Checksum Arcanius

Using: Mozilla Lightningemu and Mozilla Superbug

I am sick and I feel terrible. I think I picked something up at the concert; I haven’t felt up to snuff sense. Also, I had trouble getting to sleep; I’m attributing this to a lithium dependence — although having no schedule also contributed. And the lack of sleep contributed to me getting sick. It’s all one vicious circle. It did get me to thinking about things, however — because of scientific advance, I who know very little of the biological sciences that can be known, know far more already than almost everyone just 50 years ago, and certainly more than everyone a hundred years ago. The same goes for most scientific topic — physics, chemistry, economics (although this country is woefully economically illiterate). I’m not sure it works with astronomy, where those proposing new theories seem to have gone off the deep end– seriously, how much more convincing is the big bang theory (“boom and it was all there”) than the creation theory (“boom x 7 days and it was all there”)? Seriously, more than any other division of science — but not exclusive of the other sciences by any means — astronomy has become the religion of disproving the need for a creator. Where I am right now, I don’t claim to know either way — but at least I know that I don’t know. As the old saying goes, “It is better to remain silent and thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” Which is not to say that I don’t encourage scientific thought and theorizing. As I stated early, the scientific method has brought the quality of life forward leaps and bounds. It has done far more that can be seen by the average person than any other philosophy or religion. But that doesn’t mean that blind speculation that happens to match with some results is a legitimate theory either.

Arcanius steps off soapbox…

Today was another late start, but not nearly as bad as before. I fixed a program on my mom’s computer at her office (its great having the password of the IT guy there… oh wait, I am the IT guy there), and then I went to IS to watch the Robot drive around. We already broke the arm (its too powerful, I guess that’s my fault)… but the ball-picker upper and dumper thing worked pretty well once when we turned off one of the motors. We later removed that motor and assembly to save weight, and will test tomorrow whether the new system works. After testing, we returned to Larrys where new pillow blocks were constructed for better turning and Dave, Tim and I built a goal grabber. Larry then started working on fixing the arm. Saturday we get to test the thing out on as close to a real field as we will see before the real competition. That is the date we are shooting to be complete by. I still think we should use the next five days we have to tweak things, but people are getting pretty tired of the hectic schedule.

I’m off to sleep off this sickness and dream of lightweight mechanisms to lift a 130 pound robot five feet into the air.

Multitasking is great: I’m chatting, administering SilverFir.net, watching a movie, and writing up the latest entry to the blog all at the same time. Well, I’m mostly watching the movie and chatting, which is why after an hour I’m only on my second sentence here. Two hours. Three� ok, maybe multitasking isn’t so great :-p.

…

Well, The movie was good, and the problem with SilverFir.net was extremely obscure. Somehow, the loopback interface wasn’t up — so “localhost” and 127.0.0.1 would give different results, and I couldn’t ping myself. Thanks to a user (see http://moretti.silverfir.net) wanting to install Uberblog (see http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/) the problem started showing symptoms, and after hours of struggle, was figured out and (hopefully) resolved.

I’m thinking I need to get the next version of SilverFir up real soon, because the current one is going haywire pretty quickly. Gentoo is looking like a good option. Now I just need a way to upgrade with minimal downtime.

Since I am thinking about it now, I have thought of an ideas that I think should be considered for Linux distributions: instead of putting files all over the filesystem when installing things (as Debian and Gentoo do), why not put all the files for a particular program in a single directory (say, /usr/local/programname/ just like apache and mysql default to), then use simlinks for everything else — logs, config files, binaries — just put simlinks in the “regular” places – /usr/bin or /etc or /var/log, etc. That way, when a program is deinstalled, a cron job can go by and neatly clean up all the simlinks and there is no residual from the program. And deinstallation involves one rm command. Very clean, very simple. Maybe someday I’ll suggest this to someone who knows what to do about the idea.

Well today I made it to Larry’s about 10 — only Hilary and Eric were there. I stayed until around 5, by which time the mast of the arm was maybe complete. I wish I were better at doing the arm project myself, but there are so many things that I just don’t think about yet. It’ll just take time I guess. After leaving Larry’s I made my way to Sammamish — stopping by Amanda’s place. She was at work, so I stopped there and let her know about the test on Monday. We’ll be studying before class Monday. o.O

I never made it to Sammamish. I got about as far as the TV — with the newfangled cable TV we have, Monster House was on, and it sucked me in as I feasted on extra sharp white cheddar melted over corn tortilla chips. Then my dad got home, and we watched “Out of Time,” which I picked up at Blockbuster for free earlier today (got to love late Saturday nights and guaranteed in stock movies). Then my mom got home, and it was after ten, and I decided I would actually make it to Larry’s around 8:00 tomorrow, so I should get to bed. But first I voiced some worries about the TRC achieving its mission, using my parents as a sounding board. It was good to get some of my ideas — developed on my own and borrowed from others — out in the open. It helps crystallize them so they stick around, which is important, especially for good ideas.

I’ve found out that I’m no good at studying anymore. I tend to mess around on my computer instead of studying, unless I’m being really good. But I don’t have trouble staying on task in the photo lab, for example. So it’s a location thing. Maybe some visits to the library are in my future�

“What we really need� is a perfect CEO.” –Me

Three and a half years ago, with guidance from Larry Barello, I founded the Titan Robotics Club at my high school. That first year, the fledgling club raked in more than $22,500 in donations, entered two robotics competition events and sent 19 students to the Silicon Valley Regional of the FIRST Robotics Competition for $50 a piece. The fundraising of the first year has not yet again been matched — but of course we got a $10,000 head start that first year due to a grant from the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers. The next two years NASA treated us to $5000 — enough to cover entry to one regional. Each of those years, the TRC entered two regional competitions — one in Washington and one in California. This year, the NASA grant ran out, and so far the TRC has entered only one FIRST Robotics event � the closest one, in Portland, Oregon. What this translates into is that the TRC has pretty much had a flat level of income from the community, when KPCB and NASA are taken out of the equation. The first year, the extra money from KPCB let the TRC enter a second competition and subsidize travel costs. The next two years, the NASA money allowed the TRC to enter a second competition. This year, nothing — no extra money, just the basics: Students pay for their own travel, we enter one regional competition (even though the club got invited to the National Championships this year), and� well, who knows. It feels to me like things are winding down. But that is exactly the opposite of what I wanted. I want the TRC to take off. So, looking into the future, I have to figure out what it will take to get more students energized about the TRC. This is the great mystery�

For more on the TRC, visit titanrobotics.net

As mentioned above, the TRC participated in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC – http://www.usfirst.org). The FRC is a national competition of high school robotics groups teamed up with mentors of professional engineers and college students. Over 800 teams are at it this year. Every year, a new game is introduced, and a new Kit of Parts is released � and with the materials in the kits, each team tries to build a robot that will win the game. The compressed schedule simulates real-world engineering problems and forces students and mentors alike to balance the design, build, and test phases that every engineering project goes through. However, the six weeks of robot building are only the beginning. Every team enters one or more regional competitions. Throughout March and early April, weekends are turned into robotics extravaganzas, with thirty to sixty teams squaring off. These regional events are the real magic of the FIRST Robotics Competition. Sure, there may be better ways to teach the specific skills of welding, C programming, computer-aided design, turning drawings into pieces and pieces into robots, but there is no better way to get people who don�t give a hang interested in learning these skills in the first place. A FIRST Regional Event is part rock concert, part sports event, part nerd convention, and completely energetic fun. The FIRST Regional celebrates science and technology � flying in the face of our society that idolizes entertainment over all and pays more attention to the lives of sex symbols than to the amazing feats of science and technology (ie, Britney vs. Mars Rover). FIRST � For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology � is what we need more of.
And now, for a shameless plug: if you know of an individual or a company (including you and yours) that would be interested in supporting the worthy effort of a FIRST Robotics team� send them to this informational page

Check out the page of Bernie Zimmermann at http://www.pleasureunit.com/bernie/. He is the writer of the only comment (so far at least) on my last post. Seeing websites that are pretty like his gets me to thinking about making my website pretty. In fact, it reminds me of a story about my early days with the Internet. And since I am in the mood, I will share the story with you�

My first website ever was titled “The Realm of Arcanius.” The name remains to this day — check out the title of this page. My brother was becoming interested in graphic design at the time (he was doing his senior project on computer aided graphic design, in fact) and he made me the logo, which really was the prettiest part of the site. And prettiness mattered, since I was locked in a battle for votes with my friend Dan�s “Lagomorph’s Lair” and he always seemed to be winning. I had decidedly more content in the form of stories, poetry, pictures, photos, and jokes, for what that was worth. But he had style. I have similar problems today. I am able to update this site fairly regularly (although I admit the pictures are getting stale), but I still have trouble making my sites all that pretty. I can make what I think are good looking logos and designs using Photoshop and freehand, but putting them together to make a good website had never been my strong point. My most successful websites have always been very simple, come-for-the-content websites. Of course, Mr. Zimmermann is a professional web developer — so I shouldn’t feel too bad that my site isn;t as good-looking as his.

So the story part of that (I know it wasn’t too clear) was that I made a website when I was in the eighth grade and I lost a competition to my friend. And I;ve kept the name ever since. So now, I might as well talk about how I picked up the name “Arcanius” anyway. Actually, I think I already talked about this (if you go to the first posts in the archives). But here it is again for those of you too lazy to go back (I would be too, so don’t feel bad). There was a game I played back in sixth grade called “Master of Magic.” It was fun, and it had two worlds — one called “Arcanus” and the other called “Myrror.” I took the former name, added the ‘i’ (because I’m cool like that) and adopted it as my online name.

And I might as well keep on going; it is good to remember. Well, the Lagomorph who always beat me in website design now attends the University of Washington — where I will probally be going by the end of the year. It is somewhat sad that we have drifted apart. We still get along, but we really don�t see each other much anymore — no real reason to, I guess. The same thing happened to Alex, another friend from high school, and countless others as well. But some people I have continued to hang out with regularly — Scott, Maneesh, Amy. The difference is that the ones I have drifted away from don’t tend to find the time to do things with me, while the ones still in my life seem to always be willing to do things still. So it leads to a very simply but very important conclusion: continued close friendship takes continued inputs of time. There is simply no way around it. I will always be cordial with Alex and Dan, but already, I have nothing to talk to them about — they come online and I don’t message them, because I don’t have anything to say.

Now for an update on more current history: today. First, I did the Robotics thing, picking up a breakfast burrito as Casa D’s Tacqueria on Bellevue Way on the way to Larry�s house. Once there, Bobby and I worked on the design of the arm (we think it is pretty much finished now), participated somewhat in the betterment of the ball scooper-upper, and generally had ourselves a good time, before returning to 8, the eight-restaurant cafeteria in the basement of McMahon Hall. We seem to be eating there a lot, but Bobby does have 900-some dollars he needs to burn through before the end of the term, and I’m willing to help him as long as its not taking anything away from him. While eating and finalizing details on the arm, we watched the UW men’s basketball team put the spank on the Arizona State Sun Devils. Then we watched the Montlake parking area’s black of asphalt turn into glowing red of brake lights as thousands of fans exited the arena only to sit in their cars waiting to get out. Once the traffic had subsided, I returned home before running out to apply for employment at the low-risk, low-stress local Blockbuster, and to grab a movie and some groceries. I highly recommend the movie “Antwone Fisher.” I can’t say I cried, but my eyes did get damp. Of course, I’m pretty emotionally detached, so that’s a pretty good effect.

I’ll work on new pictures, and probably fix the error in PHPix which has hackers still attempting to compromise my system. Of course, I’m not sure if the hackers were directly related to Wadi’s crash, or if both events just happened to occur at the same time. In the meantime, I’ve thought of many ways that OS’s could be made more secure by default: some of these ideas are already implemented by Immunix, Inc. (www.immunix.com / www.immunix.org), although they use older technology. I’m too cutting edge (not quite beta, but everything up until thing pretty much) to deal with gcc < 3.0 or Apache < 2.0. so while maybe its flawed in security, I get to learn and it�ll make me a better sysadmin in the meantime.

I would have posted an interesting thing about IIS webserver acting up, but Greymatter (my blog software) seems to have issues with HTML code, so no.

I’m still being late to class; Multivar is still interesting; Tennis is fun; I have dust problems in Photography.

I’m learning a lot more about Inventor. I actually got a piece of the arm drive assembly completed today, thanks to some helpful guidance from Larry.

Thats all for tonight.

Music:
I have found that even high quality MP3’s reconstituted through a high quality player on my laptop into my stereo system simply cannot compete with the original CD. The weakest link here is, I believe, my laptop. I have tried similar tests using my desktop (with the audigy II platinum) and haven’t been able to detect reasonable differences. My laptop, on the other hand, even with the volume turned all the way up, doesn’t seem to output enough voltage to simulate a line out. Its plenty loud in headphones. I wonder how much line out is supposed to be?

Money:
I asked the CEO of T-Mobile for $4,000 today. Actually, he’s going to give the information I gave him to his marketing department. I hope I did a good enough job on it to get something. Also, I gave similar information to Mr. Chaplin of Chaplin’s Automotive Group, a contact that happened because of my mom, bless her. We’ll see how that goes.

Thanks:
I finally got around to start writing thank you letters to the very nice people who hosted Scott and I while on our roadtrip. I am now awaiting more addresses to write more letters. People are good, life is great, and I am indeed blessed.