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Wikipedia

Captain Lassard, of the 16th precinct, cannot restore the peace in his area since the neighborhood has been taken over by a mysterious gang. The chief of police gives him 30 days to cleanup and allows him 6 new men, whom Lassard gets from his brother, the Commandant of the Police Academy. The chief also promisses Lieutenant Mauser that if Lassard fails, he would become the new Captain. The new recruits are at first causing trouble, but finally manage to arrest a large number of gangsters. Mauser gets them released under false pretenses. Lassard's brother suggest to organize a fair in the area to strenghthen the bond between the inhabitants and the police, but the fair is raided by the gangsters, Lassard is suspended and Mauser becomes the new Captain. He then suspends Mahoney, who had played several tricks on him. Lassard then convinces Mahoney to infiltrate the gang to discover their hinding place. The operation is a success and the gang is finally arrested.

Wikipedia

Mahoney, always causing trouble, is given a choice by the friend of his late father who promised to watch over him: either the prison, or the police academy (which has recently opened to anyone). He chooses the latter, hoping to be expelled. Lieutenant Harris, the instructor, who disapproves of allowing anyone to enter the academy, tries to get Mahoney to quit, but the latter cannot quit, otherwise he is thrown in jail. After being the source of much trouble, he is finally expelled, just before a major riot starts in town. He then joins the other cadets, saves the life of Harris (along with another cadet that Harris hates) and eventually graduates, with honors.

© Amazon.fr

Masada is a planet controlled by the Theocracy, a religious, totalitarian regime. With the help of the Polity, a pan-planetary empire, the rebels overthrow the Theocracy and Masada joins the Polity. During the final days of the rebellion, a Theocracy proctor named Tombs is attacked by the Technician, a gigantic predatory lifeform called a hooder, one of the strange and few lifeforms on Masada. The Technician skins Tombs alive, but leaves something in his mind. Polity scientists repair Tombs body, and then wait twenty years for his mind to recover. Two million of years ago, Masada was the home to the Atheter, a species that committed global suicide to escape the Jain technology, a technological virus that was taking over their society. The humans on Masada step by step discover that the gabbleducks, large pyramid-shaped animals, are what is left of the Atheter species. The latter had built a Device, currently hiding somewhere in space, that erases intelligence, and the gabbleducks are thus dumbed-down Atheters. The hooders are war machines, and the Technician was used by one Atheter known as the Weaver as a way to safekeep his mind (not all Atheters agreed to commit suicide). When the Device detects again the presence of intelligence on Masada, it comes back to erase it again, but the Polity people organize to fight it, with little success. The Weaver's mind leaves Tombs' brain and enters the one of a gabbleduck, reviving the Atheter race, and directs the Technician in a (successful) attempt at destroying the Device, thus saving the planet.

Wikipedia

London, 1895. Sir Robert Chiltern is a successful undersecretary of the Foreign Office, and his marriage is one of the few truly happy ones in the political class. Laura Chevely starts blackmailing Chiltern, threatening to reveal that he had become wealthy after delivering inside information to her former husband (who thenbecame immensly whealthy), in exchange for his recommendation at the Parliament to support of a financial scheme in Argentina where she had invested a lot of money. To motivate him, Laura Chevely reveals Chiltern's secret to his rigorously honnest wife, Lady Gertrude, before Chiltern has resolved to do it himself. Chiltern then visits his friend, the idle Lord Arthur Goring, for advice. But Lady Gertrude had sent a letter to the same Lord Goring for the same reason. Laura Cheveley then pays a visit to Lord Goring, but she is mistaken for Lady Gertrude by the butler, who was told to expected “a lady”. Laura Cheveley, seeing the letter from Lady Gertrude, uses the opportunity to steals yet another embarassing document. When Sir Robert discovers the presence of Laura Cheveley, he leaves the house in rage. The same evening, Lord Robert delivers his speech to the parliament, and his wife, accompanied by her sister in law Mabel, hears him speak against the Argentinan scheme. Laura Cheveley then sends to Sir Robert the letter Lady Gertrude had written to Lord Goring. When Sir Robert discovers the letter, Lady Gertrude is forced to lie to preserve her marriage. Soon after, Lord Goring proposes to Mabel. Sir Robert refuses, because of Lord Goring apparent involvement with Laura Cheveley. But Lady Gertrude then tells the truth about the letter and explains Laura Cheveley's presence in Lord Goring's home that evening. Sir Robert then accepts and all is well that ends well.

Wikipedia

See Wikipedia's The Matrix Reloaded

“fruit and malt aromas… hop flavours”

Kind of fruity, otherwise just another ale. Contains barley malt.

Wadworth & Co. Ltd., Devizes, Wiltshire, England. 4.3% alcohol.

“zesty citrus aromas”

Citrusy smell and a taste of bitter almond. Contains barley malt.

Wadworth & Co. Ltd., Devizes, Wiltshire, England. 4.0% alcohol.

I finally got the courage to try out the new op amp model (LT1495) I received last week.

I tried out the current monitor circuit, and it works. The supply voltage for the op amp was 5 V, and I measured the current going through a red LED, powered with 15 V (coming from a supposedly 12 V power adapter). The measurement was 33,6 mA instead of the 31 mA given by the amperemeter. Not very accurate, but I don't actually need high accuracy.

Next step: trying to re-build the motor speed-controller circuit, get it stable enough that it doesn't reboot the Arduino all the time, and check how the current monitor behaves when the current is switching on and off all the time.

“a blend of five different hops from the Yakima Valley to create it's (sic) floral aroma… complex fruits… dry, fruity, bitter finish”

Fruity and bitter. Contains barley and wheat.

Oakham ales, Woodston, PeterBorough, England. 4.4% alcohol.

“single variety beer using only CITRA hops. pungent grapefruit, lychee and goosberry aromas leading to a dry, bitter finish”

Smells definitely like lychee, and has a quite bitter taste. Contains barley and wheat.

Oakham ales, Woodston, PeterBorough, England. 4.6% alcohol.

I hooked the Tyco slot-car controller to the Arduino's analog input with a 400 Ω pullup, and set the A/D converter's reference voltage to INTERNAL (meaning 1.1 V). The sampling rate is 100 Hz and the output values are between 0 and 1023. The movements are two successive slow squeezing-and-releasing of the trigger, followed by three quick squeeze-and-release.

• In the lower picture (red) are the raw data.
• In the second lower picture (green), the raw data is filtered by a 4th-order, low-pass Butterworth filter, with a 5 Hz cutoff frequency.
• In the third lower picture (blue), a 32-levels quantization is applied to the raw data.
• In the top picture (purple), the quantization is applied to the filtered data.

A value of 1023 (the maximum) indicates that the electrical contact is broken i.e., that the trigger is in the rest position or its maximum.

I have tried hardware filtering with capacitors (1 nF, 100 nF and 1μF), but the digital filter gives the best results. I don't doubt that more advanced hardware filters would have produced similar, if not better results, but they would have required more components, and if you can afford to do it in software, why bother with the extra hardware? Software filtering is amazing… The code for the software filter has been generated on this very useful website.

Additionally, conductive grease applied to the variable resistor may reduce quite much the noise (or shortcut the whole coil of wire…)

I don't have a proper explanation as for the why, but the op amp problem I had recently is solved by using a virtual ground set to 1/2 V_supply.

My understanding there is that the differential amplifier acts as both an inverting and non inverting amplifier, and that it needs a negative supply (or a virtual ground, which amounts to the same thing) for the non-inverting part. Using a virtual ground as mentioned above has two drawbacks:

• it brings the reference point of V_out to 1/2 V_supply, which makes it much less nice to use with the Arduino's analog input (only the upper-half of the input range is used because of this offset) and
• the maximum allowable range for the signals is between 1/2 V_supply and V_supply-1.5V (for the LM324), which is not much even when V_supply is 12 V.

Moreover, the differential amplifier needs well matched resistors: R1||R2 = R3||R4 (R1||R2 is the equivalent resistance of R1 in parallel with R2), othwerwise it has an additional DC offset which gets amplified by the gain of the differential amplifier, making the whole thing useless for my purpose of amplifying the very small voltage across a shunt.

On the bright side though, I found another op amp, the LT1495, that can accept inputs beyond V_supply and with a very low input offset. Its only drawback is that it costs 25 times more than the LM324 (which was very, very cheap, but still).

“Sir Jeffrey Hudson was an adventurer, courtier and duelist in the service of King Charles I… citrus fruitness and dry bitter finish.”

Definitely citrusy, and with maybe a hint of bitter almond in the aftertaste. Contains barley and wheat.

Oakham ales, Woodston, PeterBorough, England. 4.2% alcohol.

I just tested the first prototype of the speed controller for the Tyco slot cars. Currently, the Arduino reads the potentiometer with analogRead() and applies PWM (with analogWrite()) on the base of a BC547 transistor. The transistor acts as a driver for a FQP70N10 MOSFET which controls the motor. The MOSFET doesn't seem to heat at all (I selected this model for exactly that reason) and speed control works (i.e., I can drive the car on a simple ring circuit, down to quite low speed).

My initial idea was to drive the MOSFET directly with the Arduino, but I noticed after buying a pair of those that they it's not a logic-level MOSFET. Driving it with 5 V would theoretically work (I need about 1 A, which is well within the capabilities of the device), but the internal resistance would be much higher that the value touted on the datasheet, and thus dissipate more heat (exact figures for the resistance at 5 V are not available from the datasheet).

This was a proof of concept, and the concept is therefore proven, I can start working on measuring, with the Arduino, the current delivered to the motor.

Kultasuklaa, Tummasuklaa, 70%: pas mauvais, mais rien de remarquable.

Kultasuklaa, Naturel tumma, 54%: plus sucré que le précédent, avec un coté « biscuit au beurre » industriel

Wikipedia

Tony Stark inherited a large weapon-manufacturing company. While in Afghanistan for a demonstration of the latest missile of Stark Industries to the US military, he is kidnapped by rebels and forced to build a control system for the missiles (that the rebels seem to have got already, from an unknown source). Wounded by shrapnel during his kidnapping, he is saved by another prisoner, a doctor, who puts an electromagnet on his chest to prevent remaining pieces of metal to enter his heart. Instead of building the control system, Stark first makes a miniature generator to power his electromagnet, but also the iron armored suit that he builds next. With the suit, he escapes the rebels and is later located by US troops. Months after having left for Afghanistan, he is back in the US. There, he wants to stop his company from making weapons, but he is pushed away from executive decisions by Stane, his father's old partner who actually runs the company. Left with plenty of free time, he builds a new armored suit, around a new version of the generator. The suit contains many weapons, an AI and can fly. Stark then flies to Afghanistan as the Iron Man to destroy the Stark Industries weapons in posessions of the rebels. Back in the US, Stark asks his faithful secretary, Pepper Potts, to hack into the company's computer to find the origin of the weapons. She finds out that Stane had sold them to the rebels in exchange for them killing Stark. In the meanwhile, the rebels have found the remnants of Stark's first suit and deliver them to Stane who uses this new technology to make armored suits of his own. Since he cannot replicate the miniature reactor, he goes to Stark's house and steals it. Starks survives by reusing the older version, and fights Stane as Iron Man. Starks obviously wins and eventually tells the press he is the Iron Man (even though his military advisor had prepared a cover story).

“rustic earthy character, roasty, chocolaty flavours and typical fruity, spicy hints… It is unusually hoppy for a Scottish ale.”

Just another strong ale. Contains barley and wheat malts.

The Inverlamond Brewery Limited, Perth, Scotland. 7.0% alcohol.              

Brewdog.com

The text on the bottle is as idiotic and uninformative as usual.

Smells quite much of blackcurrant, and tastes reasonnably bitter. Contains barley.

BrewDog Ltd., Fraserburgh, Scotland. 5.0% alcohol

Wikipedia

From Wikipedia:

In the 1960s, a 20-year-old girl nicknamed "Babydoll" is institutionalized by her stepfather at t mental hospital after she is blamed for the death of her younger sister (actually defending her against the stepfather who discovered that, at the death of their mother, they would inherit everything). Blue Jones, one of the asylum's orderlies, is bribed by Babydoll's stepfather into forging the signature of the asylum's psychiatrist, Dr. Vera Gorski, to have Babydoll lobotomized, so she can neither inform the authorities of the true circumstances leading to her sister's death, nor reclaim her inheritance. As she enters the institution, she takes note of several items that would be integral if she were to attempt an escape.

In the days prior to her lobotomy, Babydoll retreats to a fantasy world in which she is newly arrived in a brothel owned by Blue, whom she envisions as a mobster. She befriends four other dancers-Amber, Blondie, Rocket and Rocket's older sister, Sweet Pea. Dr. Gorski is envisioned as the girls' dance instructor, and informs Babydoll that her virginity will be sold to a client known as “The High Roller”, who will be arriving in five days. Madam Gorski then encourages Babydoll to perform an erotic dance, during which she fantasizes that she is in feudal Japan, where she meets the Wise Man. After expressing her desire to escape, the Wise Man presents Babydoll with weapons and tells her that if she is to escape, she will need to collect five items: a map, fire, a knife, a key and a fifth, unrevealed item that would require great sacrifice. Before parting ways, the Wise Man instructs Babydoll to defend herself, and she is confronted by three demonic samurai, which she defeats. As her fantasy ends, Babydoll finds herself back in the brothel, her dance impressing Blue and other onlookers.

Inspired by her vision of the Wise Man, Babydoll convinces her friends to prepare an escape from the brothel. She plots to use her dances as a distraction whilst the other girls obtain the tools for their escape. During each of her dances, Babydoll imagines adventurous events that mirror their efforts. These episodes include infiltrating a bunker protected by steam-powered WWI German soldiers to gain the map (mirrored by Sweet Pea entering Blue's office and copying a map of the brothel); storming an orc-infested castle to cut two fire-producing crystals from the throat of a baby dragon (mirrored by Amber stealing a lighter from the breast-pocket of a client); and boarding a train and combating mechanized guards to disarm a bomb (mirrored by Sweet Pea stealing a kitchen knife from the belt of the brothel's cook). During the last of these fantasies, the dance is interrupted, and in the fantasy Rocket sacrifices herself to save Sweet Pea and is killed when the bomb detonates. This is paralleled in the brothel when the cook attempts to stab Sweet Pea as she stole the knife, but Rocket dives in front of the blade and is stabbed herself.

While the girls attempt to procure the knife, Blue, suspecting that the girls are plotting something, overhears Blondie relaying Babydoll's plan to Madam Gorski. After discovering the gruesome scene in the kitchen, Blue has the grieving Sweet Pea locked in a utility closet and confronts the remainder of the girls backstage. He proceeds to make examples of Amber and Blondie, shooting both of them. He then attempts to rape Babydoll, but she stabs him with the kitchen knife and steals his master key from around his neck. She frees Sweet Pea from the closet and the two start a fire with the stolen lighter so that, as a result of the fire alarm, the institution's checkpoint doors unlock. The two manage to escape into the courtyard, where they find the front gate to be blocked by henchmen. Babydoll deduces that the fifth item needed for the escape is in fact herself, and that her sacrifice is needed to complete Sweet Pea's story. She distracts the guards, allowing Sweet Pea to slip out the front gate.

As the henchmen get the better of Babydoll, the scene then cuts back to the asylum in which the surgeon has just performed her lobotomy. As he removes his orbitoclast, he is perturbed by Babydolls expression and starts to question Dr. Gorski as to why she authorized the procedure. Gorski realizes that Blue had forged her signature, and summons the police, who apprehend Blue as he assaults a catatonic Babydoll. Elsewhere, Sweet Pea waits at a bus station where she is stopped by suspicious police. The bus driver, revealed to be the Wise Man from Babydoll's fantasies, misleads the police and allows Sweet Pea to board without a ticket.

© Amazon.fr

Sursamen is a shell-world, an artificial “planet” made of fifteen concentric layers. On the eigth level live the Sarl, who are trying to conquer the Deldeyn, inhabitants of the ninth level. These not-yet-advanced civilizations are supervized by another race, the Oct, who are themselves supervised by yet another race, and so on. Hausk, king of the Sarl, is wounded in battle and then murdered by his closest counsellor tyl Loesp. Prince Ferbin is accidentally witness to the scene. He knows that tyl Loesp will be trying to kill him next, so with the help of his manservant Holse he tries to reach the surface of Sursamen and from there hopes to find Hyrlis, a Culture agent who was a friend of Hausk. Ferben hopes the Culture, who has spies everywhere, would have recorded tyl Loesp's treason so that he can prove his guilt. After a long and complicated travel through many worlds Ferbin and Holse finally find Hyrlis, but he is now an outcast from the Culture and cannot help the prince. Ferbin then tries to locate his sister Djan Seriy, who had left Sursamen to become an agent for the Culture's Specian Circumstances service. Having heard of her father's death, she is herself travelling towards Sursamen. Meanwhile, Ferbin's younger brother Oramen has become Prince Regent under tyl Loesp's supervision, until he comes of age (Ferbin is officially dead, even though tyl Loesp learns the truth and tries to get him killed). Tyl Loesp planes to get Oramen killed eventually and names him governor of the just-conquered Deldeyn capital on the ninth level, in order to keep him away from the court on the Sarl's level. Oramen also supervises an archeological dig in a very difficult area that has just been made possible by a rare “astronomical” event (it still all happens inside one level of Sursamen). The Oct have actually manipulated tyl Loesp so that he takes over the ninth level in time to control the archeological research, and secures the artefact, the Sarcophagus, that lies at the bottom of it. The Oct are convinced the Sarcophagus contains one of their ancestor, conserved in stasis for billions of years. But the creature is actually an Iln, a destroyer of shellworlds. Allowed to escape, the Iln kills everyone around it (including tyl Loesp's army who was attacking to kill Oramen, Oramen, and the whole Sarl settlement on the ninth level) and then plunges at the core of the shellworld where lives a Xinthian (rare, gigantic creatures that live at the bottom of shellworld and maintain them), know the the Sarl as the WorldGod. Djan Seriy, Ferbin and Holse arrive just in time to chase the Iln and kill it. Djan Seriy and Ferbin die in the attempt.

Wikipedia

Dany is a kid who prefers going to the movie and watch the adventures of his favourite hero, Jack Slater rather than go to school. His friend Nick, the projectionist of the theatre invites Dany to watch the newest Jack Slater before the premiere. Nick gives Dany a magical ticket that was given to him by Houdini; but Nick never had the courage to try it. Nick splits the ticket and gives Dany the stub. During the movie, the ticket activates and Dany enters the movie just after Slater witnesses the murder of his cousin. Dany never manages to convince Slater that he knows who is the bad guy (Dany saw the villain, Vivaldi, and his henchman, Benedict, reveal their plan earlier on screen), but Slater accepts to pay a visit to Vivaldi's house, which raises Benedict's suspicions. When Dany and Slater are attacked by Benedict, the latter takes Dany's magical ticket and later discovers its use. Meanwhile, Dany and Slater discover Vivaldi's plan to kill his rivals at a funeral, and the heroes save the day. When trying to apprehend Vivaldi and Benedict, the latter flees to the real world using the ticket, and Dany and Slater manage just to follow him through the portal. In the real world, Slater discovers he really is only a fictional character, that the writers gave him a miserable life and that he doesn't like violence anymore. Meanwhile, Benedict visits the theaters of New York City, looking for other movie villains. He finds the Ripper, the villain in the previous Jack Slater movie, and asks him to kill Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor playing Slater. At the premiere of the new movie, Dany and Slater confront the Ripper and kill him. Benedict is soon killed, but slater is mortally wounded. To save him, Dany understands Slater must return into his movie. Dany steals the ambulance driving Slater to a hospital and takes him to Nick's theatre. He finds the other half of the magic ticket in the trash and gives it to Slater, who quickly returns into his world, with barely a scratch.

Wikipedia

Lake Springfield is terribly polluted, partly by Homer's fault. The EPA decides to islate Springfield under a gigantic dome. The population soon discover that Homer is the cause of it and try to lynch the family, but they manage to escape and flee to Alaska. When Marge sees on TV that the EPA plans to destroy the city, she decides to go back, but Homer refuses. Marge and her family are caught and put back under the dome. Meanwhile, thanks to an inuit shaman, Homer has an epiphany and belives he must save the town in order to save himself. A bomb is lowered by the EPA into the dome through a small hole. Homer causes it to drop into it, but manges to take it out and it eventually explodes and destroys the dome.

Plamil Organic Dark Chocolate, 87% : amer et fade. Sans intérêt.

Pacari Los Rios, Équateur, 72% : structure pleine de bulles (défaut de fabrication ?), herbal, amer.

Pacari Manabi, Équateur, 65% : frais, citron, un peu amer

Pacari Esmeraldas, Équateur, 60% : doux, fleuri, miel.

Michel Daniel, Ouganda 80% : amer, me rappelle un peu la mer (?)

Michel Daniel, Kumabo (Tanzanie, Ghana, Sao Tomé) 80% : frais, amer

Michel Daniel, Sao Tomé 66% : très doux, bonbon ou biscuit, vanillé aussi, vraiment très bon

Michel Daniel, Nouvelle Guinée 64,5% : fumé

Michel Daniel, Ghana 60,4% : doux, madeleine, fleuri

Thierry Mulhaupt, Chuao 68% : un peu acide, intense, houblon (?)

Sate herkkutuote : ressemble bigrement au Taloussuklaa de Fazer. Pas terrible.

Sate herkkutuote Kärmes, Ecuador 71% : légèrement acide et astringent, un peu fleuri, un peu amer.

Sate herkkutuote Tumma suklaapatukka, Peru 64% : très doux, très bon.

Here's a mini-workbench for Arduino prototyping, made of 6.5 mm plywood.

The Arduino board stands on whatever-they-are-called threaded thinggies you use to screw the motherboard into the computer case without it touching the metal. Arduino screw holes are 3.2 mm in diameter, so I had to drill them to 3.5 mm. It survived the treatment.

The breadboard had an adhesive back, so this one was easy.

The LCD has one potentiometer (top) for contrast and one switch for the LED backlight (depending on the power source, backlight may consume too much current, so it can be switched off if needed). The connectors at the end of the ribbon cable are made from component legs and shrink tube.

The drawback is that now it takes much more space than it used too…

“Historically the term used to describe a Porter blended from a variety of ales, Entire Butt uses 14 different malts and 3 hops to recreate this forgotten style of Porter. The beer is… distinctly vinous. It has little hop character as essentially flavour is derived from the malts: Pale marris otter,lager, wheat, pale crystal, dark crystal, darck chocolate, pale chocolate, black, roast barley, cara malt, torrified wheat, amber, brown and malted oats.”

Noticeably bitter, not just another ale, but I can't identify any distincive flavour. Contains barley, wheat and oats.

Salopian Brewery, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. 4.6% alcohol.

«  Alors tu vois, le processeur c'est comme le moteur de ta voiture. Et le clavier c'est comme le volant… – Et le système d'exploitation c'est comme l'essence alors ? – Euh…  »

C'est n'importe quoi hein ? La comparaison avec la voiture ne vaut pas tripette, parce que la voiture n'est pas un automate programmable (enfin, pas encore). Voila une comparaison qui me paraît plus correcte (arrêtez-moi si je me trompe): le restaurant. Dans un restaurant et dans le désordre, on trouve:

• Le cuisinier : c'est lui qui fait (presque) tout le travail, comme le processeur.
• Le cuisinier lit des recettes et les exécute : ce sont les programmes.
• Les recettes sont composées de gestes à effectuer qui indiquent au cuisinier comme agir: ce sont les instructions.
• Les recettes indiquent comment transformer des ingrédients crus (viande, légumes…) : ce sont les données fournies en entrée au programme.
• Ces ingrédients sont transformés en plats : ce sont les données fournies en sortie par le programme.
• Les ingrédients et les plats doivent être posés quelque part à un moment donné, par exemple sur des plans de travail : ces derniers servent de mémoire centrale.
• Certains ingrédients crus doivent être stockés pendant un certain temps, par exemple dans des réfrigérateurs : ce sont les mémoires de masse.
• Il existe un certain nombre d'opérations qui sont souvent répétées et que le cuisinier a appris à effectuer lors de sa formation professionnelle (émincer, fouetter, incorporer, ciseler…): ces instructions sont l'équivalent du noyau du système d'exploitation.
• Il existe aussi des recettes de base qui sont souvent répétées et qui entrent dans la composition des plats (roux, bouillon, pain…) : elles forment l'interface de programmation qui sert de base à tous les programmes. Certaines de ces recettes peuvent être commandées directement par le client (le pain par exemple), et représentent les logiciels utilitaire (ou commandes de base) fournies avec le système d'exploiatation.
• Le restaurant a des clients : ce sont les utilisateurs.
• Les client s'addressent à un serveur : ce dernier joue le rôle de l'interface utilisateur.
• Le client peut choisir dans un menu ce qu'il désire manger, et donc les recettes que le cuisinier va executer : ce menu est la liste des programmes que l'utilisateur peut lancer, qui sont parfois regroupées dans un menu (déroulant ou non).
• dans les restaurants, le cuisinier est rarement seul, il est aidé par le boulanger, le patissier, le saucier: ce sont des coprocesseurs, spécialisés dans l'exécution de certaines tâches.

Enfin, on peut considérer que les casseroles sont comme les registres du processeur, elles servent de stockage temporaire pour les opérations élémentaires.

Après, la comparaison a ses limites: on peut copier des données, mais on ne copie pas un gateau au chocolat…

Aussi, il manque la possibilité au client de donner des ingrédients à la cuisine, c'est à dire à l'utilisateur d'entrer des données dans l'ordinateur.

“On the nose, this dark beer offers bitter chocolate, figs, toffee and hints of fruits. On the palate, coffee-and-chocolate flavours, followed by figs, dates and dried fruits … and an aftertaste of fruits and hop bitterness.”

Chocolate and coffee, slightly acid too. Contains malted barley and malted wheat.

Sinclair Breweries Ltd, The Orkney Brewery, Stromness, Orkney, Scotland. 4.6% alcohol.

In English below

Il m'est venu l'autre nuit l'idée suivante : si on transposait les restrictions imposées sur la plupart des DVD dans la vie réelle, qu'est-ce que ça donnerait?

Imaginons qu'on veuille acheter une copie d'une ½uvre d'art. Au lieu de recevoir l'objet attendu, on se retrouve avec:

• l'objet, mais enfermé dans une vitrine
• la vitrine est intégralement faite de glace sans tain, on ne peut donc voir l'objet qui s'y trouve, sauf si celui-ci est éclairé depuis l'intérieur de la vitrine,
• la vitrine est fermée à clef,
• la clef de la vitrine doit être achetée à part,
• cette clef est dans une boite scellée, sans ouverture apparente,
• il est interdit par la loi d'ouvrir la boite pour en sortir la clef,
• lorsqu'on pose la boite sur la vitrine, la lumière s'allume, mais seulement après que la boite nous ait bien fait comprendre qu'on est indigne de poser nos yeux sur l'objet qui s'y trouve,
• on n'a pas le droit de ranger la boite n'importe où dans la maison, et la partie de la maison où est rangée la boite ne nous appartient plus.

Imaginons maintenant qu'on acquierre une copie pirate de ladite ½uvre d'art : on reçoit une copie qui est éventuellement plus petite que la version qui aurait été livrée dans la vitrine, et peut-être un peu moins bien polie, mais au moins, on peut en disposer à sa guise.

Après ça, c'est vous qui voyez.

Flowery smell, quite bitter. Contains barley.

BrewDog Ltd., Fraserburgh, Scotland. 4.7% alcohol

“The Beer scene is sick. And we are the fucking doctor.”

Right. I'd rather be treated by a non-fucking doctor, if it's all the same to you. Anyway, everybody knows there is only one Doctor.

Smells kind of like raspberries and litchi. Quite bitter, but less than other BrewDog brews. Contains barley.

BrewDog Ltd., Fraserburgh, Scotland. 4.5% alcohol

“ruby-red beer, floral and fruity, with notes of violets, cherry, toffee and caramel… hints of roasted malt, with a biscuit malt and spicy hop finish.”

Fruity yes, cherries maybe, the violets I haven't found. Contains malted barley and malted wheat.

Sinclair Breweries Ltd, The Orkney Brewery, Stromness, Orkney, Scotland. 4.0% alcohol.

If you are used to Vim as a text editor, the Arduino IDE is terrible to use. After a little bit of fiddling, here are my tips to program an Arduino using Vim.

Makefile

To compile the Arduino software, I found the Makefile by Alan Burlison and I modified it to suit my needs. You can get the modified version and use it at your own risks.

It has been modified as follows:

• Support for arduino 0022 only (but you can change the version number in the Makefile). Versions prior to 0018 are not supported.
• Binaries are located in /usr/bin.
• The board is by default atmega328.
• The programming protocol is stk500v1 and the speed is 57600 bauds.
• The terminal emulator is xterm and the serial communication software is picocom.
• The serial port is /dev/ttyUSB0.

All these default values can be changed in the Makefile.master file. Moreover, the following changes have been made:

• After killing the serial communication software, sleep for 1 second
• Before starting the programmer, the DTR signal is triggered with stty to reset the board (programming would otherwise not be possible)
• Warnings remain warnings (GCC's -Werror flag has been removed, because I had a weird warning that I don't know how to fix)
• The sketch's .pde file is hardlinked into the build directory, and is #included in sketchname_pde.cpp instead of copied into it. This allows GCC to report the errors on the proper line of the .pde file as well as report the proper path for this file in its error messages (when compiling sketchname_pde.cpp, GCC is in the build directory; since it would include ../sketch.pde, the error messages relative to this file would point to a file name starting with ../, but since Vim is in the parent directory, the path to sketch.pde would be wrong and Vim's QuickFix fails to find the file).
• Linking is made by gcc instead of g++ because of a bug in linking to libm (which is needed if you want to do floating point computations, so it links against it by default).
• A vim: line has been appended to make Vim recognize the file as a Makefile

To use this Makefile, put Makefile.master into your sketchbook directory, and create in your sketch's directory a Makefile which contains include ../Makefile.master. If you want to add extra libraries (here RF12, GLCDlib and Ports), it looks like this:

LIBS = RF12 GLCDlib Ports
LIB_DIRS = $(addprefix ../libraries/,$(LIBS))
include ../Makefile.master

Typing make inside the directory where the Makefile resides builds the sketch. make upload uploads it, make monitor starts the serial communication software on the serial port and make upload_monitor does both sequentially. Finally, make clean cleans up the build directory created when buidling the sketch.

Arduino Syntax File for Vim

Get arduino.vim by Johannes Hoff and put it in your ˜/.vim/syntax/ directory. It will let Vim recognize .pde files are as arduino, turning on C++ syntax highlighting plus Arduino-specific keywords.

Tabs

Vim allows to open multiple tabs: run vim -p *.* in your sketch's directory, and it opens all the files (except the Makefile) in separate tabs. Use Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDown to switch between tabs.

To close all tabs at once, you can use :tabd q, but this is tedious, so I made a shortcut: Add command Q tabd q to your .vimrc and you can close all the tabs at once using :Q. You can do the same with :w, :wq and :x if you want.

Type :help tab to learn more about tabs (especially, :tabe xyz opens file xyz in a new tab. I thought you'd be glad to know).

QuickFix

imap <F9> <ESC>:make<CR>
map <F9> :make<CR>

This lets F9 calls :make (whether you're in command mode or in insert mode). You may want to add set autowrite in your .vimrc so that your files are automatically written when you call make.

Now, at least in Debian, after the call to :make has completed, when you return to your file's screen Vim redirects you to the file that contains the first error in make's output. In my setup, this is a warning in a file belonging to Arduino's core, which I don't want to modify. I could of course press Ctrl-O to return to the file I was editing just before running :make, but that's too much work. What I wanted is to be able to let Vim jump to the files containing warnings and errors, but to force it to ignore system files. The solution is then to add to your ˜/.vimrc the following (all in one line, without spaces after the equal sign):

autocmd Filetype arduino set errorformatˆ=\%-G../libraries\%.\%#,\%-G../../libraries\%.\%#,%-G/space/mweber/tmp/arduino-0022\%.\%#

It requires some tuning, because your Arduino directory is probably not in /space/mweber/tmp/arduino-0022, but since you're smart, you have already understood how to adapt it to your setup.

Please note that to get this setup to work properly, you need to append // vim:ft=arduino to all of the .pde, .cpp and .h files belonging to your sketches, otherwise the Vim will not do the ignoring above. And for this to work, modelines must be enabled by adding set modeline to your ˜/.vimrc.

Finally, since you opened all your files in tabs already, tell Vim not to open the file containing a warning/error in the current tab, but rather in the tab that already contains the file. You do this by adding set switchbuf=usetab in your ˜/.vimrc.

In short, your ˜/.vimrc has now these extra lines:

command Q tabd q
command W tabd w
set modeline
set autowrite
set switchbuf=usetab
imap <F9> <ESC>:make<CR>
map <F9> :make<CR>
autocmd Filetype arduino set errorformatˆ=\%-G../libraries\%.\%#,\%-G../../libraries\%.\%#,%-G/space/mweber/tmp/arduino-0022\%.\%#

Here's the Button Box. It has three illuminated push-buttons, one knob (which also acts as a push-button) and one light-dependent resistor (the small thinggy on the lower-right corner) which are controlled by an RBBB microcontrller (software-compatible with the Arduino). Here's the control software.

The push-buttons contain each one bi-color LED (red-green); its color depends on the direction of the current. Each LED which is controlled using PWM, which allows to quickly reverse the direction of the current and create the illusion of a yellow/orange color. Moreover, the Box senses the amount of ambient light (with the light-dependent resistor) and adjust the intensity of the light depending on that: by night, the LEDs are on only 1/64th of the time, while in daylight they are on at 100%, making them more visible.

It connects to the computer through a serial-to-USB adapter. It's a bit ugly like that, but who cares.

The current through the LEDs is limited by a 150 Ω resistor. The push-buttons use the microconstroller's internal pull-up resistors. The light-dependent resistor (rated 4 – 11 kΩ, whatever this exactly means) forms a voltage divider with a 1 kΩ resistor, and its value is read by one of the analog inputs of the microcontroller.

The white PCB is the RBBB, which is powered by the USB-BUB (serial-to-USB adapter, based on an FTDI chip). It's not the cheapest solution, but those components were the easiest to obtain.

The USB-BUB has its outputs rewired to the row of holes along its side, and is soldered sideways to the RBBB using a row of pin headers. The RBBB is then screwed through one ready-made hole to the bottom of the box through an additional piece of plastic glued (with cyanoacrylate glue) to the bottom. This gives a thickness of almost 5 mm which is enough to hold the screw (a bit thicker would have been better). The same is done to the other end of the RBBB which has a similar hole. This holds the USB-BUB enough for the USB cable to be inserted and removed.

Side view. ABS project boxed are nice, because they are easy to drill and cut through with a hacksaw or even with a knife for smaller details.

Inside view with the side walls removed. It's quite tight inside, but it fits nicely.

“malt body… passion fruit hop”

The first sniff reminded me of litchi, but after that it was just another ale. Quite bitter, it seems to be a characteristic of this brewer. Contains barley.

BrewDog Ltd., Fraserburgh, Scotland. 4.1% alcohol

Wikipedia

After Voyager 2 transported a message to the distant stars, a UFO flies over the USA and is shot by the Air Force. The alien arrives near Jenny's house, where it takes the form of her late husband. He then asks her to drive him to Winslow, Arizona where he must rendez-vous with his mothership 3 days later. On the way, he learns some amount of English, and about the ways of humans. Jenny is at first afraid, but she eventually falls in love with him. They are chased by the federal police and the army, but eventually manage to escape thanks to the help of a SETI scientist, advisor the the federal police, but who doesn't approve of the methods of the government. The alien eventually leaves, leaving Jenny pregnant with a son who will one day teach the humans about the alien's civilization.

“Traditional malts and English hops… delicate, fresh, grainy after-taste.”

Quite strong hop flavour. Contains malted barley.

St. Peter's Brewery, Bungay, Suffolk, England. 4.7% alcohol.

“Kentish hops and East Anglian malting barley”

Just another beer. Contains barley.

Meantime Brewing, London, England. 4.5% alcohol.

“tribute to the Vikings and their cultural legacy in Orkney… roasted malt aroma, bitter chocolate, dark roasted coffee and smokey notes balanced by hints of spicy Goldings hop… chocolate, toast and nut flavours… spicy hop finish.”

Definitely chocolatey and coffey, only slightly bitter. Quite nice. Contains malted barley and malted wheat.

Sinclair Breweries Ltd, The Orkney Brewery, Stromness, Orkney, Scotland. 4.0% alcohol.