So I had a few days off work for thanksgiving… Most people usually visit their family during that time, but due to a late change of plans, I ended up doing something else.
I found out that about 600 miles west of Houston is a town called Fort Davis, Texas. Near this town is the Davis Mountains State Park and the McDonald Observatory. Since I hadn’t seen a clear night sky since I was a kid, I decided to drive over and check it out. (It’s one of the places with the least light pollution in the area.)
I recently started experimenting some more with time-lapse videos while moving. I bought a suction cup mount for my DSLR and tested it out in my car.
Here’s a very rough test of the car setup. I just wanted to see if the mount stuck to the window and didn’t fall with the rough Houston roads.
I also tested it on a quick flight around the area. Since it was a bit gusty, the video shakes a lot. I tried out youtube’s built-in stabilization feature and it seemed to do a good job!
I have been working on a few projects recently. Two of them involve having custom PCBs made. I’m currently waiting for them to arrive. In order to prototype and test the circuits, I had to order a bunch of parts, so I took advantage of the buying spree to get myself some better tools.
My favourite so far is my new Agilent U1251A Multimeter. After seeing the great review of the U1253A (which is just the OLED display version of this one, instead of LCD) on the EEVBlog, I found one for a decent price and decided to get it.
A few months ago, I found out that my school offers a diving class. I enrolled and was having fun for a few weeks until I messed up an entry off the 3m board and hurt myself. I didn’t notice initially, but the next day my hip was hurting a lot.
I went to the doctor, got some x-rays, and began physical therapy. There was no bone damage, so they figured it would sort itself out with the therapy.
I recently purchased a Casio EX-FH100 digital camera. Unlike most other point-and-shoots, this one can do high-speed video. It ranges from regular 720p HD video at 30fps to high-speed 120 fps(640 x 480), 240fps (448 x 336), 420fps (224 x 168), 1000fps (224 x 64). The resolution on the fastest two is pretty bad, but it’s still fun to mess around with.
After testing the camera on myself jumping around (pretty lame), I decided to try it out at the ROC City Roller Derby bout at RIT. Here are some high-speed clips:
I’ve decided to actually write about what I’ve been up to in the past few years. Today, I’m going to start with a project from the summer of 2006. I decided to go to DEFCON and take part in the defconbots competition. The main goal of the competition was to build a device that shot targets using autonomous control only. You can see the competition page here and the results. Unfortunately, I didn’t start working on it until two or three weeks before.
Here’s a brief description of how it happened. Since I was right out of high school, my budget was extremely limited. I decided to get a webcam mount with two servos and a USB servo controller, along with a really cheap BB gun.
I still haven’t written about my Svalbard trip. Thankfully, I took some notes while I was there, so I will not forget the important details by the time I do write it.
Stockholm
My last week in Finland was great. I worked more than usual in order to have my final presentation on Wednesday August 25th. The next day I left Tampere and went to Turku to catch an overnight cruise to Stockholm with several friends. I had never been on a cruise before, so that was a nice experience. The next day we walked around Stockholm, had some delicious breakfast, and visited some museums. That afternoon, my friends returned to Finland, and I stayed in Stockholm for another night.
Svalbard was amazing! I will probably write quite a bit about it when I return and have some time. I also have hundreds of photos to upload, which will also take some time.
Some quick things: I did not see any polar bears :-/ Two kayakers did in June, when one was dragged out of their tent by the bear! I did see lots of other animals though.
I arrived to Oslo yesterday morning and will be taking a train to Stockholm Sunday morning. I will then fly to Tampere from there.
My day started at 3:50am when I woke up. I had set my alarm to 4:00am, but I woke up before it anyway. The reason I woke up so early is that I live in Tampere, but had to catch a ferry in Turku at 10:00am. The only train from Tampere to Turku that was available left Tampere around 5:55am. In order to take that train, I had to take a bus to get to the train station. As you might imagine, buses don’t run every 20 minutes in the early morning, so I had two options: one at 4:37am or one at 5:15am. I chose to take the earlier one to be safe. If I chose to take the later one, and managed to miss it (or if the bus was delayed), I would have missed the ferry (which only runs twice a week!)
It has been two months since I arrived to Finland. I have two vacation days for every working month, so I decided to use them two weeks from now. I’m not really sure when I will be in this part of the world again, so I decided to take advantage of my geographical location. So where am I going?
The summer weather in Finland has been quite nice. Except for a few very warm days, I have been able to keep my apartment windows open. Most people here don’t think it is warm enough, and would very much like to travel south to have a warm summer. So what do I decide to do? As you might have expected… go north, way north.
