I decided to document my setup of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron running with a weather station, the inexpensive WS-2310. I built this computer setup for a buddy who wanted to run a weather station, but didn’t want to buy a Davis Vantage Pro2. The machine is a Pentium 4 2.8GHz, 80G HDD, 1 GB of RAM. Read the rest of this entry »

I was trying to setup a buddy’s old laptop to run Ubuntu and wviewweather, and having no luck because his CD-ROM drive was flaky. So i found this great utility (OK, google found it) that sets up a USB flash drive so that it will boot as if it were the CD-ROM. This is: UNetbootin. Tell it where to find the ISO, tell it where your flash is, and ta-dah! Great utility.

No, copying the files from the ISO onto blank USB memory stick doesn’t work, in case you were wondering…

To give a little more detail, wview now supports a very inexpensive weather station, the La Crosse 2310 (I bought it for $120 including shipping off eBay). This is great for those who want to participate in CWOP and can’t afford or don’t want to spend the money to get a $400+ Davis Vantage weather station, and have an old PC with a serial port lying around.

I’ve been working on getting Over-The-Air synchronization working on my BlackBerry using only SyncML, Blackberry Internet Services (BIS) and Funambol. All with no luck! If anyone reads this and knows what’s going on, please drop me an e-mail or leave a comment.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, who’d have thunk it. Wiping a BlackBerry is very difficult. From my previous post, it should be apparent that I left my previous employer, and I have a Blackberry Curve 8310 (personal property). Well, the IT department at my previous employer had imposed a IT Security Policy (that required a password, etc.). It turns out that invoking the Wipe Handheld command does not remove this policy. This is a bad thing, as I do not have access to my new employers BES server to overwrite the policy. SO, here’s two ways of doing it:

    компютри втора употреба

  1. Upgrade your Blackberry to OS 4.5 and then run the JL_Cmder utility to perform a real factory reset. (I used the Beta OS 4.5.0.37)
  2. Follow the regedit procedure in the documentation here to install a “blank” policy into a Blackberry.

With mixed feelings I left Seagate, with my last day of work yesterday, and my last official employment day on June 13.

I really enjoyed working at Seagate, and getting down and dirty with hard disks, and I wish all my colleagues the best (and beat out that there W company).

I’m moving (first day June 30) to a new company. It’s a small company with unique technology.

Funny pics

In: Personal

2 Jun 2008

Redneck swing

Evolution…

In: Personal

29 May 2008

Surveillance video

In: Personal

22 May 2008

This band performed in front of Britain’s ubiquitous CCTV cameras, and then filed to obtain the footage to create their music video. All-in-all, a cheap way to make a music video.

Mostly suitable for work… This is some clever editing work to make “When Harry Met Sally” into a horror flick.

How many countries?

In: Personal

15 May 2008

50

About this blog

David Kabal writes random bits about life, gadgets and computers. David is an engineer living in Boulder, Colorado, up in the mountains, where he's also a firefighter.

  • Shelli Bergmann: Hi Dave, Great website! Just reaching out to let folks know that Silicon Labs is growing (hiri [...]
  • Dave: This post is no longer the easiest or best way of setting up wview on Ubuntu. The hard-working folks [...]
  • Stalking me for tech support - Dave’s List: [...] started out when I posted detailed instructions on how to setup wview on Ubuntu. I posted and [...]
  • Dave: Seems Weather Underground video support for webcams is intermittent at best. Sometimes the video wor [...]
  • Juan Jose Zevallos: Hi, i need this CD for my test, thank you! [...]

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