While sitting watching TV I yearned for a more stream-of-consciousness experience. Youtube was the answer.
However, Youtube requires too much interaction. I wanted to vege out and let it just feed me the stream of random images and sound. Selecting purely random youtube videos sounded like a bad idea though…
I decided to do a twitter search for anything with a youtube link, and then let a script just enqueue them into totem, ad-infinitum. Here is my abomination:
#!/bin/bash
while [ 1 ];
do
for EACHVIDEO in `wget -O - -q "http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=youtube.com" | grep http://www.youtube.com | grep "<content" | sed 's/quot;/\n/g' | grep "http://www.youtube.com" | cut -f 1 -d "&" `
do
totem --enqueue `youtube-dl -g -b "$EACHVIDEO" ` &
sleep 2s
done
sleep 30s
done
You need a recent version of the youtube-dl script, located here. Put it in your path as appropriate. Press N for next! Next! Next!
Published on April 17, 2010
in UAV.
The Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition (AVC) was a smash! You can watch some footage of the event at Sparkfun’s Ustream page.
Here is what the starting / finishing line looked like:
And some judges on the roof watching to make sure the Flying robots do not cut corners.
I was very impressed by the UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). Most of them were able to complete the course in record time. Some were even able to land autonomosouly!
Robota-Landing DougWiebel-landing Robota-Launch
Sorry for the 3gp format, it is native to the Droid. I wasn’t satisfied with the outcome of a transcode from ffmpeg or gstreamer. If someone wants to transcode for me, I would be happy to re-upload.
I was unimpressed with the ground vehicles. Only a few were able to complete the course. (Just four turns around the Sparkfun building) Most couldn’t make it past the first turn. Did they simply not test them? Was it the new environment? I wasn’t able to tell.
For sparkfun, having a three-piece band to play during the heats was a big win! They certainly kept the audience entertained, and by the time the 3rd heat came around, every team had their very own made-up-silly-them-song. I suppose it would be the equivalent of the organ player at a baseball game, but on steroids.
I hope to enter and win the next years competition!
Published on April 10, 2010
in Personal.
I’m not saying that all OS’s don’t have problems, but it would be nice if you didn’t plaster the problems all over the store 
I have a first generation Asus Eeepc, but the power plug is failing. All plugs do this eventually. Lots of tiny wires, bending back and forth all the time… It just happens.
So should I throw it away and buy a new one? No! It can be easily fixed. Here is what you need:
- Soldering Iron + Solder
- Flux helps if you have it (If you have not soldered with flux, you are missing out big time)
- Heat shrink or electrical tape
- Sugru can add a nice touch
Start by using a sharp blade to cut off the plastic molding around the connector to expose the raw barrel connector and wires:
Now your soldering skills will be put to the test. Flux helps! Don’t forget to put the heat shrink on first before you solder:
Yea, the sugru, graciously provided by DangerJim could use an artist’s touch.
But it works! Looks pretty good.
Published on April 2, 2010
in linux.
Can you see the pattern?
| ESSID |
ESSID in Hex |
BSSID |
KEY |
| MCFVC |
23CB158 |
0021636A7177 |
F8AA1AABA2 |
| H47MD |
1B6B095 |
001D19E2A557 |
BFD896F9D4 |
| Q36G7 |
29C9D67 |
0021632D31E3 |
BCD77B3755 |
| UX78G |
31880E0 |
0024d2682944 |
18DD3AB249 |
These key pairs were graciously provided by Eric Betts. They do not conform to my existing WEP key calculator.
Maybe Verizon wised up and made them random? The previous correlation was dead obvious, but this one I can’t see.
Of course, I am only a wannabe cryptologist
