I got the finished printed circuit boards for the mystery device in the mail the other day. After putting all of the parts on the board, this is what I now have:

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

You remember the ybox, right? That do-it-yourself networked set-top box in an Altoid's tin?

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:

So ever since I did the ybox workshop at Maker Faire earlier this year, I've been messing around with micro-controllers and electronics in general. For the most part I've been limited to breadboarding and some wire-wrapping, but I want to take it to the next level—making my own PCBs! And after may hours fighting with the (incredibly un-user-friendly) Eagle Layout Editor, I think I finally have something worth sending off to the fab house...

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

As some of you may know, I've been playing around with IPv6 quite a bit lately. One specific IPv6 technology which has gotten me quite excited is the Teredo automatic tunneling protocol. Teredo allows you to obtain a globally routable IPv6 address when you only have access to the IPv4 internet, even if you are behind a NAT router¹!

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. It's that simple!

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.

I got a comment from Lucian on my post about the werewolf video on YouTube. I felt my response would affect enough people that it was worth blogging about. Here is what he wrote:

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.

It looks like the werewolf animation that we created at Voria Studios has been somewhat popular on YouTube, even apparently inspiring someone to make a video response. This makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.