Blogger has introduced a new experimental interface that allows users to test all the new features that Blogger is currently working on. It’s called Blogger in draft, and it’s almost like Google Labs!

The interface is available for everyone at http://draft.blogger.com/

The first introduced beta feature is Video Upload! Although am not a big fan of blog videos, native host support for videos must be cool. The Video Upload tool is available in the post editor, right next to the image upload tool.

For more information on this service, check the official blog.

You can also take a look on the video player by checking this post. It looks great and better: it doesn’t link to outside sites :)

This is how a friend and I were trying to drive a DC motor and ended up making our first wireless broadcast without even knowing it! It took me one day after to figure out what really happened …

That day, we went down to Al-Abdali, bought some electronic components, and came back to my place to try them up. We were trying to drive a DC motor and control its speed using a PIC microcontroller. The circuit we connected was something like this:


The circuit was basically a common-collector (buffer) arrangement that is intended to switch the motor on/off using a low-current microcontroller logic signal. It worked perfectly for still logic values.

As soon as that worked, we reprogrammed the microcontroller to generate an oscillating signal in an attempt to drive the motor at a lower speed. We used Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) which is a technique that involves changing the duty cycle of a rectangular signal in order to change its DC average. Supplying a motor with a rectangular signal of amplitude 5 volts and 50% duty cycle is like giving it 2.5 effective DC volts. Using the microcontroller we can easily change the duty cycle (0 to 100%) of the control signal and thus change the effective amount of DC voltage delivered to the motor.

It sounds cool but unfortunately it didn’t work using our design (I found later that the switching times for the BJT transistor we used were too long and couldn’t match the frequency of the control signal, we should have used MOSFETs).

Anyway, after we re-programmed the microcontroller to use PWM, the motor became motionless and we started testing the pins with the voltmeter. My friend connected the voltmeter probe to the base of the transistor and there it happened …

We heard a “beep” going out from somewhere!

It wasn’t the circuit … it wasn’t the voltmeter … and it wasn’t the power supply. The sound actually came from the computer speakers that were right next to us.

It was a bit weird … the computer had no connection whatsoever with what we were doing and the sound was produced only when the voltmeter probe was connected to that specific pin.

I was too tired and exhausted that time that I just didn’t bother to find out what that was. We ignored the sound, and kept experimenting with the motor for some time.

The next day I paid it a little thought and found out what was that about …

Whenever the voltmeter probe was connected to the base of the transistor, it was connected to the PWM signal. Since tiny currents flow into the base of the transistor and inside the voltmeter, the probe picked up the entire signal and worked as an antenna! It broadcasted a rectangular periodic signal which, according to Fourier, is an infinite sum of sinusoidals at integer multiples of its fundamental frequency. The frequency we used was 500 Hz, which is pretty low, and so the resulting harmonics were at 500, 1000, 1500 Hz and so on. Periodic signals with low frequencies have denser frequency spectra. The frequency we used, along with its harmonics, was in the audible frequency range and was thus easily picked by the computer’s sound card!

It sounds weird but that’s what actually happened!

It’s not like we broadcasted anything meaningful, but as far as we went, that was an official monotonic test signal transmission :P

This wasn’t pretty much the first thing I wanted to post about since I came back but yup … my younger brother finally did it … he drove my car to its final destination … and left it there, lying dead, waiting to be sold for good.

For whoever of you that may be concerned, he got out without a scratch, but not after I got my hands on him. I just hope I didn’t scare the neighbors too much :)

Most of my friends already know about this, my younger brother (who still didn’t acquire his driving license) has been driving for almost a year. My advices and warnings to my parents about that went totally useless. All I can say is that sometimes my parents weren’t strict enough to realize evident cruel facts and take the necessary actions.

Two years ago, he totaled a car we had back then. He was too young and was going to be sentenced to jail haven’t I posed as driver infront of my parents and the police. My driving license was taken by the police and I went into so much trouble trying to have it back that I stopped trying, and I didn’t get it back till the day. Add to that I was blamed by my parents for my reckless driving!

So anyway, we bought our 318i a couple of years ago. My parents registered it under my name. It was truly a fine car … a catch; solid body, magnificent paint, and in a great shape for a BMW that spent an age with guy drivers. My brother was implicitly denied to ride. One day I went to Karak for a week or so, and came back to find him out with the car somewhere. Apparently, my parents, wise enough, decided he shall be allowed to drive now =)

The reckless driving and the skidding started soon after. One day, later on, he scratched its flawless pearly paint. Another day he got a bumper hit. Not so-long after he smashed it, got a tire exploded, hit the axis, bumped it over the roads … once, twice, and every now and then on a one year run. The maintenance rounds couldn’t outperform my younger brother’s driving.

My parents, seemingly seeing these as a series of unfortunate events, didn’t respond to the warnings, and willingly gave him full freedom as to whatever concerns the car.

I, having no time to pay attention to what goes on and off with the car, couldn’t but watch my car die bit by bit … like a leaf in fall … drops off, dries and discolors slowly as life is being sucked away from its veins.

Today my car made it to its terminal stop. Luckily no one got harmed. My father convinced me to let go of the car as I, in the first place, will leave Jordan after I graduate and will eventually be losing it then.

The car was never my problem … something that my parents still fail to understand :)

I’ve always imagined cars in the streets as living entities, each with its own attributes, skills, and mood! A good car … a nice car … an angry car … a powerful car … For me, my BMW was my colour, had my skills, and was perfectly my mood. The way I thought of it, the driver was the part that animated the car, but was also the part the held its character, skills, and gave it its human impressions, which is more important than the colour, the shape, the engine, or any of the physical details of the car.

Putting it my way, no matter what happens to the car, as long as the driver is alive, the same car will always be reborn … in a different form maybe :)