Published by Michael de Silva on Saturday, 15 June 2013
I'm not ashamed to say that I've been more a consumer of publicly-crafted regexes over the years. All the texts on the subject have been cryptic enough, that it's something I never actually bothered looking into seriously enough, and boy-oh-boy I wish I had done this sooner!
Today, I took that step and am already on my way to enlightenment thanks to
I've compiled my solutions as I make my way through these lessons as a Gist for reference and it would be great if you could share your solutions as well. Here's are a couple examples
#### Lesson 9 - http://regex101.com/r/yZ4qG2
Objective:
match 1. abc
match 2. abc
match 3. abc
...(continued)
It's another one of those pesky gem installs.
gem install rmagick -v '2.13.1'
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
ERROR: Error ...(continued)
Today I set about tinkering on an old project involving driving a multiplexed 7-segment display. I will be writing about this in more detail shortly. Here's a snap fr ...(continued)
Here are some of the best posts I've found detailing the process of setting up Python with pip, virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper. I recommend that you read throu ...(continued)
Yesterday I found adding the following to the Gemfile
group :development, :test do
gem 'linecache19', '0.5.13'
gem 'ruby-debug-base19', '0.11.26'
gem ' ...(continued)
There are two fantastic resources I came across detailing what's new in Ruby 2.0, the first of which
...(continued)
Update: Interestingly, the first comment I've received via Disqus was from Tomash and he correctly pointed out while this was a nice 'e ...(continued)
Published by Michael de Silva on Tuesday, 28 May 2013
It's another one of those pesky gem installs.
gem install rmagick -v '2.13.1'
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
ERROR: Error installing rmagick:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
/mike/.rbenv/versions/1.9.3-p392/bin/ruby extconf.rb
checking for Ruby version >= 1.8.5... yes
extconf.rb:128: Use RbConfig instead of obsolete and deprecated Config.
checking for gcc... yes
checking for Magick-config... yes
checking for ImageMagick version >= 6.4.9... yes
checking for HDRI disabled version of ImageMagick... yes
checking for stdint.h... yes
checking for sys/types.h... yes
checking for wand/MagickWand.h... yes
checking for InitializeMagick() in -lMagickCore... no
checking for InitializeMagick() in -lMagick... no
checking for InitializeMagick() in -lMagick++... no
Can't install RMagick 2.13.1. Can't find the ImageMagick library or one of the dependent libraries. Check the ...(continued)
Published by Michael de Silva on Thursday, 09 May 2013
For this example I will be taking my Hot Bodies D8T Monster Truggy as an example to base the calculations on. Here are some details
The gear ratio at the centre differential
50T Spur/13T Pinion = 3.85:1 gear ratio
For the front and rear diffs, the axle ratio is
Beveled spur 43T / Spiral pinion 10T = 4.3:1
We can therefore calculate the Final Drive Ratio (FDR)
FDR = (3.85)(4.3) = 16.6:1
Let's now take a look at rollout which is defined as
Rollout is the ratio of how many revolutions of the motor causes the tires to move one inch.
and 1" = 25.4mm
466mm/16.6 = 28mm per motor rev.
28mm/25.4mm = 1.1:1 rollout
I typically run this @ 4S which means 2200kV x 14.8vdc x 0.9 = 29,304 RPM; note that I've compensated for a 10% drop in cell voltage due motor loading, ...(continued)
Published by Michael de Silva on Saturday, 04 May 2013
Today I set about tinkering on an old project involving driving a multiplexed 7-segment display. I will be writing about this in more detail shortly. Here's a snap from today's session

As for modularising C code, here are some fantastic resources on the topic
Published by Michael de Silva on Monday, 29 April 2013
Here are some of the best posts I've found detailing the process of setting up Python with pip, virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper. I recommend that you read through these first.
My install process is detailed in the following gist
Published by Michael de Silva on Sunday, 07 April 2013
Here are some curated enhancements to boost your vim productivity
vim.This is just one really sexeh theme for vim; grab it here.
Sy shows all added, deleted and modified lines since the last commit via Vim its sign column. It supports several version control systems.
Grab it here.

A much faste ...(continued)
Published by Michael de Silva on Friday, 08 March 2013
Yesterday I found adding the following to the Gemfile
group :development, :test do
gem 'linecache19', '0.5.13'
gem 'ruby-debug-base19', '0.11.26'
gem 'ruby-debug19', :require => 'ruby-debug'
#...
end
...and running bundle install just would not work. The reason is ruby-debug19 is no longer maintained and there's a recommended fork called debugger that works on 1.9.2 and 1.9.3 and installs easily for rvm/rbenv rubies.
However, I wanted to get ruby-debug19 to install and followed the advice of this post on Stackoverflow and created a gist to allow installing this under my particular version of ruby-1.9.3-p327-fast — Gist: Install ruby-debug19 with Falcon patched ruby-1.9.3-p327-fast
### UPDATE: ruby-debug19 is no longer maintained, use https://github.com/cldwalker/debugger
# Install wit ...(continued)
Published by Michael de Silva on Wednesday, 06 March 2013
My First 5 Minutes On A Server; Or, Essential Security for Linux Servers by Bryan Kennedy is a must read. It was featured on HN a couple days back and is a decent check-list of things to cover when setting up a new server/VPS.
Highly recommended!
Published by Michael de Silva on Friday, 01 March 2013
There are two fantastic resources I came across detailing what's new in Ruby 2.0, the first of which
and there's another with many examples that's a bit more verbose.
Installing Ruby 2.0 was quite painless for me; I'm on Mac and have homebrew installed, it's certianly much easier with than without.
rvm get head && rvm install 2.0.0
This should end up spitting any brew related errors; you'll have to install those missing libs and simpy run the command again to compile ruby-2.0.0-p0 from source.
Enjoy!
Published by Michael de Silva on Thursday, 14 February 2013
Late August last year, I joined The Fountain Pen Network (TFPN)'s group page on Facebook — 'Singapore Fountain Pen Lovers'.
About a week or two prior to joining, I was in Singapore and had visited the Aesthetic Bay on Orchard @ ION. I've known about the 'Bay for many years and even popped into their branch at Funan Centre on previous trips, although I wasn't too serious on anything in particular.
In the past, I've seen snaps of beautiful maki-e pieces by Nakaya, Namiki, Danitrio online and thought to myself, 'one day, perhaps I'll get around to one of these...'. Since 2008, my other Japanese fountain pen has been my faithful Sailor Executive 1911 Naginata Togi.
Whilst perusing through the group page, one of the first posts I came across looked similar to this
<img src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-a ...(continued)
Published by Michael de Silva on Monday, 11 February 2013
I recently received some inspiration for 'going' electric and decided to perform a conversion on one of my 1/8th scale buggies. I've got two - a Mugen Seiki MBX5 ProSpec and this Kyosho Inferno MP777 which includes many upgrades taking it to a custom SP1.
This conversion is based on the Kyosho Inferno 1/8 Brushless Conversion Kit and the entire process was extremely easy. On the plus side, the MP777 did not require any of the supplied 'washers' during the installation process and meant less things to keep track of during the build.
For this conversion I've chosen a Castle Creations Neu-Castle 1515 1Y 1/8 Brushless Motor (2200Kv). This has a manufactur ...(continued)