I have been programming PIC18F8720's for the last few days. And things have been going OK. But I have been working with some TIMER code, and I did some calculations, and what I found was that the timer was being called a heap more than it should have been. In the example code it was being called 240 times more often. 240 times.

TIMER_INIT:
PR4 = 195
IPR3.3 = 1
PIR3.3 = 0
T4CON = %01111111
return

And then in my main loop I compared PIR3.3 and called the timer handler if it was HIGH. This code was fairly simple

LOOP:
if PIR3.3 = 1 then GOSUB TIMER_LOOP ' Timer has elapsed. Therefore Do It
gosub check_serial
goto LOOP

But the code was running a heap more than it should have. I worked out I needed to INIT the timer every time through the TIMER_LOOP. The code below shows the GOSUB. It now works.

TIMER_LOOP:
Gosub TIMER_INIT
TimerCount = TimerCount + 1
if timercount > 10 then
LED = 1 - LED
timercount = 0
LCDOUT $FE, $C0, "Now :", DEC LED
endif
return


Music: Tina Cousins

Recently I was at a family event, and I found that many of my relatives were on Facebook. So I decided to join Facebook. It is an interesting community. You can see the university free speech basis of the site. And I am amazed at the amount of information you can see there. Birthdays, moods, names, workplaces. So much information.

In many cases all you need to do is to join a country based network, and so much information is available. And the name of friends is almost always available no matter what. And these friends often leak tons of information... Stuff which can be seen on the details of the events screen. It is amazing how few people even look at the Privacy settings in Facebook...

There are some TV ads for SmartTraveller.gov.au, which is a Web Site for people going overseas. The TV ad tells that in many places it is illegal to take photos of some government buildings. I have just looked at the site above, for the USA, and find that there is no mention of the taking photos of some federal buildings having photography prohinited. Oops

I have just started a new business called InLocality which is intended to work in the space of Indoor Tracking.

A short update. Firstly mum is continuing to get stronger. She has driven her car a couple of times in the last week, and has felt strong enough even to walk up the front stairs without anyone home in case she falls. Her lumbar puncture went well last week too, and did not cause any problems. They did a blood test, and found that her platelets were still a bit low, but that was really not that great a concern at this stage.

I also had a blood test on tuesday to see if I am a match to be a Stem Cell donor. I imagine that we will find this out this coming tuesday when mum has ber normal checkup at the haemotologist.

Now some sad news. My grandmother (my fathers mother) died this morning after a long illness. I had a call from dad in Abu Dabi (UAE) a couple of hours ago saying that his brother had just called with the news. Not sure when the funeral will be at this stage. Given the distances involved, it is likely that Dad will be unable to attend the funeral, but he did get the oportunity to record a eulogy before he left, which will be used in the funeral.

Bad Telemarketer

I have just had a phone call from The Equity Group based in Erina, here in NSW. They were calling from a PRIVATE caller ID number, probably from India. It took me a LOT of time to find out that their phone number was 1300 799 258. They were calling from India I think. Their ACN is 123 882 842.

Now, why am I suggesting that this is a bad telemarketer, and also suggesting that it is wise not to deal with them? Well, first, they seem to be offering financial advice, but have no AFSL. An AFSL is required to offer financial advice in this country.

Next, their telemarketing call. The call was made from a PRIVATE number. This is not permitted with telemarketing calls. The company who rang were unwilling to give me their company name. It took a lot of work to find that the company they were calling from was THE EQUITY GROUP from ERINA. I had to convince the telemarketing company to give me their phone number to work this out. Then when I informed the telemarketing company that the call was not legal, they told me that my number was not on the do not call list. It was. Even if it was not, they were requrired to stop marketing to me at that point, and they should have used a public caller ID for the call.

Right now the ACMA and ASIC have been contacted over this matter.

Last night I went to the Bob Dylan concert with a couple of other members of the list.

Let's start with the support act. Unlike most concerts they were competent and their sound was mixed fairly well. The exception was that the mixing desk had a few issues with the violin, and made it feel like horrible feedback. The support act I think was THE FLAMES, from Ireland, and started at 7:30 on the dot, and went for about 30 minutes. Our seats were off to the side, directly in line with the front of the stage, overlooking the mixing desk. The three rows of seats in front of us were empty, and it was cool to see the staff of the Entertainment Centre keep them that way. Throughout the night there was a steady stream of people coming forward and sitting in those seats until security told them to get lost.

The main problem with the support act, apart from not knowing any of their songs was that one of the stage varilights tended to be pointed right into our eyes. We coped with that. The act had interesting concepts for their songs, engaged with the audience, and generally played well. The mixing seemed to break the support act rules (it was competent), and the band was not pretentious. All in all probably the best support act I have seen since either the Warumpi Band (with Midnight Oil) or Joe Calaleri (with Bob Dylan last time).

Once the support act finished, there was a major effort to get the stage ready for Bob Dylan. Probably 10-15 minutes packing up cables, equipment and the like, and getting set for Bob Dylan. Just before the show started at 8:30, we were amused to see a person get a blow torch out. You heard right. They set what looked like a rolled up newspaper smoldering on the end. As the roadie then placed it near the back curtain we worked out it was a large bunch of incense sticks. Thankfully they did not get too smelly...

The singing of Bob Dylan was different from last time I heard him. That time he was almost talking the lyrics. This time it was almost a fast talking/singing of the lyrics, where you could get two lines of lyrics in the music for one. With the horrible reverb/echo of the Entertainment Centre and the drawly American accent, it was rather difficult to work out the words. Bob was not engaging the audience, basically just playing and singing. I don’t think he spoke to the audience until after the encore.

Musically things were good, with 3-4 guitars. A double bass at times, a xylophone and some other instruments. The band looked like they should have been members of the Blues Brothers with their hats and black suits. The stage arrangement was set up so that he had is synth at right angles to the front of the stage. And since most of the time he was playing this, most of the time he was back to us. I physically did not see him playing the harmonica, but he did, and did a better job than I was expecting. I think only the first song was sung looking to the front of the stage. And he only looked our direction once, after the encore.

I actually cannot remember many of the songs that Bob Dylan sang. I know there was Hard Rain is Going to Fall, and Highway 61. And there were some others too that I knew. There were some that I did not know.

After all that, I think I am glad that I went, but I do not think this will be a classic concert that will be placed onto DVD (bit hard without video cameras, but you get my drift).

SatNav Issues... A Japanese Invasion

In what must be one of the more 'Unique' product placements ever, Hitachi has used a US map for their SatNav systems. Look at the following graphic for the MMP-501. If you lool carefully you might just be able to work out where it is from. The Web Site for the product does not have this issue, but the manual most certainly does.



This photo is from my camera phone so I am sorry for the quality. Now look at the following map from Google Maps.



Guess where this is from? Pearl City. So, where is Pearl City? It is in Hawaii, on the shores of Pearl Harbour. I am sure that a Japanese company like Hitachi could have chosen a better destination for a SatNav system.