So, sadly, Raymond and Robbie are back with Sue and George. I’m sure that they’ll be happy in another house; they’re both great cats and we’ll miss ‘em.

If you want to see how the pros do it, there’s a video here done by a certified instructor of soldering. It’s more of an advertisement than a tutorial, but if you watch closely you can pick up some pointers.

Having watched all of these, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that I probably need to use less solder and more flux than I have in the past. Eric Brombaugh (who pointed out the instructor’s videos to me) mentioned to me that he often doesn’t use solder at all when soldering ICs to PCBs that have been HASL plated. He finds that there is enough solder left from the plating to attach the leads.

They’ve also met all of the other cats. Reactions have been fairly predictable. Tracie is currently trying to break the ice by showing them that they have common interests such as plastic things dangled on the end of a string. Raymond wants to play with everyone but the other guys aren’t quite ready for that and feel that some strutting and hissing must be done first. Edwin in particular is putting on the macho-kitty show; this is exactly what he did when Alfred arrived so we’re not at all surprised. It probably doesn’t help any that Tracie and I have a hard time not laughing at his posturing since he’s usually such an easy-going cat.

Alfred seems to be accepting the newcomers without much hesitation.

Madeline isn’t entirely sure what to think of the sudden doubling of the male population. I think she’ll warm up to them eventually. She had a bit of a shock when Robbie inadvertently cornered her on the kitchen sink so it may take a little while for them to become properly introduced.

Function: adjective

Etymology: Latin obstreperus, from obstrepere to clamor against, from ob- against + strepere to make a noise

Date: circa 1600

1 : marked by unruly or aggressive noisiness : clamorous <obstreperous merriment>
2 : stubbornly resistant to control :unruly

The word came to mind again when some new code I was working on was both marked by unruly or aggressive noisiness and stubbornly resistant to control. Here’s what it sounded like–be warned that it’s kind of loud in places:

Obstreperous

Usually when I play something like this for Chris he asks whether we can preserve it and add it as a feature to the product. Beauty is in the ear of the beholder, so to speak. This is why I don’t particularly enjoy most music classified as glitch and other genres that deliberately exploit DSP artifacts: it tends to all sound like a bad day at work to me.

UPDATE: Chris mentioned this post on his blog here; some discussion has ensued. A couple of questions regarding reuse of this recording arose, so I hereby state that the above recording is made available under the Creative Commons license stated here.

Raymond is smaller and younger than Robbie, although I imagine that the difference in their ages is measured in minutes since they’re from the same litter. Raymond is also much more rambunctious; he and Edwin will be a good match. Robbie is more reserved:

They’re currently secluded in the spare bedroom so that they can adjust gradually to us and the house before meeting the rest of the herd. I’ll post more photos and updates soon.

Robbie and Raymond come to us by way of Sue and George, a retired couple who have rescued cats from difficult circumstances for 20 years. Hats off to these folks for nurturing and relocating numerous cats in need.

It’s okay for you to send me email about new products, sales, promotions, etc., particularly if I asked to be on your mailing list. However, once you send me one announcement of a sale or discount, it’s not okay to send me three to five more messages referencing the first announcement with Subject: lines like “In case you missed this!” I read it the first time, I promise. If I didn’t want to read your email I’d take myself off your list. I don’t need to be told again and again about the same thing, and I don’t need to be “reminded” about the impending cessation of the sale, discount, whatever. It’s annoying and, frankly, somewhat insulting.

Got it? Once is enough. Simple, eh?

kthxbai–

–Adam

Yes, we saw a moose. He was grazing not far from the road, up on one of the mountain passes near town. We also saw a number of deer, a few antelope (while en route), a beautiful sunset, and one owl.

So I ordered a kit from x0xSh0p.de. I corresponded with a fellow named Christian who was very polite and answered my queries promptly. It took it a couple of weeks to make its way across the Pacific, as expected, but it arrived in fine shape thanks to its good packaging. It’s a well-done kit; the parts are organized in many small, neatly labeled bags and there’s a hand-checked and signed BOM verifying that everything is present. (I checked again anyway and found no errors.)

So far I’ve finished the power supply and most of the VCO. The square wave output of the VCO doesn’t match the output described in the x0xb0x build manual, but I’m pretty sure that the problem is because of an error in the manual described here. (Short version: put in R36 before doing the test.) I haven’t verified this yet, though; I found the description of the error after packing up my soldering iron and stuff.

So, I nosed around at download.com briefly and came up with a very handy utility called LAN Speed Test, appropriately enough. It exists in a free version which was enough to perform the diagnoses I needed, and a newer version that costs $5 but adds several nice features and enhancements. I paid the five bucks to the author even though the free version was adequate for my tests because five bucks is a bargain for a program that’s this useful, and besides I figure that it’s good for my karma to buy software from my fellow small developers.

The upshot of my testing is that my new NAS is pretty good but my router has got to go. Thumbs up for LAN Speed Test, without which it would have taken me far more time and trouble to arrive at these conclusions.