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Personal

Cool Stuff

I will admit, I have no idea how to organize this thing. It is a massive behemoth of everything in my life with no good organization or purpose beyond getting things from my head to not-in-head status.

There is some cool stuff that is happening though. Not just with me, but in general. I will split it into stuff with me and then stuff that is not me.

Stuff With Me:

Tim and Matt Play:
My friend, Tim, and I started a let’s play channel on YouTube. Right now we are playing through a weird Russian game called Vangers. Tim played it a lot growing up (he didn’t have cable). It just came it out on Steam so there is no better time to tackle this weird one. We will be playing more and different games when Vangers is finished up so look for those if this proves to not be your thing.
Check us out out!

#NaNoWriMo
This is more of a heads up thing. Since this month is National Novel Writing Month, abbreviated as NaNoWriMo, I asked some friends if they wanted to do a collaborative novel where we would switch off days of writing. Mike and Tim (from above, the one who didn’t have cable) signed on and we have been doing a pretty good job. As of this post we have 14,788 words written between all of us. The goal is 50,000 words by the end of November. I can’t promise we will hit that, but we will definitely have a finished, long form story.

Tim and Mike are really talented writers and I am excited to read every portion each one of those guys contributes. It is a really interesting story and a great experience because you never know what you are going to be given to write about or how your portion will influence the direction of the overall plot and characters. I can’t wait to write, read, and share the rest.

Edit: I wrote this a while ago! NaNoWriMo has come and gone and we are going to tie up the story and release it. It’s pretty awesome.

Future Projects

Just to let you know what has been rattling around in my head and what is to come.

Photo Frame
I want to build a really awesome digital photo frame. It occurs to me that we have all these photos we take, but they mostly just sit in a folder or on an SD card somewhere. Kind of useless. There are digital photo frames out there, but they are usually slow, clunky, and are a pain to have new photos transfer to it.

My goal is to take a small computer (Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black) and have it drive an HD monitor. It will randomly pull photos from a central location over Wi-Fi without the need to ever update it. It will also pull from Instagram and Facebook to give you photos other people posted as well. The screen will be split into different sections and maybe display some rudimentary info beyond pictures.

Open Worm/More Robots
I heard about this a project that had mapped all the neurons of a simple creature’s brain, C. elegans nematode. It’s open source and can be modified to any application. A group of people hooked it up to a robot they built.

This robot has not been programmed for any behavior like “if you hit the wall turn around” it’s all based on the virtual neurons firing after some of the sensors give input. It is absolutely fascinating. I wanted to build a new robot after I finished up the one from senior design. This seems like a fantastic project. A real AI. It might be dumb, but it’s totally real.

Science and engineering are cool.

Stay tuned for more shenanigans.

Categories
Personal Uncategorized

Die Yuppie Scum!

Hey everybody.

It’s me, a concerted effort to maintain this crazy nonsense. So, I’ve tried vlogs, I’ve tried blogs, but I haven’t tried bvlogs. Double the work and half the viewers! This truly sounds architected by a genius.

I’ve just moved to Denver, so let me give you a rundown of how it is. As it turns out I’m the reason people are so angry in Denver. You see, I’m driving up property values. I don’t really want to be, but because I want to live closer to downtown and I’m willing to pay a premium for that, the places around me raise their prices. This trend will continue until either prices stabilize or a bubble bursts. If you want to see a bubble in action, just check out San Francisco’s property values. There are going to be some people covered in suds there soon enough.

Here are some recent pictures.

I will be trying to tie a bunch types of media into my posts from now on. It’s going to be like 1993 in this place. CD-ROMs! Quicktime! Encarta!

What’s this? A vlog? I have two words for it. Ruhhhh. Styyy.

Categories
Personal

A Bunch of Stupid Nothing.

Hey remember blogs?

Not like blogs today, but ramblings about the incessant nonsense of everyday life. I’m sure this happens, but it has been largely supplanted by major blogs posting about one topic with ads every which-a-way. Well, tonight isn’t about that. No, tonight is about the incessant nonsense of my everyday life. Why? Because I pay $9.99 every month for the privilege of bombarding you with such banal garbage.

To start things off right, I spilled pasta everywhere. Not just somewhere, but everywhere. Why even mention such a trivial non-issue? I might point you to the previous paragraph or title of this post, but no, this serves a higher purpose. This serve to illustrate how my move has been so far. Yes, my move has been spilled pasta. Melodramatic, sure, but apt nonetheless.

If you don’t know, which at this point anyone actually reading this should, I recently up and moved myself to Denver, Colorado. Land of opportunity. Rocky mountain high. Not my favorite place to be right now.

I am writing this post on the floor of my nearly empty apartment. You see, dear heart, the moving company I hired to move my precious, albeit mostly frivolous things, has delayed the reuniting of stuff and man five times now. So much so that I am looking into litigation.

I know this seems incredibly insignificant and first-world-problemy, but its true. I am pretty miserable right now. It’s probably terrible to admit with the opportunities afforded to me, but I miss my friends and family. I’ve been incredibly homesick and I know there is little I can do at this very moment. I never really thought I’d get this way. I’ve been fairly independent my whole life, but somehow I let feelings in over the years, and now those feels are wreaking havoc. I don’t know who bright idea it was to let people actually affect your life in meaningful ways, but I need to write a letter to my congressman/woman.

In a bout of coincidence All of the Sudden I Miss Everyone by Explosions in the Sky is playing.

I know this is a lot of complaining, and there are things in life that are MUCH worse than what is happening to a white 20-something male with a good job who moved somewhere new. I get that. I really do. But right now I’m not enjoying life. It’s a slog, and it can’t be this way.

In the totality of life all this will seems an imperceptible annoyance, but for right now it sucks. It sucks pretty hard.

While I’m writing this I am actually consider not posting it. If you are reading this you will know my decision. The point of this site, at least initially, was to be a true account of my life. For myself, and whomever wanted to peer in. Over the years it has been neutered because of job prospects and the negative effect honesty can have. I want to return to a place that I can actually fulfill that goal. I was far more cavalier in my teenage years, but you get that beat out of you as you mature.

This is some kinda rambling mess isn’t it? In general, when I write it’s hard for me to organize thoughts into a cohesive manner. I am far more of a stream of consciousness devotee, but I hope this wasn’t too disjointed.

I do want to sincerely make an effort of writing in this more, even if it is whiny, immature, nothingness. Part of it is just getting over the fear that what you produce isn’t worthy. The truth is most things are not, you just got to show up and try again. Not exactly poignant, but utilitarian I
guess.

P.S. My glasses broke today. Can someone please cue the Charlie Brown theme please?