Nokia 6267 restarting itself and how I got around it

I know, I know. I have a very old cellular phone. But since I have enough electronic toys, I couldn’t care less about turning my phone into one. And it happens to be a good one. Everything was OK until it failed to start. Or more precisely, it started, and then restarted itself. Like this: [...]

ionice. Only that made upgrading worth it.

Copying gigabytes of disk can get the system sluggish. On Linux, the solution is so simple. If process 18898 happens to take control of your disk, just go: ionice -c 3 -p 18898 And you have your computer back. “-c 3″ means class 3, which is idle class. In other words, take the disk when [...]

DCM loses lock on Virtex-4: It’s all about auto calibration

The whole story began when I decided to be kind enough to tell the Xilinx tools (ISE 9.2 in my case) that the Virtex-4 I’m targeting is a grown-up. Stepping 2, to be precise. I added CONFIG STEPPING = “2″; to the UCF file. It must have been one of those moments where I believed [...]

Vintage Tektronix 515A oscilloscope is looking for a new home

I got it when I was 13. Yes, some of us play with strange toys. I had a lot of fun moments with it, but the truth is that even if it worked, it’s not much of use, now that I’ve betrayed it with a young and colorful one. Mechanically, this old scope is in [...]

The “kamakesef” formula revealed: Calculate the wedding present’s amount

Introduction An Israeli website, “Kama Kesef” (כמה כסף in Hebrew, meaning “how much money”) is a neat web calculator telling how much to give as a money present in weddings and other events. When I realized that I’m far from being the only one using it to decide what sum to write down on the [...]