A different kind of CAD

I just discovered a new kind of CAD!

OpenSCAD Official Logo 2017

 

While the traditional CAD approach is all point-and-click in a laborious user interface, OpenSCAD takes the approach of the programmer, namely writing a definition text and viewing the reselt in an interactive 3D view. Since the language used in OpenSCAD allows the user to make relationships between parameters in the model, the result are highly flexible and customizable objects, perfect for rapid prototyping and research work. I can warmly recommend this software, I already have a substantial model build from the ground up after just 3 hours of use. It definitely made my grudge against CAD software go away!

Wheeled rig build complete!

I finally managed to overcome myself and complete the wheeled rig hardware!

Now its only software left....

Wheeled rig for OctoMY™

Canuckistanian Dictionary

I have compiled this rudimentary Canuckistanian Dictionary, so that you may also follow the teachings of The One True Canuckistanian.

Schmoo	Any liquid, be it hydrophillic or hydrophobic, homogeneous or pasteurized, that has a viscosity between that of Canuckistanian Beaver Semen at one hour after ejaculation ( 9.35 +/- 0.99 centipoise ) and Canuckistanian Maple Syrup (175 +/- 25 centipoises).
Chooch	To move, either orthogonally, laterally or radially, or any combination of the aforementioned. To let pixies pass through the wires of a contrivance. See also "Pixies".
Pixies	Small, usually obedient particles that are expected to form lines inside wires to make contrivances chooch. Se also: "Chooch", "Angry Pixies".
Angry Pixies	Pixies that for some reason are no longer obedient, and may for no reason at all step out of line. Se also: "Pixies".
Bumblefuckery	An activity that may result in a contrivance stopping to chooch. See also "Pop fart and give up the ghost".
(The room formerly known as) wife's sowing	A traditional in-home style Canuckistanian man-cave. Dedicated to learning from books and staying in front of the screen with the occational work with brain boxes. Tempered at around 23 Dungrees.
(The) shop	A traditional out-of-home style Canuckistanian man-cave. Dedicated to performing bumblefuckery with the bridgeport. Tempered at around 15 Dungrees.
(The) bridgeport	An age old contrivance for manually and forcefully opening snail-mail, cracking plexiglass, bending and annealing end-mills and making vodka glasses from sheets of copper.
(The) screen	Special purpose contrivance that allows Canuckistanians to learn stuff from the interwebs and youtubes.
Keep your dick in a vise	Have a nice day. See also "Keep your stick on the ice".
Brainbox	A contrivance dedicated to the controlled conversion of pixies into angry pixies, thereby making one or more other contrivances chooch.
Sexpert	Dumb fuck.
Enginerd	Engineer
Stupidvisor	Supervisor
Frankenstein	Unit of measure for temperature. 1 °Dungree = ( °Frankenstein - 32) × 5/9 1 °Frankenstein = °Dungree × 9/5 + 32 Se also: "Dungrees"
Dungrees	Unit of measure for temperature. 1 °Dungree = ( °Frankenstein - 32) × 5/9 1 °Frankenstein = °Dungree × 9/5 + 32 Se also: "Frankenstein"
Vijeo	Sequence of images displayed in rapid succession with accompanying audio.
Wank overload	An event where too much wank happened.
Cromulent	Important
Redonculous	Ridiculous
Jelly 4 ur Jam	Bang for your buck
Bifocals	Glasses
Canuckistan	The land of the polar beers.
(Canuckistanian) Copeks	Primary unit of wealth in Canuckistan. See also "(Canuckistanian) Pesos".
(Canuckistanian) Pesos	Secondary unit of wealth in Canuckistan. See also "(Canuckistanian) Copeks".
Scientician	Learned Canuckistanian.
Scienticious	Actions carried out exclusively by learned Canuckistanian. See also "Scientician".
Yada yada yada	I don't feel like elaborating now.
It's the cicle of life	At this very moment, I am having an epiphany.
Dog bless the nanny state	Idiomatic exclamation of pure satisfaction equivalent to "God bless the government of Canuckistan for looking after its citizens"!
Pop fart and give up the ghost	To stop chooching.
Flogg it like a Rented mule	To start chooching.
Son of a diddely	Mild expression of disappointment.
Safety squint engaged	Eyes squinting momentyarily to avoid damage. See also "Bifocals".
Fantabulous	Mild expression of approval.
Scokum	Of right Canuckistanian quality.
Keep your stick on the ice	Good day. See also "Keep your dick in a vise".
Rippums	Rotations Per Minute.
Meat hook abortion	Contrivance of unknown or non-Canuckistanian origin. See also "Chinesium".
Chees grade	Of considerable softness.
Bob's your auntie	Let's try this.
The sharpest bowling ball in the shed	Round Contrivance typically kept by land owners of Canuckistan in out-door sheds. Used for measuring relative mental capacity.

Brain-dead fuzzing in C++

I like to pursue quality in software, and so I am constantly looking for innovative or smart ways in which to improve quality.

One approach I have always liked is the concept of Fuzzing. Basically fuzzing means to feed random or cleverly provocative data into your innocent and carefree API to wreck complete havoc and expose all its bad traits/bugs/unexpected features etc. But I am reluctant to bring new dependencies into my project if I can avoid it. So how could we implement a built-in fuzzing in the least amount of code?

I came up with the approach below which I find myself being really happy with! Here the qrand() function could be exchanged with a more devious/evolutionary and data driven fuzz data generator function.

Wheeled rig update

Just a quick update on the wheeled rig. Electronics are starting to come together.

Power bar created.

• Main power bar was created and connected to battery.
• Relay board high end connected to power bar.
• Ribbon cable to carry signal between controller and relay boards was prepared with apropriate connectors.
• RC Servo pins soldered to stand alone PCB that allows for combining power with signal from different sources.
• RC Servo, ESC and power connected to RC servo board.
• ESC connected to power bar.
• Audio amplifier connected to power bar.
• Buzzer and warning light was connected to the power bar and relay board.
• Most circuits tested.

 Now only software remains!

Test circuit for RC servos.

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UTAU Robot Voice at it's best.

Who said robots could not sing?

Happy Anniversary 2017

The 7th of January marks the one year anniversary of the OctoMY™ project, and we have a ton of progress to celebrate!

OctoMY™ Anniversary 2017

Vector SVG icons for bool/boolean, char, short, int, long, float, and double

While working on the Actuator model as part of ActuatorWidget and the ArduMY™ serial protocol, my UI was in dire need of some icons to represent the different representations of values in computers.

I looked long and hard in google image results before realizing there really arn't any icons that represent this in a good way. So I decided to make my own.

Please accept my humble contribution!

OctoMY™ SVG Vector format Icons representing C/C++/Java fundamental datatypes

	download free svg bit icon
	download free svg nibble icon
	Download free svg byte icon (8-bit integer)
	Download free svg word icon (16-bit integer)
	Download free svg double word icon (32-bit integer)
	Download free svg quad word icon (64-bit integer)
	Download free svg float icon (32-bit)
	Download free svg double icon (64-bit)
	Download free svg extended float icon (80-bit)
	Download free svg quadruple float icon (128-bit)