Life

Over a month ago, I had ordered from Actel one of their brand new SmartFusion evaluation kits. It arrived this week and I finally get to experiment with it and return to experimenting and further honing my VHDL skills. I am pretty excited about this and hope to use this board, along with the hardcore ARM Cortex M3 microprocessor on board for my home automation project.

Here’s a link to the page on Actel’s website which contains information about the SmartFusion evaluation kit. Actel SmartFusion Eval Kit

From their site, this kit includes the following:

The SmartFusion Evaluation Kit board includes:

* A2F200M3F-FGG484ES
o 200,000 System FPGA gates, 256 KB flash memory, 64 KB SRAM, and additional distributed SRAM in the FPGA fabric and external memory controller
o Peripherals include Ethernet, DMAs, I2Cs, UARTs, timers, ADCs, DACs and additional analog resources
o Refer to the SmartFusion product page for full device information
* SPI-flash memory connected to SPI_0 on the device
* USB connection for programming and debug from Actel’s design tools
* USB to UART connection to UART_0 for HyperTerminal examples
* 10/100 Ethernet interface with on-chip MAC and external PHY
* RVI header for application programming and debug from either Keil or IAR Systems
* Mixed-signal header for daughter card support

User Inputs and Outputs

* OLED display with I2C interface connected to I2C_0 on the device
* First-order ΣΔ DAC (sigma delta) output with 12-bit 500 Ksps update rate
* Potentiometer used to vary voltage input for voltage and current monitoring
* 8 LEDs connected to the FPGA fabric for FPGA demonstration
* 2 user input switches connected through FPGA fabric
* Both LEDs and switches can be used with GPIO by connecting through the fabric
* Selector to choose between GNU SoftConsole or RVI-Header for debug
* Selector to switch between programming the device (fabric) and debug mode
* On-board 20 MHz crystal for system clock
* On-board 32.768 KHz for RTC
* 5 user I/Os for debug
* Option to use internal 1.5 V regulator

Having used the original Fusion FPGA and softcore ARM Cortex M1 along with their toolset, I can speak to the robustness, ease-of-use and rapidness of the whole design process. It’s integrated, easy and slick. I’m going to start out with a basic hello world VHDL and C combo today just to make sure my memory is refreshed and I get a feel for the differences in the upgraded tools since I lasted used it.

Engineering, Personal Actel, ARM, Cortex M3, FPGA, Libero, SmartFusion, SoftConsole

Klavan at http://www.andrewklavan.com/2010/04/29/christian-libertarianism/

Andrew sums up fairly accurately why I believe in the libertarian philosophy as a follower of Christ.

“Over at our much beloved Big Hollywood last week, filmmaker Leigh Scott had some thoughtful and entertaining comments on Kick-Ass, a movi…e he liked and which I haven’t seen. He says it’s a libertarian film and, as a side note, goes on to discuss what he feels are the differences between
libertarian conservatives and Christian conservatives: “A very conservative, religious friend once asked me to explain my views. He was stumped that we agreed on almost everything. But,
when a lot of the social issues came up, I kinda shuffled my feet and looked to the ground. I summarized it this way: He and I could spend all day Saturday agreeing about taxes, the role of government, and foreign policy, yet, on Sunday, he would be in church and I would be
nursing a hangover. Libertarians are the party boys and girls of the conservative
movement.”

Now there’s not only some truth to this but it’s a pretty common point of view. And yet, speaking in a broader sense, I disagree. I believe libertarianism is – or at least should be – the Christian
approach. When Jesus said all that stuff about judge not lest ye be judged, and don’t take the speck from your neighbor’s eye when you should be dealing with the two-by-four stuck in your own, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t just messing with us. I also think he meant something very specific. He did not – could not – have meant that we can’t make moral judgments, can’t say, hey, taking your kids to the park is good – telling them to blow themselves up to kill Jews, not so much. Of course we can. What we can’t judge, as I see it, is another person’s state of grace, his standing with God. (CS Lewis has some terrific stuff about this in The Great Divorce.) Our moral decisions about ourselves can be spiritual. Our moral decisions about other people can only be practical. I try very hard to live by my lights (informed by my understanding of gospel teaching). You want to argue about my ideas with me over a drink, I’m happy to oblige. But I don’t want you to interfere with me as long as I do no harm and, conversely, I don’t want to force anyone to do or love or live as I see fit. All I do ask is that you
don’t try to make me pay my children’s inheritance to clean up the results of your moral choices. Pay for them yourself.

There’s an idea going around that being a libertarian means not only not forcing your spiritual views on others but actually having no spiritual views at all. I would say it’s my strongly held spiritual
beliefs – and my desire to protect them from your interference – that make me want to leave you to yours. I’m a Christian Libertarian.”

Economics, Personal, Political

So I’ve been interested in trying out the P90X routine from www.beachbody.com for some time. They have an infomercial that I’ve seen several times. But who actually believes an infomercial about exercise or exercise equipment? Not me!

Recently I’ve run into people who have actually tried P90X and had a positive impression of it. None of these people seemed to have followed it closely, but enough to get me curious enough to order it. So I ordered the 12 DVD set from amazon.com along with some resistance bands and a pull-up bar. I bought a heart rate monitor from Dick’s which they also highly recommend.

I’m on day 6 of 90 right now and it’s been fabulous. Wednesday of this week is the only day that I didn’t have a moment at all to fit the exercise routine into, but that’s ok because I’m switching my scheduled day off with Wednesday. I will be posting my before shots here soon. I hope to see great results. I’m not really overweight, but I do feel like a have a bit more body fat on me than I’d like. My challenge is to see just how lean and ripped I can get and to vastly improve my flexibility, cardiovascular stamina and percent body fat to decrease. P90X is a 6 day on, 1 day off routine for 90 straight days. It’s very intense and challenging and I love it! Tony Horton is the trainer in the videos who leads the exercises. He’s very motivating and I think this is half of what makes P90X so great.

Stayed tuned for my progress over the 90 days. It’s only been 6 days so far and P90X has revolutionized my exercise world like never before.

Exercise, Personal Exercise, P90X, Tony Horton

I finally remembered to send off an email to the Monon Place apartments in Broad Ripple about their south Kessler Blvd. entrance/exit and the safety hazard that it posses. So this is what I emailed them. I’d like to get Indianapolis to improve Kessler Blvd. as well. Any advice for how to go about getting heard by the city?

I want to write you and let you know that I believe your apartment entrance/exit on Kessler Blvd. is very dangerous and posses a great safety risk. Just before Christmas, a girl who is a resident of your apartment complex, drove south on the main parking lot drive towards Kessler on a morning that had about an inch of slippery, wet snow. The parking lot had not been cleared or treated with salt at all. Due to the mounds of dirt that surround this entrance/exit, I could not see this girl heading down the drive towards Kessler. She was going way too fast, could not stop in time, and hit me as I was traveling towards College Ave on Kessler.

I would appreciate a response with your thoughts.

Personal accident, Indianapolis, Kessler, Monon Place

I have been enlightened today! Today is the day that I found how to make my life easier by managing my finances with the very slick Mint service at www.mint.com. I had Mint suck in my credit card account and it tooks seconds to analyze my spending pattern over the past month. Very insightful indeed! When I get some more time, I plan on linking all of my other accounts which contain my assets. This might be the first tool that I use that will actually help me (as opposed to Quicken) implement a sane (read: useful) budget!

Financial, Personal enlightenment, Mint

So if you had to say what is the most important thing to you in life, what would you say? Money, fame, power, a great job, etc? Have you obtained these things in life? Have they brought you great satisfaction, or only temporary? I don’t know about you, but I find myself in the daily grind of life obtaining all of these things but feeling very strangely unsatisfied by them. Even kept in a healthy perspective, I just don’t find these things all that great. Even things that are supposed to bring fulfillment like church, doing things with friends, family, etc, don’t necessarily return on their promise. But that’s when I discovered a secret. It’s not about these things bringing something to you that you lack (though they can do that), it’s about your expectations changing about these things. It’s your perspective on whether these things will control you. Are you confident on your own without these external [systems] dictating your life? Think about that and drop me a comment. I think I might expand some more on this topic soon. 

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