So first of I apologise for not updating the website. A few things happened and I had to put updating Flat Spike on the back seat. The one was I had to write a re-exam for Linear systems, and that’s not much fun. I had to put in a big block of intense study to make sure I pass it, and I did, yay! After the exam my vacation work started and I gave my full attention to that.

I work at the CSIR, for the Radar and Electronic warfare group where I code stuff in Matlab to help out smart people that can spend their time on better things. Its a really great experience, I get to learn allot about Matlab, I get to speak some English and it helps me to improve on my speaking abilities (I find it hard to sound clear) and I get to play darts when I need a break (probably the most important one ).

So now where does this Linux thing come in? The PC I got to work on has SUSE Linux installed on it. I tried Ubuntu on my laptop once before and formatted the hard drive 2 days afterwards out of despair. This time I had no choice but to accept the fact that I have to learn how to use it. So the re-exam was on Monday, I started to work on Tuesday (filling in so many forms, that when I saw an open line all I wanted to do is write something on it), and by Wednesday I got Matlab to work on SUSE and already wrote a third of the code for my first assignment. On Thursday I received my marks for the re-exam, a pass, and on Friday I did the finishing touches on the project and got briefed on my next project.

The whole week I was pondering on how I would get myself a Linux box and eventually I made some swaps and moved some PCs and ended up with an extra one I could use. I decided on Kubuntu, SUSE uses KDE and I was now familiar with it. My first task was to get a hard-drive to be accessible from both windows and Ubuntu (I created a dual boot system). I then wanted to share this drive from Ubuntu over the network so other PCs on the network (Mostly windows) could access it and write to it. I also installed Firefox. This all happend on Saturday. On Sunday I installed vmware, and synergy. I don’t know why I installed vmware because after I got synergy to work I really cant see the need for it. I wanted to use vmware to be able to use some of my windows programs that cant run on Linux, but I found synergy and it allows you to share a keyboard and mouse between 2 PCs as if you are running a dual monitor system, but only now you can have each screen a different OS! I cant even begin to tell you how amazing this program is and how much this helps me to make the move over to Linux.

The move over to Linux has been a long time coming, and its still going to take a long time for me to get to know my way around in it. But now that Ive taken the first few steps I’m not even close to considering moving back to a windows only setup. As for my projects, I’m planning to start working on them again this week/weekend so expect some updates soonish.

I discovered I accidentally left the old domain name and old URLs of the projects in the documentation and fixed it.

I created a new page under the electronics projects to show how you can easily build your own logic inverter with two resistors and a transistor. It can be found here: Single transistor logic inverter

If you are visiting me from the mathworks internal website, welcome! I usually enjoy looking at the pages I get linked from but since this is hosted on your internal network I can’t and its burning me from the inside! If any of you would be so kind to throw me a e-mail, comment or even a saved page or screenshot (via e-mail) I’d really appreciate it. jurgen [dot] strydom [at] gmail [dot] com