Synergy and Spanning Sync

Here's a hot tip I read about over at PVP Online: it's called Synergy and it lets you share your keyboard and mouse with two (or many!) computers. It works with just about any platform (Mac, Windows, or UNIX) over the network! It's great for my desk at work where my MacBook sits to the left of my dual-monitor PC workstation. This way I can treat the Mac screen like a 3rd monitor in terms of keyboard and mouse, but it is still running Mac OS X locally. There is a system preference GUI wrapper for Synergy on Mac available as well called SynergyKM. It also gives you a menu bar item so you can see its status at a glance. The configuration is a little clunky, but you only need to do it once.

On another note, a program that I have been beta-testing for quite some time is finally ready to rock an roll! It's called Spanning Sync and it allows you to do 2-way syncing between iCal on your Mac(s) and your Google Calendar account! Changes made either in GC or in iCal show up in both. It takes advantage of Apple's built-in sync services. A 15-day trial is available and they are charging $25 for a 1-year subscription or $65 for unlimited usage. I've become addicted to it from the long beta period, so it looks like I will be buying this one - it's too darn useful!

Scott Adams and Brain Remapping / Alternate Feedback

Good afternoon folks! I've got an inspirational story to share with you. Scott Adams, author of the famous Dilbert comic strip, lost his ability to speak conversationally due to a condition called Spasmodic Dysphonia about 2 years ago. NB: This is the same disorder that Diane Rehm of NPR has. He retained the ability to speak in front of crowds and in presentations, but could barely say anything at all off-stage and when there is a lot of background noise.

About 6 months ago, he regained his speech by repeating a rhyme at a higher pitch, but later relapsed after coming down with a cold. A more recent posting details his progress with two routes: botox and another form of therapy with which he has had more success. Basically the issue is that Scott feels like he is speaking much louder than he actually is so his brain turns down the output volume. The therapy he went through trained him to hum at a certain pitch to get going on words, and feel for facial bone vibrations to get his volume correct.

The brain is an amazing thing... read his article and be inspired (or at least amused!).

Telekinetic Contest

I found this today while Stumbling (friend me as bradleycwru). It's a stop-motion film featuring Tony vs. Paul. in a telekinetic battle.

Dexter at the Auto Show, in the News

Hello all! It's a busy week for Dexter, the Case Urban Challenge Team's autonomous robot! Dexter has made it all the way to the I-X Center for the Cleveland Auto Show! I had the pleasure of speaking with nice Clevelanders about Dexter at the show today, as you can see in the pictures below.



Dexter also got some great publicity this weekend - we made the front page of the Plain Dealer! The article, Case's Dexter (the robot car) steers toward fame, fortune is available online in its entirity and I recommend you read it! It's very well-written and factual. Big props to John Mangels, the PD's Science Writer for getting it right! They also made some killer graphics for the article, including a beautiful depicting my LIDAR scanners:



Also, a video about Dexter, narrated by our own Andy Allen and featuring Dexter in the snow, is also up on the PD's web site [direct link]. All in all, a fun day in Cleveland for the Case UC Team and Dexter!



And, in case you missed it, the Observer wrote a nice article on Dexter back in November, Case enters DARPA challenge.

Transparent Screens

This is very cool: Transparent Screens! I am going to try to make one and post it here.

Domains and Hosting

I got my yearly web hosting renewal message today, and it reminded me how good a service DreamHost is. With the basic service you start out with nearly 200 GB of space and almost 2 TB of bandwidth, which increases weekly. I use it to host my site and my dad's company's site, Farnsworth Engineering. Also lots of other goodies for free like PHP, a unix shell, CGI, SSI, CVS, subversion, WebDav, and more.

Also, I created a referral code, BRADLEYCWRU1. Enter it at checkout if you decide to try it for $5 off any package. Enjoy :)

Bradwii

Well, I finally got my hands on a Nintendo Wii! If you aren't familiar with the system, it's cool because of its slick user interface. I've always been a fan of good UI design (go figure, I am a Mac user after all...), but Nintendo really got it right with this one. The litmus test? Mom and Al play Tennis, Bowling, and Golf on it all the time! I never thought my mom would become a gamer. Of course, I should have taken the hint when she started playing DDR with me...

Anyway, the Wii Remote, or "Wiimote," has a three-axis accelerometer built-in, as well as absolute positioning on-screen as a pointer thanks to a light bar and IR communications. The remote also speaks Bluetooth, so there's no messy wires to get in the way. That is, unless you bring in your other hand with the Nunchaku controller. Not all games use it, but it adds a D-stick, two triggers, and another gyro. Zelda makes pretty good use of it, and it's integral to Boxing.

Oh, and it has 802.11g to connect to my home network and has a decent web browser based on Opera.

Now if only we can teach Al not to charge the TV when he wants his Mii to charge the net in Tennis!

Happy Holidays!

I'd like to wish everyone safe and happy holidays, and a joyful and productive new year!

There's a lot to do in 2007. I anticipate building my first integrated circuit for my thesis project, watching Dexter's AI and sensor systems come together, and having good time in general.

Cheers!

Don't worry!

Tech support kitty is too cute.

Got my laptop back!

It was returned to me this morning along with the rest of my stuff. Oh, happy day!

In other news...

I'm in the Observer this week! (But Dexter is the real star...)

Case enters DARPA challenge

My laptop walked away

Sigh, it's been a long day. Here is the post that went out to the department, it pretty much sums it up.

-Bradley

-----

I am asking everyone to please keep watch for a black leather bag which was left in Olin 314 about 11am this morning (11/9/06). The bag contained several notebooks, a USB thumb drive, a laptop, a digitial camera, and some other things. The most important thing is the notebooks which contained all Bradley Farnsworth's research data for his Master's thesis!!!

Please keep watch for this black bag and the contents in case they have been dumped somewhere around the department or anywhere on campus. If you have any information about the location of the bag or its contents (ESPECIALLY THE LAB NOTEBOOKS!!! ) please contact Bradley Farnsworth or campus security. If anyone has the bag, it or any of its contents may be dropped off in the EECS Department's central office in Glennan 321, no questions asked!

Thanks,

Dr. M.

Dexter - DARPA Urban Challenge

Who's that sexy beast? Why, it's Dexter, the representative of Team Case in the DARPA Urban Challenge (Wiki with nice Dexter pics)! Check out some Nova footage (look for Team ENSCO). He's come all the way from Ensco in Virginia to come live in the Bingham building at Case! I'm working on Dexter's image processing and computer vision systems (along with the normal research fun...) It's a neat project and I'm glad I can get involved. If you'd like to meet Dexter up close and personal, let me know... or come to Case's Almni Week!

"Regular" Expression

Ah, I love Case. The controversy never ends! Case has erected a new "expression" wall near Thwing, without any fanfare or even much more than murmuring. (Because Cleveland doesn't have enough graffiti already, duh!) Well, now it has a "regular" expression on it. Yeah Case --errr, CWRU-- email!

But seriously. We are just ripping off CMU. Maybe it has something to do with a certain Provost who was a former Dean of Engineering there. Or maybe we just think we're being original... something like the teenager who plagiarizes an author she read in elementary school, but now thinks the ideas are her own. Who knows?

If you want even more nitty gritty, we have a Wiki entry, a Forum thread (or two), and press!

Well, I guess all there is to say is... RIP Steve Irwin!

What if Dubya's serches were leaked with the AOL DB?

This is satire... but it's FUNNY. Enjoy:

Slate Discovers Another AOL Search Record.

Thanks to fark for the link.

For real AOL searches, some of which are funnier and/or scarier... check out this Something Awful link. The ones you want are the "AOL Search Log Specials."

Some new photos posted

Check out my photos on the Case Screensaver site. I posted a few pleasant ones tonight. And if you're at Case, enjoy your first day of class tomorrow! (And I'll see you if you're taking Dr. Mohseni's EECS 600 class).

Case Crime Map

I was speaking to Brian Beck the other day and asked what he's been working on. It turns out, he's writing a web application that uses Google Maps to display locations of crime incidents on the Case campus. He parses the information on the campus security website and pulls down geocoded GPS information from the Case Wiki. It turns out that he spent the better part of a day recently logging the GPS location of the center of every parking lot on campus. Well, somebody has to do it!

What are the nitty gritties? Here's what Brian has to say:

First it tries to grab the wiki page by the location name. This is desirable over grabbing markers.php because the location is often abbreviated (the BRB, for example) and our wiki has lots of redirects for such abbreviations.

If the wiki page doesn't exist or isn't geocoded, it uses a regular expression to search for a street address (or even just a street name). If found, it queries Google's geocoder and only uses the return value if it's an exact match.

So there are a lot of locations missing coordinates from these two methods. I'm going to geocode more locations on the wiki, and probably manually do the rest (things that wouldn't be useful as wiki pages). Or let users give coordinates to the missing ones.

So, there you have it!

SoaP Fun

On Friday night, I saw Snakes on a Plane. I would call it the polar opposite of a "chick flick." My favorite line?

-Remember the first thing you told me?
-What the $#!@ does that have to do with anything?!

Yeah, can't beat that. Plus we all got free posters in exchange for them taking our picture with them. I wonder where those pictures will end up...

It's funny that it only made $13.8M in the box office this weekend. The movie had great Internet hype... but only Internet hype. It was definitely pure fanservice for the 16-30 year old male audience. It was almost as good as Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter.

Going to WWDC!

This weekend, I am heading off to San Francisco with Kara to attend the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) for the second year in a row. I've been fortunate enough to receive a scholarship from Apple to attend. I'm looking forward to unlimited geek-out moments, a glimpse of Apple's new Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and hopefully some new Apple hardware (Core-derivative Xeon processors on high-end machines, and possibly Core 2 Duo (Merom) upgrades for iMac or PowerBook. I'm crossing my fingers for built-in virtualization in Leopard, but I will be at least satisfied if Apple finishes its Windows drivers and adds NTFS read/write for Mac OS.

Anyway, wish me safe travels...

Universal Binary Keyserver Available

Hello! If you use the keyserver on an Intel Mac to access Case software center programs (or other keyed applications), you might be interested in this news...

The universal binary version of Keyaccess has shipped:
http://www.sassafras.com/pr/k261ships.html

You can download the new client here:
http://www.sassafras.com/links/clientdownloads.html

Thanks to David Carlin for pointing this out!