Nerd Herd Haven

youtube video

2009-12-16T20:04:00.000-08:00

I'm posting the iFoundryman video from iExpo for those who want to watch that work of genius!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAsZK_bmnF4

Finals Aftermath

2009-12-16T20:01:00.000-08:00

So my finals are finally done. I vowed to distract the people who stayed up every night playing everything from mahjong to video games in the dorm. However I found out I can't do it. When I tried, they stayed up until 5 in the morning and my body pretty much broke down from that. I'm never attempting that again. Unfortunately I also failed my calc 3 exam and so I have a c- in my math class. I'm never taking another math honors class again. O well, I get to relax until saturday and then I go home.

Finals

2009-12-14T12:16:00.000-08:00

As my final final comes up (haha), I'm finding it harder and harder to study. Especially since I don't remember if the final only consists of the last third of the material or the whole course. On a positive note, after around 5 tomorrow, I'll be done! I had 2 finals on friday and 1 today and then tomorrow will be my last. It's been stressful but I prefer it this way even though I still can't leave till Saturday due to my plane tickets. I get to laze around for the rest of the week; well not really, I'm planning to clean up and get ready for leaving. However, I'll be hording it up over those who still have finals and were slacking last Thursday through the weekend! =P

Yu-Gi-Oh Engineering?!

2009-12-08T20:29:00.000-08:00

So recently, I've started to pick up a trading card game that I had retired long ago in middle school. This game is called "Yu-Gi-Oh!" When I had retired from the game, it was for primarily two reasons; there was no one to play against and the game was simply seen as childish or nerdy. However, after rediscovering my old cards and deck, I brought them to UIUC for when I needed to kill time. Surprisingly, I have found many people who played or haven't ever touched it who wanted to pick up the game; even people who you wouldn't normally think played this game. What I've found is that there lies a side to Yu-Gi-Oh! that most people don't recognize. The real fun of the game is building a deck, filing it with strategies, and then watching those strategies come to life. This I find is like an engineering side to Yu-Gi-Oh! I have never seen before. Due to this reason, right now, I've built around 7 decks with the cards I have. Truely, this children's card game has an unchildish side to it.

Hovercraft fail

2009-12-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

Ugh, this projects been frustrating. We've fried one arduino board, one motor shield, and a snes controller. Now we have to go with the hovercraft controlling itself. After frying all that it was pretty scary to see the arduino take in a lot of current and no voltage and then start smoking. Luckily, nothing was damaged. We don't have proof that it worked, but it did work with the snes controller controlling it. Next time, we'll be sure to wear anti-static wristbands!

Microcontroller project

2009-12-06T01:07:00.000-08:00

So I haven't posted in a while due to being extremely busy. However I felt like talking about this one project going on now. Right now, iFoundry's class has a microcontroller project nearing completion. My team chose to make a hovercraft. Unfortunately, We've been having problems with the electrical work of the hovercraft. First we couldn't draw enough juice from the microcontroller with the breadboard, so we made a motor shield. Now the motor shield doesn't even work properly. We're at a complete loss of how to use the motor shield but hopefully we'll figure things out tomorrow ...... actually today!

Mid-Autumn Festival

2009-10-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

So for those of you who didn't know, yesterday was the mid-autumn festival. At the moon's fullest, the Chinese celebrate by eating mooncakes. Now there were 2 events yesterday to celebrate the mid-autumn festival, the Chinese held Gala and the Taiwanese mooncake and bubble tea competition. Both started at the same time and conflicted with each other, supposedly because of the Chinese Taiwanese political rivalry. That's just a rumor along with the rumor that 50 Chinese ambassadors showed up at the Gala. I think this highly unlikely. The conflict maybe because of the political rivalry but I doubt 50 Chinese ambassadors showed up for the gala. Well anyways I went to the Gala which the staff locked the doors to because of overcrowding but I managed to sneak in. They starting kicking out people who didn't have a seat but I managed to sneak around long enough to see the Chinese yoyo performance before leaving for the mooncake bubble tea event. Sneaking into a Gala, watching Chinese yoyo, eating mooncakes, and drinking bubble tea, all make this mid-autumn festival the best I've ever had! Now I just need to finish off the 5 mooncakes and 11 pineapple cakes I have left!

iFoundry

2009-09-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

So after stumbling about like a live frog after dissections with its innards falling out for about 3 weeks, it seems that our group (SSE or TIPS) finally has a direction. After talking with IBM, our sponsor, and having a rather fruitful discussion session, we came upon the bright idea of traffic control during meal times as a project. This idea basically tackles the annoying problem of waiting for 30 minutes in line to get into the dining room, waiting for another 15 for your food, and then finally having no where to sit so you end up eating in the corner like an antisocial jerk but I digress. Oh, and if you live in PAR, tack on another 10 minutes to the numbers. Anyways the point is to better distribute the traffic throughout the entire meal time and also provide access to this "traffic" information to every student. Of course I have a serious interest in this project because I actually live in PAR and find the increase of traffic due to the entirety of FAR coming over plus some stragglers from other dorms anywhere from rather annoying to hemorrhagingly frustrating. It'll be interesting to see where this project goes from here. If we succeed, this project can definitely be marketed as a solution to UIUC. However it can also be used in many other places like the underground food courts in Asian department stores where everyone is literally at each others' throats for seats. Although I would also gladly drop this project for a shot at eliminating all these freaking gnats!

P.S. I do apologize for the biting bitter sarcasm in this post but it was fitting for my current mood.