[28 Dec 2009|02:18am] pfcottontail Got very little productive done today. I'm pretty sure it's because, if I try these next couple ideas and they don't work, I will be plunged into neverending despair. To take that risk, I need to be in a state where status quo would lead to an equally dismal future. Just realized it's the end of December, so I guess it's time to get moving again!!! We all had a lovely pancake brunch at Pelican, followed by a 6-coffee tasting at Starbucks led in part by Evan, using the gift pack he got me. Eli and Seth and Nate and his wife whose name I constantly forget (Jen?) were there with Erin and Evan and I and it was a nice relaxing sort of deal. Also it only cost me like $3, so can't beat that! The three of us also saw Sherlock Holmes. It dragged on a littttle bit at parts (2 hrs 15 min) but otherwise was a really solid kick-ass film. I want to read some Doyle now to see how true-to-literature the script and characters and plot and fighting were. Considering the setting, I was really happy with how the combat was done. My only other complaint I think would be how some of the 'clues' were really like "there is no way of knowing this outside the narrative." I accept that it will happen, and for the most part when things were revealed it was like "aaaaahh, that's right!" but I guess that also called attention to the times when that wasn't the case. 3 comments|post comment

[27 Dec 2009|01:12am] pfcottontail I have been urged to update, and am doing so against my will. I therefore can't promise there won't be a tasteless joke.... You know that Nigerian who attempted to blow up the plane recently? Well, it turns out (boring article) his dad warned officials that his son was extremist (/boring article). More importantly, his dad is a banker. A Nigerian banker. No wonder no one took him seriously; if they took his advice they would have needed to give him their bank account information so he could award them with 30 billion USD for keeping his son off the plane until the political turmoil dies down and he can get back in power. Also, this is totally gonna make my upcoming Seattle vacation travel an even bigger clusterfuck than it already is. Can't wait to see some new priceline e-mails come in about shit getting changed and tightened up on me. NOTE: AT THIS POINT I ACCIDENTALLY SHIFTED FROM JOKING TO RANTING. I was really really trying to do this whole vacation with just one carry-on... not sure that will be possible when January 7th rolls around. But seriously, now they are advising people to take minimal carry-on or no carry-on at all. And also you can't leave your seat or keep anything in your lap for the last hour (because literally everyone is storing explosives in their underwear). Now is this a coincidence?: airlines start charging extra for baggage aside from carry-on (one piece of luggage is an extra $25 each way. note my ticket cost $240 so that's a 21% price increase). I'm betting as this became standard practice, more people started bringing more carry-on and shipping less luggage. The airlines go "oh no, we've cut so much costs by making this a shitty experience, how can we rip off our customers more? Hooray, a terrorist plot, now we can force extra money out of people!" I know that's really cynical and douchey, but the whole airline industry has been cynical and douchey for the past 8 years. Adding costs and hiding costs is not the way to get more customers, and if you don't get more customers then you aren't going to make more money, that's all there is to it. Telling people they can't go to the bathroom isn't going to make anyone feel safer, and telling people they suddenly need to pay 20% more for something they booked two months ago isn't going to make them more loyal. 6 comments|post comment

[19 Dec 2009|11:37pm] pfcottontail Well, e-mail sent to Gabe at Penny Arcade. I wish I could work up the chutzpah next to contact Jason Calacanis! I'll definitely be doing that if the PhD thing doesn't work out... I got my fiber optic flashlight thing in the mail today. It's actually a really really gay fairy wand. It has a water globe in the middle with glitter, and there's like 5 settings for the LEDs, ranging from "slowly scintillating" to "epileptic raver" (my terms). I almost feel bad ripping it apart. Almost. The plan for Sunday is to finish my code (For Realsies) and try burying a fiber in a chip when I bake it. Then all I can do is pray. I have some 1 mm LEDs, with the tiny tiny tiny contact points that I guess go on a pre-made solder pad. They are the perfect size but with the tools I have there's no way I can use them. At least they were cheap. ( Now here's me and Barkley enjoying a dick cookie. My mom kept muttering 'so gay...' as she took the photo. ) 2 comments|post comment

[19 Dec 2009|03:37pm] pfcottontail This is so demoralizing. Here was my new code plan... since, in some conditions, it's impossible to find all 4 key points, and the conditions are somewhat random, I decided to write code to find two of the four points, and then determine which two points it is. This part went off fine. Basically there's an camera image with 4 key points, and a cad file with the points on it. The CAD file is all known. The hope was, using the two located image points, and the four known CAD points, I could determine general areas to look for the two remaining points. It works..... okay. The problem here is that I have two non-ideal solutions, and I'm not sure which professor to ask. I guess it doesn't hurt to ask them all. The first solution is to inject some food coloring into the holes made by the key points. It's a little tricky because the needle has to be angled in the hole to allow for air to escape so the color can go in. This is done with the chip liquid channels filled with food coloring. The alternative is to have an empty chip. Since, in theory, an empty chip won't turn up anything besides the key points, I can have looser tolerances to finding them, and it won't located a liquid channel and go "hey this looks like a hole!" Then the liquid channels can be filled. Okay so it's not really a problem, so much as a re-imagining. I'll send out those e-mails. Thanks for the tips. Are there any filters that block only the UV spectrum, and are there any filters that block everything BUT the UV spectrum? I think I may need one or both of those. :| I feel like the 'mult' calculation is done somewhat arbitrarily. I also understand that none of this will make any sense to anyone. In fact, the only reasons I can make heads or tails of it is a) I wrote it, and b) I have the picture and CAD files in front of me for comparison. ( Now for your pleasure, here's more Matlab code. ) post comment

[18 Dec 2009|01:06am] pfcottontail Well this is kinda cool. I just realized (or they recently added) that my online credit card account can do expense reports. So I can punch in, say, 7/30 to 12/15 and it tells me where I burned all my money! For instance.... auto-related: $941. I assume that includes gas. Groceries.... $1500 wtf. Not to be confused with Dining out... $550 holy Jesus. Long story short, check your online accounts for stuff like this and it can help point out where you're spending money, and that makes it easier to figure where you can cut costs. 2 comments|post comment

[17 Dec 2009|02:34pm] pfcottontail This is such fantastic news I can't believe it. It looks like Adventure Time will become a series on Cartoon Network in March. There's all sorts of info on a blog. If you haven't seen the original Adventure Time then you are a bad person. Also worth noting is that all my letters of rec and applications and junk are officially done and turned in now. U Pitts didn't get my GRE scores or official UF transcript yet, but they're not due until mid January. Also, I know I sent them. Also, they got my FAU transcript so I know I sent them to the right place. I'll worry about that later. post comment

[17 Dec 2009|01:13am] pfcottontail I haven't gotten any e-mails letting me know about one of my rec letters. Maybe two. I don't even know. Technically they were all due on the 15th for 3 universities, and maybe the 18th for a fellowship, and then the last university os January. I'm going to campus tomorrow to finish my code and ask the professor what's up. This whole school situation's a crazy mess. Parents got me a 61 key keyboard. It's pretty massive, I think it was like $125, so not too pricey. I USB'ed it to my laptop and Fruity Loops recognized and worked with it immediately, so that's got me pretty pumped. Now I just need some musical talent maybe and I can start making some tunes. Really gotta get this code finished and start writing this thesis, too, hard, so I can start programming this game my friends are working on. Speaking of, there's a new trailer for the Alice In Wonderland movie coming in March. The trainer and I tried to max out my bench press today and see what it was, but there were some issues and I couldn't lift the weight. We did some work with partial reps. Hopefully in a few weeks we'll go back and see. Hoping for 150. >:| post comment

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