http://www.openapc.com/
What's this?
I've been sort of hoping for an open source competitor to Labview. The lack of a home edition has been somewhat depressing. Also, Labview can be a little slow on older hardware. One of my programs takes several minutes to compile on a 3.2 ghz PIV...
Mountains
Monday, February 28, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Fall of 2009: Swirling Still
Hundreds of them.
I waded through a few hundred more today and yet, even on Halloween, there is still color in the slide tray.
Breath taking.
It's like every time I left the house I just mashed the shutter button.
Even until late october.
Even as the north atlantic wench drug grey misery over the place.
Even as winter stood at the doorstep.
It was beautiful.
I could write a book without words and people would get it.
I waded through a few hundred more today and yet, even on Halloween, there is still color in the slide tray.
Breath taking.
It's like every time I left the house I just mashed the shutter button.
Even until late october.
Even as the north atlantic wench drug grey misery over the place.
Even as winter stood at the doorstep.
It was beautiful.
I could write a book without words and people would get it.
Defensive Posture
To celebrate Presidents day, the Girly scheduled a vet appointment to honor the leaders of our great nation, and more importantly, ensure that the dog and I were not bored.
The visit went pretty well, until, when being smothered in affection by the vet (a nice young lady) and the tech (a nice young lady) he growled. The committee decided that muzzling the 97 lb toothy oaf was a good idea. (I know he bites like a toothless baby, but I knew they didn't and weren't going to risk it. My attitude: "Remember how I train you not to do that? This is why...") We struggled to muzzle him. He knows how to open his mouth and wriggle. They offered "the towel trick", whatever that was. I gave it one more try, just to be nice to the oaf. He and I took a long walk in the parking lot where lots of wriggling and wrestling took place. We came back, muzzle in hand, Mutt wriggly as ever.
"Sorry," I said, slightly bloody and very slobbery. The tech put a slip knot leash on him and went away.
A few minutes later, the vet came back. I felt sheepish. My dog can be humiliating at times.
"That was easy. We're just going to finish everything. He's a lot more relaxed when your not here. He's probably trying to protect you from us."
*
Well, damn.
I laughed and through up my hands in surrender. The vet left the room, i fiddled with the RFID scanner. (The vet would later scan him. -beep- "Oh, that's cute, you talk to computers!")
I must admit, I had never really thought about the possibility of my dog protecting me...
Trying to protect me. Brave, strong, and noble are not adjectives The Dog garners at first examination. The situation is, by our account, the other way around. I keep him out of traffic. Fed. Out of fights, out of trash, and generally have to act like a helicopter dad to keep vet trips on the ixnay. I like my vets a lot, from a distance. I shoot him with rubber bands and water when he barks. We always joke about how happy he'll be when the burglars break the windows to get in. New friends and a dog door! I write this with a firm and steady hand: I have done nothing to incentivize or ingratiate my dog to defending my well being.
Our dog is not a weapon. More of a smelly doorstop.
However, the protective explanation would explain why our efforts to train him to not growl at bicycles, old men, and sometimes visitors fail. The worst incident on record happened when The Girly slipped and fell on ice during a walk, and he went after an elderly lady trying to help her up. I had just chalked this up to his unwillingness to do anything that doesn't have dog treat as a terminal punctuation mark.
Over-protective dog bastard? I'd buy it (along with the 350$ vet bill...).
The vet gave me the card of her favorite trainer.
"She works with rescue pit bulls and Rottweilers."
He lay on the floor and I rubbed his belly while they ran my credit card.
Dog bastard.
The visit went pretty well, until, when being smothered in affection by the vet (a nice young lady) and the tech (a nice young lady) he growled. The committee decided that muzzling the 97 lb toothy oaf was a good idea. (I know he bites like a toothless baby, but I knew they didn't and weren't going to risk it. My attitude: "Remember how I train you not to do that? This is why...") We struggled to muzzle him. He knows how to open his mouth and wriggle. They offered "the towel trick", whatever that was. I gave it one more try, just to be nice to the oaf. He and I took a long walk in the parking lot where lots of wriggling and wrestling took place. We came back, muzzle in hand, Mutt wriggly as ever.
"Sorry," I said, slightly bloody and very slobbery. The tech put a slip knot leash on him and went away.
A few minutes later, the vet came back. I felt sheepish. My dog can be humiliating at times.
"That was easy. We're just going to finish everything. He's a lot more relaxed when your not here. He's probably trying to protect you from us."
*
Well, damn.
I laughed and through up my hands in surrender. The vet left the room, i fiddled with the RFID scanner. (The vet would later scan him. -beep- "Oh, that's cute, you talk to computers!")
I must admit, I had never really thought about the possibility of my dog protecting me...
Which is made of of this...
Trying to protect me. Brave, strong, and noble are not adjectives The Dog garners at first examination. The situation is, by our account, the other way around. I keep him out of traffic. Fed. Out of fights, out of trash, and generally have to act like a helicopter dad to keep vet trips on the ixnay. I like my vets a lot, from a distance. I shoot him with rubber bands and water when he barks. We always joke about how happy he'll be when the burglars break the windows to get in. New friends and a dog door! I write this with a firm and steady hand: I have done nothing to incentivize or ingratiate my dog to defending my well being.
Our dog is not a weapon. More of a smelly doorstop.
However, the protective explanation would explain why our efforts to train him to not growl at bicycles, old men, and sometimes visitors fail. The worst incident on record happened when The Girly slipped and fell on ice during a walk, and he went after an elderly lady trying to help her up. I had just chalked this up to his unwillingness to do anything that doesn't have dog treat as a terminal punctuation mark.
Over-protective dog bastard? I'd buy it (along with the 350$ vet bill...).
The vet gave me the card of her favorite trainer.
"She works with rescue pit bulls and Rottweilers."
He lay on the floor and I rubbed his belly while they ran my credit card.
Dog bastard.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Algorithmic oddities
I don't consider myself an advanced programmer. I would actually call myself a hack. I use code, spit, duct tape, and periodically, jumper wires to do my job. Sadly, sitting around writing code really isn't what I'm paid to do. It's sort of an accessory to the crime.
(I get paid to make an impact...)
I'm working on a not-so-little javascript project to simply our data reporting process. I just found out you can reference variables before they're declared in javascript. The fancy word for that is hoisting. The pre-processor goes through the code and moves all the declarations to the beginning. I think this is the standard way things work... just sometimes (say, Fortran 77), you have to a) declare your variables first b) the pre-processor will often give up if it finds an unreferenced variable. However, it would make a little since to go through the program and figure out if the variable ever gets used first. Although, it will make your code a bit complex for mere mortals (like me) to read.
I feel about the same way as I did when i discovered what a coroutine is. (During a crash course in Lua...) Fun stuff.
Although, unlike coroutines, i do not understand why hoisting is particularly useful.
(I get paid to make an impact...)
I'm working on a not-so-little javascript project to simply our data reporting process. I just found out you can reference variables before they're declared in javascript. The fancy word for that is hoisting. The pre-processor goes through the code and moves all the declarations to the beginning. I think this is the standard way things work... just sometimes (say, Fortran 77), you have to a) declare your variables first b) the pre-processor will often give up if it finds an unreferenced variable. However, it would make a little since to go through the program and figure out if the variable ever gets used first. Although, it will make your code a bit complex for mere mortals (like me) to read.
I feel about the same way as I did when i discovered what a coroutine is. (During a crash course in Lua...) Fun stuff.
Although, unlike coroutines, i do not understand why hoisting is particularly useful.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Gift Fish
I was meaning to buy a new camera. In the deep, dark recesses of my heart, my major hope upon getting out of grad school was to be able to actually afford my hobbies. My prior small camera, a canon A570is gave up the ghost nearly a year ago. However, numerous little things have stood in the way of this: the rent rates in NoVA, the need to save $$ for the next disaster, the Volvo, Christmas, doctors appointments, wedding expenses, congress threatening to shut down the government. In other words, the usual suspects.
I have been sort of frustrated by not having a second, smaller, cheaper camera because many of my best photos come from things I discover and photograph.
A blanket email at work on Thursday announced that an old Nikon digital camera was up for grabs. I ran to the secretaries office (having missed an F3 under similar circumstances). The camera turned out to be a Coolpix 950. Old heavy and huge, and in a nice travel case with many unused accessories, including two 96 meg CF cards and an 8 meg card woo! Time warp.
That it used CF cards and ran on AA batteries made it a tempting toy. Unlike the quicktake, it was unlikely to become OBE simply due to the obsolesce of a certain computer operating system. It's computer link cable, a serial cable, was untouched in it's shipping baggy.
The previous user hadn't set the clock, but it appeared that the last photos were taken during the Clinton administration. A lot of them were corrupted.
I put batteries in it that evening, and took a few photos. It started making more corrupted photos. Perhaps that explains why it had gone unused? Bad sensor? I wasn't expecting much, but my heart sank. Googling offered few clues. After letting it sit for a day, the problem vanished. The nikon webpage suggested a firmware update, so I've done that. It's been squirting out 2 megapixel images all day.
Squirting may not be the right adjective. It's clearly a blast from the past, and can only handle a picture every few seconds. It's auto-focus hunts alot. But then, it's a 12 year old camera...
My 9 year old mac loves opening and closing the resulting files, and they are perfectly sized to upload to Picasa.
I'll keep it around to play with until i can afford something pocket sized. I think it's resolution will limit its utility because it won't yield good prints, there's so much that I just want a digital or 4x6 image of.
Mysterious image corruption. The sony did this some times.
Wide angle fun.
Macro fun
More wide angle fun.
I have been sort of frustrated by not having a second, smaller, cheaper camera because many of my best photos come from things I discover and photograph.
A blanket email at work on Thursday announced that an old Nikon digital camera was up for grabs. I ran to the secretaries office (having missed an F3 under similar circumstances). The camera turned out to be a Coolpix 950. Old heavy and huge, and in a nice travel case with many unused accessories, including two 96 meg CF cards and an 8 meg card woo! Time warp.
That it used CF cards and ran on AA batteries made it a tempting toy. Unlike the quicktake, it was unlikely to become OBE simply due to the obsolesce of a certain computer operating system. It's computer link cable, a serial cable, was untouched in it's shipping baggy.
The previous user hadn't set the clock, but it appeared that the last photos were taken during the Clinton administration. A lot of them were corrupted.
I put batteries in it that evening, and took a few photos. It started making more corrupted photos. Perhaps that explains why it had gone unused? Bad sensor? I wasn't expecting much, but my heart sank. Googling offered few clues. After letting it sit for a day, the problem vanished. The nikon webpage suggested a firmware update, so I've done that. It's been squirting out 2 megapixel images all day.
Squirting may not be the right adjective. It's clearly a blast from the past, and can only handle a picture every few seconds. It's auto-focus hunts alot. But then, it's a 12 year old camera...
My 9 year old mac loves opening and closing the resulting files, and they are perfectly sized to upload to Picasa.
I'll keep it around to play with until i can afford something pocket sized. I think it's resolution will limit its utility because it won't yield good prints, there's so much that I just want a digital or 4x6 image of.
Mysterious image corruption. The sony did this some times.
Wide angle fun.
Macro fun
More wide angle fun.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Fall of 2009, Redux
The summer of 2009 was miserable for a lot of reasons. The water heater failed. The Girly couldn't find work. The dog wanted about 3 more walks per day than anyone was prepared to deliver. Then he got geardia. Then it rained and rained and rained. Tomatos hung on the vine for a month without growing. Slugs ate the garden. And then there was the dissertation....
Sometime in August, the weather cleared. Just in time for autumn to set in. The span from late August to early November more than made up for the wet gray mess that the summer had been. Sitting in the muggy brown of Virginia winter, I am a bit homesick for a place I never really thought of as home.
Sometime in August, the weather cleared. Just in time for autumn to set in. The span from late August to early November more than made up for the wet gray mess that the summer had been. Sitting in the muggy brown of Virginia winter, I am a bit homesick for a place I never really thought of as home.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Anthropogenic Wasteland
The vast urban nothing where we now reside does not easily yield to artistic interrogation. If you want something pretty to look at, or even nice to be, suburbia is like a well painted ghetto, without the poverty and crime. You have to look between the cracks and in the bushes to find something with any story or any meaning. It's going to take some practice. Perhaps I should hire a model?
I want to know why this has schrader valves. I think it is a water fountain head, but I am not sure. It's not exactly in an obviouse place for a water fountain, and it seems a little tall. And why two valves? They don't make much sense for water. It confuses me. When I rotate the photo this way, it looks like it has bulging eyes.
At least there is always The Dog.
Ready for Spring
Ok, I admit, I'm ready for spring. The leaves are so much better when there's color.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Incoherence
I wanted my hands free to take pictures, so I tied the dog's leash to a tree then stepped a few feet down the trail. He immediately started to gnaw his leg off to get free.
I realized that I display all the symptoms of a severe case of imposter syndrome, but then again, I cannot be sure. It's probably nothing.
I realized that I display all the symptoms of a severe case of imposter syndrome, but then again, I cannot be sure. It's probably nothing.
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