iOS Upgrade

The iOS 7 Upgrade fun was slightly marred today by a glitch in the order of updating iTunes and iOS. Read More...

G-Code: A poorly define language

Many Computer Controlled Machines used for CNC use NC-code / RS-274D / G-Code / Gerber to describe their programs. This language appears to be very loosely defined. To save others searching I am summarising some sources and observations about this language. Read More...

PCB Routing

I recently acquired a Roland iModela iM-01 which I intend to use for routing small PCBs. This is the first of a series of articles about getting to a working toolchain. There is a bit of a learning curve with using CNC and many of the tools only exist for Windows. One of the things I wanted was a tool path tracer - so I could quickly see what the NC-code / RS-274D / G-Code does. Read More...

Perl on BSD talking to MS-SQL Server

A lot of broadcast monitoring equipment seems to use Microsoft SQL Server as backend for storing alerts and other data. As we use a FreeBSD based monitoring box it proved necessary to find a way of accessing these servers via ODBC. Read More...

Not good news for Science in Australia

Australia has a new federal government and it looks like world opinion of science in Australia has taken a hit. New Scientist just ran an article entitled “Australia rips up climate-change policies” (10 September 2013) which covered a number of policies:
  • climate
  • National Broadband Network
  • Specific research projects
  • NICTA
With a focus on the reduction or scrapping of these initiatives. Whether you agree or not with these individual policies the overall impression is one of a reduction of focus on science and technology in Australia. Read More...