Tech-savvy time-saver: January 2015

Friday, January 30, 2015

EE Times Quizzes : Stay Current, or not

Thursday, January 29, 2015

The Greatest : Greg Giraldo

How do you keep that show on the air?
That wasn't a premise to a joke. That was a real question.
I don't want to say no one watches it, but more people have seen Dennis Rodman reading. (It's even funnier because D is in the audience or on the stage..)
To Bea Arthur (and Pam A) you both were quintessential feminist icons of your day and you both blew Kid Rock.
BTW, Pam, Kid Rock wanted to be here, but he got stuck in a 20 year old.
Adam Corolla - you horse-toothed *rd. You have a mouth full of 2 by 4's. Everytime you smile I remember to waterproof my deck.
Good to see Eddie Griffin. Eddie Griffin - people said there wouldn't be any big movie-stars here tonight and they were right.
Pam : You're environmentally conscious but you've caused more seed to be spilled than the department of agriculture.
What's the deal with the implants Pam? They're in, they're out, they're in, they're out - jeez Pam, they're not contact lenses, they're tits. You've been inflated and deflated more times than Jeff Ross's prom date.
You've done so much - humanitarian causes, TV show, written 2 books. You're busier than Courtney's pharmacist.
2 books Pam! What's up with that? You've written more books than you've read.
To Carrot Top. What did you do to your face? How did you do that? You look retarded. How did you find a plastic surgeon who could add a chromosome?
Jeff Ross - you're running a talent show! Where did you get the balls? You running a talent show is like Michael Vick running the ASPCA.
Snoop, you've killed people, you're filled with toxins, you've been banned from every country on the planet. You're like Chinese toothpaste.
Cheech and Chong - just when I thought you were gone, you came back. You're like the herpes of comedy.
Toby Keith is here. Toby, I'm glad you could take time off from spitting on Mexicans to be here. Toby, you put the "big" in bigot.
Larry the Cable Guy - you've been inside more farm animals than Purina.
You lost 50 pounds on Nutrisystem and another 10 when you shaved your back.
How are you so popular!??? Your fans can't afford cable. They're not coming because you're funny. They're coming to see you because they've never seen a cable guy.
Tom Arnold is here. Tom, so glad you could take time off from being Rosanne's ex husband. Joan actually named another of her s*ty watches after you. The Tom Arnold edition - it never stops ticking and it used to come in a giant hairy box.
Joan, what the f did you do to your upper lip? Not just you all the rubber-faced monsters out here - what goes into peoples' heads? Why? Really? Is that good? How much worse could your real face look than that clown mask you've had welded onto your head? You used to look your age, but now you don't even look your species.
Look at this dais - it's not a roast, it's a melt. The devil has signed so many deals with you people, he's got carpel tunnel's syndrome.
Jeff Ross - how fat are you planning on getting? You're getting faster than you're aging. You're like the curious case of Benjamin Glutton.
Speaking of fat and ugly, Hulk Hogan is here everybody. I can't imagine why your wife loves you. You're an old man who dresses like a Hooters waitress.
Hoff, you're even more popular in Europe. The Queen knighted you. She dubbed you Sir Ossis of Liver. Have you ever not been drunk? You used to have a car that started when you talked to it. Now you have a car that won't start when you blow into it.
You're such a drunk that when alcohol does its taxes, it lists you as a dependent.
Your liver is so shriveled, black and dead, if you put your ear to your stomach, you could hear, "what you talking about Willis?"
Ralphie May - you're like the population of India - big, sweaty and double in size every year. You're the only guy who watches porn and comes when the guy delivers the pizza.

Wish List

Please guys, fix the crappiness..

Provide a way to Cadencify - we need a dark theme - not everyone can tolerate the ridiculous light background.
Default net-naming - when you do a DC analysis, you want to see the voltages of ALL nets, not just the ones you named!
A way to look at operating point info of transistors.
A way zoom in with right-click-and-drag
A way to do custom bindkeys.
A way to annotate OP info onto the schematic.

How to Generate Additional Income with Bovada

Substitute the name of your favorite betting site.

Pick a popular event - one that will be contested by well-known contenders and invite betting from a large population. (Why? well-known contenders : the models used to predict their chances are mature and reliable. Large population : the analysis is more rigorous - very little is left to chance. You have the math working for you)
Choose an amount to bet - in such cases, $10 will return about $1.50. Don't be greedy :) You want to be able to forget the ones that don't work out.
Bet

If all goes well, this strategy can easily return $5 per week. Can you use that? I bought a Win 7 laptop that I'm using to type this for $220. Make your own decision.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Eugene Chan to Me : You've Wasted Your Life :)

http://sensing.xprize.org/teams/competition-2-teams/dmi (oudated. Thanks :)

Use this : Eugene Chan | Lemelson (mit.edu)

Enough said. Amazing work.

Remembering the Eleven Mottos of Sosai Oyama

Here's a mnemonic that might help : CRYSTALLIZE

C	Courtesy	The Martial Arts way begins and ends with Courtesy. Always be properly and genuinely courteous at all times
R	Roasted	The nature and purpose of the Martial Way is universal. All selfish thoughts are roasted over the tempering fires of hard training
Y	Yen	Even for the Martial Arts practitioner, there is the place of money. Yet, one must be careful never to become attached to it
S	Stance	The Martial Arts way is centred around posture. Strive to maintain the correct Posture at all times
T	Ten thousand	The Martial Arts way is begun with 1000 days of practice and is mastered after 10,000 days of practice
A	Abundance	In the Martial Arts, the rewards of a Confident and Generous heart are truly abundant
L	Leadership	Strive to seize the initiative in all things, at all times guarding against actions stemming from selfish motives
L	Lines	The Martial Arts begin in a point and end in a circle. Straight lines stem from this principle
I	Introspection	In the Martial Arts introspection begets wisdom. Always see contemplation of your actions as an opportunity to improve
Z	Zenith	Following the Martial Arts way is like scaling a cliff. It demands absolute and unfaltering devotion to the task at hand
E	Experience	The True Essense of the Martial Arts way can only be realized through experience. Knowing this, learn never to fear its demands

Zayu no mei juichi kajo by Masutatsu Mas Oyama.

Friday, January 23, 2015

Konstanz Ain't No Göttingen

So desperate was this man to win a Nobel Prize for his alma mater. Göttingen has too many he decided; time for Konstanze to have one too.. Except, in place of the German work-ethic, young Jan Hendrik used Teutonic guile.

If he had just gotten a PTAT log plot right, he might have escaped..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal

Find of the Day : QUCS (Does Veriloga)

One of the factors contributing to my speed of execution in past jobs was usage of veriloga to make difficult things easy.

If you want to get better, you have to practise. How? When you don't have access to spectre, or hspice?

Here's one option (not tested) : http://qucs.sourceforge.net/index.html

Found on : https://mixedsignal.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/top-ten-circuit-simulators/

In case you plan to install :

The download files alone, for qucs and octave are 127 MB and 68 MB. What giveth? Guess you have to pay for great work. And you really have to hand it to the Qucs guys when you look at their page - compared to gEDA, they're 100x better. What gives? Are Europeans really sick of Cadence and Altium raking in the money? Or is it just the socialistic/democratic/fraternistic streak?

And they've actually taken the trouble to create a Win32 (okay, why not 64b also?) binary executable. Why can't gEDA do that much?

The Open-Source FAN4860

That will be our LTspice project of the day : design an open-source version of the FAN4860 in LTspice using the NMOS and PMOS devices from the TSMC 0.35 um process. (Why? Because, though the 0.5 um process might suffice, those models aren't readily available).

What will you learn? You will learn pseudo-constant ON-time control. You might have heard of fixed-frequency voltage-mode and current-mode control - which ensure a well-defined switching frequency. By choosing this architecture, we avoid some issues inherent in the fixed-frequency approach like limited bandwidth and consequently diminished load-transient regulation performance. The chosen regulation scheme is not without drawbacks - mainly that the switching frequency is not well controlled - but it is good enough.

You will learn what is needed to provide true shutdown - ensure that there is no path from the input supply to the output when the converter is disabled. A poor way of providing this is to have an additional switch in series with the inductor - a scheme adopted by Texas Instruments on DSC PMICs.

You will learn what can be done to reduce the no load IQQ (quiescent current) from the existing 37 uA to less than 10 uA.

Points for extra effort from FCS : they state the soft-start peak input current is only guaranteed by design and not tested in production. Good to know - it's kind of understood if it's not a min/max..

Conveniently missing from the datasheet is any mention of the shutdown sequencing. When EN goes LO, do you immediately send the bulk of the PFET back to VIN thereby sending huge current through the diode? I doubt it.. What you could do is switch the PFET at a certain duty cycle (NMOS stays OFF all the time) till you have discharged Vout to close to VIN, or operate the PFET as a current source again - probably better - why have any noise if you can avoid it?

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Google Spares Apple's Blushes on iPad

Sure, Apple markets "It Just Works" - but their ads don't tell you which part doesn't work.

Nuts! I sometimes wonder if Apple builds its products a certain way to deliberately insult geeks. Think about how long it took them to get Skype on iPhones.

Most recent one : someone's sent me a zip file with a bunch of PPTs. No problem on the PC. How about the iPad - drives you crazy. First, Safari just gives up - doesn't have a clue what to do.

Then, installs Chrome - and that guy says "Open In" - which is a by vague - "Open with" would work better. Needs to go on the App Store again and now find an unzipping utility - iZip - which is ad heavy :( But, it works. I can get on the treadmill and go through Eric Swanson's excellent commentary on the IC industry. Ye all must use the ITRS!

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Setting Up a Custom PDK with LTspice

Hokay, so you've decided to take on RidgeTop and provide your own foundry IP.
You don't want to shell out $60k a year for a Cadence license, so you're going to cuts costs and use LTspice for your design.
How do you build a PDK that has all of the resistors and capcitors and FETs and BJTs?
Start with one - the FET.
You want a symbol that you can pass W, L and M (number of devices in parallel) to.
Why not just use a primitive (like these folks do)? Because, then you have to fill in AD,AS, PD info on a per-device basis. The approach detailed here gives a default setup for AD,AS, but is not user-friendly in that you don't get separate text fields to type your choice of W, L and m into. On the other hand, you will get the default values set up.

Summing up below steps : LTspice comes with a symbol for an nmos device. We use that symbol to create the symbol for a new subckt for our custom nmos and provide the subckt definition for it. The steps below are for one device and would need to be repeated for all PDK devices.

-1) Avoid pain by ensuring LTspice isn't installed in the Program Files directory - it can lead to headaches due to permissions if you follow below procedure..

0) Kudos to this page for giving me a good starting point.

1) You start with you subckt file, which should look something like this :
.subckt mynmos d g s b params: w=2u l= 0.6u m= 1
.param adl = {expression for ad}
+ asl = {expression for as}
+ pdl = {expression for ..}
+ psl = {expression for ..}
+ nrdl = {expression for ..}
+ nrsl = {expression for ..}
m1 d g s b modmynmos w={w} l={l} m={m} ad={adl} as={asl} pd={pdl+w} ps={psl+w} nrd={nrdl} nrs={nrsl}

So, you can see how the basic parameters are being used to construct AD, AS, etc and passed on to the model. Call the file mynmos.cir.

2) Take the existing nmos4 symbol (nmos4.asy) and make a copy of it - call it mynmos.asy (i.e., use LTspice to Save As to do this copy). Open that one in a text editor.

3) Open LTspice and use it to open mynmos.cir. Position the cursor on the word "mynmos" and right click and choose "Create Symbol". Say Ok on next confirmation dialog.

4) LTspice will create a symbol in the AutoGenerated folder under Sym. Open the file mynmos.asy in that directory in another notepad or editor window and view both files side by side (other one was created in (2) above).

5) Now, you can see that the lines of interest are these :
SymbolType ~~~
SYMATTR Value ~~~
SYMATTR Prefix ~~
SYMATTR Description ~~~~
SYMATTR ModelFile ~~~~
SYMATTR SpiceLine ~~~~
PINATTR PinName ~~

Basically, all that's useful from the copy you made is the graphical content.

6) Use the AutoGenerated symbol file as a reference and paste/type into the Copy you made in (2) to get
SymbolType BLOCK
SYMATTR Prefix X
and so on.

7) User experience is enhanced if the number of parallel devices "m= 1" is available to the user in a separate text field, so make your file look like this :
SYMATTR SpiceLine w= 2u l= 0.6u
SYMATTR SpiceLine2 m= 1

8) In your LTspice installation directory, create MyFAB directories in the lib/sym and lib/sub directories. In the sub directory, you'll put the model file MyFAB.lib (or whatever) and the mynmos.cir subckt file. In the sym directory, you'll put the final .asy file.

9) When you build a schematic with this component, you need to have a ".INCLUDE MyFAB/MyFAB.lib" spice directive

Sad Day : Uninstalls LTSpice

Sorry Mike, you gotta go.

Couldn't autogenerate a symbol because I couldn't save to the lib/sym/AutoGenerated directory - usually this is a permission problem.

Great, but what does one actually do?

Searched, no luck. Only course of action is to re-install. And, now I'll have to setup preferences all over again :( Not a good user experience.. Why not store them some place easy to find?

Monday, January 19, 2015

Shame on NEdit - Can't Hack Cygwin

Stuff you've relied on for years and years, now you get "Error starting shell: /bin/csh". Why can't they code it so it figures out what shells are available, and, the first time you filter stuff, tell you how you can choose something else?

nedit -xrm "nedit.shell: /bin/bash" worked, mercifully..

In you ~/.bashrc :
alias medit='nedit -xrm "nedit.shell: /bin/bash"'

will let you use "medit" in place of nedit. If you know why aliasing nedit doesn't work, please tell me :)

The Ones You Don't See That Often

Most ads on my blog tend to be ASU, Advanced Circuits (PCB Fab), Cox, Digi Key. I was surprised to see some of these as I kept going to older posts :

american express travel

Bath and Body Works Semi-Annual Sale

bluejeans video conferencing

caboki smart hack for hair loss

cfr.org Rising Nuclear Threats?

citrix gotomeeting

colorado state univ

Cox in-home WiFi

Dell Chromebook 11

FLIR infrared automation guidebook

Get Covered America health insurance.

H&R Block

healthcare.gov

hearthstone heroes of warcraft

highincome real estate a susidiary of Talia Jevan Properties

LG G Pad 7.0 LTE free with AT&T Next

Linq hotel and casino Las V

LMX2492, bq24075npl

lunc enterprise voice for dummies

nissan business certified dealers

optimizely

panterranetworks.com Business PBX

perforce.com/Version-Control

pluralsight

salesforce desk

session border controllers for dummies

SIP Trunking for dummies

Sonus Cloud Communications

store.spark.io (open source IoT toolkit)

teach.org

treehouse learn to write code

Vanilla adults with ASD

webRTC for dummies

zendesk

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Amazing, Simply Amazing. How Do They Do It?

If you haven't watched the CC Roast of Donald Trump, I say you're missing out on the 8th Wonder of the World.

Gilbert G : Donald has done so much damage to the NY Skyline that, I think, instead of calling him the Donald, they should call him the 20th hijacker.

Just one of about 100. Incredible stuff. And they're all such good sports!

Snoop Dogg : Lisa L is the only one who's f'd Larry King, Don King, Rodney King and Billie Jean-King in a Burger King bathroom.

I clearly don't give a s about this show, so I'm the perfect host for this show or for the oscars
recently we lost a very talented and beloved performer and it would be wrong not to ack him and to say how much he'll be missed. Larry King died 10 minutes ago (he's on the dais)
Larry, you're old. Don't deny it. Everytime you lie, your balls grow longer.
Snoop Dogg is here. Now Snoop, be honest, when you were backstage, did you (makes smoking joint impression) .. you know .. blow Jeff Ross?
Since our man of the hour was stupid enough to agree to this, let's get started making one more piece of garbage with D Trump's name on it.
Please welcome the 2nd worst tragedy ever to hit NY city.
That's right, for all his self-starter bullshit, he's Jaden Smith with a combover.
You're a grown man, you've got hair like Dennis the Menace. What's going on here? Did you fall head-first into a cotton-candy machine?
BTW, the producers of our show have asked me to interpret that joke for the handicapped person on our stage, the "hey Situation, rich guy have funny hair."
Donald, it's pronounced huge, not euge. And here's another one, it's pronounced, "I am f'in delusional, not I am running for President."
That's right, Trump says he's running for P in 2012. But if his plan for America is to fire everyone, he's about 2 years too late.
But for me, it's kind of hard to vote for a guy whose resting facial expression is "who farted?" (makes monkey face)
And he also sells Trump cologne. And fellows, that stuff can get you laid. Basically, you pour it onto a cloth and press it onto a woman's face until she stops struggling.
But, even when you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth, hard times can strike. And that's what happened to D. He was even forced into the ultimate act of degradation : starring in his own reality show. And soon, the top-rated TV show in the nation starred a total asshole torturing people who were stupid enough to work with him. In addition to 2 and a Half Men, the Apprentice was also a pretty popular show.
This guy has an ego. When T bangs a supermodel, he closes his eyes and imagines he's jerking off.
Jokes aside, I was thrilled when they offered me the op to roast such a brilliant, charismatic, totally self-made billionaire who, I believer, will one day run this country. Then the Facebook guy canceled and we were stuck with your bloated ass.
So, as she huffs and puffs and makes her way to the podium, please welcome the queen of mean, Lisa Lampanelli
I love Seth Mcfarland. He's gayer than Ryan Seacrest's a$$h.
I joke Seth, I love your work. I especially like that weird baby you made with that enormous football shaped head. Oh wrong, sorry, that was for my Sarah Palin roast.
Ah, look at Marlee, sitting up there like she's normal. Hey Marlee, you read lips right, what's my cameltoe saying?
Look at Larry King. Larry King is a legend. In this business, Larry in known as a triple thread. At any time, he could have a heart-attack, stroke, or shit his pants.
Larry King is an elderly b*d. Seriously, those suspenders aren't for his pants, they're for his balls.
Speaking of old crips, Snoop Dogg is here.
On a past roast, Snoop claimed I wanted to bang him. Please! If I want to bang a skinny black man with braids I'll call Alicia Keyes.
Snoop's not the only musical artist on the dais, Marilyn Manson is here. Oh, I'm sorry, that's Whitney Cummings.
You know Whitney, people in this business hate you because you're beautiful and vain. Not me. I hate you because you're a c.
Anthony Jezelnik is here. I'll pause for a few moments so those of you at home can Wikipedia him.
It's great you're here Anthony. What happened? Is Daniel Tosh busy getting fisted in Key West?
It's great to see my friend Jeff Ross here tonight doing what he does best : sitting and watching funny people tell jokes.
Wow Jeff, ... hair joke - seen better hair on Susan Boyle's taint.
Don't you laugh at a hair joke Trump - look at that helmet. What do you say to a barber to get that? I f'd your daughter?
Situation from the Jersey Shore. You're all over TV. And you have a book out. I tried ordering your book on Amazon.com. Amazon said customers who bought this book also bought a rope and a stool.
But enough about Chachie. The reason we're here. Donald, tonight people will make fun of your looks. F them. You've always gotten beautiful women. You've ruined more models' lives than bulimia.
You're disappointed more women's lives than Sex and the City 2.
You are the ultimate proof that money can buy good looking booty. If you were broke, you'd be f'ing me.
But that's all behind you know. Donald is very happy with his lovely wife "insert name here."
I joke. D's wife's name is Malania, which is Slovenian for "get that wrinkled p off of me."
Mr. Trump, you're overcome obstacles to become a huge success. You're put up more worthless hotels than an autistic kid playing monopoly.
You have made Trump more than a name. You've made it a brand, a brand, like Massengil because you're a bloated stinky douche.
Tonight we are happy to be joined by L. King. As a TV host, he knew exactly when to retire, but he stayed another 20 years anyway.
He has a spine like a question mark as if his body is asking : "How did I get 7 women to f me?"
Please welcome a chattering pirate skeleton on loan from Disneyland, my friend, Larry K
To prepare for this roast, I read a book - Jeff Ross's ... Jeff, my last pre-nup was funnier, and, unlike you, I wrote it myself.
If you're just joining us, we're here with Lisa Lumpybelly. Lisa is a shot comic, but only if you look at her face.
And now, Snoop Dogg. Good old double shizzle. Snoop told me during the break that he once had a DNA test that found he is only 71% black. If you're 71% black, that means you're 29% not guilty.
Snoop Dogg is up next. That right there, was my impression of a receptionist at a parole office.
We're here to roast Trump, but I got to give a shout out to my old friend Larry K. Backstage, I handed Larry a joint and he rubbed Ben Gay into it.
We got Lisa L in the house. Lisa is a stone-cold freak. Lisa f'd Larry King, Don King, Rodney King and Billie-Jean King in a Burger King bathroom.
This bitch likes to eat for real. If you want to f Lisa doggie style, all you got to do is put a bowl of food on the floor.
Marlee, you so fine. Having s with you would be like rolling up on someone. You never hear me coming.
Whitney Cummings, look at you sitting up there your skinny a. I roll blunts fatter than you, but you been passed around a little bit more.
But right now, things are popping for Whitney y'all. Everybody in Hollywood is talking about her. And they're all saying the same thing, "I think that b gave me herpes."
This is an ugly biz man. I mean, look at Jeff Ross. He is one ug mf. When he was born, his mother s during her delivery. When she looked down, she thought she had twins.
Look at his droopy face, saggy skin, rubbery wet lips. If Jeff had a string hanging from his mouth, he'd look like Lisa's ---
No, seriously, I like Jeff. You know why? Coz he'll do anything to get a laugh, except say something funny.
No, onto the real player.... (jokes) For real though, I'd love to f one of Trump's ex wives, just to find out what's it like to come into money.
Donald says he want to run for .. President and move on into the W House. Why not? It wouldn't be the first time you pushed a black family out of their home.
Our next roaster, W Cummings, can be seen this summer in her one woman show, "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Swallowing."
She's got the body of a crack wh, but, she's got the razor-sharp wit of a crack wh..
Some people say Whitney struggles with bulimia, but I'd say she's actually quite good at it.
Snoop, you speak worse english than Marlee Matlin.
Situation, people don't like you lifting up your shirt to show your abs, but I endorse it. In fact, I think you should lift it up even more to cover this (face) situation..
Donald Trump is very rich. He's literally rolling in dough - which means he knows what it's like to f Lisa Lampanelli.
Donald, you're gross, nobody likes you, but you come back every couple of years. Nobody knows why. You're like the McRib.
You got Malania a huge 12 carat diamond engagement ring. You should not have gotten her a diamond - now she knows what hard is supposed to feel like.
Tonight is the beginning of his (The Situation) 15th minute of fame.
A lot of people laughed at him for hooking up with his co-star Snookie, but, Italians are known for grinding organs with monkeys.
No need to clap, he already has it, please welcome..
Tonight Anthony Jezelnik is going to leave his stamp on the roast. And tomorrow, he's going to use that stamp to buy food.
Whitney's had more undeserved opportunities than a Native American applying for college.
Look at this dais, you've got a pimp, a murderer and a drug dealer and 8 white people.
Mike Sorentino - you're doing really well - you've got endorsements, a cologne, a vodka. You've got your name on everything... except a high-school diploma.
Trump, the only diff between you and M. Douglas in Wall Street is that no one's going to be sad when you get cancer.
Can you believe Jeff actually asked me out? I said Jeff, I'm deaf, not blind! (Marlee Matlin)
Gilbert G : Speaking of ballroom Mr. Trump, how are those spanks holding up?
Jeff Ross : Well Trump, are you having a good time? Well tell your face.
Larry King's first caller was Alexander G Bell. Larry K Live. Even the title was an oxymoron.
I love Larry. He recently quit his show. He plans on spending his retirement opening a jar (?? what?)
Whitney's so busy these days, working on 3 pilots and that was just on the flight in.
Donald's ego is so big, he videotapes himself m'ing and then m's to that video.
Running for Pres. Personally I hope you win because I can't wait for the assaassi, I mean the inauguration.
Trump : Lisa, or as I say, Miss USDA, I want you to be a judge at my next Miss Universe pageant. Because, like the U, you're always expanding and filled with dark matter.

LTspice : Cadence Style Zoom with Right Mouse Button

Okay, may the Cadencification continue. Once you are in flow, you will be creative. Cadence has set the benchmark that every other tool must aspire to.

What : You want to be able to click and drag with the right mouse button to define the zoom rectangle and not have to first launch the zoom command.

Note : This implementation achieves the objective, but doesn't cause the zoom rectangle to be drawn - so it's not perfect, but still works good enough.

See below post on LTspice customization with Autohotkey.

Add this code :

RButton::
MouseGetPos, sx, sy
If ( GetKeyState( "RButton", "P"))
{
Loop{
Sleep, 50
MouseGetPos, cx, cy
If ( abs( cx-sx) > 5 or abs( cy-sy) > 5 )
{
Send z
ControlClick, X%sx% Y%sy%,,,,,D
Break
}
If ( !GetKeyState("RButton", "P") )
{
Click Right
return
}
}
KeyWait, RButton
Click Up
return
} else {
Click Right
return
}

LTspice : Achieving the Noun-Verb Interface (Dragging, Moving, Copying)

This will not work for multiple objects of course, but it works great for single objects.

What : You want to be able to do things like Moving, Dragging and Copying without first entering a command mode.

This is understandable - if you want to move and tweak, you don't want to be doing 'm' each time. Cadence doesn't force you to..

Instructions below tell you how you can Drag using your Middle Mouse Button (i.e., the scrollwheel - you put your pointer of the object (wire or instance) and press the wheel down (not rotate) and move and release to Drag the object; how you can Move using CTRL-Middle Mouse Button; Copy using ALT+Middle Mouse Button

Install Autohotkey
Install the Easy Window Dragging -- KDE style (this is useful anyways : it lets you move and resize your windows as if you were on linux. You're not forced to use it if you don't want to. Just install so you can insert the code I'm providing here) -- in your Startup folder so it launches automatically when you start your PC.
Go to Windows taskbar notification area and find the Autohotkey icon and right-click and do "Edit this Script" (and take 10 seconds to see the other things you can do)
Insert code provided below above the line that says "!LButton::". Note, if you haven't remapped the Keyboard Shortcuts to Cadencify LTspice, then you need to change "Send m" to "Send {F7}" and similarly with "Send c" --> "Send {F6}" and "Send s" --> "Send {F8}" in the below code. Not too much to ask for, is it?:)
Back to the script icon, do "Reload this Script"

#IfWinActive, LTspice
!d:: send !p{Down}{Down}{Down}{Down}{Down}{Enter} ; delete plot pane

; p:: send !pp ; add plot pane - no need - go to drafting options and add there

^2:: Send !is ; open current sheet's symbol

^w:: Send !fc ; close current window with CTRL-w

^MButton up::
!MButton up::
MButton Up::
Click
Send {Esc}
return

MButton::
Send s
Click
return

!MButton::
Send c
Click
return

^MButton::
Send m
Click
return

#IfWinActive

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Arnold's Slip in "The Secret"

The last chapter of Arnold's Total Recall is called "The Secret"

... in my last hectic months as governor, Maria and I went to see a marriage counselor. We talked about the issues a lot of couples deal with in middle age - the fact that our kids were growing up and soon be on their own, etc. But when she made the appointment for the very day that I left office and became a private citizen, I sensed that this time was different...

Then, after the admission, he says :

Maria had asked me before if Joseph was my son. I denied it because I didn't know he was my son.

Really? What should he be putting in the book?

She asked him if J was his son? If J was his son????!!! He said no. What???
And he thought he wasn't lying because he didn't know J was his son???
So, what's missing?
Did she ask him if he had had sex with Mildred? Did she ask him that? What was his answer - there was no way he could not know the answer to that.

Please put that in the book.

So, what happened in the end, what's the lesson for the Kennedy family? A : There is such a thing as class - just because a man works hard and "makes it" doesn't mean he's going to conduct himself like a "well bred" citizen. You just can't tell about people, but you need to be especially careful to consider what sort of people a person has hung out with on his route to "making it." In A's case, he used to work out at the gym during the day, also work as a trainer, and, in the evening, go brawl in the beergartens and chase girls. What are the odds that he would have affairs after marrying into a quality family like the Shrivers? He's just not a classy-enough guy despite the work-ethic and the results..

Oh How I Wish for du On Windows

It's crazy. I've had my PC for less than 2 months, and, of the 107 GB harddrive, I have 39 GB left. !@#$#@

Where's it going? On unix, you just do "du -ks" and then "sort -nr" to know.

Properties on the Users directory says 30 GB. Why?
3 GB of EE Lectures.
1 GB in audiobooks
5.6 GB in a Ubuntu VM
0.4 GB in eclipse
0.34 GB in downloads
0.5 GB in .AndroidStudio
0.8 GB in .android

That's only 12 GB. Not adding up :( Could it be something to do with setting the disk size to be 20 GB when installing that Ubuntu VM from .iso using VMWare?)

Program Files (x86) : 2.7 GB
Program Files : 1.2 GB
KiCad : 1 GB
Windows : 20 GB (dude, is this made by freaking M$? Why are they so inefficient? System32 : 2.8 GB, SoftwareDistribution 1.2 GB, )
Everything else : less than 1 GB. Damn! So, that's about 25 GB unaccounted for!!

Turns out the AppData thing in Users/me is taking up 18 GB... So, that's about 7 GB left.. Android is the bad boy - 16 GB right there. WT*? What happened to "Don't be Evil?" They're worse than M$!

What it Takes to Make an IC Design Tool

The basics : http://www.rulabinsky.com/cavd/

Electric : https://www.gnu.org/software/electric/electric.html

China to Invest in Chip Design Infrastructure

Reads in EE Times that they have a $10 billion budget in 2015 to boost chip fab infrastructure. They said $10k of that is to be spent on licenses for EDA tools and $9 billion on research on reverse-engineering and cracking EDA tools.

Cool - they buy half the worlds chips and produce less than 10% of them. Who knew the market there was that big?

About 15 years ago, I heard that TI was set to do (that year) about $250 million worth of business in China and about $2 million in India. No surprises there - if there's one thing we can be proud of, it's chronic underachievement.

Friday, January 16, 2015

LTspice Utility : Sorter for Operating Point Info

You get voltage and current info - but, in the case of FETs, a lot of it is useless - no one wants the gate current and you know drain current and source current are equal - usually - unless you did something funny with the bulk? Sure, with impact ionization you get current going into the bulk, but.. if you use this tool, you're only interested in Id.

So, this one will display stuff "formatted" - like Excel can do - different colors for different rows, etc.. Should also boost productivity.

A Cadence-Style Library Browser for Use with LTspice

Wouldn't it be nice to double-click on the icon of a device in a browser and then be able to put that instance on your schematic?

And, wouldn't it be nice if the devices in this browser were arranged like they are in a typical Cadence PDK?

How can this be done? Autohotkey of course. Autohotkey gives you the power to be and do anything you want. Shame on Linux for having no equivalent. At the end of the day, you want a classic PDK setup that you can use for the TSMC 0.18 um process. Umm, maybe the

So, what do you need?

You need a GUI that has panes for Category, Cells and Views. There can only be 2 views since this is LTspice - schematic and symbol. You double click the schematic or symbol, it opens for editing in the already open LTspice - coz that's what Windows does anyway (how?). You double-click on the cell-name, it sends the currently open LTspice schematic editor into Component mode and navigates in the new popup to find the component, select it and say Ok.

Easy? :)

A Robust Any-Cap-Stable Compensationless Unity Gain Buffer in TSMC 0.18 um

The Cadencification of LTspice, coupled with the excellent work done by Dr. Nagendra Krishnapura macht das möglisch :) :

May the fun and games begin!

The Way to Love LTspice

Go try everything else first :)

Sure, some of the cool features you see on the hot-shot upstarts like EveryCircuit and Circutlab aren't there, but they can't really do any real design.

Things I didn't know you could do, but I found out you can :

Mirror components - you just have to be "in" the Move or Drag commands. (CTRL-e is default bindkey)
Zoom selected - CTRL-Z (Cadencify to just z)
Re-map bindkeys (RTFM product :(, but it's free)
Jeez, they even have net highlighting - sure, it's not a user-friendly implementation, but it's there..

Goodbye Cadence!

Having said that, what might Mike add for us to please us?

Zoom Cadence style - RightClick and drag.
Wire snapping during draw mode.
A way to prevent anyangle wire-stretch during Drag mode.
~~Provide a way to rename components~~ :) (Exists!! It's an RTFM thing.. Editing Components)
A way to select components so you can do a certain operation on all of them :) Cadence is very powerful in this regard - if you have a bunch of current sources operating off a common VGS, you can select all of them, do 'q' and change the L and hit Ok, or Apply and all the other parameters will be untouched - so they could have different M's and those will be retained.
Provide a command-mode for net-highlighting - and a way to highlight different nets in different colors :)
A command-interpreter log - so you can see what commands you've sent the tool, so you can combine some of them into macros :)
A way to do custom bindkeys - not just single commands, but macros (see above).
~~A way to view MOSFET parameters (like gm, VDSAT, etc)~~ (Exists : Do CTRL-l to view the Spice Error Log - has the OP data. Needs a better UI though - like backannotation onto the schematic)
Also provide the noun-verb interface :) Sometimes, you want to select objects and then operate on them. This, coupled with the command-log and a programming interface would kill Cadence (meaning be very powerful and give us a super-tool). The extensibility would explode - Eg. you could write a script to fetch and display the OP info for a particular transistor.
More UI-QA :) You will see during usage that it's possible to right-click and therefore edit things like device name and base-name (for example, if you add an "nmos", it's name is NMOS - it shouldn't be possible to change that). Sure, only a dumb user would do this, but no harm making stuff bullet-proof. They don't let you re-program your iPhone to not work anymore :)
A way to Disable, rather than only Remove analyses types. For example, you have a .OP analysis and a .TRAN. At the end, only the .TRAN result is backannotated. Not good - you want to see the .OP. Only way is to delete the .TRAN. Would be nice if that form had a check-box that you could uncheck to disable the TRAN analysis. (*You can put a semicolon at the start of the spice directive to accomplish this*)
Provide a way to pan in the waveform display. This is a pretty painful interface. Still, for free, you can't complain when you're able to zoom in. Still, would be nice if we could easily put down markers. Would be nice if you could use the arrow keys to move the waveform one way or the other.
Provide an easy way to go to multi-strip mode. By default, it's overlay mode for the waveforms.. If you want to separate just one waveform, you need to create a new plot pane and drag that one to the pane.
Provide wire routing - that is, when a user want to connect 2 terminals with a wire, he should be able to launch the wire command, click on the 2nd terminal and have a reasonable wire route (not something that goes over other instances) complete. A snap command like Cadence has would also be nice..
Provide a way for a user to select signals to save - if you force-save everything by default, you might slow down the sim or use disk-space extravagantly.
Provide multiple-monitor support - that is, when you create windows (like Cadence) allow the OS window manager (Win 7 for instance) to manage them. Don't force everything to be within ONE window. Analog Rails could listen to this too..

The Cadencification of LTspice

Bindkeys are important. BTW, what does changing mouse-pointer to a pointing hand convey?

You want to do CTRL-w to close a design, instead of ALT-f, then c. Put this in your Autohotkey script (see below post) :

#IfWinActive, LTspice
^w:: Send !fc
#IfWinActive

TINA-TI Horizontal Pan with SHIFT-Scrollwheel

See earlier post on Zooming and use this code :

SetTitleMatchMode 2
IfWinActive, Schematic Editor
{
Send {Left}{Left}{Left}{Left}
return
}
Send +{WheelUp}
return
+WheelDown::
SetTitleMatchMode 2
IfWinActive, Schematic Editor
{
Send {Right}{Right}{Right}{Right}
return
}
Send +{WheelDown}
return

TINA-TI : Zoom with CTRL-Scrollwheel

Cadence gives you zoom in/out with the scrollwheel (I prefer CTRL-wheel, but scrollwheel also works, no complaints).

Now, you want the same thing with TINA-TI.

Download and install Autohotkey
Install the Easy Window Dragging (KDE) Style script in your Startup folder so it launches automatically each time you boot your PC.
With the script running, go to the task bar notification area, rightclick on the H (autohotkey) icon and choose Edit this Script.
Insert below code above the "!LButton::" line in your script.

^WheelUp::

SetTitleMatchMode 2

IfWinActive, Schematic Editor

{

Send !vzi

return

}

Send ^{WheelUp}

return

^WheelDown::

SetTitleMatchMode 2

IfWinActive, Schematic Editor

{

Send !vzo

return

}

Send ^{WheelDown}

return

Go back to the H icon and this time, do "Reload this Script".

You should not be able to zoom in and out with CTRL-wheel. If you don't want to have to do CTRL, you just have to remove the "^" before WheelUp and WheelDown - even on the Send lines :)

Autohotkey Helps Work Around Cadence Bugs

Last place I worked at had the worst every tech support in the world - I mean the EDA side.

There was a time when you'd sleep your laptop, go into a conference room to be present for a meeting and restart Exceed and have Cadence (Virtuoso) windows be off screen. How frustrating - nothing you could do.

Even worse, some of the new windows that came up would show up off screen. Horrible!

My workaround? Define CTRL-ESC to take the currently active window to 0,0 - top left so you could then interact with it. It's been a boon.

Just insert this before you get to the meat of your Easy_KDEstyle_dragresize script (before the !LButton:: is good)

^Escape::

WinMove,A,, 0, 0

return

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Almost 20 Years with Unix, Mann kann jetst Etwas lernen

Things I didn't know after all these years!

tac : view a file backwards
cd - : takes you back to where you were before you cd'd
apt-cache search tells you what packages are available in the repository that might be a match
dpkg -s tells you if the package xyz is installed on your system
/proc is a pseudo filesystem - only lives in RAM
xz for compression - the new kid on the block
CTRL-r on bash command line lets you search history for a particular cmd
CTRL-u : delete from beginning of line to cursor

In vi, do "%!command" to overwrite. fmt is a useful one.
Dealing with text : paste is a utility that pastes files together column wise! join is a smarter version of paste!
grep -C N -- wow, context is reported (N lines on either side). Where have you been my whole life?
tr -cd <> : delete the complement of the match you specify (Eg [:digit:], [:lower:], etc)
z command family - deal directly with compressed files as if they were plain text! You also have xz and bz (so, bzcat, bzless, bzgrep, etc)

Options for top in interactive mode : m, t, A, r, f ..
List files that don't match : grep -L pattern fileList

Also check out the link to Alex Skorkin's masterpiece : http://tersamgt.blogspot.com/2017/04/alan-skorkins-treasure-trove-bash.html

MIT Gets Presentation Right : pdftk Tutorial

From the Edx course :

pdftk 1.pdf 2.pdf cat output 12.pdf	Merge the two documents 1.pdf and 2.pdf. The output will be saved to 12.pdf.
pdftk A=1.pdf cat A1-2 output new.pdf	Write only pages 1 and 2 of 1.pdf. The output will be saved to new.pdf.
pdftk A=1.pdf cat A1-endright output new.pdf	Rotate all pages of 1.pdf 90 degrees clockwise and save result in new.pdf.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

It's So Hard to Make a Good IC Design Schematic Capture Tool :)

5spice has a mention on MIT.

But... though it's way better than pspice and kicad (holistic grading), it still has a ways to go.

No undo/redo :) So basic, so hard to do :)
Place a component in such a way that one of its terminals is on an existing wire. Now drag the component. Not connected :(

But, it's a joy to have click and drag. Why is that so hard for LTspice to implement? Also, click and select exists!

Net highlighting is broken - kind of all-or-nothing is what you get - not good enough.

Still, phenomenal job by a one-man team.

Apart from that - what's missing? The usual suspects :) :

A way to do custom bindkeys.
A command-interpreter window where you can basically see every interaction you have with the software captured as a command, so you can easily bunch up some commands and do your own macros.
A library browser that lets you access components in a more user-friendly way - you want to see names and views, etc..
A better wire-drawing experience. He's got some of it - but it ain't no Cadence :)
Stretching is pretty crappy - ain't no Cadence :)

Your Idea : Protecting and Selling (S. Key)

When you're ready to have "the" meeting with a licensee, you have to get them to sign an NDA. It must have these :

Both sides agree not to disclose each other's confidential info to others.

Both sides agree not to use each other's confidential info without compensation to the other party.

Both sides agree to return all docs, info, prototypes, etc supplied in the event of a no-go.

Both sides agree that info that was already known to them is deemed not-confidential.

Then, your Sell Sheet must have the bold Benefit statement - benefit to the user, but, also, potentially, to the manufacturer.. Brainstorm, get a few, use one : focus on one big thing, keep it short, concise, specific, no jargon.

Sell Sheet :

Contains bold one-line benefit statement

Visual representation of your idea

Contact info (include your biz card in the package)

A few additional benefits of the idea - as concise and compelling as the big benefit statement

"Patent Pending" in the lower left corner. Never list the application number!

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

How Stephen Key Does It

Have an idea
Do a Google product search for it
Exists? Come up with a spin on it.
Call companies that might be interested licensing (they want your idea!).
Say, I'm a "product developer".
Say, "Look, I want to submit an idea to your company. Can you help me?"
Those are the magic words : Can you help me. Guide the operator..
Don't call Legal or Purchasing.
Call Marketing or Brand Manager or call someone in Sales! They do answer their phone.
Go to LinkedIn to find the names.
How to get started? Call a co you have no intention of submitting an idea to, and find out the process. Who do I submit to?

You don't need to read his book - just watch this one :

Resources :

Do the image search for your product idea : https://www.google.com/images
Do the "product market" search : https://www.google.com/shopping
David Pressman : Patent it Yourself and Patent Pending in 24 Hours

Monday, January 12, 2015

Now That's What You Call Rapid Development

https://discuss.atom.io/t/use-ctrl-mouse-wheel-to-increase-decrease-text-size/11916

So far, Atom looks good. The best part is that Ctrl-wheel works! Glad to know there are other OCD types out there.

batjko, rogernordqvist, TwoPly, russlescai, thanks mateys!

Sunday, January 11, 2015

A Gem from Infosys Training Institute : Code Tuning Techniques

Use correct data types in your assignments : float x = 10 is bad - because an implicit conversion is indicated to the compiler, resulting in overhead. Do 10.0 in this case.
Know the data you're going to process! So, When it comes to switch statements, order the cases on the descending order of frequency.
Avoid multiple for loops if you can do one loop to cover both tasks.
Un-switching of for loops - when statements don't depend on the iteration, don't add overhead! Pull those outside.
Subtle : for( i=0; i <= max-1; i++) is bad - because the check does max-1 each iteration (really? aren't compilers smart enough to figure out this only needs to be done once?). In this case, change to i < max.
Break loop once result is known.

Around 1:25 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfqL31EzqSw

Why? Coz I wanted to know more about Java before diving into Android (I had already jumped in and come up to the surface for some air).

The Condensed Bunnie

With most books, I find that the 100 pages could have been condensed into 5. That's not the case with Hacking the Xbox, I'm happy to report. It's MIT culture that produces this kind of writing style that is a joy to read.

That being said, these are the specific things I'd like to remember :

He started with an Apple II when he was a kid, but references to Apple end there. Thank God! No credit anywhere to Steve Jobs:)

His best advice to aspiring hardware hackers is to be persistent and to be thorough. Persistence and thoroughness come naturally if you love what you are doing.

Plenty of gems on soldering - kapton tape, chip removal alloy. Naprotek assembles BGA packages, etc. If you didn't know how valuable flux was before, you will after reading this one. I once struggled with some soldering and then the tech did it easily. I saw him use flux and said, "so that's your secret." His response, "Dude, it's no secret."

FPGAs are excellent choices for implementing cryptographic functions if you are interested in doing brute-force keysearches or encrypting large amounts of data quickly. Really?

FPGAs can interface with just about any signaling protocol - remember that - you can talk to just about anything.

Basic programming skills to be able to build yourself simple tools to analyze data and netlists are worth developing.

Intuition, pattern matching and experimentation are the core skills of the hacker.

Starting young and taking time and trying out a lot teaches you the value of thinking ahead and envisioning the final result. You do the hard work upfront only if you know the value of the hard work. If you're an employee, you won't value that kind of effort - which is what I saw in my co-workers - they never took the trouble to pick up valuable skills or decide to be knowledge sponges.

Before you start laying out your PCB, order all of them components - you'll find some that you took for granted aren't available. All you'll need is a simple change. Before you ship the layout for production, print it out actual size and place the components on there. Any gotchas?

You get the sense that this guy could see the bits and bytes of a printed out gif file and reconstruct the image in his mind.

FPGA timing models are conservative - worst case. If you know what you're doing and can figure out that you're being limited in frequency because of skews between related signals, then you can cleverly insert delays in select paths (delay elements) and recover and extract much higher than advertised speed (Pg 242).

Considering how much debugging I'll be doing in the months ahead, this one will serve me well : as a general rule, you should observe at least two, preferably three, symptoms that are consistent with a cause before concluding that you have found the root cause. So, how to apply this proactively? Easy - during the design, be grateful for every time the simulator said "doesn't work" - and record the symptom and the root cause. Collect these. Then, in the end, collect up the root-causes and symptoms - this kind of effort is the LEAST you can do.

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Raspberry Pi CGI Python Serve JPEG Image Howto

Note that lighttpd doesn't care about the interpreter your specify in the shebang (#!/usr/bin...) You have to ensure (default is usually good enough, supports .py) cgi.assign in the /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf has ".py" => "/path/to/python"..

That done, this will do it for you (you'll also have to add "mod_cgi" to your server.modules in the .conf, and put this one in the cgi-bin directory in /var/www if you're using lighttpd that is) :

#!/usr/bin/python
print "Content-Type: text/html"
print
print """\
<html>
<body>
<h2>Hello World!</h2>
"""
data_uri = open('/home/pi/Desktop/snapshot.jpg', 'rb').read().encode('base64').replace('\n','')
img_tag = '<img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,{0}">'.format(data_uri)
print(img_tag)
print """\
</body>
</html>
"""

Friday, January 09, 2015

Verdict : gEDA vs Kicad vs Partsim vs Circuit-Diagram vs PCBWeb

PCBWeb is the best - but it still doesn't have everything one wants - still, considering it does flip components vertically, that's a big deal :)

Thursday, January 01, 2015

From PC to iPad Through Raspberry Pi

So, you want to read Dr. Leach's Noise Potpourri
So, you managed to scavenge them off the internet onto your PC - all the PDFs
So, you can open them on your PC, but, you think, wouldn't it be nice to look at them on your iPad?
But, how do you get files onto your iPad? Apple forbids transfer from PC to iPad. As you know, Apple products that fit in your hand are great for absorbing content, but not for creating content.
So, how can you read these PDFs on your iPad?
Fortunately, you're a visionary who's set up a Raspberry Pi webserver.
So, if you can just get to your Pi from your Pad, you're done.
Easy - you have to set up lighttpd - google it. That'll make what's in your /var/www directory visible to the world - if you care about a static URL like mypi.mynet.org, you need to set up an account with a free DNS service like freedns.afraid.org. Google it.
Use MS Word (this is the painless way, there are other ways) to start a new file.
Use M$ Command Prompt (#r, then cmd) to go the directory with the Leach files and do a dir. Then, you right-click on the title bar of the window and do Edit > Mark and select the column of filenames. Then you do R > Edit > Copy.
Come to your Word window and do a Ctrl-V. Then, Save-As, into the same Leach directory, as a web-page, name index (it'll be htm for now, change to .html on your Pi later).
Then, double-click on each name and then do Insert > Hyperlink > and put in the name of each file by double-clicking on the available list the Word gives you - come on! This part is easy. Don't give me that look!
Then, use WinSCP to put the files into a folder on your Pi called (say) leach (includes index.htm).
On Pi, rename the index.htm to index.html.
Then, in your /var/www directory do "sudo ln -s ~/Desktop/notes/leach ."
And you're set.
You should be able to take your iPad browser to either mypi.mynet.org/leach or 192.168.0.113/leach - which assumes your using port 80 - which you probably aren't :) So, put in the port number you used to set up your lighttpd :) In my case, it's http://mypi.mynet.org:1082/leach. That'll be in the /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf.
Of course, some CS genius can tell you how to do all this with 2 keystrokes, but that's not me :)