Halloween 2024

 Several photos I made this year in our neighborhood. 

This banjo duet plays nice country style music.

Front yard jazz band is on pre-Halloween rehearsal. 

Kids, does these toys  scary you?

This is an election year after all. Steve Garvey and his supporter.

Guards of the Star-Sprangled Banner.

Resting couple.

And the last video is of our house front window.  That is how it looks this Halloween.

Crane

 Yesterday,  on the trail in neighboring town, I have taken with my Pixel 6 Pro couple of pictures .

First one I made when crane just walked out of creek water.  

And here is the same crane again staying still next to a wired fence.

 

Wallpaper

 I just published small Go  project on GitHub:

https://github.com/jumbleview/decor

This is the program which takes jpeg picture as argument and set it as Windows desktop background.

Command line looks like this:

• decor.exe [-s] path_to_jpeg_file

It starts with single argument: path to jpeg file. If before an argument there is the flag -s program starts in silent mode (without console).

Program reads jpeg file, encodes it, crops image so it's width-to-height ratio matches width-to-height ratio of computer monitor, saves the image as bmp file and sets it as a screen background.

It is pure Go program. It should be compiled with command

go build -ldflags -H=windowsgui 

Using such flags allows to start without Windows console attached. Console is created dynamically or suppressed by flag -s.

This program allows to change background by desktop shortcut, batch file or schedule background change with Task scheduler.

Update on September 13, 2024.

One more project on GitHub:

https://github.com/jumbleview/picshuffle

It is more advanced version of background utility.  It starts with such  command:

• picshuffle.exe [-s] [-l] path_to_folder_or_jpeg_file

If argument is a path to a jpeg file program  works exactly as decor.exe.   

In case argument is a path to a directory with some jpeg files program reads content of directory and randomly picks one file from that directory to set it as a desktop background. Program tracks selected files in storage picshuffle.db so once selected file will not be selected again till all files from this directory are taken.

I personally use this program out of Windows task scheduler at log on event. Each time after a log on into the system  I see different background picture.

To track selected files program uses embedded key-value store  bolt  (go.etcd.io/bbolt). If started with flag [-l] program prints list of files used as a background within last 365 days.

Deer , Turtles, & Heron

 

Get lucky to make this shot of two deer (probably mother and child) roaming around neighboring town.

It is good  that may Pixel 6 Pro is always with me. Its telephoto lens is excellent.

One more picture  I shot next day  in another neighboring town. It is a pond near town hall.

The same phone, the same lens.

And one more at the park lake.

Four Years in Use

 Four years ago I published post about my Go terminal application which I use as  personal password manager.

https://www.jumbleview.info/2020/04/here-we-go.html

During all these years I used it on constant basis making some tweaking here and there. This post  summarizes major changes.

• Application now supports mouse interface. User can utilize keyboard  hits  and mouse clicks interchangeably.
• At start application can be supplied with some flags. That allows  to select application colors, initial application mode, even  add new table column or delete existing one.
• In case current cell contains valid URL user can open browser window on that URL with the help of WWW button.
• There is no button Add anymore (its functionality  absorbed  by button Edit). 
• When table is in focus user may select  row by hitting key which corresponds to the first letter of the  record name. 
• Initial implementation had a security vulnerability: content of clipboard was not cleared  in case application was terminated  by closing console window .  Now it is fixed: disregarding of which  way application is terminated (by Ctrl+C, Exit button, or window closing)  clipboard is empty.

Source code of the application  as well as readme is available to the public (same place)     https://github.com/jumbleview/tspur

Tetris House

Couple of photos of  new street art  artifact : "Tetris House". It is private house  in Duboce Triangle neighborhood of San Francisco. Owner recently made  his house to become piece of art.

 

Street where this house located is not that wide and it is hard to catch the moment, when there are no cars parked, but I tried my best.

And one more photo near the Market Street and 10th Street.

 

Syntax Prototype Board

 From my experience succuss of electronic DIY project in a big part depends  on how good  you  solder circuit  components. And high quality soldering depends on the prototype board. Three years ago I have published my review of  Adafruit Board . It is indeed excellent  for small projects accommodating Attinny85 processor but for project based on Atmega328 it is too small.  For a long time my favorite boards for such projects were Radio Shack  catalog numbers #276170 and #270150. Alas, there are no anymore  Radio Shack stores around  and, while Radio Shack web site  still exists, boards are not on sale on there site. Sometimes Radio Shack boards can be bought on E-bay, but cost with delivery reaches   $15 or even more. I consider this as  too much. So I have started to look for a replacement. Eventually I found  this site They sells some useful  stuff including prototype boards. On the picture  below you can see the board taken from there.  I paid  for five boards with delivery  ~$25 (~$5 per a board).

Boards came nicely wrapped into transparent material. On wrapper of each board there were labels: "Made in Taiwan". As you can guess board has  two power buses  and six rows of three  hole  pads.

What differentiate this board form other unexpensive  protype boards is the fact that conductor strips   are not on  surface  but sandwiched in the middle. On one side of the board there is white paint picture  of conductors topology, on opposite side there are isolated spots for component soldering. At first I got frustrated of this fact: (what if I need to cut conductive strip), but eventually I got  used to it. By using some external wire and with boards three hole pads  I can  accommodate any circuit topology needed. Soldering  experience is very good. At least as good as with Adafruit board (maybe even better). 

 Below you can see project I made with this board.

Project itself I published on Instructables site: https://www.instructables.com/Half-Dial-Wall-Clock/