Month: December 2005

Site NewsLeave a comment

X10 trick

Rob

My X10 setup is rigged to control some lights and that’s about it. The important task my X10 setup has is lighting my lizard’s house. When the sun rises, his lights need to go on and when the sun sets, they need to turn off. I have a Linux box figuring out when sun rise and sun set is and turns the lights on and off accordingly. Many times the sun is up, the lights are not on. And every now and then, I’d go to bed and his lights would still be on. This had been a problem I didn’t know how to work around. I think its an interference problem. My working work around has been this:

issue X10 command

sleep 3

issue X10 command

sleep 3

issue X10 command

If there’s a way to setup for looping in a shell script, this would be ideal, but I didn’t look into it (yet).

By adding sleep, the script takes a nap for 3 seconds before trying the command again. There’s no harm done if the lights get toggled on the first command. But if they don’t, then there’s 2 more chances. So far its been working great!

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SchoolLeave a comment

DSA2 is OVER!

Rob

I think I survived it! I walked into class with a 93% and walked out with a 97%. This doesn’t take into account the final exam I just took. I think the exam went ok. There were a few questions I know I got wrong, a few I know I got right, and a few I’m not sure about.

I got the Adventure program back. Scored 105 points out of 100! Everything in the program had worked. And if you don’t mind, I wanna quote the comments:

Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm: “Very elegantly written – especially for someone who didn’t start as a Java programmer! You used Java methods extremely well and intuitively here.”

Documentation: “Incredible! I looked through it very carefully, trying not to bend any pages. I also did not write on any of your code. No reason, to in any event, as your program works perfectly. (+5)”

Other: “Just an overall very professional job and good code.”

Me: Whoa!
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Site NewsLeave a comment

Gallery v2 hosed on server migration

Rob

Ugh. Migrating to a new server doesn’t go very well with Gallery v2. I looked around the ‘net and didn’t find much on how to work around a couple of the errors I was having (it complained about the thumbs and not enough space or too many). Oh well. I figured it would be quicker to blow away the archive and database and build from scratch. I think I’ve got all the images back up. Now they’re a little out of order.
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SchoolLeave a comment

Whew! DSA2 Program 4 Done!

Rob

The last program for DSA2 is now done. The program works (hopefully to the way the prof wants it). The documentation ended up filling a 1″ standard binder (I tried and a 1/2″ binder wasn’t going to cut it!). I’ll post the code probably after tomorrow. I think I have to post code for program 3 too. I’ll get that done too.

Also U. Akron related: The Zips football team won a championship! I talked to several people and they had all given up on the game 2 minutes or so before the end and the Zips managed to turn things around in those last minutes making for an exciting game.
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AutomotiveLeave a comment

Amazing what a set of tires can do

Rob

Its hard to get all-season tires for the Teg so this summer I was stuck getting summer tires for it. The tread looked like they might be ok in winter. Well, winter is here and no, they’re not ok. Luckily no damage has been caused. I got caught on a hill with a traffic light at the top of it and I spent the entire duration of the green light trying to get the car to move forward (it was creeping at about 5-10 miles but wouldn’t go any quicker).

Olessia and I were going to go to Mentor yesterday evening. I had heard from John they had 12 inches of snow already and snow tires would definitely be a requirement for getting around over there.

I slip-slided home from work and pulled the snow tires out from the shed. I had them mounted in an hour. Then I went to put some air in them and what a difference! Sure, they still slip here and there, but for all the silly things I did, I had grip and no loss of control. I went into the gas station and they hadn’t plowed or salted and there’s an inch of snow and the snow tires gripped. Starting and stopping was not a problem. With the summer tires, you’d have to gently slip the clutch and hope there’s enough traction to get the car to start rolling. Then once its rolling, you kind of have to keep egging it on to move forward. Then braking is a whole other problem. My car has ABS and at 20 miles an hour, would have to plan on 50 feet at least for stopping distance! With the snow tires, its not a problem! The car has plenty of grip to get going and stop, almost as if its summer outside.

The other cool part? I was able to change tires IN THE GARAGE and with plenty of LIGHTS! Whoa! Awesome. Not long ago this wasn’t possible…
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