Today I looked deeply into the I2C bus and I really think it rocks! This 2 wire multidrop bus allows many many devices to be attached at the same time and its cheap to implement. With the I2C support in Linux it is really easy to implement using two spare GPIO pins or a special purpose device. Each device is then capable of requesting bus mastering and send or receive data at speeds counted in megabits per second. Using 2 wires! Using a battery powered PIC just think of what can be created in terms of external devices. Why bother with USB when you can download audio files over I2C. I just must get hold of a cool I2C device! USB sucks, Go I2C Go Go Go!!! ;-)

Today I looked at ethtool 1.3 to be able to set some parameters on my Natsemi card. I soon discovered that not all the ioctls needed were in place, only one. Ethtool 1.3 is like 25 Kb after it has been 'strip'ed. Very nice for a small distribution! So either I have to upgrade my driver but that would force me prematurely to upgrade the kernel to 2.4.19. Instead I looked at ethtool 1.6 which seemed to have Natsemi support builtin. I compiled it only to discover that the whole binary was over 100Kb now! Geehhh, four times the size increased over 3 releases. And still I discovered that it required more ioctl:s by the driver too. Both versions were compiled linked statically with the uclibc (wrapper) toolchain. Amazing how things increases in size when they become popular. Good software should be small and Linux should fit on a floppy!

Made a fast google on espresso coffe to find out that the espresso device I just baught isn't good enough to get the 'crema'. 'Crema' is the white milky stuff on top of a good espresso and it needs at least 5-6 bar to be generated. How discouraging! On the other hand I spent just 10% of the cost for a real espresso machine. Also I learned that there are 1500 italian espresso coffe roasteries (correct word?) and that a good espresso blend uses 4-6 of those, usually beans that has a low acid rate. Darn, I baught my own beans, a kg! Do I need to buy 4-5 more packages of beans to get a good cup of espresso?!! Sometimes google just makes you low. Ignorance is bliss!!

First day out of bed. Had to sort out a few things regarding the init process we are using. Why on earth do System V init processes send a HUP signal to forked childs when they exits? It is horrible!! An experienced collegue of mine told me that many people start their processes in System V using 'nohup' to avoid the behaviour. Starting out with Slackware and after that RPM and Debian packages I have never needed to understand the finer points of System V init until now. The HUPed processes silently dies with a mission incomplete. I think I just put myself into bed again *arghhhh*

I need to get a life, but where? Another day in sick bed makes me feel like vasting time. Jesus, what am I doing here? I should spend my time writing the most emperial software in the world making Linus Torvalds look like a worm! Or I should be drinking candy shots with women half my age at the nearest neon-light bar. Same same but different.

So what do I want to put on my permanent record? It's just another day in bed, sick with the latest flue from asia (darn chickens!) The goverment seems to soft up towards the "greens" and might be able to sit for another 4 year period. I am posetive to taxes, they are good! The reds promissed a 5% increase in the area where I live to build up school and hospitals. I would love to have 100% taxes if everything were available for free!! :-) Really I don't care much as long as I got what I need. Now I have to force my kids from the soap opera and have them do their home work. CYA