In preparation for the impending shit-storm that will consist of me, a soldering iron, and dozens of small, fragile components, I decided to see if I can actually get my Arduino to talk to a servo. Well, it turns out that the code is not the issue.

The built in servo library is pretty easy to tackle. A little bit of analogue, a little bit of digital, a little bit of shameless self promotion…

shameless plug

messy

Step one…check. I can sweep through 180 degrees. Can I solder to save my ass (and semi-valuable electrical components)…time will tell.

Also, I’m post dating this post. Happy B-Day Betsy.

I splurged on a motor shield from Lady Ada for my Arduino antics.

Here it is..

shit, indeed

“Some Assembly Required” Sonofabitch. I guess my soldering skills are going to be put to the test. Stay tuned.

It pains me somewhat to admit that I still have a dual boot set-up on my primary laptop. 2010 is not the year of the Linux desktop, although Linux has gained all sorts of ground on Windows. Yes, citation needed. Google it…Ubuntu has brought Debian to the masses in the way of an easy-to-use Linux distro. That said, running a dual boot machine is easier than keeping a virtual machine up and running. I know, citation needed again.

That said, I still need to run Windows. I have Vista on my main box, since Quickbooks Online requires IE. I have no idea why this is so, but that is a different story entirely. My options are slim in this case; keep a Windows setup (with security issues and all) handy or go all Windows…pretty sure you all know what way I lean there. I have absolutely no idea if I can run IE on Ubuntu, and have no intention of finding this out. Pride is what it is.

That leaves me still subject to virii. Computer viruses and Windows go together like peas and carrots.

for the loss

So, what to do? I’ll tell you what not to do…buy anything Norton is peddling. Not only do they offer poor protection at a premium price, but they have an awful track record of getting the ‘hard’ bugs until they are moot.

I have been searching for something to boost my security on my dual boot, and think I have found the answer. I ran across bullguard antivirus protection, and think they will be my next answer. AVG absolutely failed on Katie’s XP machine in regards to Anti Virus 2009, so I will not use that suite again… BullGuard looks to be on top of the game in regards to the new stuff.

They have a 30 day trial for free-99, so I’m all over it. Check back to see what comes of the whole deal, but I’m fairly certain I will be issue free. Issue free-99.

I haven’t weighed in on the current state of the cell-phone-o-sphere in some time. I beg your apologies. There are currently two phones that have me second guessing my affinity towards the HTC Incredible. Namely, the Samsung Vibrant and the BlackBerry Torch. Since I am 100% certain that I am done with RIM for the time being, I’m going to focus on the former.

Samsung + Android = solid machine. No doubt about that. My only qualms with Samsung has been shoddy user interfaces and a poor track record on the hardware side. That was completely established when the Moto Razr was the cool kid in school, and Samsung has really made improvements. The biggest improvement of all…the Vibrant is shipping with Android OS v2.1. Froyo is amazing, but eclair is no slouch.

vibrant thang my vibrant thing yo vibrant thang my vibrant thing oh

I’ll cut to the chase. The same thing I love most about the Incredible (and too, the Droid X) is the smoking hot processor. Turns out, the Vibrant has a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor. And boom goes the dynamite. Par.

I’d be lying to say that I can afford to buy both the Incredible and the Vibrant, with the recent wedding, new dining room table, et cetera…I could, but it would be frowned upon, perhaps. Maybe more paid posts like this will change the situation, but I digress. I will say that the Samsung Vibrant Accessories have me questioning my loyalty to HTC. Not only the Samsung Vibrant Covers, cases, data cables, and what-not, but the phone is pretty sexy in general. Five megapixel camera, folks. 16 gigs internal storage, folks. Four inch screen…folks. I’m torn.

Long story short, take a look at the (I am getting paid to Samsung Accessories and see what you think. I’m up in the air, because this phone is 100% legit.

I managed to hit a walk-off dinger to end the 2010 softball season. Unfortunately, my shitty co-ed league counts dongs as outs, and my walk-off was the last out of our year. Whoever penned that rule was a fun-hater.

I did manage to rip my goddamn knee open, yet again…

ouchos

Insult to injury, I suppose.

We’ll get ‘em in 2011.

Weird weather week continues…

xxtreme

I have made zero effort to conceal the fact that I hate comics. They are, as a whole, utterly useless. Utterly.

In my book, there are only three people making comics that are worth reading. My first? Randall from xkcd…pretty much speaks for itself for a math dude to be all over that stuff. My other two are Drew and Natalie, and their combined four works.

Here is my favourite MTTS entry of the month…

marriedtothesea.com

…and what I deem to be Natalie’s best (or most random) offering…

nataliedee.com

Hit one of those ill links to get to the respective sites. They also pen Super Poop and Toothpaste for Dinner, which, names aside, are incredible as well.

Weird weather week continues…mi madre just snapped these from my parents’ front porch in Glasgow, Montana.

incoming

building...

incredible

Weather Underground has this thing at 65 MPH and 13,000 feet. Five miles out. I sure hope I don’t have any follow up pics.

Vivian South Dakota? Ever heard of the place? Yep, neither have I.

It has been a bizarre year around my neck of the woods, weather-wise. Giant hail in Bozeman, tornadoes in Billings and all over the NE corner, micro bursts near Glasgow…weird stuff.

weather != gadgetry, but
awesome weather phenomenon = science FTW

Well, Vivian (from here on out, “Viv”) South Dakota has claimed its colloquial fifteen minutes of fame, in the form of a world record hailstone.

that's-a a spicy-a hail-a-ball

1.9375 pounds. Nicely played, Viv.

I found this story amazing…some local news site interviewed one of Viv’s finest. Les Scott is a death-defying party animal…

“I just happened to see this one fall and the only reason I went out and got it is because it has all these fingers sticking out of it and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s weird.’ So I thought I’d go get that one,” Scott said.

Scott originally wanted to make a daiquiri out of the hail, but decided to contact the National Weather Service instead. Tuesday, they were in Vivian. They carefully took the stone from the freezer and placed it in a cooler with dry ice. The next stop was at the post office where the hail had a date with the federally certified scale. Moments later, the hailstone weighed in at 1.9375 pounds.

Daiquiri? Come the hell on Les. National news, buddy…pick something less feminine about which to wax funny.

cool.

Okay…maybe not that cool.

One step closer…

Switch open yields a killer red LED…

stop

go

I even tossed in some 1K resistors to keep my LEDs healthy, in addition to my 100 ohm / 10000 ohm pull-down setup.

+4 resistor

I even managed to comment my code, for a bonus win:

/*
* binary red/green led setup
* by Joseph Swanson
* http://swantron.com
*/

int led1 = 11; // green LED (pin 11)
int led2 = 12; // red LED (pin 12)
int swit= 5; // switch (pin 5)
int varr; // to read pin on/off (pin 5)

void setup() {
pinMode(led1, OUTPUT); // output green
pinMode(led2, OUTPUT); // output red
pinMode(swit, INPUT); // switch input
}

void loop(){
varr = digitalRead(swit); // store swit to varr
if (varr == LOW) { // button = pressed
digitalWrite(led1, HIGH); // trigger green
digitalWrite(led2, LOW); // ground red
}
if (varr == HIGH) { // button != pressed
digitalWrite(led1, LOW); // ground green
digitalWrite(led2, HIGH); // trigger red
}
}

+1 Snippet

I’m getting closer to having this thing behave the way I intend. Stay tuned for a while longer. I’ll have a robot up and rolling in no time whatsoever.