory instead of physical RAM. So, to solve this problem, we can create swap file on this ts-7260. Here is how to add swapfile on ts-7260 board running the default debian Sarge on ts11 kernel 2.4 SD card boot linux.

When you run a command that would take long time to finish, you would rather do something else beside staring at the terminal to wait until it finished to do the next procedure. In my case, if I write the SD cards for my ts-7260, I would leave it and do other stuff. Since it is easy to get distracted with so many stuff on the internet, I sometimes forget to get back to check the dd terminal. This could waste my time because the process have stopped for quite long time where I should write another card instead just right after the first card finished. Therefore, I use notify-send from libnotify-bin package to notify me about my process while I'm free to check my mail, reading, surfing and so on. Here is the screenshot of my gnome notification when it is ready. It can be done with one line of command like this: notify-send -i /usr/share/icons/Human/scalable/devices/media-flash.svg \ -h int:x:$(xrandr -q|grep '*' | sed -e 's/x.*//' -e 's/\ //g') \ -h int:y...

One of my reason why I hate Windows XP is because it is prone to virus. However, I can't escape from using it because there are instruments which I use that can only communicate with it's own proprietary windows program. Love it or not, I still need these proprietary programs to run in the windows box on site because they don't have linux version of it nor even going to have it. Leaving the windows box like that. I believe in some way, it will get infected when some user access the box to grab some data with their infected USB drive or there is virus in the network. It simply happened last two weeks on the site box where this virus prevent me to open the Windows Task Manager to show what process is running in the box. Thanks to VBScript which allows me to view the running process and investigate. So, after getting frustated and cursing the virus prone OS for some time, I just open Notepad program and begin writing this script: '==========================================...

Lately, I'm getting interested in Mobile Phone Application . And what make me more interested about it was, getting to know the Android , a new open source operating system and software platform for mobile phones . The Android is developed by Google, and later the Open Handset Alliance based on Linux kernel . Google has made most of the Android platform available under the Apache free-software and open source license. The Open Handset Alliance (OHA) is a business alliance of 48 firms including Google, HTC, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, Samsung, LG, T-Mobile, NVIDIA, Sony Ericsson, ARM, AKM Semiconductor Inc, ASUSTek COmputer Inc, Atheros Communications, Borqs, Ericsson, Garmin International Inc, Wind River Systems, Huawei Technologies, Omron Software Co Ltd, Softbank Monile Corporation, Teleca AB, Toshiba Corporation and Vodafone that came together to develop open standards for mobile devices. The Android platform was announced on 5 November 2007 with the founding of the Open Handse...

When working with SBC or Single Board Computer for embedded project, we can't have full RS-232 serial with all 9 pin signal compatibility at all times. For instance, while I'm working with TS-7260 board from Technologic Systems, the COM3 serial interface have only 3 pin which is RX, TX and GND. So, in order to make my Wavecom GSM/GPRS/EDGE modem working, I have to create my own cable pinout to connect the 15 pin connector on the Wavecom Modem to the 3 pin RS-232 serial interface on the board. Before creating the cable, I did some search and find this cable pinout from Wavecom GSM Modem manual. Pin Description 1 DCD (Data Carrier Detect) 2 TXD (Transmit Data) 3 Reserved 4 MICROPHONE (+) 5 MICROPHONE (-) 6 RXD (Receive Data) 7 DSR (Data Set Ready) 8 DTR (Data Terminal Ready) 9 GND(Signal Ground) 10 SPEAKER (+) 11 CTS (Clear To Send) 12 RTS (Request To Send) 13 RI (Ring Indicator) 14 RESET 15 SPEAKER (-) and the pinout from TS-7260 Board manual: 5.6 C...

Sorry for not having any post last month. It's just because I'm getting busy with my workloads and some stuff to do with Ubuntu Malaysia Community . Now I'm back, and I would like to share with you this cool IDE for programming in Linux called Geany. Geany is a light-weight cross-platform GTK+ text editor based on Scintilla with basic Integrated Development Environment (IDE) features. It is designed to have limited dependency on separate packages and short load times. It is available for a wide range of operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, BSD and Solaris. Among the supported programming languages are (according to the documentation) C, Java, JavaScript, PHP, HTML, CSS, Python, Perl and Pascal. Geany is one of the more fully-featured editors on the Linux platform, as most Linux editors adopt a more minimalist philosophy. It is similar to Windows editors such as NoteTab or ConTEXT. It is Free Software licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL. ~ Cited From Wikipedia ~ P...

I've been tweaking my blog template because I've already bored with my old default template that I use previously. While working on this template, I'm thinking that it may be cool to have my long post to be truncated and have the "read more" link . I found the code from Blogger Help to do this. However, there is one issue with their code where the "read more" link will appear regardless of whether a post has been truncated or not. You can check it out at help.blogger.com on How can I create expandable post summaries? . If you have already read them, you should notice the disadvantages under the Note list which says: Disadvantages: Requires changes to the posts themselves, rather than to the template only. However, the "read more" link is in the template, so it will appear regardless of whether a post has been truncated or not. (Modifying this feature is left as an exercise for the reader.) Do you think it is a good exercise? So, how many of...

Ubuntu normally use .deb package for application installer. However, if you have an rpm file for a package you wish to install, and if you cannot find a .deb debian package in any of the Ubuntu repositories or elsewhere, you can use the alien package converter application to install the .rpm file. Alien is a program that converts between the rpm, dpkg, stampede slp, and slackware tgz file formats. If you want to use a package from another distribution than the one you have installed on your system, you can use alien to convert it to your preferred package format and install it. Despite the large version number, alien is still (and will probably always be) rather experimental software. It has been used by many people for many years, but there are still many bugs and limitations. Alien should not be used to replace important system packages, like sysvinit, shared libraries, or other things that are essential for the functioning of your system. Many of these packages are set up different...

Have you ever wished of having a desktop where your super slim LCD monitor attached to just a keyboard? And nothing else? If you did, it is worth to have a look at this space saving desktop computer from Cybernet , the Computer in a Keyboard . This company has shrunk the CPU behind a regular sized keyboard and it comes complete with an Intel Core 2 Quad chip, DVD drive, hard disk drive, up to 4GB RAM, a touchpad, memory card slots and standard USB ports . Even thou it makes the keyboard bulky, it can be a small tradeoff for all the space saving that the PC achieves. You can plug your standard monitor or even your LCD monitors into this Computer in Keyboard . Isn't that great? As far as I know, the PC in keyboard is fully customizable and will cost around $700 to $1100. Enjoy!!

Well, this time I make a basic simple tutorial. For all advanced geek who read this blog, please ignore this post... I just wanna help myself not to teach the same basic thing on every newbies friends that really need help. OK guys, back to the howto... There are two ways to create a hyperlink on your blog post. One is the simple GUI way and the other is coders way. I prefer the coder way as I can have more control on it. I like to teach by example. So, let say you wanna create a hyperlink on this line of words... You can go here to see my art blog where you wanna link the word "here" to the other page on your blog or on the internet. In this example, I wanna link it to my Art Of Apogee Blog post with the address: http://artofapogee.blogspot.com/2008/03/gimp-best-free-photoshop.html And here is how to do it using both ways... The simple GUI way If you rollover every button on your Compose toolbar, you can see one button called "Link" where the word Link will pop u...