Keith's Noodle

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posted by Keith @ 8:24 AM 0 comments

Knex Starfighter Diagram

This week, we got a couple sets of Knex over ebay for our oldest. He wants to build a robot this summer, so when a robot/bridge combined set showed up on ebay for $10, I couldn't resist.

I've started Daniel on some bridges to get him used to how the pieces fit together. In the meantime, I've been playing a bit with them while he's still in school.

There seems to be an utter vacuum of Knex diagrams on the internet, except for those projects that use up a warehouse of Knex pieces. I decided to post this to allow those with Knex sets to get ideas for their own projects.

This is my first attempt at a solo Knex project. Being the sci-fi geek that I am, of course the first thing I had to build was a spaceship.

The first step was to construct the basic 2D design (sort of reminiscent of the fighter in the old Galaga game).

Then, I added the nose and three tail fins perpendicular to the frame. I connected the lower half of the cockpit between the nose and the center tail fin.

Then, for landing gear, I added the inverted "V" piece to the two angled tail fins. The inverted "V" extends up through the plane of the frame and back down again, and is situated just right to loosely snug up with the upper half of the cockpit. It's not really connected, but does provide sufficient stability to hold the upper cockpit piece in place.

Finally, to give it a little more body, I added the "M" piece to the two angled tail fins using the short outermost connectors. The longer legs of the M don't actually connect to anything; they just give the illusion of struts.

What I really like about this model is how extending the pieces outside of the traditional 45 degree planes opens up possibilities for different shapes.

I actually prefer the look of the model upside down, but it lacks the stability to sit straight. On the other hand, tying a string through the hole in the rear cockpit angle-piece will allow the model to hang fairly level!

Enjoy, experiment and share!

posted by Keith @ 8:04 AM 0 comments

One of Our Submarines

(missingmissingmissingmissing)
One of our submarines is missing tonight...

Last week, I put together a mix of music for a friend (one which, for some reason, took a turn for the exquisitely morose). It turned out quite good (I'll have to borrow it back to get the playlist and post it), and one of the songs that has invaded my headspace is "One of Our Submarines" by Thomas Dolby. That song has been going through my head now for the better part of the last week, and has reached a fever pitch tonight.

Back in the 80's, when I first got my hands on "The Golden Age of Wireless", this song immediately devastated me (granted, I was pretty easily devastated back then... being in High School and all). The ambience of the song is haunting and solitary, and although I couldn't make out a good portion of the lyrics, the impression of a lonely doom far from home (or even the Earth's surface) was unmistakable.

I don't know if it was growing up in the tail end of the cold war, with films like "The Day After" and albums like "Radio KAOS", but for many many years I had this unshakeable dread of dying in isolation, cut off from everything and everyone familiar (kind of sheds some light on the source of the morose theme of the mix, I suppose), so a song like "Submarines" held a terrible relevance to my state of mind.

Plus the song is exquisite, both in composition and in its lyrics. Mind you, I only finally researched the lyrics today, but they only add to the haunting nature of the song. An excerpt:

red lights flicker
sonar weak
air valves hissing open
half her pressure
blown away
founder in the ocean

Actually, in the song, he uses the term "flounder" (which means wander aimlessly... also a type of fish), but I think he meant to use the term "founder" (capsize). In a live recording of the song it does sound like he uses the latter term. In any case, he paints such a stark and vivid picture of a failing sub, it just makes the bottom sink out of my stomach whenever I hear it.

Thanks to an intro to the live recording (which is on the One of Our Submarines EP), I've learned that the song was written about his uncle who died in a submarine in WWII. This spawned some spontaneous research, which brought me to the lyrics and some very harrowing stories of submarine deaths (including that tragedy involving the Russian sub a few years back).

It also makes me think of some more current tragic deaths far from home, but that's just too ripe fodder for political banter and I just don't want to go there. I'll just say a prayer for those trapped far from home, wherever they are, that they get back to familiar places alive.

posted by Keith @ 7:38 PM 0 comments

What I'm Listening To

I've added a section on my sidebar listing what's playing on my Zen Micro. I will try to provide links to information about the songs. I've worked my way through the first few on the list so far:

Annie Waits - Ben Folds
Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo - Harvey Danger
My Doorbell - The White Stripes
Drown - Son Volt

Once I figure out how to directly link to a soundclip, I'll do that instead.

posted by Keith @ 4:00 PM 0 comments

I almost cried

When I got home from work today, James Taylor was on the CD player, and the kids were hanging around, listening to it.

I walked into the kitchen to talk to Elizabeth about something, when Maggie (my almost 3 year old), came into the kitchen saying "Daddy... daddy..." I turned to her, and she said "I want dance wit you". I picked her up and she put her head on my shoulder and we danced. It was the sweetest feeling I've had in a long time, such that I almost cried.

Sometimes it is the coolest thing to be a dad.

posted by Keith @ 5:38 PM 0 comments

Love, Hate, and Music - The Zen Micro

I did it finally. I dropped an inordinate lump of cash for an MP3 player. I did a lot of research, and opted for the Creative Zen Micro 6 GB Player because it seems to have the right balance of capacity (6 GB) and flexibility (music I've ripped, music I've bought, music I could rent, er, subscribe to), and appears to be sturdy as heck.

So... now that I've had it almost a week, what do I think? Well, over all I'm very very pleased. But I also have some significant peeves. So, as a public service, I'm going to list out what I love and hate about this thing, in case someone is thinking about buying one (and happens to find me by random chance).

Love:

Capacity

The capacity is just right for me to put enough music on there to get lost in without feeling like if I had to reformat the stupid thing (which I've had to do twice - see my peeves) that I'd want to chuck it out the window. I've got almost 1400 songs on it, and let's face it, I don't think I can even name 1400 songs that I seriously like. I leave about 1 GB for new, old, or different stuff that people recommend or that I feel like I should try listening to even though I'm not typically inclined (like Elvis or Grieg).

Sturdiness

This thing feels, and seems to be rather solid. I love the battery cover (the Achilles heel of far too many portable electronics), which slides instead of flipping, and should be the last thing on the unit to break. I have read nasty reports about the headphone socket on these things, but mostly with the older units. Rumor has it that Creative has fixed the stupid problem (the socket would become loose as a result of normal usage, resulting in no sound on left and/or right), so we'll see.

Display

There is a lot of information very clearly displayed on the little screen of this thing. The title of the song, album and artist, which track (out of how many tracks) it is, how much time has elapsed, how much time is left, and a progress bar, what play mode the unit is in, whether the equalizer is on, the battery meter, and the header for the current screen. On the menu screens you can see five entries, so it's easy to see where you're going. The backlight is nice, and you can program how long it stays on.

Sound

Man, this thing sounds sweet in my ear. It's very clear, whether loud or soft, with no noticeable distortion. Plus, there's a cool feature that will balance out the volume on all selected tracks, so that you don't get that annoying loud song/soft song/loud song transition. The maximum volume is PLENTY loud, so I can hear the music in various environments.

Play options

You can access music by artist, album, genre, all songs, playlists, bookmarks (haven't figured what that's for yet), or you can get a random album, a set of the most played songs, or a set of least played songs. You can play songs in order, repeat one song or all, shuffle once or shuffle and then repeat, or just play one song and stop. You can add single songs to your current list, or an album, or an artist, or a whole genre, so it's very easy to build lists of songs of any scope or size.

Flexibility:

Now, this is flexibility as measured in the things I care about. I don't have any Ogg files and am not about to convert my collection to Ogg anytime soon, so lack of Ogg support doesn't keep me up at night. What I care about is that it will play the mp3 files that I have, as well as the WMA files that most of the vendors (aside from Apple) are selling. And what I care most about is that it can also play songs that are downloaded as part of a subscription from any of the major music services (Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo). That's such a cool deal - pay a monthly fee for as many songs from their collection.

If you want to get a taste of what this is like, Rhapsody has a free service that limits you to 25 downloads per month to your computer. That is enough to sample a couple new albums or try several new artists per month, and is really worthwhile in its own right.

But the ability to do this and upload it to my mp3 player is an awesome idea. I do most of my listening on my way to and from work, so if I can try out part of a new album or a new artist every couple days, that's just perfect for me. Yeah, I know I don't own the music, and if my subscription ends, the music will go away. I think of it like Netflix - I'm renting the music, not buying it. If I really can't do without a song or an album, I'll either buy the tracks or the CD... eventually. The point is the ability to dive in and sample new stuff whenever I want. That just rocks. I'm still not sure if I want to pay $10-15 per month for the priviledge - it's not expensive, but it's also not in our budget at the moment. I just want to make sure that if we do get to where we can afford it, I can do it.

Ambivalences:

Ok, these I don't have strong feelings one way or another:

FM Radio - it's there, which is nice... it's kind of weak, so it's of limited use

Voice Recording - it's there, which is nice... I can think of nice uses for this, and I may love it later, but for now, I just don't have much use for it.

Style - Oh it's cool alright. The blue backlight lights up the entire edge of the face, and pulses slow and soothingly when charging. The rest of the case has a sturdy, clear outer shell that makes the printed stuff on it look like it's floating on the white plastic below, and there's a cool ripple effect under the clear coat on the back. Woop-de-doop!

Hates:

Charging - ok, it doesn't take long to charge (about 3 hours for a 12 hour charge, which is nice), but out of the box, you can only charge it using the USB cable, thus requiring a computer. That's right... no wall adapter. This makes travel troublesome unless you have a laptop. Eventually I'm going to need to buy the $30 wall adapter, but that's a big extra expense for something so basic.

Touch interface - hate may be a bit strong. Annoyed is more like it. I actually didn't have too much problem with it at first, and kind of thought it was cool. Problem is that it is so very easy to bump the big touch panels that you very nearly MUST use the key lock when listening to music. Also, it's easy to make mistakes when navigating, so you have to be careful. Perhaps when I've gotten more used to it, I'll feel better about it, but for now it's definitely something I'm having to put up with.

Lack of Windows 2000 support - what gets me is that the player *does* support windows 2000.... until you want to update it (which you almost have to do right away, at least if you want to use any of the new music services properly)... at which point it won't work with windows 2000. I realize that this is because a lot of the new licensing technology is just incompatable with windows 2000 and I've run into this problem with a fair amount of multimedia software already. Still, the box says it will work with Windows 2000, and there's nothing to suggest that this is going to change suddenly.

Firmware and patch hell - ok, I got myself into this mess by trying to keep the unit windows 2000 compatable at first... but when you update the firmware, you have to reformat the drive, so you have to find a 6 GB drive on a windows XP box upon which to back everything up (which takes a while). And you may have to do it again even if the patch is to the computer drivers. So, do yourself a favor, go through all of this right away so that you can get it over with before you put any songs on the thing (unless your collection is on a windows 2000 machine, of course). Now that I've got it updated, it's working great and I have no complaints, but it was a pain in the ass for me to get it to this point, and I have a career in computers!

posted by Keith @ 3:23 PM 0 comments

Disposable monitors and their imact on libraries

Well, tomorrow is now... or at least it's coming sooner than I had expected (big surprise there).

According to this article in the Guardian, Siemens has unveiled computer displays that are thin, flexible, and cheap enough to be disposable.

They're projected to be available in 2007. Possible applications include displays on merchandise packaging, trade show tickets, magazine covers, newspaper inserts, etc. According to another article on PhysOrg.com, the screens would run on printed batteries (another technology that's already here), and could even have a printed antenna to receive new content.

There are a couple of aspects of this that are particularly pertinent to libraries - for one thing, what is this going to mean for preservation? If you have magazines or newspapers whose covers go dead after a few months, what do you do with those?

More importantly, one important (in my mind) benchmark in the whole notion of digitizing books is the point at which producing a truly portable, flexible reader becomes comparable in price to a printed book. I had assumed that this point was quite a ways off (decades), but this really makes me wonder about that. Granted, the disposable displays they are talking about now are not at high enough resolution to display small print. But really, that's an incremental advance.

Currently, the projected cost of the material is around $60 per yard. And if this material is mass produced (and you know it will be), that cost will go down dramatically. Imagine a handheld reader the size of a paperback whose screen could be replaced for less than five dollars if it got scratched or creased or whatever.

Imagine using a customized usb flash drive to store content and the reader software, with a groove into which you'd slide the edge of the disposable screen (to "plug it in"). There are mp3 players essentially like this for less than $50 with more than enough memory to hold hundreds of books in pdf format, and all that would be different would be software and an interface to the disposable screen. It's not hard to imagine a budget unit costing less than $10-20 within the next five to ten years. Heck, throw in wireless and you can stream books.

posted by Keith @ 9:12 AM 0 comments

PDFs and Accessibility

A List Apart has a great article debunking the myth that PDF content is not accessible.

It takes a very balanced view towards the appropriateness of using PDFs in the first place, as well as what is required to make PDFs accessible, both from the authoring and reading side of the equation.

It is a very good read for those considering publishing PDFs or for anyone interested in Accessibility issues.

posted by Keith @ 1:43 PM 0 comments