Posted
Tue, 28 Feb 2006 00:06:56 GMT
to Posted in Geek, Programming
So, lately I have been spending some late nights on campus. I mean LATE nights, 1….. 2….. almost 3 in the morning. Have I been spending late nights working on my schoolwork? Ok, you can stop laughing now. No, instead I have been doing some hardware/software hacking with a Roomba. My friend Oliver and I have been busy putting the Roomba together and doing cool stuff with it. Ok, ok, Oliver did most of the hardware work, I just provided ideas and suggestions along the way. End result: A Roomba being controlled using a USB Gamepad over the wireless network in the Computer Science building. Over the break, several individuals from tech support came to take a look at it cause it sounded cool, and we even showed it off to the high school students that showed up at the Open House last Saturday (they also thought it was cool. Right now, we have the movement controlled via one of the analog sticks, though we have a lot of cool ideas (which I am sure I will write about as they are accomplished).
More information (as well as pictures) can be found at Oliver’s site here
Additionally, Make Magazine has already featured it in their Make Blog. How cool is that?
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Posted
Thu, 23 Feb 2006 22:30:43 GMT
to Posted in Work
Today, I finally worked my last shift at Satlantic. Due to various time considerations, I told my boss I couldn’t realistically do any more work for the rest of this term, due to my erratic schedule. This week I spent cleaning up issues that I had experience with, and basically finished it today. Funnily enough, the last few days I have felt more productive than I have normally been as of late, and I was even the last person to leave the office today.
Ah, Satlantic, I will miss thee. You were definatly one of the most fun jobs I have ever had, and you taught me a lot. May we meet again some day (and don’t forget to call me in the spring).
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Posted
Wed, 08 Feb 2006 14:48:23 GMT
to Posted in School, Projects
At the start of this term, I thought I had one more degree requirement: one second year or higher course that was from Mathematics, Science, Engineering, Management or Commerce. ‘Crap’ said I, ‘I most likely won’t be able to complete that until next fall’.
Today, however, I checked over what I needed to graduate and all I will need after this term is any one course. ANY ONE COURSE. I forgot that I signed up for a 3rd year commerce (Entrepreneurship) course at the last minute this term. Which means I can basically take anything this summer if I wanted to.
Funnily enough, this discovery comes just after having a talk with Dr. Scrimger regarding the directed studies course. Sure, at the time I didn’t think I would be able to take this course. However, it is my opinion that simple course work doesn’t really cut it for preparing students for their post university experience. Sure there is Co-op, but that is more ‘ok I need a job, any job, and maybe I will like it or not’ where Directed Studies is supposed to be more of ‘Yeah, this stuff really excites me, I want to try it’. Sure, there is Honours as well, but Honours has additional requirements.
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Posted
Sun, 05 Feb 2006 23:51:15 GMT
to Posted in Life, Geek, School
Tags acm, dal, debian, hacking, linux, roomba, xen
So the Dal-ACM hosted another Installfest on Saturday. Rather than be a simple spectator of cool stuff and mooching off the nice spread of snacks, I decided to be an actual PARTICIPANT this time.
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Posted
Tue, 17 Jan 2006 22:08:01 GMT
to Posted in Life
I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, but decided that I would wait until I got my first impressions over and done with. As many of you know, I have served as bar bit…...... errrr…... social representative for the Computer Science Society 8 of the last 12 months. It did have its good points (and plenty of its bad). However, I am glad to let everyone know that those days are behind me. I am now no longer in charge of running social events, leaving most of my Friday and Saturday nights officially free now. Nope, no more Social Rep Sean, instead, you know the current President of the Computer Science Society.
At this time, I would like you all to hold on to your congratulations at the moment. Early into the term, I have had the following said about society: “At one point society was well respected by the student population, but now it has a bad reputation of not caring”. Harsh words to be sure, but nothing I haven’t actually thought myself.
It is my goal to clean up this reputation to a degree and encourage a greater degree of communication and productiveness between groups and individuals. A serious undertaking to be sure, but someone has to do it, right? I hope that I will prove to be an effective leader and inspire the next generation of productive society members. I do, as always, have a plethora of ideas. How many of them actually get accomplished…......... let’s just say I have my hands full.
Society has always been about actually DOING things. In the past, we have managed to do them quite well. With a lot of work (not to mention a degree of luck), we’ll get back onto that track once more (and be worthy of the A level Society of the year award again next year).
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Posted
Mon, 16 Jan 2006 09:18:38 GMT
to Posted in Life
Tags humor
I normally don’t do this, but I came across this joke and found it very amusing. You can find this blonde joke here.
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Posted
Sun, 08 Jan 2006 01:45:30 GMT
to Posted in
A few years ago, I had an idea (dangerous, I know). The idea was simple: Every year shitty situations happen to everyone. People deal with these and life moves on of course, but surely we can do a little better than that. What about reflection, sharing, knowing you aren’t alone? The idea was to combine all these things into one event which I have called ‘Drink To Shitty Situations Day’. The goal is to get a group of people together, reflect on the past year, bitch about shitty situations, drink copious amounts of alcohol, and have a good time. I would like to think that the other day was the third successful such event.
Traditionally held at the end of the year, this time it was held at the beginning. I’m actually liking that choice of time better, as it allows people to actually reflect on their past year, and does not involve so much scheduling problems, like exams. Sure, as always there were some complications (and I’m sorry to everyone who was wondering where the hell I was), but all in all I had a good time with some good friends.
I could go into details, but Ann basically lists most of the highlights here.
To poor choices, shitty situations, and those people that help us see it all through.
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Posted
Wed, 04 Jan 2006 02:58:55 GMT
to Posted in Geek, Reviews
A few weeks back I bought myself a Nintendo DS for my birthday. Now, normally it is usually hard for me to play anything more than ‘twitch’ games on my main PC, due to my regular busy schedule. However, I noticed that I generally have down time between tasks that is spent just sitting around or aimlessly surfing the web. I figured I could use this time to play games with one of the current gen portable consoles. But why the DS and not the PSP? Several reasons really: I have fond memories of my old Nintendo products. Nintendo seems to innovate in gameplay more than the competitors (and dual screens seem cool). Oh, and Final Fantasy and Shining Force (in various incarnations) are/will be available for it. Coincidentally, the Mario Kart/DS bundle came out shortly before my birthday, and my friend has been going on about how awesome that game is, so I got that too.
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Initial impressions:
Right now the dual screen doesn’t do much (in Mario Kart). Then again, I used to hate pausing to view a map, so we will see how future games handle it.
I hate the fact that there is no battery indication. I hate playing a game and all of a sudden my DS going dead. I mean, they have a flashing light for testing Wi-fi connectivity, why not have one of them flash steadily when the battery is low? At least then I would know that I need to wrap things up, maybe save, and then exit gracefully.
Range of the Wi-fi connection seems a little slow, and I have had some problems getting connectivity over the internet, but some of that might have to do with the set up of the access points I have been connecting to over the DS itself.
Doesn’t support the GBA link mode. For example, in Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced you could link two GBA units and do co-operative and competitive missions and get extra stuff. Not so with the DS. The rest of the backward compatibility works fine, but I thought doing this for the DS over WiFi for GBA games would have been a no brainer. I suppose the most likely cause is hard coded hardware information in the GBA cartridged, but it still would have been nice to have.
All in all I am enjoying my purchase. Mario Kart is a blast and I am loving going retro and playing some of my favorite older games. The fact that Final Fantasy 3-6 are coming out (4 is already out) only strengthens my decision in my own mind. Suddenly, waiting doesn’t seem as boring any more…......
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Posted
Tue, 03 Jan 2006 17:39:34 GMT
to Posted in Reviews
Tags oreilly, project management
O’Reilly has recently begun a new line of books called ”/Theory/In/Practice” (and no, I don’t know why it isn’t listed on their web page). These books cover such topics as “Essential Business Process Modeling” and “Applied Software Project Management”. It was my pleasure to secure a copy of “Applied Software Project Management” right before I left for the holidays. Since I am doing some project management now, I figured doing some reading certainly couldn’t hurt, right?
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Posted
Mon, 02 Jan 2006 04:35:10 GMT
to Posted in Life
Tags family, travel
Back from 10 days in the sticks of Ontario for Christmas with my family. While it did have its ups and downs, it was pretty interesting and much better overall than my last visit home. My flight to Ontario was the best flight I have ever had through Toronto. I like how Air Canada has fixed things so I don’t have to run from terminal 1 to terminal 3 and go through security again.
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Saw a lot of people while I was back. Between the regular Christmas day festivities and bouncing back and forth between various relatives I also managed to see some old friends from high school. Most of this occured on one event, called the Glencoe Gong Show, a yearly invite to dinner that started out with three of us 4 years ago and has grown to almost 20 people out of a graduating class of 62. Most of these people I haven’t seen in almost…..... 5 years now. It was interesting to hear what they have been up to and where they are now. Many are actually working on their graduate degree. One actually has a 7 month old son. It puts some things in perspective (almost done that undergrad degree….... almost…... almost…...)
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