Recently I over heard someone saying that they rarely get 8 hours of sleep, which got me thinking that I also rarely get 8 hours as well. Normally sleep is around 11:45PM to 6:45AM so on average about 7 hours, which is not bad, but still leaves me tired in the morning, daylight savings did not help either. Luckily for me I do not have heavy physical activity in my daily schedule which helps reduce my sleep needs. Sitting in class, sitting at work, sitting at lunch, sitting doing homework and sitting in bed. Recently I have come to notice school does not help you stay physically fit, luckily going to school near mountains fixes that. Oh well, such is the life of a college student.
6 Hours and I am Sleepy
7 Hours if I am Lucky
8 Hours and I am Spoiled
9+ Hours and I am lazy.
I did a little research about why eight hours are recommended, because we always hear it, but why is it eight?
"Before the experiment began, the subject routinely got about six and a half hours of sleep. During the first night of the experiment he slept eight hours, the second night 10 hours, the third night 12 hours, and the fourth night 14 hours. Over the next several days, he began to reduce the number of hours slept, eventually falling to a steady eight hours and 13 minutes. This experiment was performed repeatedly with all types of people, with similar results, and this is where the recommendation of eight hours comes from."
Taken From Here...
There you have it, that is why they recommend eight hours of sleep, well I found it interesting at least.
I had whipped up a online photo album for the AMS website I am working on, however after photos where uploaded I realized that I was not using thumbnails, but instead the huge pictures, which on dial up would take years to load a large album. So I went looking for a good thumbnail function, sadly all the ones I found where way to complex for what I was trying to do. With no other options, I did some research and studied how the other functions worked an came up with my own simple version.
function makeThumb($im,$dest,$thumbwidth,$thumbheight)
{
$resizeResult = TRUE;
$imgResult = TRUE;
list($width, $height) = getimagesize($im);
$exttype = exif_imagetype($im);
$tim = ImageCreateTrueColor($thumbwidth,$thumbheight);
if($exttype == IMAGETYPE_GIF)
{
$image = imagecreatefromgif($im);
imagealphablending($tim, FALSE);
imagesavealpha($tim, TRUE);
$resizeResult = imagecopyresampled($tim, $image, 0, 0, 0, 0, $thumbwidth, $thumbheight, $width, $height);
//header('Content-type: image/gif');
$imgResult = imagegif($tim,$dest);
}
else if($exttype == IMAGETYPE_JPEG)
{
$image = imagecreatefromjpeg($im);
$resizeResult = imagecopyresampled($tim, $image, 0, 0, 0, 0, $thumbwidth, $thumbheight, $width, $height);
//header('Content-type: image/jpeg');
$imgResult = imagejpeg($tim,$dest);
}
else if($exttype == IMAGETYPE_PNG)
{
$image = imagecreatefrompng($im);
imagealphablending($tim, FALSE);
imagesavealpha($tim, TRUE);
$resizeResult = imagecopyresampled($tim, $image, 0, 0, 0, 0, $thumbwidth, $thumbheight, $width, $height);
//header('Content-type: image/png');
$imgResult = imagepng($tim,$dest);
}
if($resizeResult != TRUE || $imgResult != TRUE){ return FALSE; } else return TRUE;
}
Well that time has come again, the stressful period of choosing next years living space. I have gone from two person dorm room, to a quad apartment, to a multi floor quad apartment, however because two of my friends are graduating, I have to look for another place again. My roommate and I though that a two person apartment might be nice, however it is not quite that easy...
To get a two person apartment you need to sign up for the draw, which only has apartments that people are moving out from, thus a small number, where as there are a lot of people who covet these sweet living spaces. I got to the apartment draw and dealt with the paperwork, and had to sit and wait for them to start. There must have been around 30-40 sets of people looking for a two person apartment, where as there where only 10 apartments up for grabs. The order of people who get to chose one is based on our ranking numbers (age, year, credits and grade) Luckily for me I got to choose second! (Take that youngsters ^_^).
So I chose an apartment, which our resident director of the student apartments said was her favorite, I figure it must be good. Here comes the intresting part... I walk by the place and from what I can tell by the windows it looks like it had cathedral ceilings, the living room window had another window on top that was a triangle against the sloping roof, which made me very happy. However later that night I could see there was light downstairs but not upstairs? Hold on, so there is some kind of random painted and finished loft/attic with what looks like a door above the apartment, that does not appear on any plans. Um, what? Now I am interested, if I can find a way into this space, like the Attic access panel in our current apartment I will be very happy, it could even mean my own room!
Well this is all speculation for now, but it looks like next year will be very interesting indeed.
After fixing an iBook, my next plan was to change it into a digital picture frame. This is something that many people have done with every old laptop you can imagine. So I took the stripped down iBook, and completely disassembled the lcd screen, down to just the panel, and took some measurements for a frame. The closest frame I could find to the screen size is a 8.5 x 11 inch with a nice looking border. The screen fit well in this, but it would need a bit more room to fit the rest of the iBook. So a box that fits inside the frame was made and attached with screws to the sides. Small wood dividers hold the lcd in place, while adding some space for air flow. I also cut out the holes for various connections, air vents and for the optical drive. It all just perfectly fits snugly inside. The back cover is attached to the sides of the box by small blocks of wood, and puts some pressure on everything below it with. All it needs a quick paint job, probably black to match, but that is for another weekend.
The end result looks amazing. Another successful project, completed!
I randomly stumbled upon Blik Surface Graphics who carry a set of wall decals that look like Space Invader sprites. Space invaders for the video game challenged is a simple game where you shoot aliens, using a little mobile cannon, before they get too low and invade the earth, or shoot you. There have been many renditions, but Space Invaders still remains one of the first arcade shooters.
I thought the decals where very cool, but I am a poor student and did not feel like paying the $12.50+ so I set out to make my own. Firing up AppleWorks I went to town with a bunch of black squares. They ended up looking like the real thing, so I was happy, and printed out the same number as the decal set would have. If you are feeling lazy and do not want to make your own, I have uploaded my set here for anyone to use.
The end result turned out rather nice, but now Matt says we need a Mario wall too, sounds good to me!
After building a vandergraph generator, which worked rather well, I have looked at making one of the many other high voltage static generators out there. I really want to build a wimhurst, and eventually will, however I really want a Tesla Coil, because they are amazing. They are so powerful the intense electric field around them can light up fluorescent bulbs from a few inches to a few feet away depending on the size. The one big drawback to Tesla coil is they need an outside power-source, usually a high-voltage transformer of some kind, as well as other electronic components, so in reality it is not quite a static generator, but still amazing machines! If I ever find plans for a simple low power one I will definitely start building it.
I love the video above because it demonstrates a simple Tesla coil very well, plus I can not stop laughing every time it starts up, creates a static buz, and then BOOM (At 00:24). This is the first one I have heard do this.
Other people have done amazing things with Tesla coils, such as adjusting the frequency to play music on them!
Well I am usually pretty good about not breaking things worse when I am trying to fix them, but today was not my day...
I had got an iBook off of surplus for a buck, however it did not have any video, after taking it apart and pressing on the graphics chip on the board I could tell its connections had come loose. Similar to the story here. So I set off on an adventure to try to fix it. After making a cup out of aluminum, I got a propane torch and started heating it. It worked well enough and came very close to working, but shifting the board still caused video problems, so I had the bright idea to put some pressure on it while heating.... BAD IDEA! The solder balls underneath got squished and fused together, rendering the logic board useless.... Sigh. There are times when you wish life had an undo, this was one of the times I wanted to use it. Well I will remove the solder and chip from the board and see if it at least starts, right now it turns on shorts and shuts off. However it would take inhuman skill to solder it back on correctly. Ah such a waste, well maybe I can sell the working parts online.
Note: The clamp was not tightened any further then to simply hold the cup and a small metal piece on the bottom together, plus give me a grip to hold on to, but that was still to much pressure.
Luckily there are more iBooks on surplus with the same problem, and because I am probably the only one crazy/stupid enough to attempt this again to try to fix them, I at least have a couple more tries at making a digital picture frame. Yes that was the original goal.
Oh well, now excuse me while I go beat my head against a wall.
I had recently been refused access to a sql database for a project, this I started looking for other options. After a little searching I stumbled across txtSQL, which is a very powerful but easy to use flat file database.
To start off download the latest release (2.2 final at the time of writing this). Then read the read me in the doc folder it will walk you through setting up the include files you will need as well as the database folder, by default called data. One you have these placed correctly just like with mysql you will need to connect to the database.
include('includes/txtSQL.class.php');
$sql = new txtSQL('includes/data'); // Location of the database files
$sql->connect('root', ''); // This is the default name and password
$sql->selectdb('XXX'); // XXX is the database name
// txtSQL created a new database named testDatabase
$sql->createdb(array('db' => 'XXX')) or die('Error creating txtSQL DB, txtSQL said: '.$sql->get_last_error());
// Create Table in new database
$columns = array(
'id' => array('type' => 'int', 'auto_increment' => 1, 'permanent' => 1
'name' => array('type' => 'string', 'max' => 50),
'email' => array('type' => 'string', 'max' => 50) );
$sql->createtable(
'db' => 'testDb',
'table' => 'testTable',
'columns' => $columns);
// Select
$where = 'somthing = '.$_POST['something'];
$results = $sql->execute('select', array('table' => 'XXX', 'where' => array('0' => $where), 'limit' => array(1)));
// Grab first result
$result = $results[0]; // Just want the first result
//or use them all
foreach($results as $result) // Grab each row from the result
{
//... Do something
}
// Insert
$insertvalues = array( 'name' => 'matt', 'date' => '9/8/06' );
$sql->execute('insert', array('table' => 'XXX', 'values' => $insertvalues));
One thing I wanted is the ability to share directories online other then having to make folders in my WebServ folder. So off I went to look up how to configure Apache to do this. As I expected this was not all that hard to do, you just have to add a few lines to the apache config file.
Just type " sudo vi /etc/httpd/httpd.conf " or use what ever editor you like, I like VI. then look for the section below...
#
# Aliases: Add here as many aliases as you need (with no limit). The format is
# Alias fakename realname
#
<IfModule mod_alias.c>
#Share via online
Alias /NAME OF SHARE "/PATH TO DIRECTORY/"
<Directory "/PATH TO DIRECTORY/">
Options Indexes FolowSymLinks MultViews ExecCGI
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
<Directory "/PATH TO DIRECTORY/">
Options Indexes MultiViews (+ other things you want)
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
AuthName "Name of Stuff Share"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /PATH TO PASSWORD DIRECTORY/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
require user ADD USERNAME
