Monday, March 25, 2013

"...Out Like a Lamb!?"

There is an old saying about the month of March coming "in like a lion" and going "out like a lamb".  The current Farmers Almanac is predicting  "[March]24th-27th. Some showers, especially Great Lakes, then fair."  Huh.  We have several inches of snow on the ground, and Intellicast predicts maybe 40s this week.  They predict high 40s & low 50s on March 30-31.  So, maybe, a lamb at the very end of the month.
A soggy, muddy, lamb.

Here at the Penguin Farm, we are working on the next SPOCS release.  The GUI console is being improved, a number of bugs have been found and swatted.  One odd thing I have noticed with my first dual-core Penguin, is the USB serial interface operates intermittently.  Sometimes, SPOCS can't open the serial port.  One of the improvements to the console shows you if SPOCS can use the ports you assigned in the SPOCS.SET file.  I made sure that the user SPOCS belongs to the DIALOUT user group.  That's the group that serial ports belong to.  SPARCL10 is an old single-core machine, and it's USB dongle works great.  I use it to read the temperature board.  Hmm.  More later.