Home » Archives for 2010
by Mike Levin on October 20, 2010
Momentum is a precious commodity and wielding it well is among best productivity tricks. Accomplishing big, artistic things and staying on track to do so requires momentum, and daily mental tricks to prevent derailment. It’s not like you sit down and create a great big achievement all at once. It’s broken up over days, and [...]
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by Mike Levin on October 19, 2010
I’m moving from Windows to *nix for server programming and am finally getting comfortable. In this post, I’m laying out my switching strategy for others who wish to become powerful by going old-school with a modern twist. There’s just too much to know even with just a basic Linux install, so the trick is to [...]
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by Mike Levin on September 21, 2010
Okay, its time to do the SD card cloning. This is full of nuances. First thing, be sure you’re on a Linux machine, because it is equipped with the dd command, which will do a raw copy of media, plowing right through partitions and such. Preferably, you should be on an Ubuntu box, due to its [...]
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by Mike Levin on September 20, 2010
There are two types of work in the daily-grind. The first is the well-known duties required to keep existing processes running smoothly. Route, formulaic behaviors characterize this type of work, and is the domain of the uncreative and secure. Craftsmanship may exist here, and even artistry and genius. But it is rare, and principally confined [...]
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by Mike Levin on September 15, 2010
Okay, its one thing to simply use a SheevaPlug, but its another to use it safely and systematically. The idea is to clone many instances of the SheevaPlug application with a simple process. I’ve done my research on the various approaches, and it seems that there are two popular approaches, depending on whether you want [...]
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by Mike Levin on September 8, 2010
I spent considerable time unbricking my SheevaPlug, losing precious time at work. But I chalk this up to gaining experience on Linux/Unix embedded systems. I’m doing this just barely after gaining my legs on Linux itself, so my thinking is to position my professional expertise for the cloud backlash. I figure I’m about a year [...]
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by Mike Levin on September 8, 2010
Here’s a peek of me at the office unboxing and logging into a SheevaPlug. It may be useful to you if you are you on a PC trying to use PuTTY for the serial connection and get the “Invalid port number” error, are struggling with Windows drivers, or just tried to your first apt-get update [...]
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by Mike Levin on September 8, 2010
Dorothy, you’re not in BIOS anymore. Yep, I bricked my SheevaPlug. This happened somewhere along the line of debootstrapping onto an SD card, a process which in all other ways went butter smooth. I posted that video to make the details of interacting with these silly embedded system more clear. I have two five SheevaPlugs, and am [...]
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by Mike Levin on August 26, 2010
But is deboostrap there? Oops, no. Okay, then we have to expand our plans. I didn’t want to touch the default system drive at all, but without debootstrap, probably the best thing to do right now is to connect the network cable and restart the networking service. First, let’s do an ifconfig “before”: Funny thing [...]
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by Mike Levin on August 26, 2010
Okay, let’s log into this thing. We can either connect through a network connection, assuming you have a DHCP server on your network (and if you’re at home with a WiFi router, then you do) and figure out your IP, or you have to connect with the provided serial cable. If you choose the network [...]
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I am Mike Levin+, an Earned Media Optimizer, husband, daddy & Linux / Python hacker living on top of the hill on top of the island on top of the world. I put my stream-of-consciousness here in order to create greater commitment and consistency in pursuit of my goals.
