Sunday, July 15, 2007

Good Times

This past week has been pretty intense. The highlight is that a film crew from the Discovery Channel spent three days with Team Case and our robot car, Dexter. We got a lot accomplished during the time they were here and hopefully I will get some airtime when the show airs in February! It will be a 6-episode special featuring 10 teams and the actual competition which takes place in November. The next big milestone is August 10th - that's when we find out if we passed the DARPA site visit.

Then, yesterday I hosted a fun party with a lot of the guys from college - Gerv, Vanv, Steve, Scott, Nitin, Paul, Jack, Jamie, and Nick all showed up for a day of Texas Hold Em, Munchkin, Guitar Hero, Second Option and Smash Bros Melee. It was great to get (almost) the whole group back together for some nerdly good fun.

I've got a lot to take care of this week. My chip should be coming in soon, so I need to make sure everything is ready for testing. I will also be working on my linear actuator controller for the Motion Studies Lab at the VA, bringing the new SICK LMS FAST LIDAR unit on-line for Team Case with streaming distance and reflectivity data, working on my thesis, and keeping up my PerceptIS (tech support) and ENGR 210 Circuits TA responsibilities. Well, you can say one thing about me -- I'm used to working hard!

Also... I emulated my sister and dropped my oldish Kodak digital camera... I attempted repair and thought I was successful... until I tore a little data ribbon cable (d'oh). So I bought a Canon Powershot SD1000 to replace it. I looked at DSLRS also (like the Canon Rebel XTI and EOS 30D) but I decided to put off the $1000 camera until I have a steady job. Go me!

High Quality VHS Capture on a Budget in 2020 - Part I: Choosing a VCR

Introduction I recently inherited a few dozen family videos on VHS and VHS-C going back to the early 1980's. Along with this haul came a...