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Walt Disney World, I've found with this vacation, tracks you everywhere and now has my finger prints: they use chipped cards and 'watch-band' type things. AND, you also use a finger to pass through the park gates.

The system for passing through the park gates is glitchy, and you either have to use a fingerprint or get your picture taken because of the glitch not making your chipped device work.
When the devices don't work, the person letting you through raises their hand, and a supervisor type comes over to solve the issue. The issue happens constantly. He supervisor comes over and tried to solve the issue with a pad device running Windows, which you can see because when they tap the device, there is a brief flash of the windows logo.

The issue happens CONSTANTLY.

My son won't wear the watch thing, so I wear his and mine, and use (because I was surprised by the request for a fingerprint) my index finger on my left hand for him, and my middle finger of my right hand for me.
Now I have to remember which finger for which hand, AND they have my fingerprints.

Will the prints be wiped when I leave? I'm going to have to ask, but I'm doubting it.
At least they don't have my son's prints, but they did take his picture for the 'disabled fast pass' thing.

Sigh: go to enjoy yourself, and end up wondering who has your details.

Note to self: don't go for the Disney hookers.

BUT, my son is enjoying himself, so......worth it.

It's hard to believe that my daughter (it still feels weird saying that) is 7 months old now.

When I wrote my last entry, I'm pretty sure I had paternal postpartum depression. It's relatively rare (I think single digit %, although it's likely it's under reported), but it really hit me hard. Everyone knows that becoming a parent is a life changing experience, but until it happens to you, you just can't know what it actually means.

I had a real tough time for the first five-ish months. The baby was, for the most part, pretty unpleasant. You know how they play soundtracks of babies crying as a torture tactic? I was acutely aware of this, and I felt like I was in my own little part of hell. Both of us were exhausted. It felt like every day we were just surviving. We were just trying to make it to the next day. I felt dead on the inside. Some days I would sit in the car wishing I could cry just to release some of the sadness that I felt inside.

Also at that time, I hadn't had sex in months. I had assumed that because my wife had had a c-section, that she would be good to go pretty soon after the baby came. That was not the case. We tried to have sex after 6 weeks. The doctor said that the incision had healed well, and we could try sex when my wife felt up for it. We tried, and she did not enjoy it. She said it was like she was a virgin again, but worse. Things were super tight down there, and burned badly. Turns out, painful sex after c-section is quite common. Who knew? Anyways, between having almost no free time, no sex, little sleep, and really nothing to look forward to, I was pretty depressed.

Until I had my own baby, I never cared about babies. At all. Over the last several months, my daughter has transformed from an infant to a baby. What used to be an annoying, crying, pooping, needy, blob, is now a tiny little person. She can sit on her own. She can manipulate objects. She likes some food and dislikes other foods. She likes to play with my beard. When I come home, she gets excited. She could crawl for the first time any day.

Over the last couple months, my depression has passed. Now that my girl is older, I get more reward from her. Little things like when I pick her up, she holds on to me or when I talk to her, I see her little lips move slightly as she tries to figure out the mouth movements. She watches everything I do. I now feel like I can actually make a difference, and I think that has helped. I am also sleeping better at night, which again helps, and we are also forming new routines which helps set the new 'normal'.

I'm still not getting sex often. Maybe once per month. Last time we tried, it was the best we have had since the c-section. I was able to get maybe 1/2 way inside her, which was a big improvement from previous attempts. Things are slowly getting better on that front, but I think that the breastfeeding is messing with her hormones. I'm not a doctor, but it makes sense that her body is telling her to hold off on having another baby.

I've started dating again. I started looking again maybe 4 months ago. I got a date a couple weeks ago with a really attractive woman I met on Bumble. She was a PhD candidate too, so really smart. I really liked her, so naturally, it didn't work out (just my luck). I had another date just last night with another girl I met on Tinder. We had a good date, but I'm kinda on the fence about her. I wasn't all that attracted to her, although we got along well.

When I have a date like that, I'm never sure what to do. Should I have a second date to see if a spark develops, or do I move on? There have definitely been people that I was not attracted to until I got to know them better, and then I would form a crush on them. I also put in a lot of effort to even get a date, so it's tempting to see someone again just to make sure there is nothing there.

So, all in all, things are coming along. I'm still adjusting to my new life, but I no longer feel depressed. For me, that is a major win.

-- Snow

Oh, this is getting ridiculous. I write a small state machine to test understanding of a micro-controller and it is now going to be used to run a quiz. Additional hardware is on order. (A cheaper Arduino which can be damaged or stolen without affecting my work.) Even sillier, I'm getting feature requests. The first feature request is for lights per participant and per team. So, code has been extended to allow up to four separate buttons for each of four teams:-

begin 644 buzzer.ino.gz
M'XL(`%2YC%D"`Y552U/;,!"^^U=LIQ<#;O%*?F72'`I-@9D`!9+AP.3@8@4T
M8^S4#QA@\M\KVY(39(?2TZZ_77WZ]C'6_BX<E"\O+(.?:087)7^!H_"!Y;"[
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M<J8"VT:B#JAI;'"M@VH6O4$Y@8V[5N^N@.QH=43RJO&WS5GU-BAC2R8:',7/
DZS;%:;K\_SWD"[-OASZ-U(JI1)#KT2]XU97Z%U!H?@E5"0``
`
end

(Usual instructions for uudecode process.)

Another feature request is distinct sound samples per participant or per team. That would be awkward. The sound samples would either have to be compressed and compiled into flash with the program or loaded into RAM via a USB virtual serial port or invoke an unholy set of libraries to read FAT32 flash storage over SPI and play MP3s or invoke a separate piece of hardare which does the same task or port/re-implement algorithm to a different platform, such as a Raspberry Pi. So, no, there won't be distinct sound samples. Pin goes high. Pin drives NPN transistor. Buzzer makes noise.

If people also want scores on a digital display then the project may be re-implemented on other hardware. At that point, someone else can continue the project because I have more important tasks.

I wrote a small program to implement the buzzer round of a quiz game. This is not much more than a "Hello World!" test in the quest to implement a 3D surround sound speaker array which itself is part of a larger project. During this process, I repeatedly bump into emperical but mundane reality. The most mundane problem includes not having any momentary switches to hand and only having latching switches. Therefore, the buzzer game code has been updated so that it works either type of switch. This has the side-effect that any of the switches may be independently wired with pull-up resistors or pull-down resistors. Therefore, the project has gained some idiot-proofing which may be considered elsewhere.

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M'XL(`+8WBED"`WV27V_:,!3%W_,I[K27@+(1_V%E0KRT8FTE5M8NJ,]18UI+
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M-Y;H]LY/<"\AO81ZB$OR!-2YN[]WYR;&(\&]A/02VB&?AZ)8P5+#LGQS'$TN
MY6$R?!WZ]O;+3*/##K@E.FE^U^?#UH<]/GS>1ZR/>'SDO(]:'_7X:.,[">0_
(J"G,$O8%````
`
end

(Usual instructions for uudecode process.)

I've written a program which implements the functionality for a buzzer round of a quiz game. This is suitable for two, three or four teams to have a common button (or buttons wired in parallel). The program performs a power-up test of lights and buzzer before entering the main loop. When a member of one team presses the team's button, a buzzer sounds for one second and the team's light stays locked on until the quizmaster hits a reset button.

It requires an Arduino compatible micro-controller configurable as five digital inputs (button1, button2, button3, button4, reset) and five digital outputs (light1, light2, light3, light4, bell). The first team has a very small advantage which can be measured in millionths of a second. Making a completely equally weighted input is left as an exercise. Keeping score is a more difficult exercise because it requires a routine to compensate for switch bounce.

begin 644 buzzer.ino.gz
M'XL(`#P`AUD"`WV26T^#,!B&[_D57^(-6]1!6]V,V<W,/"33>6#9-9%N:X(M
MEJ+9S/Z[I3`$I+N#]^G[G0=]F&2['95P*R2\9&P'=^$'3:$_<`9]<&]ZR/.'
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MK`1;">D@Q;AJP`RWZ+[X+X=7)\A*L)60%JF=6;D421,:*AK%V[_5Q$(<-L-6
LC3V7`]*+-B=NGD!Y*[7R]S8GLCO1<2>V._%Q)[$[2>6L#>87E=OD@RH%````
`
end

(Usual instructions for uudecode process.)

(This is the 37th of many promised articles which explain an idea in isolation. It is hoped that ideas may be adapted, linked together and implemented.)

I'm working on a 3D surround sound speaker array as part of a larger project. I'm working through a list of tasks. One particular sticking point has been to deploy code on a micro-controller. This has been a limitation since at least Apr 2015 and has been complicated by trying to use a clone of the least supported Arduino on a poorly supported host without using the supplied idiot interface. Regardless, I report success if using a large number of third-party binaries count as success.

The first complication is that Arduino is open source and the schematics are freely available. Therefore, anyone who is time rich and cash poor may purchase a clone of the official Arduino boards. I purchased a board which was approximately 1/2 of the official price and I'm told that it was possible to purchase similar for 1/3 of the official price. So far, I've not encountered any incompatibility but I'm told that clones may omit ground-planes to reduce cost and therefore I/O may fail to work at full rated speeds. This is quite pausible. I understand that the processor on the first Raspberry Pi was only intended for use with eight layer boards and that the choice to use a six layer board limited storage card communication to a maximum of 15Mb/s and even this is optimistic.

The second complication is compiling ARM Cortex M3 code for no operating system when the host is ARMv6. This involves installing a random set of binaries on Raspbian using apt-get and then using /usr/bin/arm-none-eabi-gcc which may or may not have been present when I started.

The third complication is deployment of code to a Atmel ARM SAM via BOSSA. Each manufacturer has its own method of programming a micro-controller and this particularly true for ARM. So, one protocol is used for Atmel AVR chips, a different protocol is used for Atmel ARM chips and different protocols are used for ARM chips from other manufacturers. To further complicate matters, there are two (or more?) implementations of BOSSA programmer. The official one from Atmel works on Windows and Linux. An open source re-implementation uses wxWidgets and works on more platforms. From the dependancies installed via apt-get, it would appear that Raspbian uses the implementation which uses wxWidgets.

The fourth complication is that installation of arduino, arduino-core, bossa and bossa-core fails to provide any ARM firmware under /usr/share/arduino/hardware/arduino or suchlike. Indeed, the Arduino IDE 1.8.0, 1.8.1, 1.8.2 and 1.8.3 has no support for ARM. This would be particularly problematic if downloading the software recommended via Arduino's online shop. Ignore the official recommendations. Use 1.6.8 or 1.6.13 rather than the latest and greatest version.

The fifth complication is to avoid the IDE. This can be achieved by hacking up some random Makefile to use $(HOME)/Arduino-1.6.13/hardware/arduino/sam, /usr/bin/arm-none-eabi-gcc and /dev/ttyACM0. You may also want to use suitable flags to reduce compilation time, compilation size and execution time. Unfortunately, this will not increase security because there is no support for stack protection when using Arduino's BLOBs.

After working through these problems, compilation and deployment of a blink light worked first time. After a quick play with LED PWM, I devised a library so that it is possible to divine more than one bit of state when an error occurs on a micro-controller. Indeed, this will blink up to four hexadecimal digits and also blink an arbitrary error string in Morse code:-

begin 644 error.c.gz
M'XL(`"K3AED"`Y68;6_:,!#'W_,I/"J50"$8VK6LK)TZ^L36EJZCZQXU&6+`
M(R29$TK9Q'>?0R`%#+E=D%"P[WX^W_WMF!1SY$1:0^&XY$Q*5Y*::W%R)5J2
MR3')%5/%'#%JV3(M'9!FCZMNQW=E((8#,^P-N]O,M@D/G0WZ5"KO[N73Z2SI
M*!9W+)O[/K%=UR-NAPR8['-)F&,12W1%X)NS$181^?2U\F%=;L*4:U?Z/`XD
M#))6:(7X`9/!O'7H<V+Q#AO:03Q5X5BBS0(%]X1#ALZ4[P8]+D="F?L>;XN.
MX-84O24ZC@*0^LUIO7;2;-S]O*W?I+94DW#X<BLI[::V5+RBDTH]NL**YO2S
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MF+>F]Y('0^E44Y.E6+K,,V;#3VWW*4VPMMQ@9KTXDS*E^7*R'_-[:QSW04=/
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M,)WXYH$'H92,<*`<\<>#"!=&XL7#>N&PJN^;1W]4O84Q_9$(VCUCUC5O)4K6
M2DP9,W,8MVCQ15=+<M:?_YPL>1?6>4^S"[C/-*][QXG8Z#Q!)"ZJ5CY*G):V
M44_8W"@='97F65$+[EIM,2OZ;=PW;^^;LZ@6%5,*M5:924:1.U'-J6J))_:L
M'.OXN%2>F4Y6'#;85]:;;[#>6VN]P9@N&<<*TO43*VA%/W,-D"4-D"7%IDEZ
MH9@KY7Q6PQSU(@E5,-6G@.)]SR0!%:U0,%'`[62>:>)P!C!?9'19$(=+'TWD
MA1<*5P*+@<*5$W$F%K>;C,-*;P_`(4OQ$L+AE+*?K!0L[B!9*%A<!=`=$O<*
MDC$.9P)[`':5Y:'D(957!&J+G.X;:)DAJW&2.5QI8<D)1='?:O06)'44OZ;Q
MV]`S"\4_U?@6$#\*?Z;A>6+R4?!S#=X!M(/C7VC\+K!T4/A+#=^#-ET4OZ[Q
M13(?17^GT7]!CUL4_[W&[P/"1^&O-+P-';50_&N-/TC6#HI^H]&=Y.2@Z`V-
M[@)/-!3^5L-[@')PX7_0^+^!98N+_T[C2T`Z*/Q'#>\#VP(*W]3P06)V4/![
M#3X$=F04_I.&?X0.T2C^@\8?`<I$X3]K^"?HZ(3B?]'X8^@/&HK_5>/_@8Z2
;_\E?\W9FP_N9C9#E=S4++V?^`7A,_//4%0``
`
end

(Usual instructions for uudecode process.)

So far I don't see why it's any better than Objective-C. Perhaps I'll find that out later.

I just resumed iOS App development after quite a long hiatus. My iPhone was stolen and my MacBook Pro dropped dead just a couple weeks after AppleCare expired.

Now I have a Mac Mini and an iPhone 7. (The 7 Plus is too large to hold comfortably.)

I've been working on Warp Life since time began.

Some of the APIs I use have been deprecated. I'm unfamiliar with their replacements, and have found that all the tutorials are in Swift.

My current job is a consulting contract. While my clients and I really like each other, when I finished all their projects I'll be out of work again.

I hope to get a job as an iOS App Developer. Just to be considered for that role, one has to have published at least one App in the App Store. Having a stellar resume doesn't help one bit - you need that one published App, even if it's totally braindead.

I've got at least six months before I have to look for a new client.

It’s 2017 and Hayes AT modem commands can hack luxury cars
The affected BMWs went on sale between 2009 and 2010, the affected Infiniti models were built between 2013 and 2015 and there's a chance Nissan Leafs manufactured between 2011 to 2015. The problem device is a 2G baseband chipset, the S-Gold 2 (part number PMB 8876) used by Continental.

The first vulnerability is a stack-based buffer overflow exposed by the Hayes-AT commands AT+STKPROF, AT+XAPP, AT+XLOG and AT+FNS. The second vulnerability is remotely exploitable if by a 2G connection which lets an attacker “access and control memory” for “remote code execution on the baseband radio processor of the TCU.”
Details from DEFCON.

We found a hidden backdoor in Chinese Internet of Things devices
VoIP company "dbltek" found a vulnerability in their GSM-to-VoIP devices which uses components from a Chinese vendor that refuse to fix it.

Basically, when you try to telnet into the device as dbladm, the gadget tries to connect to UDP port 11000 on 192.168.2.1 on its local network. If it receives a valid response, it grants access.

A variety of quotes from the Hypocrite-In-Chief:

        "Don't take vacations. What's the point? If you're not enjoying your work, you're in the wrong job." -- Think Like A Billionaire

        Pres. Obama is about to embark on a 17 day vacation in his ‘native’ Hawaii, putting Secret Service away from families on Christmas. Aloha!

        When will Obama next go on vacation if he wins the election? The day after.

        President Obama has a major meeting on the N.Y.C. Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf!

        Can you believe that,with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf.Worse than Carter

        The Obama's Spain vacation cost taxpayers over $476K http://bit.ly/JtGxxy They love to spend money.

        We pay for Obama's travel so he can fundraise millions so Democrats can run on lies. Then we pay for his golf.

Well it's official! Trump's Taken More Vacation Days To Date Than Obama During Presidency

I'm resigning from my role in the site, not that I had a big role anyway.

This isn't due to any problems I had with the site or administration, I've just lost interest and I've been unable/uninterested in contributing anything to the site.

I've enjoyed my time here. I've learned a lot and leave with nothing but warm feelings for everyone I've interacted with. If anyone has any concerns or questions, I'll be hanging around in IRC for a week or so. Feel free to send me a query and I'll try to get back to you.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.