A few weeks ago Jenn sent me a video of a robot that a Danish guy named Frits had built out of paint mixing sticks and hot glue. He called it "Yellow Drum Machine", and it basically just drives around until it finds something interesting, and then it plays a drum beat on it, records the beat with a microphone, then plays that back on its giant smokestack-like speaker and taps out other beats along with it, or dances to the music. It was adorable, and I wanted one of my own. As I looked at the pictures more closely, I realized that I actually already had a lot of the motors and sensors that he used to build his, and so it was decided — I have to build one of my own.

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Over the past year or so I've noticed BinRock getting slower and slower. It got so bad that visitors' web browsers were timing out before BinRock got around to sending them the page they were waiting for. I don't get any notification when a visitor times out, but for the last few months, I've been getting 5-10 error messages a day from my own scripts that load BinRock pages for one reason or another, and I can extrapolate from that and guess that it's been quite a lot.

In Linux, there's a measure of how heavily the machine is loaded, aptly called the "load average." A value between 0.0 and 1.0 means that the machine is only partially being used, and it's spending part of its time idle. A value of 1.0 effectively means that there is something using the CPU at all times, but nothing is being made to wait. That's just about perfect — you're not wasting hardware sitting around doing nothing, but you're also not overloading it. Values above 1.0 mean that the machine is overloaded, and processes are having to sit around waiting for their turn to run. Generally, if you see it reach 2.0 or more, the machine will be running pretty slowly and it'll be really obvious to the users.

For years, BinRock's load average was down around 0.10 — it wasn't even breaking a sweat serving all the web sites, email accounts, etc that are hosted there. But for the last year, the load has started growing steadily, and during the last few months, I'd regularly see it get as high as an astounding 30.0. Hence all the timeouts.

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It's convenient how every year at midnight on March 14 I get a handy reminder of exactly which vBulletin-powered message boards I'm still registered in. It's a walk down memory lane, because many of them I haven't visited in months or years. It's touching that they haven't forgotten me despite my neglectful inattention.

I think SupraForums is really really glad it's my birthday.

I've always been really interested in robotics and artificial intelligence, but because I changed majors in Freshman year from computer engineering to computer science, I missed out on the chance to get any real formal education in the field. I did take one electrical engineering class where we learned to breadboard circuits and stuff, and it was actually one of my favorite classes at Clemson. But it was only an introduction to the subject and didn't really get into detail, and so despite my longstanding interest in the field, I've never really known how to go about making the jump and actually start doing it.

I have a Lego Mindstorms kit that I've toyed with, but the inherent fragility of Legos was always a limitation. I found that if I tried to fashon an arm to pick stuff up with, I couldn't apply too much force or it'd just smash itself to pieces spectacularly. So the desire to learn to build "real" robots out of metal has stuck with me.

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You know how, in college, each class had its own up-and-down cycle where the workload was really high as a test or large assignment approached, then got easier for a while until the next big exam or assignment? It was like several parallel waveforms with different frequencies, and at the points where they all line up, you get constructive interference. The resonance can destroy bridges or shatter a wine glass — in college, it just shatters your social life.

Anyway, Thursday was a day of constructive interference of a different sort — after days filled with boredom and uneventfulness, Thursday seemed to try to pack in as much enjoyment as possible.

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This is a subject I've been giving a lot of thought lately. Motorcycles are known for getting great has mileage — in the 50-60mpg range for the larger 600cc bikes, and up closer to 80mpg or more for the smaller 250cc bikes. So I was surprised to hear people on forums talking about getting 12-15mpg out of their 600cc ATVs. I figured those posts must have been exceptions, but I've kept track of my own gas mileage on my ATV, and I've been averaging about 13.5 mpg. That's a lot worse than even my Buick, which averages 22, much less the Civic with its comfortable 31 mpg.

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As I mentioned before, I'm planning on going along on the Windrock ATV Club's club ride on Saturday. The ride is scheduled to set out at 8:30 am though, so I figured I'd head up to Windrock today to be sure I knew how to find the place. And then I figured that, as long as I was heading up there, I may as well load up the ATV and go do a little riding. Aside from the obvious desire to just get out and ride, it would also be a good chance to be sure that my gear fits well, my clothes are warm enough, etc, without having 20 other people waiting for me to adjust things and try different arrangements. And it proved to be a good idea, because I did get lost several times trying to find the trailhead, so I'm glad I spent the time finding it today rather than early Saturday morning when it's dark and people are waiting for me.

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For Christmas, Andrés, Amy, and I flew to Phoenix to spend the holiday with my extended family. One of the highlights of the trip was when we drove up to Sedona, rented ATVs, and went offroading amidst a Grand Canyon-like landscape.

I took the opportunity to strap on all of my bulky large-format camera equipment and take some 4x5" Velvia slides in the environment that was practically made for them. And I had a realization. I've had the large format camera for a few years, but I've barely ever used it, mostly because it's so big and heavy that I've been pretty much limited to the kinds of places I can reach with a car, which are seldom worth photographing. I'm not trying to make undue comparisons, but I remember reading Ansel Adams talking about having the same problem. He had a platform on the roof of his car from which he did a lot of his photography — for his longer jaunts into the wilderness, he packed most of his gear on a burro.

I realized that an ATV can be my version of a burro. I've always been interested in offroading, but when I realized that an ATV would both let me enjoy crawling over rough terrain plus let me strap down all my bulky large-format camera equipment and take pictures from places that I couldn't otherwise reach, it did me in — I had to have an ATV.

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I left the stalagmite undisturbed after taking the picture in my last ice-stalagmite-themed post, and I discovered a few weeks later that it had apparently been on the move. Maybe it was thirsty, and wandered off in search of the cool, refreshing taste of Diet Coke®.

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I know that the past generation was probably just as irreverent and wild as this one, and it was just as common for people to get drunk at parties and do crazy things. But there's hardly any evidence of it, so the past is safely behind us and now they can present a nice proper image to their kids, and most kids don't think to question that. So everyone growing up thinks that their parents are old and unhip and just don't understand what it's like to be a kid. It's not until you get past all those teenage years that you start to realize, "Hey, they were probably just as bad as me."

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