I have a customer who is using the Celeros XT816 3U ExtremeSAN iSCSI based IP SAN appliance. They purchased it because it had an exceedingly good price/storage price point. They had original plans to use it as a primary storage unit for use with VMWare ESX server. As it turns out, after much testing, and a few chats with tech-support, it won't work in such an arrangement with the customer's version of software. They are in the process of gaining access to Celeros' Knowledge Portal to obtain some updates.
Continue reading "Celeros XT816" »
As of this writing, you can't google for it, but the Inquirer has an article on a Open Source Linux based Cellphone with built-in GPS. There isn't much information there, but then I remembered that the key site for Linux based devices would be from the people at LinuxDevices.com who have an article with some real details in it regarding the OpenMoKo. They talk about the development platform being in pre-release, I'm wondering when hardware becomes available.
Continue reading "OpenMoKo: Open Source Cellphone" »
Monday, November 6. 2006
Well, Bermuda, that is. But I should take one step back yet. I had to go back to my paperwork to see just how long I've been here in Bermuda. Ah, yes. My rent contract came up for renewal back this June. So ... a few more calculations, and it turns out I was here off and on from the beginning of 2004, and settled in full time during June 2004. Almost three years. Three very fast years.
Continue reading "What Is it Like" »
This was not a pleasant experience. No wonder I like CLI over GUI interfaces. With a command line, I get feedback as to what I'm doing wrong. With Cisco's SDM, it has some rudimentary user-interface checks before performing a post. On the other end, if you haven't put something into the UI correctly, at least for the wireless config pages, you don't even get a 'hey dummy' message, it just plain ignores you. No feedback, no hints, no nothing.
I simply wanted to get my wireless bit bridged to the vlan bit. The first step is to
select the setting in SDM GUI to bridge the wireless with the wired. This will create the
normal BVI interface. No problem there. After that, you go into the wireless configuration
web pages. I simply wanted to get a WPA-PSK (Pre-Shared Key) into the unit. There is no
obvious way to accomplish that task.
Continue reading "Configuring Wireless on Cisco 871W with SDM" »
Sunday, November 5. 2006
Cisco doesn't store their phone serial numbers anywhere. So, for companies wishing to obtain SmartNet for their installed base of telephones, there aren't too many ready ways of obtaining those serial numbers, from a first time perspective.
To help one customer out of a bind, I did a couple of very quick and dirty scripts to scan the network for
phone devices. I know it works for 7912's, 7940's, 7960's, 7970's and ATA adaptors.
I didn't realize until later that instead of scanning the human readable pages, I could have scanned the xml
pages for the information. Oh, well. That will be for the next version.
To operate, you'll need a Perl interpreter and a couple of libraries off CPAN. Then edit
findphones.pl and
supply the ip address ranges you'd like to scan. Run the script and send STDOUT to a file.
Then run the file through
filterphone.pl to get a model
number and serial number list.
Cisco's CP-7935 and CP-7936 conference phone serial numbers are simply their mac addresses, which is easy to
pull out of Callmanager.
Well they aren't flavour bugs per-se. They are more like misunderstandings. Well, not that either. The word will come to me. My issue is that I have the two flavours: .blog and .article. Each with their own foot and head pieces. Now I have to figure out how to meld the two into one so that I don't have to update code in two different places when ever I make adjustments to the web site.
Continue reading "Flavour Bugs" »
So far, Blosxom has behaved quite nicely. It is amazing how such a compact application can effectively do so much. One addition I've wanted to add in order to make this site a two way street is WriteBacks. There were a few items in the Blosxom Plugin Registry, but have been a bit uncertain as to the reliability of the code, as it really hasn't been updated in quite some time. I finally did come across a link to Kevin Scaldeferri's Blog, from the Blosxom User Group Blog. He has a plugin, with recent updates which provides WriteGack capability.
Continue reading "Blosxom WriteBacks" »
I installed Todd Larason's Categories Plugin, and I'd say it is another very easy winner. I used the 'breadcrumbs' version rather than the heavily indented and space consuming 'categories' version.
Continue reading "Blosxom Categories" »
I installed Todd Larason's Calendar, changed a value in the config file to turn off caching, put two lines of code in my story.flavour file, and presto, calendars. I wish all software were this easy.
Continue reading "Blosxom Calendar" »
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- For the > type >
- For the © type ©
- For the & type &
- For the " type "
Saturday, November 4. 2006
From a technical analysis perspective, I think the best book I've ever purchased is Bollinger on Bollinger Bands by John Bollinger. It's 228 pages covers a number of interesting concepts. It does indeed cover the concept for which Bollinger is famous: the volatility indicating Bollinger Bands. Since signals typically require corroborating evidence, he makes use of Arthur A. Merrill's Five Point Patterns as well as a number of different volume indicators.
Continue reading "Bollinger on Bollinger Bands" »
When I first started looking into developing an Automated Trading Strategy, I started by building some historical data acquisition routines in Perl. The routines were designed to communicate with DTN/IQFeed's servers. I then started gaining access to their real time data. At that point, I started to realize how daunting was the project I started on. More realizations were yet to come.
Continue reading "IQFeed Provider for SmartQuant" »
Thursday, November 2. 2006
For an Automated Trading system I've been developing, I've come across the fact that
Fuzzy Logic may assist in making decisions on how to trade at particular times of the day
depending upon what conditions are predominant.
Amazon has a bunch of theoretical books, but hardly any at all for the practical
practitioner. I did purchase The Fuzzy Systems Handbook, 2nd Ed by Earl Cox. I'm about
half way through it now. I've got
through all the bits that make up the basic fuzzy sets. The sections are liberally
sprinkled with C++ code. I'm not sure how much of it will compile in today's tools. The
book was written back in the age of Windows 98. On the other hand, the code snippets are
readable for one needs to understand what is happening in the commentary.
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I had approached the subject from a different perspective though. I started by searching
for code libraries. I came across FLUtE: Fuzzy Logic Ultimate Engine. The fellow has written a code library
in C#. The code does compile in Microsoft Visual Studio with the v2.0 run time libraries.
Coding new stuff in it may be somewhat of a challenge as the documentation is quite sparse.
But then again, that is par for the course.
After taking a look at the modules, I came across something called 'hedging'. At the
time, I didn't know what it was all about. And that prompted me to look for some good
practioner's books. Hence the book I referenced above. Hedging, is obvious once you think
about it. It is adding fuzziness to an existing fuzzy rule. The concept is well described
in the book.
The book doesn't exactly flow from front to back. For instance, during the beginning
of the book, the author introduces a
concept called alpha-cuts, and incorporates its use in to the development and discussion of
fuzzy rules.. I can see what they do, but where and how they are applied, I'm still not
exactly certain. And I'm up to page 344 now. There have been some hints, but no concrete
usage criteria. I'm sure it will become clear as I move along in the book.
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It was good that I did some prior reading, otherwise I think I would have been lost with
the onslaught of information. I recall one of the first things I read was the document
regarding the Mathworks Fuzzy Logic Toolbox. You can review the document in html or as
a complete pdf document. In the pdf version, on page 56 (2-26), they have an excellent
drawing summarizing how everything fits together.
Another book that helped fill in the gaps is An Introduction to Fuzzy Logic For Practical
Applications by Kuzuo Tanaka. It is quite expensive for its 138 pages, but does have some
useful background info. In the end, it is a good pocket guide for starters. It did leave me
thinking that there were holes in the information presented. Earl Cox's book has filled in
some of those gaps.
Having said all that, I'm just beginning to build the environment for using fuzzy logic
in my trading solution. Although the FLUtE code looks like it could work, I'm going to try
my hand at some basic C# code for fuzzy rules and rulesets to get a feel for what is needed.
Once that is in place, I think I can then use a Genetic Programming engine I wrote to see if
I can optimize some rule selections.
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