Graduation cometh, and verily, in 13 days I shall walk, or die trying.

On to the fun! The small CNC Router we built a few years ago at IZation Labs is still kicking! It was used to make around 20 Wine Glass Holders for Christmas Gifts this past year. The following video shows the basic process from start to finish.

Yes. I do need to get more sleep.

-Lace

This site will serve as an uncluttered unique website to showcase my graphics based projects when they reach their absolute final stage of completion. You can find a link to it at the top of the site, too! Check it often, That’s where a lot of my finished projects will go, possibly with links back to here for posts concerning more of the in depth and nitty gritty aspects of each project!

-Lace

Well here’s your reason.

I’ve decided to halt all studies and find my way to a monastery. There I will devote my life to their ways, and come back a better man for it. True, it may be decades before my return. But I think the wait is justified. I’ve been trying to decide on this pamphlet they sent me for quite a while now, and it’s really effected me, socially. I’ve made up my mind, and no one can stop me. It has been nice knowing all of you, but I have to move forward, no matter what the cost.

In other news, Google has changed it’s name to Topeka.

-Lace

Here’s the link for anyone interested. I’m always updating it with new screenshots or sneak peaks. It just sums up to a good laugh.

-Lace

I was exiting the library today, having just finished printing out all the necessary materials for my English class portfolio, when I snuck the typical heavy glance at the security sensors that everyone has to pass through near the main doors. True, they could be metal detectors, but then I think I know better. They are the same things you see in Wal-Mart, Meijer, Kroger, the campus bookstore, and any other place that often deals with small expensive items being taken illegally.

As I’m walking back in the general direction of the dorm, I posed a mental question to myself. What would you have done if the alarm had gone off?

“Well,” I thought back to myself, “I would just keep walking. I didn’t take anything, so I have no reason to stop.”

But think, my self exclaimed, hopefully not out loud, it does happen sometimes. If you just keep walking and don’t even look confused, someone may think you DID take something! What if you were at a store, and a security person came after you, insisting that you must have taken something to set off the alarm?!

“Then I would calmly explain that I took nothing and they had nothing to worry about, then continue on my way.”

But he would insist you go back into the store and let him check through your belongings!

“Gah. You are so persistent. Little punk. Alright. Fine. If that was the case, I would turn to the man and say this. ‘Listen. You seem like a nice enough fellow who I understand is only doing his job.’ I would point at the tower-like sensors and say ‘Do you have the slightest idea how those work? It’s not just magic, you know. Inside is a small copper coil that transmits a radio frequency at 125 KHz. When someone walks by with a stolen item, say, a sixty dollar video game, the small chip inside the box, called an RFID tag, uses an internal coil that picks up and actually powers the chip. Isn’t that amazing!?”

He would stare at you. Like you are a freak.
…because you are a freak.

“Shutup, I’m not done. ‘Now, that little tag modulates the 125KHz signal to send data to those biiiiig sensors-’”

You sound condescending.

“Shutup, I’m not done. ‘And the big sensors get a signal that either says 0 or 1, or in this case ‘stolen’ or ‘not stolen’.”

And he would look at you and think, Wow, this guy knows a lot about our security system.

“Yep! And then I would say, ‘Seriously now, think about it. The fact that I know so much about this generic little security system of yours means that I could easily find a way around it! I could build a device that kills the tag the same way the cashiers deactivate the tags when you checkout with the item, and then just walk out with it! Or, heck, I could just hold the item high over my head as I walk out, then it’s not even near the sensor towers, they only have a range of like 10 inches any way! What I’m saying is, if I wanted to steal something, I would be long gone before you would ever even KNOW ABOUT IT!’ I would have this big smug grin and he would understand my point, and away I would walk.”

Really?

“Sure! …………………wait.”

Now that I know I enjoy it, I’ll be making my own rings instead of purchasing them from a seller on eBay. 1100 stainless steel 16 gauge rings cost me nearly 20 dollars. 200 feet of stainless steel 16 gauge wire can cost me as little as 6 dollars or less depending on where I purchase it. That comes out to around over 4000 rings for nearly a quarter of the price. Expect more pictures in the future.

Cheers!

Lace

Dead. Came home from a nine hour work day, and the system is frozen, the little spinning umbrella staring insistently at me, as if to say, “Just two more seconds, I promise I’ll start working again soon!” I let it sit for awhile, eventually become frustrated, and then hard reboot (hold the power button for 5 seconds).

First sign of trouble:

“Uh-oh. What’s that sound? Oh crap. No, I know that sound.” *smacks forehead* “No! NO! Come on!”

What was it I was hearing? It was the hard disk drive. Making the same sounds as a floppy disk drive out of the 80′s and 90′s. (I’m dating myself with that comment, but still.) A few loud crackle/scratch/grind sounds followed by the sound of a short, thin piece of metal ‘pinging’ once or twice.

“Well,” I think, “at least the screen is blue, like it’s going to boot. Wait. Oh no..”

Second sign of trouble:

This is it. This is all the Mac had to say? Not even a cryptic error message? I can just IMAGINE the confusion that would ensue if a typical, non techy Mac user (such as one portrayed by the…ahem, person in the Mac commercials) came across this image, blinking incessantly on screen where they expected their beautiful background and dock to be.

So I rebooted, knowing already that I was most horribly, utterly, (again, to use a common College-Now phrase,) hosed.

Third sign of trouble:

Upon reboot…
Oh well now we’re talking! This is much better! So informative and explanatory!

So the system is kaput, and I’m not sure what my next move is. I figure that I have two options, however.

One: I fix it myself. Who says Macs are inaccessible? I remove a (good few) screws and pop out the hard drive, then give data recovery a shot on my own, replacing the dead one with a bigger, hopefully more hearty MBPro compatible one. The con, however, is that it will void my warranty, which would be a shame, as the fans already need replacing because I’ve run them on full all the time due to the heat generated by rendering in Blender.

Two: I send it in to a (cr)Apple repair center. They fix it under warranty and two weeks later I get my system back, with no idea if the data would have been recoverable, or the security of the data that was on the hard drive, or really any information or guarantee that it won’t happen again. Great. At least I only lost about 2 weeks worth of data, the rest was backed up. Unfortunately, that two weeks included ALL the work on WNBG, as well as a bunch of daily models. :/

Opinions?

–Lace

Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.

This is by far my favorite line of poetry that I have ever come across. So, upon finding out that one of the six ‘parts’ of the assignment requires us to come up with a creative visual work to be included with our paper, I couldn’t help but turn to Blender for all my imaging needs.

This sequence depicts, quite literally, a starry dynamo in the machinery of the night. The star field was created using Blender’s built in stars functionality, and the object’s vertices were made into ‘stars’ by turning on the halo setting in the render pipeline.

–Lace

So for now, check out hackaday.com and this little comic. I recently purchased a new drawing tablet for my computer. Here’s some output from it. Click the image for full size! I need to change some things on the site, so keep an eye out for a face lift in the near future, too.

This has nothing to do with anything technology related, if you don’t count the fact that I did the sketching on paper but the editing using the Gimp. If you need a photoshop substitute and you like open source software, or if you want to get away from Apple’s overpriced software, then Gimp may be for you.

And don’t you dare think you can’t handle it. Mr. B is using it. No offense, B-san. I praise you for taking on new technology and ideas so openly, and encourage everyone else to spend their lives doing the exact same!

The Pandora continues to blossom! Head over to the OpenPandora website to check out some new photo realistic renders of the console, as well as some recent blog posts! I’m really torn between buying the Pandora and funding the purchase of an HD camera. Blender compositing is calling my name…

Sorry for the low frequency of posts! Things have just been a little hectic lately! Mr. B has been speaking of classrooms without walls quite a lot recently, and I realized that that is exactly what IZation Labs is. IZation Labs has no actual physical location. The only true constant of this site is the web address itself! It is made up of individuals all over the place, and no physical connection is needed! Kind of neat when you think about it!

Lace

Click for more detail.

There it is; a Delorean. My favorite car in the world. Someday, I will own one.

And yes, this still ties in with steampunk. Who has seen the third Back to the Future movie? That’s Steampunk.

In my mind it's not "...if I ever own one...". It's "...when I own one..."

See the little stick figure? See what he’s doing? Telekinesis: manipulating objects with his mind. In this case he is lifting a wooden box and stopping bullets.

Mind numbing announcement. We’re getting there. No, really. And knowing the kind of things I blog about, how do you think we are ‘getting there’? That’s right. Technology.

Enter Emotiv’s EPOC. A controller that captures signals through the skull much the same as electroencephalography does and shunts the data into a computer or game system for processing. (Think of actually reaching out and using the force instead of pushing the left trigger in the next Star Wars game.) For around 300 dollars, you can own a device that has the potential to turn your thoughts into commands for not only digital, but also real world items.

It’s actually an amazing device, and seems to do a decent job of coming-through performance wise. There are multiple videos showing off what it can do at Emotiv’s website. To get an a basic idea of what the EPOC is capable of, watch this video. Note: I found a better video that isn’t hosted by facebook. Click the link to enjoy!

Think of the possibilities. One could tie this to a microcontroller or a small computer (eee PC, anyone?) and use it to take control of anything from, for example, remote control toys to heavily modified remote operated lawnmowers. Think of any item you own that requires a button push; maybe the turn of a dial. Theoretically, you could do away with the physical contact of pushing a button or turning that knob, replacing it with nothing but mental concentration.

Not to say that is a simple thing to do, but have you looked at the hacking community? If it’s possible, then someone can do it. Enough said. Go check out that website. It’s worth it.

And yes. I have reserved my EPOC headset. :]

Woodchuck62 suggests that we change IZation Lab’s catch phrase to “Making the Brain USB 2.0 Compatible One Unsuspecting Victim At A Time.” Maybe we could put that on a t-shirt and sell it!

Our dorms are a little spacier that typical freshman dorms. There are 4 people to a room, and there are two bedrooms with a living area in between the bedrooms. The bathroom is off to the side of the living room. Honestly, there’s plenty of space.

There

Of course, they matched me up with my roommates perfectly. We all listen to good music, play good games, and are into technology and computers at a fairly heavy level. All despite the fact that only two of us have declared technology intensive majors. One of us is going into Network Engineering, one into Nursing, one into (I think) Biology and English, and I have declared a Computer Engineering Technology major.

Plenty of storage space!

There’s a pilot program they are starting here next semester. I’ve had a very positive experience being a test subject in pilot programs, so when the Dean of the College of Technology here told us of this new program, my ears perked up.

The new program is Gaming, Animation, and Simulation. The core of the education is learning to do CG animation. They teach you by making you develop video games, with the ultimate goal being CG animated simulation, as I understand it. My ears perked when I heard animation. I love bringing things to life on the computer, and I would jump at the chance to get involved in a program like that.

Don’t confuse me with one of those high school kids who ‘wants to make games when he grows up.’ It’s different from that. I’m interested in the simulation aspect. And think what you can do with animation. Gaming, yea, sure, I used to be all for it. But I’ve always loved special effects. You can probably tell from some of the videos on my Vimeo page. My love of SFX goes all the way back to Back to the Future.

Every time I watch a movie, I keep my mouth shut and enjoy it. But the inside of my mind is always working to reverse engineer certain special effects. Iron Man is a great example of what you can do with CG animation skills.

Years from now, we could be looking at systems that project things into 3d space, maybe someday they will even provide force feedback. (Wow. Getting a virus sure would ruin your day. Imaging a digital entity with malicious intent with the capability to physically interact with the real world. That would be something else.)

I have some engineering background. I want the animation and simulation background to go with it. I want to be there when we discover that we can project three dimension images into three dimensional space at resolutions previously unthinkable. I am going to be a part of that.

You might call it a fantasy. Maybe it is. But think about it for moment. Tom Swift, From the Earth to the Moon, Star Wars. Look at those. All are science fiction fantasy. They were all far ahead of their time. Now look at the development of technology since they were released to the public. When mankind is inspired, they chase their dreams. And when the inspiration comes from seemingly impossible things like those found in a book, say, a spaceship that can travel to areas outside of our own atmosphere, the inventors and visionaries of the age chase those dreams.

To quote a very bad man.

“It is inevitable.“

All are broken in one way or another. No, really.

As the months battle ever onward, I enjoy making a habit of jumping around to my usual online stores and checking out the newest computer component prices.

Almost every time I find myself in the position to think, “Oh! Hey! I bought that 3 months ago for double the price! Cool!”

Of course I always check out Tiger Direct and Newegg, but there’s one that some people haven’t heard of, and it is my favorite of all, mainly because I love upgrading my flash memory collection. Dealram is part of a bigger site called dealnews, where people report the best deals on all things electronic. The cool part is that it doesn’t seem forum based, which may be a turn on for some people due to its quirky, semi haphazard arrangement. Instead, it acts like a business in itself. You search for products, and the best deals that are the most up to date appear in a heartbeat.

I was amazed but not surprised, if that’s even possible, to find out that for the price I purchased my 16 gig flash drive for last winter, I can now buy a 32 gig replacement. Think about that. That is a huge decrease in price. And what’s more, 64 Gig flash drives are, at the time of writing this, under 500 dollars. Wait 6 months. I guarantee they will be under 250, probably closer to 100.

It just blows my mind every time. Do you remember when you first bought a flash drive? I believe mine was a 64 meg. Weighing in at close to 40 dollars, that was a lot of money for such a small amount of storage. But it didn’t feel like that then.

64 megabytes! Wow! I’ll actually be able to move my dos games around now. I can get them off of that old computer and onto my parents new laptop… I won’t have to rely on those darn floppies anymore!

I had no idea that a few years later a 32 gig flash drive could be purchased for under 100 dollars. What about a year from now? What about 4? At the rate that technology seems to be improving and prices dropping, by then we could be storing Terabytes of data on something barely larger that our fingernail, and at an affordable price.

You can also tell that I’m not the best actor, but hey, it’s not easy when you have to be the camera man and the guy who jumps off the porch 10 times in a row to get the right shot! That kind of thing can leave you a little disoriented..

We arrived a little late, as we had a previous engagement. The expo started early in the morning, around 8 or 9-ish, but we arrived closer to 12:30. The expo itself had upwards of 70 people there, some of them from as far away as California, and we even had Paul Baker, a Parallax Applications Engineer there to speak with us. It was only a forty minute drive for us, but it would have been well worth the trip no matter how far the drive.

There were all kinds of projects on display, created by people ranging in age from 11 to upper 50s at least. There were autonomous vehicles, lighting displays, product demos, a magic touchscreen Etch-a-sketch, and even a set of bells hacked to ring when their corresponding notes on a midi keyboard are pressed.

A special mention goes out to a young man named Thomas. He is eleven years old and is positively brilliant. He nearly has a savant-level of understanding of computers and technology. Let me illustrate.

While we were talking, I mentioned that it looked like his (yes, his) Macbook Pro had crashed. He said that it was actually just a screensaver he had located on the net that consisted of crash and error codes from unix and linux based operating systems, as well as various other programs. Wow. Okay.

He is running Parallels on his Macbook Pro, so that he can interface his microcontrollers with the computer, and showed me an example of writing a very simple “Hello World” program for his Propeller, which we got on the topic of after I asked about freedos, or something to that effect.

He also pulled up some files from his home ftp server that he had set up. He saved a Dell Optiplex from being trashed at a local mechanic shop and installed freenas on it, which is a Free Network Attached Storage system. He then routed it and set it up so he could call up files on his home computer from anywhere in the world via the internet.

Keep in mind that this young man is only eleven years old. I can’t impress upon you enough just how blown away I was. I think he could have out-coded my electronics professors from last years classes when it came to the Propeller. His father is very proud, and tells us that Thomas is almost entirely self-taught. He said that he listens to what Thomas tells him, nods politely, absorbs as much information as he can, and then gets out of the way. Thomas is an active member of the Parallax forums, and I’m sure that he has a very bright future ahead of him. I hope to see him again next year!

For a ten dollar per person entrance fee, everybody left with at least 130 dollars worth of components, including two Propeller Prototyping USB boards, two forty pin DIP propeller chips, and a ultrasonic sensor module. There was even a sensor product manual, a propeller sticker, and a fancy little spinning propeller that I enjoy flying outside. :] There were multiple vendors there, and its a good thing that they didn’t take debit or I would have spent a lot more than I did.

While there I picked up 15 one dollar solar cells, each one rated at 4V open, and 80 MAs.
I also purchased a 50 pack of USB connectors for 5 bucks, and a Micro datapad, which is a very popular little piece of equipment when your microcontroller projects require user input.
Altogether I spent 22 dollars on other items.

There were quite a few speakers, the most prominent one being Paul Baker from Parallax. There were also prizes given out throughout the day, ranging from sensor kits and professional development boards to Boe-bots and Hydra kits. We didn’t win any, which was okay, because I was already extremely satisfied with my ‘haul’.

The man who set up the entire event, Jeff Ledger, has posted a gallery of images from the event, so if you want more pictures, head on over here. Thanks Jeff! My full gallery can be found on the next page.

I have to say that I am a big fan of xkcd. I just love the kind of humor that can be found there. I have every comic. Here’s a taste of my own, in a new kind of post that I am proud to introduce.

The sketches posts are… well, just that, sketches. They might be from napkins, a random sheet of paper, my notebook, sticky notes, or even my arm if I can’t find anything else. It might be a funny thing from my life turned comic, or it might be design ideas for a new robot or piece of machinery. If anybody else wants to contribute, feel free to contact me! A word of warning: my drawing skills aren’t exactly first rate! Remember, it is the meaning behind the sketch that matters, much like everything else in life. Everything has meaning. You can’t have an interesting sketch/life without some meaning hidden deep inside.

Whoa, getting a little existential. Better go get the air cannon out and shoot at things that ought not be shot at.

Virginia Beach was very nice, nothing but clear skies the entire time we were there. We stayed in a hotel along the beach with a nice view of the ocean. I actually liked Virginia Beach more than I did Myrtle Beach, mainly because there was an actual (concrete) boardwalk, and because there was more to do along the beach than just get sunburned and swim. (Lucky me, I got to do both.) I’m not a hot weather type of guy, so I had a good appreciation of the ocean and its cooling abilities. Here are some pictures.

You couldn’t help but feel majestic standing on the battlefields that were once home to one of the most well known conflicts between friend and fellow Americans in our short history. Though much has changed, time still seems to stand still when you look over those areas that have been almost perfectly preserved. It’s an amazing place, supplemented by the natural beauty of Pennsylvania.

Here are some of my favorite pictures:

.