Posts in month: September, 2005

It’s been a really long time since I’ve been involved with embedded computers, since about 2000/2001 when I worked with EMJ America ( now WDL Systems) a company specializing in that kind of thing. The other day while rambling the net, which I do a lot of these days, I came across a group that figured out how to load Linux onto the Linksys WRT54G and WRT54GS and other wireless access points and home routers. They call it OpenWRT. Now it just so happens that I have a WRT54GS sitting in my closet.

An hour or so later:

It’s really pretty impressive when you think about it– for about $50 you get:

• 200 Mhz Mips processor (easily and safely OC’d to at least 240Mhz)
• 8 Mbs Ram
• 32 Mbs Flash
• 8 easily accessible GPIO lines
• Built in Ethernet and 802.llg wifi
• 2 Built in RS232 serial ports (easily converted to USB 1 with cheap cell phone cable and some soldering)

Which if you were to buy elsewhere would easily run you $200.

So what else can it do? Well I’m considering this mod that would allow me to increase storage with a SD card reader, but frankly I’m jsut thrilled that I get to mess about with iptables and real linux routing stuff. While the interface on my other wifi router (some cheap-o Netgear) allowed port forwarding this is way more useful in the long run.

While it would be fantastic to eventually serve all of my web pages from it, I don’t think the 8mbs of ram are up to the task of running a MySql server. Although I suppose I could modify WordPress to operate with SQLite…

Hmm…

I believe my namesake may have gone out of business!

For the last several years the domain ianknox.com was owned by another Ian Knox. In fact he ran a “School of Motoring” in Dumbarton Scotland (I know it’s just the American in me but I can’t help chuckling every time I hear the term motoring used in earnest).

Of course, I have never met Ian Knox of Dumbarton Scotland, but how can someone with my own name who runs a school of motoring be all bad?

Sadly, I believe that he may have gone out of business since his website has now officially expired from the web and is no more. At the very least he decided the website wasn’t doing it’s job advertising. If you want to see what his site did look like check out this link (hooray for archive.org).

Of course there is always a silver lining… ianknox.com now belongs to me. I prefer .net and I’ve gotten used to it but within 24 hours you can get here by visiting www.ianknox.com or www.ianknox.net I’ll also forward all the e-mail addresses.

If anyone who knows Ian Knox of Dumbarton Scotland stumbles across this page leave a comment and let me know how he’s doing! I can’t help feel a little connected to my namesake from across the pond.

Wheeeeee!

My feet hurt a little but it was worth every mile!
At 2:14:43 that makes for a 10:14 second mile which was pretty dang close to what I was shooting for (10:00/mile or under).

In case you are confused like I was: Chiptime is the actual time I ran the race in. Finish time was the time I would have finished the race had I been at the starting line at the begining of the race Of course with 7 thousand people in the race only a few cross the start line when the gun goes off and they’re the bastards who ran it with times like 1:10.

Next year the full 26.2!
(I must be crazy)

I meant to put this up a while ago, but it’s been this way for three weigh-ins in a row so I guess it’s official.

Booyah:

Under two hundred pounds for the first time since my sophomore year of college and man it feels great.

This just goes to show you what a good exercise regiment and a reasonable caloric intake can do.

*happy dance*