Mondays again.

People started asking me whether I am doing weed. I thought about that today. It's as if I am on weed, but without the weed. I seem to have gotten so lazy recently. I've skipped a few assignments, stopped really paying attention.Yeah. I will fix that. Eventually.

So today was a weird day. Angie got pissed at me for no apparent reason. Oh well. We'll work it out, I'm sure. Though I am pissed.

Anyway, in actually interesting news, I have taken up the DDR pad again. In fact, I bought all necessary materials, and will begin construction sometime this week (probably the weekend). I am happy to report that the grand total for my project was less than $20 dollars! I am quite proud considering that other peoples' pads are over $100. That is the cost of authenticity I guess.

My dad pointed out that having switches in the pad is a really bad idea. So, he suggested a capacitance button. Yay! No moving parts. So, we'll see how that works out.

I also renewed my interest in lockpicking. For those that are interested as well, I suggest this wikipedia article as well as this online store. However, be aware of the legal consequences of possesion of lockpicks. Check your state/federal laws reguarding this. For example, in Arizona,this falls on Chapter 13 section 15-05:

13-1505. Possession of burglary tools; master key; manipulation key; classification
A. A person commits possession of burglary tools by:
1. Possessing any explosive, tool, instrument or other article adapted or commonly used for committing any form of burglary as defined in sections 13-1506, 13-1507 and 13-1508 and intending to use or permit the use of such an item in the commission of a burglary.
2. Buying, selling, transferring, possessing or using a motor vehicle manipulation key or master key.
B. Subsection A, paragraph 2 of this section does not apply to a person who either:
1. Uses a master key in the course of the person's lawful business or occupation, including licensed vehicle dealers and manufacturers, key manufacturers who are engaged in the business of designing, making, altering, duplicating or repairing locks or keys, locksmiths, loan institutions that finance vehicles and law enforcement.
2. Transfers, possesses or uses no more than one manipulation key, unless the manipulation key is transferred, possessed or used with the intent to commit any theft or felony.
C. Possession of burglary tools is a class 6 felony.

link

So be careful. Don't do anything stupid.

Let's see. Also, I've also become interested in DJ'ing. For this, I've found an interesting tool called BpmDJ and this book. Yay!

Also, I've been notified that our Engineering Club will be doing FIRST and there are some pretty awesome mentors involved. AKA Kick-ASS! I wanted to do this last year, so I'm pretty excited. They're going to need C coders, and I guess I'm the only one that is even close :).

Also, I'm going to need to make us a website. I already agreed to make a website for our NHS club. I was interested in RoR so it was all RoR-like. Except then exams happened. And it ground to a halt. To this day (a month or so since) it is in the SVN repository somewhere. Oh well. I guess I should just give them the HTML sources and that's it. I should probably do the same for Engineering Club.

Well, yeah. That's about it. Thanks for reading (someone?) :).

Homecoming 2006

Well, homecoming came and i have to say, it was almost as good as prom last year. Angie had this amazing silver dress on. It was really soft and silky. For dinner we went with friends to Di bepos. The portions were huge! Anyway, Angie ordered pizza (as usual :) ), and we split it. We ordered a small, and we couldn't finish it. Hanging out with the Asian crowd was alright, but we didn't really have that much in common. They ditched us as soon as we got to the dance, but we were actually happy that happened :).

Then we went in to the dance. It was kind of akward at first, because no one was dancing and it was fairly cold, but eventually, people were drawn to the dance floor and I could now dance my inherent whiteness behind the crowd. Honestly, it was the first time after having a girlfriend that I didn't feel that bound to behave in any certain dance. Usually, I would run off and do something crazy, but after being with Angie, I couldn't do that. But this dance, I didn't even feel that obligated to stay. I just wanted to.

Well, afterwards, we walked to her house, (I'm a nerd! I walk! :) ). Unfortunately I couldn't stay ;).

Overall, I really enjoyed the dance, especially with Angie wearing that dress :) .

Home Made RAID Array

This isn't really a real post, just writing stuff down to get it off my mind.

I've recently been thinking about building my own RAID array for file server use (as I keep running out of space). Here are some links to look at...

• Poor man's RAID at InventGeek


• eBay RAID Controller Search


• DIY NAS Built on Desktop Linux and Hardware RAID


• Build a Cheap and Fast RAID 5 NAS

Other interesting links (misc) i've found today.
Various tools by a Gentoo developer

Ok. Now to be totally screwed by my Rome project for Ms. Dempsey. Stupid busy work!

State Fair Goodness 2006!

Well, That was the last time I went to the State Fair with the choir. I don't really feel that bad about it, not because I didn't like it, but because I know I'm moving forward and I'm excited what I'll see and do.
Anyway, the Fair was awesome. The crazy amount of people, shady food and rides of questionable safety always get me excited :). I have to say though that the fair was really expensive. Overall, Angie and I probably spent over 60 bucks. That's ridiculous! Oh well.
I have to say, the Ferris Wheel was the best. We went on it twice; that's how awesome it was, though too short.
In the spirit of this blog, here are some pictures!

Here is Angie after we got wet on the waterlog ride at the State Fair. She sat in the front :).

"In Motion" at the park with all the gang!

Raisa and Shuba exclaiming about the "insaneness" of the rides. They were afraid to go on them :). I really like Raisa's expression.

This is Hebert giving us the pep talk before we went to the Fiar.

Steve and Jamie

(Friday, 20th)Aww! They're cute. Their relations are in danger cause Jamie fell in love with the hot bassist from NAU today. :)

Homecoming Plan 2006

Disclamer: Do not repeat. Likely to make you look retarded/racist. Also, please don't be offended. This is meant as a joke. I do like black people, I promise. Also, since I know Angie reads this blog (no one else would :) ), please don't read until tomorrow!

Alright. Here's the lowdown. So to ask Angie to Homecoming I decided to write a rap. Here it is:

Now I told everyone I am almost black/
like an Oreo, Yeah I'm doin' the rap /

So taking inspiration from DDR and Sher /
I would like to show a certain lady that I really do care/

I hope that lady will recall/ how last fall/ she took a chance/
and we pranced/
(no beat)
in a mannor that can only be described as random body movement

Anyway, a year and a month since/it was the best year of my life, it made sense/
I hope she will see/ that we were meant to be/
So tell me baby/ Will you go to Homecoming with me?

Yeah, so isn't great, but hopefully she'll think its cute. :). Now for the costume!
A few hours and a quick run to Basha's later, I have my bling all good and ready! :)
Here are some pics for your Paparazzi enjoyment :). I'm going to go do homework!

DDR Plans (part II)

Well, like I said before, I will be using a keyboard to attach buttons to. I have gutted it, and I have pictures :).

If anyone wants to do this themselves, and are unable to take the case apart, make sure you unscrewed everything. There were some tricky screws under the rubber "legs" of this keyboard.

Inside, quite compact (very good :) ) I found a microcontroller that claimed itself to be a Chicony MC17003.

The buttons aren't capacitance based, but are actually simple switches. Thus, adding buttons should be as simple as randomly pluging in switch leads between the two black headers. Of course, one would have to avoid buttons like ctrl, shift, enter, winkey... stuff like that. This will be guess work.

Now to test the buttons. Here's my testing "rig" :) :

By the highly scientific method of "poke-and-check," I have concluded that the best "rows" to use will be somewhere around the 7th slot on the bigger of the headers.
If you use linux (I do), you have an excellent program at your disposal called showkeys. Run it with the -a command to see which keys your poking corresponds with. Here is my output.


That's all I'm going to do today. Check back soon for more DDR pad goodness ;).
Out.

Procrastination as a Solution to all of Life's Problems

"And that will pass." - King Solomon

And with that in mind, I am choosing to neglect schoolwork to design a logo for my blog. Guess what it will be?
That's right. A radioactive lemon.

Wish me luck! I have no skill whatsoever in GIMP or Inkscape. Well, chance to learn I guess!

DDR Plans (part I)

So, recently I have become fairly addicted to DDR. After discovering that there is a wonderful emulator for it called StepMania that runs on Windows and Linux (!) I played it over spring break (instead of studying for SAT II's :) ). However, as I got better, my hacked Kraft pad (which you can get here) wouldn't cut it anymore.

Thus a plan to build my own pad was born. The other pad plans that I saw online were just too expensive to make for a poor student like me. My goal is to make a fairly usable pad for less than $20.
Here are my criteria:

• Cheap


• Functionality is the main priority


• The exact dimensions aren't that important


• No masochism including:
  
• Bending metal


• Cutting an inch off of each 12"x12" pad block



• Use as much material lying around as possible

So the basic plan is to use available materials, making up the actual plan while doing the project in my spare time. In order to satisfy the cheap requirement, I decided to use an old, broken USB keyboard (picture)...

... to act as the controller, as StepMania supports keyboard input, and its just easier and more importantly cheaper than breaking apart a gamepad (no d-pad hacking required too!).

The pad base will be two 2'x4'x1/4" particle board panels. I want to make it fairly portable so I will add a hinge so that the pad will be foldable. I'll post the pictures later, when I'm that far.

The arrow buttons will be 12"x12" pieces (instead of the standard 11"x11") of different colored linoleum glued to a harder material, probably more particle board. The sensors used will be surface mount switches attached in parallel to the keyboard controller, surrounded by some kind of squishy material like mousepads.

We'll see how this will work out. Wish me luck! :)

My Beautiful Girlfriend

A Day in the Life... Part one of Many

Today was a fairly interesting day. By that I mean I've done some very stupid things.

First, I was late to school 'cause I overslept. Everyone in Calculus is used to that though. Well, later in government class, we somehow started talking about birth control. Apparently, it is now legal to buy birth control over the counter (again), and the girl doesn't even have to be 18. Yay, I guess. I asked the class what would happen if a guy took the pill, and Cierra (a very activist girl in my class) replied that I would get a massive dose of female harmones. "So I would grow breasts? Sweet!" was my reply. Ms. Adams, my govt. teacher looked at me wierd, and the class laughed. Well, that was fun.

After choir, I had a dentist appointment where I would get this...

...put into my mouth to replace the temporary crown I got. Well, everything seemed great except I kind of bled and the crown didn't fit :). So, I'll have to do it again next tuesday. Alright.

I didn't feel well because of anesthetic that I got injected (they thought they were going to have to cut my gum) so I didn't really feel like going back to school. I was excused for the rest of the day so I just hung out on campus. I went to Ms. Moran's chemistry class with Angie, and apparently Ms. Moran really doesn't like Angie. That's frustrating. She snapped at me, because Ms. Moran yelled at her. :(. Oh well.

Anyway, later, I hung out with Adam, from choir, and played guitar. Well, I played guitar; Adam mostly spaced out. He gave me a link to his myspace (adam weingart). You can tell what he's into from myspace... I thought he was pretty cool but geez, he is so f*ed up with the stuff he does. He locked his keys in his truck, by the way.

Anyway, I jammed on his guitars; I really liked his 12-string guitar, by the way. My mom apparently called my cell phone something like 7 times, but I didn't hear it. She called Angie (who was working...) and both were really worried. I felt really bad about it... So much for visiting her at Basha's...

If this is what it's like to be a sterotypical American teenager, I want out...

So now I'm going to work on my DDR pad idea. I'll post the project as soon as I get somewhat underway...

Also, I need to work on that thing that I am going to do to ask Angie to the Homecoming dance this saturday. Details later... when I'm done :). You'll also get pictures, because I have to many MMS messages left :).

Out.

Compatability issues everywhere! Yay!

Hm, Konqueror and this richtext editor aren't friends. This isn't good. Oh well. Good bye browser-based rich text posting, I guess. Oh well.

I'm tired, and there's school tomorrow.

Goodnight.

This is how we do homework

Why not a picture to start out the shiny new RadLem blog? Well, here is my cat, Kiki laying on my table while i'm attempting to do something useful. Here's to a lustrous blogging career!