What RDC stands for in Contiki

So: Contiki, neat-o teeny-tiny footprint "OS" with IP6 stacklet, protothreads, various wizardry, and deep lack of coherence.

For the benefit of those stuck on the other end of search-tubes, I thought I'd note that RDC stands for "Radio Duty Cycle". Do you know how often it mentions that in the source or documentation? As far as I can tell, once. Gits. (cf. NETSTACK_RDC, NETSTACK_CONF_RDC, etc.)

So it turns out that the stack actually runs;

• TCP/UDP
• MAC
• RDC "MAC"
• Radio driver

And it turns out the "drivers" in core/net/mac are actually a random sprinkling of RDC and MAC drivers. Anything exporting an "rdc_driver" being one, and "mac_driver" being the other. So, obviously:

MAC drivers

csma
tdma_mac
ctdma_mac_driver
nullmac

RDC drivers

contikimac
cxmac
lpp
nullrdc_framer
nullrdc
sicslowmac_driver

Ruby + Rails so not ready for prime time

Support for multibyte strings is abysmal. If you're after a cheap laugh, see the Official advice and the hideous workaround hacks people use to get around it.

To fix the awe inspiringly broken behaviour I was getting, I had to change the system default console locale. Yes, really.

(hint: In .net It Just Works.)

Making Aptana work on Debian

Debian lets you "aptitude install rails" very nicely, without faffing with all that gems confusion. The Aptana IDE installs quite happily in /usr/local or ~/bin using their installer - but the rails skeleton it generates whinges about gems not being installed.

To make it go, these links need to be put in the generated ./vendor directory of your project:

actionmailer -> /usr/share/rails/actionmailer
actionpack -> /usr/share/rails/actionpack
actionwebservice -> /usr/share/rails/actionwebservice
activerecord -> /usr/share/rails/activerecord
activesupport -> /usr/share/rails/activesupport
rails -> /usr/share/rails
railties -> /usr/share/rails/railties

Amusing to me

Messy progress

At the cost of various scratches to both myself and the fabric of my room, the destruction of a small number of tools, and the liberal coating and removal of my epidermis with pungent machine oils, I feel able to say tada;
The handlebars creak alarmingly when propelled uphill, the rear wheel is a shade too large and has a terrifying tendency to intersect the brake calipers, the front wheel has a bearing which barely bears, and one of the chainrings is ever-so-slightly non planar but, all in all, it goes. Which for £58 isn't bad.

I shall, perchance, invest in new wheel at the cost of some £30 and it shall go like the clappers.

Inchorent efficiency

After scouring Bristol, nowhere seems to sell second hand road bikes or, rather, this is precisely the wrong time of year to go looking for them.

I have dabbled with the idea of buying new, but it seems a bit unnecessary. Thusly, I was delighted to obtain, for £25, about 1/3 of a bicycle;


Woo. Now all I need to do is ungum the headset, replace the bottom bracket, straighten the chain rings, replace the axle on my wheel so it fits, fit a load of miscellaneous parts, and hope it works.

At that point I will establish it is too small for me, sell it for £50, and give in and go for the newshinyness.

Ho ho ho.
This is important.
I think.
Possibly.

Tea?

Easily the best thing I have ever seen on the internet: ISO 3103. Very rarely have I had to restrain the urge to telephone friends and relatives to inform them of the latest information to which I have become party.

In other news, The Scheme for Full Employment is an amusing novella masquerading as a novel. £7.99? Pirates. If the margins occupied less than 40% of the page surface, the type was 9pt rather than 12, and the lines weren't 1.5 spaced then I suspect the page count would drop from 250 to nearer 100. Tsk. Still a good read, anyway.