My little "combat robot trainer and test platform" is up and running. I call it the 'Trike'. I also refer to it as the six-hour battle bot, since that's about how long it took me to make it.

It is a blast. I wish it was faster and had some traction, but that doesn't diminsh the fun. I took it to the parking lot across the street (it needed some help getting up the hill, due to lack of traction), but mostly I just drove it around the carport of the apartment building. It got the attention of a couple of my neighbors. One neighbor friend who knows nothing about this sort of thing thought it was cool, so I let her drive it around a bit. She was pretty good at it for never doing anything like that before. I think it is partly due to the intuitive way I have the controls set up, too.

Anyway, I captured some video of the beast. Have fun watching it as I head back out to do some more driving! ;-)

The video clip shows how the Trike can be controlled at slow speeds as well as at full speed. I want to put some wheels on it that actually have some rubber on them - or wrap them with some kind of rubber belt. The drive wheels are just this hard plastic and they're already very worn. The front wheel is just a caster wheel (that I originally bought a couple years ago for my battle bot, Road Rage).

It works well. Well, I'm off again. I want to see how long these batteries last.

So, today I got bored. After building an embedded computer inside a power supply case, I decided to build a radio-controlled car. It's kind of a unique car. The frame and the motors and the rear wheels came from an old child's electric riding toy (that looked like a small truck). I have had the parts for some time, but threw out the truck body shell, and I got the itch to start driving something around.

I may use it to mount my embedded computer on as a test platform for RC4, rather than my 280-pound battle bot. I built this thing in about four or five hours, and it's pretty cool. I just need to secure the battery and mount the R/C receiver and batteries (and oil a squeeky motor) and I'll be out having some fun in the parking lot.

I was irritated, because I bought two motor controllers from a guy on the BattleBots team I was on over a year ago, and I just now got around to testing them. One worked and one didn't. And the one that didn't had a post broken off (where the cooling fan mounts), with some residual sticky stuff on it - apparently someone tried to glue it with the wrong kind of glue. And the screws on the back where the labels used to say "void if broken" (referring to the seal over the screws) have obviously once been removed, so I suspect there may have been a known problem with this controller before it was sold to me.

Gee, thanks.

So, I had to scavange one motor controller from my battle bot. I am also missing the signal cables for one set of my controllers and I have NO IDEA where they could possibly be. I seem to have a vague recollection (though I am unsure if I am creating the memory) of lending them to another guy on the team. But I posted a message on the bot list and got no response, so I guess I'm on my own. I'll either have to make a new set or buy a new set.

Anyway, here is a picture of the new toy:


I'm looking forward to taking it out for a spin tomorrow! I'll get a better picture of it, too. Perhaps even some video! I don't know how fast it is, but I think it is faster than my battle bot (and my battle bot is not very fast). But at least now I will have something to use for driving practice. Woo hoo!

:-)

Quite some time ago - like when this whole Computer Circus 'blog began - I took an old dead power supply (yeah, remember that one?) and gutted it, and tried to install a much smaller power supply inside of it, along with an embedded computer. Well, that didn't work out, because the power supply I installed (that I bought supposedly brand new from a surplus electronics store) didn't work.

I abandoned that project, thinking I would never find another power supply like the one that didn't work. But I put a search up on ebay with a six-month lifespan on it, and just the other day, I hit paydirt. I just bought another tiny 100W power supply and am waiting for it to arrive. This means, I can now finish that project. Good thing I didn't throw it away. Actually, I did at one point, but fished it out of the trash before it got dumped.

So today I spent some time installing the embedded computer and a disk drive into the power supply case, along with the old dead tiny 100W power supply that will soon be replaced with a WORKING version.

Here is a shot of the work in progress. The embedded computer is being installed at this point:


And here you can see I have installed a laptop hard drive. I bolted it right to the outer casing. The embedded PC is installed and is just waiting for the power supply:


And here is the tiny computer fully assembled:


Looks just like a power supply, doesn't it? I think it will make a great little shop computer for programming microcontrollers, etc. In fact, I was thinking of installing it into my combat robot ("Road Rage"), either with a long extension cord, or an on-board power inverter, to implement some autonomous control into the beast. It would be a great test bed for my RC4 device. I would love to drive it around, recording the R/C control signals that I give it along its path, then play back the sequence to watch it repeat the course on its own.

Anyway, just something fun to play with. I'll make sure I get some video of the activity and make it available here when that time comes. :-)

I got tired of the blog being in reverse chronological order. To me it always seems to make more sense to read about events in the same sequence that they occur.

Call me odd.

So, I decided I would try to put my new knowledge of style sheets to use, along with javascript, and see if I could re-sequence my blog display, since everything comes up in reverse order. And Blogger does not provide an option to change that -- WHY?

Well, after hours and hours of futzing with the f-ing thing, it kind of sort of works to some degree, but I bet it doesn't work on anything but IE. I cannot believe the inconsistencies that exist in this web technology. How much money is spent in this industry on wasted time, working around all the discrepancies? This is driving me close to a murderous rage - something to make a Lifetime movie about.

I am about to just abandon this whole thing and pick a stock template and live with the reverse order of things. Or simplify the whole thing by showing one entry on the page and have an index that is listed in chronological order. I just don't get it. Every book or journal or whatever I have ever read, I started at the beginning and ended at the end. Why can't the blog work the same way? Why is there no option for that? Why am I wasting my time on this when I could be EATING or SLEEPING or TAKING A CRAP?

Oh, the Web just brings out the best in me. It represents all that is wrong with computers (beyond the fact that they simply exist). Anyway, I'll stop ranting now. It seems my blog entries these days are just rants. Rant, rant, rant.

RANT!

The rants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah...

OK, it's almost Noon. I think I'll go eat breakfast now!

<way off-topic><sarcasm>

Welcome to America! Where corporate corruption rules and the people who do the work just don't matter. What is it with paranoid companies and their non-disclosure agreements and proprietary attitudes? If you are an honest, hard-working, caring individual (or spouse!), you are sure to be degraded and down-trodden for trying to help. Are we taught to fear to such a degree that a helpful intention is highly suspect? What the hell is happening to people these days?

OK, well, I guess I can play this game, too. If you want to know why I am so bent out of shape today, just send $10,000 to me via PayPal at kwooda@netzero.net and I'll send you a non-disclosure agreement which you must sign and return, after which you will receive a full written statement of the events that transpired today. All proceeds will go directly to benefit me and my wife. Because, after all, WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT YOU?! That's the American way, right?

P.S. And don't you dare try to help, or we'll just make you feel really, really bad! Go away, you with your good intentions and your helpful actions and your caring nature! Go away, you with your honesty and your integrity and your goodwill! Go away, you with your....wait a minute - is that MONEY?! Well, in that case, COME RIGHT IN! WE'D LOVE TO HAVE YOU! What can I get for you? Can I lick your shoes for you?

</sarcasm></way off-topic>

I hate it when I can't sleep. I'm supposed to get up early...today...but it's already early and I haven't slept yet. I need to take my wife to work as she is still recovering from arm surgery and can't really drive yet. It's about an hour commute, but I guess I'll be working with her, since she roped me into helping her with this web stuff.

I learned cascading style sheets this weekend. Well...not all of it.

One of the reasons I am still awake is because I have slipped back into my old ways. A million thoughts go through my head while I'm laying in bed, because of all the mental stimulation.

I have been thinking about a cool program I wrote (well, you know, never quite finished) years ago before I started using Windows. Back before DLLs and ActiveX and COM, I wrote a program (set of library routines, really) called Ubiquitous. It was pretty cool, because it allowed two programs to run together over a serial port. What I mean by that is that one program running on one computer could actually call a function or procedure that was part of the program running on the other computer. Just like a normal function call...only it executed on the other computer.

I had a set of cool windowing routines (for DOS) that I wrote earlier, so I used that unit as a test. I wrote a wrapper to encapsulate its functionality (actually leaving the original unit unmodified!) so that its routines could be called remotely. I could manipulate the windows on one computer from another computer.

It was cool.

I never completely finished it, but the core was done and it worked. It worked! That's pretty amazing to me. Usually I give up before I get things to work. I don't remember what originally gave me the idea, but I think it had to do with wanting to play multiple-player games with other people via modem. Back then, a 14,400 bps modem was all I had, and I got to thinking that instead of passing data back and forth that needed to be interpreted and processed by the receiver to update what was going on, why not have some way that I could just call a remote update routine, directly?

Seemed to me like that would save time.

But the idea opened up other possibilities. The part I never got to was adding the ability to send binaries and have them load up, dynamically (hey - like DLLs!) and be immediately available to use. Of course, that opens up a HUGE door for virus possibilities.

Anyway, so that has been on my mind this evening/morning, for whatever reason. I want to dig it up again. I am wondering if there is some way I can adapt it to Windows (gak!). I have been having thoughts about some built-in routines that would allow memory to be allocated and accessed on remote systems. Plug it into some kind of networking scheme, and you could set up a huge distributed computing environment. "Memory" access would be a bit slow over remote connections (and the memory could be on disk or in RAM), but it would be basically unlimited. Not sure what such a configuration would be good for, but it's fun to think about.

Aside from all this computer nonsense going through my head, all of my acting monologues are going through my head. From The Apartment, the Goodbye Girl, Grapes of Wrath, Apocalypse Now, an original work of my own, and a couple others that I can't remember what they are from. Plus the scene I did from Silence of the Lambs.

And what did you see, Clarice?

I'm thinking of recording my monologues and putting them online for any prospective agents or casting directors to review. I think I could do one a week...if I can get off this stupid silicon device.

By the way, now I know my muscles are atropheing [sp]. I went out to chase off those horrible squaking birds today (I've had it with them) and got winded and noticed some minor cramping just going down and up the hill. Time to get back on the bike. Which reminds me, we have a treadmill on consignment that I need to check up on to see if it has been sold. I haven't heard anything. It's been two years now!!!

I also want to put together a reel of Hobby Hut out-takes. Hobby Hut was a public access TV show some friends and I put together quite a few years ago. I also want to set up a web camera. Man, I am just thinking of all these things I keep wanting to do but never get around to it. Why is life like that? I just want to to what I want to do, not what I have to do. :-)

Now I'm hungry. I guess I'll eat something before going back to bed. Such fun this business of life is.

Oh, yeah, in case you didn't notice, I tweaked the look of my 'blog ever so slightly today. I was just looking at the style sheet code that is used for the template. I want to change it, now, too. Yeah, like maybe right after I finish building that time machine. Ah....I'll do it tomorrow.

One more thing. I learned a new term today. "Linky-love" I guess I am out of the loop - apparently the term is not quite as rare as I thought it might be. I guess I've got to stop writing in the dark and start scoping out the 'blog scene a bit. Not that I have time to read these days. ;-)

I don't pay too much attention to my Linux box. It runs so long that I forget how to use it between the times I need to interact with it. I have to re-learn everything I knew just to take another step. It's kind of frustrating, but then it is also a testament as to the stability of the operating system.

Imagine that. An operating system designed with stability in mind. And security, too! And it's free. FREE! That's amazing. I guess money corrupts things...even operating systems. That explains a few things about Microsoft.

But enough Microsoft bashing - who needs to do that anymore? They're an easy target. I think there are enough Microsoft bashers out there that I can take a break from it for a while.

Back to my Linux box. I decided to poke around a little...just a little. I came across my web server logs and thought I would see how many people were reading my blog here (by the hits on the image files that I link to). It looks like I'm pretty much talking to myself.

Except for one other person using an Opera browser. One faithful reader since February...who even stuck it out through March when I think I made only one entry in this blog. The IP address changed in March, but it was still someone on an Opera browser, so I assume it must be the same person. Actually, you know what? I'm not sure how to read this server log. I just see "Opera" listed at the end of the entry, but it also lists Mozilla, among other things, so I'm not sure what I'm looking at. Although, one thing is clear - I have at least one faithful reader.

Is that you, Jeff?

There have been a few stray hits here and there, but few (if any) other repeat visitors. Of course, I haven't done much to publicize this masterpiece.

...............................sorry........gotta pull myself back together after that last comment. Masterpiece? ....................................... Oh, man, I gotta stop saying that. If I had the talent to create a masterpiece, I don't think I'd be wasting my time maintaining a 'blog.

Hey - I do this for FUN! I have to do SOMETHING on the computer that's fun once in a while. Sometimes I actually do something interesting, but mostly I think I do this as therapy to share my agitation with the rest of the world...hopefully with those who can relate to the content. Even if it's not always about computers.

Anyway, there hasn't been much happening in the Computer Circus these days, but I don't want the 'blog to get stale, so I keep writing. I still need to get my files consolidated, so I'm sure there is some activity looming on the horizon. I suppose this is intermission.

What I have been working on the past few days is this program that is probably a waste of time. I'm not even sure I want to disclose the nature of it, as it deals with floppy disks. Oops, I guess I just disclosed the nature of it.

Some guy wrote a virtual floppy disk driver that lets you mount floppy disk images without using a physical floppy drive. I have a bunch of floppies I have been meaning to archive (or consolidate and weed out, etc.), so I thought I would write a little tool to help me with that as part of my file consolidation process.

To make a long story short, all this stuff was written in C/C++, so I had to write some wrapper routines to access them in Delphi. I was creating a virtual floppy disk object that I could interact with easily. You know, something I thought I could whip up in a couple of hours.

Well, I had some problems and wrote to the author of the floppy driver and he said he was already working on some updates. They're not fully tested, but he sent me the updates, anyway. Turns out it looks like the thing was practically rewritten from the ground up and was nowhere near backward compatible, so I basically had to start over.

But the saving grace here is that the guy now has a DLL! This made things MUCH easier! As long as he doesn't change the DLL interface radically in the future, I could conceivably keep up with it. Though if I finish this, I won't be upgrading it, because I'm going to just use what I need and be done with it.

Anyway, I've almost got the basic object done that I want. My wife is working on a project at work and she wanted to put some JavaScript in to make a prototype actually work, so she recruited me to do that part, so I have been working on that instead of the floppy driver for about the last day and a half (two actually). Man, it just reminds me just exactly why I got out of doing web stuff.

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!!!

I have a sticker on my monitor that reads, "what is your 'H' level?" It is really asking me how happy I am. Oh, man, while I was doing this JavaScript/HTML/DOM/CSS crap, I glanced up at that note at one point, and I think my answer was some negative exponent of a google. It was pretty low. And trying to communicate with my wife about programming issues was not alleviating my stress any.

So that is where I have been lately. I also noticed that the entries I made in my 'blog during this time that I have been programming seemed to reflect a less-than-happy tone. I detected a bit of irritation between the lines (even sometimes running over and through the lines, and even hiding the lines at times). Perhaps my entire 'blog has a hint of that (NNNOOOOOOO!!!!), but the past few entries have seemed particulary...edgy.

Oh I am itching to do some film work! Get me off of this thing!

---

Let's see. If I were to describe JavaScript - or, better yet, web technology in general - what would I say about it?

Hmmm...

Never mind. I'm not going to go there.

The software demons have possessed me the past few days.

It started in the usual fashion. I got an idea in my head for something and I thought I could fire up Delphi and whip out something in a couple of hours. But here I am, five days later, and I am still working on the foundation. Nothing is ever easy or quick in software development.

And by the way, who ever drummed up the term "software programming?" I hear (and read) this term a lot. I even saw an ad on television about a technical school where the guy supposedly learned all about software programming.

I wish I knew what the hell it was.

Since I have been programming computers over the past 26 years, I have always been under the impression that I was programming computers and that software was the result of that programming. I thought I was creating software, not programming it. I didn't know software could be programmed. I mean, I have created software simulations of embedded hardware systems, and these simulators executed code that was targeted for the processors that we simulated, so I guess in a sense there was some software programming going on there. But, all in all, it still seemed like computer programming to me.

Computer programming. That's the term I use. Maybe I'm just old school. Maybe I've missed the boat somewhere and nobody is actually dealing with computers anymore - only software. Am I off base on this? Am I that far out of the loop?

Help me understand!

Anyway, I got sucked back into this computer programming mode ("software development" if you really feel the need to refer to software when discussing it) and I think my muscles are beginning to atrophe. The whole world goes away when I am in that mode. It's just me and the box. There was a time when I lived for that. But not anymore. I have too many other things I want to do.

It's time to get out of the box! This application will join the ranks of my many unfinished COMPUTER PROGRAMMING projects.

Death to computers!

I am so sick of people and companies who list software as "free download" or "free version" when, in fact, it is a TRIAL or EVALUATION version of the software. If it was FREE, it wouldn't expire and it wouldn't required a license key and it wouldn't require that you do anything except download, install and run the software.

COME ON PEOPLE - TELL IT LIKE IT REALLY IS!

When something is advertised as free, it better be free, or it is only wasting people's time. It makes it difficult to find free software when you are searching for free software and you get a hundred listings of "free downloads". Come on, shit heads, all downloads are free! If it is a trial version, then list it as "trial version". If it is an evaluation version, then list it as "evaluation version". "Trial" and "evaluation" are pretty interchangeable, but THEY ARE NOT FREE!!!

FREE SOFTWARE DOES NOT EXPIRE!

I lose all respect for those who use subtle and misleading marketing tactics to lure potential customers. If I am looking for commercial software, I am happy to find trial versions available. But when I am looking for FREE software, I demand an equal opportunity to find it! Otherwise, companies that claim to provide free software that is actually limited trial versions that expire, will never get a dime of my money!

Are you with me on this?

I urge you all to contact any companies that you see confusing "free" with "trial" or "evaluation" and let them know that you demand they stop misusing the term "free" and replace it with "trial" (even "free trial" is OK, I suppose, as long as those two words are not separated - "free download" is unacceptable!). Let's put some pressure on these companies that want to mislead us and let them know we won't be mislead! Start a trend: set them straight!

So today I thought I would see what I could learn about 3D modeling and animation.

I downloaded a number of tools, including 3D Canvas, Alice, Anim8or, blender3d, and Metasequoia. I have used Metasequoia in the past to create some virtual models of model airplanes (and BattleBots) to fly in the FMS flight simulator. It has some of the most intuitive interface controls to manipulate the virtual environment while creating a model, but it is rather lacking in other ways.

The one I liked best was Anim8or. It Anim8or could include the interface controls of Metasequoia, it would be great! It is just too annoying to have to click on the select button, select an object, click on the move button, move the object, click on the rotate button, rotate the object, then click on the select button and click on another object, then click, click, click, click, click... UGH! My wrist is killing me!

Another annoying thing about Anim8or is the non-standard approach to selecting multiple items. Instead of holding down the shift key while clicking around, you have to use the right mouse button. Very unintuitive.

Anyway, I created my first objects using a tutorial I found. Here's the weirdness in all it's glory:



I added my own twist to the basic tutorial, by adding a second plant. It is your guess as to whether the second plant gave the egg to the first plant, or if the second hand is trying to take the egg from the first plant. Use your imagination...

IT'S ART!

Outside of the tutorial, I made an attempt to create my own object. A small space ship. But it is so bad, I won't even show it. No, really - it's that bad. Refer back to my previous blog entry about my clay elephant that looks more like a rabid mouse with elephantitus. My visual skills have not progressed beyond that.

I just want to create some basic models to piece together some Double Space scenes. Or at least just to play with. But it looks like 3D modeling is very much an art and a skill that will take much time to master. Time I don't have...unless someone will pay me for it. :-)

Aside from the fun stuff, I have a stubborn computer that refuses to let me install Java on it. I was trying to track a flight last night, but I couldn't, because the tracker required Java. And for some reason, it won't install.

From what I could tell (following another monumental waste of my time searching and searching for information that Microsoft seemed to go out of their way to bury), the Windows Virtual Machine is no longer distributed with Windows XP. And it is funny how ALL of the help and support information explains how to go in to enable Java in IE and in the OS, etc., yet not a single item represented in the pages were even present on my machine.

WHAT IS IT WITH MICROSOFT???

I tried downloading Sun's Java installer, and it keeps telling me there was a problem and it could not install. It's just too bad it doesn't give ANY clue or ANY information about what the problem IS exactly! They must be taking cues from Microsoft.

So, I have a computer - THE ONE I BUILT FOR VIDEO EDITING! - that doesn't do Java. Won't do Java. Can't do Java. So, now what do I do?

The balcony beckons...

Well, well, well. Something appears to have worked!

My DSL modem has not locked up since I updated the firmware. Not bad for a firmware update that ended in "Update FAILED!" I guess you can't believe everything you read.

I just discovered this place called omnicircus. The artist is looking for a roboticist. Actually, he is looking for a variety of skilled people to help him bring his robotic creations into reality. It is a sort of robotic theater.

I am grappling with a fundamental question, now, about where I want to go. It looks like an interesting place to pick up some good skills - even possibly video editing skills - but it really comes down to whether I can commit to someone else's vision. That seems to be what I have been doing since I entered the corporate world...how I have earned my money all these years.

But something hit me on the way home from meeting this guy: I am destined to continue to work on someone else's vision until I become clear about what my own vision is.

Omnicircus seems a bit dark and brooding to me. When I see some of the stuff - the robots and the animations and the artwork and the music - I get an uneasy feeling in my gut, like I don't want to be around it. I have always felt driven to protray robots in a more positive light (one reason I became disenchanted with BattleBots). Lately, I have been seeing promos for movies like the Stepford Wives and I, Robot, and there always seems to be some sort of evil associated with the machines (or their creators), or something sinister in the use or the application of the machines. Terminator comes foremost to mind.

I guess that sort of thing sells better ratings. I just wish there were more uplifting stories about robots. Anyway, I have to decide whether his vision is something I can get behind - even if for a little while. I just need to study it more to see what it is all about - what his vision (or his message) really is.

I was also thinking on the way home that there is a difference between sending a message, and making an artistic statement. If you want to send a message, then the message has to be clear. Art, on the other hand, seems open to interpretation, so a message portrayed through art may not be so clear. So, I guess I need to understand whether this guy is trying to send a message or make an artistic statement. Perhaps I would understand better if I knew something about art. Anything.

I have often felt I was born with no artistic sense. I have never felt compelled to have decorative things in my environment (if you've ever seen my shop, that's pretty evident). Unless you consider my model airplanes and my computers and all my CRAP, art. What appeals to my artistic sense - if I have any - are things that occur in nature. Scenery. That is one thing I absolutely loved about living in Arizona - every sunset was a new masterpiece. Maybe that's why I don't like having paintings on my wall - they're so static. They never change. I'm happier with a window. And it might also explain the idea I had for a digital wall hanging that would show a different or ever-changing image on it every day (or gradually changing all the time). But someone beat me to that invention...yet I still don't have anything in my living space displaying anything artistic (except for what my wife has had me hang on the walls).

I simply have never been driven to pursue art. I have a clay...thing...that I made in school when I was very young. It was supposed to be an elephant. It looks more like a rabid mouse with elephantitus. I also have another clay...thing...that was supposed to be a rocket ship. What it looks like is better suited to a personal log of an entirely different nature.

This is an early clue that makes me question whether I have any artistic talent. But I think I have talent in other dimensions. I consider some of my source code works of art. But that is an art that nobody sees. I am the unseen artist. I also think I have some talent in video editing. Another unseen art. A good transition is one nobody notices (i.e. that does not distract from what you are watching), or perhaps even enhances the content.

Anyway, robot art pieces are of interest to me. Or robots as art. They move - they change. But just what IS art, anyway? What is it? Who defines it? Is it purely subjective? Can anything be art? Can a sprained ankle be a work of art?



Or a deer with a sprained ankle?



I believe the arts (in all forms) are essential to the continued evolution of a culture, even if I don't completely understand what art IS, yet. All I know is it involves creativity. And if creativity does not exist in a culture, I don't think the culture survives very long, for how can it adapt to changes in the environments?

So... Do I contribute (i.e. dedicate) my talents and skills to another man's vision? Maybe it is a good thing. Maybe I need to. Maybe this is the path that helps me clarify my own vision - to reveal whatever it is that is trying to present itself to me - whatever it is my soul is seeking. Why have I been into computers and gadgets all these years? Why am I now getting into acting? And why has this opportunity to do both suddenly presented itself?

Maybe it is a message - or an artistic statement? - from the universe.

Something is telling me I should do it. But is it the little guy on my left shoulder, or the little guy on my right shoulder, whispering in my ear? I know - it's those damn birds that have been squawking outside my window every morning!

"GET UP! GET UUUUP!!!"

Okaaaayyy... Something is adrift in the ether this morning. This replacement modem just won't stop locking up. I sent an email to my ISP to see if anything is going on on their end, but no reply, yet. At least I haven't checked my mail, anyway. I haven't been able to - my modem won't connect!

Well, it is connected now. I went to Westell's web site to see if there was a firmware upgrade for the modem I have. It said there wasn't. However, the guy at my ISP sent me an upgrade about two years ago that I never bothered to try. Today seemed like the day to try it, so I dug it up and fired it up and - guess what - it actually upgraded my modem firmware.

So why does the manufacturer say there is no update available?

Actually, the update - once complete - said "Update FAILED!" So, I tried it a couple more times. It gave the same results each time. However, when I run the diagnostic on the modem, it reports the new firmware version and it tests out fine. And I am writing a new entry in my 'blog, so it must be working.

We'll see if it locks up again.

Place your bets.

---

Well, it appears the new modem has the same problem as the old modem. I just had to reboot it again. Maybe it is my network provider that is having hiccups.

---

There are these incredibly annoying blue jays that show up around this time every year and begin squawking at the cats in the morning. EVERY FREAKIN' MORNING they wake me up between 5:00 am and 6:00, and I am about to keel over dead from not getting enough sleep!

I want to kill the birds - which is unusual for me, since I don't like to kill ANYTHING - but when driven mad by inadequate sleep and relentless daily interruptions by these magnificantly horrible creatures, it is easy to fantasize about their demise. And in a most heinous fashion, I might add.

The f-ing birds woke me up a little after 5:00 this morning...after my f-ing cat kept walking over me in the night. I swear I must have been woken up 15 times through the night. The cat must be on drugs or something. I am feeling some serious need for retaliation at this point. Between the cat and the birds, I've about had it with animals. I think tonight the cat will sleep out in what we affectionately refer to as the "cold" room (and don't think I'm going to let it sleep today!). As for the birds...well...I am working on a solution for their removal.

Anyway, it was actually a good thing I was up early this morning, because my DSL modem froze up. Twice. When it does that, nobody can get to my web sites (and the pictures in this blog become unavailable). Several months ago, I found a DSL modem at a thrift store that is the same make and model as the one I was using, so I bought it. I think it was $5. I bought it as a backup in case the one I was using went bad.

Well, my DSL modem has a bad habit of locking up occasionally, as it did this morning. So, today I decided to dig out the backup modem and check it out. It turns out it is a later revision. So, I decided to swap the modems to see how things perform. Time will tell, but it is presently working just fine. Maybe this will actually circumvent the lock-up problems that the original modem suffered.

Time will tell.

Well, I finally have started to gain a little momentum toward doing something with video production. Today, I went to Home Depot and bought some green paint and I came back home and painted up a piece of cardboard. This was a big piece of cardboard, left over from another production that never got off the ground. It was a piece of the ceiling from the set, which was the bridge of a space ship (see my Double Space pages for more info).

Now this piece of cardboard is a big green panel that I can hopefully use as a "green screen" for some chroma key effects.


As you can see, I set it up in my living room to give it a try. But I was not having too much luck with it. I need to work on the placement and lighting (you can see two work lamps in the photo that I also bought at Home Depot today). As it turns out, the green screen may be too small and I may need a better solution.

The universe seems to be leading me to do video these days. A friend of mine has started sending me little video clips that he has put together, using a simple luminance key feature that is built into his camera. Here is a sample of some of the clips he has sent to me (you'll need Windows Media Player to view them):

The Dolphin
The Giraffe
The Big Drink

I laughed pretty hard at that last one. I think he made himself laugh, but he used it and it worked.

Anyway, here is one other one he sent to me. This was the motivation for me to do something in return, and also the motivation for me to get set up to do chroma key.
Where is Spongebob?
I wanted to use chroma key to put myself into the video, as if Patrick was asking me if I had seen Spongebob.

My adventure began some time ago, actually, when I bought Pinnacle Studio Deluxe 7 from someone locally, which is a digital video editing system that comes with a video I/O card and software. I had it sitting around for some time, and it was originally going to go into the computer that I was building that kicked off this whole Computer Circus blog (if you go to my first entries, you'll get all the gory details).

Instead, it wound up going into my new shop computer, Borg, because that is where I spend all my time. It is a slower computer, but it works. I began the installation, hoping it would not lead to another [negative] Computer Circus entry, and guess what? The installation went without a hitch! I think the universe is trying to tell me something.

Anyway, I quickly learned how to use the software and have already grown to dislike it, but at least I am able to do some stuff now. It is very limited for what I want to do, and the controls are not intuitive to me. I was rather surprised, considering that I have heard a lot of good things about how easy this software is to use.

I have version 8 of the software, but I have not yet installed it. That is the next thing on my list of things to do. I did a little research and discovered the hardware for version 8 is identical to version 7, but I don't know if the version 8 that I have is the Deluxe version (or even if there is a Deluxe version for version 8).

Regardless, I have used version 7 to produce my first very short video, based on the Patrick/Spongebob video that my friend sent to me.
Again, here is the original he sent to me:
Where is Spongebob?
And here is the version I have created from that:
Are You Asking Me?

The idea was to use this as the background video for my chroma key setup. I shot many, many takes of myself interacting with Patrick (and the camera), but nothing quite worked out. I simply could not get the conditions right that I needed in order to perform a successful key effect.

The biggest problem that I had was that Pinnacle 7 does not appear to have any key effects. It also does not have any way to select a segment of video and reverse it, but that's another issue (I had to reverse some portions of the original video, one frame at a time, to create the motion loops to extend the length of the original footage). I looked around online to see if there were any tools available that would do it, but there was nothing. Nothing affordable, anyway.

However, I had a hardware solution that has been sitting in the closet for years. It is a Videonics MX-1 Digital Video Mixer:


I dug it out of the closet and hooked it up. I played around with it for a while and determined that my source footage was crap. The key effects looked terrible...but only because I did not have the proper lighting. I also determined it would be quite difficult to try to perform the edit live, since I would not have the luxury of having both source videos in the computer to work with non-linearly - it would all have to take place in one take. And this meant having two video sources and one target, and I just don't have the equipment to make that happen.

So now I am looking for digital tools. I downloaded the trial version of Adobe Premiere, but I haven't dug very deep into it, yet. So far, I really like it. And it is weird, because another guy I know was supposed to send me some software to try out a long time ago, but I hadn't heard from him in a long time. Out of the clear blue, he called me today and asked me what software I wanted him to send to me. Weird. I tell you, the universe is telling me something.

Anyway, I was not able to get a good clean key effect, but here is an example that I was able to put together from a still shot.

Here is the key shot I took with my digital camera:


And here is the same shot with the Patrick background blended in:


As you can see, there are many artifacts around the edges that are characteristic of improper lighting. There is quite a bit of green light reflecting onto my body, so the edges are not crisp. I need a fill light to wash the green off my back.

So, I have my work cut out for me if I want to get this working right. My first step is to secure some decent DV editing tools. I'll have to see what I can afford. I do want to get the chroma key working, but I think I will need to construct something out of some kind of cloth or cloth-like material so I can make it large, but still transportable (i.e. something that breaks down into a manageable size). I'm also going to install Pinnacle version 8 to see if I like it any better, though I'm not real happy about being limited to the fixed tracks that it provides. But at least it is SOMETHING! After all this time, I am finally able to get video into my computer. HAHA! And I'm not even using the computer that I built for this purpose! But I think I am reserving that computer until I know what software I want to clutter it up with.

But Borg is filling up fast. It already has assimilated too much.

Well, it's nice to have a positive entry in the Computer Circus blog for a change. Nothing drastic happened. Another friend of mine sent me a couple of BSOD screen shots, so now I am equipped with some samples to use in the video I want to make about a guy who is driven insane by his computer.

That will be fun!

Well, I got the first previews of my head shots back, and it looks like I'm going to have to do them over. Ugh! It was my first time, and it is a new style of picture taking for the photographer I am using, so we're just going to do it again.

That's OK.

In the meantime, I am sitting here in my shop with my digital camera, thinking of various expressions I might try, and I started just snapping a bunch of pictures of myself. One reminded me of Data, the artificial life form on the Star Trek television series (Next Generation). So, I thought about it for a minute and wondered, if I was an artificial life form - you know, something borne out of the technology that so rules my life - what would an appropriate name for me be? Well, with computers, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out, right?

So, meet GIGO, Data's other brother:


Pretty scary, huh?

Oh, I know this isn't a political blog, but I just received the following in my email today and I just have to include it here. I just have to. I wouldn't be serving my country if I didn't!