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Rembrandt |
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8/23/2006 4:12 PM |
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Mindless rantings of a dizzy geek. |
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Trees Suck. |
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By Rembrandt on
3/30/2007 10:26 PM
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Yeay ! It is allergy season! Growing up in the apparently barren desert that is New England, I had never suffered from this malady. Trees were non-existent in this fantasy land. [Government regulation was a lot harder to find too .. cause you know, you could maybe .. smoke in your car there, if you wanted.]
Not so in wonderful Maryland, land of incredibly mutated toxic pollen. Toxic pollen that swarms around your head like locusts amongst .. well .. anything green. Toxic pollen that makes your lungs weep fluid back up into your throat, fluid that is secretly battery acid.
Great stuff.
The crappy part is Vincent apparently is affected by this as well. Every time I cough, he coughs, horrible phlegm filled coughs because he does not understand yet to spit it out. Coughs that wake him, and thus .. US, up in the middle of the night.
Trees suck sometimes.
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Who is John Galt ? |
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By Rembrandt on
3/18/2007 10:54 PM
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Tonight, after being encouraged by my wife, and shamed by my closest sister's "Who is John Galt?" bumper sticker [Or horrified should it be my brother-in-law's], I brewed myself a cup of tea, grabbed a cigar out of my humidor, and retired to the garage. With the pellet stove churning out heat, and the cigar being a bit stronger than I expected, I started reading the first book published by a Soviet Union refugee. The forward states that Ayn Rand wrote "We the Living" first because at 25 it was something she was familiar with; The collapse of Russia into the Soviet Union. Consuming a potent toro while drinking tea, my Russian heritage felt a little bourgeoisie twinge as I began my road to literary recovery. For a brief moment in time, I remembered who I used to be, how I used to think, and debated about how much the old me might like the 'new' me. Its been so long since I was a literary man, you see ... 0's and 1's don't have the same texture.
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Even two year olds understand ... |
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By Rembrandt on
3/18/2007 9:21 PM
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 Today I was wearing a shirt I bought from www.Threadless.com called 'Planetary Status'.
Sometime around 10:30 in the morning my two year old pointed at my shirt and asked : "Whats that ?"
I told him that (what he was pointing to) was the sun, and the sun and all the other planets in the sky were all happy, but Pluto (and I pointed to Pluto) was sad because people decided he was not a planet anymore. He laughed and said "The sun is smiling." and that was that ..
Until about 9:00 at night, just before he went to bed. He pointed at my shirt and said in a quiet voice : "Mom, Pluto is sad because he is no longer a planet." Those words exactly. This isn't the first time he has done something like that. But its the first time he had a response that he had obviously thought about for a while.
Man, science rocks !
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Oh .. the ideas just keep coming. |
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Project: Fireworks Control Panel
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By Rembrandt on
3/17/2007 9:49 PM
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Oh I had a cool idea this morning.
Every forth of July we shoot off fire works, and each year we get better at it. We make better choices for the pyrotechnics, we are faster with setup and tear down, and we are safer.
But i never get to sit back and RELAX and watch them.
This year, that will change, as I think it would be easy to build a device that will allow me to use a laptop to set the things off, in series even !
I did a search on www.patentmonkey.com for electric firework ignitors and this is all I came up with.
I figure using some of the stuff I cooked up with my mask ideas, I could easily rig up something that would let me sit in relative comfort on our (hopefully new) deck in the yard with everyone else, and fire off the things from 80 ish feet away.
Part of the design would be having a webcam out there to monitor stuff to make sure nothing goes horribly wrong.
I'll let you know more as I come up with it.
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Video Games .. Video Checklists |
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By Rembrandt on
3/13/2007 10:35 AM
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Dead rising is almost 80% done, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance is holding at 80% as well. After I finish this mission against the Zombies, I will go back to fighting crime again, in attempt to clear the 6 or so awards I have left in superhero land.
Its no secret that I both love and hate Microsoft's Achievements Lists for their games. On one hand, they push me to totally FINISH a game, even if its frustrating and difficult. They also give me a visual checklist of thngs to accomplish. "O.K. I rescued 50 people from the Zombie horde, cool." [check]
However, sometimes, the achievements are totally unfair. I don't mind hard, hard is ok. Getting 100% of Lego Starwars II was HARD. Getting all the gaps in Tony Hawk American Wasteland, also very hard. Those are worth it to do, just for the 'I did it' factor. I don't like acheivements like 'Score Kingpin in Online Play' (Saints Row) or 'Win 25 arcade mode games with 3 other people' (Marvel Ultimate Alliance). While these achievements are 'do-able' they are certainly dependant upon other factors, and if you don't really LIKE online play, or none of your friends have the game, its gonna take a LOT longer. I don't want to be forced to play Saint's Row online for 4 weeks to get an award.
But my REAL beef here .. Is games like Chromehounds. Where 80% of the awards are for online play. Things like 'Be the highest rank in your country's standings at wars end.' Basically, have the highest score over anyone playing.
THAT .. is absurd. Sure, the people who get that achievement can brag. They can brag about the WEEKS a war lasts, and how they played all the time. Chromehounds is FULL of stupid awards like this :( And the real kicker is, if the game was AWESOME - like counter-strike AWESOME, they might have been justified putting those awards in. However, the game sucks ass. Its slow, ponderous, and not exciting. Tactics are very important, but most of the people there are NOT casual gamers, so joining a squad just to play with people who are not singles - not gonna happen.
I Blame it all on Jerry (Tycho) from Penny-Arcade, he was the one who sang so highly of its praises. Normally I agree on most of his game choices .. aside from the crafting soup obsession he tends to have, which saddly, I believe Chromehounds falls into.
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Step One .. Don't Panic |
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Project: Adventurers' Club Masks
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By Rembrandt on
3/12/2007 10:41 PM
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Well, I finally got a working PICKit 2 from Microchip. It took me a few days to understand how the PICBASIC compiler works with the programming environment. Microchip's IDE environment was confusing as hell, and, of course, came with almost NO documentation.
Following one of the books I have, I started using MicroCode Studio [Free] with PicBasic Pro Compiler from melabs.com [Free]. I had to wait a few days for my free samples to come in from Microchip, as none of the chips I had bought for my programmer worked with the free compiler. The registered version of the compiler that works with everything runs about $230.00 .. So free chips it is, until my code demands more lines or better chips.
After about 2 days I *FINALLY* got a helloworld ... a blinking LED. WOOT.
That rapidly turned into a blinking light on a second chip when a pin on the first chip was +5v. Which soon turned into the second chip getting power, and the +5v pin reading via a cat-5 cable. *cool*.
Tonight while waiting for the USPTO to update .. I played around with serial communication between two chips. [sending only numbers, no ascii chars yet.]
As I don't have a usb <-> serial cable yet [but will soon $4.00 off ebay] I had to do all my debugging with LED's. 1/2 way though the project some wierdness occoured. My circut spontaniously loses power ? or something wierd. if I move the .1uf capacater i have across Vdd and Vss on the first chip [or totally remove and put it back] the circut starts going again. Sometimes if i touch the metal housing the breadboards are attached to, that will reset it too. Either the breadboards are cheap [I hope not, it was like $40.00] or I might have hurt one of the chips somehow .. regardless ..
Tonight's final result was that I have a PIC16f627A talking to a PIC16f876A via Serial communications. The 876A [chip two] will flash a green LED if it receives a value of 8, with a double flash for a value of 7. It flashes a red LED for any other value.
Chip A can send 7,8, or 125, determined by the presence or lack of +5v on two pins, over the serial communications pin.
Works pretty good.
What does this get me ? one might ask :
I know I can send Power [+5v], Pin voltages, and Serial Communication over Cat-5.
I know I can, using jumpers or a DIP switch array, set the address on a PIC, and then communicate that address to another chip.
I know that, on another chip, I can do something depending on the value of an address.
What this gets me bigger picture wise, is the ability to make a 'routing' circutboard with multiple cat-5 jacks. These jacks can be connected to child boards - which can be set with an address via dip switches. When a command is sent to the main chip on the router board, I can compare the 'target address' of the command with any of the child boards attached to the router board, and send the command accordingly.
Depending on how I truncate the command string, I can even have programmable sub circuts on the child board, to fire off selected events .. so I'm thinking via serial communication my commands might look like this :
[address of child].[address of child target].[command values]*
Where command values are whatever I need for the sub circut. [analog voltage, pin on .. whatever]
This might let me standardize commands .. for example maybe a command of 'blink eye' might have a command value of 57. [regardless of if a mask has that ability] so if I wanted all masks who COULD blink, TO blink, I wouldn't have to program each one, I would just send the command out to ALL masks, ALL Targets with command 57.
The ones that could blink, would.
I havent really gotten to far in thinking the language behind all this out quite yet. :P I need talking circuts first.
Then .. I need masks - but I have been thinking of ways to make them efficiently. Probably casting with Bondo and plaster molds - as they would be neigh-unbreakable - and I could saw and cut them into 'moving' parts without losing integrety easily.
Besides, 1 gallon of bondo is like $15 .. thats 1-2 good sized masks.
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Hot Tub - 1, Me - 0 |
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Project: Hot Tub Rewire
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By Rembrandt on
2/19/2007 1:37 PM
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So, I spent part of Saturday checking out the wiring of the hot tub.
The first thing I discovered, was that the GFCI switch that controls the whole thing had a crack that ran 80% of the length of the housing.
Mystery #1 solved why it wouldn't run.
The wires leading to this switch were also exposed (no insulation) about 3/4 an inch before they were connected, AND this exposed wiring was freyed about 50% of the way through.
Mystery #2 solved.
I wish I had taken a photograph, it would probably be very useful in the court case that will most likley result from me not paying the ripp off hot tub place.
The GFCI should have been the FIRST thing a repair guy whould have checked, especially if it was triggering all the time. The fact that components burned out after he installed them doesnt bode well .. It says that there is a short somewhere eating up voltage.
[A short which I haven't found yet, but at least i have been able to jury rig the hot tub to keep it from freezing, its not safe to USE, but at least it wont freeze solid and screw stuff up.]
More to follow.
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I love when you cant even PAY someone to fix something. |
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Project: Hot Tub Rewire
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By Rembrandt on
2/16/2007 1:52 PM
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Anytime Spa and Pools. Strike them from my list of companies to use. They came out last year to fix a broken filter casing, and ever since - our hot tub hasnt been right. This season - they came out to fix a burned out heating element, which I am very suspicious of, as its burned out twice since the cannister replacement. Possibly a leak ? who knows.
They obviously haven't diagnosed the problem. They came out 2 days later to fix a burned out switch.
Last night I noticed .. again .. that the hot tub wasnt hot .. or running.
Great. At least I haven't paid their invoice yet. I need to get on the phone with them to see what their warantee is on parts etc. I have no intention of paying for botched labor, nor defective parts for that matter. Their tech wasn't able to diagnose the problem, the hot tub doesnt work, i'm not putting more money in the kitty.
Tomorrow I'm going to crack open the wiring to see if *I* can fix the damn thing. its got to be a short somewhere, or water in the line as the GFI keeps tripping.
Nice.
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It all starts with an Idea. |
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Project: Adventurers' Club Masks
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By Rembrandt on
2/16/2007 12:07 PM
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I'm not sure who here has been to The Adventurers' Club in Downtown Disney Orlando.
I've
gone a few times, its a fun place - because they like to play with the
drunks. There are all kinds of 'tricks' like barstools that move, or
strange lighting effects.
My favorite, is a room called the
'Mask' room, where there are a bunch of audioanimatronic masks covering
the walls. every once in a while, one moves. It blinks, or its eyes
light up, or it closes its mouth .. etc .. not enough so that you would
really notice, but enough so out of the corner of your eye (especially
if you have been drinking) you might say .. 'hey .. did that just move
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Needless to say, I was fascinated with this room BEFORE I went to disney with my best friend and his (now X) wife.
Kevin suggested out loud (after a few beers) 'How cool would it be to build something like this !'
Man .. what a horrible thing to say.
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