Bierfaristo Blog

Today, we held a Makers@AmherstMedia workshop in the BCRC on how to build a Raspberry Pi Home Theater Media Server. I've been wanting to build something like this for years, but I wasn't sure how many other people would be interested. Five people signed up, but one couldn't attend, so there were four of us in the end.

People had to bring their own parts. I got a Raspberry Pi B+, an 8GB micro-SD card, and a 1TB hard-drive. Unfortunately, it appears that the hard-drive may draw too much power to work reliably, so I still might need to get a powered USB hub to run everything.

The BCRC was the perfect place to do the workshop. We have Mac Minis with SD slots, which you can use to write the Micro-SD card and we have HD displays with free HDMI cables, so its easy to hook up the Pi and you can borrow the keyboard and net connection from the Macs.

Formally, the workshop was about Raspbmc but I downloaded and installed OSMC instead. It's still pre-release and I wasn't sure how stable it would be, but I thought it would be useful to see them both side-by-side. In point of fact, once they were installed and running, it was hard to tell the difference.

I had meant to dis-assemble something before the workshop to recover an IR receiver I could play with during the workshop but hadn't found the time. One of the participants had, however, and so we were able to see how that part works. It was encouraging to see how straightforward the configuration appeared to be. So much so that, during the workshop, I spent a few minutes trying to recover a receiver from an old data projector, but then damaged it while trying to desolder it. I'm not very good at that stuff yet.

Unfortunately, I could only spend a couple of hours and then had meetings, meetings, and more meetings for the rest of the day. Soon, however, the holidays will be here and I should be able devote a bit more time to seeing what this system can do. But today was time well spent -- and fun to get together with other interested geeky friends.

Last spring, I received a grant of five Galileo development boards from Intel and intended to use them with my class this semester to study balanced aquaria. It hasn't gone as well as I had hoped.

I set one up last spring and my initial testing was encouraging. I wrote a script that could collect the data, display it on an LCD screen, and output it to the serial port.

My goal was to extend the script so that we could use MQTT to upload the data to a server to aggregate it. But over the summer, I spent several weeks in St. Croix and then, when I returned, I was totally absorbed in getting the new BCRC renovated and set up for the fall. I never had time to finished my preparations for working with the boards.

I thought about having the students work with the boards, but I ran into enough weird problems that I decided that was a bad idea. For example, I had found that the liquid crystal libraries provided with the Arduino application didn't compile cleanly for x86. Someone had posted an updated version of the library, but it was non-trivial to replace them in the MacOS X application bundle -- or, at least, I surmised it would have been non-trivial for the students.

I ultimately found several similar problems: some c++ headers weren't correctly linked and required creating a symlink in a magical place. The MQTT PubSubClient for Arduino wouldn't compile for Galileo. Much of the Arduino code for x86 was buggy: the SD library could write to an existing file, but couldn't create a file. In all of these cases, I could find a discussion online where someone had figured out how to fix the problem, but the fix was often complicated and required being adapted for the local circumstances.

Some problems were simply architectural: Galileo, unlike an Arduino, doesn't save a script you upload to it. So if it loses power, when it restarts, it's simply dead. You can fix this by creating a micro-SD card with a distribution of linux on it, but creating the cards is non-trivial and getting the boards to boot from the cards seemed tricky -- it took me a couple of hours to make it work reliably. Also, the Galileo has a real-time clock chip, but no simple way to include a battery to keep the clock running across reboots (ie, there are headers where you could attach wires connected to a battery, but there's no battery holder).

If I could have simply worked with a linux shell, it would have been a lot easier: but it wasn't trivial to get a terminal connection to the Galileo. Working through the Arduino interface made everything cumbersome, especially as it was buggy and unreliable.

In the end, the students proposed using an incubator in the ISB which created another level of difficulty, because the University never turned on most of the network in that building. Given time, I could have figured out which was the closest network jack, requested it be turned on, and found a switch to connect the boards to the network but, in the interest of time, decided to write to the SD card instead.

Eventually, I got a script that would manually set the time, minimally collect data, and log it to the SD Card. But the boards seem to only run for a day or so before they quit logging. And if the boards have a power failure or reboot, they reset the time to what the script originally set it to. I'm not sure if it's memory leaks or some other hardware problem, but the net result is that the data are very, very messy.

In any event, I'm glad I didn't try to have students work directly with the Galileos -- I think it would have been very frustrating for them and to little purpose. I think, in the long run, it would have been a lot easier to use Raspberry Pis for this project. And I think, if I can find the money, that's what I'll try for next time around, if I decide to do this again. Next semester, I'm thinking I may try agent-based modelling with Netlogo.

A couple of days ago, someone came into the BCRC to ask about rescuing some old data files. He had a bunch of figures he'd created in MacDraw in the late 1980s that he wanted to recover. I agreed to meet with him today to see what we could do.

We have one old MDD G4 that I have carefully preserved that can still run Classic (ie, MacOS 9). It wouldn't fire up initially and I had to reset the PMU to get it to boot. It had forgotten the date-time, so we needed to reboot it after it set the time and became unstable.

He'd already gotten help from someone to read his old floppies, but the old Mac couldn't read his thumbdrive. We copied the files to an SMB volume, but then found that whoever recovered the files only recovered the data-forks, so we couldn't open them anyway. So I got out our old floppy drive and we went back to the original floppies to get good copies of the files.

We tried a number of old applications. I had a copy of Appleworks (from after Apple bought Claris), but that didn't work. Eventually, I found that you can download several different old versions of MacDraw and we began trying those. Eventually, we found that they would open with MacDraw II Version 1.0v1. But although they would open, the screen wouldn't update properly -- perhaps the application isn't "32-bit clean" or something. The window only contained a smear of multicolored static.

But I had read something that suggested printing the drawings to a file to get a Postscript copy of the image. And this worked! So we set up an assembly line: he went back to the floppies and got good copies of the files, we opened them with MacDraw one by one (restarting periodically because it would crash after you'd opened up a few) and printing them to Postscript. Then we copied everything to SMB and I downloaded the files to his thumbdrive from my office computer.

The room where I've kept this computer is going to be renovated and I had been on the fence about what to do with this computer. But you know what? I think I'll just take this whole workstation and put it in into the Living Museum of Dead Computers in working order in case anyone else needs to rescue stuff from the old days.

About a month ago, I was contacted by Charlie Wells, a journalist at the Wall Street Journal, who indicated that was interested in writing an article about Pasporta Servo for Esperanto Day (ie, Zamenhof's birthday on Dec 15). I agreed to be interviewed, spoke with him a couple of times, and provided some pictures and links to additional resources. I think the article, One of the Perks of Speaking Esperanto? Free Lodging Around the World came out quite nicely.

In the article I talk about how I didn't advertise that I was an Esperanto speaker when was a new faculty member. I got a (slightly tongue-in-cheek) comment by the Dean who remarked that he was honored he "knew my secret", so I replied with something I've been thinking about for several years:

I've actually seen it as part of a larger problem in faculty culture. I think it starts in grad school -- at least it did for me -- when advisors pressure students to focus on their dissertations to the exclusion of all else. In many environments, it seems to become almost taboo to talk about anything you're doing that's not related to your academic work. This carries over to faculty when they begin their careers: faculty culture tells new faculty that they must present carefully redacted pictures of themselves: they can talk research and grant proposals and, maybe, teaching -- if only to say how much work it is. The result is that faculty present only one dimension of their lives to their colleagues, and the culture at the University suffers because people don't want to admit to their other passions and interests.

Some people have claimed that I never made a secret of being an Esperanto speaker and I suppose there's an element of truth to that: I didn't go to any great lengths to hide it. I just didn't bring it up. I didn't try to do anything professionally with Esperanto until around 2004, when I decided to apply for a Fulbright Fellowship using Esperanto. I wrote a proposal that I thought was pretty good that was focused on using Esperanto for a class on global problems, but it never went anywhere. Nobody (but me) liked it: It wasn't focused enough on Esperanto to satisfy esperantists and had too much Esperanto for everyone else. But writing the proposal was what got me involved with the Esperanto community again.

For years, Alisa has been participating in the Amherst Educational Foundation Trivia Bee. This year, it occurred to me early enough that I could put together a team for Makers at Amherst Media. I realized that, given everything else going on in my life, I probably shouldn't. But I did. First, I sent an email, got a couple of replies. Then I sent another. I followed up with people and hatched a plan to get everyone a lilypad and have the team members wear light-up hats with Makers at Amherst Media t-shirts. I think it took about 12 emails altogether to get everyone on the same page. But we fielded a 4-person team for the trivia bee, with everyone wearing a Makers t-shirt and a light-up hat. With a little nudge to get everyone to recognize that the hats had been programmed by the kids, the team won the Best Costume prize.

Being recognized by Ellen Story at the Trivia Bee, the @AmherstMakers team with self-programmed light-up hats! pic.twitter.com/EfN9jG6SHx

— Steven D. Brewer (@limako) October 31, 2014

They didn't win their round of trivia, but the questions were hard. I mean *really* hard. But it was nice just to participate -- to actually do something -- and to get our name out there. And I was very satisfied just to have my idea come together and happen.

For several years, I've been writing my haiku primarily in Esperanto, but posting them with English translation. I write haiku principally for myself -- the reaction that other people might have to them has always been secondary for me. I started writing them in Esperanto because it gave me a chance to stretch my linguistic abilities in Esperanto. I continue writing them because I've come to appreciate the opportunity to reflect thoughtfully on nature and my experience. I shared them in both Esperanto and English because... Well... I guess I imagined that authors of English-language haiku might express interest in my haiku. But I haven't seen that.

I have had positive comments about having both English and Esperanto in my books -- mainly from people interested who were learning Esperanto. But the recent review of senokulvitre got me to question the value of posting bilingually. The quality is almost always uneven: haiku often turn on the particular way you can render something in language and really don't translate well. You can translate the words, but you can rarely translate the haiku. So, as an experiment, I've quit trying to translate my haiku into English.

No complaints so far...

Many years ago, I began to accumulate old computer hardware that was lying around or being discarded from Morrill Science Center at UMass Amherst. I think my first real acquisition was when someone threw out a PDP-11. It was just sitting on the Geosciences loading dock. This was probably in 1998 or 1999. It was a whole rack with a nice plastic sign with the old DEC lettering. The PDP-11 itself was just something like a 2U box with some huge 4U floppy drives below it. Someone had pasted on a little paper sign on it that said, "Please GOD, Keep it Running!" I rescued the PDP-11 and the little plastic sign and tucked them into the back of the BCRC. Then, little by little, other things began to arrive.

I contributed my Powerbook 100, which was one of the first real laptops. I found some old Model 100 TRS-80s someone was throwing out and rescued them. Al Woodhull contributed a Model 15 teletype and a DECScope. Tom Hoogendyk added an early Macintosh. Brett Longworth had rescued a NeXT Cube. Joe Kunkel had an old Apple II. Willie Bemis added an original IBM PC. Someone found an old adding machine. Chris Woodcock contributed a wafer of 386 microprocessors. Little by little, the collection grew.

George Drake contributed a lot of stuff. He had a block of old core memory and some big old hard-drives. Someone mentioned that George had actually *made* computers -- in particular, word processors -- that many people in the department had used prior to IBM PCs. I was able to get a keyboard (in a wood case), but all of the CPUs had already been lost -- a great loss to history.

I think it was Sean Werle It was Rodger Gwiazdowski who added an old cracked slate tablet, like kids in the 1800s used for lessons, that he had inscribed with the words "Your new information technology may become obsolete." I also found some old Leroy Lettering Guides, which John Roberts had left behind.

All this stuff had been just hanging around in the old BCRC, but without a real place for it. When we began making plans for the new BCRC, I pleaded for a display case where the stuff could actually be seen and appreciated. The display case finally came in and I'm now trying to move stuff in.

is pleased to see the Living Museum of Dead Computers start to take shape… pic.twitter.com/L4cHRETLUA

— Steven D. Brewer (@limako) October 10, 2014

It's wonderful that it finally has a home where people can see it. There's still a lot of work to get it curated and make some signage so people can understand what they're looking it. But it gives me a real thrill every time I walk by it. Thanks to everyone who's helped make it possible!

En la frua mateno, mi ofertis mian programeron: "Ni Verku Hajkojn!" Jam delonge, mi kutimas organizi rondon por kune verki hajkojn aŭ rengaojn ĉe kongresoj. Mi ofertis ĝin je la oka matene, ĉar mi emas verki hajkojn frue, kiam la mateno ŝajnas freŝa. Estis belega aŭtuna tago kaj mi renkontiĝis en Sproulo, kiu estas bela ligne-ornamita ĉambro kun fajro en alta loko kun multaj fenestroj kiuj kaj donas lumon kaj enkadrigas la belegan pejzaĝon de Lago Georgo. Venis kvin partoprenantoj kiuj pacience aŭskultis dum mi rakontis pri hajkoj kaj post kune verkis serion da hajkoj dum duonhoro. Poste, ni laŭtlegis niajn hajkojn. Tre bele! El miaj hajkoj, mi plej ŝatis tiun ĉi:

ĉe la fenestro momente kaptas lumon… araneaĵo #hajko #esperanto

— Steven D. Brewer (@limako) October 13, 2014

Je la 9a, Bill Maxey prelegis pri La Bona Lingvo. Bill dum multaj jaroj, malmulte povis partopreni la Esperanto-komunumon, sed ĉijare iris al NASK kaj nun al ARE. Ni ĉiuj feliĉas vidi lin denove kaj tre ĝuis lian programeron.

Mi partoprenis la Oratoran Konkurson organizita de Zdravka. Mi prelegis pri kial oni lernas Esperanton. Mi prilaboras eseon pri tio nun kaj estis bone esplori la ideojn. Tri aŭ kvar sekvaj prelegoj menciis aŭ respondis al eroj el mia prelegeto, do mi sentis ke ĝi almenaŭ iomete trafis.

Post la tagmanĝo kaj la grupa foto, Francisko Lorrain prelegis pri la Ora Nombro. Mi devas konfesi ke la vetero kaj la horo lasis min preskaŭ dorma kaj tuj poste mi revenis al mia ĉambro por dormeti dum la "libertempo". Mi ankaŭ finfine faris la hejmtaskojn por miaj studentoj kiujn mi ne povis fari dum la semajno.

La kultura vespero estis aparte bunta ĉijare, kun Steven Smith, la ge-sinjoroj Alexander, kaj multaj aliaj partoprenantoj. La esperantistaro estas mirinde talenta muzike kaj kulture. Kia plezuro estas aparteni al tiu ĉi grupo.

Mi vojaĝis sola ĉimatene al Silver Bay por la Aŭtuna Renkontiĝo. Survoje, la komenco estis malseka, sed la pluvo ĉesis ĉe Albanio kaj mi alvenis bonorde sufiĉe frue por tagmanĝi ĉe Silver Bay.

Ĉijare, Normando volis eltiri sin el la organizado — aŭ almenaŭ ne estu la ĉeforganizanto. Tomaso traktis la kontrakton kun Silver Bay, Julie organizis la junularan domon, kaj mi prizorgis la programon. Sed ni konvinkis lin oferti la bonvenigajn rimarkojn ĉe la komenco.

Multaj homoj parolis pri la pasinta jaro en Esperantujo: vizitoj al la UK, NASK, kaj diversaj aliaj Esperanto-aranĝoj tra la mondo. Ŝajnis ke neniu partoprenis la usonan landan kongreson. Mi menciis mian viziton al la Esperanto Klubo de Orient-Centra Ilinojo kaj transdonis ties salutojn.

La nombro de partoprenantoj, kiu antaŭ jaroj kutimis atingi 50, nun svebas proksimume je 40. Lunde, ni diskutos la venontan jaron kaj unu temo devos esti kiel allogi pli da homoj, ĉar de la nombro falas sub 40, la prezoj kaj aranĝoj fariĝas malpli favoraj.

Morgaŭ estas plena tago kiu komeniĝos per mia programero "Ni Verku Hajkojn". Mi simple invitas homojn sidi kun mi dum horo por verki hajkojn: Tute simpla plezuro.

From the point of view of the College of Natural Sciences, the network infrastructure that connects our buildings together, and provides the "on-ramp" to the internet, is critical to providing effective support for teaching and research. The College and its departments were early leaders in making difficult investments to build and provision network resources — and to hire dedicated staff to support them. Even before there *was* an OIT, we were pulling network cable and linking computers together. In several older buildings, we still maintain our own cable plant, which we've upgraded from thick wire to thin wire to twisted pair -- from 10 megabit shared to 100 meg to gigabit full duplex. And we've run our own fiber backbone at higher speeds in a number of places to alleviate bottlenecks.

Bottlenecks happen when there's more data coming into a segment than will fit. When that happens, the network becomes unstable, as packets are lost, time out, and need to be re-transmitted. It isn't just that the network slows down, but rather that connections get dropped altogether and fail.

As new buildings have come on-line, like the ISB and the LSL, we've been working toward forging a partnership with OIT that will enable us to contribute to the design of the building infrastructure and to use it effectively to support our research and teaching laboratories so that our students and faculty can be productive and access the services they need.

However, our speedy internal networks and shiny new buildings are connected together with a campus core infrastructure that is increasingly showing its age. When our servers and clients were all in the same building, this was less of a concern. But as we move toward a future where our departments are spread across multiple buildings, the interconnections become increasingly critical. Here are a couple of examples:

Currently, to provide teaching lab computing support between Morrill and the ISB, we maintain separate servers in each building and replicate 311 gigabytes of lab computer software images between the two buildings. That way, we can synchronize data between buildings only when necessary and all of the client computers in each building have a local connection to a server to perform nightly updates. It's been an effective workaround, but it can't scale.

In our Bioimaging class, students using 9 fluorescent microscopes routinely collect 2.8 megabyte images every few seconds for minutes -- or hours -- to study cell growth, division, or other processes. When we were all in one place, we could architect our local infrastructure to provide the support that was needed. But increasingly, we want our students to be able to access and work with their data anywhere. Try copying one of these "stacks" of images over your wireless connection and watch what happens.

We're moving toward an age of "Big Data". Students and faculty with ever faster computers can generate and work with vast quantities of data. To work with big data, you need to be able to get it, copy it, manipulate it, and move it around in real time -- from anywhere. To be a destination of choice, we will want our students and faculty to be able to play in this field. We support building the network infrastructure we need to make sure that UMass Amherst will remain a destination of choice going forward.