Herein lie the stories sung of Nikhil when the world was young.
03-31-2004, 1:00AM [BF]
Date #3 with Jen, and she has now been appropriately subjected to the Kentucky Fried Movie.
03-31-2004, 2:00PM [BF]
We have made major software modifications, yet still cannot get consistent functioning with the PCB. Something bad is definitely happening here. I'm counting on coming in to help tomorrow when the other guys are in.
And we were the front-running project up to today, too. Damn it. The scary thing is, we may STILL be the front-runners.
03-29-2004, 11:00PM [BF]
Date #2 with Jen. Not too bad.
03-29-2004, 3:30PM [BF]
Day 1 of testing SideMinder at the proving grounds. We are now seeing significantly bad behavior when the PIC is moved from the prototyping board to the PCB. This is NOT GOOD.
Problems we're seeing are symptomatic of bus saturation, but since we are running our bus at the same speed on both boards, this makes no sense at all!
As always, the first order of business is to analyze and see if we can work around the problem in software. Yowza.
03-28-2004, 3:30PM [BF]
A decent episode of Alias, especially fun to watch how evil Lauren is. But, an even better episode of The Practice, as Alan Shore kicks the firms ass all over the court.
03-28-2004, 6:30AM [BF]
Freedom begins! I go to back to sleep.
03-27-2004, 8:30PM [BF]
I am now preparing for a week of freedom. Woo-hoo!
03-26-2004, 1:30AM [BF]
Went over to The Night Train's and finally got to see his new daughter. She is, indeed, very cute. However, her cheeks are very chubby, giving her a pseudo-squirrel look. Heck, maybe she's storing away her favorite foods for later.
Sadly, they did not take my naming suggestion of Nikhila. Oh well, maybe the next one.
Had a nice time getting together with Jen to catch up. Now the stress of our project next week begins to build.
03-25-2004, 3:30PM [BF]
Met a girl, Jen, I went to high school with. She seems to be doing ok. I'm curious to see what info she has on other former classmates.
03-21-2004, 11:00PM
Very very cool episodes of Alias and The Practice tonight. It was amusing seeing William Shatner on Practice, especially his "Denny Crane" act. That rocked.
And have I mentioned lately how hot Rhona Mitra is on that show, or hell, in general too? Absolutely yummy.
Alias was cool as well, with Jack Bristow (Victor Garber) kicking ass as usual. And of course, our favorite hot little evil double-agent chick was looking nice as usual. But still, gimme Sydney.
03-20-2004, 10:30PM
A fun day of hanging out with Malchorious. A little man-shopping (DVD's and electronics, of course), some food, and some chick-watching (for me anyway). And a nice long round of billiards. (That's pool to anyone who says y'all.) Found a new billiards place to replace Legends, though we lose the nice windows and brand new tables, but mainly the hot, hot, hot waitresses. (Sigh.)
Oh, and the damn basketball game bumped out Century City (the new law drama set in 2030) that I was looking forward to. Damn schedule-screwing sports.
03-19-2004, 3:32PM
Project - Checkpoint Alpha
"It was the best of times; it was the worst of times..."
The project deadline for functional end-to-end testing came today. The start of the day was a little frustrating for all, since after the plug-and-play operation, everything did NOT work. After a bit of resoldering and retesting however, we happened to get it working about 90% of the way. It turned out that one of the inputs was latching (staying on after the signal went away) when it should not have. By random chance, I hooked up an oscilloscope probe and it worked! We then measured the resistance of the scope probe path and soldered 2 equivalent resistors in place.
Oh, and the firmware is still in its locked-down state. Of course, that is unless we need to implement my "Schmidt Trigger-style" hysteresis-loop code once we get testing underway on Joe's car. I imagine it will be necessary to avoid constant "chirps" from the sound system, but I guess we'll see. Implementing that portion should be fairly straightforward, as I already have a mental picture of the code I'd need to add.
End result: fully functioning project with all subcomponents (brain, A/V system, 4 sensors, modular cabling) by the deadline date. Time to enjoy Spring Break, and get some sleep!!!
03-17-2004, 1:30PM [BF]
Luckily the Radio Shack parts run was beneficial to the project, minus some small assorted parts. Joe did a nice job making room for the volume pot by Dremel'ing away the PCB. Also, props for a nice job working with the wiring scheme to both Joe and Mike. Mike's mounting of the sensors turned out to be simple and elegant as well. The firmware is now feature-and-implementation locked - Yay! And Christine's A/V system is ready to rock for end-to-end testing. It looks like we are good to go!
03-17-2004, 8:32AM
Was talking with Stacey about watches yesterday, and I found out something. All the Casio G-Shock owners that brag about their watches being waterproof to 300 meters should beware. The Breitling SuperOcean is waterproof down to... (wait for it...) (wait for it...) 1500 meters!!! Holy moly!
03-16-2004, 7:35PM
Would you believe that stores are out of snow shovels? WTF? I still see snow outside...
Oh, and thank god for Radio Shack. Where else can you get parts in a hurry?
03-15-2004, 3:39PM
Project is in danger of slipping the schedule, but it's tough to lock it down as people are starting to get very territorial about things. Fun for the system integration guy. Sigh.
Oh, and the presentation today went flawlessly, as always. Perhaps I should change my name from AccessMan to PowerpointMan? Nah.
03-14-2004, 11:45PM [BF]
DriveCatalog has now gone Beta! A partial help file is included, and the rest is being developed now. As soon as the complete manual is up, I'll let you all know. In the meantime, please feel free to download and play with it!
03-12-2004, 8:00PM [BF]
Cool Toy Alert -- Chronograph
Today was a dark day for me, with a happy ending.
My Casio touch screen watch, which I have loved ever since I got it a few years back (for a rather hefty sum, I think), had a button that stopped working after I scrubbed the face clean. It began working intermittently later, but failed again. After opening up the watch to fix it, I ended up making things worse. I am confident I can fix it and get it back to 100%, but I'm going to need a watch till then.
So, I went browsing around to find the coolest Nikhil-spec gear that's out there. I came across the Timex DataLink USB watch. This thing is pretty impressive on paper, and it seems to be all they hype, as well. A few high points:
- It's a chronograph, with a 200-lap memory (good for my marathon training)
- It has mulitple countdown timers (up to 200 also!) with text labels
- It has chained countdown timers (10 minute warmup -> 5 minute jog -> 45 minute run -> 10 minute cooldown -> 5 minute stretching)
- It has alarms with text labels, that can recur on specific weekdays (you guessed it, 200 of them!)
- It will sync Contacts, Appointments, Tasks, Notes from Outlook!!!
- It can run arbitrary applications on an internal microprocessor!
- There is a free SDK distribution with many developers already out there!
OK, now if a watch that can sync with Outlook is not cool enough, a watch with an SDK available? Who isn't getting a stiffy out there now? Come on, let's have a hand check. I thought so.
Stay tuned for a review in the next couple days.
(The downside? I've gotta get used to wearing my watch on the other hand. How odd.)
03-08-2004, 6:36PM
Well, the software for the embedded microcontroller in our project is now officially locked down. Both circuit boards are in fabrication (or will be tomorrow), and all we need now is sensor mounting and weatherproofing. Looks like my 1-week in advance scheduling was a good thing. If we were late at this point, we'd be totally screwed.
On a side note, some other groups in the class are, in fact, totally screwed. My favorite group is the one that cannot manage to set a timeline, a task-list, or even lay out a board. Have fun retaking a year of school, guys. Or, heck, just change your major to some pansy-ass degree like Packaging Engineer. What amazes me is that those people call themselves 'ENGINEERS' at all! Wow.
03-05-2004, 9:10PM
Sorry for lack of updates folks - lots of stuff has been going on. First, the major software design for the project should be locked down (excepting troubleshooting) on Monday. Second, DoubleStrike has a new face. Finally, some work on the house has been keeping me busy too. I dropped in some BF's for the last few entries that never got uploaded.
03-01-2004, 12:10AM [BF]
Happy new month, everyone. Oh, and beware the Ides of March.
