Good news: my Grandmother just bought a new LCD monitor, a 22" widescreen thing, to replace her old LCD monitor, and sent the old one home with my brother.

Apparently, nobody else here wanted it, so I got it!
I've used it to replace my old CRT, whose focus has been failing for the last four months, making everything over 1024x768 kind of fuzzy.
(hence why I haven't been using the desktop computers for a while)

With the new monitor, things are almost perfectly crisp, save for some slight ghosting, which can be effectively ignored, especially on high-speed games.

---

The bad news: I must have slept with my mouth open again, as I now have a ball of dust in my throat again, and it's making me feel off. Rather off.

My balance is a little unsteady, my head is, while not completely full of cotton, not thinking very clearly, and my body temperature is fluxuating a bit.

I lay down for an hour or two today, and didn't feel much better afterwards.
I've take a Tylenol and am heading to bed right after this, so I hope I feel better tomorrow.
(as Tuesdays are my busiest days, with one class nearby in the morning and another class late at night on the farther campus)

I hate writing courses.

I saw an academic advisor today, and found out just what I need to do to qualify for graduation.

Currently I'm working towards a Bachelor of Science in Computing Science, and I only have eight credit-hours left after this semester (assuming I pass all the courses I'm working on right now).

This means that I might be able to graduate after the coming Summer semester, assuming I can find the money to take that many courses.
(it has been hinted that my parents might not want to pay for another semester, though nothing official has been said on the matter)

The committee in charge of all things related to the 2010 Olympic Games has, to all outward appearances, gone stir crazy with power.

For some bizarre reason, VanOC chosen to shut down roads around the Olympic venues during, and more annoyingly, well before the games begin. They are assuming that you can get places by transit or by walking.

Unfortunately, they don't seem to have spoken to Translink much (if at all) to ensure that people can still get around during the games.

Some companies with locations in Vancouver are doing their part to keep congestion down by allowing, facilitating, and encouraging some employees to work from home, or, if they need to move around a lot due to their job, they're encouraging walking instead of driving.
(it'll be interesting to see how many of those that walk will continue to walk after the games are over)

Also, police (at least the forces in Vancouver and Whistler) have been given authority to enter private properties without a warrant if there is a perceived problem, or perform random street searches, also without a warrant.

In addition, all advertising in the above-mentioned areas must be Olympic sponsors only (as dictated by the IOC), which means that all buses, trains and stations have substantially-reduced ads, and the video ad screens on SkyTrain platforms are only running one ad. This is to keep people from thinking that non-sponsors are sponsoring events.
Unfortunately, the VanOC legal team overstepped the line of sanity when they tried to sue a Greek restaurant for using the word "Olympic" in their name, when they'd had the name for at least ten, closer to twenty years...
(can't find the article on this one, Google News only goes back a week or so, it seems...)

---

I'm just glad I get a two-week break from classes during the games. Maybe I'll be able to stay home and avoid all the possible problems VanOC might cause over there...

Listening to: Houston, by Dean Martin

According to the liner notes for Dino: The Essential Dean Martin, (as written by daughter Gail Martin Downey), the distinct percussive instrument you hear at the beginning of the song is an empty glass Coca-Cola bottle.
Interesting how a "found instrument" such as that could make a hit song, eh? =^.^=

Boy, I sure enjoy working for the Computing Science department, they're very supportive, encouraging, and very appreciative.
And I've just barely begun on the project!

It was suggested that we try connecting a webcam to one of the robots, but then we'd need to use a computer.
So, if we add a computer, we can't use the Command Module, but we can have the computer control the robot directly.

Problem: The computer I'm thinking of using doesn't have any serial ports.
Solution: Get a USB to serial adapter.

When I mentioned this to the C.S. program coordinator, she indicated that the department would cover the costs, and would even order them and have them shipped direct (to the department, of course).
To help out, I found an inexpensive place to buy them.
(Powersonic, at ~$12CAN versus Future Shop at $60. An additional problem is that the battery on the laptop I'd like to use only lasts about an hour before quitting on me...)

Anyway, I've got two ideas for projects that use a webcam:

• Laser-pointer dot follower (just need to figure out how to find the dot in an image)
• Light or dark finder (almost trivial, just find the lightest or darkest part of the image and drive towards it)

I'm working on other ideas, as these aren't really all that interesting on their own.
I might write a framework with a GUI to control which program is currently running, possibly even with options to dynamically control each program's parameters.

Actually, that framework alone would be really handy to have, let alone any applications written with it...

I've known about it since about October/November that the next Open House event my primary campus is having is going to be on March 4th.

A couple days ago, the program coordinator for the Computing Science department on that campus contacted me asking if I'd be interested in helping out again.

I think it's rather flattering that the program coordinator (which is a pretty important position) would be interested in contacting me, though I suppose I've made an impression with her before she made it to that position.
(actually with most of the department, I think...)

So, I'm thinking about doing stuff with our iRobot Create robots again, but I'm having some problems with deciding what to have them do.

I should probably first point what features the robot has:

• Two bumpers on the front (to tell if you've bumped into anything)
• Four cliff sensors (to tell if you're about to drive off a cliff, or stay away from stairs)
• A wall sensor on the right side (to tell if you're near a wall. Usually used for wall-following algorithms)
• An IR transmitter and receiver (for talking to other robots and listening for commands from a remote control or other device)
• Two driving wheels (independent, used for mobility)
• A bay in the back with a device connector (for a controller, such as the Command Module)
• A serial port (for interactive control, programming via this port is not supported. You need to use a controlling device for that)
• One or more "virtual walls" (an IR emitter that the robot can detect)

This is a fairly impressive array of sensors, however, there is very little to actually control. This in turn is what my problem is.

Last year my demonstration project was a fairly simple "escape the room" problem: navigate through a space trying to find the virtual wall indicating the exit. The program was fairly simple, actually, but didn't actually look like much.
(people seemed fairly interested in it, however, especially as a possible teaching aid)

My ideas so far are:

• A race of some sort
• Last year's demo (maybe change the description to something else, but most of the logic could stay the same)
• Demo instead an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for programming (and possibly simulating) the robots

The last one is the one I think would cost the most amount of effort, but would probably pay off bigger in the long run, as it might shorten development time for later projects.

I was even told that we could set things up the way I liked, which makes me even more inclined to get some kind of curriculum and software set up for students to learn with...

I must say I had a pretty happy birthday on Saturday.
I got stuff I wanted, as well as several gift cards, and I even got to see a pantomime, too!

The important stuff I got:

• The first two Schlock Mercenary books (Tub of Happiness and The Teraport Wars)
• The FlyTech BladeStar helicopter. (sure I have another RC copter, but that one only lets me control the height, while this allows me to control much more)
• A book on Electronic Arts' first twenty-five years. (fascinating read, though the first ten or fifteen years are more interesting to me at the moment)
• Cats: Commemorative Edition (there's interviews with some of the actors and the producers that describes a bit of how and why it was done)
• Clue: The Movie (the movie based on the board game. Very entertaining)
• The Funny Blokes of British Comedy (it's going to be very funny, as it includes some clips from Are You Being Served?, Fawlty Towers, Good Neighbours, and more!)
• A tape of some of Victor Borge's musical comedy. (most of what I have so far is his jokes, so I don't have much of him horsing around on the piano)
• A book called Rhyme and PUNishment: Adventures in wordplay (should be good!)
• Also of some mention: More mint chocolate (I'm starting to get tired of it, despite the fact that it's one of my favourites) and more gift cards (for London Drugs, Tim Hortons, and A&W)

The pantomime I got to see was put on by the Royal Canadian Theatre Company at the Surrey Arts Center. If you've ever seen the Robin Hood pantomime as put on by Ross Petty Productions, you'll notice some similarities.
I really enjoyed the "band", a two-piece accompaniment made up of a set of drums and an electronic piano, both played by people old enough to know how to play them properly. They played before and after the show, as well as during the intermission, a selection of songs such as Christmas favourites, some Big Band stuff, and more.

One other thing they had while the show wasn't running was snowflakes projected onto the walls of the theatre, they gave a very nice effect that I think more theatres (as well as theaters) should do. It adds so much to the experience.

Some of the songs they sang were from various places, including one from Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (You're My Little Teddy Bear), Anything You Can Do (they included a verse about singing anything faster...), and, and...
Hmm, must be bed time again...

---

My semester starts today (Monday), with one class on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, another class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and a third class Tuesday evenings, and one of them is on the campus closest to me.

The nearest campus is having an open-house event on March 4th, so I need to get my act together and figure something out to present for the Computing Science department...

I did manage to score some neat stuff this Christmas:

• A USB-connected tape deck. (I've been trying to record a bunch of tapes to my computer so I could put them on my MP3 player, but all four of my tape decks have something wrong or lacking with them, making them all but completely useless for my purposes)
• Cats: The Commemorative Edition. (I've been looking forward to this for a while now and almost got the opportunity to buy it myself a few months ago, but didn't think I had the money)
• Three Schlock Mercenary books, Under New Management, The Blackness Between, and The Scrapyard of Insufferable Arrogance.
• A set of six Faber-Castell artist pens in landscape colours. (I hope to try drawing stuff, mostly landscapes. Yes, I'll try scanning them and posting them somewhere so you can see, eventually)
• An LED penlight. (when I saw my brother's new penlight I thought it looked cool, but didn't get an answer out of him as to the price, so I knew I shouldn't get one myself)
• The latests Sherman's Lagoon, Confessions of a Swinging Single Sea Turtle.
• A small ceramic cutter with a blade extending a very tiny amount from the handle to cut layers of stuff without going through too many layers. (and also claims that you can't cut yourself on it)
• Some other miscellaneous small things, including a tiny hand-cranked flashlight, a balsa wood glider, a small, posable Wall-e figure, a so-called "Rubik's Cube" game that has nothing to do with the real cube, and other bits and bobs that don't quite matter as much.
• And to round things off, I also received a fair amount of chocolate, most of which, unfortunately, turned out to be mint (while mint is my favourite flavour, too much is very possible).

Interestingly enough, the USB tape deck doesn't need drivers (it acts like a USB sound card, which most modern OSes support), and the only software that came on the CD was Audacity, an open-source audio program.
(the packaging claimed support for Windows and Mac, but it's working beautifully with my new Linux box anyway. Oh how I love using Linux!)

I probably should have started with a typical music tape, as it was, I started with a classical music tape (J. S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, numbers 1, 5 and 6) and a tape I made off the radio back in 1999. Neither one was a good choice. With the first, I couldn't figure out how to name the tracks, and with the second, I'm having a hard time trying to cut it up into tracks.
Next time I'll try something by the Acapella group like The Book of James, or Heros of The Faith or something like that.
(you know, stuff I don't have MP3s of, has lots of silence between the tracks, and has easy to figure out track names)

Oh, and apparently I might have had too much chocolate or something, as I have another sore throat again... =>.<=

Book stores can be dangerous places, especially if you happen to like reading books.

A while ago I mentioned that I'd found Groucho Marks' biography, well this time I found Bob Hope's autobiography entitled "My Life in Jokes".
He means it literally, as each paragraph or even sentence is a joke, which might be tiring for some readers.
(I don't know about myself yet, I haven't finished reading it yet)

Sometimes you find books that you just can't leave, such as one about the history of the Bumstead family.
(I eventually figured out that my Dad would like that, so it worked out after all)

However, I'm keeping the Bob Hope book, as I'm apparently collecting comedian biographies...