Cavalcade of Mammals

I went to a panel that discussed gut microbes at Chicon, and had a few ideas for making use of them:

1) Microbes as sensors. Take existing gut bacteria, electroporate in a reporter plasmid, reintroduce orally. The reporter can be a sensor protein hooked up to GFP or an enzyme that acts on a microbial product to make a derivative not found normally in bacteria, and easily detectable and distinguished from normal chemicals in the gut.
1a) Detection can be by examining poop. A souped up Japanese toilet would be the least obtrusive solution.
1b) if the product is fluorescent, detection can be by direct gut imaging, as is done for mice.

2) Introduce GFP producing bacterial into the gut, and use them like barium is used for gut imaging. Imaging would be done using transilluminated epifluorescence microscope or a fluorescence light box
and thermoelectrically cooled CCD camera. By moving the detector and light source around, enough images can be made for low resolution computed tomographic imaging.

3) Introduce gut bacteria that absorb methane. Natural methane absorbing bacteria, normally present in low numbers can be introduced to increase total gut methane absorbtion, or if methane absorbtion happens at low levels, bacteria could be selected to find strains that do it at a higher level. A third option is to engineer normal gut bacteria to have this capability.

Brought to you by Cokie’s Law, an article asks what he’s hiding
New glider found that lives in a Penrose tiling version of Conway’s Life
Digispark, cheap USB dev board
Printcrime by Cory Doctorow
Collection of recession economic stats
Cat ancestry genetic testing

Learning population genetics
Malaysian beetles

Cheap GPS unit
DIY copper rivets for PCBs
DIY through hole plating
Emergency contraception doesn’t prevent implantation: 1 2

En Garde capacitive touch sensor
Talking about asteroid mining. Still at: 1. Go get an asteroid 2. ?? 3. Profit!!

CNC power supply:
20A, 13.8v, lots of design info
Nat. Semi. Intro to Power Supplies

Tupac Pepper’s Ghost illusion
Halloween Pepper’s Ghost Illusion
For the second year in a row, House Republicans pass a budget that ends Medicare and increases the deficit

Dinosaur Comics
Detoxifying chain emails by dissecting them at length, an example

Charles Stross starts a discussion of untried forms of government
Maker supplies
Project to connect a 3-axis accelerometer to a PIC16

Best of the internet: thoughts on modern American conservatism by John Holbo

Calcudoku
The invisible welfare state of the top one percent
I am aware of all internet traditions: The 27% Crazification Factor
Nobody Wants to Learn How to Program
Scratch –programming for kids
All the books mentioned in Among Others by Jo Walton, as a pinboard
Holy Hypocrites (Calamities Of Nature #550)
England runs an economic experiment
Lucky for the US, they don’t mind being killed
Stepper torque units conversion
Good prices on steppers: Kysan, Keling/Automation Technologies

State taxes twice as high on the poor as the rich (Corporation for Enterprise Development)

Petr Kropotkin and anarchism

PhoneGap: a native app wrapper for HTML5 apps
Windows 7 HTML5 app example using PhoneGap
HTML5 iPhone app example
HTML5 app intro

HTML5 info canvas
HTML5 demos and browser support list

Built a USB PIC microcontroller programmer, the usbpicprog. I used Marcelo Maggi’s version with daughter boards for the USB and ZIF. The boards had some narrow traces–I had two small defects after eteching, and lost a few more pads soldering the components on. Small wires fixed things up and it worked first time.

The instructions aren’t very clear. The bootloader .hex gets burned using a JDM programmer using the self programmer header. Then place a jumper on the self programming header Vpp and Vdd, plug it into the USB port, run usbpicprog. These messages appear on the command line:
Bootloader Devid: 11240
Autodetected PIC ID: 0x11240


Then open the firmware .hex and burn it. The program said it completed OK. Then quit the program, remove the USB cord, and add a second jumper on the self programming header from the Clk pin to Gnd.

After this it I connected my PIC18F46K20 to the ICSP header (on a breadboard), plugged in the USB cable, and ran usbpicprog again. I opened my .hex and burned it. It said the code burned OK but gave an error for the configuration bits (like I was getting from the JDM programmers). Then I tried erasing it followed by running blank check. Both of these completed OK. I re-burned my program, and this time it worked! Configuration bits were programmed and verified!

So far I’ve only finished the main board. I made the USB board but haven’t populated it yet. I intend this mainly for ICSP programming, so I haven’t decided on whether to make the ZIF board. I do need to make an enclosure.

You can see some of the trace repairs.