Z425

My robotics blog is here..

2011-04-07T15:21:00.000-07:00

I don't really update this anymore. My robotics blog is here..

billyzelsnack-robotics.blogspot.com

What are my projects 2010sep

2010-09-19T08:13:00.000-07:00

Freedom3D
Scope now includes MCAD capabilities.

130cm Humanoid Biped
I'm devoting all my robotics research time towards a large humanoid. A secondary goal is to enter in AdultSize robocup competitions.

CNC Mill/Printer
Scope now includes fused deposition capabilities.

Shapemaniac IPhone
Yep. Still not shipped.

Fix big telescope
I need to convert the positioning motor from 240VAC to 120VAC or better yet swap it with a DC motor so I can run from a battery.

New robotics blog

2010-02-27T09:40:00.000-08:00

So the blog plan..

Move all robot related stuff from z425.blogspot.com to my new robotics blog at billyzelsnack-robotics.blogspot.com .

Move all robot related stuff from z425.com to the new robotics blog.

Move everything else from z425 to the z425 blogspot blog.

I need to do this carefully so I don't lose my ranks. The final goal is getting rid of the z425 domain all together.

I'm also going to put a little bit of effort into my ad revenue. For years now I've been pulling in about $200 doing nothing from my blog. With the "new" analytics and ad stuff integrated into blogspot I should be able to tweak that. The robotics blog should actually do pretty well since the keywords are pretty obscure and typically have high value. My goal for this year is to get my ad revenue up to $100/mo without doing anything that I would not do anyway.

Let's see how well this shows up in buzz.

2010-02-11T11:22:00.001-08:00

Maybe if this works out I'll start making blog posts again.

Now let's see what happens if I edit. Are they REALLY linked together.

What are my projects

2009-09-13T09:01:00.000-07:00

freedom3d

Learning how to use behaviors. Have a little test using sketchflow.

imu demo

Getting data back from the imu. Learning to use the new .net tasks for use in other projects.

alibre ax-12 biped

Two parallel link sections operational, but really that nice.

shapemaniac iphone
It's in alpha.

stepper motor driver
AVR environment all ready. Motors ordered.

cnc conversion

Cleaned and oiled everything. 2-axis table sitting under my desk.

iButterToast in Washington Times

2009-08-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

I never posted a link to this. Here it is..

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/26/some-iphone-apps-may-be-offbeat-but-thats-by-desig/print/

Clothing pressure sensors

2009-08-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

Anti-patent.

I'm think that instead of putting pressure sensors on the robot itself that it might be a better idea to put them in ( probably padded ) clothing and shoes. The clothes and shoes do not need to be tight fitting, but tight enough to stay mostly in the same relative place to the skeleton.

For calibration you could have the robot touch itself all over ( while playing that song. ) That will give the location of the sensors as well as a calibration of their sensitivity.

One advantage of doing things this way is that it self-organizes the huge mess of sensor wires and provides a nice way for you to remove them as a whole easily. Which is nice for maintenance and testing.

wpf VisualStateManager.GoToState not working

2009-08-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

I'll save you the 3 hours and tell you the answer.

It just does not work if you throw a bunch of controls into a Window. You have to add stuff into a UserControl ( maybe something else works too. ) With a Window the GoToStateAction behavior works just fine to confuse you, but if you try to call GoToState from code it just does nothing. Changing to a UserControl makes it work from code.

LAME.

more robots

2009-08-11T18:06:00.000-07:00

ok. I thought about it. It is going to be too difficult to give my biped project up. Maybe if I figured out a way to not have such a horrible work area I could deal with it. I really try. I have like a million storage boxes, but I never get anywhere. I just don't have enough physical space. 16x12 in a crappy basement is just too small. Maybe I could build a shed for a few things and transform my garage into a workspace. It'd be super cold in the winter though and frozen hands are one of my major complaints with the basement. Frozen hands messing around with metal sounds worse than frozen hands typing.

no more robot building

2009-08-09T17:26:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking of abandoning my biped project. In so many ways the biped project is just perfect for me. I have so many relevant skills already and the missing skills ( machining and electronics ) are things that I am very interested in getting good at.

The problem is I am super demotivated. The usual. Everytime I have a little time and start working I immediately get this feeling of not having enough time to do shit. Today I realized something that just compounds the problem..

I hate owning stuff. The less stuff to own the better. However.. Machining and electronics are not exactly something you can do with that attitude. You have to have tons of shit. I'm going to need to get tons more shit.

I can still play with robots and leverage my programming and problem solving skills. I probably should just not scratch build them. Buy not Build.

Which sucks.

Slowing down

2009-08-01T09:14:00.000-07:00

So iphone Shapemaniac should of already been released for a month. It's still close like it has been, but still not ready. In the time I've had to work on it I've been in ship-it mode. Working on this iphone stuff has taught me how to be in ship-it mode a lot better. If you spent a shit ton of time on a project and it does poorly then that is not going to be very motivating. However.. That does not really lend to quality and poor quality is also not very motivating.

So the new plan ( yeah shutup ) is going to be to slow down and get out of ship-it mode ( mostly ) and focus more on quality. Kinda counter-intuitive since I have very limited time. However the hope is that in my very limited time I should at least be motivated to work and maybe focusing more on quality can help with that.

( Of course I could just be bored with the last couple things and this is just an excuse to get myself out of being bored. )

Semi-related rambling..
Over on braidgame.com the ad has some text that reads, "Every puzzle in Braid is unique. There is no filler." I like that. That is a lot of work and I appreciate that. There are definitely some filler puzzles in Shapemaniac especially after the auto piece culling that happens to make things fit on the smaller iphone screen. The problem is that I don't have a good way of editing the puzzles AND getting that data back into the pipeline. Editing is easy. The game basically is a simple editor. To get the data out is an annoying manual process. This is somewhat holding me back from shipping because there are several puzzles that really suck after culling and I have to build some shitty extra tools just to fix those damn puzzles. With my new slowdown mindset I think I might actually fix them.

Bigger bots easier

2009-07-31T12:18:00.001-07:00

I was thinking that my earlier post with the idea of a bigger bot being easier to construct because torque to weight ratios increased with size was bullshit, but it might be true. Torque is linear with lever length. Double the length, double the needed torque. For some insane reason I had it stuck in my head that it was squared ( I now present you my physics card in shame. ) Everything is damn squared in the world after all.

What does work against you though is centripetal effects, but the torque to weight advantage might just eat those.

So yeah. I should be building the 1M bot I want to make. Maybe bigger. Asimo is 1.3M and is targeted towards helping shorter Japanese people. Maybe I should go 1.5M. How awesome would that be!

Sorry for the RSS spam

2009-07-11T07:59:00.000-07:00

I switched over to hosting on the blogger domain instead of z425 and apparently to them that means I want every one of my posts ( for a year or so ) to be reclassified as a new post. Go Blogger.

Servo torque to weight ratios

2009-07-10T19:19:00.000-07:00

( Future updates to this table will be here http://billyzelsnack-robotics.blogspot.com/2010/03/servo-torque-to-weight-ratios.html )

0.16 Hitec HS-805BB 24.5kg-cm / 152g
0.16 HS-645MG 9.6kg-cm / 60g
0.18 HXT900 1.6kg-cm / 9g
0.19 Hitec HS-805BB @7.2V maybe 29kg-cm / 152g
0.30 Robotis AX-12+ 16.5kg-cm / 55g
0.37 Hitec HS-7955TG 24kg-cm / 65g
0.42 Futaba BLS152 31kg-cm / 74g
0.44 Hitec HS-5990TG 30kg-cm / 68g
0.46 JRPROPO DS6311HV 36.5oz-in / 80g
0.52 Robotis RX-28 37.7kg-cm / 72g
0.55 Robotis RX-64 64kg-cm / 116g
0.68 Robotis EX-106 106kg-cm / 155g
0.66 VSTONE V-SERVO VS-SV410 41kg-cm / 62g
0.68 VSTONE V-SERVO VS-SV1150 115kg-cm / 170g
0.85 VSTONE V-SERVO VS-SV3310 327kg-cm / 387g

The nice trend is that as you go up in torque your torque to weight ratio also goes up. So bigger robots should actually be easier to make than smaller robots. However what I also should really factor in is how much weight is required to power the servo. You could run a entire HXT900 biped on 2 A123 cells, but you might need on average a cell for each VS-SV3310 ( just a guess. )

Another thing going for the bigger bots is that the computer and censor bits take up a much smaller percentage of the over all mass.

Now for laughs.. http://www.z425.com/robot/diy-servo-project/
1.63 BILLY CRAZY DIY SERVO 594kg-cm / 365g ( no electronics )
I came up with those numbers years ago. Soon I'll finally get around to building one and see what it actually ends up at. I think I want to swap out the motor with a smaller one for physical size and amp reasons. The ratio should still end up above 1.0 with electronics. Which would be awesome.

Computer naming conventions

2009-07-09T11:48:00.001-07:00

My computers are currently named after GIJoe characters. This works pretty well because there are a lot of them and they are usually interesting names. I just work my way down the list.

I'm thinking that it might make sense to have a convention for drives as well with a sub-convention for partitions. Having all of these gives an absolute path to the existence of a file. While usually not important I'm running across the issue when syncing stuff across the cloud.

The question is what convention. The computer names are already long enough. Adding in another long drive name and another long partition name is a bad idea. One thing that also is useful is to include the name of the OS for the drive. That fails if you have more than one OS per partition, but that's really not all that big of a deal to limit things to one OS per partition. Probably a good idea anyway.

For partitions I could name them letters. This maps well for Windows, but does not make as much sense for other OS's. Though it does fit the convention of being nice and short. If I do go with drive letters I should start them down the alphabet enough so I can map them myself and not have to worry about windows reordering them.

So what happens when a drive ends up living in another computer? Does this live on via the naming convention? Maybe the real absolute path is the name of the drive and whatever computer it happens to be parked in at any give time really does not matter.

Yet another plan

2009-07-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

In February Janel's income goes up and it'll be right on the border of enough to support the family. We have money in the bank, but it'll be burned by then ( we've been burning it for awhile. ) So we're finally taking some of the "free" school money. We'll be proud Americans. With Janel covering the financials I will no longer need to both take care of the kids and pull $20K a year out my ass.

Which is good. Since I got back from Australia all the jobs I have taken were just to have an income. Shit. Most of my projects in that time have been directed towards being a way of having an income so that I could work on real projects. I'd get a job for a year or two and then spend the next year failing at making money and then have to go back to a job again. Taking a job always just ended up being a set back. The Ageia gig was particularly a bad plan. At the time I had the fastest and most robust physics tech around. Not that I would of built a company around it because that takes money ( though I should of), taking that Ageia job killed any of its potential. Of course when Havok was sold for $110M to Intel and Ageia for $35M to nVidia that was particularly "funny."

Anyway.

So the new plan.

1. Ship ShapeManiac for the iphone.
2. Give up.

I am no longer going to pretend that I have time enough to get anywhere on anything. It's just the same damn cycle over and over again. It just pisses me off.

I'm not really sure what I'll do with all those superfluous hours. I can always do nothing and go to bed at 9pm. Maybe I could take up the Wisconsin lifestyle and drink a 6 pack after "work." Maybe I could be ambitious and do both. I like to be ambitious.

Two weeks off

2009-07-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

Janel finished up 3rd year and had two weeks off. That gave me some time to work.

I spent the first half of the first week on random crap I needed to get done. Stuff like finally getting our data backed up properly.

The second half was very productive and I got the iphone version of ShapeManiac to a playable state.

The second week didn't go so well. I had more random crap and over-sleeping to take up my time. Janel also needed to start taking blocks during the day. About Wednesday I started feeling that my time was nearly up and that was completely demotivating.

So the end of the 2 weeks all I accomplished was getting iphone ShapeManiac mostly done. I thought I'd be able to kick out 2 apps, but I was not even able to kick out 1. FAIL.

sugarsync

2009-06-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

I'm currently trying out sugarsync.

I like it, but it scares the hell out of me. I chose it because it works more like I do. I like that you can choose whatever folders and that you can see computers as they are. It just seems technically way ahead of the others. It looks like they solved a lot of difficult problems. At least it seems that way.. Which is what scares me.

When I think about what I want it makes me think of how to actually implement it. There are just so damn many things that can go wrong. Sync seems simple on the surface, but it really is damn hard. That's scary.

So say I put all my family pics in the cloud and have it sync to my directory. No say sugarsync gets confused because my drive letters remap because I have a USB stick during a reboot. Sugarsync sees the files missing and goes.. Oh.. I guess I should delete them from the cloud. NOOO!!

I think the real problem is that everything is backwards. What you really want is everything in the cloud and anything on your disk is just a local cache. The cloud also has unlimited storage, so if I want 20 copies of something just in case.. Fine. Except I can't because that would be damn expense.

So my plan for my critical data is to get the data into the cloud and then manually every once in awhile sync everything down to a new directory/partition/drive and then turn that machine off. It's kinda like my backup of the backup.

New plan is to go back to the old plan

2009-06-13T10:12:00.001-07:00

So not trying to work is actually much worse than working and being frustrated about not having enough time work. While working still is a waste of time at least it does not feel like a waste of time most of the time.

I finally figured out the magic word that I am not. Fulfilled. The little lobotomy stirring I get each day from childcare is just not fulfilling.

At least when the kids where younger I could occupy my brain with predicting future events so that they would not get hurt. Now that they are older I still play that game, but they almost always out of arms-reach now and there is nothing I can do about it except watch the prediction come true and that's kinda disturbing.

I guess this is why other people play Sudoku or crosswords. Too bad I hate that shit because I see it for what it is.

So the new plan is to go back to old plan. I'll work when I can and I'll try to not get frustrated when I don't have enough time to do shit.

Sounds so familiar

2009-06-10T06:20:00.001-07:00

http://www.adam-mcfarland.net/2009/06/02/patience-is-a-virtue-i-dont-have-flashback/

Time fail

2009-06-04T11:28:00.001-07:00

The plan for June was to switch over to iphone shite app dev. That's still the plan, but it's been a total fail so far. After Janel gets home I am out the door within 10 minutes. The coffee shops around here all close too early so I need to go downtown. I really should drive, but there is no way I am going to drive because it is too nice outside. So I walk downtown to Starbucks and get there about a little before 7:30 .

I screw off for a half hour on the inet and finally start working at about 8pm. After I start I soon realize that there is no point. What the hell am I going to accomplish in 1.5 hours? Nothing. There is no point.. So I just get pissed off and walk home.

New plan..

I don't even try or bother working during the week. That'll at least give me some time to do other things. Maybe I'll even see Janel for more than 30 minutes a day and have a real conversation with an adult. That'd be crazy.

So I need to do all my work on the weekend. I still typically have the kids for half the day each day, but at least I'll get some contiguous hours.

Sales

2009-05-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

I guess I should post on my iphone sales.

$700 total as of last month. Not bad actually considering I've just left the apps to die. I figure doing nothing but playing the bullshit update game I could make at least $500/month from iButterToast and iToiletPaper combined. I only need to pull in $2,000/month to keep our bank account from drying out. I guess I should make some more stupid ass apps too.

JSON with inheritence

2009-05-30T11:42:00.001-07:00

Many games use some sort of inheritance for some of their content. This is basically a json preprocessor that supports inheritance using a couple of specific file location rules.

The path rules are pretty simple.

./ prefix for file scope ( internal to file )
../ prefix for file scope ( external to file )
/ prefix for global root scope
no prefix for local root scope ( traverse up to find a local root )

Path's are not absolute file system paths. So global does not literally mean the global root, just whatever is registered as a global or local. You'd never path something as c:\ or anything.

The actual inheritance is done via splitting a json name into two parts with a colon.

"goat:Animal":{ }

goat is the name. Animal is what it inherits from. The preprocessor doesn't really know or care what it means. It is just text.

To actually have the preprocessor do something you need to inherit something it knows about and the only thing that is is other .json files accessed via a path.

"goat:../Animal.json":{ }

goat is the name which inherits from the animal.json file that resides in the same directory as this file.

"goat:scripts/types/Animal.json":{ }

That'll inherit from the local root scope

"goat:/otherproject/types/Animal.json":{ }

That'll inherit from a different local root scope called otherproject.

"goat:../Animal.json/Goat":{ }

You can also go inside another file. This'll inherit Goat from inside the Animal.json file located in the same directory. Global and local root scope would also work.

"goat:./Goat":{ }

You can also locate within the same file. The parser is two pass so you can inherit from "objects" below the current object.

"goat:./something/else/Goat"

You can also go however deep you want into the file's json path too.

At this point I've not decided if I want to support arbitrary backtracking in paths ( dotdots. )

Future laptop choice

2009-04-25T20:08:00.001-07:00

The plan was to eventually pay the fat Apple tax and get the new 17" macbook. It really is quite nice, but I'm not so sure now.

For the last couple of days I've been living mostly in Win7 on my macbook and something just does not feel quite right. I just feel disconnected from my computer for some reason and it just might come down to something as simple as no physical page up/dn keys.

I use page up/dn a billion times a day. I should be used to the stupid way you have to do it on the macbook by now, but I am just not. Living in xcode I could pass it off as just one of 50 other annoying things, but now that I am back in Windows mostly.. I freak'n hate it.

So now I am thinking that it might make sense to get a PC laptop and see if I can get osx running on a partition for when I need to do iphone work. If that does not work I guess I can lug around two laptops. ugh.

Sales update + weekly

2009-03-16T07:06:00.001-07:00

15mar2009
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 52 .7 USD .99 USD US 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 13 .7 USD .99 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 8 .36 GBP .59 GBP GB 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 8 0 USD 0 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 5 .36 GBP .59 GBP GB 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 4 .48 EUR .79 EUR DE 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 3 .48 EUR .79 EUR FR 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 2 .48 EUR .79 EUR IE 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 2 .76 AUD 1.19 AUD AU 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 2 .7 CAD .99 CAD CA 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR NL 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD RU 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 1 .48 EUR 6 NOK NO 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD RU 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR NL 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 1 0 EUR 0 DKK DK 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .7 CAD .99 CAD CA 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .76 AUD 1.19 AUD AU 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 1 1 .76 AUD 1.19 AUD AU 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR IT 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD US 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR BE 307810193 1003

09mar2009 - 15mar2009
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 130 .7 USD .99 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 86 0 USD 0 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 65 .7 USD .99 USD US 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 29 .36 GBP .59 GBP GB 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 12 .48 EUR .79 EUR DE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 9 .36 GBP .59 GBP GB 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 7 0 GBP 0 GBP GB 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 6 .7 USD .99 USD US 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 4 .7 CAD .99 CAD CA 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 4 .76 AUD 1.19 AUD AU 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 1 4 .7 USD .99 USD US 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 4 0 AUD 0 AUD AU 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 4 .48 EUR .79 EUR DE 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 3 .48 EUR .79 EUR IE 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 3 0 EUR 0 EUR DE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 3 .48 EUR .79 EUR FR 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 3 .48 EUR .79 EUR FR 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 2 .7 USD .99 USD RU 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 2 .48 EUR .79 EUR DE 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 2 .48 EUR .79 EUR NL 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 2 .7 CAD .99 CAD CA 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 2 0 EUR 0 CHF CH 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 2 .48 EUR .79 EUR IE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 2 .76 AUD 1.19 AUD AU 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 2 .48 EUR .79 EUR AT 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 2 .48 EUR .79 EUR IT 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR 1.1 CHF CH 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR LU 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR BE 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 1 1 .76 AUD 1.19 AUD AU 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 1 0 EUR 0 DKK DK 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 1 .48 EUR 6 NOK NO 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD CN 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD AE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 1 1 .36 GBP .59 GBP GB 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR 7 SEK SE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 7 1 0 USD 0 USD CN 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD RU 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR NL 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 1 .48 EUR 1.1 CHF CH 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 1 0 USD 0 USD CL 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 1 0 USD 0 MXN MX 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 81 JPY 115 JPY JP 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 1 0 EUR 0 EUR IT 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iButterToast 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR IT 307810193 1003
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD TH 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 7 1 0 USD 0 USD US 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD IN 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR NL 306007398 1001

Creating a minimal iphone app without a xib

2009-03-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

I can't stand interface builder and I don't want its garbage in my apps. This screencast shows how to create a minimal iphone app without the xib garbage.

noxib.html

iToiletPaper

2009-03-14T14:52:00.000-07:00

ok. Let's link this..

http://freedomhobby.com/iToiletPaper

appstore sales report

2009-03-14T14:41:00.000-07:00

13mar2009
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 14 .7 USD .99 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 7 .36 GBP .59 GBP GB 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 2 0 USD 0 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD US 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD US 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR AT 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD CN 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 1 0 AUD 0 AUD AU 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 1 0 EUR 0 EUR DE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 1 0 GBP 0 GBP GB 303491343 1000

12mar2009
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 20 .7 USD .99 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 10 0 USD 0 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .36 GBP .59 GBP GB 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD TH 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .76 AUD 1.19 AUD AU 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .7 CAD .99 CAD CA 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 1 0 AUD 0 AUD AU

11mar2009
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 28 .7 USD .99 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 16 0 USD 0 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 10 .36 GBP .59 GBP GB 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 4 .48 EUR .79 EUR DE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 2 .48 EUR .79 EUR FR 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 2 .76 AUD 1.19 AUD AU 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD US 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 1 1 .36 GBP .59 GBP GB 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 1 0 GBP 0 GBP GB 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD RU 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR AT 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR DE 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR IE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD AE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR NL 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR IT 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD US 306007398 1001

10mar2009
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 28 0 USD 0 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 28 .7 USD .99 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 6 .48 EUR .79 EUR DE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 3 .7 USD .99 USD US 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 3 .36 GBP .59 GBP GB 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 3 0 GBP 0 GBP GB 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 2 0 AUD 0 AUD AU 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 1 2 .7 USD .99 USD US 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 2 .7 CAD .99 CAD CA 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 2 0 EUR 0 CHF CH 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR FR 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 1 0 EUR 0 EUR DE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD IN 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 1 0 USD 0 MXN MX 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR 7 SEK SE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR LU 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 1 0 EUR 0 EUR IT 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR DE 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 7 1 0 USD 0 USD CN 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 7 1 0 USD 0 USD US 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 1 0 USD 0 USD CL 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR IE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR IT 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR NL 303491343 1000

09mar2009
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 7 14 0 USD 0 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 5 .7 USD .99 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR DE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR 1.1 CHF CH 303491343 1000

08mar2009
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 17 .7 USD .99 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .36 GBP .59 GBP GB 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 1.4 USD 1.99 USD US 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR NL 303491343 1000

Sales report + weekly

2009-03-09T14:27:00.000-07:00

I missed a few days there..

08mar2009
iToiletPaper : 17 US , 1 GB , 1 NL
Particle Paint : 1 US

07mar2009
iToiletPaper : 21 US , 1 DE
Particle Paint : 1 US
Time File : 1 AU

06mar2009
iToiletPaper : 13 US , 1 GB , 1 VE
Time File : 1 US

02mar2009 to 08mar2009
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 135 .7 USD .99 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 5 .7 USD .99 USD US 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 4 .36 GBP .59 GBP GB 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 2 .76 AUD 1.19 AUD AU 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 1 2 .7 USD .99 USD US 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD CN 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR IT 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR DE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR CZ 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 1.4 USD 1.99 USD US 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR ES 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Time Fill 1 1 .76 AUD 1.19 AUD AU 306462332 1002
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR NL 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD VE

Sales report

2009-03-05T07:45:00.000-08:00

04mar2009
iToiletPaper : 25 US , 1 GB, 1 AU
Particle Paint : 1 US

I don't really understand why the iToiletPaper sales keep going up. Maybe it was posted somewhere that I don't know about? Maybe I am getting some sort of network effect. I'm baffled.

I think I am going to add the global highscores earlier than I was planning. I probably should start experimenting with cross-marketing the titles between apps.

Sales report

2009-03-04T08:43:00.000-08:00

03mar2009
iToiletPaper : 23 US
Time Fill : 1 US

Hey.. Someone bought Time Fill!

Last night I got an update build of iToiletPaper ready. I'll be uploading it today and we'll see what type of bump it gets after the approval.

sales report

2009-03-03T06:58:00.000-08:00

iToiletPaper : 19 US, 1 ES, 1 AU
Particle Paint : 3 US, 1 CZ
Time Fill : 0 Ouch!

Yesterday I added a games->racing secondary category to TP and that might be the cause of the bump. Maybe it'll stick.

The crap Time Fill showing was kinda expected. I was trying to find the bottom for a minimum app and it looks like I found it. I still think that it'll end up being worth my effort. I did learn a couple things, but even if it pulls in a sale here and there it'll pay for its 5 hours of work.

One super interesting thing I learned for the Time Fill release is apparently I didn't actually know how the live drop goes down. Here is my current understanding..

The live drop is the minimum of the "Ready for Sale" date and the date you set it to go live on. Which is horrible because you can't really control anything. You still need to play the daily bump game, but as soon as you see it go live you need to just push it into the store immediately.

So this week I have a couple of things to do.. Get those other two games out. Start another two games. Update the 3 apps in the store. Next week I think I might give a try at localizing actual app content.

Time fill app is up

2009-03-02T09:18:00.001-08:00

Wow. Be amazed!!

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=306462332&mt=8

सलेस report

2009-03-02T07:11:00.001-08:00

Hmm. I think the title messup is related to some sort of auto-correcting. It only happens after a word is delimited by a space.

1mar2009
iToilet Paper : 11 US, 1 CA
Particle Paint : 1 US

I also have weekly sales

23feb2009 - 1mar2009
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 38 .7 USD .99 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 18 .7 USD .99 USD US 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 4 .36 GBP .59 GBP GB 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 2 .36 GBP .59 GBP GB 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 2 .48 EUR 1.1 CHF CH 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .76 AUD 1.19 AUD AU 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .7 CAD .99 CAD CA 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 .76 AUD 1.19 AUD AU 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .7 USD 10 MXN MX 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR NL 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR BE 306007398 1001
Freedom Hobby LLC Particle Paint 1 1 .7 CAD .99 CAD CA 306007398 1001

Here's the first week one since I don't think I posted it in full..

16feb2009 - 22feb2009
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 61 .7 USD .99 USD US 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 7 .36 GBP .59 GBP GB 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 3 .76 AUD 1.19 AUD AU 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 3 .48 EUR .79 EUR DE 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR ES 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .7 USD .99 USD CL 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR 1.1 CHF CH 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR AT 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .7 CAD .99 CAD CA 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR 6 DKK DK 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR CZ 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR FR 303491343 1000
Freedom Hobby LLC iToiletPaper 1 1 .48 EUR .79 EUR NL 303491343 1000

सलेस report

2009-03-01T08:57:00.000-08:00

Uhh.. I dunno why my titles are in another language up. Go blogger!

I don't think I put up sales for Friday. Here they are..

iToiletPaper: 5 US
Particle Paint: 1 US

Ouch for Particle Paint!

Saturday's sales were unexpectedly high consider how shit they were last week..

iToiletPaper: 11 US
Particle Paint: 4 US, 1 GB

Time Fill is ready for sale but I'm holding off until tomorrow to make it go live. This will be an interesting one since it is so incredibly basic ( even compared to iToiletPaper )

न्यू अप्प

2009-02-27T10:28:00.000-08:00

I'm getting rather frustrated with the performance of the iphone. This is not the third time I have brought a prototype to near completion to find shitty performance. My apps have been very simple too. One interesting bit is that all three of these poor performing apps were doing in Unity. So maybe Unity is the real problem. The device is "just" powerful enough to make something and the Unity overhead pushes over into the shit.

So maybe I'll get the App I have been working on for the last two days out today. Maybe not.

Sales update

2009-02-27T08:02:00.000-08:00

I decided to stop spamming facebook with status updates about this, so stuff like this will mostly be here now.

Particle Paint : 5 US, 1 CA
iToiletPaper : 4 US, 3 GB

Mind control your lights

2008-12-07T22:48:00.000-08:00

anti-patent.

You can now buy some magical device to stick on your head to control a game with your brain. If you could track locations either absolute or relative to your head you could control things as you walk around. There are a lot of ways to track objects absolute / relative to other objects ( ultra-sonic, camera, etc. )

So knowing the location of an object relative to your head ( or absolute of both ) you could train yourself/device to activate that object. A good use would be all the lights in your house. For most any point of view there would only be a few visual and they would not usually be near each other. If you could train yourself/device to operate in only a very quantized version of your FOV you could easily control lights even if you are walking around. You just look at the light and it could be turned on and off at will.

Spread the inet wealth.

2008-12-07T22:45:00.000-08:00

I gave the new neighbors the wifi password. I told them not to download any illegal stuff. I hope this does not bite me in the ass.

Billy Zelsnack Resume November 2008

2008-11-18T00:07:00.001-08:00

Here's the link to my most up to date resume..

Billy Zelsnack's Resume

earpiece headtracker

2008-11-16T23:13:00.001-08:00

anti-patent

The google earth app for the iphone has a terrible implementation, but it has a lot of potential. The idea that popped into my head was that it would be quite cool if you combined head tracking with a hand head display that also had tracking. Seems like adding orientation tracking to a phone earpiece or headset would be pretty ideal. The data could be transmitted over however the phone data was transmitted.

Yeah. I was going to post more..

2008-11-02T20:40:00.000-08:00

However blogger is being a bitch and not logging onto my damn server properly. Everytime I actually take the time to start a post something goes wrong with it. I fix it and it just breaks again. I need to just stop doing anything that's not a default and get over it. The problem is I don't get any 'sweet' SEO action if I do that!

windows update is awesome

2008-09-11T18:18:00.001-07:00

Update failed.
Update failed.
Update failed.

At some point it says something like..

Nevermind. You don't need that update after all.

No longer an employee at HH

2008-09-10T20:54:00.000-07:00

I'd asked about switching my HH schedule a few months back. The core hours were exactly wrong in combination with watching my kids. It was pretty brutal on me. I was either with the kids at work or sleeping ( 7 hours. ) Anyway.. They stuck to their guns and I was denied.

Things changed a bit when Janel started school for this year and we got a new nanny. I now had a few hours each day to do stuff other than kids+work. It was amazing how much better of a mood I was in.

I had a bunch of paternity leave I needed to use up before it expired so that left me with even more free time. Of course with this new found free time I of course had to find a way to fill it up with work. Two contracting projects fell onto my lap.

After I got back to work ( actually I told one boss well before ) I told them about my upcoming contracting gigs and that I wanted to switch to contractor status so that there was not a conflict of interest. As a contractor I offered to work in-house for the same hours and pay. So pretty much the only thing that would change was my status.

The response.. I'll think about it.

A week passed and I still had not heard anything. My start dates are approaching and I really was not about to give these contracts up. These are very well paying part-time contracts. I would make in a little over a month what I would make in 6 months at HH. This income boost would be perfect because lately I'd been a bit miffed when I realized that I only net 2.5 times what I my nanny nets!!

So I send another email..

Today is my last day as a HH employee. blah blah. I'm available for 20 hours in-house a week contracting at my same hourly salary rate. blah blah.

I up'd the anti a bit with the 20 hours since I was pissed that I didn't get a response. It was what I wanted anyway, but I was willing to do 40 hours if they would given the go ahead.

After I sent the email my boss came into my office ( talked with officemates ) multiple times and didn't say a word. The end of my day came and nothing. I put my keys in an envelope on the desk and left.

It's been two days now. I've still not heard anything.

Basic CNC router drawing

2008-09-03T00:44:00.000-07:00

I'm finally going to get around to building a CNC router. Mainly for routing out circuits on copper clad PCB's, but I'm building it to have a bit more room for other projects. It's a small one for my desk that should be able to handle 8" x 8" x 4" working areas.

Here's the first drawing. Not to scale. Just a rough out.

For linear slides I am going to be using high quality ball-bearing drawer slides. The ones I found cost 5 bucks a piece and have zero slop. I'm going to be using them in a non-standard type of way from what I've seen internet folks do. All the folks I've seen lay them flat ( and use just a single slide. ) I'm going to be all crazy and use them just like they were designed.. So each axis is basically just a sliding drawer!

For the screw/nut I just got some threaded rod and a coupler from the hardware store. Lame yes, but I want to see how well it works. If it sucks I'll rebuild it and move up to a lead-screw, though I have been eyeing ball-screws on ebay.

To motorize the rods I am going to use some of my robot servos. They have a continuous rotation mode, but you only can read the angles from 0 to 303 degrees. I'll be adding another encoder to the back of each servo ( just like the one that's inside it ) to get the remaining data. The servos should have plenty of oomf at 220 oz/in and they'll be super easy to interface since I already have that working. They spin at 60rpm. I'm not sure have fast that'll allow me to route. Probably faster than I can anyway without breaking bits.

Why no posting?

2008-08-23T00:29:00.000-07:00

8 months ago z425 switched over to SliceHost and I was much too bothered to switch bloggers config until now.

Currently I'm using up the paternity leave I never used before it expires. That means I actually have more than 1 second available in the day for myself. Which is nice.

VERY NICE. wait...

VERY NICE.

So maybe expect some actual postings with some classic BillyZ bad attitude.

Too many projects

2008-06-12T19:43:00.000-07:00

We're going on our annual Chautauqua trip soon so I need to figure out what programming project I want to work on. I been trying to figure it out for about a month, but all that happens is that my list gets longer..

Robotsu ( formerly Robot Engineer ) game for XNA
Robotsu game for Wii
Some other Wii game that uses the controller(s) well.
Han Solo FPSRPG
IMU micro-controller project
Low latency USB <-> AX12 micro-controller project
Raycasting PS3 SPU demo
Sparse voxel octree PS3 SPU demo
Sparse voxel octree GPU demo
Random CUDA demos
WPF 3D modeling package
IPhone game
CNC router project
gamebasis of course

Some of these don't work so well on a trip, but I still want to do them.

I could also just give up and do none of them as per usual lately. I'll get all excited about a project and start working on it only to quickly realize that I was totally delusional about the possibility that I have enough available time to work on it. "Luckily" it only takes me a few days to realize this now, where in the past I could work on a project for a couple of weeks to only be completely crushed when I come out of the clouds.

Shit. Just writing that may of burst me from the clouds. Damn it. I'll will be so happy when I can retire and just work on my projects. Unfortunately it always seems to be 2 years away. Fuck.

fx shader + DxInterop in WPF

2008-03-09T20:33:00.001-07:00

SWEET! It's about time. WPF will soon be able to make real world products. Hopefully Silverlight will get this ability soon as well.

Ok. Ok. I'm just posting this so I can get the first juice on DxInterop. haha.

Tiny heli

2007-11-09T12:43:00.001-08:00

GMail is barfing on this video and I wanted to send it to some people, so I'll just put it here.

I bought this thing broken from a guy on the forums for a huge discount. I got my parts today and this is the second flight. The first flight it would not lift off the ground. A few adjustments and it flies quite well. I was planning on flipping it and selling it quickly, but it's actually much nicer than I was expecting. We'll see how long it lasts. It still might be too big to fly in the house and that's what I really want for the winter.

The video is pretty short as my memory card ran out on me. doh.

Wisconsin Narcotics Officers Association

2007-11-08T08:40:00.001-08:00

Jason got a mailing from these assholes. He called them up. Apparently they hire another organization to collect money for them and only 15% goes to Wisconsin Narcotics Officers Association. From that they give some unknown amount to the actual officer training. So pretty much nothing.

At the bottom of the form it has a checkbox..

"I am contributing an additional $3.00 to defray the fundraiser's mailing and processing costs."

hahahha. Even worse than that.. It states that you can not even deduct your donation.

Who in the world would be stupid enough to donate to this? How can this shit be legal?

Model citizens.. City workers!!

2007-11-05T07:28:00.000-08:00

There's a bus parked outside my window. That's quite unusual. Turing likes buses so I pick him up to look at it.

Hmm. What's that water dripping from the back exit? WTF. Is the bus driver peeing from inside the bus and letting it drip out the door? WTF! No way.... Holy shit. He is. When he's done he zips up, walks to the front of the bus, switches the sign back from 'not in service' and continues on his way.

Usually my run-ins are with the fine parking officers doing and saying idiotic things, but this is so much better. haha.

Wifi camera card prediction is now true

2007-10-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

My post from awhile back..

http://www.z425.com/patents/memory-over-wifi/

Sweet..

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/review/eye+fi-adds-wi+fi-to-almost-any-digital-camera-316537.php

Another victim of the office fire!!

2007-10-14T20:37:00.000-07:00

My copy of Vista Ultimate!!! Damn it. I was just about to install it! Which reminds me.. I really need to get reimbursed. Here's the list I sent in.

----------------

I don't remember the values I quoted on these items before, but here they
are as I computed today.

I lost the following value on my RC equipment. These values are computed
from the difference between the going rate and the price I got for them
when I sold them at my 'fire sale'.

$75 heli
$30 gyro
$10 servos
$10 motor
$25 flight sim (dongle was in the fire)

The following items never sold as I kept dropping the price and people
still did not want them. At a certain point I didn't want to just give the
items away and took them off the market.

$75 transmitter
$25 receiver

These items were also in the fire..

$150 leather office chair. It cost me $350 when it was new.
$650 computer I was selling.

Total

$1050

----------------

Here's my RC sale link just for fun..

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=681695

Christopher Hitchens is a badass

2007-10-13T19:23:00.000-07:00

As per usual I am out of the loop on local events. This weekend is the FFRF.org annual conference. Yesterday Janel mentioned that Hitchens was going to be speaking and I actually managed to get to it.

His talk was good. He has cool stories and he's super quick and smart. Nothing you can't see on youtube. The interesting bit was during the Q&A. Immediately people went in on him about Iraq/Iran and it pretty much remained that way for the entire Q&A.

Hitchens believes that we need to be very proactive against Iran ever attaining nuclear weapons. To the point of a first strike if need be.

Of course this does not go over very well with a crowd in super-extra-liberalville Madison Wisconsin. The vibe shift was quite amazing. Everyone hung on his every word. Pretty much nodding their heads to themselves. Then BAM.. WTF.. Does not compute! haha. It was awesome.

Anyway. He very easily stood his ground against the angry mob. It was very impressive. I'm adding him to my list of role models.

After the talk during the book signing I stood near the signing table so I could overhear what was going on (why don't more people do this? i was the only one). A guy came up with a book to sign that was sent to him from his son from Falluja. It had something written in the sleeve that he showed Hitchens. Hitchens was obviously moved. He spent a couple minutes writing back to the guy's son ( in guy's book! ) and at the end said pointing to the what he wrote.. This is my voice mail number. Please ask your son to give me a call. I thought that was a pretty damn cool move.

I'm gonna get fixed.

2007-10-12T21:45:00.000-07:00

Quite the adventure at my vasectomy consultation today. All is well. Joking with the doctor about random crap while going over the 'brochure'. We were almost done and I mentioned.. oh yah.. Sometimes I can get really nashouse (wtf, how do you spell that). I was feeling it a bit at that point, but the second I said it, it got 10 times worse. I then said.. Yep.. I'm actually getting n* now. He directs me to lay down on the exam table. I stand up..

Next thing I know I am on the floor. I open my eyes to see the doctor telling me that I had fainted!!! I guess all this talk about testicles brought about some latent n*ness of being kicked in them something.

It was pretty neat experience actually (minus the n*).. I went instantly into my sleep state and I remember dreaming about something for the few seconds I was down. It was very slick how my brain just switched back and forth. Rebooted!

Working the dental system.

2007-10-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

A minute after I chipped my tooth I thought.. Hmm.. Maybe now I can get that calcification fixed under insurance because it is no longer cosmetic surgery.

The dentist says.. Yep. In fact he has to fix the calcification because whatever the fix is won't stick properly to it.

Clicking on the real world.

2007-09-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

I just tried to click on my laptop's physical mute button by moving my cursor below the screen! haha. Awesome.

I don't think my transition to living inside the Internets will be a difficult one!

I should run for a coop board of directors position.

2007-09-12T20:22:00.000-07:00

Our grocery coop is having board of directors elections. I think any member can run for a position. Above the registers they have a big sign for each person running with a picture and a campaign quote. Here's what mine could be..

Coop prices way too high? Why are we paying as much or more than freak'n Whole Foods. What's the point of having a coop if we pay more. We can do better. A vote for me is a vote for lower prices.

The other lamo's have quotes like..

I'd like to see the coop be more active in the community.

wtf.

Huxley is like.. WTF.

2007-09-10T22:10:00.001-07:00

He can blame Turing..

My head is still NOT shaved!!

2007-09-09T20:21:00.000-07:00

Geez. What kind of tradition is it when you don't stick to the rules!

I decided that it was best to not have the nurses mock me so I held off. I had an opportunity today just before my mom and brother left for their flight, but no.. I forgot.

Hmm. I know. The new neighbors just moved in. This could be a perfect time to meet them and then promptly shave my head to confuse them.

Huxley Zelsnack

2007-09-09T13:42:00.001-07:00

He's here!

Huxley Zelsnack's website

Not fighting and keeping quiet.

2007-08-27T10:15:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of keeping quiet about things lately. I dunno what's wrong with me, but it's like my confrontational nature is taking a rest. I'll chirp about things and then give up. This is for lots of things.

Stupid ass mailman is blocking traffic parking in a yellow zone everyday on my way to work. I talk to the parking dude, they say they can't do anything to federal vehicles. I fill out the form on the city site and send it off. That's it.. I have not followed up. I should.

Things come up at work. I say something in email, or a meeting, or just general talking to peoples. People disagree. ( THEY ARE WRONG, HAHA ). I just don't follow up. I should.

Maybe this is all related to my home life. With Janel preggers I have just got used to letting things that bug me go. This is an active process and maybe doing it over and over again has pushed it into habit.

I guess once the baby is born I should actively try to turn myself back into a confrontation seeking ass.

teh diet

2007-08-08T12:00:00.001-07:00

I stepped on the scale this morning. 186! WTF!

Actually I was expecting this. My body is very good at acclimating to diet changes. All going on a diet ever gets me is less pooping.

I'm guessing I'm averaging a deduction of at the very least 500 calories a day. Probably more like 750. I've cut out a lot of the daily trash. Janel's mom was in town and there were a few excessive meals and a gelato here and there. Still.. +2 pounds from a week ago. WTF2!

I'm sticking with my plans though. I can push a lot of this into lifestyle. For instance.. I've been pretty successful with switching over to carbonated water. I am so tough that I can drink a whole bottle of the stuff without dying now. Crazy.

WPF and Silverlight

2007-08-02T18:51:00.000-07:00

I've had over a month working with WPF and I am quite happy with it. I do spend a lot of time fiddling with it, but it seems to do what it's supposed to do once you know how to kick it right. My project at work with it is working out very slick and I'm happy with where it is at and with where it is going. WPF really needs some better Direct3D interop, but other than that my complaints are minimal.

Silverlight is not looking too hot at this point. The reason is that they subset it just way too damn much. It comes with pretty much nothing meaning you have to implement everything. This is just lame. I don't want to rewrite stupid ass basic controls. I've written too many and I really don't enjoy it anymore. I guess they are trying to keep it super lightweight, but that is just stupid in this day and age. They don't have to compete against Flash, they can just kick it's ass outright. Too bad they don't. Maybe it's an anti-trust bullshit issue. Maybe they'll add more goodies in the future. At the very least it would be nice to give developers the option to require a full .NET installation for their web apps.

Gonna shave my head diet.

2007-07-29T21:15:00.000-07:00

My birthday is coming up soon so I want to lose a bit of weight before I shave my head. My hair is pretty long now and it camouflages my chub a bit. A shiny top will offer no such protection.

I've gained a few pounds since moving to the new office. Mostly due to stupidity on my part of staying at the office after core hours. Now I stay only for core hours and walk downtown every night to finish up my daily work. Second "mostly" due to having a Q'Doba right next to the office. bah. I'm so over that shit now.

My new thing for the last couple of weeks is to go to the salad bar at Copps and get me a POUND of salad at the salad bar. Previous to that I had been going to Panera for salad training, but I realized I could do better on my own at Copps. For awhile I was a bit shocked to be hungry again 30 minutes after eating my POUND of salad. Adding more cheese was the solution ( as it is for so many difficult problems. )

Since last Wednesday I have been tracking my weight in the morning and it's been at a consistent 185 lbs. That gives me a BMI of 25.8 or something which is technically overweight ( 24.9 is the border). BMI is derived from the 50th percentile I believe so I probably am still under the arbitrary number as I definitely have more muscle on me than the 50th percentile ( amazing as that might sound ).

So my goal is 175 without muscle loss.

My plan is pretty simple. Cut out most of the shit in my diet that has crept back in. Max of 1 Coke a day (WTF0!) . No daily candybar ( WTF1! ). 1 Coffee (WTF2!). More walking.

Let's see the savings!!!

3 coke = 140 calories *3 = 420
1 candybar = 200
1 coffee = 15 calories * 6 sugars * 1 = 90
-------------
710!!

An extra walking trip downtown and back = 120 * 2 = 240
-----------
950!!

That's a pretty big number, so I don't think I am actually going to limit my intake otherwise. I'll just keep it the same as it is now.

(950 calories * 7 days ) / 3500 calories in a pound of fat = 1.9 lbs per week.

1.9 lbs per week is pretty much perfect. So 5 1/4 weeks for 10 lbs.

So I should be able to mostly get there by my birthday. That is as if..

WRITING CRAP ON INTERNET PAPER MEANS ANYTHING.

Driving makes me so mad

2007-07-27T10:06:00.001-07:00

With the office all the way across town now I "get" to drive all the way across town everyday.

BrianS had a post awhile back about just letting yourself be mad. It's ok and healthy. I had adopted that attitude before (maybe not the healthy part), but after reading his post I let myself go into it deeper.

Holy shit can I get mad. Very impressive. Old and frail people should not get in my way as my pissed off stare of death could cause them to have a heart-attack.

You see.. The entire city of Madison is under construction in summer every year. It is ridiculous. Combine that with the MANY cunts trying to kill themselves on their bikes and MANY asshole pedestrians and the fact that I fucking HATE to drive.. It can kinda upset me.

My under 5 minute leisurely straight shoot to the previous office turns into 15-20 minutes into the office and 20-30 minutes home. Woo fucking woo. I'd say I am in a shitty shitty mood for at least an hour after the first drive and 30 minutes after the second.

Oh yah.. We had to get another car too.. I HATE having 1 car. 2 cars is 3 times worse.

Silverlight test

2007-07-21T19:35:00.000-07:00

Here's my first test of a Silverlight web app.

http://www.z425.com/silverlight-test/Default.html

It is barebones and boring as can be, but I wanted to play with Silverlight ( C# flavor ) a bit since it is WPF light. I was surprised at how 'light' it actually is. The controls it ships with are just some shapes, a canvas, and a mediaelement. That's as much as I can tell from inside blend at least. Though mediaelement was not even in the control gallery so I added it manually.

See the moons of Jupiter

2007-07-20T18:26:00.000-07:00

Get some binoculars and go look at the moons of Jupiter. They are amazingly easy to see. If freak'n Galileo could do it. So can you!

As of right now ( jul2007 ) Jupiter is the brightest object in the sky other than the moon. You can't miss it.

Also.. Make sure and check it out a few days later and see the moons in totally different spots. They're moons after all.

Non-astrologist

2007-07-13T21:46:00.000-07:00

Sam Harris is totally wrong now..

He said that nobody calls themselves a non-astrologist. Not any more. I've done some soul searching and..

I am a non-astrologist.

Dehumidifier FAQ

2007-07-11T13:21:00.001-07:00

Our house came with a basement dehumidifier. The previous owner used it in an attempt to keep his wood supply nice and dry.

Janel had kept turning it on so that the baby clothes stored in containers in the basement would not grow mold or other yucky nastiness. I kept turning it off because I didn't think it was doing anything and I was scared it was going to start on fire or something since it was just running all the damn time.

A few months back I bought a watt meter. I had a couple of uses for it and the dehumidifier was one of them, but I never got around to it.

The other night I thought I was actually going to go to bed early. Sucker. Janel got mad at me for turning it off again and that made me finally remember about the watt meter. So I went and hooked it up..

820 WATTS! Holy shit. That's almost as bad as both our window air conditioners put together.

So my early bedtime hopes were squashed and it was debugging time.

Long story short..

DEHUMIDIFIER FAQ

1. Clean the filter.

So I tried to clean the filter before, but I could not get the thing out. I even tried prying it out. Nothing. Apparently in order to get it out I needed to move the entire unit 2 feet and 180 degrees for no reason. After I did that the filter pulled out with zero pressure. WTF.

Cleaned the filter and bam.. Hey look.. It's actually sucking water out of the air. Pretty fast too. 30 minutes later and I had about 2 cups. This particular unit is pretty beefy at 50 pints and hour which is why it use 820 WATTS. Geez.

The stupid thing still does not turn off on its own, but at least I feel better that it's not going to burn down the house. Though $3 a day is a pretty steep price to pay for a dry basement. There has got to be a better solution.

I wrote with a pen.

2007-07-09T18:57:00.000-07:00

At vacation I wrote a letter to Lia. I'd been meaning to for a couple of months now, but of course like everything.. I'm kinda slow.

In 2006 I wrote about 1000 words with a pen/pencil. Not kidding. Most of those were my name and address. 2007 might be higher since I did all that heli trading, but it is still pretty low.

Apparently I am no longer capable of writing in a sequential manner. I just can not organize my thoughts that way. Even when writing this small stupid post I have already written another paragraph out of order.

THE PEN FORCES YOU TO WRITE IN ORDER. WTF.

I mean.. Who writes stuff in order?

Anyway. If you think that my writing is terrible here.. OMG. That letter is even worse. Sorry Lia. I tried. Maybe next time I'll type it out and the transcribe it. doh.

btw. I never actually managed to get the letter mailed at at vacation. Of course not. Maybe I'll get it out in the mail today. Doh.

More WPF

2007-07-04T19:17:00.000-07:00

So I've been playing with WPF for about a month now. I'm to the point where I can usually make things do what I want in a reasonable amount of time. WPF really is incredibly impressive with its flexibility. About the only shortcoming of the way it works is to say that it is a bit.. quirky. I'm just going to go ahead and blame that on the way XML works.

So for the first day or so of my vacation I spent doing job stuff. Yeah. I'm dumb. I actually would of continued doing it, but I figured that I be pretty pissed off if next week I went into the office and was told that my PTO would not be removed even if I did work the whole time. So I skirted the issue and just worked on my own stuff. omg.

I'm doing a 2D biped balancing sim and I needed a physics engine. Instead of digging up one of my old ones or start another one from scratch I decided to just get Erin Catto's Box2D up on .NET. Looking around there is a XNA version, but I decided against that. I guess I could of used the .NET version of Bullet, but I didn't. Oh well.

I initially just started porting Box2D to C#. I got as far as switching over the syntax and realized.. What the hell am I doing? I can just recompile it under C++/CLI. 20 minutes later I had a box falling onto another box. Woo. At some point I'll port it over to C# to just be more pure, but this let me get it up pretty fast.

One crazy thing is that while getting this up I was actually using freak'n Blend to place my bodies and joints. I can literally drag them out and position them on my workspace, launch it and boom.. They are physical if they are my UserControls! I even get the fancy WPF anti-aliasing.

My new $45 shipped video camera

2007-06-25T17:06:00.001-07:00

New $45 video camera

Links to pics of my office on fire.

2007-06-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37482520@N00/466034895/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37482520@N00/466018858/

Roofer

2007-06-23T20:47:00.001-07:00

When it rained hard, our porch roof would leak. I finally got around to looking into the problem last Friday.

So I got the ladder out and inspected the roof. Yep. A bit soft over here. I'm guessing it's just due to rot.

After ripping off the shingles and the first strip of OSB, this is what I found..

Upon first inspection this looks pretty bad, but when I tore off the inner roof I saw the BIGGER problem.

See those old boards.. On the front side they are sitting on a support. On the side near the house they are sitting on NOTHING. They are held in place by sitting against the angled siding. Across the entire 16' length there where two 2x2 support. WTF.

So my day project turned into a still not done project a week later. That's with taking off two days of work! I never take days off of work. Bah.

It has been an interesting build so far since after I realized that nothing was holding the roof up.. I was not going to walk on it again. This meant I had to tear the roof down while I was building the new roof across! Bah2.

At this point I have the old outer roof ripped down with inner roof intact. I've framed most of the way across and there is some OSB up there to protect from the rain.

Oh.. Did I mention that it keeps raining here. Oooh.

If I get a decent amount of time to work on this tomorrow it should be framed and skinned by the end of the day. I've never done shingle work before, but Jason has and he can help me pick out what I need.

Watch this talk

2007-06-09T10:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92

It says it's 20 minutes, but it is broke into smaller pieces. At least watch the first part. It's worth your time.

Profile 1st!

3 orders of magnitude speedup in 10 minutes

2007-06-08T10:17:00.000-07:00

It's not often that I can get a 3 orders of magnitude speedup with 10 minutes of work. haha.

I was using a lexer I wrote in one my work projects and it was SLOW. When I wrote the lexer I was using it as an experiment in lolo style lexing (which I will talk about in a future post)..

http://luna2.informatik.uni-osnabrueck.de/alumni/bernd/lolo/

I was just playing around with the concept and did not care about speed. All my little toy datasets were very small, but when I threw a 1.5meg file at it. SMASH. haha.

Ya see.. I was being INCREDIBLY lazy.

I was loading the entire file into a String. When I wanted to eat some characters off the front I did the INCREDIBLY lazy thing of..

this.readerText=this.readerText.subString(eatLength);

OMG is right. haha.

The solution was obvious of course, just pass in an offset and index from that instead. POW! 1000X speedup. haha.

Lee Rayburn is annoying

2007-06-08T05:28:00.001-07:00

Stephanie Miller doesn't start until 8am. Which was fine when Turing would get up before 8am because the Young Turks was on. Too bad the mic changed their lineup and put on a local guy Lee Rayburn in that time slot.

Lee Rayburn is annoying. It seems that literally half the things that come out of his mouth are in an attempt to reinforce that he is politically correct. Stephanie and Ed are overly PC too, but Lee takes it to a new level.

Today he was talking about how he doesn't want to refer to himself as straight because that would imply that the LGBT community is bent. He then went on to say that hetero-sexual/homo-sexual is not good enough either because the word 'homo' has such bad connotations.

Uhh.. Ok dude.

Sorry about this post. Turing got up at 7am today and I just could not take it and had to vent a little.

My blogger feed

2007-06-07T20:34:00.001-07:00

http://www.z425.com/blogger/atom.xml

Word.

2 hour work units

2007-06-07T20:18:00.000-07:00

The programmers still are working at home since the fire. We'll see if we make it back at the office on Monday.

Since I'm not at the office I've been doing the old coffee shop routine. The most efficient time block I've found is 2 hours which happens to coincide with the battery running out of juice. My goal is to get in 3 units a day for 7 days a week.

Two hours is enough to get something done, but not enough to screw around on the inet. I do a tiny bit of screwing around in that time, but it's on the order of 2's of minutes per unit. So pretty good.

If I do end up getting 3 units in then I think I am doing really well compared to most programmers in an office environment. Most office environments are TERRIBLE for productivity for most people ( most people don't even realize how much they are not working ). So 6 actual productive hours in a day is WAY ahead of the game and it is scalable across 7 days a week.

Another cool bit about my work units is that it takes me 15 minutes each way to/from the coffee shop. It's really nice having that time to rev-up and cool-down between sessions.

ANOTHER reason for a vertical mill

2007-06-06T15:05:00.001-07:00

Geez. I don't need another reason to get a vertical mill. I've been holding off on my cnc conversion until we move and I have a place for it. I mean.. Those suckers are HUGE. However. Seeing pepole making 3d printers and especially stuff like this..

http://www.ciciora.com/picknplace.html
http://www.ciciora.com/surface_mount.html

When I build my custom servos I probably should go ahead and do something like those. Sure it'll take more time, but think of the busy-work savings! Also. Once you have one of these suckers set up the things that you can make are just insane.

I guess in the mean time I could build it out of extra robot parts..

http://robosavvy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=318&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=4

Time for a new laptop

2007-06-05T22:15:00.000-07:00

Beginning of main was the launch of the new Centrino pro stuff. The two main nice things about Centrino pro is 802.11N and DX10. Forcing a high end standard sure is nice.

All the notebook forum kiddies thought it would take forever for the DX10 laptops to make it to market and that they would be expensive at first. They were wrong. I dunno why I listened to them.

You can go to freak'n egghead and for $1500 get an ok setup machine with a Nvidia 8600M DX10 card. If you order from a reseller for about $1500 you can get..

15.4 WSXGA 1600x1050
Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz
8600M 512M
2 gig
160 gig drive ( 5400 )
1G crazy Robinson memory card deally
wifi card
dvd/cd read-write

Whoa. So much easier to do than my last laptop purchase. I'm going to be doing some more research, but I think another Compal will be in my future. Now the big question is... Do I go for 4 gig?

I chipped my front tooth on lettuce.

2007-06-03T20:30:00.000-07:00

What the hell.

I guess technically it was on the fork holding the lettuce, but it sounds cooler that the lettuce did it.

The chip is quite small, but maybe it'll allow me to get some free "cosmetic" dentistry done on the calcium deposit on the same tooth. Ya know.. Cuz they hafta.

ML-1740 toner refill

2007-05-30T13:40:00.001-07:00

A few years back I bought a laser printer. A Samsung ML-1740. I think after rebates ( back when I used such disgusting things ) it ended up costing either $40 or $70. The big catch was that it only came with a 50% filled toner cartridge.

Last week I needed to print out some very dark camera tracking markers. Considering that our tonor has been pretty much run out for months.. It didn't go to well. I decided to see what all the fuss was about with tonor refills. I went to ebay and typed in ML-1740 toner refill. Bam.. $15 shipped and I get 3 bottles. A few days later I have my bottles.

I had figured that Samsung would make it a hassle to refill, but apparently not. You just pop a cap off the side and fill it up. It took 3 minutes.

It actually worked. Crazy.

Apparently you can only refill it twice because there is some sort of contaminant collection area that gets filled up, but still. WAY WAY cheaper than buying a new cartridge.

Choosing a language

2007-05-29T17:57:00.001-07:00

I decided to make a lightweight prototyping app to help speed along development of my current task. The engine is just too big to move quickly enough for my taste. I should of done this awhile ago, but considering our fire situation, now seemed like a good time.

What I have so far is all C++, but I was thinking today that maybe it doesn't make sense to be in C++. The idea being.. If this is going to be a prototyping app it should be done in a language that gives me the most development benefits/speed.

My first thought was C++/CLI. I very much enjoy the language. It was pretty obvious that C++/CLI was a bastard child compared to C#, but I had hope. Recently I read that Microsoft was planning on a change of direction with their C++ focus. Their new direction for C++ was to concentrate on C++ standards. Bah.. Microsoft is a large enough company that they can do more than one thing at once.

Ok.. C++/CLI was out.

Maybe C#? When Microsoft announced the news about C++, they also announced that C# was the favored child of .NET development. This itself was pretty obvious over the years too. The problem is that while I think C# is a nice language.. I like C++/CLI more. A lot more.

I guess I have another major .NET decision to make while I'm at it.. WinForms2 or WPF.. hmm.

So lazy with the blogging software

2007-05-27T11:10:00.001-07:00

I have not been able to bring myself to working on my blog software. It takes way more time than I am willing to spend right now so.. I'm gonna be lazy with it and try out blogger for awhile. I'm not sure what I'll move the old stuff over to blogger or not. Maybe now I'll actually start posting more.

Pic test

2007-05-27T10:47:00.000-07:00

Medium image

Small image

Real blog

2006-07-04T12:49:00.000-07:00

My new blog is starting to take shape. The main page is..

http://z425.com/

The current categories are...

daddy
everything-else
experimenting
game-development
health
inet-cool
making-money
movies-and-tv
patents
politics
programming
projects
radio-control
religion-is-dumb
robot
travel
videos-of

test

2004-11-28T10:35:00.000-08:00

test yo test