4.29.2006
11:53pm
How much bad science have you been taught in the past? A number of things on that page I believed to be true thanks to past textbooks and instructors... turns out they were wrong.
10:42am
Hell week is over! The Whittaker project is done! We are probably going to get an A on it! No more Deshmukh classes!
Alright so I'm a little excited that school is almost over for the year. One week of exams to suffer through and then it's summer break. I've got four exams (Mon,Tue,Wed,Fri) and none of them are particularly easy. I'm happy with the results from Software Engineering though--Whittaker liked our traffic simulation program and said we would most likely get an A grade (he grades on a relative basis... so unless a lot of people had a better program than us we should be good). Ron and Matt's project didn't have as much functionality as ours, but it did use C++ and OpenGL whereas ours was C# so Whittaker was impressed with their extra effort there.
If you have the .NET Framework installed on your computer you can get the executable of our program here. The Emergency Vehicle functionality was not implemented but everything else works. Source code available on request.
4.27.2006
8:54pm
For the Star Wars fans out there.
4.26.2006
12:41am
Whenever I need a good chuckle, I turn to our fearless leader. And this week I definitely need something to keep up my spirits.
4.25.2006
11:24pm
Surprise, surprise, our Software Engineering final exam is a take-home. Not only that, but he also allows group work to complete the problem. Today I worked with a group of 8 other people to get as much done as we could--the actual exam is due Thursday at noon.
Today I also got the traffic lights for our project to stop the cars at the intersections. There's still a problem with cars backing up and/or blocking other lanes, but no cars are doing weird things like bypassing or jumping over the other cars which is good :)
4.24.2006
6:54pm
Sneak peak of the big project. It's still in development as you can tell by the temporary stuff on the form.
4.23.2006
8:41pm
Poseidon - coming May 12th.
2:32pm
4.22.2006
11:43am
I forgot to mention yesterday that I went with Dan, Buff, Drew, Cory, and Jessica to see Thank You For Smoking at Oaks 10. The trailer looked amusing and it didn't appear to be your typical comedy fare. The male lead in the movie, Aaron Eckhart, hasn't done very many movies but he was in The Core which I saw a few years ago and now own on DVD. Anyway, regarding the movie: it had a perfect cast line-up. I read on IMDb after seeing the movie that the director sent a personal letter to each of the desired actors and actresses explaining why they would be the perfect person for the role. Nobody turned him down. There are several sub-plots that take place during the movie but they all tie together very well. The primary goal seemed to be to make fun of lobbyists in general, not just those on the two sides of the smoking debate. Much of the humor is situational and some of it is pretty subtle so you have to be listening carefully.
One amusing part was a scene where Aaron's character and his son are at an entertainment studio in Los Angeles and there is a big-screen TV in the background showing footage of killer whales attacking seals along the shoreline. They are transfixed by the on-screen carnage instead of paying attention to the talent agent who is talking to them. The surprising part was that I just saw that footage last week on the documentary I got called "Deep Blue" (see 4.12) so it was quite coincidental.
4.21.2006
11:12pm
Now here is something worth posting on my blog. The THX Deep Note, courtesy of Slashdot today. I never knew that it was created by a computer program (and quite a complex one at that!)
I picked up the Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture multichannel SACD today but haven't listened to it in surround sound yet. It's one of those weird Telarc discs that uses the 0.1 subwoofer channel for an optional height speaker instead of for the subwoofer. It's great if you have a speaker mounted on the ceiling for that express purpose but otherwise quite superfluous.
4.17.2006
9:58pm
Cool website with a timeline from Half-Life and Half-Life 2 that explains a ton of stuff that you don't learn from the game itself. The new Half-Life 2 expansion called Episode 1 is coming soon.
I've got a lab test tomorrow, a Materials test Thursday, and projects due next week. Where's the commercial skip button for real life?
4.12.2006
12:08am
Just finished watching a very nice documentary called Deep Blue that I got at Best Buy today with some reward zone coupons. It's from 2003 and part of a BBC series called The Blue Planet but it's got some spectacular underwater (and above-water) camera shots with all sorts of aquatic life. Hopefully they make a high-definition DVD version of it because it would be worthwhile. And speaking of HD-DVD, when I was at Best Buy today I check the home theater department and they still don't have a display model of the new Toshiba HD-A1 player. They said it should be coming in this week or next week so I will be going back to see what kind of amazing quality is upcoming with these new units. On a positive note, they did have some of the HD movies already in stock. Unfortunately there's no means to play them yet, but the people who pre-ordered the Toshiba player shouldn't have to wait very long.
4.11.2006
12:03pm
Time for some news for a change...
We can look forward to $3/gallon or higher gasoline here in the US this summer. The good news is that gas will have less sulfur due to some changes in refining this year, which is better for emissions.
Lenovo, the company that bought IBM's consumer PC division, is going to start selling ThinkPads at Best Buy. I wish I could say that it has success written all over it, but I think most consumers will be turned off by the ThinkPad's traditionally bland design and high(er) cost.
So Apple has their new feature called Boot Camp which allows Apple intel Mac owners to load Windows XP onto their computer and dual boot both OS X and XP. In recent news however, some users are finding it impossible to boot back into OS X after installing Windows due to file system corruption.
Solicit donations for $5,000 Apple G5 in exchange for blowing up your own Apple G4.
4.08.2006
6:52pm
Gettin' closer to the end...
The movie night yesterday went well, even though only 4 of the Ambassadors besides me came. Laura Seward, Laura Feja, Alina, and Philip were the attendees and we had fun watching Narnia and chatting afterwards. We had our executive board elections Thursday night and I was voted in as president, Philip was voted as vice-president, Joe will be our treasurer, Mfon will be our secretary, and Trevi will be our historian. The bad news is that Steve and Rebecca came and had a discussion with us about the new group they are forming to handle tours and open house next year. They felt that the Ambassadors group has not been reliable enough in recent years (partially due to our small size) and they want more control over their own student organization (still comprised of volunteers for the tours themselves, but supervised by a couple paid organizers).
So that means Philip and I have our work cut out for us next year as the organization will have to re-focus on things aside from regular tour duties. I don't doubt that some of our members will also join Steve's group to continue giving campus tours but our Ambassador group will focus more on Alumni events and other philanthropy and campus events.
4.05.2006
11:11pm
Well, it finally happened. South Park made a direct spoof of Family Guy (and itself). They criticized cartoon shows that make fun of religions for the sake of a few laughs, especially in cases where people could get hurt. The specific example of blasphemy in the fake Family Guy episode was display of the prophet Muhammad.
I watched the special features disc from the Chronicles of Narnia DVD set I got yesterday, and I'm really amazed at how well they are able to integrate live-action footage with CGI. I mean, I had a vague idea of how they accomplished it but to see the techniques and step-by-step resolution from basic overlay to fully-rendered scene is very cool. I was also surprised to find out that they shot the film chronologically, unlike most CG films where they shoot scenes in the most efficient order. One of the things that was most talked about when the film was released in theaters was the animation of Aslan, and after watching a few of the related featurettes it's obvious that they spent a LOT of time on that particular aspect. I read online that they might also be releasing an extended version of the film nearer to Christmas time, which would be unusual for a Disney distribution but they might be changing their process.
4.04.2006
10:13am
Ice Age 2 pulled in $68 million on opening weekend. Way to go Fox animation. Plus with the Simpsons movie coming out next year, they are probably going to make the investors very happy.
The Chronicles of Narnia DVD comes out today.
4.03.2006
5:47pm
3d Realms (aka Apogee). What a great software company. They put out a lot of the fun DOS games that I remember: Commander Keen, Crystal Caves, Duke Nukem, Hocus Pocus, Paganitzu, Raptor, Rise of the Triad, Terminal Velocity, Major Stryker, Wacky Wheels, Dark Ages, Halloween Harry, and of course Wolfenstein 3D.
1:58am
But can it find the answer to life, the universe, and everything?
No, I'm not talking about Deep Thought, I'm referring to the new supercomputer commissioned from Cray that will require 170 megawatts of energy and should hit the petaflop (1,000,000,000,000,000 floating point operations per second) mark.
4.02.2006
3:39pm
Every once in a while you come across an article that stirs up the past and makes you remember all that stuff from childhood that was so important. Like Duck Hunt, Donkey Kong, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Tamagotchi. Speaking of Duck Hunt, after the poker game at Ron's last night we played some Mario and Duck Hunt on his NES. It was quite the party, with enough people that we had to split into two different poker tables.
4.01.2006
10:25am
April Fools!... well at least for a few more decades.
Ice Age 2 was great. It improved upon the original in every way possible, including quality of animation and sound effects (great bass in some parts). You get to see more of Scrat, and as always he is the comedic device throughout the movie. However, this time he actually has a big impact on the movie's outcome... I'm not going to tell you--you will have to see it for yourself. Oh, and Queen Latifah is the voice of a female mammoth/possum in this one (yes I did mean mammoth/possum) and Jay Leno voices a character as well although it's difficult to recognize.