Now why would you do THAT?

I had a really interesting experience recently which I hope might enlighten others as much as it did me: I was approached (via LinkedIn) by a recruiter from one of the big tech firms, as they put it "based on the work you've been publishing on image analysis and learning models".  I would have to admit that doing this kind of work for one of the holy trinity sounds like a dream job for a hardcore geek like myself. So I went along late one afternoon (they kindly offered to meet with me at their premises in town at the end of the day to allow me to focus on my current job).  To be completely honest, I am happy where I am, but what's the harm in hearing what they have to say, right?  What they had to say was truly fascinating. After the usual niceties, we got down to my professional history.  " I see you've been working in the technology industry since the early 1980's.  That must be a misprint right? "  I briefly explained the somewhat circuitous path ...

  I am not 100% sure where this is going, but it's going to be a fun journey...   I own an iRobot Roomba 630 floor cleaner, and it works well enough for our house.  But I discovered the iRobot "Create" which is designed for teaching and hacking in general.  As you can imagine, repurposing our cleaning robot for my hobby might not sit too well. Using the local social networks, I picked up an iRobot "Scooba" for nothing.  According to the previous owner, it won't charge and the power light glows red when you plug it in. I downloaded the service manual from one of those manuals websites, and learned this is likely to mean that the battery has failed and won't hold a charge.  I figured I could probably re-pack it and things would be sweet. As with so many of my projects, the problem was a little more complex than I expected.  The reason why it won't charge is that the battery was missing, rather than simply faulty.  Given it's a specialised package, ...

Yes, this comes up a lot, and if you're getting mysterious build breaks, maybe it's a mismatch between what version of gcc/g++ CUDA requires, your default compiler. The symptoms are that cmake completes just fine (so it found a compiler, all the libraries, etc) but then you get a "failed to compile" error when you do a "make -j[number]" The first thing to do is to run a single-instance make, because the errors will likely be less obtuse.  When I did this, I got: "error: #error -- unsupported GNU version! gcc versions later than 8 are not supported! " gcc --version told me it was version 9, so there's the problem.  But how to get around it? Make sure you have a suitable version of gcc and g++ installed (version 8) in our case.  On Ubuntu, you can do this with: "sudo apt install -y gcc-8 g++-8" Tell cmake about it when you do the pre-build with: "-D CMAKE_C_COMPILER=gcc-8 -D CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++-8" To wrap up, the cmake comm...

Evoluzione delle specie Seems there's another Evolution 2020, so don't get confused I published the plans and instructions for the original Meerkat around 2 years ago, and in that time Meerkat has done a lot of teaching work, not to mention being built quite a few times from my instructions. But over the last while he's been sitting there not doing much because of what I thought was a dead motor, and because my day job needs full attention.  But not that long ago, I got inspired to give Meerkat a proper update. In automotive parlance, this new version is an update of the existing model rather than an all-new model.  So I've decided to call the update " Meerkat Evoluzione 2020 " Back in the workshop again... So what is the feature list for the reborn 'Kat?  How is this for a start? Cliff detection.  Stairs are the enemy of most robots, so we'd better find them before we fall off. Power monitoring.  So Meerkat knows how much ...

Episode 4 - "We have liftoff" Last time , I got the RX2600 started up and failed to install OpenVMS because of a suspect hard drive.  From the screen shot above, you might observe that I have gotten OpenVMS installed and running on the machine. There were a bunch of issues.  The hard drive supplied with the system was bad, and it was not the original device if the butchered screws on the caddy were anything to go by.  The seller did offer to replace it for me, but since I have a box of replacements, I didn't take him up on the offer.  Needless to say, if I want another RX, I know where I will look first. The other curious issue is that the DVD drive is staggeringly slow.  It's not just OpenVMS, but also on RedHat.  Since it's not something you use much once the system is installed, HP didn't put much emphasis on it's performance. I'm not going to take you through the whole installation process, that's what the OpenVMS manuals are for, ...

Episode 3 - " Are we there yet? " Last time , we had the RX2600 plugged in and talking on the Management Processor (MP), and burned a copy of OpenVMS to a DVD.  Now let's get this thing running.  The green on black terminal mode is not required, but it does make things feel so much more serious.  I recommend it. Of course, it's not as simple as it sounds! My system had previously been configured with HP-UX as you can see from the Boot Manager menu.  With the DVD in the internal drive, I scrolled down (using the "v" key) and hit enter to boot it.  Wait a while (patience is a virtue...), you will get an OpenVMS startup message.  So far so good! After a long time you get the installation menu for OpenVMS.  Wait a while again... Alright!  Now, type INITIALIZE (Aussies, Kiwis, Brits etc, just tolerate the spelling) because this is an existing disk, and we're going to clobber it. And this is why my problems began...  ...

It's here! Last time, I wrote about my reasons for choosing the HP RX2600 to run OpenVMS . Having gotten all the manuals, firmware and everything else, I set up the machine according to the instructions from HP, and nothing much happened.  Nothing on the monitor, even though all the docs said it should mirror the console. Next step, connect a cross-over cable to the Management Processor (MP) serial port, and try again.  This time I get greeted by a login prompt.  The user needs to be "Admin", but I don't know the password... No biggie, with the power on, hold in the reset button on the MP card and then you will be prompted to enter "p" to reset the accounts.  The manual says Admin (note the capital letter) should have no password, but the prompt on the console said it's "Admin", so that worked. The Help command is your friend here.  First thing I did was to use the Command Menu (CM) then LC to configure the networking for the...