Memos From the Cube

I think I just survived an assassination attempt. But more on that in a minute.

This week I’ve been keeping rather busy – not only with work, but I decided to try out that whole socializing thing that’s been all the rage amongst humanity for the past few hundred centuries. Last Friday night, my roommate Saurab and I decided to check out the local basement party and have a drink.

In the student housing area I’m currently living in each multi-floor apartment building has a basement, which is put to some use or other; some are laundries, whilst others are managed by the student association and are used as tiny multicultural get-to-know-each-other clubs, complete with (licensed – I think) bar. It’s a bit of a party in a bottle; I was surprised that you can actually fit roughly thirty people into an area the size of two average bedrooms. Actually, it wasn’t just students stuffed in there, as there was also a tiny pool table and couch in addition to the bar. But I digress.

The party itself was everything I always imagined a student party would be (I’m showing my boring nature here – but all the parties I go to are much more measured save for the ones at Atmel) with lots of talking, laughing, spilled drinks and tiny, tiny pool. I eventually went to bed around 11 after a drinking and chatting for a while, but left my roommate with a few Kroner to have a good time while I got some much needed rest.

On Saturday, Saurab and I decided to see some more of the town – no more sitting around at home watching movies all day. Saturday afternoon we went to Centrum Bowling, and played a game. Saurab hadn’t gone bowling before – afterwards I quote “it’s much harder than it looks” – but embarrassingly, he beat me. Yes, on his first time ever. There’s nothing quite like explaining the rules of a game to someone, bowling gutter-ball after gutter-ball and have your friend win on his first try ever.

But no matter! Next we decided to have a couple of rounds of Pool on the (regular sized) table at the bowling alley, which I fared a bit better at. Tables here were rented by the minute, rather than by the regular hour or game, which I thought was a bit odd – it seemed like it’s a policy that would encourage people to stop playing quickly, although the 1.5Kr/Minute amount wasn’t too steep, so we lingered for a while.

Finally for Saturday, we went to the local cinema and saw the latest Harry Potter movie; something I saw just before leaving for Norway last November, but Saurab hadn’t had a chance to catch it. I quite enjoyed this as the cinema used digital 4K projectors, meaning the picture quality was, to quote Fry from Futurama “better resolution than real life”. I wish I was watching Avatar in 3D on this thing, since the quality of the 2D picture alone was absolutely eye-popping. A slight downer to the experience however was the cramped seating in such a small room – I think I had more leg room on the economy flight up here, and as a result my knees were screaming by the time the film ended. Definitely not a place to watch the three Matrix movies back-to-back.

Now, back to the assassination attempt. I’ve been receiving some great Birthday cards and food parcels from friends, family and nice people in general all over the Internet for a while now, which I’ve very much appreciated. But today I was greeted by a package with a difference. In my mailbox about an hour ago was a slightly heavy international package to me covered in what I can only assume is the annual output of stamps in Bulgaria:

And inside, was something I wasn’t expecting at all – some sort of home-made device, partially assembled. Imagine my confusion when I pulled out a large hand-made resin ring, lead acid battery, circuit board and some annotated schematics on a sheet of paper.

No explanation as to what it is; my first thought was that it was a bomb. Bulgaria: I apologise for whatever slight I may have inflicted upon you. My second thought was that it was some sort of metal detector – the #avr chatroom on IRC agreed:

<Tom_itx> it's a metal detector
<LoRez> that's what I said long ago
<grummund> yoy sure Tom_itx ?
<Steffanx> He mad it..
<Steffanx> *made
<grummund> ah
<Tom_itx> no but he's far enough away from me it won't affect me if it's not

Vote of confidence there. Upon plugging in the coil and battery, I was greeted by a…well, nothing much at all really. Plugging in the USB connector to my laptop yielded a virtual serial port outputting some sort of ADC data, so whatever it is, it’s doing whatever it is supposed to be doing.

Updates when I find out what exactly it is. If you sent this to me, please email me and shed some light on what exactly I have sitting in my room :).