It's good to be back.
I finally had my first flight cancelled on me yesterday. I suppose given that I've been flying a few times a year for at least the past 8 years (even if it's only back and forth to Northern Ireland) I should consider myself lucky.
I arrived at Belfast City Airport at about 8am, for a 9:45am flight (the last time I flew from Belfast we hit really bad traffic, so we ended up overcompensating). On check in I discovered it was delayed by 15 minutes. Shortly after I'd made my way through security it was delayed by 45 minutes. Then they delayed it until midday. Then at 11:30 they said they'd have an announcement at midday. And then at 11:45 they cancelled it.
Now, I was flying from Belfast to Norwich. There's only one such flight a day. So I'm a bit stuck. And by the time I get to the front of the refunds queue they've filled up the flight today (Saturday), leaving me the option of a direct flight to Norwich on Sunday, or any other flight leaving Belfast City on Friday that they have seats on. So I go to London Gatwick, supposed to leave at 14:30. And it gets delayed by 45 minutes straight after I check in. Thankfully it does actually take off at 15:15 and I manage to get to England. On the wrong side of London for Norwich, but hey, the trains are running. I negotiate the Gatwick Express, get a tube to Liverpool Street and get on a train to Norwich. Which then gets delayed for 25 minutes because a train breaks down in front of it. Bah.
I finally get home just after 9pm, rather than the 11:30am or so I would have managed if my initial flight had taken off on time. The house is still in one piece, the plants haven't died, I have food again. Rar.
And I know this is small fry compared to American flight horror stories, or the potential problems we could have had when Uncle Steve lost our clothes en route to Brazil, but it's the first time I've had a major problem with flights.
(We'll ignore the fun I had when turning on my desktop machine and seeing "GRUB Read Error" displayed. Damn scanner had decided to frob the SCSI bus enough that the BIOS could boot grub but grub couldn't then see sda.)
Linux WMDs
So, the delightful Kathy bought me a Marks & Spencer USB Missile Launcher (unfortunately out of stock at present or I'd have linked directly to it. Try searching on eBay / Google to see what I mean.) Problem. WinXP/2k only drivers. That's no fun.
Plugged it in to my laptop (as you do). dmesg reports:
input: Tenx Nonstandard Devic as /class/input/input6 input: USB HID v1.10 Device [Tenx Nonstandard Devic] on usb-0000:00:1d.1-2 input: Tenx Nonstandard Devic as /class/input/input7 input: USB HID v1.10 Device [Tenx Nonstandard Devic] on usb-0000:00:1d.1-2
lsusb says:
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 1130:0202 Tenx Technology, Inc.
Device Descriptor:
bLength 18
bDescriptorType 1
bcdUSB 1.10
bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level)
bDeviceSubClass 0
bDeviceProtocol 0
bMaxPacketSize0 8
idVendor 0x1130 Tenx Technology, Inc.
idProduct 0x0202
bcdDevice 1.00
iManufacturer 0
iProduct 2
iSerial 0
bNumConfigurations 1
Configuration Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 2
wTotalLength 59
bNumInterfaces 2
bConfigurationValue 1
iConfiguration 0
bmAttributes 0x80
MaxPower 100mA
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 0
bAlternateSetting 0
bNumEndpoints 1
bInterfaceClass 3 Human Interface Devices
bInterfaceSubClass 0 No Subclass
bInterfaceProtocol 0 None
iInterface 0
HID Device Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 33
bcdHID 1.10
bCountryCode 0 Not supported
bNumDescriptors 1
bDescriptorType 34 Report
wDescriptorLength 43
Report Descriptors:
** UNAVAILABLE **
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN
bmAttributes 3
Transfer Type Interrupt
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0008 1x 8 bytes
bInterval 1
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 1
bAlternateSetting 0
bNumEndpoints 1
bInterfaceClass 3 Human Interface Devices
bInterfaceSubClass 0 No Subclass
bInterfaceProtocol 0 None
iInterface 0
HID Device Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 33
bcdHID 1.10
bCountryCode 33 US
bNumDescriptors 1
bDescriptorType 34 Report
wDescriptorLength 23
Report Descriptors:
** UNAVAILABLE **
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x82 EP 2 IN
bmAttributes 3
Transfer Type Interrupt
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0008 1x 8 bytes
bInterval 1
The Windows software appears to consist of TenxHID.dll (24k) and
Missile_Launcher.exe (908k). TenxHID only exports DeviceIni, ReadBuffer and
WriteBuffer AFAICT. Which implies the higher level stuff is done in the exe to
me. I think it's a job for USBSnoop and a Windows box, but that'll have to wait
for a few days until I get back to a WinXP box I can use to fiddle. Unless
someone else manages to write a driver in the meantime. :)
It's not easy being green.
I can't believe I did this, but:
You are Hulk
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You are a wanderer with amazing strength. 
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Socks
When I had a real job I used to hate having to iron shirts every week. While I'll occasionally wear one when I go out it's not something I'd choose to wear to code in, so it grated that I had to expend effort in order to be able to wear something I didn't really want to.
These days I'm a lazy layabout who largely works from home and I can wear what I like. However I still have to deal with socks. Now, at least I like wearing socks, but they're still a PITA. Pairing them up in particular. I think the problem is that almost all my socks are plain black and while you think that would make things easy it really doesn't. They're different shades of black for starters. Or different shapes. Or feel different. Or are lost for months and then suddenly turn up and the other half of the pair that kept annoying you out of the corner of your eye has suddenly disappeared. Gah.
X11 Programming
I'm feeling somewhat stupid. I sat down tonight to have a look at writing a basic fire/flame demo thing under X (the sort of thing people used to write in 3 bytes of x86 assembly 10 years ago). See, I'd quite like a funky xdm/login thingy for my laptop, so random people who see me use it on the train think "Woah, cool". I'm sad like that. Anyway, my idea is a ring of fire with the login prompt in the middle. This seems simple. Except when I try to get involved with programming X.
Now, I'm not a graphics programmer by any stretch of the imagination. But all I want is a nice simple framebuffer I can store pixels of 24 bit colour into. Or 8 bits with a colourmap is fine too. If the functions for dealing with the colourmaps are decently documented. This isn't much to ask, is it?
Perhaps the issue was that I assumed Xlib would just provide me something that could do this. Or that I'd be able to find decent docs easily. Or that I had more than 2 braincells to rub together. But I've given up now. I really don't understand how to get Xlib to just let me XSetForeground to a 24 bit colour and then XDrawPoint. I tried to fight XAllocColor. I even accepted defeat and had a quick look for a simple X framebuffer library. No joy.
So, can someone point me at the right docs to inhale for this sort of thing? Or a really lightweight C library that'll make it all really easy?
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