Year: 2006
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Timing closure
Saturday… me being a Guild Whore, tackling a quest log (dwarfed only by my Project Stack) as a travelling-salesman optimization problem. Meanwhile, attempting (with no success, yet) to load an .iso of Shadow of the Colossus with HDloader. Eventually gave up on both of those and crashed for the night. Had a dream that night…
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mYpod : my CompactFlash-based, in-dash mp3 player
Yay…after all this being too busy, too lazy, or any number of other excuses, one more project finally off my stack. The “mYpod”* is a small CompactFlash-based mp3 player I built from leftover spare parts from a bottom-secret government project, free samples and a standalone mp3 decoder chip. (Click thumbnails for larger image) Features: Supports…
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0b00011010 // Happy birthday to me…
I was driving to work this morning, which takes me past Tufts…so I was enjoying the scenery, and that’s when it hit me. “Oh, fuck, it’s happened. I’ve become a dirty old man.” * * * I mentioned this revelation to GG and the ‘Nator in the lab. They were proud of me. Said I…
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Labor day Chicago trip
Some pictures I think I’ve been forgetting what I actually made this here blog thing for – jotting down all the stuff I do, people I hang out with, etc. So anyway…Chicago trip from Labor Day. It was a 10-4 week, so I got the friday off “for free”. The only decent flight I could…
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Void Where Prohibited: The Phantom Urinator strikes again!
At work today we had a meeting in which we discussed toilets. We talk about toilets way too much. Figure 1: Toilets, and the discussion thereof, are thouroughly appreciated by everybody. Anyway, for at least the last few weeks or so, there has been a problem with leaks in the men’s room. Specifically, somebody taking…
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The Slimeball Shuffle
Today I received my VIP invitation to the Women’s Financial Conference. …uncomfortable pause… Right now, you’re probably wondering a few things. Like, “is there something you haven’t told me?”, or, “did the operation hurt?” No, I haven’t been in for a change of equipment. But at least I know where they got my name*. Fuckin’…
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One more thing finally off the project stack (for now)…
Terrarium for hot, humid, picky little plants Keeping my Boston-intolerant carnivores in cut-up 3-liter Coke bottles was a litte..um..ghetto, so I built this. The box It’s basically a regular off-the-shelf 10-gallon aquarium with a few extras thrown in. The lid is a seamless piece of Lexan from the hardware store. Lexan can be somewhat of…
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I Did Not Write This Firmware!
The parking lot at JR’s building is guarded by a formidible adversary, an automated parking system that doles out timestamped magnetic tickets. When ready to leave, you (hopefully get the ticket validated inside and) pop it into a machine along with your credit card*, and now feeding the magnetic ticket back in at the exit…
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Protected: All I can do is close my eyes…close my eyes and watch.
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Staatsgevaarlijke
Yeah, I have one. Over 70% of people do, even though the vast majority of these despise them. It’s one of those discount cards from a major east-coast grocery chain. “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a MARK in their right hand, or in their…
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Why you can’t charge your Ipod* while downloading songs
Ever wondered why so few portable USB devices can be recharged from the USB port, even though it provides half an amp of relatively clean power at 5V? Here’s why. * Technically, now Ipods can be charged with USB power, avoiding the patent by using the docking cradle as sort of an electron-laundering middleman so…
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Scotland pics
Ok, getting them online took a wee bit longer than expected. But there are sheep, castles, and McCondoms galore. The entire big photo album! Funny story: On our 2nd night in Stornoway, I ran into our driver*, F, having a smoke outside a pub. We went in, had a few drinks and met some people**,…
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Lad, I don’t know where ya been (but I see ya won first prize)
I’m disappearing this Friday for most of the month, with the rest of the family… My folks: “Hey, we’re going to Scotland, wanna come?” Me: “Hell yeah!” With any luck we’ll find our supposed pile o’ rocks castle, and many more just like it except more castle-shaped. As always, many pictures promised to anyone who…
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LSP-Fix utility open-sourced
I wrote this waaay back in college, while doing the webmaster / perl thing at the Power Transmission Products Company Who Shall Remain Nameless. It took maybe a couple evenings after work plus a weekend to code, and probably just as much time coming up with test cases to throw at it (not to mention…
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Rorschach door…am I nuts?
gunslinger gunslinger gunslinger gunslinger gunslinger butterfly
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*boggle*
Ever have one of those *boggle* moments? Scott and I were talking about processors and DSPs, and the days of yore when there was actually a clearly-defined difference between the two. General conclusion was, there doesn’t need to be a difference anymore; technology has advanced to a point where we can have every chip do…
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Nope, not dead
Just busy. And doing a bunch of hanging out. Anyway, mini-update with purty pictures…* Lastlast saturday, Brazilian BBQ w/ Jane and Scott, and some wandering around by the big courthouse-building-with-a-jail-on-top. Mmmmm… protein craving satiated…and um…re-awakened. The jailbirds were all being quiet. Found the World’s Lamest Playground, consisting of metal steps, a (non-mobile, non-bouncy) metal bridge,…
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Sweet, my brain *does* work in 3D
I’ve been remembering segments of dreams the last couple weeks, which is highly unusual for me, and they’ve been…well, no “sleepwanking”* involved, but unusually amorous. The most recent one, however, was orgasmic for other reasons. I guess you could say it was a post-apocalyptic humans-vs-our-own-AI-run-amok story, vaguely reminiscent of The Matrix trilogy with a less…
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My old (pre-pay) cell phone, free to good home
I have a cell contract and a new phone, so I no longer have a use for this one. It’s big and the screen isn’t in color, but it still does what phones do best – taking pictures emailing text messages surfing the internet you know, making phone calls. Since it’s contractless and fully functional…
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Gr8…VZW ncuragz txt spk w/ msg xl8r
One of the guys at work wrote a LABVIEW module that will send someone a phone text message (via T-Mobile’s email-to-SMS gateway) if anything unusual happens with an unattended test rig in the lab before shutting down the test. That’s pretty cool (especially once I get together a list of valid SMS addresses and a…