Here is a good video explanation of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image with some depth added. It makes me wonder what would happen if we made a telescope that had a hemisphere view and set it to view the entire universe for a year, instead of a speck of sky for 11 days.

On BoingBoing the guest blogger Lee Billings is doing a great job of summarizing what’s been recently discovered from the Kepler mission. Kepler is a space telescope like Hubble, also named after an astronomer. Its purpose is to stare at a small patch of sky for several years looking for planets around the stars in its field of view. There are two main ways of seeing these planets, the direct and indirect methods (sounds like something from Roman Holiday…). The indirect method looks at the star to see if it wobbles, meaning it has something gravitationally bound to it pulling it to a side as the planet orbits it. The direct method basically looks for eclipses. It watches for when planets transit in front of the star, dimming it. This several year survey of this one patch of sky has recently yielded the first results, biased towards small stars with planets orbiting close to it, and thus their “years” are significantly less than an Earth year. That said, planets are ridiculously common it seems, something we suspected for a long time but now have direct observations of. Here is Lee’s interview with one of the involved astronomers.

So I want to know what happened. These were to be the cars of tomorrow! They were aiming for new designed, efficiency, and new features. Explain the cars of the 70s and 80s after seeing this:

This is really neat! I’m glad I don’t live down there anymore but sometimes you can see how amazing it can be.

Seems like the only time I post here is when I update the look of the site. Well, that’s going to change. So, the updates: I graduated (for the last time I think), bought a house, got laid off, got a better job, and started disc golfing. Been a good few years!

So I haven’t actually posted something new here in a while, if you discount updating the previous entry umpteen times with new pictures. That got a bit unwieldy so I moved it up to it’s own page above (look up there at the top) and hide the entry that was here. Speaking of which this site was overhauled too. It was past time for a new look. I was never 100% sold on the previous theme I downloaded so this time I just made one of my own. I’m happy with it again. It’s not complete yet. I need to put the dynamic stuff back in, the background color changing with the time of day and the top image. Currently both are fixed to what you see. This weekend I hope to have the time to do it right. There will be fewer colors and the top image at the top will match the color of the page instead of being random. And I’m going to get rid of a bunch of the less then stellar images. The stellar ones are mostly from the Astronomy Picture of the Day, linked above. I’ve massively abbreviated everything up there, but it’s all still there plus lots of new stuff.

One of the big reasons I haven’t had time for this much neglected site is school. I’m into my final year of Mechanical Engineering. I only have my senior design class this semester. Or rather I did until I thought “hey I’ve got LOTS of free time, I should learn Mandarin!” so now I’m taking Mandarin too. Additionally I’m also relearning/refreshing Spanish and French and maybe, sort of considering Tagalog too. Tagalog likely won’t happen for me this year though. The senior project is great though. We’re designing a replacement for the MIT Handiboard. That may have been a good system at one point but it’s certainly seen better days: it’s too slow, big, heavy, error prone, and expensive. Our system will be small, lightweight, under $50 (preferably about $30), modular, and completely open. You can buy one or roll your own. We should have the beginings of a prototype here in the next week or so. Controlling a robot will come a few days/weeks after that. World domination commences with the new year. As it stands we have more demo ideas then time, effort or money will allow and we’re still coming up with more ideas. Come Design Day in mid-April we’ll hopefully steal the show!

The FE is finally over. In case you somehow missed it, that’s the 8 hour engineering test I had to take in order to graduate, and later on become a P.E. Turns out that the studying for it was far worse then the test. Two 4 hour sessions today, 120 questions in the morning and 60 more in the afternoon. I hope I passed, I don’t want to have to go back.

The robot is nearly complete. It just needs software now to make it work well. I got the sensors soldered and wired up and tested the thing walking. It turns left ok, but on the right, it’s going to walk off the competition course. Speaking of which the competition is this coming Thursday, April 17th, 12-3pm, Saltaire Room in the Union at school. The races start at 1pm.

School is nearly over, other then the robot competition I have 1 lab left (until graduation no less), one presentation I need to start on solar concentrators (which I can do in my sleep now), 2 assignments and 4 finals. Not much at all, relative to what the rest of the semester has been like. 5 engineering classes and working wasn’t a bright combonation. Oh well, after April 30th, I’ll have 3 classes until I graduate, and I seem to already have an engineering job lined up, a year away. No too bad. Now if it could just be a solar/energy job in Santa Cruz/San Francisco with ….. Guess I shouldn’t get greedy.

Senior project will either be making a one wheel balancing rechargeable electric skateboard, or replacing the horrible Handyboard for the University of Utah. I’m sure then those MIT kids designed it, it was good, but computers have come a ways since then. Weird that I’ll be designing circuits for my ME senior project. Guess I really am going to finally graduate with that CS/EE/ME/ChemE degree I wanted when I first started college. Who knew?! Yeah, the ChemE part, I’m looking at adding some chemistry/eng classes in the fall. I’m a glutton for punishment it seems, plus taking 1 class will be a grand, 2 classes is only $1250, might as well.

It’s finally Spring Break, and for the first time I actually need the break! This semester is killing me, between 16 credits, 2 labs, 2 projects, and working. I went into work today, the power was out, so I left after a bit. When I got home I accidently slept for four more hours. If I could do that when classes are on, that’d be great! Tonight it seems like everyone is busy with family, work, concerts or other stuff. I should be working on one of the two projects I wanted to get going on, but I just can’t seem to find the effort to work on either of them. 

So I recently found a neat idea online and made it tonight. It’s a box to put all your power cords in to declutter your desk. I added a USB hub to it and now my laptop has all its wires neatly arrayed.

My friend Sheryll has a photography business. She is amazing, and I’m not just saying that because I’m paid to! lol I don’t get paid at all actually, I’ll have to look into that. Check out her work: http://www.sheryll-lynne.com/

So a while back I took some pictures right after a storm passed through. It was still breaking up on the mountains when I got these images. Just recently we had a major storm pass through and I was able to get some pictures from before it started. The sun was low enough it light up the mountains by shining underneath the clouds! The pictures with the flag: that’s one of those giant flags that you can see from 10 miles off. You can imagine the wind from seeing how actively it’s waving. The sound of the wind was incredible!

So I finally decorated. I decided not to be a Scrooge this year. Not a huge amount, but there is a stocking and some other stuff too.

Finally! Finals are over and surprisingly I think I did well! I was dreading the robotics final, given how the class went, but as it turned out he wrote an easy test. The first two problems were simple and nearly identical, the third wasn’t bad, and the last one was easy. Fluids could have been hell but turned out to be more like West Valley. Mechatronics I didn’t have a chance to study for at all, but still managed to do half decent. It was easy compared to the midterm, but not an easy test. Regardless, it’s all over now! I don’t have to Think about our robot for a few weeks at least! And for anyone who might be reading and forgotten, dinner Saturday night, 7:30 or so, Ethiopian place.

So the new blog is coming along pretty well. It’s not quite done yet, but once done will have a number of nice things on it. The banner image at the top will change each time the page is loaded. The sidebar and post header/footer will change color in time with the day, probably every 2-3 hours instead of every hour like it is now. That’ll involve some javascript-fu to make it happen. Mostly written but needs to be adapted.  There may also be a clock and/or a music playlist embedded on the page. We’ll see. I’m also going to see if I can make the page adapt to the seasons automagically, that shouldn’t be too hard but we’ll see how lazy I get. Also, my old sidebar of links needs to be fit in some how. Right now I’m really not certain how I’m going to make that happen. It’ll be figured out at some point. And I’ll likely put up a dedicated page for the robot. Also, the calendar will likely be linked up to my Google Calendar and my home computer / iPhone calendar. If I can get all four to autosync I’ll be amazed! Lastly, the webcam is in limbo for the time being. No idea what’s going to happen with that one. Time to go, I hear gliders roaming around…

On the left a picture of the robot, on the right a quicktime video of the legs moving. By the end of today we should have the whole thing assembled and walking.

I have new pets! Two female sugar gliders (Eris and Iris) and five fish: 4 glofish (danios) and one betta.

So I completely forgot to get my camera out this year for the party, but I did have the webcam going. Here is the day from 10:20am to 1am or so, in about 30 seconds. Amusing to say the least! I think people had a good time! Atleast this year’s chili wasn’t killer hot! If the video doesn’t work try the alternative version. HalloweenParty2007.avi (8,495k file) Alt version (9,907k file)

So the title really says it all. This week is the first round of midterms, not fun for anyone. Fluids doesn’t look like it’ll be that bad tomorrow though. Despite this I’m feeling relaxed, a first for school. lol

So the webcam isn’t really back, I guess. It was going to be. Now I think it’ll just be on periodically from my laptop, where ever that happens to be. Currently it is/was in the Overmoe room of the WEB. 10 hours there on a Sunday kind of sucks. Also, it was brought to my attention that not only am I not the only person who reads this site, but some people would like updates more then once a quarter. So I’ll be trying. Promises? Never. :-p

The webcam is back, at least for now.

103 is the predicted temperature this week, pretty much all week long. I guess the plus side is that at 3% humidity I’ll die of dehydration before heat stroke. I can’t say I’m doing anything exciting for the fourth other then not working and not going to school. Ok so I guess I really don’t have anything to say right now, but I haven’t posted here for a long time and I’m bored out of my mind right now. So you go enjoy whatever it is you’re doing and if you’re not enjoying it email me at my.full.name@gmail.com. Don’t know my name? See above. I’m curious who all checks out my site here.

Oh yeah, and if you happen to know a smart, nice, cute, single geek girl have her email me, or better yet just have her knock on my door.

Shannon, doing what she loves most:

So last night I managed to get an hbridge up and running and controlling a motor (mostly, needs work). Not bad for a few hours work and being entirely self taught. I also discovered that I’m famous in eastern europe. Or at least my page is. With drug spammers. Nearly killed my site! Still working of fixing it and cleaning up the mess. I’ll have pics of my hbridge mess up later.

I can’t believe I actually got a B average on all 6 classes, including one A-! It’s all over now and I never have to take that many classes at once again. 20 credits of real engineering classes blows! I just have one class this summer and three in the fall. And two of those are robotics. Speaking of which I ordered an Arduino board the other day (from Sparkfun) and should be able to test out some ideas this summer and get good at microcontroller programming and bot building! I plan on having my team in the fall and spring get the highest grade in the class, by far! I have several tutorials to get through that will show me sensor basics, motor basics, running an LCD, etc. Should be fun!

Time lapse: I think that describes my mind’s view of time since the start of the semester. Things are going very well for once, so it’s working out. Otherwise there is this time lapse for entertainment. (You might need to install mpeg4 if you’re on Windows. Go here and download and install the pack.

Break went by way too fast! And the semester will go by way too slow I bet. I wish it was quarters instead. Oh well, this coming summer I won’t have class and that will be a bit longer then a 3 week break! It’s just the getting up at 7:30am everyday from now til then that’s going to kill me.

I made it through finals and I think I’m doing ok. I’m just about ready to go back to school and have a week more off which is nice. I also think that I can get between a 3.5 and 4.0 this coming semester. I’ll have two hard classes, two medium (both of which I’m retaking), and one easy class for a total of 17 credits. I’m also, for the first time in a long time, actually excited to go back to school. I used to be very competitive and lost that somewhere along the way (just before my freshman year I think) at which point my academic career tanked. I suspect that I’ll do better this coming semester because of this. I really don’t know a good way of putting it into words; basically as long as I don’t lose momentum along the way I’m assured of doing well for the first time in a long time. I guess the other clue I have is that I’m interested in reading again. I’ve noticed that seems to be a big thing. For a long while now I’ve just had no interest in reading much of anything, whereas now I’m interested in reading everything. I’ve even putting together a list of books I need to acquire to read! I haven’t done that in years.