Category Archives: Navel Gazing

This is now the longest consecutive span I’ve not been enrolled in a class since the summer between my sophomore and junior years of highschool (in Kentucky, you can take college courses for keeps after your junior year. I did.) I’ve forgotten how to make myself do anything while living a fully unstructured existance. I can’t focus on anything. I’ve lost my drive to be productive… and oddly, I haven’t lost my reserve, so I’m not partying, I’m just frittering. Mostly on the interwebs. It’s kind of freaking me out. That said, it is rather relaxing, even if I would like to be doing other things, or letting loose for a bit(either would do nicely). The failure to blog is related to the failure to focus; I haven’t been forming or sitting down to articulate the kind of cogent meditation on topics that make for good blog posts.
Projects-wise, In addition to the pile of projects which have been mentioned in the past on here, almost none of which are complete, I’ve picked up an additional physical computing effort. The collexion folks have a bourbon barrel to be gussied up for a charity auction, in the same vein as the various horrible fiberglass animals that have been popular for such things. Being electronics people, we are making it into an electronic, musical bourbon barrel. The hoops will be touch sensors, connected to solenoid strikers with xylophone tiles (keys? I’m not really a music person). Someone else has taken the lead on design, but I’m now getting involved for the “Making it work” and “Making sure it won’t hurt anyone” processes. I’m hoping having one project with some form of external pressure will help me to focus on others. In a related note, I’m half-seriously becoming tempted to start carrying a pocket-sized DMM around with me. Practically every time I’ve been out of the house this week there has been something I wanted to poke with a DMM to figure out. I’m refraining from looking seriously into finding a baby (pocket size) DMM because 1. I already carry too much crap around with me and 2. Even I would fell like a horrible dork doing such a thing.
On the topic of dorkery (dorking?), the great summer reading project continues; I finally have my sought after copy of Joseph Weizenbaum’s Computer Power and Human Reason, and have set to it. I’m a little afraid from the portion that I’ve read that it won’t live up to my expectations; some of the portion I’ve read reads like Weizenbaum covering his ears and chanting “I want there to be a soul, I want there to be a soul”, and a few of the “Can/Should computers do this” questions posed in the book (written in the mid 70s) have long since come to pass, and worked out fine. It is however, as I understand, still the seminal work on human/technology interaction, and is therefore well worth reading simply because it is the framework for discourse.

At the beginning of the semester, I wrote up my expectations for classes, so I would actually have them at the end of the semester to compare. The semester is over, so now it’s time to compare.

* Digital Controls (EE572) /Walcott
– Expected: Its going to be hard. Its going to be a lot of work. Its going to teach me a whole new model for thinking about things, and make me actually learn the signals material I half-learned in Signals and Systems (EE421). Every expectation that it will be a good course.
– Actual: I’m actually a little disappointed. I didn’t feel like I had the prerequisite knowledge for the class, and spent the whole semester struggling to catch up. Also, everything was abstract enough that it would be difficult to apply to the kinds of situations I wanted it for. I should have bailed to the applied controls class, the people who went that way showed me what they did and it was more applicable (and easier). Oh well, this was reasonably interesting anyway, and it’s good to stretch ones self.
* Solid State Electronics (EE661)/Hastings
– Expected: The graduate version of EE360 “Introduction To Semiconductor Devices”, which I didn’t really feel like I absorbed as well as I should have. I’ve heard good things about the class and good things about Dr. Hastings’ handling, so I have high hopes.
– Actual: I pretty much guessed right, I actually understand semiconductors reasonably well now. It’s a shame they try to sterilize the quantum mechanics out of the undergrad version, this are actually easier with limited portion of quantum than trying to hand-wave around it. It would have been nice if it got a little more into fabrication, but there isn’t time, and my interest is mostly because the way UK’s fabrication class is taught doesn’t appeal to me (boo industry focus).
* Introduction to Cognitive Science (CS585/CGS500) /Goldsmith
– Expected: Definitely going to be a fun course. Lectures are going to be scattered, and the material may not be of much utility, but it will definitely be interesting and fun, and shouldn’t be too time consuming. Looking forward to being able to do some non-technical writing again.
– Actual: Called this one pretty well too, it was really fun, Dr. Goldsmith is a VERY interesting and well connected person. I got play with things I can’t usually justify spending time on, and accelerated the expansion of my ever-growing reading list. I’d recommend this class to just about anyone reasonably smart and interesting.

In another ending, the assured broadcast run of Dollhouse also ended Friday. It was not a satisfying ending, but it was a perfectly good plot development episode. I’m sadly not hopeful that FOX will continue it. Maybe we’ll get a movie like last time this happened (to make the disclaimer I always feel the need to put on such comparisons, Dollhouse is no Firefly, but if you aren’t judging it against Firefly it’s a perfectly good show).

Is a state of being and a way of life. Better to be interesting than sane, right?
I may have done myself in this time though, I don’t think I can get an honest feedback-employing controller running on my XY Table by Friday… but I can probably get something that sufficiently resembles one to get away with it. Again.

As far as the specific case of burying myself for fun, I designed and understand an algorithm, I’m just finding myself unable to implement it in a timely manner; I haven’t worked with an ATMega chip’s timers in too long. I know what I need is to run my pair of 8bit timer/counters so that the full 255 count is 2kHz (1uS high, 1uS low, 50% duty cycle square wave) set the output compare registers so it actually runs at about 1500Hz (toggle and reset on match), and use the (scaled) difference in the output pulse train and the pulses from the encoders to adjust the output compare registers up/down to accommodate missed steps. I’m just being dumb with BOTH the encoders and the timers, so it doesn’t work.

EDIT: Toggle at TWICE the desired output frequency, not half. Dumb.

I definitely just made another editing pass on a paper that I got an A on and have no plans to resubmit anywhere, just because I wasn’t happy with it. Urgh. The link is updated in the Multiracial Cognition post.