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.

For me, I always imagined offering a custom-designed one-of-a-kind ring to my love. A unique artifact which no other woman would have on her finger.

Sophia was quite fond of Tacori's elegant and sophisticated designs. However, by buying one of the existing Tacori designs we would be certain that the ring would not be of a unique design.

So... What do we do? Have Tacori make us a custom-made, uniquely designed engagement ring?

Yep.

More details to follow.

Of course, there are plenty of other pictures from my steamboat trip. Read on to take a peek.

The com.google.android.xmppService package has been replaced by the com.google.android.gtalkservice package. This is driven by the fact that the GTalk API is not XMPP compliant, and will be less so going forward. The reason is that XMPP is too verbose and inefficient for mobile network connection, and the GTalk API will be moving to a binary encoding for the protocol between the client and the server.

I'll enumerate the implications and conclusions:

1. XMPP is verbose.
2. XMPP is inefficient for mobile networking.
3. A proprietary binary protocol would be more efficient for mobile devices.
4. The former Android xmppService API will diverge away from XMPP.

I think that this direction is unfortunate, and the reasons misguided. Read on, and I'll elaborate...

After playing around with it for a few days, I have come to a few conclusions about the device. And, for my own amusement, I'm making this post entirely from my XO-1.

But lately teredo hasn't been all it's cracked up to be, and I think I know why: BGP routes to broken teredo relays. Whichever teredo relay which happens to be covering most of North America is really busted. I can connect to Japan (kame.net) just fine. I've been having problems like this for months but it only recently got really bad, because I no longer have a teredo relay set up at my home. Even though most of the IPv6 internet has been unavailable thru teredo for months, I didn't really notice—because at least I could access my home network. Now I can't even do that.

This is a damn shame. What was once a very promising transition path from IPv4 to IPv6 has fallen into such a state of disrepair that it has become useless.

All of these problems seemed to crop up when my router died an untimely death a week or two ago. Probably related.

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?

It’s hard to work the concept of a “software update” into a cow analogy, but here goes: You willingly purchase a cow, which, the purveyor of said cow makes explicitly clear, is intended only to be used to produce milk. You buy it and figure out a way to make cheese. Two months later the purveyor of the cow offers you a pill, free of charge, which, if administered to the cow, will result in slightly better-tasting milk, but which pill comes with a stern and plainly worded warning that, if administered to a cow that had been used to produce cheese (which, recall, was made clear from the outset the cow was not intended for), the pill might kill the cow, and that, even if it doesn’t kill the cow, will prevent all previously known cheese-making hacks from working. Further, let’s stipulate that there is no medical or bovine pharmacological reason the pill could not have instead been engineered in such a way that it would enable the cow to produce the better-tasting milk and still allow the previously discovered cheese-producing hacks to continue unabated — that the reason for this frustrating limitation is, at best, marketing, and at worst, spite — and so that, in some way, the whole situation is, undeniably, at least somewhat shitty.

This time they had some of the couches we wanted on the self-serve floor and we loaded it onto two of the flat-bed carts. We glided over to one of the checkout lines and proceeded to wait for our turn at the casher.

Eventually it was our turn, and after all the items were scanned I was ready to pay. I reached for my wallet and...no wallet.

My heart sank. Not only another wasted trip for us, but another wasted trip for Sophia's dad! I fumbled around in disbelief for a few distressed moments.

"What's wrong?", I heard a voice ask. It came from the guy behind us in line.

"I forgot my wallet", I replied while fumbling around. I figured he was annoyed that I was taking so long.

"How much do you need?", he asked.

Puzzled, I answered him, "Around $700."

"I'll cover it and you can send me a check," he replied.

I was dumbstruck. There must be some catch, I thought. Or maybe I didn't hear him right. It seemed like something out of a movie, not something that happens to real people. But here I was without a wallet, and here was someone willing to help. And that's exactly what he did—he walked around the couch to the register, pulled out his American Express card and paid for it.

He handed me his drivers license so I could get his address off of it. I also wrote down my address, phone number, and email. I thanked him profusely, and we went our separate ways. His name was Stephen.

As you might imagine, this has been quite a profound experience for me. $700 is no small amount of money, and he had no way of knowing if I was even good for it. Yet he helped me anyway, and for that I am extraordinarily grateful.

The check is in the mail.

UPDATE: By the way, Stephen apparently runs the Boulder Creek Brewery in, um... Boulder Creek. If you are in the area, you should probably drop by and check it out—because it is a known fact that cool people make delicious beer. You heard it here first.