About
This is pembi.net‘s blog site, a place for Ken to share his news, reviews, rants and random ramblings.
Comments are welcome, in fact they are invited.
About Ken:
Ken is a technologist. That’s executive-speak for Geek. In fact he’s been told he’s an Über-Geek. Enough of a geek, in fact, that he knows how to type a Ü. So what does this mean in your life? Probably not a lot. But what it means in Ken’s life is that he plays with all sorts of tech toys. Key project items at the moment are the uNSLUng LinkSys NSLU-2 “Slug”, the Freecom FSG-3, and the Velleman K8055 USB experiment interface board.
- The FSG
iswas the home of all Ken’s online content –edit June 2008 — online content has now all been moved to a hosted service. It’s a great little box, running a SnapGear-derived Linux distribution.CurrentlyWas serving the static website at http://www.pembi.net and this blog site, along with a mailserver and a webmail host. And it (still) serves as a home backup server, keeping all my work safe and secure. Windows home server? Bah! And humbug. - The Slug is a similar, but slimmed-down device. Intended as a network host to USB drives, it too runs Linux, which means it can do so much more! It used to power the website and blog, but these duties have now been assumed by the FSG, so the Slug has now been freed up for the robotics project.
- The K8055 is a great little bit of kit. It plugs into a USB port and allows control over a number of digital and analogue inputs and outputs. Switching things on and off, sensing temperature, etc., are what it was intended for. Of course that’s not what Ken uses it for! Coupled with the Slug, it’s the core of the robotics project. Thanks to Glen for this toy, it was a birthday present from him.
Each of these will shortly have now has a page/section of its own, if anybody is interested. See the links under the “Pages” heading on the right or in the title bar. Your feedback is always welcome. Don’t forget that Ken’s focus will usually be technical, so he’ll rely on everyone else to nudge him in other directions from time to time. Tell him what you want!
Ken’s also an old fat git who has just discovered that he’s diabetic. So some lifestyle adjustments are under way. Being (just a lot) overweight, and a smoker, having already had one heart attack, with high cholesterol and a sedentary lifestyle, with heart problems in the family, white and over 40 ticks all the risk boxes. Diabetes being very carefully looked at by the local health service. Weight slowly (but steadily) coming down, and I make a point of taking at least one walk a day.
