Where is my watch?

For as long as I can remember I have worn a wristwatch. I think it started when I was about 10 when my parents gave me my first watch as a gift. My Dad showed me how to wear it on my left wrist since I am right handed and wearing on my right hand would get it much more banged up. Not sure if that was lifelong advice or just what you tell a kid that you want to have the watch you just gave them to last longer than a few months. From that day on for over 40 years I wore my watch all the time. I took it off when I went to bed and put it on when I got up. I took it off to take a shower and put it on when I got dressed. I felt naked when I didn't have it on my wrist. I had many a summer with a watch tan.

Most of my watches lasted for a long time. I usually had 2 watches at any given time. My nice watch and a working watch. I wore my nice watch when I wasn't doing physical labor or things that could mess up the watch. The work watch (usually a much cheaper watch that I replaced more often) was one I didn't care about as much. I have had calculator watches, cheap digital Casio watches, nice Seiko watches and several other nice brands. Nothing expensive just functional.

Well recently since my last watch I bought (with a JC Penny gift certificate from my Grandmother over 10 years ago) had the batteries run out I stopped wearing my watch. Since I started working from home a few years ago I always started carrying my cell phone with me everywhere I go and when I was home I am surrounded by clocks (at the computer and all over the house) so I never needed a watch. Sometimes though I don't bring my cell phone with me and I find myself looking at my bare wrist. I need to get my watch fixed or buy another, I'm just not used to having nothing on my arm and knowing at any given moment what time it is or how much time I have left. I know it is supposed to be freeing to be unleashed from our time pieces but for me it is a part of me that seems missing.

By the way this watch is WAY to big but it sure is cool!

Interesting way to get out of the house

A friend of mine who shall remain unnamed. Uses Dial-up for Internet access (I know, can you believe it!). He says that when he needs the bandwidth he takes his laptop to a hotspot and uses the free Internet. I should probably mention that my friend is also VERY cheap. To his credit though he is much more financially secure than I will ever be. Me and money have this love/hate relationship. I love to spend it and hate it when I never seem to have any.

Anyway, my friends comment of using a public wireless access point for broadband internet made me think that would be a great way to get out of the house more often. I have been cooped up here for a couple of months hardly leaving once a week if I am lucky. If I loaded all my work on a nice laptop I could go to a different public space each day and work all over the city. From Starbucks in the morning to public buildings and other fun areas in the afternoon. I could even meet people and become a regular at certain spots. Problem is I don't drink coffee or tea (never acquired a taste for either). I'd probably spend too much money at all the locations out of guilt for using their free internet. There goes that whole money issue again. Still sounds like a cool idea. Of course I'd have to buy a laptop beefy enough to do my work on first?

HD TV is pretty cool

The DirectTV guys came by a couple of weeks ago and replaced our dish with a HD version and gave me a new HD DVR. It is something else watching HD shows on the TV. BIG difference from normal TV. I setup all the shows to be recorded in HD. Something I learned though...shows you didn't like in regular TV even if they look better in HD still aren't good shows. And it's also funny how some shows aren't HD? For example David Letterman is in HD but the Late Show with Craig Ferguson which is on right after is NOT HD? I prefer Craig over David. Too bad the show isn't in HD.

Also FX, SciFi, TBS are all in HD but Comedy Central isn't? I like John Stewarts Daily Show but it isn't in HD?

It actually been more fun watching shows in HD that watching movies on the new TV.

Now all I have to do is get a Xbox-360 and see what 1080p video games look like. I'll keep you posted.

We got a new TV!

On our way home from the coast we stopped at Video Only and looked at TV's. The talk we had in the parking lot was something like this. We can spend up to X$ if it goes over that we will have to wait a few weeks. So we go in and the 42" LCD 1080p Toshiba TV that was much more earlier this year was exactly X$. So we bought it. I quickly came home unloaded the lugage and brought the TV box into the living room we finished painting the weekend before. The TV was the reward for me helping with the painting and not being a grouch about it. We spent the evening watching movies and TV on our new flat screen. My only complaint is that we don't really have anything to show off the higher resolution. DVD's look pretty good but they aren't HD. The Digital Satalite looks good too but it is still only 480i (4:3). And regular TV programs seem pretty lame at 4:3 on a wide TV. So I ordered a HD DVR and HD service for our digital Satalite. I am also getting a used X-Box 360 which does high res output of games. Still working out all the connection issues and figuring out the best way to set things up but this is a LOT better than our 10 year old 32" tube tv we had.

I love my new TV.

Funny thing happend at the office

I got an email from a friend the other day that was one of those joke emails. It was about the 6 levels of hangovers. It was well written and very funny. In fact, half way through reading it I busted out in a hearty laugh that made my eyes water. Afterwards I thought about it. If I were in an office instead of working from home someone probably would have noticed and maybe even came over to my cube and asked what was so funny and I would probably have been embarased a little. But no one noticed when I laughed because no one was home but the cats and nothing I do seems to phase them. So I wondered if I laughed even more freely because I was at home or if I would have even laughed at a cube? It now also seems a little weird that I did laugh so hard with no one around. But I did enjoy the email.



The 6 levels of hangovers

* 1 star hangover

No pain. No real feeling of illness. Your sleep last night was a mere disco nap, which has given you a whole lot of misplaced energy. Be glad that you are able to function relatively well. However, you are still parched. You can drink 10 sodas and still feel this way. You are craving a steak bomb and a side of gravy fries.

** 2 star hangover

No pain, but something is definitely amiss. You may look okay but you have the mental capacity of a staple gun. The coffee you are chugging is only exacerbating your rumbling gut, which is craving a rootie tootie fresh and fruity pancake breakfast from IHOP. There is some definite havoc being wreaked upon your bowels.

*** 3 star hangover

Slight headache. Stomach feels crappy. You are definitely not productive. Anytime a girl walks by you gag because her perfume reminds you of the random gin shots you did with your alcoholic friends after the bouncer 86'd you at 1:45 a.m. Life would be better right now if you were in your bed with a dozen donuts and a meatball hero watching the E! fashion awards. You've had 4 cups of coffee, a gallon of water, 3 Snapples and a liter of diet coke - yet you haven't peed once.

**** 4 star hangover

Life sucks. Your head is throbbing. You can't speak too quickly or else you might puke. Your boss has already lambasted you for being late and has given you a lecture for reeking of booze. You wore nice clothes, but that can't hide the fact that you missed an oh-so crucial spot shaving, (girls, it looks like you put your make-up on while riding the bumper cars.) Your eyes look like one big vein and your hair style makes you look like a reject from the class picture of Grover Cleveland HS, class of '84.

***** 5 star hangover, aka "Dante's 4th Circle of Hell."

You have a second heartbeat in your head, which is actually annoying the employee who sits in the next cube. Vodka vapor is seeping out of every pore and making you dizzy. You still have toothpaste crust in the corners of your mouth from brushing your teeth in an attempt to get the remnants of the shit fairy out. Your body has lost the ability to generate saliva, so your tongue is suffocating you. Death seems pretty good right now. You definitely don't remember who you were with, where you were, what you drank, and why there is a stranger still sleeping in your bed at your otherwise empty house.

****** 6 star hangover, otherwise known as the "Infinite Nut smacker"

You wake up on your bathroom floor. For about 2 seconds you look at the ceiling, wondering if the cool refreshing feeling on your cheek is the bathroom tile or your vomit from 5 hours ago. It is amazing how your roommate was as drunk as you, but somehow managed to getup before you. You try to lift your head. Not an option. Then you inadvertently turn your head too quickly and smell the funk of 13 packs of cigarettes in your hair. Suddenly you realize you were smoking, but not ultra lights...some jackass handed you Marlboro reds, and you smoked them like it was your second full time job. You look in the mirror only to see remnants of the stamp "Ready to Rock" faintly atop your forehead......the stamp on the back of your hand that has magically appeared on your forehead by alcoholic osmosis. You have to be to work in t-minus 14 minutes and 32 seconds and the only thing you can think of wearing is your "hello kitty" pajamas and your slippers.

Yet drinking SEEMS like a good idea...

Halloween Prop for 2008

I REALLY like how our animated skull for our hearse driver came out this year. This is a project I have been working on for 2 years. Ever since we created a hearse for our graveyard display I wanted a talking driver. A lot of things just came together the right way and it turned out better than I could have thought.

I wrote an initial speech that Chris helped me edit. We found a voice talent guy at HaUNTcon that turned out perfect.

One of my original plans was to use the uMP3 player from Rouge Robotics. It has a SD Memory card slot so any sized MP3 file can be used. It requires a custom cable to be built for use with the EFX-TEK line of controllers but it wasn't hard to make and it works great!

One of my original plans was to use the standard "Bucky" skeleton from Anatomical chart co. that we always use. I didn't want to manufacture any special parts or at least none that anyone could make. The issue with this is that the skull is VERY heavy and most people couldn't figure out a way to make it work. I had one of those creative moments and bought a 2" nylon ball and drilled a hole in it and slid it down the bar that holds his had and then sanded out the base of the skull a bit and it pivoted nicely on the ball. I added a spring to counter balance the head and it now could turn and nod without much effort. I later added a bearing below the ball to make is spin smoother. The rest of the mechanics (placement of servos and linkages) other people had already done so I just copied them.

I also wanted to use an EFX-TEK prop controller that loaded the entire movement show onto the the controller and just played it back on repeat. I didn't want to hook a computer to the animated head (that's how a lot of them are done). Another goal was to use a standard RC transmitter with 2 joysticks to puppeteer the the head and store the movements so we could play them back. I didn't want to have to to manually program each movement while listening to the audio track over and over which is how a lot of this type of thing is done. The joystick option is more how the movie people do it.

So EFX-TEK had a program on their forum that would allow you to use a VEX transmitter which I got off of eBay to move 4 servos using their Prop-SX controller and send the data out it's serial port that a PC could then capture. With the captured data you could create a show program that read the data and played it back. One of the first issues I ran into was that trying to move the head around and make the jaw move was just not practical. So I decided to use a "audio talker" which is a servo controller board that moves a servo based on a audio signal. It automates the jaw movements for you. So this freed up my transmitter to move the turn/nod/tilt servos while the audio played and the jaw moved which was MUCH easier.

After capturing what I felt was a conservative amount of head movement for the 2min speech I took at look at the data. It was just under 3000 data points which is 3 servo positions every 20ms. A lot of the data is redundant since the servos weren't always moving every 20ms so I compressed the data down with a 4th value that was a counter of how many 20ms frames do the servos stay in that position ( a common technique I found out from EFX-TEK). This reduced the data points down to just under 2000. The program area for the Prop-SX is 8K. When I created the reader program combined with all these data points the program was too big to fit into the 8K memory space. The program for the SX was pretty big and the left over memory was pretty small. I decided to try using the Prop-SX which is much slower than the SX but the data reader program is VERY simple and took hardly any memory so I could use the rest for the data points. It still wouldn't fit so I had to reduce the data points by increasing the counter to a minimum of 240ms frames instead of 20ms which created 425 data points. This fit into the Prop-2 but made the head movement a little jerky. I didn't have time at this point to fiddle with it any further so I stuck with the jerky movements. The Prop-SX has a 32K EPROM that you can burn data to but I had never done it or written/used any code that read from the EPROM so it will have to be something I try next year and get my entire 2000 data points in the EPROM.

I still have to come up with a amplifier solution for the audio since the output of the MP3 player is just line level. I found a couple of small amplifier solutions that I think will work.

But I am pretty pleased with how it turned out.

The Halloween Monster

Here is a exerpt from a chat session with my good friend....

Friend: You bastard

Me: ???

Friend: you really want me to play Portal

Me: oh? sorry. I hacked portal and got the sounds out ot it. Grabbed all of the ones for the companion cube. We are going to have them play from a speaker in the cube Chris is making.
Me: funny sh*t

Friend: when I get a computer that can actually handle it I'll play.

Me: I still think it would make a great console game. But you have to have a 360 or ps3

Friend: feckin' bastages

Me: used 360 would probably be cheaper than a new computer?

Friend: ah but I kinda need a computer. the boys and wife have homework that requires internet access.

Me: WHAT! You living in the stone ages? No Internet?????

Friend: yes we have it because we are borrowing a computer but eventually we have to return it.

Me: ah...I was worried about your geek status. Thought we were going to have to revoke your badge
Me: I see X-Box 360 used on ebay for $189?

Friend: nope...because I know how long the tube used in the Hedron Collider is

Friend: I get to keep my geek badge

Friend: :-)

Me: F*ck you da smart one

Friend: since when did smart become a qualification of being a geek.

Me: So...how long is the tube?

Friend: approximately 20 km

Me: WOW! you even know it in metric!

Me: You must be some sort of Mad Scientist?

Friend: that's all science cares about

Me: Hey I am trying hard here to give you sh*t and you are making it difficult!

Friend: I'd like to say I'm an evil scientist but we both know that's not true.

Friend: roflmao...I'm supposed to play nice and let you give me crap?

Me: Well...no but....

Friend: where's the fun in that?

Friend: :-)

Me: fun for me!
Me: me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me

Friend: roflmao...It's all about you until Chris is around. *Evil Grin*

Me: shhhhh

Friend: hee hee

Me: don't tell her....we are being sneaky
Me: I can only do this if I whisper.....if she catches me talking about "me" then I'm doomed
Me: Oh BTW did I mention that I am LOSING MY MIND!

Friend: feckin' christ I can't stop laughing
Friend: where is your mind going?

Me: It is being eaten by the big horrible HALLOWEEN MONSTER!

Friend: does the Halloween Monster listen to light country music and dream of a day when Monsters everwhere can wear pink lace?

Me: yours does THAT too?

Friend: Mine is frends with the Tequillia Monster

Me: seriously, I'm not THAT crazy....yet

Friend: call me when you get there, man.

Me: the HALLOWEEN MONSTER keeps you up at night and steals time when you are not looking and gives you more work to do than you can handle

Friend: Does your's smoke menthols?

Me: no but he smells like CANDY!
Me: lots of milk chocolate and peanut butter

Friend: Mine love's pop rocks

Me: too noisy....wouldn't be able to sneak up on you and wake you up or change your schedule without you noticing

Friend: That's the brilliance of monster design. It's head is so massive ya can't hear the popping until it opens it's mouth and drolls on your head.