Mannnn…

I have so much stuff to write about.

Remember that mapping program?  Yeah, well that’s done (well, at a temporary stopping point), and it’s gone in a completely different direction from my last post on it.

I also have a few more projects to add to my list of projects that I should write a page for.  The best part is, I probably will never get around to it.  Once-a-year blog updates ftw, amiright?

I update my Youtube account a bit more than I do this blog, but I should get around to linking some of those videos up in har.  Please note, however, that by “a bit more,” I really mean a bit more, which could mean anywhere from every 10 months downward.

Hurrr…

Oh god, it’s been a while, and I’ve gotten much less done that I would have liked.

The dreadful specter of schoolwork is ever-looming in my life… I feel like I’m trapped: either take easy classes and look unimpressive to colleges but have plenty of time to pursue my hobbies, or take hard classes and feel terrible all of the time because I’m not doing what I enjoy.  This might sound easy enough to fix, and I certainly wish it was…but it’s not.

On a happier note, I’ve gotten a pretty new Macbook pro (actually my first mac).  I don’t consider myself a mac person, through.  For a self-proclaimed (sometimes) computer geek, I’m pretty non-partisan when it comes to computers.  Then again, it’s hard not to like some aspects of Apple as a company more than Microsoft.

Perhaps I’ll find some way to make more time for myself to pursue what I love… I always say that.  But still…

THIS IS MADNESS!

It’s been 20 days since I last wrote something…  And I have so much new stuff to write about.

I’ve been drowning in work – most of which I consider a waste of time – and right now is no different.  I guess I’ll have to save my big update for whenever my teachers decide I have a life outside of school.

Ridiculous

The balancing robot is working pretty well…

This is awful – school has leeched almost all of my free time – and it’s all spent doing things I don’t want to do, when the things it’s preventing me from doing are equally educational (like this website and everything related to it), and much more relevant to my interests.

We're all autistic…

I was looking through some old email, and I happened upon this post I made to a forum… We had been discussing the ‘dehumanizing effects of the internet’:

“It is easy to attest to the de-humanizing effects of the internet.  Spend 10 minutes on any kind of anonymous forum, especially one having to do with politics, and tell me you don’t feel less ‘human’ – or, at the very least, depressed and angry.

As for being connected … well, that depends on your definition of ‘connection’.  Connection can certainly be interpreted in the way you have, as any kind of human-to-human interaction, over the internet or otherwise.  With this definition, the internet would seem to be the most universal ‘connector’ currently in existence.  But physical interaction, in real space, gives connection a whole new meaning.  Without the internet’s anonymity, people regain a sense of identity, as well as a sense of responsibility for that identity.  Humans, being social creatures, have evolved to work well with physical interaction.  Whole portions of the brain and endocrine system – in fact, much of the body itself – are devoted or well adapted to it.  The internet strips us of all of these things, leaving us with only words, sometimes basic audio and visual stimulation, and…emoticons.  In the real world, people who cannot pick up on the subtle social cues so essential to meaningful interaction are known as ‘autistic’.  The internet, in a sense, has made all of us autistic.  Only so much humanity can be transmuted into a digital signal.”

HE NEEDS MORE TIME, CAPT'N!

Oh man, do I have some updates to do…at one point or another.  I have at least three new pages to write (pages, not posts)…and probably 40 pictures to upload.

As for DragonCon…bawwwwww.  I finished the antweight, and my nice $60 electronic speed controller had been working so well…and suddenly, it would only drive one pair of motors.  This was at 4 am the day before the competition, mind you.  So it goes, it was probably my fault.  Nonetheless, the antweight looks pretty badass.  And at least I have some cool pictures from Dragon Con.

As for new pages, I’ll need to make one for all of the following things:

• An arduino-based MP3 player (what do you mean I never told you about it?)
• The DragonCon (sort of) Antweight – I’ll have to come up with a legitimate name for it…
• The Cheap-antweight – something I’m building to prove to myself/others that antweights can still have sawblades on them without being (too) expensive
• The balancing robot (I’m actually pretty far along now)
• “FailAnt” (different from the DragonCon antweight…failed worse, in a different way)
• A hacked RC car-turned-wireless IR HUD (oh, you’ll see…best part is, I already finished it)
• Probably some other stuff (like a SET playing robot, mayhaps?)

And, I need to update the Gyroplane page with my the gyroscope (did I mention that I’m pretty sick of gyroscopes right now?).  All I need now is some free time…

Plastic gears should go kill themselves

So, I’m pretty much finished with everything besides the ‘wedge’ part of the DragonCon robot.  I was driving around, just to see how it was…and suddenly two of the motors are stripped to the point of providing almost no torque (but still spinning).  These aren’t cheap motors either – they’re Copal 30:1s, about US$22 each.

So now I need to buy a bunch of expensive-but-poor-quality motors as replacements if I want to compete.  I hate everything.

Dreaming of a less busy tomorrow…

I admit it, I haven’t made much progress on the mapping program in the last few days.  Right now, I need any moment of free time I can muster to finish the various mechanical projects I have going on (namely, the new Balancing robot – which I hope will be as simple as I imagine, the GyroPlane, and the DragonCon robot).  After those things are done – which at least one of them should be by the end of the weekend – I’m hoping that I’ll be able to focus on the mapping program, because I really want to finish that.  No, not in an “I’m so sick of this” way, quite the opposite.

God, I’m dreading trying to come up with something to write about besides wishing I had more time.  I guess I better go build things…  After I finish a few papers.

Big Problems

Well, not really big problems.  But time-consuming ones.

What I’m really trying to say is that school has started up again for me, and I no longer have nearly as much leisure time as I’d like to work on various projects.  However, I am determined to continue…progress might just be frustratingly slow.

In other news, I ran/drove out to get a fairly large number of new (and much larger) airplane propellers in a variety of flavors – wood, plastic, and some kind of material that is apparently filled with glass.  These propellers are a good bit beefier than the previous plastic ones (see the picture a few posts ‘down’), and aside from providing more thrust they will hopefully not asplode after only one or two collisions.

As seems to be my way, I’ve decided to take up yet another, kind-of mini project: a balancing robot, utilizing my favorite platform, the Arduino.  I wish I had enough time to dedicate to making this a full-fledged, sensor-fusion-riffic accelerometer/gyroscope balancer…but I don’t.  So for now, I think I’m going to stick with a very high center of gravity (that makes it look cooler, anyway), and a range finder for balancing (probably a sonar sensor).

Hopefully, I’ll be finished with the DragonCon battlebot by the end of the weekend (I’m kind of running out of time).  It’s most of the way there, and I have some artsy pictures of it (among various other things, including that new gyroscope design for the GyroPlane) that I hope to post in the very near future.

…But to me, it's beautiful.

So, I’ll be the first to admit that this is a little bit excessive, but I just love the feeling you get when you can finally start throwing ridiculous things at your program, knowing full well that it will work as you expect it to. Without further ado, here’s an example of just that.

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Map length: 36
Map width: 6
# of rows: 6.0
Too close to top.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 36
Map width: 6
# of rows: 6.0
Map length: 9
Map width: 3
# of rows: 3.0
Too close to left.
Too close to top.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 48
Map width: 6
# of rows: 8.0
Too close to left.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 99
Map width: 9
# of rows: 11.0
Too close to top.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 132
Map width: 12
# of rows: 11.0
Too close to left.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 168
Map width: 12
# of rows: 14.0
Too close to top.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 210
Map width: 15
# of rows: 14.0
Too close to left.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 255
Map width: 15
# of rows: 17.0
Too close to top.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 306
Map width: 18
# of rows: 17.0
Too close to left.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 360
Map width: 18
# of rows: 20.0
Too close to top.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 420
Map width: 21
# of rows: 20.0
Too close to left.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 483
Map width: 21
# of rows: 23.0
Too close to top.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 552
Map width: 24
# of rows: 23.0
Too close to left.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 624
Map width: 24
# of rows: 26.0
Too close to top.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 702
Map width: 27
# of rows: 26.0
Too close to left.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 783
Map width: 27
# of rows: 29.0
Too close to top.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 870
Map width: 30
# of rows: 29.0
Too close to left.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 960
Map width: 30
# of rows: 32.0
Too close to top.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 1056
Map width: 33
# of rows: 32.0
Too close to left.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 1155
Map width: 33
# of rows: 35.0
Too close to top.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 1260
Map width: 36
# of rows: 35.0
Too close to left.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 1368
Map width: 36
# of rows: 38.0
Too close to bottom.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 1482
Map width: 39
# of rows: 38.0
Too close to bottom.
I need to change the size of the world map!
Map length: 1599
Map width: 39
# of rows: 41.0
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BUILD SUCCESSFUL (total time: 0 seconds)