Date:	2009-05-21 05:07
Subject:	BubblePainter and BubblePump!
Security:	Public
Mood:	accomplished

the final project for Physical Computing has been completed!  Below, the code. 

No significant changes.  Just minor bits and bobs altered for smoothness.

( Code!Collapse )

Physical Computing's second major project, Project Runway, has been almost completed!  I'm off to bed for now, but here's the current state of affairs:

Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcs7928/sets/72157616412853658/

The ring is currently able to act as an accelerometer-based pendulum during its worn state.  It will keep three LEDs pointing toward the floor when it is worn. 

If, for some reason, the ring is left untouched for a period of one minute or more, it will settle into an idle routine where it demonstrates some of its capabilities.  Each of its 16 LEDs, half of which are tri-color, are individually addressable.  The colored LEDs are controlled as a group, but can be color-shifted individually through some careful switching.  This is not demonstrated, as it was a pain to code and not nearly worth the effort to execute in any visually pleasing manner.

More details to follow once less weary.

And now for that gloriously huge chunk of code: 

( Mountains of CodeCollapse )

Wow, a new tag! This is the initial post for the new Physical Computing course blog thinger. It'll likely give me the excuse I didn't really need to get more active here, but I'll also be posting up my projects and dev stuffs as I go along. So far, tinkering with the little controller has been a blast. In fact, I just now realized how awfully late it is after having tinkered with it for some hours.

Future content shall arrive!

Date:	2008-11-20 03:47
Subject:	Movie Chain time!
Security:	Public
Mood:	content

It has begun. If you are not familiar with the concept of a movie chain, it is pretty straightforward and simple. You start off with a movie (any movie) and watch it through. From this movie you pick a cast or upper-level production staff member, or even a major plot or setting and watch a movie involving that concept or individual. There is no repetition of these links as a means by which to lead into a new movie, but you can certainly watch movies involving them.

We started off a bit light, having an urge to watch Talladega nights for Gary Cole's never underwhelming screen presence, and soon adopted the idea of watching Elf. From there, we segued into HHGTTG, and from that to Matchstick Men (One of my favorite movies, tragically ignored by nearly the entire world). I might actually pull a qpine and review them, but that requires effort. My hope is that we'll be able to make this chain at least 100 films long. I'll post updates as necessary to carry it onward.

Talladega Nights (Beginning)
Elf (Will Ferrel)
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Zoey Deschanel [who did a really terrible job in the film, by the way])
Matchstick Men (Sam Rockwell)

Up next, Gone In 60 Seconds (The Remake, Nicolas Cage)

4/100 Completed.

Some random browsing ended up pointing me at a nifty little ipod/iphone app that offered blog viewing and posting which I have decided to give a try. So far, it has demonstrated a decent level of basic functionality and looks like it will give me a bit of a lesson in the onscreen keyboard. Gadgets are neat.

I'd still never buy an iPod touch as an mp3 player, but as a pda it is pretty decent.the spellcheck system is pretty terrible, though.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

I just had to put this out here for those of my friends who have had the joy of following Bibleman...

The Venture Brothers managed to produce one of the finest parodies of our beloved (and so subtly religious) show in the first part of their season finale.

For those interested, compare clips after the jump.


I'm in love.( See the terrible truth after a quick message from our sponsors!Collapse )

For those of you who are (apparently) interested in my lack of posting, I really don't have anything to talk about.  Really.  There's pretty much nothing going on in my life worth mentioning right now. 

So I'm bored, still wandering the web aimlessly...attempting to get the boat aligned and have some new shoes installed.  That'll be fun. 

Ok, not so original. but still.

Date:	2007-02-25 03:23
Subject:	Tell me about us...
Security:	Public
Mood:	sick

Blatantly stolen from callistazm's myspace account.

1. Who are you?
2. Are we friends?
3. When and how did we meet?
4. Do you have a crush on me?
5. Would you kiss me?
6. Give me a nickname and explain why you picked it.
7. Describe me in one word.
8. What was your first impression?
9. Do you still think that way about me now?
10. What reminds you of me?
11. If you could give me anything what would it be?
12. How well do you know me?
13. When is the last time you saw me?
14. Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn't?
15. Are you going to put this on your blog and see what I say about you?
16. Any last comments?

Repost as you wish, but prod me in the comments if you want me to respond.  My internet access is going to be...limited in the near future.

In other news, the illness continues.  My body has been making strides in no particular direction, and the sinus troubles persist as they always have.  In fact, the recent trip to the doc has me taking off work straight through Wednesday.  Pretty unhappy, I am.  If I can get myself up to it, I'm moving out of this (thoughtfully constructed) shit hole.  I'm sick and tired of living here, and even if it's only one more week, I firmly believe that this place is what's stopping me heal.  I can't breathe, I can't sleep...and the constant smoking of those around me is just not making it any less painful.  Enough is enough.

So I just found out a few minutes ago that my roommate in Rochester had his appendix removed early this morning. I'm stunned at the news but am exceptionally glad he was able to get this business taken care of promptly, and I truly hope he feels better soon. (He sounded a bit under the weather tonight, but hell, he got out of surgery only so long ago...)

Feel better, my roommate to the frosty north!

...and then there are bad days.

This was most certainly a bad day.

I don't quite feel like getting into it right now, but this damned sinus infection is causing me more trouble than it should. Now I'm on antibiotics, which is both wonderful and terrible. Lets just hope I can get to work on time tomorrow. :/

So the auto show was damned awesome, but at the same time, I'm left a bit bummed as I made the discovery that most of my photos were god awful.  The use of the polarizer knocked the f-stop up a few steps and had me shooting with too high an ISO.  Doh!  Also, generally dark photos ensued.  Sucky, I know.

But oh well.  Today I managed to get myself an IG-88!  WOOTSKI! 

Also, after searching for a damned cellular phone  headset for what felt like eighty billion years, I've finally stumbled upon a decent one.  With some modification, it should be perfect. 

Seems like a trivial complaint, but for something I use for almost 50% of my phone use (which itself is quite high), it is important to be comfortable.

Anyhoo, photos of the show will go up soon.

Your Five Variable Love Profile

Propensity for Monogamy: Your propensity for monogamy is high. You find it easy to be devoted and loyal to one person. And in return, you expect the same from who you love. Any sign of straying, and you'll end things. Experience Level: Your experience level is medium. You probably have had a couple significant loves. And you may have even had your heart broken. But you haven't really dated a wide variety of people. Dominance: Your dominance is low. This doesn't mean you're a doormat, just balanced. You know a relationship is not about getting your way. And you love to give your sweetie a lot of freedom. Cynicism: Your cynicism is low. You are an eternal optimist when it comes to love and romance. No matter how many times you've been hurt - you're never bitter. You believe in one true love, your perfect soulmate. And if you haven't found true love yet, you know you will soon. Independence: Your independence is medium. In relationships, you need both "me time" and "we time." You usually find it easy to be part of a couple. But occasionally you start to feel a little smothered.

So it seems there were some questions spawning from my last post or three, so I thought I'd answer them in one quick run.

Date:	2007-01-18 21:32
Subject:	Still here, quiet everywhere but between the ears.
Security:	Public
Mood:	bouncy

Life in the Land of Mary has been pretty boring outside of work (what a shock there), but I've been killing time with the help of my christmas gift selection: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine seasons three and four!  At the present rate, I'll be out of entertainment by the end of next week, but I will likely have gained a safe margin in my account to be able to afford the acquisition of Season 5 on DVD.  Woot!

So what's been up in the lives of everyone else?  Being employed has resulted in the loss of any time during the normal hours of the day, which are those where everyone else is active.


On one note, I am tempted to drive back to DC and strangle everyone in the HSBC branch.  I have wasted a substantial quantity of money going back and forth just to find out each time that my debit card is nowhere to be found, that the replacement has not come and appears to be nowhere near arriving.  But of course, the card being shipped to rochester never came.  Being my only means of accessing the account, an ATM card is critical to my livelyhood.  I have no nearby ATMs!  I have nothing of the sort to fall back on short of a pile of reserve cash in case something were to happen.  And while checks can still be written, their utility is nowhere near what it used to be in the real world.  Ever tried to pay for groceries with a check these days?  How about gas?  It wouldn't be such a huge problem if I just got a straight answer from the firm.  But each time I talk to them it's another story.  "Your card will remain active until the expiration date."  According to the ATM no more than five minutes later, nuh-uh.   "Your card has been shipped by DHL to your statement address."  (Bullshit on that one.  A blank envelope containing an invalidated card arrived via regular post after the first, likely sent the same way, never arrived.)   "We've shipped it to your branch.  It will be there next-day."  Wrong again.  Five days later, nothing.  "We're sorry about that.  By five days, we meant five business days."  Five days *after* that statement, nothing.  Called the branch, they've received nothing.  Frustration and poorness set in.  It's kind of sad, really.  I lived without a card in Rochester and NY for nine months, but I had a dangerously high density of branches there.  There is only one in this state, and that is dead center in DC.  Only time will tell if I can ever have a damned card.  That's it for this rant.

Moving away from that little rant, though, I'm fairly happy with things as they are.  I finally got my camera in the mail, meaning I can resume my random photo journey once again.  Combine this with the ipod and I am truly set right now!  I may have been an opponent of its continued existence, but the current generation ipod is just unbelievable.  It's fast, simple, and has just the right amount of capacity for the cost.  the battery lasts long enough for regular use without a charge and makes commuting that much more interesting.

On a bit of a tangent, my last MP3 player was an iRiver SlimX 350 MP3 CD Player.  It served me a long time, coming into use in January of 2001 when my father purchased it at costco and finally being retired recently.  This was actually preceded by a TDK MoJo MP3 cd player, purchased in late 1999/early 2000.  These were both marvelous devices which I love so very much for their reliability and general quality.  In fact, the TDK is still in service under my mother's irregular use.  And the kicker is, these are still some of the cheapest ways to play MP3s.  CD-Rs are just so damned affordable, coming out around 2.8GB/dollar for reputable brands.  And they were not much of a shift from having used CDs for so long prior, with the same cases still being used for the same storage medium.  Thanks to a tape deck adapter, both of these devices saw regular use in my various cars (excluding the first 740, which had no tape deck...only a crappy CD player which couldn't read CD-R's).  With the iPod, the library that once took up a 4" thick binder in the back seat of the car is now contained within the confines of a unit only slightly larger than my wallet, with a good four fifths of the capacity left to spare.  All I need now is finish using the space!


One thing I have come to realize lately is that while I enjoy driving the Vic around, it's just not as fun as the 740.  Sure, I didn't fit quite as well and it is more noisy, but the Crown Victoria is just a recliner on wheels.  When it is idling, I sometimes have to crack open the window to make sure the engine is even running.  It smoothly takes the highway and passes effortlessly.  But it just isn't fun.  It steers like a dead walrus and bounces its way through terrain changes.  Stopping is something to fear, and wet-weather traction is a friend who I have not heard from in a long while.  The 740 has spirit and charm, a lot of personality, and a very utilitarian nature to it.  Problem is, it gets roughly the same mileage as my current boat of a car, with improvement nowhere in sight.  Too bad the 740 ends up costing me only ever so slightly less at the pump than then half-ton heavier Vic. 

So there you go.  My stream of consciousness for the moment.  Now I return to DS9.

Callista and I are owned.

Next year, there will be hell to pay!

More details will soon follow about the last week and a half-ish of vacation, but I once again failed at life.

I actually had a conversation about just this on the way out of the house with CallistaZM.  As we were driving down the street, a thought popped into my mind that I was forgetting something.  This is fairly typical.  I often forget small items here or there.  Usually, I will leave behind a key, toll change, a charger--Trivial items I can usually replace or do without.  Hell, I was already missing my fleece, so I attributed the thought to that. 

Turns out, my camera was (and remains) behind my sister's laptop.  Oops. There goes my photo journey this weekend.

Oh, and since I own at life, I do not have any Memory Stick Pro card readers in stock.  As such, I cannot read the data stored on three memory sticks in the pouch no more than five inches from my left hand.  Double doh!  So photos most of the last week will have to wait.  Sorry for that, folks.

I have, once again, returned to Maryland for my quarter-long internship with the the company of much goodness. Having just completed my fourth day of work following the resuming of duties from last time, I'm starting to feel fairly caught up. Otherwise, there's not all that much to say.

In all honesty, I'm a bit lonely again. There's nobody really close to me here (that's neither emotionally nor physically), so I must begin the process of socializing once again.

At the very least, it's been a fairly uneventful time back, though I did get to spend the weekend with callistazm back up in Rochester in an effort to better celebrate her birthday. Of course, that also meant driving back Monday afternoon after having dealt with another financial aid mishap)

Though short, the visit back to Rochester only three days after my initial departure (last Tuesday evening, for those who wish to know) was a great way to keep myself comfortable given the rapid change of environment, something that I am generally slow to adjust to. It also gave me the chance to get a few last forgotten items from the great frosty north (which, to my amusement/comfort, was ten degrees warmer than Maryland).

Soon, I'll be making an excursion to Long Island to celebrate Christmas with the family. But what is going to rock beyond all reason is that Callista will be joining me! From the 23rd to the 1st, I'll have a gabbyling to play with. If all goes well, this'll be one of the better christmas seasons in...ever.