There seems to be some progress on every front these days. I am making significant progress working on a yet-unreleased-project using Ruby On Rails. Its really quite fun to program with Ruby on Rails– I wish I would have learned about such web frameworks a long time ago.

I’m also thinking a bunch about LaserLine 2.0. MacWarriors is on board with working on a real 2.0 version and we are going to do some planning Saturday at the meeting. I hope to have the hardware finished this summer so we can work all next semester to create a beautiful piece of software to drive the thing. I expect features and plans will be detailed on the WikiTrac Project Site.

Laser Galvo Update

Speaking of the projector, the final CAD versions of the base and side are ready. I am now prepared to go in to production with the pieces. It might take some time to get them produced, but it is very much going to be worth it. The M2 metric screws for it arrived; here are some pictures of the finished coilform and screws:

I tried to contact Robin Adams at Linux-Laser about the bILDA2 interface but got no response. Hopefully Linux-laser.org will update soon with plans for this amazing piece of hardware. I am really excited about building one and writing an IOKitUSB driver for it. (This is only half-sarcastic–it would be very interesting to write my first hardware driver–but also scary. Hopefully IOKit will make this not so painful???)

KAP Update

A week ago, on the startlingly windy Friday, I flew my kite. While at first I had problems I thought I was ready for some good KAPing when the wind diminished and steadied at the Arboretum. When I tried earlier in the day to fly the kite on the Engineering Quad the extreme wind was strong enough to break a swivel and release my kite. It was the closest I’ve been to flying away. There was also some sort of down-draft-vortex business making flying in the quad near impossible. So back to the Arboretum–I had the kite up and steady, so I attached my camera. When I got home I found my pictures were 100% failure. I realized that there is no way I’m going to get quality pictures with this camera setup. It just can’t handle the movement of the kite string. I also need a better suspension– but really I’m starting to look for a broken Digital Elph that I can hack in to a camera for KAPing only. I’m still too scared to send up a really nice camera– and I want one that I won’t feel too bad hacking up for an external electronic shutter release.

I also need a broken DLP projector– but that’s another story. Please let me know if you have one you’re considering disposing of. In fact, there is a large amount of specialty equipment I am looking to purchase. All sorts of strange things, mostly used, broken, or otherwise unavailable. Maybe I should put up a “Wanted” web page with product info on it.

Random

This week I found this company, Pomona Electronics, that makes the greatest little metal project boxes. I bought one from ECE Stores, and now only search for a great project to build in to it. I’m sure I’ll come up with something. They have this great blue enamel finish, and just exude quality. Made in the USA. I think they’ve been around for…ever.

I was thinking about applying for the ADC Student WWDC Scholarship– but that means I’ll have to join ADC as a student member first. I should really act on that quickly if I’d like to go.

Non-Electronic, Non-Technical Update

I was introduced to this great website Threadless this week. They have a bunch of great t-shirts (though I don’t really need to buy any of those right now…) My favourite is the Visible Light one.

Geek-out Addendum

So instead of actually posting this 2 hours ago, I spent a huge amount of time trying to install mmCache or eAccelerator. on Mac OS X 10.4.5. Unfortuantely I was not able to get it to work. It looked like phpize was configuring the package for the wrong API version, but it seems somehow worse than that… Anyway, does anybody have either of these modules in binary form for OS X 10.4.5? If not– any other suggestions for a phpAccelerator?

I took many pictures over spring break, I have posted some pictures here. A few in the 2×3 format, cropped, which I especially like because its like film.

People:

Animals:

An alarm clock is on its way. I plan to take it to a gentleman in Urbana to be sure it is well oiled and cleaned before using it extensively. The level of anticipation is very high.

ANL was fun; now time to go back to school and unfortunately I have missed the elusive Dama Dama. I still need to write some documentation…

A few new photographs are posted–also the captions are automatically displayed with the photos. I’ve finally posted a few photos I’ve taken with my Wide Angle lens– though I am disappointed I have not yet taken more.

Thanks to Paul for reminding me to post stuff. He’s been doing good posting on his blog while in Japan. You should really check out his adventures at A fresh serving of Japan.

Thank you Zathros for posting back in September about Paul’s trip to Japan. I am looking forward to hearing the stories all next semester now that he’ll be around again.

So, there are many things to be looking forward to at school– too bad academic stuff is not high on that list.

I am very impressed with the new Kodak V570 [imaging-resource.com] but almost certainly will not buy one. I probably won’t recommend it to my friends either. But I am extremely happy about it such that I hope many people buy it and use it!
Its not because I just got a new camera in October for my Birthday and not because it is a lower resolution than my current camera. Its because I don’t like Kodak cameras as much as Canon cameras.

That said, I have owned two Kodak cameras in the past; a DC265 and a DCS 330. I absolutely loved the DCS 330, but it is dated now, with its 3.2 megapixel sensor.

Anyway, the reason why I am so excited about the EasyShare V570 is that the industry is producing a reasonably priced camera with a genuine (23mm equiv) wide-angle lens. Being an avid QuickTime VR photographer for years now, I may be a bit biased to getting pictures with a great field of view, but I really think it will be useful for many everyday photographers. Holding the camera at arms length pointed at ones self takes on a whole new dimension when using a wide angle lens. Tight spaces and arid vistas are captured with incomparable spice given the adavantage of a wide-angle lens.

My setup is a Canon SD500 Digital Elph with a 1GB SanDisk Extreme III SD card. Additionally, i have a 28mm Screw Mount Adapter and Nikon WC-E63 Wide-Angle Lens Converter for a total focal-length range of 23.3mm to 117mm. @ 7.1 Megapixels. Score. And it looks way cool when I show up with this unreasonably large lens-adapter on my pocket-sized camera. I really enjoy every element of the setup, except feel the adapter was slightly overpriced. I also find my Delkin 5-in-1 Cardbus reader to perform exceptionally well, but have experienced a few problems with the Tiger version of the driver. Hopefully this will be resolved in the future.

I just got the wide-angle lens converter recently, so hopefully I’ll be posting more pictures taken with it. There is some distortion with the lens, but it is easily corrected. It certainly makes shooting the photos for a cubic QTVR easier than the wide-angle setting on the camera unassisted.
One interesting problem I have run in to is that the end of the built-in lens barrel on the SD500 is constructed of shiny metal. This unfortunately reflects light backwards in to the optics of the wide-angle converter essentially projecting a ring of light (with the focal-length markings visible) over the center of the picture, when taken in to a light source. I have come up with a solution to this problem that i think will work quite well. It is as simple as a piece of black felt placed in the adapter tube on the end of the lens. The ring-shaped piece blocks the mirror-like metal and prevents the unwanted reflection quite well. I hope to improve upon this in the future by securing it in the tube somehow, but I will need to be careful to avoid vignetting.

This setup has a few limitations; the flash is rendered inoperable with the converter mounted, as is the optical view finder. Its somewhat clunky and heavy, and not nearly as ingeniously engineered as the Kodak wide-angle solution, but wow, does a 72mm filter on the end say to my photographic subject that I mean business. In the end, I love the photos my SD500 takes with or without the adapter, and feel the camera’s software, size, and controls can’t be beat.

What do you think?