Some timers

I forgot what my great idea for a blog post was.....

I think I have a form of writers bloc

Was it about a dream I had?   nope

Was it about some revelation of my inner soul?   nope

Was it about how I havent written anything here in like 6 months, because I never write down all my good ideas and them forget them after I go home ? Yep

Did I accomplish this mission? yep

Done.

P.S. I figure if I start with random baby steps I should be alright by Christmas :)

The New Bloggers Dilemma (NBD)

In the fast paced world of blogging, just like nascar you build a following and hold on to them. If you don't you fall to the wayside and wither away. There are a lot of people who claim you should not promote your own website or submit your own stories to digg. The majority of those people have fallen to the wayside and are withering away. Promote your website, it is not SPAM, it is something you have worked hard to produce. Let quality determine if you succeed.
The new bloggers dilemma (NBD) is a catch 22. Those without exposure will not have a user base. However to get exposure you need a user base. You also need to provide quality content to retain a following. Again you need a following to ensure your content is quality. The last statement is a bit counterintuitive, so I will restate it. Having a consistent user base will offer contructive critisim on those thing which are good and bad, which will help create high quality posting and insights. This does not mean let everyone else hijack your site and opinions. It does however, allow you to gear your grammar, layout, and topics to those who use your site regularly. This in turn allows them to point others with the same interest to your site, which expands your user base.
The second NBD is what do you talk about. Talk about everything and anything, screw niche blogs. If you find one you love, great, one thats not over run with established persons, even better. But as a whole people have many interests and many subjects they know something about, talk about them. There is alot of expertise languishing in the minds of people who only write about one topic. IT WANTS TO BE FREE, so let it go!

My New Livingroom

Last month, I got my very first flat panel flat screen tv.

It is a Phillips 42" w/ Ambilight 2. I decided to go with a 42" because of the layout of my livingroom (its positioned about 8ft away from the couch). A few things I have figured out since buying it:

1.) It does not have VGA or DVI inputs (so connecting a Home theater PC: htpc: is a
bit more difficult.
2.) Three HDMI ports are easy to fill once you get them.
3.) Some older technologies don't look good on a big screen. (i.e Laserdisc)
4.) Ambilight is cool but sometimes you want it off. (video games, horror)
5.) A flatscreen tv can make a room appear larger than what it is, so even if you have a
small room, it could still work well.

Now I know someone is going to say LaserDisc, WTF? Well, I got it from my grandpa, and it looked good on an old analog tv, so I figured why not. My mistake.

After I got the tv I found I needed to get a few more things to make it feel a bit more comfortable in its new surroundings. WalMart had just what I needed.
Summit mountain TV stand and Summit mountain audio pier

After a few hours of putting it all together, my 42" Philllips had a new home. Then I decided it needed neighbors. Out came the Xbox 360 and modded Xbox, the Ps2, the sony home theater system, and I bought a Ps3. After another few hours and wiring everything up. It was time to watch something wonderful it was a toss up between The Boondock Saints, Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King, and Spiderman 3 (blu-ray it came prepackaged in the Ps3 and it was the only blu-ray movie owned at the time.) Right before I started the movie I realized I was still missing a few things one was a place to store DVDs and the other was a way to hook up a computer. I said screw it I'll do that after the movie. In the end, I watched Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The king, It was amazing. Movie theater experience!! At home, it was awesome.
After the movie I looked around and found

media tower: cherry
I still haven't gotten it, due to backorder, but hopefully soon.

I also bought a s-video cable and 3.5mm to rca adapter and an Adesso wireless keyboard w/ built in track ball to hook up my girlfriends laptop and it works well not extremely crisp but it works for general intertube surfing.

This has been one of the most satisfying experiences in a long time and it will be something me and my girfriend will enjoy for a long time to come.

*All pictures were used from the respective places where the items were purchased

Update: Wheres the robots

In my last post, which was a long time ago, I said new projects coming soon. Well I've run into a bit of a problem. I have three things I want to build but no time. Spring is here and there is lots to do around the house and yard. Spring cleaning is a time consuming task and hazardous. Organizing, rearrangeing, packing, unpacking, dusting, and a myriad of other things. And thats just inside. Then theres mowing, rakeing, mulching, gardening, seeding, and a plethora of other -ings. Unfourtunatly, these preclude BUILDING. Oh, and there is also baseball and softball practices for the young ones. So I'm still peicing all the parts together as I can and when I start buildin one of the robot masterpieces I will post lots of pictures and maybe even video.

New robot projects. Coming Soon!!!

After building my rudimentry BUGbot last weekend, I find I can not stop looking for more projects to build. I think I may have single handedly increased the ranking of the keywords: Robot and robotics. Since I was looking for some pretty specific things and ideas to see if they had been published. I went over a lot of sites with a fine tooth comb, and certain places seemed to have a very good reputation. So I have included links to them in the bottom of the post.

Although I was looking for a very specific project to build (which I didn't quite find), I found a few other projects that looked like a lot of fun. These projects have pretty detailed instructions and have been built by a lot of people, I intend to do them with the help of my girlfriend and her two children, which I think will help them as an introduction. As I said they are well documented so any problems we run into should be pretty easy to solve and we have something to show for it after a few hours worth of work (important for small children). Ok, ok, and me too.

Now the first robot we built was the BUGbot which is here. For the second robot, I was thinking of the Sandwich robot created by David Cook. Which unfortunately means I have to buy his book Robot Building for Beginers, but I'm a good sport so I'll pick up his other book, Intemediate Robot Building, also. David Cook also hosts Robotroom.com, and that is where I saw his Sandwich robots to begin with.

Another place where I found the $40 and $50 robots was societyofrobots.com. Both have step by step tutorials online as well as parts lists. I almost decided to do these two before attempting Sandwich, but decided that I could probably learn a few things when I read the aforementioned books, and since I am going to buy them anyway, I figured I might as well read them too.

Now the other project I want to build is the Twittering Plants project. It can be found here at the Botanicalls.com. This project seems like alot of fun because it will, hopefully allow my plants to live longer and provide a voice to an inanimate object. I figure if I can actually get this one too work then the possibilities are endless. This one uses Twitter. If you have twitter you can follow me here.
Well now that I have a bit of an outline. I will post more as I begin and during these projects.

See you then.

Recomended Parts suppliers:
sparkfun.com
digikey.com
mouserelectronics.com
robotpower.com

More robot links:
robots.freehostia.com
mcmanis.com/chuck/robotics/tutorial
tedlarson.com
tlb.org/scooter.html
ridgesoft.com/articles/balancebot/buildingabalancingrobot.pdf
teamhassenplug.org/robots/legway
ben.jellybaby.net
geology.smu.edu/~dpa-www/robo/nbot

A bug robot

This weekend, I was a bit on the sick side, I got bored and decided to build a simple robot.
It is a very simple design that uses two motors for movement and two switches for inputs. When turned on it moves in a fairly straight line. However, when it comes into contact with an object, via the two switches located in the front, it causes one of the motors to change direction. This allows the little guy to move around a room, the only real problem is that chair legs and corners tend to cause it to get stuck.


I used a similar design to the ones shown here and here. But, I also did a bit of modifications of my own.
I purchased all the parts from radioshack and it costed less than Ten Dollars.

My girlfriends dogs hated it. But it was fun watching them run around attacking it. So, maybe they actually loved it.