Well, I created a simple block shooting game using the arduino, wii nunchuck, and LoL shield. This is one of the first times doing multiple tabs of arduino code, and learned that the prototypes are only created for the original one, not all the rest. It is a pretty nifty but simple game. I am thinking though, that after I show it to some of the devs at work I will try rewriting it for the ST7565 LCD display that I got. I think that will allow me to make some more complex scenes and maybe make a space invader like game.

I may also try to do a version of pong for the LoL shield sometime. That could be nifty.

Well, my NXT needed some repairs today. The display was acting funny, as in not working. After some research it turned out that some of the caps needed to be resoldered. Wasn't too bad even though they were SMDs.

And I found what might be the perfect board for a biped robot. The leaf lab maple, with an arm cortex cpu instead of an 8 bit avr. And it has a modified arduino environment. I think that might be perfect for some of the more complex stuff that I will do with a biped. So may order that and the lynxmotion BRAT sometime in the next month or two.

Randomness

This is real randomness.... Matt and I today built a pendulum system based on the instructions from Make Magazine. This allows for both a double pendulum and a Rott's pendulum to be configured. Here are some cool pictures from the pendulum.

Languages

A talk with my boss yesterday about programming languages got me thinking a bit more. Why is it that some languages become mainstream while others remain obscure or academic? Part of this is languages have to be 'cool enough' to be worth while. By that I mean by the nature of programmers they want to either work on something very cool, or use a very interesting tool. Most have a domain that they are passionate about; for me that is computational biology and artificial life. However many of us don't work within their domain of specialty. (like for me I don't have a PhD, so the jobs are very rare) So if a programmer is working on problems that are not in themselves exciting what gives them drive?

I think that the answer is the tools and techniques that they can apply to the problem. As an example, I do not find web technology in itself to be particularly thrilling. I recognize that it is one of the most important technologies around currently, and changes the whole way client server interactions take place (REST interfaces are beautiful). However, something happens when I am using an interesting tool like Python, and test driven development. I get excited when I get each test to pass. It is no longer a matter of focusing on the web technology, but now I focus on the tests, and it becomes a game where my score is the number of unit tests I can get to pass. I think many people who program are the same way. They want to play with cool technology, but also don't want to relearn everything.

Since they become productive with one set of tools, they are reluctant to move out of that unless they really have to. If a developer is a java expert, and is given some problem that is more amenable to a perl or python script, and they do not know perl or python already, they will likely solve the problem in java instead of taking this as a chance to learn a new tool. In many cases they will just 'get it done' with the tool that they know and are comfortable with. However over time this leads to situations where the tool that they are expert with is no longer the current industry fad, and they have passed up all these small chances to delve into a new tool. For an individual developer this doesn't mean too much, but as an industry it means that fewer developers are willing to adopt some other tool at any given time point. Thus leading to a problem of how to find enough developers proficient in a new technology to actually use it.

The other side of the coin I think is managements perception of 'academic'. Software companies exist to produce a product, and to make money with that product. To do so the product has to work well enough that users actually want to buy it. This leads to the importance of code quality and maintainability and long term service. However to most managers it seems that academic means more whimsical programming, code that is all throw away, and does not have strict quality standards. This very well might be true in the language design labs, or OS labs, where things are proof of concept. However, outside of these areas things change very much. Go to a physics/engineering/genomics/applied math group and likely the situation is very different.

For one investments in equipment are taken seriously, and in many cases specialized instrumentation that interfaces with computers may be kept for decades in use because of prohibitive costs in obtaining new equipment. In such cases any custom code written for that instrument must work, and must be maintained over a long lifetime by different people. Additionally there are high stakes if there are errors in the system, as it could invalidate all the research done with that equipment. Costs of reagents are high, and rerunning experiments could be a huge financial drain on a research group. However such systems are generally on the smaller side of programming projects in academia.

Consider the case however of the code base used for working on grand challenge type problems. Here code quality is probably more important than in most companies. A team might spend months writing code for their scheduled run on a supercomputer. If their code doesn't work they have to essentially buy more time and wait again for their run to come up. This is not the time to find a null pointer exception. So these things have to be written by teams quickly, robustly, and in a manner that is is maintainable, just like commercial software. However, because of the huge complexity of many of the problems the overhead in learning a new language for a project is just not that big of a deal if it means that the problem goes from impossible to just barely possible.

Thus I think commercial software houses should look not to the CS departments for what is up and coming in languages, but to applied math, physics, bioinformations/computational biology groups. Right now this seems to point to Python, Scheme, and R.

Glider time

So last week I finally got my first R/C glider. I picked up a Dream Flight Alula. It is a simple side arm launched glider. Not a full DLG, but it is a nice step in that direction. It is all foam and carbon fiber, and went together really nicely. I put in a couple hightech servos I had kicking around, but will probably put in some good spectrum digitals once my skill with it starts to exist.

I had my first flights with it Friday at lunch. Some mishaps caused a broken nose, however that was easily repaired and a couple small strips of strapping tape now add some more support. I went out again today to the high school fields, and got a good number of flights in. I didn't manage to catch any thermals, nor was I really expecting to. However I did get some good launches in, and a few flights that I would say were even a bit graceful. This glider looks so good in the sky, because of its somewhat bird-like appearance. I also was able to figure out a few things that needed to be changed, such as some sub trim on one of the servos. I now have it set up better, with a bit of reflex dialed in, and both elevons trimmed out right.

I also painted the hatch cover gun metal gray, which looks very nice. I am thinking some bright green spray on the wingtips will add a bit more color and help with orientation. However, it flies great, and I am happy.

My night vapor did not fly so well today though. I am figuring it was the cold air being blown across the battery by the prop, since that is completely exposed. I made a small battery sock which will hopefully fix that issue. I will try that out sometime during the week hopefully.

Well, today was semi productive. Got my phone rooted at lunch time. Kind of nice to have a clean slate, as it was starting to get a lot of crud in it. Will be nice to play with different things. Although I don't think I will be a heavy modder.

I also got some flight time in with the night vapor. It is getting cold out. I probably need to invest in one of those radio hood things to keep my hands warm. But it was still good to get a little flight time in as I didn't really get much on Sunday due to a bad crash. Still need to finish fixing the tail of the super cub. Think it might be getting close to to time for another large aircraft. Another BNF whileI build the trainair 20.

New toy

I picked up a livescribe pulse pen a couple weeks ago for school. The desktop software doesn't work on my vista system, which is a shame, but it does however work great on my laptop running XP. This is a really cool thing, as it links lecture audio with my own notes, so I can go back and review material later on while working on problems. I hope that it helps make things a bit clearer in these math classes. We shall see if it was worth it.

On a side note, I now have enough space to dedicate a small area to my electronics projects. I am hoping taht keeping my tools and whatever project I am working on out that I will be able to move quicker with them and do stuff more often. Again, this remains to be seen.

Yeah, the night vapor is the perfect after work plane. It is great to be able to get in a little stick time even though it is dark out so early, and that I don't always have time to make it to the field.

Bad R/C day

Well, today wasn't my best day flying. I few the lil' squirt in the yard, and ended up in a tree. I had to use a basketball to get it down, so that caused some damage. Mostly easy to repair, but still, not idea. Thinking I should get a second one, just to have another airframe. I like it, it is a great small field plane, though I tend to fly it in too small of a field. Second time I have tried flying it someplace too tight and ended up in a tree. So think I need to treat it better and fly it at a park. Also seemed like it really needed a good trimming too. So maybe will do that. And just stick to using the night vapor in the yard. Sadly the wind picked up so it wasn't much fun to fly that tonight, so brought it down fairly early. Didn't want to have to get that out of a tree as well. And this weekend will be too busy to make it to the field. Maybe next weekend I will be able to.

Well.... I am back from Europe, and back to building. Had a great trip, just wish it was longer I could have flown a free flight model in the park, would have been different.

I ordered some free flight model kits, which came in today. Also got the parts to finish my Matt Chapman flatout. Hopefully can finish that this weekend. But got the build of the Retro RC skyace done today. I just have to do the finish on it. Will look great with some neon green. Will have to get some colored sharpies. But damn it is so tiny, i love it.

Pictures from Fly In

Poor P-51

I got in the light set for my ultra micro P-51 and realized that the stabilizers were damaged severely, beyond repair. I will hopefully be able to pick up a set at R/C Buyers tomorrow. I also realize that I really need to go through all of my batteries and figure out which are still good and which need to be tossed, and then get a bunch to replace the bad ones. Probably go with the 150 mah ones from Common Sense R/C as they have a nice form factor compared with the e-flight 150mah batteries.

I also got all of the tape covering on the Gremlin. It looks good, except it has way too many wrinkles. I hope some come out when shrinking with a covering iron, but still, not the best covering job in the world. But, it should fly, and that is all that matters since it will be my first combat event. Hopefully I can get some experience before then.



And two aircraft I really want, the Quickflick II DLG and the E-Flight UMX Beast. I will probably pick up a Quickflick in the next couple months to build. But the beast is so pretty, and impressive. The new receiver brick seems like something I should consider getting as well for a foamie or something. So many aircraft to build. I am trying to stay away from the ready made stuff, but some of the eflight and parkzone stuff is just perfect, especially the ultra micros.... hopefully one day I can build stuff just as good. Easiest might be a kit for the Plantraco hardware as a first ultramicro build. And then a foamie for the new spektrum brick. So many possibilities.

Shot a bunch of touch and goes today, went ok, not all of them were perfect. But more importantly I was able to catch a thermal with the supercub and climb to about 500 or 600 feet at about 25% throttle. Was really cool. I am a tad hooked. Thinking some gliders really need to be in the build queue soon. Just trying to decide if I should do a HLG or a powered glider. Really thinking the Quick Flick II DLG from Mountain Models. Will be good, just worried about flying out of a short field and ending up not being able to make it back to the field.

I have to say, my first few hours building the flatout foamie did not go so well a couple months ago, and I put it aside out of frustration. I must say however, after getting some little transfer pipets do apply the CA accelerator instead of the spray, things have turn out well on this project. I haven't been working on it for a few days since I needed to get cracking on the Grelmin, but I might work on it some today. I can probably do everything that doesn't involve electronics today if I feel like it. Will have to see how lazy I am.

Also thinking that I might do a Multiplex glider 'kit' for my first glider. It is foam, so will be easy to repair like the parkzone radian, but will at least get to do some building and hopefully learn a bit about glider setup before tackling a scratch built one. I am still on that steep part of the learning curve, where even fairly simple builds will teach me something new. So just need to build lots (hopefully start scratch building by the end of the year to save lots of cash) and fly a bunch more. .

Got a gremlin

Well, over the weekend was the three club flyin in Derry. Was a great event, got lots of stick time. I flew about 8 times, for between 9 and 11 minutes each flight, with some juice to spare. Was a very successful weekend, got some loops and stall turns in with the supercub. Thinking I should start keeping a flight journal though. Might be good to track what I am doing, and the such to see what I should improve on.

Also picked up a gremlin kit. Hopefully can get that built and learn to fly it before the contest in October. Goal 1: finish the even safely, Goal 2: finish the event with an aircraft....#2 is not always a given for a combat event. If I had time I would build a second one.....

Also got to see the mini gremlins in action.... I need some. They are tiny and freaking great. I love the mini aircraft. Actually, would be great for Friday lunchtime flying, especially if there is wind. My P51 does well in the wind, but the mini gremlin I think does better. It is a bit larger, more powerful, and also a gremlin....Can't wait to get my hands on one.

http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2010/07/code-coverage-goal-80-and-no-less.html

Well, been a long time since I have posted anything. Started playing with the Arduino again. Messing around with my LED cube and figured out that the reason my interrupt wasn't working right was more hardware than software. I was trying to use the AREF pin for my +5V, but it appears that this does not work. I didn't check, but I suspect that AREF is actually 3.3v, making it useless for the input button for the interrupt.

Also been playing a lot more with Go. I am trying to do one Project Euler problem a week, even though they do not take terribly long. It is a matter of getting off my rear and actually doing the problem. I did the 1000! one last week. This week though I am working through the example code to make a web service with Go. But will get back to the math problems next week.

I am really getting into the whole micro r/c thing. I don't know why but I think it is even more interesting than the giant scale models. While the level of detail is amazing in many giant scale models, I just can't get over how wonderfully the micro aircraft fly and how much engineering goes into the components. I think the other part is that they are less restrictive in the flying site that they require. I don't have to make a huge event out of flying, i can just grab a few boxes of stuff, drive 5 minutes to an empty park and tool around for a bit. The other great thing is the indoor flying aspect during the colder months.

I picked up a parkzone micro p51 mustang the other day to add to my fleet. Very impressed with it. I flew yesterday in some fairly moderate wind. It was very difficult because of the wind, but I was amazed at how well such a small aircraft handled such heavy wind. I tried before that with my Stevens Aero lilsquirt which was downed immediately because of the wind. That craft was completely uncontrollable with the gusts of wind. However the p51 just cut right through and trucked on. I have a feeling that over the coming years I am going to have a whole fleet of these micro R/C craft. Already have a couple helicopters and a couple planes. The next step will be into building the kits and scratchbuilt models that are smaller than the lilsquirt.

Started working on a game in Java with Andrew. Changing some of the game loop code around to get a constant FPS, then have to change the objects around so that the x,y refers to the center and not the top left corner. That's going to be important since I'm writing the collision detection method. Hopefully I can figure that stuff out. Also need to do some school related stuff later. But think right now I am going to go do some r/c stuff. Seems like a nice day, so will probably drive the truck around a bit. Need to consider getting a bigger helicopter sometime this summer that I can fly outside.

Last weekend Andrew took some really good pictures of the mSR flying with his digital SLR camera. Really came out great. Need to drag him with me this summer to the flying field to get some even cooler pictures. Will be cool. Just can't wait to get some more flying in. Also picked up an ebook on the mSR. Redid my expo/dual rate settings based on that. Should actually be more effective, since I sort of want some lighter controls for laning and takeoff.

Also the little stevens aeromodel SQuirt came in. Got that glued up the other night. And just sanded the fuselage and put some clearcote on that. Not actually going to do a film coverning except for the wing panels. That is the recommended way to do things for this particular model to keep mass down. Kind of critical with those indoor models.

Hopefully this summer i can come up with some really cool stuff to build. So much fun.

Also, found a cool program called Flicnks. Basicly a text based browser to teach you speed reading, Quickly flips through the words on the page.

Picked up a blade mSR today. Tried flying it at home earlier all excited thinking that it would be a bit challenging but manageable and was disappointed. However I went to an indoor flying group tonight and tried it, and found that all I needed was slightly more space and I could fly it fairly well. Not nearly as well as the mCX, but not crashing every 45 seconds. Infact I only had a couple of real crashes, but managed not to have any big enough to break anything. Think if I make flying at this place a regular weekly event I might actually get good with it. A couple of the other pilots complimented me on my skill with it. Not bad for having just gotten the thing.

Next step though will have to be a radio with multiple model memory. Having to manually change the trim settings when I switch models kind of is a pain. Means nearly crashing a few times while getting things dialed in. Also the packets/sec on the radio that comes with the RTF kit isn't that high, while the DX6i and the DX7 series have much better refresh rates. Not a problem with the mCX, but I did notice it with the mSR. It seems to be twitching a bit and commands are slightly sluggish. Not terribly so, but enough when you consider the speed and agility of the mSR. It be a fast little helicopter. Also need to get someone to get some videos sometime too.

Second long weekend in a row. Kind of nice. Getting time to do random stuff. Spending some time flying the little helicopter and spending some time in RealFlight with some park fliers. Feeling like its almost time to get another helicopter though, one of the intermediate level ones in the Blade family. The mCx s300 is lots of fun, but feel like I need a little more to get some more skills. Can fairly reliably land precisely with full rates on the radio. So really need the next step up, and probably eventually a better transmitter, probably the Dx6i. Hopefully in a month or two I can do that. Maybe get the Ember as well so I can get sometime in with a fixed wing craft.

And Java sucks, the language is such a mess. Don't know why anyone would willingly use it. Though for some of the stuff I want to do I will probably end up writing my own libraries for Go. Don't think there is a version of openGL ported to it yet..... sounds a lot like effort though.

Crazy roombas...... Such a nifty and useful device. Must make some accessories and stuff at some point. Bur right now focusing on changing some things around in my Game of Life program. Need to take care of a few refinement things as far as catching some events and adding some more delay functions. Then I want to make it so you can use command line arguments to change the ruleset that is used. Could be interesting to explore other CA patterns.

Google is taking over the world.... but I think I am Ok with it....

Well, this was an r/c heavy weekend. Got in a lot of flight time with the little Blace mCX s300 helicopter. Did some figure eights and precision landing practice. Lots of fun. Glad I got another battery for it. Starting to flight with the high rate transmitter setting now too, instead of the low rate controls. Much harder to do precision landings, but still lots o fun. Can't wait until this summer when hopefully I can afford to get a decent electric plane and maybe another helicopter too. Something that can fly in the back yard. This one is a bit small for that, would worry about it getting blown away with the wind.

Made some more abrasion holograms with ML. Starting to come out good. Will have to try some more intricate ones at some point.