Back to Feedback.

Guestbook.

Forum.

Yahoo Group.

Here, you'll find my site history, news, and other junk I felt like putting here.

Blog entries are put in reverse chronological order.
In English, that means that the first entries are last, so that you don't have to scroll all the way down the page to get the latest, most worthless and inconsequential pieces of informational BLAH I put here.
Also, I will always (I mean, usually) have a yellow separator in between entries.
The red border below is just there to add color to this page. Oh, and it marks the start of the entries....

Completed another project that I've been waiting to do. It's the biggest project I've ever breadboarded! You can see it here.

2:55 PM 4/23/2008

Notebooking article finished. Most of that stuff was from memories of mistakes I've made over the years. (Between 2000 and 2007)

So much stuff I want on my website, and too much HTML to do! (I could just do plain text files, but those lack formatting, pretty colors, hypertext links, pictures, etc.) Once I upload notebooking up to my website, I'll start on the next article, or fix some of my existing pages. HTML maintenance ain't fun. Get it right the first time!

1:46 PM 4/16/2008
Finished the Vdrop article a couple of days ago. One down, infinite to go! Been quite awhile since I've updated this site. Don't worry, I've got lots of ideas to upload!
(Problem is, I have dial-up, so you'll have to wait a bit)

6:04 PM 12/20/2007
Poked around with Microsft Works Word Processor to find out how they kept the text content in a table at the top of the particular "cell". I hit "save as .htm document", opened it up with a web browser (right click, view source) and saw that they used:
VALIGN="TOP"
In the

Now, I have: TD VALIGN="TOP" on the pages that I expect to change a lot.

2:22 PM 12/16/2007
Finally got the mouse-over image on the vdrop page to work! Now I can carry on with the article!

Article is getting big enough to split into two pages.

The Yahoo group finally has another member (aside from myself): nhernan20, joined Oct 23, 2007. I wonder when others will follow?

10:47 PM 12/15/2007
Darn it! I asked anvilstudio.com if I could use some of their sample music for my movies, and they said no (well, actually, they weren't sure themselves, but I think it would be afe to assume it's a no). Next time, I'll get permission to use stuff before I need it.
Lesson learned.

I think, according to copyright law or something, I'll still be able to view the movies and music for private use only: no uploading to YouTube(or is there? People are uploading copyrighted stuff without permission all the time....), so once I get around to it, I'll delete the description and stats for the two movies from the self-promotion page.

8:44 PM 12/14/2007

At this point, a heartfelt thanks goes to photobucket.com for allowing me to be able to have a bunch of images on my site without worrying about bandwidth limits.

You can see my album at:
My album

Got a bunch of progress done on the Vdrop article. Not much in the way of text, but I did change the image links to the photobucket images. (Used to have all my images on a separate Yahoo account to get double the bandwidth. That's what they get for offering free stuff to Americans: Take full advantage!!!)

6:01 PM 12/14/2007

Site is getting a much needed update.
Files on my computer's hard drive have been mysteriously dissappearing by themselves.
A folder-full of music, gone. Good thing they were not that important, but I also found a few parts of my website missing (I keep a backup-copy on my harddrive for casual on the spot updating, then upload it to Geocities). I was able to copy back from the Yahoo stuff, but that time of year has come when I need to make a CD backup of my important stuff.

I don't like it when things go missing without a soul accessing them....

On a positive note, I'm finishing up a second Pivot movie. A more impressive movie this time. Haven't titled it yet.

Also, I've told a few people I know to come visit my site a good week or so ago. Too bad I don't have anything of substance up... Sigh.

10:46 AM 11/3/2007:
Put up a youTube video. Not exactly the best, but it's not the worst. Bloodville Ep.1, with many more, better, bloodier episodes to come. I already have a few Pivot animations done. They're just waiting to be transfered to the 'internet computer', and then they need some Windows Movie Maker polishing.

10:30 AM 10/25/2007
My prize arrived yesterday. I was so excited about getting them that I got a mild paper cut opening the package! (Hey, it's not all that common for me to get robot parts shipped to me for free)
White LED's, ten of 'em! Must have cost a bunch!
Lots of useful stuff, especially that ATTiny45...

Time to send a thankyou note to David....

9:31 PM 10/20/2007
Drawing the full-wave bridge rectifier for the Vdrop article.

8:21 PM 10/20/2007
Whoops! Accidentally put the blog page code where the index was supposed to be. Fixed it just now; not that anyone saw it. Checking other pages for this same mistake.
David Cook is also adding stuff to his website daily. Me like.

Also, see at his site history page, under 09/30/2007 entry. I'm there!
Found that entry while Googling for my own site to see if it has been indexed yet. Whay is it that it will search every piece of text on every site on the internet, except what you want to see? Bah, give it time. Google will submit to my will eventually. I will win the time game, Mwahahahahaaaa!

In other news, progress on the Vdrop article has stalled. I need to find out how to make mouse over images similar to those seen in typical instructibles.com articles.

Oh yeah, Mall Day was today. We practiced driving our robots. [Some needed it more than others (you know who you are!)]
How different and unique the robots are from each other! Some are short and squat, while others are pretty tall, and narrow. Some worked, while most of them were incomplete (even after a full month, but to be fair, it's pretty hard to "get something done right" while a whole group of independent minds are all pulling in differeing directions at once). I expect that all of the robots will be complete by competition day (one week from now, on Saturday). I also predict that teams will incorporate elements of what they have seen in successfull robots onto their own.

But, then again, it's the typical by-product of giving everyone the opportunity of easy espionage on everyone else....

I've been charged with wiring version 2 of our dumper (our robot is the one that looks like a dump truck with an arm stuck on the front) controller. I have a schematic already drawn. Sorry, no details will be released as to how I pulled of an easy method of adding a "phantom channel" for our radio controlling (perfectly legal, no bending the rules here).
Very tired after being Driver for a turn, then playing as Spotter for the mock competition that took place today. We should be able to hold our own as soon as we have all of our Drivers and Spotters agree on our hand-signals and radio wiring (half the team wants this, the rest want that; can't split up the team, because of our ONE robot, and the member minimum).

Anyway, V1 might have seemed too slow (in controlling the dumper) for our purposes, so to please them, I made a new, faster one!
Will May release details as to how I came up with it, AFTER the competition is done.

6:10 PM 10/19/2007
Google might index my page. Or not. Still waiting.... Oh, and I won David Cook's website contest, (sorry to rub it in to all you other losers out there) see: http://robotroom.com/Pumpkin7.html

Also, got the links page started. It's no longer a semi-empty HTML document. Only David Cook is there so far.
Gonna shift my HTML attention to the forum and Vdrop project.

9:57 PM 10/18/2007
Too busy updating the rest of the site. I think I'll just wait until I have my corner of the internet on stable ground before I make entries in this blog regularly (nah). As it is, I only have, what? 7 visitors to my site so far. Well, to be fair, that is to be expected. Sites with long URL's, slim pickin' for robot info, no submissions to any search engines, hardly worthy of significant word-of-mouth promotion, and no noticable reputation as of yet
are bound to be left in obscurity.

Gonna try and submit my site to Google.

Thur. 8:57 PM 10/18/2007:
Site is changing daily...uh-oh. Sorry to cut this one short, but my favorite show is coming on in 3 minutes!

[Would put the date I recieved this, but I forgot, and Yahoo guestbook does not seem to have a date-of-entry feature. This was entered sometime in early-October 2007, aproximately a week after this site was started.]

"wilf_nv" (A guy really good at doing BEAM stuff) signed my guestbook with...
"...I understand that you would like to start a new family of BEAM circuits using a demultiplexor chip. Why not call it a BEAMux?..."

I'd like to make something clear right here, right now, before confusion, and misunderstandings run amuck(sic).
No offense to Wilf, or any BEAMer, but...

My robot building philosophy may be similar, maybe even parallel to that of BEAM, and I may design BEAM-like solar engines and circuits, but I consider myself to be a separate, independent robot-designing entity.

I don't mean to sound hostile, but I am not a BEAMer. You may call my circuits involving my demultiplexor(s) BEAMuxes if you want, but I already have a designation for my demultiplexors themselves.

This is not to say that I don't like BEAM. I love it! I'm a fan! I just want to say that I'm an independent party, unofficially allied with (but not part of) BEAM in general.

[I'm usually a loner...who likes to team up with others who are useful. That's right, take over the world for me my minions, and serve me fruity drinks with rediculous unbrellas in them! Mwa ha ha HAAAA!]