The kits are selling for $75 each, and include all of the parts required to build a functional ybox2.

Here is the cool part: You don't need any extra tools to reflash the firmware! The EEPROM in the kit comes preloaded with an ethernet bootloader I wrote, which allows you to upload new firmware to the device over the network! This works so well that over the past month or so I've used my prop-plug only two or three times. 90% of my development—including development of the bootloader—has been over the network.

More information is available in the FAQ.

UPDATE: The ybox2 made it on Engadget!! w00t!

This should put a stop to that.

It works! Woo-hoo! Now comes the hard part: the Propeller TCP/IP stack.

Keep in mind that this is just a prototype. The next version will be cooler.

Oh. Maybe not. Well, it was pretty cool.

There is a special place in my heart for the original ybox, as it is what finally got me into tinkering with microcontrollers. However, the more I've learned, the more things I can find wrong with it's current design:

• It's expensive! The XPort component is $51 in single quantities!
• The XPort shielding isn't properly grounded on the original PCB, so if you have stray VDD wire touch the XPort, you just fried a $51 part! (I speak from experience)
• The PCB seems largely autorouted, with lots of vias and unnecessarily long traces for the video signal.
• Did I mention it was expensive?

So I've set out to make a better and less expensive networked set-top box in an altoids tin. It should be around $40 cheaper to build. This is what the board is looking like:

Ain't it beautiful? Anyone care to guess what it does?

Support for the Teredo protocol is actually in WindowsXP, but it is disabled by default. However, that has changed for Windows Vista—where IPv6 and Teredo are enabled by default². This is important because this means that relatively soon, widespread deployment of IPv6 will become a reality. This is great for Windows users, but what about other platforms?

Miredo is an open-source (GPL) user-space teredo implementation for linux and BSD. Someone went thru the effort to get miredo to work on MacOS X, but setting it up is not something your average joe can accomplish. What is needed is an installer package.

Well, that's exactly what I'm putting together. I'm releasing a prerelease version of the package today for early-adopters and power-users. You just download it, install it, and you should have IPv6 connectivity.

IMPORTANT: This package is a prerelease version intended for early adopters, and is NOT intended for widespread deployment. If you decide to install and use this experimental package, you should subscribe to the miredo mailing list, paying serious attention to any security advisories.

Is this project still Up and Running. I'm interested in Synfig. I want to create some animations (and tutorials) but there are no movements in this project for couple months. I need some documentation for this app. There are a lot of things that can't intuivly learn only just by looking at the program. (I tried to document some features on Wiki). I think the major problem to this project is the missing documentation (not the people). I think there are a lot of people just like me who tried to figure out how this app. work ... and give up. So .. is there anyone in this project ...

The project is not dead per-se, but I am not able to contribute to it in any significant capacity any more other than to be a resource for anyone with questions. Paul Wise(aka: Pabs), who has all but taken over managing the project, is currently on a three-month long sailing trip. Things have grown a bit stagnant without him.

Honestly, I think the biggest issue with Synfig is usability and stability. Resolve those issues, and people will spontaneously submit documentation and tutorials. At the moment, it is so obtuse that it turns people off before they understand it enough to contribute. They just see pretty pictures and videos and scratch their heads wondering how my company did so.

It is a bad situation which makes my heart sink. I'd love to contribute more to the project, but I don't have the time or the energy to do so unless it:

1. Is directly related to something related to my job, or
2. It becomes a significant source of income.

I realize that the sorry state of the website is stunting the growth of the Synfig community, and I'd like to do something about that (ie: having a website with a forum). Unfortunately that goal is months away, at least.

Ultimately what is needed is for some people to help set up and maintain a real community-oriented website. I cannot be the driving force behind Synfig right now or in the foreseeable future, so some other qualified individual (or group of individuals) needs to take over daily management and maintenance.

Anyway, I'd just like to remind people about the IRC channel, #synfig on Freenode. If you are a Jabber user like myself, you can join the channel thru my freenode gateway as well.

Making a website secure is a surprisingly non-trivial task that requires plenty of thought and discipline. What makes it worse is that it is all too easy to create gaping security holes without realizing it.

Implementing a captcha seems like an obvious next step, but I know that many people are greatly annoyed by them. Writing an Akismet plugin is another option as well.

Muah-hah-hah!

UPDATE: MySpace sucks. Their website is a mess and maintaing the syndication plugin is more trouble than it's worth. I spend several hours hacking on it only to get something that works on 1 our of 20 attempts. I sat down and wrote an OkCupid syndication plug-in which worked perfectly in around 30 minutes. Conclusion? MySpace sucks.

Oh well. Something like this was bound to happen at some point when you "roll your own" solution. Good thing I have the photos backed up elsewhere--but I'll have to re-add them all which will take forever.

So, you'll be seeing A LOT of broken images on the website until I can find some time to start re-building my online photo database, which may be a few days.

This is of course coming right after I made a post with a bunch of pictures of me hanging out with my friends, heh. Social interaction I've learned to be a prerequisite to sanity, so I don't consider it optional.