The Life and Adventures of TuRfYMaN...

NEW SITE!

2006-12-04T11:42:00.000-05:00

Wow, I guess I forgot to post after I set up my own server... that was dumb of me!

The Life and Adventures of TuRfYMaN

This new blog is hosted on my own webserver running at my house, in my basement. It's on a slower connection than Blogger (obviously...), but it allows me to run a free server and it is super customizable! Go check it out!

--------Warning: Geeky stuff Below--------
For all of those that are uber curious about my server, it is running Apache2, PHP5, and MySQL 5. My blog software is Wordpress (version 2.0.5). It is hosted on a Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz with 512MB SDRAM (no DDR support on motherboard... poop...). The OS of choice was Ubuntu (Yay for Linux!) The only major limiting factor is my 348 Kb/s upstream connection. Damn you Time Warner...

Super Battery: Recharges in Seconds, Lasts Forever

2006-08-04T20:31:00.000-04:00

As our portable devices get more high-tech, the batteries that power them can seem to lag behind. But Joel Schindall and his team at M.I.T. plan to make long charge times and expensive replacements a thing of the past--by improving on technology from the past.

read more | digg story

Happy Pi + 0.01 Day!

2006-03-15T01:46:00.000-05:00

Yes, yesterday was officially Pi day (3/14), but it's 2 AM on the 15th, so technically its not Pi day anymore. Yesterday a few notable things happened, Apple put their first full length movie on iTunes, Disney's High School Musical (for $2.99), then took it down, then put it back up (for $9.99). I suppose they haven't quite worked out all of the kinks in the movie system yet. I don't know about you, but 10 dollars for a 400 x 250 pixel movie? Yikes... don't think so. I came across a little project that was kind of interesting, a motorized, optically tracked turret appropriately named, TheSentryGun.

The idea of this project was to create a fully-automated sentry gun, capable of picking out a human target and accurately tracking and shooting him or her in the heart. Really, the idea was to find a cool robotics project for the summer while I was working at an advertising agency, and I'd only ever seen sentry guns in movies (like Congo) and video games (Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress Classic).

I guess the creator of the project searched for another similar project but didn't find one... On to more interesting things, Google released "Google Mars" which allows people to explore Mars in a similar fashion to Google Earth. Neat concept, but not really all that useful. I suppose it has novelty factor. Also a distro of Linux titled, Kororaa was released. This distro is in very early stage of development, but it uses the Xgl interface which is very fluid and has very flashy window effects. Not to mention 3D manilpulation of the desktops. Try the Live CD, it's pretty cool. Last but not least the feature of the post. FOTP: GIMP "The GNU Image Manipulation Program" The GNU Image Manipulation Program or just GIMP is an open source free software bitmap graphics editor, a program for creating and processing raster graphics. It also has some support for vector graphics. The project was started in 1995 by Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis and is now maintained by a group of volunteers; it is licensed under the GNU General Public License. This program has a lot of support and a lot of plugins, it also, IMO a GOOD Open Source alternative to Photoshop. For the latest tech news, visit digg.com. -Tom

Journalism is organized gossip...

2006-03-04T01:04:00.000-05:00

More news today, and a FOTP: So, browsing digg.com and I noticed an article about a programming language called KPL, which stands for Kids Programming Language. This will allow even the most novice programmer be able to pick up an IDE and just start writing readable code that can do things such as manipulate sprites, and 3D applications in 100 lines or less! I’ve dev’ed in Java before, and this is an amazing feat. Currently KPL is only in version 1, and version 2 is only in alpha, but it is roughly 10 times faster for certain executions. This looks very promising for high schools in the future. The whole idea behind the project was to make programming an almost instantaneous gratifying experience, and I think that goal has been met. In other news, yesterday Apple announced a Video iPod with a 4” screen. Supposedly it will sport a touch screen and movies will be able to be purchased from iTunes. One more thing for the MPAA to gripe about, yay… As for WoW ever making its debut on the Xbox 360, it looks as if that is not going to happen.

“We do not have any plans to take WoW to Xbox 360,” Blizzard COO Paul Sams told MCV. “WoW is built as a PC gaming experience. Porting PC games to console often compromises games, and we’d never allow the WoW gameplay experience to suffer.”

That’s ok, I suppose, I couldn’t really see how World of Warcraft gameplay would be a whole lot of fun on the Xbox anyways, but what do I know. And finally, today the Catholic Church just got a little bit more classical, as in classical music. Pope Benedict XVI got an iPod on Friday. FOTP: TagWorld.com “Think MySpace, on fire, going 150 MPH though a school zone, being chased by ninjas.” (Thanks Bungie) I haven’t personally signed up for a TagWorld account yet, but the Web 2.0 App looks freakin’ cool. Drag and drop interface, and so much more customizability than MySpace, but yet organization that doesn’t leave you searching the page for the person’s info. PLUS VERYTHING IS TAGGED. This makes searching so easy. If you have a social life, dump MySpace and get to TagWorld -Tom

Apple's New Products Are Rotten...

2006-03-02T20:07:00.000-05:00

"Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you've made is worth the misery of having to review it." -Federico Fellini Well, two days ago, Apple had a press conference to show off the new products. Lots of hype was circling the convention, and Apple flew people in from many parts of the country just to see these 'new' products. Images surfaced on the internet about 2 weeks ago that were supposedly leaked from the Apple factory showing a full sized iPod video. Later then, a video showing someone creating the 'image' with photography and Photoshop. However, there were discrepancies between the actual image and the image in the video, so this gave new hope to the image actually being a leak. Then the day before the Apple announcement, AOTS admitted to creating the video of the faked image, and I believe the original also... "Way too meta..." Well, the new products Apple did actually announce included the iPod HiFi, and the Leather iPod Case, and I suppose most importantly the Intel iMac and Intel Mac mini. For me, these didn't really live up to the hype (that was mostly created by rumors). Besides, Apple's jump into the iPod accessories market is about 3 years too late, and the products that were introduced, IMO are overpriced and not original. As of today however, Apple has filed for a wide laptop touchpad patent from the US Patent office, Apple has a way of filing for patents that have anything to do with touch or interface. All we can hope for is a touchable iPod... And for the last bit of Apple news the Mac II computer is 19 years old today. You could buy one of these in 1987 for $5,498 (1 MB of RAM, a floppy drive, and a 40MB SCSI hard disk). FOTP: Digg.com and Wikipedia.org Digg: "If you like tech news, you'll love Digg.com" Digg was created as an experiment in November 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson (who serves as CEO), all of whom play an active role in the management of the site. This site is a where members choose what news stories belong on the front page by "Digg"ing a story. The more diggs, the story will stay on the front page. Wikipedia: "The Encyclopedia for the Internet, if you haven't used it, you need to." If you can think it, it's probably on here (Example: Digg). This is the definition of Wikipedia, from Wikipedia, hence all of the links. Wikipedia is a multilingual Web-based free-content encyclopedia. It exists as a wiki, written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most articles to be changed by anyone with access to a web browser and an Internet connection. -Tom

Poetry At It's Best...

2006-02-09T02:17:00.000-05:00

I ran across this on a link from Entensity.net

Roses are red, Violets are blue, All of my base Are belong to you.

Now on to more pressing issues. The H2GP project that I have been working on for 9 months should be finished here in the next few months, its just a matter of getting some time to work on it. Battlefield 2 is actually receiving more of my attention than Halo 2 is at the moment, so I might have to make some modifications to the H2GP program to allow it to be more 'multi-game' friendly. Ah... The internet, where really 'f'-ed up things are found. Take for example, this. And lastly for today's post, the FOTP. FOTP: Kegbot, Your beer's bodyguard. This project has been around for a while, and I would really like to see more updates to the project, but none the less, it definitely is cool. This project uses a Linux box, solonoid, and flow meter installed on a beer tap to control and record how much your guests drink. Each guest (if the system is setup this way) uses a "Smart Button" to login to the Linux box, then the solonoid opens and allows the beer to be tapped from the keg. The flow meter calculates how much was poored and the Linux box keeps all the stats and compiles a website from them with many interesting atributes. I think I need to build one of these, maybe even for a 'School Project'? -Tom

Does 'E' really equal mc^2? Maybe E=BF2?

2006-01-18T13:29:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year. Hope everyone had a good holiday season. Back to school again, time to reminisce with old friends and attempt to make some new ones. Maybe this semester will be less work... no probably not. On to more important things. Battlefield 2. If you like FPS and you are one of the elite few that have PC capable of enough FLOPS to cure cancer, this is definitely the game for you. The graphics are ridiculously amazing and the gameplay is addictive. I honestly bought this game, and I don't buy many games. If you have played any of the Battlefield Series games and liked them, and your PC is one heck of a workhorse, then pick up this game. Most sites have features such as POTD (Picture of the Day) or SOTD (Site of the Day), well I'm going to start a new feature called... FOTP ( Feature of the Post). This will include just a cool thing I found or use, and a short blurb about it. So here goes the first FOTP. FOTP: Maxthon If you dislike the featureless IE and you are not sure you want to switch to the Flaming Fox Browser Thing. Then try this program. It was actually featured at CES and has won alot of awards. Until next time... Peace out. -Tom

Video Games are Like Good Wine...

2005-12-22T01:53:00.000-05:00

Recently I've rediscovered why I love video games so much, definitely kickin' it back to the classics when you talk about Sonic and Mario. Halo 2 is a great game, but why play it when you could be experiencing the fast paced action and catchy tunes of Sonic the Hedgehog! Yes, it's true, I do occasionally give up my Xbox controller to sit at my PC and emulate a system long past, but it's still surprising how much fun these games actually are. Anyways, I posted some of screen shots from the master system, just to show off the gorgeous 16bit graphics of the early 90's. (The game music really is catchy, it just gets stuck in your head.)

Flash Slideshow

Ahhhh... The good old Genesys days.

On to bigger issues, Christmas is officially in 3 days! That's defenatly exciting!

When I get around to it, I will make the list of software I promised in the last post. Until next time, Happy Holidays!

-Tom

Next update soon...

2005-12-21T03:01:00.000-05:00

In my next update I will post some of the software that makes my life easier and also a bit fun! I'll be doing this from time to time and hopefully others will benefit from this. Any-who, signing out from the mobile blog. -Tom

Set phazers to melt...

2005-12-19T20:59:00.000-05:00

Today is my first real post, I think after I get some actual posts to the blog, I will delete the test posts, but for now they will stay. I found a pretty intereting contraption online the other day, and decided to share it. It's called the "Death Ray". This giant thing was made with mirrors that are aligned to +-0.5 degrees! When it catches a glimpse of sun, it can melt just about anything they throw at it.

Stay tuned, for more neato stuff from the wonder world of Wonka! -Tom

First mobile post.

2005-12-18T03:47:00.000-05:00

w00t! Mobile posting is amazing!

-Tom ------- Sent with TagTag WAP mail. Visit http://tagtag.com for free WAP home pages, email and other WAP services.

First Post

2005-11-11T04:07:00.000-05:00

First Post, just to test...