Happy new year internets. I hope your 2008 was a good one. I have a lot of random little things to talk about so this is going to ramble a bit. My final weigh-in for 2008 was 182.6 lbs (EWMA 184.4 with λ=0.35). I started keeping track of my weight April 7th which is when I started exercising for serious and I’ve lost a little more than 30 lbs. That and quitting WoW have made this a pretty decent year for my physical well being.
The rowing machine has a little computer that tells you how fast you’re going, how many calories you’re burning, how many watts you’re outputting and so on. It keeps track of each row and can even share this stuff via USB in comma delimited files. When you take the little smart card out when you’re finished, it also tells you how many total meters are on that card. Around the beginning of December I realized I was closing in on 1,000,000m and that it was possible for me make it by the end of the year. I was getting there until the holidays came around and then my normal schedule went all pear shaped on me and I was stuck at 980,000m yesterday. I ended up leaving work a little early and as a result I had a few hours to kill before I needed to be at Bill’s for New Year’s dinner so I decided to go for it. I had to stop and rest a few times but I did 20km yesterday and the card said 1000058m when I was done. Go me.
One of the many nice things I was given for Christmas is a bench for my entry way. I’ve been wanting one for a while and I had put it in my big to-do list as a woodworking project but I’m happy to not have to saw and finish that. It’s sturdy and has two storage shelves underneath which is a nice feature. I’m going to go see if I can find a cushion for it at Pier 1 or Ikea or something. The space on top is 13.5″ X 38.5″ though and I don’t think that’s a standard size. I’ll have to see what’s available.
I used some of my left over Wii points from when I got FFCC: My Life as a King to pick up World of Goo. It’s a fantastic puzzle game / physical construction simulator where you build bridges and towers and various other odd things out of little goo balls to allow other goo balls to get to a pipe at the end of the level. There are obstacles and special pieces and environmental things. It’s a lot of fun. The last three levels are fairly tough but I finished them today. The music is surprisingly good and the story (such as there is one) is funny. I also noticed while I was in the Wii store that they have made Secret of Mana available for download. Secret of Mana was my favorite game for the Super Nintendo and it’s still one of my all time favorites. In many ways Kingdom Hearts is the spiritual successor to Secret of Mana though it has an inferior menu system. SoM has these awesome, rotating pie menus that just work really well.
I think I mentioned that the Arduino came in a couple of weeks ago. I finally managed to find some time to sit down and play with it a bit. I got the built in LED on digital pin 13 to blink and I got one of my white LEDs on the bread board to fade on and off using one of the analog output PWM pins. Good stuff. I also spent an afternoon with nothing to do a work making the schematic for the 20 channel lighting controller. It’s really busy though so I want to try again. Maybe use some buses in there? I dunno. I also think it might be good practice to allow card edge connectors and four channel cards up to 32 channels just in case 20 lights isn’t enough and also so that the design itself is more generally useful. I don’t think it would be that much more work. Each card would have the connector on the bottom, the logical NOR chip, four power supply circuits and the plugs for the LED cable on the side. I know that’s not much of description but I can see it in my head.
I tried cutting 1″ base triangles out of 80mil acrylic sheet and it’s much more of a hassle than I had hoped. I don’t think the glass cutting will be any easier so now I need to explore my outsourcing options. Meyda Tiffany, who made the light that started this whole mess, thinks that they can make a 5″ diameter star which is one of the sizes I want. I’m also thinking about going to visit the nice folks at Anchor Ventana glass that made the glass top for the end table I made. I hope that for a large enough order (say 1200 pieces) I could convince them to use their fancy CNC glass mill to cut and bevel the pieces exactly the way I want and then I could assemble them.
I’m sure there’s more but that’s all I can think of for now. I’ll probably edit this later and put in some pictures but I’m going to run over and see if the Ikea is still open. Have a good 2009.
edit: I forgot to mention the garden. I’m planting a garden this year. The first step is to kill the grass. This is apparently done with either a big tub of poison or with newspaper and mulch. I’m starting with the happy, green, organic method and will probably end up with the poison. Here’s a small picture of the start. I need a bunch more newspaper and mulch. If anyone has newspaper you just let me know and I’ll take care of it for you.
