Author: Brian C. Becker

So my parents are going to buy the second most ugly car on the road, a Hyunde Element. Not only that, but they plan to fly from Florida to New York (yeah, that bitterly cold place up new Canada) and drive it back next weekened. And it just so happens that they’ll be trying to get through Jacksonville next Sunday – right past all the hordes of people swarming around the Super Bowl game. Good luck! Oh, yeah, and here are some pics: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Oh yeah, I also noticed my Contact page was broken, so I fixed that. I wonder why nobody told me it was broken…hmm, let me thing about that 😀

My family came by today and my Dad fixed my car in about 2 minutes. Apparently, all that had happened was the tube that connected to my spark plug had fallen off, so I was running on 3 cylinders. I felt a bit stupid, but I’m glad it wasn’t anything serious. I then saw my sister graduate from her semester long modeling training (yeah, never thought I’d have a model for a sister). Hopefully she can get some good jobs out of it. I spent the rest of the day and evening at robotics. I’m really liking my GUI for image processing and computer vision, but I was getting a bit limited with FLTK GUI and need to do some re-organizing in order to add some new features, so I decided to swap to the nicer, more professional looking wxWidgets. While I was at it, I decided to try out Visual C++ 2005 Express Beta (what a mouthful!). It was actually really good. It has some quirks and it is a memory hog, but it is miles ahead of Visual C++ 6 in terms of features. Still, it took me a while (all night basically) to get the basics ported over and wxWidgets setup. Now I have to port the GUI, something for next week, I guess.

This past weekend, my grandparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Of all the things they wanted to do and all the places they wanted to go, they choose Epcot! Although a bit surprising, it certainly was a nice surprise. So after being in Orlando for a year, I finally went to a theme park. The whole clan gathered Friday afternoon (although I had to turn around a lot because I kept getting lost) and we went to Downtown Disney, which was a real treat. We ate at Captain Jack’s and then went to Geradeli for dessert. Man, they sure pack it in – it was some of the best dessert I’ve ever had. The next day we went to Epcot early. Just as we were leaving on the bus, we realized that not everybody was on….oops, not even at Epcot and we were already separated. Good thing for cell phones! We met up at the gate and went in. Our first stop was Mission Space which was a really cool simulation ride. None of us really had any breakfast, so at least there wasn’t anything to get all over the shiny controls 😉 However, we did feel a bit on the wobbly side when we came out. We at breakfast, did the big Epcot golf ball ride, the aquarium, energy, and some other stuff while we were there. Then we went to the countries. The countries were really cool. We ate at Mexico and had some really good Mexican food. We visited Norway, China, Japan, Morraco, USA, Paris, which was most of the countries. We ate at Morracco and watched the belly dancer do her stuff. Afterwards we watched the fireworks, which were pretty spectacular. By the time we left, we realized what Epcot stood for: Every Person Comes Out Tired, which was certainly the case. The next day some of us went back to Downtown Disney to walk around a bit and eat more Geradeli desserts. Then we all split up and went home. On my way home, I had some car trouble – I was almost home and it started shaking quite badly. Not good at all…at least I could take the shuttle to school and back.

My first business trip went well. I flew up to Washington DC to attend an NSF I/UCRC annual meeting. The NSF building is a whole lot bigger than I had imagined. The Marriott hotel we stayed was also huge (13 stories) and the top story overlooked the Potomac river, Georgetown, and Washington DC. You could see the Washington Monument from the hotel as well. It was a grueling first couple of days trying to get presentations and demos done. Our presentation was squished quite a bit and we had to scrap the demos because the computer we were presenting on was…well…let’s just say very incapable. No internet? How am I supposed to demo my online website?!? Some of it was interesting and some of it was boring, but I took some notes and had fun. I got to ride the metro for the first time too – that contraption must have been built a long time ago, because it was rather rickety. Overall, it was a great learning experience. But now it’s time to crack down on schoolwork <sigh>…

I hope everybody is having a nice holiday shopping and doing all sorts of other fun stuff – isn’t shopping such a blessing? OK, so maybe shopping isn’t the biggest blessing in your life, but I do hope that everybody is enjoying themselves this holiday. I just got home yesterday and it’s nice to be able to sleep in and not have to do much of anything. Hopefully that means I can organize my computer and do a lot of (badly needed) updates to this site. I’ve got a lot of cool stuff that I can put up, so perhaps if I get a chance I’ll do that.

The week after finals! So nice not to have to cram for one weekend in my life! But I am staying at UCF another week to work and get some Robotics done. I’m making some real progress…well, at least with generating some cool feedback loops with the new Sony Handycam DV camcorder. Take a look at our new “Discover” application in a feedback loop.

Whahooo!!! Finals are over!!! I’m so excited…conk…zzzz……We are sorry to interrupt this message, but it appears Brian is unconcious and drooling on his keyboard…Until next time…

Finals are upon us. Run for your lives! Umm, err, well, maybe we ought to run for the library instead!

Wow, what a day. First a meeting that never happened, then a 16 page Differential Equations take home exam due, then classes, homework, and more classes. I had a class at 6:00 PM, so I couldn’t leave for home until after class around 7:00 PM. When I tried to merge onto I-95, I set a new record: I merged onto the interstate at about 20 mph becuase it was nearly total gridlock. Nice…That’s what you get for traveling home the night before Thanksgiving. Oh, well, I’m thankful that I got home!

Well, I tried to make no-bake cookies today. They are oatmeal chocolate cookies that you boil and then put on waxed paper to set. After they have set, you can eat them like a normal cookie. Unfortunately, being the engineer that I hope to be, I decided to “improve” upon the recipe. Why not add some marshmallows to the mix? And if you don’t have waxed paper to put them on, why not use aluminium foil? It turns out that if you put marshmallows in the recipe, the cookies never set and you get a gooey glob of a chocolate cookie. And it turns out if you try to put them on aluminium foil, the cookies stick to it and never come off. OK, so I guess I should stop trying to be creative.

What an insane week! Looking back, I’ve realized that I’ve spent no less than 12 hours at the UCF campus every day of the week! Monday I had a rescheduled class from 8:30 to 10:15 PM. Tuesday I had a very important work deadline to meet. Wednesday I had a massive assignment due. Thursday I had an exam I was not prepared for. Friday I had another extremely important deadline to meet. And Friday night I crashed and got me 10 hours of sleep…mmmmm….nice….

I also helped a friend hack my first attempt at an existing open source project. We added a password change option to SquirelMail using the Mercury Mail Server on Windows Server 2003. Awesome!

Oh, and yeah, my webhosting company upgraded some stuff to add some security measures and broke most of my php scripts. I had to coax my webmail and Typo3 back to life, but I think I’ve gotten it now. Whew!

Tonight was time to hit the Volusia County Fair! Every year my family gets together and we go to the Volusia County Fair for the night. We had lot of fun, watching some tigers misbehave during a show, eating all sorts of grease and sugar, and looking over the plants, animals, and farm equipment. Of course, my sister and my aunt were blowing through the rides like no tomorrow. I did notice they didn’t go on the ride that dropped you from about 50 feet in the air. Anyhow, it was lots and lots of fun!

Wow, I actually got to go to a social event tonight. Amazing! Must be a record for most engineering students. OK, so there was a reason: today is Veteran’s day and I didn’t have to go to school! Whoopie! Instead I spent 7 hours in front of my computer. Then I decided to go hit some balls around at the tennis courts. I came back for a quick change and then went to my church’s spagetti dinner and entertainment, which was a mockup of the show The Price is Right. I hadn’t heard of the show before, but if it’s anything like what I saw, it is pretty pathetic. However, it was an uproar with all the twists, enthusiastic college kids, and goofups. Anyhow, gotta be up early tomorrow (6 AM, no Mom, 5 more minutes, please?), so gotta get to bed. Oh, yeah, and in the last 23 hours, I’ve gotten 42 spams. Cool, almost 2 per hour. Awesome.

Well, I’ve spent the last few days studying (ur, um, cramming) for my second Electrical Networks exam. Yeah, and it didn’t go well…at all. I only finished 3 of the 4 problems (like I didn’t even draw the circuit on the 4th problem), so I hope he drops one. The problems weren’t too difficult, but they were really really long! So I was rushing around doing stuff as quick as I could. The other three problems I didn’t get to double check and I’m pretty sure I didn’t quite get the last couple parts. And I probably made some dumb mistakes too. All I can say is I hope he curves a lot!

Today I voted – and boy was I prepared. I had heard horror stories all around campus and from friends that they had waited 2 or 3 hours to vote. So I brought 3 books on my PDA to read while I was in line. I figured it would be a nice relaxing afternoon reading my books in the cool Florida fall weather. And boy was I wrong. I parked my car at 2:57 and walked in and got in line – a very short line since there were only 4 people in front of me. I didn’t even have time to pull out my PDA book! I waited for several minutes, then got my ballot and went to the booth. I took a while to look over the ballot and understand all the legalese before voting. The machine didn’t want to accept my vote, but after spitting it up a couple times I force it down. By the time I was pulling out of the place, it was 3:16 – I had spent grand total of 19 minutes voting. Not fair!

Because I was sick and coughing a lot, I didn’t go physically to church today, but I watched the live stream on the Internet. Last time I checked you couldn’t srpead germs via the Internet (that would be scary!). I also fooled around with some more robotics stuff, and came up with these images. Pretty nifity, even it the method I was using only works with about 1 in 100 or so.

I had a hot date tonight – litterally! I took my sister to the Melting Pot for dinner. It was our first time, and I sure was impressed. For those who don’t know, it is a fondue restaurant (for those who don’t know what fondue is, go look it up in a recipie book and make it!). We ordered mexian cheese fondue, which was slightly spicy. It came with corn chips, a mix of breads, celery, carrots, cauliflower, and granny smith apples to dip. I found the apples eaten raw helped cut the cheesyness. It was like nachoes like you’ve never had nachoes before! Then we ordered the cookies and cream chocolate pot. Man, I think I went to heaven or something when it came out. Choocolate and marshmallows mixed together with strawberries, bananas, pineapple, cheescake, marshmallows, crumb cake, and brownies to dip in. When we were done, we both just about rolled out of the place we were so full. Excellent place!

Argh!!!!! Just when I was thinking the cool weather was nice with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, I had to be reminded of the not so nice things of this season: the cold. I’ve been battling with it for the past couple of days, and I’m losing…I’m just hoping it won’t be as bad as last year when I was flat on my back for 3 solid days – I litterly got out of bed to go lie down on the couch all day – and I got off the couch to go back to bed. Yeah, hopefully not that bad. Anyhow, I need to get more sleep to keep doing battle with it.

You know you need a haircut when: Different friends on different occasions tell you so. Your parents tell you so. You could probably make a really good mohawk if you shaved off the sides of your head. Your haircutter comments halfway through cutting your hair that she’s cut off 5 pounds and there are only 5 pounds more to go. So yeah, I broke down and got a haircut today. It feels much better, but it’s still not short enough. I’ll probably have to get another cut around Christmas.

Well, my friend Taj is writing a Linux distro (which is like way cool) and not being a great fan of Linux, I wrote some Linux experiences of mine down. See my Linux Rants page… On the subject of academics, when I went to school today, I got about 10 feet into the Engineering building before the alarm went off and a recorded voice told me that this was an emergency and to walk to the nearest exit. OK, so I did a quick 360 and was back out the door. About 30 minutes later, with multiple police and about 3 or 4 fire trucks, we were let back in. The reason for the evaucation? Somebody burned popcorn and set the fire alarm off. And these are the engineers of the future!?!? Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy!

Well, the typo3 upgrade to 3.7.0 went remarkably smoothly, aside from some FTP server & client erors I had work around (my connection inbetween uploading files timedout, so I tar.gz the files, uploaded the package, and then unziped). However, RealURL will not work no matter what I do to it. I can get it working with page IDs, but not page names. I spent like 6 hours, and I’ve thouroughly fed up with it. It’s not like it is rocket science either – I wrote some similar php code back in high school! Arg!! Oh well…homework time.

Whew, a lot of fanagaling to coax Typo3 to work. Apparently the contact form broke. Some investigating through PHP code shows a file got deleted, so I downloaded Typo3 source and replaced it. That works now. And messing around with my RTE, I managed to break it. So I had to mess around and try to get that to work again. But I managed. Now if I can get Typo3 upgraded and RealURL installed, I think I’ll be a happy guy.

Cooking went better a bit better this week – I only managed to cook my okra into a pile of slimy green goo (those who are familiar with okra will testify that it is indeed pretty slimy). I took a statics exam today and I think I did pretty well. I have a Diff Eq exam Thursday that I am totally not prepared for, so I need to do like massive studying tomorrow. Off to bed…

The start of a new week, hip hip hurrah. OK, maybe not. I tried to to cook last night and stuck in a frozen lazana in the oven. Unfortunately, I messed up the cook time and so instead of cooking for 2 hours, it just sat there. So instead of being done at 8:30 PM, I had to re-start it at 8:30 PM to be done at 10:30. I also made some banana bread, which turned out OK – it needed some real bananas to make it a lot better. Oh, I finished up the DirectX code for the DLL that allows you to capture video from any webcam/DV camcorder. It’s really cool and it can be accessed from any language – and the DLL is only like 50 KB to! I’ll have to upload it soon. I’m also installing some stuff like webmail and file managers on this site so that I can more easily check my mail anywhere and keep all my files in one place (on this site).

My parents came up to visit and showed me some pictures of our house and property after Jeanne came through. Man, it was really disappointing to see stuff you had worked hard for and built over many months and years strewn all over the place. We lost plywood sheets off our boarded up house that we never did find! They just blew off our 10 acres I guess. Anyhow, one of these days I’ll have to put together a hurricane gallery with comentatry to remember this wild and wacky hurricane season by.