However to much of my chargin, it was sold out. I clicked the magical button at the bottom of the page to be notified when it would come back in stock, and then promptly forgot about it. There is something magical about ADHD in that sometimes you get small bouts of excitement as you remember something you were yearning for actually exists. It’s like a mini christmas.

Two weeks ago, an e-mail came into my inbox, telling me they were available again, and I was given a top secret link to order it before that fact went public. I clicked on it and was lead to a form where I was tempted into parting with my hard earned money, filled it, ordered the new kit (which now comes with an xdaliclock-like firmware, and a lovely FTDI controller into which a mini-b USB cable can be fitted.

I then — again — promptly forgot about it. Until it arrived today, and had another mini christmas as I saw Adafruit Industries in the sender’s address label. I then went off to assemble the kit, a process I thought would probably be blog-worthy.

Read on for pictures and a retelling of the epic adventure, including the part where I did not set fire to my place nor did I release the magic smoke, against all my expectations. I’m not particularily handy with a soldering iron.

After unboxing the kit, I spread out the components on my desk and made sure everything was there. As usual, Adafruit ensures you have everything ready for a smooth experience. For some reason my kit included an extra battery holder, but I am not going to complain

I warmed up the soldering iron, wet the sponge, prepped the multimeter, and went ahead with it.

Soldering everything went really well, as the documentation adafruit put together was, as usual, more than stellar, guiding even the most insecure nerds like me every step of the way.

The design is awesome enough to include a safety diode that only let current flow one way. This is handy should you be like me and easily mistake your center positive power supplies for center negative ones. Instead of releasing the magic smoke, it will just refuse to work, with no further ill effects. <3

After successfully soldering the last part, the LCD, I powered it on and it promptly lit up, and booted the pre-programmed firmware. That experience alone made the entire ordeal worth it.

The only difficult part was coercing everything in the acrylic case, which would require at least three hands to be efficient, but I managed anyways. According to the last picture I took after successfully booting the clock for the first time and the time displayed when I booted it again after putting it into the case, that step alone took nearly 40 minutes. But, no matter, it is beautiful.

A rather important hint for anyone else not feeling very secure about their own soldering abilities: It is incredible how much of a difference using a proper soldering iron and quality solder makes. Seriously, toss that shitty radio shack soldering iron in the trash, and get a proper, temperature adjustable one. If you’re just starting out like I am, I wholeheartedly recommend the Lady Ada Electronic’s Toolkit. Contains everything you’d possibly need, and none of it feels cheap or shitty. Do yourself a favor, and use the right tools.

You will find below a lovely gallery of the clock in various states of being assembled. Now excuse me while I run off to install avrdude and and an avr compiler toolkit on my workstation…

However, Apple arbitrarily decided to disable the following features on the older 3G model (which I actually own):

• Multitasking (this is the big one, most awaited feature)
• Wallpaper on home screen (why? so it keeps its “depreciated” looks?)
• Battery percentage (What? Why on earth? — Do note that I haven’t confirmed this one, I was just told it was the case by multiple sources)

This made me cringe. While collections (folders) are actually nice, I don’t need them. But on a lighter note, PwnageTool 4.0 also came out today, and deep within its bowels, if you create a custom image, you have the option of re-enabling those features right back in. So I did.

I am pretty much convinced Apple is not doing this out of concern for performance, but rather, to create an artifical demand for the newer models. Look, I don’t mind if you pump out a new hardware model every 6 months, if it is significantly better than the previous one, people will switch. In fact people will most likely buy anything with an Apple logo on it regardless of its merits. But don’t voluntarily cripple the previous models to force people to upgrade. That’s just fucking greedy. Usually one sells a new product by putting emphasis on its merits, on what it does better — not by preemptively forcing the previous models into obsolescence, even if the new products have very little merit of their own. If that is the case, simply, you know, create a better product.

However, the iPhone 4 is currently getting incredibly good reviews all around. Engadget even goes so far as to call it the cream of the crop:

We’re not going to beat around the bush — in our approximation, the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market right now. The combination of gorgeous new hardware, that amazing display, upgraded cameras, and major improvements to the operating system make this an extremely formidable package.

Granted, Engadget seems to be madly in love with anything Apple, but usually, they are still fair in their reviews and visit both sides of the hyperbole equally, the awesome — and the suck. For them to be so enamored with the new hardware, it must mean it is better, no? That alone should be enough, I think.

Then again, I am probably being incredibly naive. Either way, Apple, I am through with your shanenigans.

So I wrote a Quine in Python. It’s not exactly short or impressive, but it works. I am pretty happy with myself, because I found out how to do it by myself, which was a very enlightening moment, makes you realize a bunch of things about compilers.

So here it is: (pretty vim-desert syntax colored version here: http://alex.underwares.org/quine.py.html)

#!/usr/bin/env python
# Holy fucking shit I wrote a quine!
# You wouldn't believe how baked I am.
 
code ="#!/usr/bin/env python\n# Holy fucking shit I wrote a quine!\n# You wouldn't believe how baked I am.\n\ncode =\"__code__\"\n\ndef regurgitate(text):\n    \"\"\"Hi, I regurgitate stuff, but escaped.\"\"\"\n text = text.replace(\"\\\\\",\"\\\\\\\\\")\n    text = text.replace('\"', \"\\\\\\\"\")\n   text = text.replace('\\n',\"\\\\n\")\n  return text\n\ndef main():\n    \"\"\"I seem to be the entry point, sir.\"\"\"\n    print code.replace(\"__code__\", regurgitate(code), 1)\n\nif __name__ == \"__main__\":\n    main()\n\n"
 
def regurgitate(text):
    """Hi, I regurgitate stuff, but escaped."""
    text = text.replace("\\","\\\\")
    text = text.replace('"', "\\\"")
    text = text.replace('\n',"\\n")
    return text
 
def main():
    """I seem to be the entry point, sir."""
    print code.replace("__code__", regurgitate(code), 1)
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

http://www.flax.co.uk/xapian_windows.shtml

This renders my binaries redundant, so I will update the relevant pages with this link. I hadn’t built recent python bindings in a while because my the Windows Server 2003 VM I used for windows builds was lost in a hard drive crash, and I never got around to rebuilding it. Well, this is great news!

But alas, no. I plug it in this morning, and bang:

Again, for those not speaking french, it means “battery not charging”.

This is the third battery that dies with this laptop. If the laptop broke down, I’d understand. It has a bit over three years of age, which is pretty much the average life span of a laptop-you-carry-around-every-day. But the battery is still young. Bleh.

ADDENDUM (24 mar 2009): I just noticed I sound like an elitist douche hipster in that post. I mean, Art Salon + Apple hardware + French… Should have included more codetalk or wires as not to lose my geek street cred, yo.

THEY ARE ALL WEARING THE SAME GOD DAMN HELMET!

Thank you.

So, Mark Hoekstra of Geek Technique has died of a heart attack earlier this week, while riding his bike.

Shit.

Mark was a really huge inspiration to me, I absolutely loved the guy and his work. I really related to his love of SGI gear and various obsolete chunks of hardware. I read geek technique with almost religous, cheerful glee every update.

I can’t believe he’s gone, I truely am sad now. This really is sad day.