A Girl and Her Bike: Victory (sort of)

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

I was stopped at the intersection of 13th and Kenyon St. NW at a red light, waiting to turn left onto 13th St. Kenyon is a one-way street going west, and I was on the left side of the street, since I would be turning left. While waiting for the light I heard a car speed up Kenyon St. behind me. I could sense the car stop immediately behind me, extremely close. It was aggressive, but fairly typical aggressive driver behavior. I didn\’t think much of it because we were at a red light, and there was no where for him to go anyway.
And that\’s when I felt a *BUMP* from behind. Nothing too hard, but enough to intimidate. Now, remember: I knew he had STOPPED behind me. So this was a conscious decision by the driver to hit me with his vehicle. I could hear laughing coming from the car behind me. They thought this was HILARIOUS. Also, there was a taxi to my right, waiting for the light as well that even remarked on this behavior (\”asshole\” is what I think the taxi driver said).
The light turned green and I started to proceed. And then I felt *BUMP!!!!!* again, this time a bit harder.
Oh no. No. No. No. I can\’t ignore this. I just can\’t.
So I stopped. Pulled out my police badge (yes, I\’m a cop if you didn\’t know before. No I really don\’t want to talk about it, thanks) showed it to the driver and motioned him to stay right where he was.
And that\’s when he panicked.

Read the entire story at A Girl and Her Bike: Victory (sort of).

10 Free Desktop Applications for Managing Your Code Snippets

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

One problem I have always had, is keeping my programming code organized.  I have short demonstration applications, code examples, and more scattered around.  Some of it in Evernote, some of it just in a file in my programming directory…
I have yet to find the right application for the job…
But, I\’ll be going through this list soon to see if they meet the need…

Why reinvent the wheel? And by extension, why keep re-typing or copy/pasting commonly-used pieces of code over and over again? Copying and pasting pieces of code into text files and the like is disorganized and wastes your precious time. Instead, you can use code snippets to quickly call code you repeatedly use. There are applications that let you save, organize, and use your code snippets – for practically all of the major programming languages. And this article features 10 free desktop applications for managing your code snippets.

10 Free Desktop Applications for Managing Your Code Snippets.

Defining the DBE & KCMG

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Well, when reading books that are written by the British, sometimes you run into odd little phrases or acronyms….
Here\’s two that I have never run into before:

  • DBE / KBE – Dame [or Knight] Commander of the Order of the British Empire
  • Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) or Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE)[
  • Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)
  • Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)
  • Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE)

And of course, the The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George.  Which brings with it:

  • Knight Grand Cross or Dame Grand Cross (GCMG)>/li>
  • Knight Commander (KCMG) or Dame Commander (DCMG)
  • Companion (CMG)

Hopefully, this will help you if your reading Charles Stross\’s The Atrocity Archives.

Pioneer VSX-1021-K AV Receiver Integration

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Nsheldon, over on the Perceptive Automation Forums, has documented how to connect the Pioneer CSV-1021K AV Receiver into your Home Automation.  The workflow he documents involves Indigo Pro, but in theory other software can implement this technique.
Any Elite Series receiver can be integrated in this manner…

Pioneer VSX-1021-K AV Receiver Integration
Part of my recent home theater upgrade included replacing my old AV receiver with the just-released Pioneer VSX-1021-K AV receiver. One of the reasons I chose that receiver was the availability of an iOS remote control app which operates over your home network. Like my recent Panasonic Blu-ray player to Indigo integration process, I did some packet sniffing on my network while the iPod app and the receiver were communicating to discover their communication protocol. What I later found out (and what\’s not in the manual) is that this receiver can also be integrated with whole-home automation systems using Pioneer\’s published command sets for their Elite series receivers (using a standard telnet connection, see these RS-232 commands for the similar 1120 model here) without affecting the iOS app or IR remote functions.

So, I devised a way to both send commands to the VSX-1021-K and for all response messages from the receiver to be put immediately into an Indigo variable using a persistent telnet connection to the receiver in the background. Be forewarned, this is a somewhat advanced setup, so if you\’d like to replicate this with the VSX-1021-K or other networked Pioneer receiver, be prepared to do quite a bit of command-line work on the Mac with Indigo running on it.

Setup requirements:

  1. Pioneer VSX-1021-K (or similar networkable Pioneer receiver. The command set is similar for all of them).
  2. Wired network connection to the receiver (a Wi-Fi connection may work with the optional wireless adapter, but I haven\’t tested this).
  3. Static IP address assigned to the receiver.
  4. Indigo 4 Pro (or later).
  5. The Mac running Indigo Pro will need to be on all the time.

Read the full instructions here Pioneer VSX-1021-K AV Receiver Integration.