Potato Waffle

Did you know that potato "was first "borrowed" by the guar, who used the word patata to describe the root crop Ipomoea batatas"... Well I didn't!

Anyway, I had my first potato waffles this evening and boyohboy were they great! I couldn't believe how tasty they were. I suppose the health factor is not so high, but damn! I really enjoyed them.

Anyway, that is about the most excitment of my day, so you can imagine how the rest of my day was!!! Cheers

Priorities, Todo Lists, and the end of eras

I can tell you tell you now...

They always catch you out, although you always try to plan for them.

I was telling Tiff and Graeme that it was less than a year ago that we were having a house-warming at their house after they moved to England, and wasn't it weird how different the situation was then: with Tiff being unemployed, Graeme and Lauren recently having started a new job, Simon the boss and Jof only stopping by for the weekend, working in Denmark and not particularly enjoying being surrounded by people who don't believe he is from SA.

Surreal... for that night, last friday, we were again at Tiff and Graemes house. Yet this time, Tiff and Graeme had the kiefest jobs, and they were the bosses. Simon was the couch-surfer from Aus, just on a stop-over between Aus and SA. Lauren had moved on from being an employee, to a pre-Aus-i-dont-know-gold-plated-friend-of-some-sort?!?..., and Jof was now quite stoked with the Danish, good job and working hard, but wondering about life and where to go forth.

And at that instant.

Jof left.

He ended the era.

a decicive knife blade through my comfort zone of partying fun and craziness. Severing the South African embilical cord of I don't know what... I suppose semi-bachelorness... not that I am single, but I have often felt alone here, and I didn't have anyone close by, so I am sortof alone, but not. I don't think there is a English word for that, and it was pretty hectic. I was affected. I think everyone was. It was the end of an era.

I hope we all saw that. It is amazing how fast things move. I feel like we just get a glimpse of reality, not just our reality, the WHOLE reality. Moments of change where everything is moving so rapidly, you can not see what is happening around you - but the bigger picture reveals itself in a fuzzy, but visual way. I think I might be rambling now, but oh well!

Oh yes: you are probably wondering how priorites and todo lists came into the heading.

I have so many todo lists, I don;t know where to start... House cleaning list, Washing list, EWB list, IEEE SB list, IBM UBC list, Personal List, TAC list, Ewan List, Jim List, Gym list, Where the hell do you start! Where do my priorities lie, it was a week ago when I wrote this, and I have no idea now, what I should be doing right now!

Oh well... Gotta do other things...

Brrrrr.... Frost! Already!

Well, I think winter is here. It was icy this morning with frost all over the ground while the sun was shining. Not very kief.

I need to start going to gym again, but it is not very pleasant when its so cold. I will need to make a plan.

Denselsboys are doing well (141st), although they are going to take a hit today :(

Oh well, still good

The Best things in life are free?

But you can leave that to the birds and bees....

Damn those Flying lizards... I do want money - as long as they are not Zim dollars. I could do with some pounds - and not the ones that are growing around my waist. Maybe I could swap them for the GB ones?

Yes - Credit crunch, the breakfast cereal being consumed by the whole world at the moment seems to be giving me a sore bum. It could be the hole in my trousers, which is where all my money is falling through, or the flames of pressure being applied to my backside... Or all of the above...

At least I am alive and kicking, and the weather hasn't turned totally bad yet. Also my boat 'DenzelsBoys' is sub 500 on leg 1! Come-on Denzels Boys!!! Went sailing with the Hoff on his 49er on Saturday - It was kief. I messed up my stupid hands - gotta turn them back into the tough man-hands they used to be, and not the stupid little Onassis' yacht barstool hands they are right now.

I said I would write my sister a bed-time story... Need to find some subject matter. hmmm... Will have to think a little more. I suppose its also time for a picture of some sorts - Don't have any at the moment - will have to give it some thought.

Thats about all. Time to get back to the (whatever I am meant to be doing???) Adios

Yey-ha! Viva Complete

Yay, yay! It's Friday
If I wish to pray, today just to stay
For I just completes, my first set of feats
Although might be small, gave pain to my ball.

But now it is done, says Denzel the hun
I feel like a jock, once taken a knock,
gave back a hard sock. I totally rock.

Viva Procrastination.....

Wasabi

So tomorrow is my 9-month (come 12-month) oral examination:Viva Voce or latin for Live voice. In true denzelness, I am writing my blog entry instead of preparing some slides for the mini-presentation. At least I have just got my personal copy of my report complete.

I will write again tomorrow after its complete. In the meantime, check this out!!

My Hero

This guy...

he is truly my ultimate hero....




When I grow up, I would like to be him.

Onrus Beach Gone!

Ok,

So I haven't written in a while, and my holiday has just finished with some great stories to tell, but right now I just want to share with you the amazing sights I saw in and around Onrus and Hermanus! What an amazing site I saw with the last storm which hit the Cape. Onrus beach disappeared - Roads were closed, houses damaged, parking lots messed up! It was really quite bad!



Here are some cool pics:


Wave breaking at Hermanus Parking lot


Wave washing away Whale Watching store - 3 Boats sank in the harbour the previous night...

Ahhh Cape Town!

Well, I think I have seen more sun in the last few days, here in Cape Town, than the whole English Summer... Wow!

The weather is changing now, and the sky is dark with a cold front moving in with howling winds and lots of rain. It is quite ominous and exciting. Looks like its going to be an interesting start for Lipton this year if the weather continues (Though it now looks like its now meant to die off...).

Haven't been writing in a while, because of other things like 9month report... phewww - It is mostly over, and I think its ok. Not my best work ever, but good - I hope... will see.

So, its really nice to be in Cape Town. Things here don't seem to change too much, but its always good to see old mates and how life has slowly moved on.

No Pics this time, but will have some up at some stage...

Good Weekend

Things are tough. It is amazing how easy it is to be happy when things are good, while ridiculously difficult when things are tough. I am trying to be happy.

I suppose not all things are bad, and bad situations do tend to be more pleasant when they change from severely shitty to reasonably unpleasant. It is a bit like warming up after being painfully numb-cold. The warmth hurts at first, but then sends a pleasant fuzzy feeling all over your body, and you know... This is good.

Well, I am currently at the warmth-hurt part now. Things are looking up, but it is still hurting.

Went sailing on Saturday with a Tokoloshe. She is very pretty -needs some work- but It looks like there are a couple of people finding her a job. Tried to go sailing again with her on Sunday, but there was no wind, and everyone seemed a bit grumpy. I think it was a combination of Saturday night and some confusion/disagreement with the guys. It seemed by the end of our Sunday morning cruise around the Solent, that moods where improving and people started communicating together. Kief! I am looking forward to some fun sailing.

After the cruise, I took a bus back to the train I wrecked on Wed evening. Fixed it mostly, well at least filled the crack with fibreglass repair something-or-other and surface gelcoat repair something-or-other. Sanded it down this morning. Will try a second coat tomorrow morning. Lesson: Do not crash boats...

Anyway, I got a place to sail on a boat AND I mostly fixed the mess-up of Wednesday. Not bad for a weekend! But still not feeling 100% Great! Too much heat.

Tool

What a day...

Woke up late for a presentation. Thought I would wing it because the slides weren't ready.

I froze.... humilating and embarrassing. Looked like a tool. Luckily I had some backup slides which I then took out and spoke about them instead. They were not good, but I had something to talk about.

Picture of myself today courtesy of Extreme Electronics

I was very depressed, so later that evening, I went sailing with the Uni Yacht Club, and managed to crash the yacht whilst parking. What a complete tool...

Going to bed now and try and forget about my toolness.

I am a legend Baker

So, there I was sitting on my ace in my room, all clean, wondering what I can now do that does not involve drinking beer or touching a computer. I should have gone to gym, but I was feeling a bit lazy... So, looking at the tired bananas sitting above apple, I decided I would make Banana Bread. I then got thinking, that if I make Banana Bread, I might as well make some Milk Tarts. Thanks to scrapbook, I still had all of the recipes Jess and I looked up from when she was here. Awesome!

Callista suggested I start a Bakery, and John (Scarlet's great-grand nephew), suggested I call it 'Dirks Tarts'...

Anyway, I have classified myself as a legendary baker. Here are some of the 'fruits of my labour' (although, watch this if you have ever thought about whether we own what we create, intellectual property and have a spare 30mins - it is an interesting presentation about IP Law)

I made:

• 2 Banana Breads
• 3 and a retard Milk Tarts

This is the retard Milk Tart. He was sooo cute! I just ate him with Callista and John. He tasted great!

This is one of the plump milk tarts... notice he has a slightly burnt edge on the top... I don't know where he will go. I think he might go to the lab tomorrow.

Here is a pic of the three sister and a little Denzel.... You can see two of the Banana Breads younger brothers below my arm (and booze) hanging out with all my business contacts and laundry coins who spend most of their time chilling outside the boiler room.

As you can see, I am an excellent food photographer. I call this one 'Dysfunctional evolution of the sexes'. Notice how the (female) milk tart is surrounded by a halo of shinning light, while the (male) banana bread is separate, cut-up, slightly crumby, not knowing what to do with itself.

Well, as I am sure you can read from the crap I have just written, I am getting bored and sleepy. So Its time to go to bed! Sleep tight Milk tarts and banana bread. You have a big day of being shown around Southampton tomorrow (and being eaten).

April in a Nutshell

Hey Everyone,

Just thought I would add some comments and pics of my April...

So April was fun ,but tough...

Well it actually started with Graeme and Tiff moving into their new flat on Friday the 4th April... It all started as a pleasant, civilised affair as can be seen by Graeme relaxingly pouring himself another glass of French wine!

The evening was great! And Tiff cooked us some delicious and healthy Salmon fillets.

As one can see, we all started going a bit red and got a bit jolly.

So Jolly in fact, that we managed to persuade Graeme and Tiff to go out for a few drinks!!! And this is where it all turned a bit scary - I still don't know how I managed to get home...

But in the end, we all made it home alive! Even though I believe we all suffered extremely painful hangovers - I know I did.

In the beginning of April, I took this pic of the ESD 1st Year boys having lunch outside Stags.

And I was very proud to be able to say that I know the guy who designed this awesomely crazy wing-mast! Wow!

I also cycled through to the Hamble a couple of times, and took this pic from the Itchen River Bridge...

And the view from the other side.

And a pony near Weston!

So, after reading my flatmates awesome door sign, I decided to make my own!

It was really cool! But I wasn't ready for the graffiti abuse I was about to suffer!!

It was Environmental rock at the end of April, and I never knew so many hippies lived in Southampton, and was quite shocked to realise that only hippies seem to care about the environment. It is a sad state of affairs in England, when only the hippies care.

We had a stall from EWB there, and where right next to the Circus club, which was quite awesome, because we got to see a LOT of juggling.

And then the strangest thing happened. The SUPER hippies rocked up, and started doing this crazy dances in front of us. Apparently its called Morris Dancing. They went mental and hit each others sticks with sticks. The only non-hippie who was there was the mayor who you can see wearing the gold bling in the top right of the pic below.

Dave and Fiona came through! So I suppose there were 3 non-hippies...

Note the awesome beard on the right...

Hippies...

The stall next to us were advertising the naked bicycle tour around Southampton. It was all about lets get naked... and we have a cause. Not, "Yeah! Don't use petrol - lets get naked, but lets get NAKED... uhhh to decrease petrol consumption..."

It was quite successful! I had a good time!

And that was my basic April from a weekend point of view.

Just thought you guys might like some pics.

Keep well

Friday!

Woohooo!

Its Friday again, and this weekend I am looking fwd to some serious work!

I know that sounds twisted, but I am getting into a serious work mood swing and am almost ready to spend a couple days grafting like a crazyman...

Bring it on! Before that though, I will go for some drinks with Graeme, Tiff, Simon and Jof as Jof is back from the Land of Dens and Marks.

Radical... I will post some photos later!

Adios

Snowy Sunday

Hells Teeth!

Woke up yesterday morning, and it was ridiculously snowy. I was meant to cycle to the Hamble to go sail, but this is what greeted me through the window!!!

I was not excited about the cycle, so I phoned Graeme and Tiffany for a lift. Thank goodness! Bye the afternoon though, the weather had turned again and was looking like this.


Weird hey.... This is crazy land!

MSP430 Working on Linux with Eclipse

Wooahoooo,

So Getting this MSP430 to run on Linux with Eclipse is quite a bit of fun. Had a few hiccups and now am starting from scratch all over again. I wish there was a cool little eclipse installer for all this stuff....

Arrrgghhh!!! Its getting worse and worse....

OK, So I thought I would do my personalised little tutorial for Installing the MSPGCC Toolchain with Eclipse, running on Debian Etch for the ez430-F2013 Development Tool....

But first, I will give you some helpful links to pages which REALLY helped me get this going.

1. This guys Buildscript! Whoo, what a life saver. Thank you, thank you, thank you! http://vivara.net/software/mspgcc_build_script/

2. Thanks for this tutorial, although it is not 100% applicable to the ez430, it gives good details for the Eclipse setup. http://msp430.techcontent.net/eclipse.htm

4. This helped me getting the actual device running on Linux. http://people.ethz.ch/~npreyss/msp430/

5. Thanks Travis for the correct msp430-gdb commands to run (spy-bi-wire) in the init file!
http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.com/2007/11/ti-ez430-in-linux-with-iar-kickstart.html

6. Thanks xGoat for having done this last year, and some little issues! http://xgoat.com/wp/tag/msp430/

7. Texinfo 4.8! Which is needed to install binutils 2.17. I had a more up to date version -4.11 which DOES NOT work somewhere in some makefile to compile the code. It has to do with some regex somewhere in the code. http://packages.debian.org/etch/i386/texinfo/download

8. The legend who actually codes some of the mspgcc files. He has an Eclipse MSP-GCC debugger extension (which I don't use, but it is cool anyway) http://homepage.hispeed.ch/py430/mspgcc/index.html

9. Some helpful mspgcc stuff although out of date... http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8682

10. Nice pdf to get all steps working: http://www.scribd.com/doc/219845/msp430-mspgcc-eclipse-ubuntu-tutorial?ga_related_doc=1

OK,

So here goes, quick step-by-step.

1. Plug the ez430 device into a USB port. Then from a terminal window type:

dmesg

2. If everything is correctly installed, you should get something like the following and skip to step 4. else continue (You need to get something like the last line!!

usb 5-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 14
usb 5-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
ti_usb_3410_5052 5-1:1.0: TI USB 3410 1 port adapter converter detected
usb 5-1: reset full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 14
usb 5-1: device firmware changed
ti_usb_3410_5052: probe of 5-1:1.0 failed with error -5
usb 5-1: USB disconnect, address 14
usb 5-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 15
usb 5-1: configuration #1 chosen from 2 choices
ti_usb_3410_5052 5-1:1.0: TI USB 3410 1 port adapter converter detected
ti_usb_3410_5052: probe of 5-1:1.0 failed with error -5
ti_usb_3410_5052 5-1:2.0: TI USB 3410 1 port adapter converter detected
usb 5-1: TI USB 3410 1 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB1

3. Ok, you now need to follow the instructions from http://people.ethz.ch/~npreyss/msp430/ Which worked for me. If your kernel is slightly older, you might need to do some other things which I can not remember, but searching through some of the other links will render some solutions...

4. Ok, Hardware working, now its time to run the build script from http://vivara.net/software/mspgcc_build_script/ This script rocks, all you have to do is copy it into a user directory (ie /home/denzel/mspgcc) and run make (Ensure you have make installed- if not: apt-get install make). It will fetch the correct msp430 libraries and code,correct binutils 2.17, apply the patch to get the 2013 and 2012 mcu's working and install all the working binaries etc to the /usr/local/msp430 directory - You can change the msp430 directory in the top of the Makefile buildscript.

5. Ok, here is something that stumped me for a bit - although now I feel like a dumbass for not seeing it sooner. The buildscript might crash saying something about you not having Makeinfo, blah, blah, blah around the [info-recursive] make step. Check your texinfo version (texinfo --version)and if it is 4.11, you need to install the older 4.8 (download from the debian sources , and dpkg -i the .deb file). Run the script again, and it should compile!

6. Ok, You have the mspgcc files, the device working, now all you need is the Eclipse IDE, Eclipse CDT, and I used this plugin by Zylin (although I am not sure if it is required...). Go to the Eclipse website, download the latest version with the CDT. And download the Zylin plugin from http://www.zylin.com/embeddedcdt.html.Nice.

7. Setup Eclipse as per: http://msp430.techcontent.net/eclipse_tutor.htm. Ignoring the Windows Eclipse install screens....

8. The .gdbinit or .ini file that you use should contain the following instead though.

set remoteaddresssize 16
set remotetimeout 999999
target remote localhost:2000
monitor interface spy-bi-wire
monitor erase all
load Debug/THEProjectBINARY

You can see all the commands you can run from msp-gdb by typing help set .

9. uhhh... That should be about it. I hope the steps, although random give a good, ok, overview. Good luck and cheers! Doing things this way allows you to program for the 2012 and 2013 mcus! Woohhooo!!!

Bimingham - PostgreSQL UK Users Group

So I went to Birmingham Yesterday!Well, I went on Tuesday evening, and this pictures were taken on Wednesday (2 April 2008).This is the Selfridge's building... it is big and pretty.


Here is a big bull outside one of their Debenhams. It is like a symbol for Birmingham.

Here is me and the bull.
As I was leaving for the train, I got a quick glimpse of this pretty builiding, So I took a quick pic!
And here is some more building pics. There are quite a few huge buildings around Birmingham, and it appears as though everyone walks everywhere.

Sailing - Hooray!

Well hey there....

Went sailing on a Hunter 707 on Sunday. It was good fun, and ended up with a second and third place. For light conditions, it wasn't bad ,but we did have opportunities to win both races - which we threw away....

Spent Sat at Cath, Jack and Haig's house in the Hamble - had a few beers at the Bugle and a good nights sleep before the sail on Sun. Was good fun - it is always relaxing chilling in the village - it is soo teeny and cute.

Cath made a large stew for 10 on Sunday night... It was great but as Jack and Haig are currently trying to get rankings on the International Federation for Competitve eating website(http://www.ifoce.com/eaters.php), it turned out to be a meal for 6.

The herp is still stinging, but It is slowly getting better.

Now wasn't that an interesting snapshot of the life of a super hero - Denzel Fantastic....

Virgin Entry

Sup, everyone....

For the sake of Steven Burnett, I would like to start a blog. So here it is.... This page is for the painful and irritating ramblings of myself - Denzel Fantastic.

Awesome. This page
Not so awesome. I have Shingles

Kief. My holiday I just had
Not so Kief. My wallet was stolen

Kewl. I got a new camera.
Not so Kewl. My car broke down.

Fantastic. That is me.
Not so Fantastic. The Weather here...


Ciao