Killing Just to Save a few Bucks

Yesterday morning, Black Friday, as Wal-Mart employees tried to hold sliding doors back against a crowd of near 2,000, an employee was trampled. Multiple employees were holding the doors against the unruly crowd right before opening time, but the crowd burst through the doors, and in the process threw all of the employees back, and one to the floor. As the crowd ran by the employee struggling to breathe, other employees tried to get to him to help him. The man taken to the hospital, and died an hour after the crowd first came flying through the doors. Full Story

Is this what the American life has become? Groups of people willing to kill just to save some money on a Friday morning? What must other countries who already think we are unbelievably greedy be thinking of us now? I hope people realize that a person's life is priceless, and that destroying one to get a better price on something is an unbalanced, heartless decision. My heart and prayers go out to the family of this Wal-Mart employee. Bless them Lord.

Glow!

Glowing stuff seems to look nice most of the time. Therefore, it is nice to be able to make some. I just made some simple glowing spheres, and put them in a dynamic simulation so I did not have to worry about positioning them myself. The only thing I had really trouble with in this scene was parenting a lights to each of the dynamically translated objects. But thanks to the varomix on the SideFX forums, I was able to solve my problem. So I was able to create a decent quick animation, and a higher quality frame from it with global illumination.

Animation: http://vimeo.com/2133774

Frame: http://flickr.com/photos/heydabop/3000358717/

Obama Halloween Candy Analogy

Happy Halloween! And what's Halloween without one of the scariest things known to man, politics! The other day I heard an analogy of Obama's "spread the wealth" plan, with Halloween candy, so here it is.

A group of children has been trick-or-treating for almost two hours and they are getting tired, but they have bags full of candy for their work. They come upon a house, and knock on the door. The man who answers it asks them how much candy they have gotten. Excitedly they show him all their candy, saying they have been working hard for it, and they cannot wait to get home and eat it. However, the man, instead of giving them more candy, asks each of the kids for half of their candy, so he can give it to all the kids who did not go trick-or-treating. The kids of course do not like this idea, and quickly run away.

New Hard Drive

I decided to buy a new hard drive after I had run low on space, which I define as less than 10GB of free space, on my old drive. This would be second upgrade to my laptop. My last upgrade had been from 120GB to 160GB, both SATA 1.5Gbit/s at 5400RPM. (My 160GB would have been 3.0Gbit/s, but thanks to the lack of technical knowledge of HP's tech support, I was not sure if my computer could take it.) So this time I figured I better get more than I think I will need, so I will not have to upgrade again during my computer's lifetime.

After looking through prices of different manufacturers and their hard drives, I decided to go with a Western Digital (A somewhat biased decision) 320GB 7200RPM SATA3.0Gbit/s with a free-fall sensor (WD3200BJKT). (HP was able to tell me what I wanted to know after the second try this time.) Because I may drop my laptop one day, and the sensor only cost a little more compared to the one without. After ordering my hard drive online from provantage.com, it took only 3 days to arrive at my house.

Using a 2.5" external enclosure, I copied the contents from my old hard drive to my new one using Norton Ghost. However, while doing this I assigned the new drive's letter as H: in Vista, which turned out to be a dumb move. Once I had finished copying my old drive, I shut down my computer, took the old one out, and put the new one in. I turned on my computer and Vista boot up, but once it had, I ran into trouble. Vista would load almost nothing after its initial start, as everything was stored on C:, according to Windows, and I had marked my new drive as H:. I then spent the next three hours digging through my brain and futilely trying all I could think of to change the drive letter as it was assigned in Vista. I knew how to do so if I was given a command prompt, but I couldn't get one as Vista would search C: for explorer.exe and cmd.exe, and C: wasn't there. I finally decided I would try to copy my old drive again, giving Vista no knowledge of the new drives existence. I switched the drives in my computer and again copied my old drive to my new one using CloneZilla. When I started Vista with the new drive in again, it worked perfectly.

After feeling like an idiot by making a simple, but problematic mistake when coping my drive, I was ready to benchmark my new one against my old one. I had already benchmarked my old drive using PC Wizard 2008 and HD Tune, running both twice. I went ahead and benchmarked my new hard drive in the same way. All HD Tune benchmarks were done with Windows running in safe mode, to minimize other programs using the disk. I have posted the results below.

I have been using my new drive since the 24^th, and I am very pleased with it and have found no problems, except the ones I caused. The speed increase is noticeable in everyday use, and having double the space I used to have is very liberating. Thank you Western Digital and provantage.com

Old:

HD Tune 1: http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/4142/1sthdtunebenchmarkwdcwdqa3.png

HD Tune 2: http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/9448/2ndhdtunebenchmarkwdcwdrs9.png

PC Wizard 1: http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/5872/old1ee5.png

PC Wizard 2: http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/4854/old2qv6.png

 

New:

HD Tune 1: http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/7852/1sthdtunebenchmarkwdcwdde0.png

HD Tune 2: http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/8168/2ndhdtunebenchmarkwdcwdav9.png

PC Wizard 1: http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/2391/new1ys3.png

PC Wizard 2: http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/8379/new2on3.png

Happy National Mole Day

From 6:02AM to 6:02PM today is National Mole Day! Some of you may be wondering why it is only 6:02AM to 6:02PM. Well, this Mole Day is not about the moles that dig up your yard, it is about the moles that make up matter, and a mole is approximately 6.02 x 10²³ atoms or molecules, depending on which you are measuring. So, if you write the date as time then month then day, you get 6:02 10/23, which is like 6.02 x 10²³, this is why National Mole Day only lasts from 6:02AM to 6:02PM. So to celebrate, go get some concentrated sulfuric acid, H₂SO₄, and sucrose (sugar), C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁, then put them together and make some solid carbon!* I won't go into detail why this happens, for I don't entirely know, but sulfuric acid will combine with water, and since sucrose has twice as many Hydrogen atoms as it does Oxygen atoms, just like water, it's like carbon and water. The sulfuric acid will rip the water from the sucrose, leaving separated carbon and water. The water will then boil off as steam, for this reaction is very hot, and the carbon will become a porous piece of solid carbon. So there is your simple, incomplete chemistry example.

 

*I suggest that you do not actually go and do this. In the event you go and do this and end up hurting yourself or someone else, I cannot be held responsible in any way. If you do this, then you do so at your own risk. Again, I am not responsible in any way at all for anything that may happen if you do this. This includes, but is not exclusive to, causing you or another being harm, or any property damage that may result.

Folding

Objects abilities to fold up are usually taken for granted, as it has become very common for an object to fold up. Scooters fold up, computers fold up, puzzles can fold up, a few trailers can fold up, glasses fold up, some flying discs fold up, ironing boards fold up, knives fold up, tool sets fold up, tricycles fold up, tents fold up, and I think you get the idea. Nevertheless, this next item is still surprising to me. It is a good idea, and I am surprised it was not thought of sooner; Microsoft has developed a fold up, wireless computer mouse. It folds up to 60% of its original size to save a little space for portability, and then one can un fold it to get a full sized desktop mouse. I do not see how that little of a size difference could matter, but someone will buy it.

While writing this article I did find a fold up mouse from Japan, so Microsoft isn't the first to do it, but theirs will probably be used more, and I think it looks more comfortable, and looks better.

Global Anti-Piracy Day

Today is Global Anti-Piracy Day hosted by Microsoft. Anti-Piracy Day's goal is to educated people about illegal, pirated software, and to enforce current piracy laws. Some people who attended the educational events learned that they had unintentionally purchased counterfeit versions of Windows through auction sites, even after being told they were a genuine version. Microsoft reimbursed these people with genuine versions of Windows, and many of them appear to be pleased by this action. Action was also taken against resellers in multiple countries that had been selling illegal copies of Windows and Office.

Global Anti-Piracy Day Virtual Pressroom

 

Microsoft DreamSpark

I recently read that Microsoft was offering some of their development software free to students. I got excited when I read this, but when I went to the Microsoft site, in order to verify I was a student, I had to be going to one of the colleges they had listed. I am not in college and I almost gave up, but I saw a link to an alternate verification method. Luckily, high school students are able to participate in this program thorough the alternate verification. So I went and verified myself, and now I am legally downloading professional software from Microsoft free. Thanks a ton Microsoft! To go and download this stuff yourself, go to https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/.

Green Glass Dodecahedrons

I started working on making a frame from my Dodecahedron Rain into a nice still image with glass dodecahedrons and a floor texture two days ago. First, I had to work on putting a material on the dodecahedrons, and this was new to me, since I had used a dynamic simulation to clone the objects, instead of a normal clone operator. I will not go into deep details, but it took me a little while to get the material to work because of the odd configuration. After I learned how to get a material on a dynamically cloned object, I had to find the material I wanted, and then configure and fine-tune it to suit my needs. Once I had done this, I found a frame that looked like it would make a nice still image. I then set up the lighting, using one point light to generate photons for caustics, and an area light for shadows and normal lighting. With the lighting all ready to go, I went ahead and generated a photon map. Luckily, I was familiar with the controls and this took little time to configure. After I let to photon map render, I double-checked all the settings, saw I was ready for a final render, and started rendering.

As of this writing 53% of the image has been rendered and the rest is still being rendered. When I set up the scene, I knew it would take a long time to render, since I allowed a maximum of 10 reflections and 10 refractions for the glass material, and there are a few groups of multiple glass objects in the scene. Tracing a light ray through multiple reflections and refraction can be computer intensive. However, I never expected a time as long as this; it has been rendering for 17 hours as of this writing. I also think that the second half of this image will take longer to make, because there are more glass dodecahedrons in it. Therefore, it could be another 24 hours at least before I get a finished image. The first half looks good, so I am assuming the rest will.

UPDATE: It has now been 33 hours and 30 minutes since I started rendering this image, and it is 73% done.

UPDATE 2: 36 hours after rendering start, the image is 85% complete, and I think there are no more densely populated parts of the image, so it should be done by this afternoon; in roughly 6-10 hours.

I hope that nothing happens while the image is rendering, as it is going only to my RAM, and not onto my hard drive. This might not have been the best decision, but I wanted to be able to look at the image while it was being rendered, and as far as I know, I can only do this without saving it to my hard drive as it is rendered. If I were saving it to my hard drive as it rendered, and something crashed, I would at least have half an image, and I could just render the rest of it, instead of all of it again. I am hoping that sometime I will find out how to make mantra, the rendering program, output to two places, such as a live view, and a file on the hard drive.

On a side note, my laptop processor has been overclocked by 21% this whole time, so I guess this is a nice stress test too, and so far, my processor is passing. Although the temperature is getting high, with one core at 78°-80°C (172°-176°F) and the second core at 74°-76°C (166°F-169°F), assuming my temperature readings are correct, which I believe they are.

FINAL UPDATE: After a hot (for my processor) 38 hours, the image is finally done. I will post it soon. I was surprised at how fast my processor temperature dropped; it went down 20°-25°C in about 3 minutes.

To see the final render, go to http://flickr.com/photos/heydabop/2947837408/.

Houdini’s RBD Simulation

After doing many complicated (to me) projects, I chose to do something simple that I assumed would not take long to set up, a simple Rigid Body Dynamics simulation. It consists solely of dodecahedrons being generated at random spots and falling to the ground. It took only fifteen minutes to calculate the 600 frames of the animation. It could have done it even faster, but it saved every frame to disk, which apparently takes a lot of time to do, because the first 31 frames took a minute, yet I can make it calculate the first frames in real time at over 24 FPS if I don't save to disk. I rendered it at a low quality, since it is not anything special in the first place.

Final Video: http://vimeo.com/1942465

I might do a single frame render later on, where all of the dodecahedrons are glass, with a floor texture, better shadows, and a higher resolution.

Collisions 2

After posting my problem that I explained in my last entry in the Side Effects forums, I received an answer from Allegro, who I believe is a Side Effects employee. From what I have seen of Allegro's posts, he seems to know what he's talking about. So I read through what he had posted, understanding most of it. I could not look at the file attached to his post, as I was short on time.

I returned later and downloaded his file. I opened it to find a high quality collision mesh of my geometry. Pleased with what Allegro had made I went on to fine tune my fluid simulation. After computing the simulation, I then foolishly rendered it without actually watching it all of it. I had to do some test renders of the first frame to get lighting down, and get a good render time to quality ratio. After I set up the lighting and render quality, I rendered all of the simulation. I kept checking on my computer every few minutes to see how far it was, and see if everything looked good. It took about two hours to render, and once it was done, I played the finished sequence. I was not happy with what I saw. You could only see the water drop in two frames of the 24 FPS sequence, and it settled in its container in about ten frames. Frustrated with myself for not checking my simulation before I rendered it, I started to think about how to slow down the drop. However, I quickly decided to work on it later. So far, all I have thought of doing is increasing the scene's scale. I will see how that works in a day or two.

Thanks for fixing my collision mesh, Allegro.

Collision Thread: http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=13588

Collisions

I have been trying to make a scene in Houdini where a drop of water falls about three meters, and then splashes into an oddly shaped container. It has not been going as well as I would have hoped. First, I had to make it so the particles were not being formed uniformly, because then I would get a uniform splash and it would look fake. Looking though controls on the emitter node for a little while solved that problem when I found jitter. I then added drag to the particles, and I was inexperienced with drag, so that took a little learning too.

Now, most of these problems I have just listed were not too big, and were easy to solve. However, I have one big problem that has been hounding me throughout this whole project, and I have yet found a way to solve it. The container that the drop of water is falling into is not a simple or normally shaped container. It looks somewhat like a modern squashed glass vase. This is hard to represent well in a collision mesh, and still being relatively new to Houdini, I am having trouble doing so. It would be easier if I did not have to represent interior features, but I do, or else the container is not container, and is then worthless. I have been using the trial and error method, but this is not the best method, since each collision geometry takes anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours to generate. So, I have posted my problem on the Side Effects Houdini Forums, which is full of great, helpful people, and hoping someone there knows a way to get an accurate collision mesh for my geometry.

Container: http://img56.imageshack.us/img56/5651/containeret0.png

Resulting Collision Geometry: http://img56.imageshack.us/img56/9083/collisiongeometrydr3.png

Global Illumination

Over the past three days, I have been doing a little work on Global Illumination in Houdini. I made a scene with bright colors to emphasize the diffuse reflections. I had to do a lot of tweaking to get a result that was similar to what I wanted, still not exactly what I want though. So here they are.

 

This is my first try. The main problems with it are the red boxes reflection to the right is to bright and has weird edges, and the texture on the tube is weird and has a seam on the right side of the image. Other than that, it came out decent.

http://flickr.com/photos/heydabop/2923490110/

 

For my second render, I changed the lighting upped the photon count to 1,000,000. I also added in caustic calculation to help keep the Global Illumination from being over lit, as with the reflection in the last image. The caustics are not rendered in the final image. In lighting, I went from one spot light, to four spot lights, creating a square behind the camera.

http://flickr.com/photos/heydabop/2923495580/

 

I decided to change the tube's texture in the third render, since I am too inexperienced to get the UV projection I wanted, I just went with a homogeneous texture. Same lighting and photon count as in the last image. I am going to render this again, but get rid of the bronze tint from the tube, as it does not suit my tastes. One thing I found interesting in this was the purple reflection in the blue box. The only thing I can guess is that the red box is reflected on the back of the tube, which reflects on the blue box.

http://flickr.com/photos/heydabop/2922647089/

Same Torus, New Light

I decided I go ahead and try to re make the Glass Torus scene in Houdini. I chose to leave out a floor texture because I couldn't find one that I thought looked good, and it greatly increased render time and photon map generation time. However, I changed the lighting in the scene to get better looking shadows. I used a spot light for photon map generation, and I used a grid area light for shadows. It took about thirty minutes to generate the photon map for caustics, and then 11 hours to render the image. I like it how it looks; I just hope other people do. It's simple, yet still looks good. Any intelligent suggestions or criticisms are welcome.

http://flickr.com/photos/heydabop/2912048362/

 

Now that I've finished this I'm going to try a scene with prominent Global Illumination.

Recap; Side Effects Houdini Apprentice HD

As you can see, what I predicted when I started this blog happened to some extent. I got lazy and did not feel like writing. So here is a quick recap of what happened over the past two months.

Hurricane Gustav hit me hard and parts of it were scary. Streets near my house flooded, and we were without power for 5 days, with is not much compared to many other people hit by Gustav. We had a lot of tree debris to clean up. It took us about 2 weeks to get most of it out of the way.

A week and a half after Gustav hit I went to Disney World. We did not go because of Gustav; we had been planning this trip for almost a year. We spent a week at Disney World, in a Disney resort on Disney property. It was one of the best weeks of my life. I spent 3 days in EPCOT, and one day in every other park except for the water parks, which I never visited. The last time I had been was in 2000, so I remembered a little bit of Disney, but not much. They have changed a lot of stuff too, so most of it was a new experience to me.

Besides those two major events, life has been moving at a normal pace for me.

 

Now, on to Side Effects Houdini Apprentice HD. Houdini is a 3D animation and modeling program made by Side Effects Software Inc. I stumbled upon it after doing countless searches for software allowing me to do computational fluid dynamics. When I first saw it, I just passed over it, remembering using it a few years ago, and not liking it. This was partly due to my inexperience. After running out of solutions, I finally went back to look at it, and watched some demo reels on it. Amazed by what I saw I decided I had to try it out. I downloaded a free version of it called Houdini Apprentice. It limits your rendering resolution, and puts watermarks on everything you render. After messing with it for a few days and doing some tutorials, I bought Houdini Apprentice HD, which takes off the resolution cap on still images, raises the resolution cap to 1920x1080 on videos, and gets rid of watermarks. I have now owned it for about 2 weeks.

The more I learn about it, the more I realize there is more to learn. It is full of features for almost anything I could need. It does very well with dynamic simulations, but those take a lot of processing power, so I have not done many with my 1.8 GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 over clocked to 2.2 GHz. I am still learning so much about it, and still being impressed by what I see. So far, I have only made two scenes worthy of release into the public domain, portrayed in the thumbnails below. I hope you liked them.

 

The highlight of this is the use of caustics. Rendering caustics in Houdini proved to be trickier than I had expected. Many times when I rendered it using Physically Based Rendering, not only was there noise created by PBR, but random bright white specks and blocks of pixels would appear. This was not acceptable, so I went posted a topic on the Side Effects forums, and got no response. The forums are very helpful, and have assisted me many times before, but I guess no one knew what was wrong here. So I went looking around for people with similar problems, and while doing this I found a way to render caustics without using PBR. I figured this would at least get rid of noise, so I went ahead and did so. I then rendered the scene again using Micropolygon Rendering, and got what you see here. I plan to render this again, improving caustic count and quality, and make giving the floor texture. However, this will take much longer to render, and I will probably have to leave it over night. Hopefully, the result will be worth it.

 

This is the first scene I made for rendering a still image. Making this was a multiple stage process. First, I had to model the Möbius Strip, which included learning how to model objects. After modeling it, I rendered the first image, with the textures and no wireframe, which is what you see on the right of the image. Then I had to go and learn how to do a half-wireframe render. This took some searching on the forums, and combining parts of what I found. Once I was successful in rendering the wire image, I went into Paint.NET and combined it with the first render, and used an alpha gradient to make what you see now.

For more Houdini renders, go to http://flickr.com/photos/heydabop/sets/72157607632268880/.

Proof Against China’s Gymnasts?

It appears that someone has used the vast information available on the internet to try to prove the actual age of China's gymnasts in the Olympics.

http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2008/08/hack-olympics.html

I did what he did, and the documents still stand today. I copied them to my computer in the event they could be used for proof.

Trackmania United Forever

I just bought Trackmania United Forever. I have played Trackmania Nations Forever for a couple months, and it was a lot of fun, so I figure I'd expand and get United. I have also almost gotten all the medals for single player in Nations. I am excited to play United, but I will have to wait for the 1.1GB download to finish in 2 hours.

Catch Up

I have not posted in a while, mainly because I did not really feel like it, and I did not want to put aside the time to do it. So this is my post to catch up for the past month or so.

I went to Canada recently on a family trip, which was a lot of fun. We were delayed on the way back, but it was all right. At my friends house I was able to play Battlefield: Bad Company, which is an incredibly awesome game. I stayed up all night playing it with him and his friend. It makes me want to get an Xbox 360 of my own. I also just repaired my friend's hard drive that had 577 bad sectors on it. The sheer number blew me away. I believe he had a physical scratch, as 80% of the sectors were in one area. I told him to get a new one, or watch as his hard drive fails. Besides that, nothing has happened that I can think of right now. I'm enjoying the Olympics, and hoping Michael Phelps will get his 8^th Olympic medal.

Firefox Download Day Record Set

Just got news from Mozilla, their download day succeeded. They set a world record for the most software downloads in 24 hours.

"From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3"

Nice to know I was part of it. Just like 8 million other people. Firefox 3 is awesome anyway though.

Pickle Jar; Animation

My friend and I used our past two days to make a short film. The plot is half-decent, but most of it consisted of us seeing how well we could do certain effects. Anyway, go watch it for yourself and see what you think. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgfT9-uPQWQ

I have recently started working on an animation. It started as just messing around with hand drawing every frame using my Wacom tablet. After I made about 40 frames, I figured I might as well try and go somewhere with it. I do not have a full plot in my head, just a meager premise. When I am done, I am going to submit the animation to the Red Stick International Animation Festival. Currently, I have spent about 3 hours completing 194 frames or 12.9 seconds.

Wii Fit

Last Monday my family got the game Wii Fit. When you first get it, you have to make a profile. First, you have to tell it when you were born and how old you are. After that, you stand on the balance board with your feet spread apart equally. It will then measure you for approximately two seconds. After it measures you, it shows you your center of balance during that time. Then you can look at your BMI and your weight. Last, you do two balance tests, which can be anything from walking in place to staying as still as you can. After all this, the game presents you with your Wii Fit Age. It uses your real age, your BMI, and how you did on the tests to calculate your Wii Fit age. After you complete your first body test, you can go on to play some games, or do exercises.

The games and exercises are divided into four categories: Yoga, Strength, Aerobics, and Balance. In yoga, you have a trainer demonstrate how to do a pose, and then you do it. You get points for how still you keep during the pose in yoga. In strength, you do various strength-based workouts such as lunges or pushups. In strength, you are ranked on how your center of balance shifts, and timing. Done correctly, the workouts in strength can actually be difficult. Aerobics gets you moving more than any of the other categories, but there is only so much moving you can do with a video game. Aerobics contains activities like Hula-Hoop and running in place. The last category, balance, is filled with games that require you to be able to control your balance, such as skiing and tightrope walking.

Overall, Wii Fit is fun. It provides a Top 10 high score list for each game, so you can compete against your friends or family members. You can do the body test each day, and it will track your change in BMI and weight. I am glad to have Wii Fit; I was just surprised at how hard it is to get it in the US.

Firefox Download Day: Today

Today is the download day for Firefox that I mentioned in an earlier post. So go download.

Camp Orr

I got back from Camp Orr last night. It was a lot of fun, as I ended up doing a BSA lifeguard certification course. I swam one mile two days in a row, and got to jump off a cliff.

I planned on going to camp to get Merit Badges; I was doing four badges with one free period during the day. Only one of my Merit Badges was Eagle required, and the other three were somewhat boring, so during my free period I went down to the waterfront to see what it took to be a BSA lifeguard. I got signed up without ever saying I wanted to be, but it all worked out nicely.

During lunch, I found all of the staff teaching my different classes and told them I would no longer be attending. Then I got on to lifeguarding. I knew most of what I had to do and know from Lifesaving, but some was new. It was very enjoyable, and the Staff Members were awesome. During the second half of the week, my days mostly consisted of helping teach some very big classes at the waterfront. On Friday, I had to take a test, which I passed, and from then on, I have been a BSA lifeguard. The requirements for BSA are about the same as Red Cross, I just have to know stuff about Safe Swim Defense and Safety Afloat.

Overall, I had a ton of fun at camp. The food was good, the Staff was awesome, and I had fun with my troop. However, it is nice to be back home.

Cell Phones CAN Swim

Turns out, I was wrong about cell phones and swimming. They can swim, they just cannot do it for very long, and they have to rest when they are done.

About an hour ago, I went back to my phone and figured I would try it once more before I left for Arkansas. I put the battery in, and it did not vibrate, which was either a good or a bad sign. It could mean that there was less water, thus causing it to stop vibrating. It could also mean it was so messed up, it could not even vibrate. I hoped it was a good sign, and I left to try again in about an hour.

I came back in an hour, and put the battery in. It did not vibrate, so I figured nothing had changed. However, just in case something had, I tried to turn it on. To my great surprise, it turned on. I was so happy I was jumping and running around. This was a huge load off my back, because I did not lose any phone numbers, or pictures, and phones without plans are very expensive. I had to put the SIM card in before I could test if everything still worked. It all worked as if nothing had happened, except my speaker. It is now quieter, and has somewhat of a tinny sound, but it is still damp. I am hoping sound quality will improve as the speaker dries out.

On a side note, my phone is tougher than I thought. It's been dropped to the concrete over six times, fallen in a ditch full of water, and gone swimming for twenty seconds, yet it still works.

No Sleep Tonight for Me; Lots for My Phone

I am leaving for Arkansas tomorrow at 3 in the morning, and I'll be gone for a week. I am not going to have access to a computer, so I am not going to be posting anything. Since I am leaving at 3, I plan on just staying up all night and sleeping in the car.

My phone is still broken. I talked to Samsung about it, and they are going to see if they can repair it. It is still under warranty, so I think they might do it free, even though it is my fault. I am shipping it off tonight, and I will see what happens when they get it.

Cell Phones Can’t Swim

I spent the majority of the day at my neighborhood pool doing swim team and just swimming with friends. I went home for lunch, and then again in the afternoon to do some chores. I came back sometime in the evening, because many of my friends were there and the pool was going to be open until 10.

When I came back in the evening, everyone had been out of the pool for a while, so we decided to go swim some more. I had not worn a shirt, because I forgot it with my friend, and my goggles were around my neck so I figured I was ready to swim as is. I dove in, and in about twenty seconds, my pocket started vibrating. I thought, "O, I've got a call...in the pool…" Luckily, I was right next to the edge, so I hurriedly climbed out of the pool and took my phone's battery out. I put it in my friend's backpack and it sat there for the next two hours. I put the battery back in when I got home, and as soon as it was in, my phone started vibrating again. So I quickly took the battery back out. It is currently sitting on my counter, open and with the battery and SIM card removed, waiting for revival in the morning.

Swim Meet #1

I am on a swim team, it is somewhat uncompetitive and small, but it is still fun. Today we had our first swim meet. It was my team and two other teams. We were at one of our competitors pools, but there is not much of a home team advantage in our league of swimming. Warm-ups started around 8:30 in the morning. I worked mostly on flip-turns, as I had not worked on them much during our previous week of practice. I was not paying any attention to time, but I think events started at 9:00. All events are done in order of age. Youngest, 6 years & younger first, and oldest, 15-16, last.

Our meets start with Freestyle Relay, where teams of four all swim Freestyle one length of the pool. My relay only had three people, because one of our teammates was absent. Therefore, we had to get someone from a younger age group to swim up. However, each person can only swim four events, two individual, and two relays. Turns out it is very hard to find someone not swimming four events in the older age groups. The age group below mine already had one kid in their relay that was swimming up. My teammates and I went searching around for someone to swim up for us, which took quite a while. Finally, we devised a plan, we would get a kid from two age groups younger than us to swim up into the age group below us, and take one kid from their relay to swim up for us. We ended up putting this together about 5 minutes before our relay, so we were a little tense.

After the Freestyle Relays were over with, the meet moved on to Freestyle. In swimming, it seems that the older an age group is the less kids are in it. Due to this, there are tons of kids in the youngest age groups, so they take the longest to do their events. I think 6 & under, 7-8, and 9-10 take up 80% of individual event time, if not more. So anyway, after we did freestyle relay, we had a long time to wait before any of my friends and I got to swim again. I was swimming Freestyle, and by the time I was up to swim, it was as if I had not warmed up at all. That does not matter that much though, since our races are only two lengths of the pool. When I swam, I found everything acceptable except my flip turn. I ended up flipping too much, and my feet almost hit the bottom of the pool. This caused me to have no time to streamline or twist back on to my chest. Therefore, I had to twist onto my chest as I pushed off the wall, so I pushed off towards the lane rope and almost hit it. My competitors' turns were much faster than mine were. I had to try and make up time in the last length, which did not work. I ended up losing my race, and being unpleased with it. Freestyle did not work out well for me.

Backstroke starts after the finish of Freestyle, I was also doing backstroke. I was hoping to do well in this race, as I think backstroke is my best stroke, and I did backstroke flip turns during warm ups and did very well with them. However, I had not counted my stokes from a flag marking to the wall, so I was not sure how well I would time twisting onto my chest. When it was time for me to race I was excited, I always get excited right before a race. I swam very well for me and stayed straight for the most part. I ended up twisting unto my chest a little early for my flip turn which slowed me down a little. My flip turn was fast and smooth, although I did swallow a lot of water. The rest of the race went fine, and I forgot what place I came in.

Breaststroke, Butterfly, and Individual Medley succeeded Backstroke respectively. I did not swim in any of these, since I had already swam in 2 individual events. During these events, I just sat under a generic EZ-UP and hung out with my teammates, some of whom were doing these events.

The last event in our meets is the Medley Relay. It's a relay made up of teams of four. Each person swims one stroke in the order of Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly, and Freestyle. Again, my relay team did not have enough people, so we had to go on another search for a fourth swimmer. Luckily, someone from one age group younger had arrived during the meet. He was not at the meet for Freestyle relay so he did not do it. Because of that, he was only doing one relay, so he ended up being our fourth. I was starting our relay swimming Backstroke. I was neck-and-neck with my opponent, but he finished a little ahead of me. Our relay went downhill from there, and we ended up coming in second out of two.

The meet lasted a total of five hours, and I had fun. I got to swim and hang out with my friends. We have another meet next week on Wednesday, but I will not be attending it, as I will be at Summer Camp. Our team came in second, which is decent. At least we did not come in last.

Download Day 2008

Firefox is trying to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours with Firefox 3. Currently 687,307 have pledged to download it. Firefox is a good browser; it is faster than IE and uses less RAM. If you do not currently use it, go pledge to download it. If you use Firefox 2, then get ready for a great update. I use Firefox 3 RC1, and it is much better than Firefox 2.

Hackers and DD-WRT

I figure everyone has heard of hackers and what they do. Most people see a hacker as someone who tries to break into a computer system to steal valuable information. However, there are hackers who many people do not hear about. These hackers have a beneficial motive, usually increasing functionality and/or freedom with an electronic device. Such as those who have designed the custom router firmware DD-WRT.

I have known about DD-WRT for a few months now, and I have always wanted to install it on my wireless router. Mainly because it has a ton of features and is very customizable. I have not been able to install it until recently, since my old router, a USR8054, was not compatible with DD-WRT. However, I bought a WRT54GL wireless router from Linksys, which is supported by DD-WRT, and has sufficient memory to host the standard version of DD-WRT. It arrived about 4 days ago. When it came, I set it up and got it running. I was content with the Linksys firmware for about 2 hours.

The more I read about DD-WRT the more I wanted to install it. Now, as far as I know, DD-WRT is not officially supported by Linksys, and there is a chance of bricking one's router when installing it. Therefore, I was a little unsure on whether or not to install DD-WRT. My $60 router was brand new, and I did not want to ruin it and go back to my old USR8054, which dropped wireless connections a lot. However, the curiosity in me wanted to see what DD-WRT contained, so I decided I would install it. I started working my way through the install guide, reset my router, and downloaded the firmware version I needed. After I saved all the pages I would need to view if something went wrong, I went to my desktop computer and started installing the firmware. I had to wait 5 minutes to make sure the install finished, and I was a little tense during those few minutes. After the install said I could restart my router, I did so. I unplugged my router, plugged it back in, and waited about 30 seconds for everything to start up. After 30 seconds, the indication lights on the front did not look like they were doing what they should. I tried to connect to the router's interface, and could not. I was not sure what to do here, and decided I would restart my router again before doing any of the brick restoration techniques. This time it looked like it was working, I tried to access the interface again, and successfully got to the first page. I spent the next 10 minutes configuring everything that needed to be initially setup.

Now that my router was all ready, I went back to my laptop and successfully connected. I went to my router's interface, and started looking at all the extra settings. I was not sure where to start, so I just worked my way through every page looking at everything. Every time I found something I could use, I enabled it and set it up. This went on for about 30-45 minutes, as QoS took a while to set up. Now that I have set everything up, I must say I am very happy with DD-WRT. It has everything and more a computer freak could want in their router. I did not even know you could do a lot of this with your router. I am glad I chose to install it.

Origin

 

Well, I have decided to get a blog. I do not have any particular reason to do so, but I also do not have any reason not to get one. I just figured it would be a way I could get my opinions out on certain matters. Posts based around that may end up turning into angry tirades. Chances are that many of my posts will center upon computer-related subjects, as a large portion of my life deals with computers.

So sometime soon, I will write an article that has an actual topic.