I'm going to be doing some updates to the animatronic skeleton I built last year for Halloween.  One issue I ran into at the last minute last year was that I didn't have enough memory to initially load all the animation sequences for both songs and patter.  I did a Band-Aid and just loaded the patter, but this year, we want to make our animatronic sing, so I will be doing some updates to load in the animation files on demand to accomplish this.  Additionally, we'll be doing less hands-on running of the animation sequences,. There will be a jukebox mode so the skeleton can run without intervention.

Here's the status of last year's code.  I'll rework this repo to clean up and remove unused options.

https://github.com/darthmario/halloween23-skelleton

Image

The lack of process and QA, which could allow something like this to go out, is surprising. I've agreed with many of the takes that question why this was a global rollout and not a staged rollout where issues could be found and the "blast radius" would be smaller, though still disruptive.  It's easy to conclude that this is also a Microsoft issue.  That may also be true, but take this comment:

Do note that while the focus is on Windows, Linux machines can run CrowdStrike software too, and I’ve heard from Linux kernel engineers who happen to also administer large numbers of Linux servers that they’re seeing a huge spike in Linux kernel panics… Caused by CrowdStrike, which is installed on a lot more Linux servers than you might think. So while Windows is currently the focus of the story, the problems are far more widespread than just Windows.

I don't know many Linux admins that closely at present, but I'd be curious if this were the case.

Hoping for the best with this.  My wife and I are big alamo fans and go there for pretty much all our movie going these days.

Sony Pictures Entertainment has acquired the popular movie theater chain Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, the two companies announced on Wednesday.I hope for the best with this. My wife and I are big Alamo fans and go there for pretty much all our moviegoing

To get the most from GitHub Copilot as your Drupal coding sidekick, know its strengths and limits. Its AI can spit out boilerplate code, but it's no replacement for developer know-how. 

The opening sentence really sums up my experience with AI coding tools and autocompletions.  They are defnitely pretty handy, but much like AI text and images they can spit out utter nonsense too.

I'm going to do a whole post / video on this at some point, but for now, just going to place this here. Along with this link for a vintage article describing exactly the same thing. 

From some amiga bbs:

> How did you do it?  I mean, connect your Amiga 1200 to your Sony
> KV25-XBR?  Nobody I've spoken with at any computer store or Sony dealer has
> any idea where to get a cable to connect a computer to the 34-pin RGB port
> on my Sony.  I even called Sony customer service, and those folks are real
> polite but even THEY don't have a clue.

I went to a Sony Service Center back in 1985 and purchased the
"KV-25XBR/RM-724/APM-X3U Service Manual".  It has schematics and lists
two options for the RGB MULTI INPUT:

  1) The PX-34 RGB multi connector plugs into the back of the TV.
     It has to be soldered on to the end of a cable that brings RGB
     data to the TV.

  2) The SMK-0001 cable has a PX-34 at one end and a "microcomputer
     connector" at the other.  (From the drawing, it is not obvious
     whether this is a DB-9 or some other style of connector.  The
     microcomputer in the diagram looks more like a TI-99 than an IBM-PC.)

The PX-34 was listed for more than $30, and there was no guarentee that the
SMK-0001 had the connectors I needed.  So I built my own.

I purchased a standard 34-pin connector with flat ribbon cable from a
computer store, and wired up a box that has an Amiga-compatible 9-pin
video connector, 6 RCA phono jacks (red green blue sync left right), and
2 switches.  One switch selects sync-on-green versus separate sync, the
other enables TV audio while in RGB mode.  The Amiga has a 23-pin video
connector, so I had to use either a DB-23 to DB-9 cable, or use a
genlock (which uses a 9-pin output connector).

9-pin Video connector (used by A2002 and A1084 monitors, AmiGen genlock):
  01 = Sync ground	06 = no connection
  02 = RGB ground	07 = combined Sync
  03 = Red		08 = no connection
  04 = Green		09 = no connection
  05 = Blue
	07+01 go to a black RCA jack labeled "Sync"
	03+02 go to a red   RCA jack labeled "Red"
	04+02 go to a green RCA jack labeled "Green"
	05+02 go to a blue  RCA jack labeled "Blue"

On a 23-pin Video connector, 03=Red, 04=Green, 05=Blue, 10=Csync, and
16-20 are all ground.  Do not use 11=Hsync or 12=Vsync in this case.
(On the 9-pin male to 9-pin female cable I was using, I took some wire
cutters to pins 06, 08 and 09, since their signals confused my A2002
monitor.)

I planned on adding a second DB-9 for CGA (TTL) monitor, but never got
around to it.  The original IBM PC used 1=GND, 2=unused, 3=RED, 4=GREEN,
5=BLUE, 6=INTENSITY, 7=unused, 8=H-SYNC, 9=V-SYNC.

34-pin RGB connector:
  01 = +5V		18 = no connection
  02 = +5V		19 = no connection
  03 = ground		20 = Audio, Right
  04 = ground		21 = Mode Switch (digital RGB vs analog RGB)
  05 = Remote Ctl gnd	22 = no connection
  06 = Composite gnd	23 = Video (composite)
  07 = Audio ground	24 = Audio, Left
  08 = Red ground	25 = Red
  09 = Green ground	26 = Green
  10 = Blue ground	27 = Blue
  11 = Ground		28 = no connection
  12 = Blank ground	29 = Blanking
  13 = Hsync ground	30 = H-sync
  14 = no connection	31 = V-sync
  15 = Vsync ground	32 = no connection
  16 = Ground		33 = RGB vs Normal
  17 = no connection	34 = Audio Select (+5v enables audio)

01+34 go to a SPST switch (to enable audio while in RGB mode)
20+03 go to a red RCA jack labeled "Right"
24+07 go to a white RCA jack labeled "Left"
25+08, 26+09, 27+10 go to the Red, Green, Blue jacks (and Amiga connector)
13 goes to the Sync jack ground, 30 goes to a SPDT switch, which connects
it to either the Sync jack (separate) or the Green jack (sync-on-green)

The phono jacks are useable by a "GIGI" (DEC VK100 terminal with BASIC).
The 9-pin connector is useable by an Amiga 23-pin to 9-pin cable, or
by the 9-pin output of an AmiGen genlock.

See also the "Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ on Pinouts" 
http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_Pinouts3.html#PINOUTS_015
for "Sony RGB Multi Input (found on KV-25XBR TV's).

Links to other documents:

 *) http://www.hut.fi/Misc/Electronics/circuits/vga2tv/ for details
	on converting VGA video (15 pin) to NTSC (CGA, 9 pin).

 *) http://home.att.net/~billhudson/rybyrgb.pdf has a component (YPrPb)
	to RGB converter.

 *) http://elm-chan.org/works/yuv2rgb/report.html - look for "Circuit Diagram
	3 (Simplified Lv.2) BG part is omitted (Sync on RGB)".

-- 
Joe Smith  <js-cgi@inwap.com>  CA license plate: "POPJ P,"  36-bits forever!
Humorous disclaimer: "My Amiga 3000 speaks for me."    http://www.inwap.com/

Really neat looking.  Some of these raspberry pi based personal projects are super cool!

The volumetric display is built using multiple panels—each sporting an array of LEDs. The panels are spun at high speed while the Pi tells each LED when to illuminate. The end result is a 3D effect that you can see no matter which direction you're looking at it from. The framerate and spin speed has to be just right for the effect to work successfully.

I've been wanting to play around with the esp32's for a while.  They're very popular in home automation / home assistant circles as they kind of allow all sorts of things to just run out of the box.  This might be the product that gets me to play around with them.

“Nano ESP32 brings MicroPython and IoT to the fingertips of Arduino user” – this is how Arduino describes their software and hardware compatibility. They believe that their new Nano ESP32 module is the best platform to learn MicroPython.

Another project that makes me go, "Wow!"  Basically this reads the luma signals coming off of old computers or video game systems and with the help of another board allows them to be converted into something that can be output to HDMI.

LumaCode is an interface standard for transfering digital video data from retro computers. Its main application is to be used for machines that do not already expose the video signal in a digitally usable form. Because of its simplicity, the necessary hardware to generate the LumaCode signal for a specific machine can be made quite cheaply. The main effort to translate this signal to something to be used for an actual monitor or TV can then be done by an external upscaler. This upscaler is probably more expensive but can be shared by multiple retro computers.

Another project leverating the raspberry pi for some interesting stuff on another Video Game machine.  What's neat about this one is that because of the simple architecture of a lot of these older machines, the raspberry pi can basically take over the CPU's job and still use the rest of the hardware of the machine.  

The Vectrex CPU, a Motorola 68A09 running at 1.5MHz, controls all of the I/O including display, sound, and controls, via a 6522A VIA chip. These are both connected to the cartridge port, and with the CPU disabled using the HALT signal also at the cartridge port, all of the Vectrex's functions can be controled by an external device. In this case we're using a Raspberry Pi Zero with a 1GHz ARM CPU and 512MB of RAM, powerful enough to emulate arcade machines with vector displays, emulate the Vectrex CPU to load ROM images akin to a multicart, and run custom games written to take advantage of the greater processing power.

The Vectrex is pretty rad. I did a video on mine five years ago.  I still have a couple things to fix on it someday - think the video board needs a tune up so it's a little more stable.

This has been out for a while, but now that I have my Amiga 500 mostly working I'm planning on adding one of these to it, at least for the CPU emulation for a speed improvement.  I'll probably also try out the memory expansion and harddrive as well.  This should make a kick ass Amiga 500!

The PiStorm itself is an adapter board intended to be paired with a Raspberry Pi Model 3A+. It goes in the DIP socket on and acts in place of the CPU, but functionality can be extended beyond simple CPU emulation.