Exciting stuff! I’m tying all the loose ends around the code for the robot. Hopefully this weekend we can take it out and see how it performs! Also, I got an Linux account at ISL. First thing I did was change it to make it look like Windows XP <Grin>. And my Physics II quiz was either really easy or a trick question. Hopefully really easy.
Just another day as a student. Classes to attend, meetings to go to, study groups to meet, clubs to particpate in, youth groups to visit, etc. It hasn’t even been an entire week yet (only 3 days!) and I already have my first quiz in Physics II…ah, the joys of academics.
Wow, what a day. First I locked my keys in my appartment 35 minutes before class. After deciding to hike the mile or two to school, I was picked up by a kind friend (Enrique) and made it in time. Then I discovered that my right ear got really sunburned and is flaking. Finally, UCF Robotics is kicking up as we only have another month before competition and I’m having to put in lots more time.
Today I started summer classes: Calc II and Physics II. Back in the grind of things. My teachers seem to be pretty good so far. Oh, and if you’d like to get your hands on a free copy of MS Visual BASIC.NET, you can – by watching and rating 5 short (5-10 minute) videos on using VB.NET.
Today I got back to UCF for my summer courses that start tomorrow. I had a great break and my Dad and I managed to put up about 25% of the walls for the barn. It’s sloooow going without the right tools (using metal snippers to cut sheet metal and such). Now I’ve got to prepare for the heavy mental work…<sigh>…
I don’t know about you, but barn raising is hard work. Today we drilled the concrete foundation and put tapcons in them (funny-looking blue screws). We kept hitting rocks in the concrete and slagging the drill bits.
Today the barn raising began. My dad and I are building a small barn (with an office). We cut lines in the foundation and measured & cut the channels for the walls.
Finally! The semester is over and I’m headed home for a couple weeks before the summer term begins. Lots of time to read, build barns, and work on my projects.
With some free time, I started to put a new design together. I sort of got tired of the old one, and hopefully the new design will be a bit more simple. Also, I noticed that my old site didn’t load at all in Netscape 4.x. So no more CSS or other fancy technology.
OK, boys and girls! Step right up to get the new release of Simply KoolB. Today I prettied up some code, fixed some bugs, and generally finalized things. The Windows version (now in Beta 2) now has an installer and uninstaller (in addition to the zip package). I’ve worked out some bugs on the Linux version and prepared a bit more offical tar.gz pacakge.
So somebody has told me that Page 2 on my Physics 13 work is actually a copy of Page 1. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I’ve (hopefully) corrected this so that Page 2 is really Page 2 (quite a novel idea, huh?).
Today was the big day: the Great Navel Orange Race. The whole class was to basically build a boat to race across the UCF reflection pond, retrieve a floating orange and then bring it back. Our team was the first heat to go of like 15 or 20 (with 11 teams per heat). We came in 2nd place in our heat, which was pretty good. We took 4:40 minutes (we estimated 4:05 or something). You can see some CAD drawings of our design here.
Today I paid my dues to become a Tau Beta Pi member – I get initiated on Saturday. I also went a head and did my next and FINAL (do I hear hallelujahs?) WebAssign homework 13.
OK, physics homework 12 is up. Sorry it took a bit longer, but I’ve been pretty busy. Also, don’t expect me to be online or respond to emails this next week and ahalf as I’ll be cramming physics as much as possible.
Happy Easter everybody! After a really hard week, from which I could get through with kratom, I finally got some time this weekend to kick back and work with Simply KoolB on Linux. After spending probably 5 to 7 hours getting everything configured while drinking kratom, I was free to spend like 3 hours actually programming. Anyhow, I’ve got a alpha version up (I don’t know if it even deserves the name alpha quite yet…) If you try it out, let me know how it goes. And if you try Kratom, also let me know. You can buy kratom from the Kratommasters at their link and be better…it helped me as an energy booster, it has a great taste so I’m sure you will like kratom’s white borneo!
My homework 11 physics work is now up (and I’m not fooling you, either!).
Hurrah! I got an 85% on my physics test! I really didn’t deserve it since I totatally bombed two questions (like ALL the numbers are wrong). I’m now committed on Sundays to UCF Robotics, so I’m afraid KoolB is sort of on hold until final exams are over.
Today I was able to really optimize and restructure a lot of code for the UCF Robotics BlackKnight robot. In fact, I was able to up the frames per second from 1.5 to almost 10! And that’s for all 4 cameras – pretty good, I think.
Yep, after 9, almost 10 straight of doing physics homework, I finally got all 8 (yes, eight) problems! Whoopee! OK, so I’m not quite that excited about it. I had hoped to do some more programming tonight, but I guess it’s time to turn in. Anyhow, you can get a copy of my physics work here on my Physics I page. Me go bed now…zzzz
So much for Linux port of Simply KoolB this weekend! After trying get my laptop touchpad mouse configured (I normally use a plug-in USB mouse) with Mandrake 9.2, I managed to break all my mice. So I decided to install Lindows to see if that would be any better. Well, yes, it supported both mice – but it installed a 1 GB swap file and ran out of room, damaged its own superblock, and wouldn’t boot right. And of course, it installed lilo over my existing bootmanager (XOSL), so I spent quite some time recovering from that. Finally, I was able to get Mandrake 9.2 installed again, and it works with my touch pad. But now my USB mouse won’t work! Arggg! There are GOOD REASONS why I use Windows!
After a really intense week that ended in a Calc 2 exam, a Chem exam, and a Physics quiz. To top it off, I’ve found out that we are restructuring the code for the camera capture and processing for the UCF Robotics KnightVision system. Well, finals are comming up in 4-5 weeks, so it’ll be all over one way or another.
Well, after a wonderful relaxing spring break, it’s back to the salt mines…On the upside, I’ve made progress with the Linux port of Simply KoolB. Stay tuned…Thursday, Mar 4, 2004 Hurrah! I am so happy because I got an 80% on my Physics test. If I keep this up, I might pass the class with an acceptable grade. To celebrate, I coded on my robotics project until 1 AM in the morning.
Thanks all who have reported bugs or commented on the beta release of Simply KoolB. Based on some bug reports, I’ve fixed a bug that causes the IDE to go into an infinite loop when you try to run a BASIC file with errors in it. So grab the latest here.
OK, so yeah, today I downloaded my Simply KoolB package at school to test it out on a Win2K machine and I belatedly realized I had somehow forgotten to package the compiler in the zip file! So dumb! So I’ve updated it and fixed a minor bug in the IDE. Grab it on my Simply KoolB page.
Unfortunately, I don’t believe I did very well on my physics test. The good part is that I understood the questions and knew how to do most of it, which is an improvement from the last test. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do all the math and probably made lots of little silly mistakes. I’ll see exactly how bad the score is Wednesday or Friday.