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It is the end of April, but we just have a rain storm, that coming down like hell...
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look on the bright side: as long as it doesn't flood or hail keeps the farmers happy, increased crop yields, cheaper groceries.
It's why the Sto Latians Welsh are always happy, cheap cabbage all year round, something they really love to sing about.
Signature ready for installation. Please Reboot now.
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So far, we have had hail, flash floods, storm damage, and 11 deaths (at least 9 due to criminal stupidity). 
The Sto Latians can keep their Brassica products; we have plenty of our own.
Ad astra - both ways!
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Could be the same one that's due to hit us this weekend.
So much for painting my fence...
Still, I guess a "yellow warning of rain" is preferable to a "warning of yellow rain".
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Quote: Long as I remember the rain been coming down.
Clouds of myst'ry pouring confusion on the ground.
Good men through the ages, trying to find the sun;
And I wonder, still I wonder, who'll stop the rain.
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It's not frogs again, is it?
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Would that it were. At least we could sell them to the French Quirmians. 
Ad astra - both ways!
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Drawing schematics again, this time the graphics hardware. I need a graphics chip (or a modern FPGA based replacement). It should be obtainable and of course offer as many features (HW sprites, resolution, colors, fonts...) as possible, while not requiring too much from the little 8 bit CPU that's going to use it.
Really great chips from the 8 bit age, like the Atari ANTIC, are almost completely unavailable, at least if you don't want to rip apart perfectly working old computers. They also often were designed to work together with a chipset and can get a little complicated when used standalone.
Up to now I have two candidates:
Motorola 6847[^]
Texas Instruments TMS9918[^]
I have a MC6847 in my parts box, but it requires a good load of external logic and offers only a limited alphanumeric mode, but decent monochrome graphics modes (vector graphics on 8 bit computers!)
The TMS9918 needs only two DRAMs and not very much more logic. It managess this video memory itself and allows no direct access from the CPU. That makes things simple. No bus drivers or potential bus collisions. It even has some simple hardware sprites and the alphanumeric modes are better than the modes of the MC6847. Nice and well, but the 'graphics' suck. Big time. Complicated addressing, complicated color restrictions...
Do you know any alternatives? Modern FPGA replacements that produce VGA output instead of composite video?
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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I have used a Texas part (might be the TMS9918 ?) that just needed RAM a clock line and go, a friend of mine was doing the programming a he said it was the hardest part and that was CGA good luck!
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That sounds very much like the TMS9918 or one of its successors. The hardware part is really simple, addressing the nonlinear graphics memory in the graphics modes on the other hand...
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Piggyback an rPi and write a service to implement your graphics through its HDMI chip? 
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A Space Shuttle on a 747 already looked funny. This would be more like carrying an elephant on the back of a donkey. The Pi would be just as fine without the old computer. To have that, I would not need to build very much.
And this reminds me to look for that picture I took of Shuttle Enterprise on the 747. I must still have it somewhere...
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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That. Was. Painful.
Wrapping calls into the Matlab app for a .Net Dll.
It creates a class, woo-hoo, or twos.
There are methods on the classes to be balled and all that OO jazz.
Hairy sphericals it does!
The 'class' is the runtime & bloody expensive to instantiate.
The 'methods' are function calls. No, not methods on underlying classes but frigging functions.
Oh and you can't pass Matlab classes out of the API so everything needs to be managed [statelessly] within the functions.
F.
M.
L.
veni bibi saltavi
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POW!
BOFF!
KAPOW!
BONK!
(You can't have a Batman thread without the right visual sound effects!)
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Did you fall into a tank of bubbling chemicals? Is your hair now green?
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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IF I had hair, I would not give a flying sidekick what colour it was! 
veni bibi saltavi
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Ok. Nobody actually ever said that it was his real hair after taking the bath in the tank...
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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MATLAB integration is a sure way to lose your faith, if you ever had any. Our guys had to use MATLAB for something, and the best way to integrate it with our application was using files and hot folders  . Our app writes files to a hot folder, spins up the MATLAB application, waits for it to exit, and then reads the results out of the created files.
Fugly? Yes. Sounds inept? Yes.
Still infinitely preferable to hosting the MATLAB runtime in our process.
Software Zen: delete this;
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This, allegedly, doesn't screw things up too much.
Also it wasn't my preferred route; but who cares.
veni bibi saltavi
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Desensitised by drug taken in blind alleyway (8)
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
modified 26-Apr-18 4:56am.
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Deadened ?
e in dead end or something like that
We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
modified 26-Apr-18 4:54am.
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One letter out ... or two letters out, your choice ...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Oh yes I can see it now - yours I think
We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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Nope! I had yesterdays, and it was your answer that gave it away - you should get the prize I think.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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