Metal Marionette

2011-09-21T21:09:00.000-05:00

The CFFL Champion T-Shirt

2009-09-22T09:56:00.000-05:00

The current CFFL Champion T-Shirt. This is just a draft design. Personally, I would rather have a long sleeve, bi-colored shirt. Or maybe even a 3/4 arm-length shirt. But I do like the text on the front and back.

Morris, "I'm all in.."

2009-09-08T08:53:00.000-05:00

Nothing like hanging your professional career on a 21 year old. Raheem Morris in front of the Tampa media the other day,

"Obviously when you talk about Freeman and the quarterback position, everything we do has a thought process with Freeman," said Morris. "Everything we do (must have Freeman in mind). I'm sacred to say this again. I don't want to have another picture of me on youtube, but we are married to him. Everything we do at that position, around this team, around this organization, the Tampa Bay area, if we clean a street around Mac Dill, it is going to be around Freeman. That is what it has got to be."

Part of me is impressed with Raheem - its apparent he has no problem "marrying" himself to a strategy. And how refreshing is his attitude, especially considering how the QB position was treated by our recently departed head coaching regime. But my god man, he's a 21 year old kid. Ever heard of Alex Smith? How about Ryan Leaf? How about, Art Schlichter, Heath Shuler, Kelly Stouffer, Andre Ware, Rich Campbell, Jim Druckenmiller, David Klingler, Todd Marinovich, Dan McGwire, Rick Mirer, or Tim Couch? Just some of the few first round QB's whose names litter the all-time worst busts picks of the NFL draft.

Is this just a rookie head coach making a rookie head coach mistake? Or is he really on to something? As a fan, I will give Raheem and Freeman the customary two seasons before I make up my own mind. But one thing is for certain, it won't matter if the Bucs defense returns/remains in the top 5. It won't matter if the Bucs running offense cracks the top 10. Raheem has indicated that his tenure in Tampa should be measured by the success (or failure) of his young rookie QB.

Mac surgery a success!

2009-04-29T11:19:00.002-05:00

Last week I twitted that I was going to update some of the hardware in my stock MacBook Pro. Last night I just about finished re-installing all my frequently used software. So what was done? Well I increased my RAM from 2Gb to 4Gb and installed a new 320Gb, 7200 RPM (improvement over the the stock 120Gb, 5400 RPM drive). To give full disclosure, the hard drive upgrade voided my warranty since it required removing the keyboard. Doing that was a little tricky but guides on the www were very helpful.

Being the engineering nerd I am, I couldn't resist the temptation to benchmark my system pre- and post-upgrade. I used an program called Xbench - pretty basic but it was free and simple to use. Xbench can run seven tests including a CPU, thread, memory, quartz graphics, OpenGL, user interface, and disk tests. Each category has a number of subtests but Xbench generates a cumulative score for each category based on the results of each subtest.

With a nod to my statistics training, I decided to run all seven tests five times before and after the upgrade. Doing so allowed me to statistically prove any increase (or decrease!) in my computer's performance. So without further adieu, here are the statistically significant test results:

Thread test: -8.1% (p=0.06)
OpenGL test: 1.1% (p=0.04)
UI test: 5.1% (p=0.03)
Disk test: 122.1% (p<1e-3)

According to Xbench, the greatest performance increase was going to the faster spindle hard drive. The other tests only showed a minor blip in performance increase or decrease post-upgrade. But beyond the numbers, I have to say my machine 'feels' a lot quicker. Programs and menus all respond quicker. Finder is more responsive. Matlab seems to be more stable, etc. Anyways, for the price the performance upgrade can't be beat. Especially when you compare what I paid to what Apple charges for just the same memory upgrade - $200! I did the hard drive and memory upgrade for much less than that.

Draft day senarios for the Bucs

2009-04-24T10:49:00.004-05:00

A lot has been made of what the Bucs might do with the 19th pick. After signing Leftwich, I am almost positive they are going DE - Either Larry English (who I don't really like) or Michael Johnson. Jerria Perry, DT, is also an option. But from what I hear, his abilities are best suited for a Tampa-2 defense which, unfortunately, is being dismantled by Bates.

Beyond the obvious, I really hope the Bucs consider trading out of the 19th spot in an effort to pick up a few extra picks in later rounds. Unless there is a run on D-linemen, many top prospects Tampa is targeting should be available at the end of the 1st round. Plus due to the Winslow trade, Tampa lost its 2nd round pick - a very important pick when you are trying to ~~"rebuild"~~ "take the team in a new direction". With that, here are Tampa's potential trading partners. Note that I didn't just pull these out of thin air. I considered all teams with the 20-32nd picks who also had multiple 2nd or 3rd round picks. I also consulted a Trade Value Chart (TVC) NFL teams are reported to use to make sure these are realistic.

1. Tampa trades 1st (19th) and 3rd (81st) round picks for New York Giants 1st (29th), 2nd (60th), and 3rd (91st) round picks.

Motivation for NYG: The Giants are really a pretty solid team without too many needs to address in this draft... EXCEPT for WR. I think its pretty well covered how important Buress was for Manning and the Giants success. With the latest stories that deals for Boldin and Edwards to the Giants have broken down, they should be looking to take a WR in round 1. But chances that a top prospect falls to them at 29 is pretty slim. On the other hand, at 19, a top receiver could be available.

Bucs take: Dropping 10 spots in the first round is a BIG jump in talent available. But passing up a pickup of a 2nd pick is hard to do.

Overall: This is a VERY situational trade. Only way I think this happens is if both a run on the top D-lineman happens AND a few WR fall to the Bucs. Bucs would then have little need of the 19th pick and could really use a 2nd round pick to address the MANY needs they have.

2. Tampa trades 1st (19th) round pick for New England's 1st (23rd) and 3rd (97th) round picks.

Motivation for NE: NE is one of those teams that just seems to nail the draft year in an year out. This year looks the be another repeat of past performances. With 11 picks (6 in the first 3 rounds!!) its almost impossible for NE to not come out a winner again. But the team does have a few needs including RB and LB. If one of the top RB prospects is available to Tampa at 19, look for them to ring up Belichick.

Bucs take: Drop 4 picks for an extra 3rd round pick? YES! Probably still get the players you were going to pick at 19? YES!

Overall: This is a pretty low risk proposition for the Bucs. Anyone they are targeting at 19 is probably going to still be on the board at 23. In exchange they get another 3rd pick to address the needs at CB or WR.

3. Tampa trades 1st (19th) round pick for Miami's 1st (25th) and 3rd (87th) round picks.

Motivation for MIA: To be perfectly honest, I am not up on Miami's needs. But if there are any poker player's in Tampa's front office, you would have to believe they would try and play NE against Miami (being division rivals) to see if they could get Miami to bite on a pick trade. If the needs of Miami and NE align (which I want to say they do), Tampa could find itself with the Tuna in one ear and Belichick in the other.

Bucs take: This is almost an identical trade at the NE one above. Instead they drop 6 spots to the 25th pick but in exchange they get a 3rd round pick 10 spots higher than they would have from NE.

Overall: I actually like this trade a little more than the NE trade. There's a little more risk that the players they are targeting could be gone only 6 picks later. But then with only 8 overall picks (and only 2 of those picks in the first three rounds!), I think the Bucs MUST roll the dice this year.

Still some diamonds in the rough..

2009-03-24T10:18:00.001-05:00

News on the free-agent front is all but the occasional chirp now. In fact I always love it when I hear, "Calm down! Free agency goes on for months!" Well actually, no. Noteworthy signings occur 48-36 hours after the start and during the first 15 or so picks of the NFL Draft. That's about it.

Anyways, I digress. I wanted to point out that there are still a few gems to be had by some lucky teams. At this point only those teams with tons of cash laying around can get in on the mix - oh wait, that's the Buccaneers! Considering the team needs, here are some of the best still available:

Quarterback

Byron Leftwich

Linebacker

Ryan Nece
Angelo Crowell***
Nate Webster

Wide receiver

Torry Holt
Brandon Lloyd
Lance Moore (Restricted free agent)
Jerry Porter
Reggie Williams

I am still not completely conviced with McCown and Leftwich has shown flashes of brilliance when he filled in for Roethlisberger this past year. But like garlic pasta, you just can't shake that nasty taste left from Leftwich's career at Jacksonville.

As for the linebackers, two of those names should be very familiar to Bucs fans. Nece probably has too many grey hairs for management to give him another look. But both him and Webster have continued to do pretty well since they left the Bucs. But Crowell is VERY intriguing. He was one of Buffalo's best linebackers. But in 2008 he suffered a season-ending injury and sat out the whole season. He might be a little bit of a project but I am betting he is this years Antonio Bryant.

Speaking of Antonio Bryant... yes the addition of the "F****NG SOLDIER" (aka Kellen Winslow) was nice if not completely unexpected. If he stays healthy he could definitely be a 800-1,000 yard receiver. Then, of course, their is Bryant, and then? Clayton? Is this the year Clayton returns to his rookie-year performance? Management seems to think so but I am not holding my breath (done that too many seasons in a row already). And we got rid of Ike "Mr. Third-Down" Hilliard. So then who is our #2 or #3 receiver? Parris Warren? Maurice Stovall? Dexter Jackson?... Sure, one of those guys might step-up but why not answer all these questions and sign a legitamate #2 receiver. All those listed would be great additions of depth to our team. And players like Holt and Williams could even give Bryant a run for his money at the #1 spot. To be honest, I think Reggie Williams would be a steal. He's had a rough time at Jacksonville the past few years but honestly, he is a tall, physical receiver with great hands.

*** UPDATE *** So I assumed information on NFL.com was up-to-the-minute stuff. Turns out both me and the web-merchants at NFL.com completely missed the signing of Angelo Crowell by the Bucs last week. First, HELL YEA! Way to go Bucs on the signing. Mark this down, Crowell will be the Bucs #1 LB. And second, if there's a lesson in this, its that ESPN.com is still the "world-wide leader in sports".

Hanging with my little girl

2009-03-13T12:52:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I was down in Tampa taking care of the little one. Mom was out in Las Vegas catching up on some much needed R&R with her girlfriends. But little Jules and I had a lot of fun. Probably the highlight of the weekend, for her and me, was our trip to the Tampa Aquarium! We actually were invited to go with Ben and his little girl, Ella, and his wife. Jules loved every minute we were in there. She was litterally sitting on the edge of her stoller, holding herself there, and looked at everything that moved. Here's some pics from the trip:

Taking a break in front of the shark tank.

Admiring a smaller tank. You can barely see her, but she's on my chest in the Bjorn.

Loving every minute of it.

Watching the big kids play in an outdoor water park before we left.

There was a lot we didn't get too, like the Penguins exhibit! But that just means we need to go back! By the way, big thanks to Dana for sending me her pics as well.

"And with the 19th pick in the 2009 NFL Draft, the Tampa selects ..."

2009-03-12T12:39:00.003-05:00

My previous rant on mock drafts notwithstanding, I couldn’t resist a quick survey of what the Internet and NFL expert community thought the Bucs were going to do with their 1st round pick. I tried to limit my survey to predictions which were at least updated after the start of the FA period. Here's the results:

QB, Josh Freeman (Mel Kiper, espn.com and walterfootball.com)
QB, Mark Sanchez (Randall Weida, fftoolbox.com)
RB, Knowshon Moreno (nfldraftdog.com)
DT, B.J. Raji (nfldraftsite.com)
DT, Evander Hood (Pat Kirwan, nfl.com)
DT, Peria Jerry (draftking.com)
DE, Larry English (Justin Pawlowski, 620 WDAE)

No too much consensus here in the actual names. But, if you step back and look at just the positions people predict we pick then its a little clearer - three votes for QB and three for DT and four for any kind of D-lineman. This lines up pretty well with the general consensus on the Bucs needs at the moment.

Of the picks I believe in the most, I'd have to go with Kiper, Kirwan, and Pawlowski. If you can get past Kiper's strangely perfect head of hair, you have to admit that his only purpose in life is the NFL draft. Also I have heard that Kirwan knows his stuff. Finally there's Pawlowski - a local Tampa sports guy who probably has a better feeling for the team needs then the average Internet pundit.

If I was running the show at One Buc Place, I’d take Freeman and Sanchez in that order if they fell to the Bucs. After Freeman and Sanchez the drop-off in skill at the QB position is astounding. So addressing the d-line would probably be were I would turn to next if neither of them were available.

Mock drafts - a glorious waste of time

2009-03-12T12:31:00.001-05:00

Well the free agency is rolling on and seems like things have quieted down a bit. But you'd be a fool to think a few more surprises aren't in store before April 25th. Here's my not-so-original predictions: Cutler and Boldin will both have new homes before the draft.

Pre-draft rumors aside, what I find intriguing each year is the almost fanatical research and speculation that goes into mock NFL drafts. Just google "2009 NFL mock draft" and you get at least 25 or more unique sets of predictions. Some even try to predict picks into the 2nd, 3rd and even 4th rounds! I can't imagine a bigger waste of time. Factors like team trades, runs on a position, or just out-right surprise picks make these predictions worthless usually after the first half of the first round - if not before that.

Recently though I have been encouraged by few intrepid “NFL experts” who have explored other analysis formats. Even though he has his own mock draft (after all, you aren't a true NFL pundit with out one), Justin Pawlowski has his "Blitz Board" which simply places NFL hopefuls into a tiered ranking. Tiered ranking is old-hat in the fantasy football world, but, surprisingly, this year was the first I have seen it pop-up in relation to the real NFL draft. I think tiered lists combined with some insight into what your team "needs" is much more useful and thought provoking than a set of predictions with a shelf-life tied to what direction the Lions decide to head in.

If you absolutely *must* have some sort of list relating a player name to a pick number, you are almost forced to embrace some sort of probabilistic framework. Such a framework could take into account several "expert" opinions. For instance, the general consensus is that the Lions will pick Stafford. If not, then the Rams might take a shot at him. Arron Rodgers and Brady Quinn aside, the point is there is not a very good chance that he makes it out of the top 5. So for each player the "list" would be a probability of each player's availabilty at your team's pick. For Stafford, maybe something like:

Detroit: Stafford (100%)
St. Louis: Stafford (20%)
Kansas City: Stafford (1%)
Seattle: Stafford (1%)
Cleveland: Stafford (1%)
....

In the fantasy football world, a popular pre-draft player metric is their average draft position or ADP. Internet sites hold tens or hundreds of mock drafts. From this they compute the average position player X is being taken. This availability probability simply takes the idea of ADP a step further and could tell you the chances your team has to land Player X at Pick #Y. But who knows.. maybe analysis like this already exists within the secret bunkers of a few NFL clubs.

Disappoing 1st day for the Bucs and my Theory

2009-02-28T10:47:00.003-05:00

Well the first day of the 2009 NFL Free-Agency is in the books. And I have to say I am pretty disappointed in the Bucs. Going into it not only did we have one of the largest pots of money with which to buy new players, but also we had just cut a lot of fan-favorite players. Unfortunately we ended the first day by coming in second in a bidding war for Haynesworth and the got snuffed by Vilma for a return to the Saints. I have heard some fans blame this on stingy owners or even possibly that the owners are some sort of financial trouble. But this theory is kind of ridiculous. Stingy they may be, but they definitely aren't hurting financially. While that's what the common American is doing right now, you got to remember that people like the Glazers are doing just fine. Unless their squad of accountant managers has been on hiatus in Hawaii for the last year, their assests are in no danger of disappearing.. unless, of course, the current administration ~~confiscates~~ taxes them, but that is all together another post.

No, I think what we have here is really a perfect storm of circumstances,

1. New GM and new head coach. For all the talk of how our new facilities are going to lure the best players to Tampa, I think what it really comes down to is personal relationships. The NFL is really just a bunch of tree-houses and boys-clubs. Morris is tight with players on this team but outside of Tampa, no one really knows him. For example, look at Tomlin when he became HC. In his first year, they lost a lot more than they gained. The only person they were able to lure to Pittsburgh was Mahan but in-turn lost Porter. What about Bart Scott becoming a Jet? Big reason is that he's getting reunited with a former coach. Look at who Gruden usually recruited. Hell, we almost exclusively filled the Bucs ranks from Oakland FAs.

2. Lack of experience in the front office or just plain poor planning. According to the PewterReport.com, Bucs FO sounds like they had some serious tunnel vision.

"Albert Haynesworth, who agreed to a seven-year, $100 million contract with the Redskins this morning, consumed a great deal of their time.

Although neither Dominik nor Morris confirmed or denied this, PewterReport.com believes this to be true because in its contact with dozens of agents around the NFL, only a few of them have confirmed that the Bucs have contacted them regarding one or more of their clients. Many of the agents have told PewterReport.com that they have not heard from the Bucs yet."

Again, I don't know if this is lack of experience or just poor planning. But who puts all their eggs in one basket. Really? I think its well-documented by many "experts" that the need positions for this team were DT, LB, QB, and then possibly CB and RB (Not necessarily in that order). And the only thing we walk away with is a top-5 TE?? Great, I love upgrades no matter where they are. And I know the counter argument... "Just hold on, we are only 1 day in to the FA." True, but after the first day, most teams are just looking to add depth since most of the marquee players are off the board. For instance, all the "3d-down" LB who could have really strengthened that position for us, are now all spoken for (Well Ray-Ray is still out there but 1) If we cut Brooks because of "Youth" we aren't taking Ray-Ray and 2) he's all but locked into Baltimore with Scott now gone).

The night before FA...

2009-02-26T18:04:00.000-05:00

Now that we have more money than Jesus heading into the FA market tonight, here is who I would target and spend all this gobs of money on. First the Must-Address positions,

Linebacker (Starters returning from last year. Black, Ruud, Hayward, Hayes) - After the massacre yesterday, 2-3 of the following 6 would be absolutely necessary:

Bart Scott, Ravens - Obvious starter.
Jonathan Vilma, Saints - Obvious starter. We NEED to get either Scott or Vilma. Neither is not an option in my mind.
Angelo Crowell - A true gem/project. Spent all last year with knee injury. Could be one of the best at his position. Could use him to fill the ranks and possibly start one day.
Michael Boley - Another gem/project to fill the ranks.
Tyjuan Hagler - Would work well in a Tampa-2 or as a coverage LB. Again though, get him to fill the ranks.
Kevin Burnett, Cowboys - Hasn't lived up to his 2nd round pick status. Little more than a project.

Wide receiver (Starters returning from last year: Bryant, Stovall, Clayton) - Bryant isn't enough. After losing Mr. 3rd-Down (Hilliard), someone like TJ would be awesome. But with our new OC coming from the college ranks I am betting we go for a speedy FA to match Luke "I-am-your-father" McCown's strong arm.

Nate Washington, WR, Steelers - Instant #2 WR. Could be awesome with a big arm QB like McCown.
Devery Henderson, WR, Saints - Also an instant #2 WR. Either Washington or Henderson would be great with McCown. Adding either of these speedy receivers, plus a big arm QB, plus a college OC all might be enough to get Barnett excited enough to watch Buc-ball again.
T.J. Houshmandzadeh, WR, Bengals. - Not really a need. Bryant is now our possession receiver. But getting TJ plus one of the guys above would be p-h-e-n-o-m-i-n-a-l.
Laveranues Coles, WR - Only if we don't get TJ (most likely). Nice dependable WR. Need someone like him after losing Hilliard.
Jabar Gaffney,WR - Iffy #2, solid #3 receiver.
Ronald Curry, WR - Has a lot of talent. Could be the next Bryant if he found the right system/home.

Quarterback (Starters returning from last year: McCown, Greise, Johnson) - Also a need. But really there's no one worth getting. Obviously we can't have anyone older than our head coach (everyone cut the other day was older than him except for June). Which leaves us with people like, Leftwich, Sexy-Rexy, and Losman. I'd rather take my chances with a 2nd round QB in the draft plus McCown.

Cornerback (Starters returning from last year: Barber, Buchanon*, Talib, Mack) - Not as urgent a position as the ones above. But with Barber now the elder statesman on defense and if Buchanon doesn't resign, this
position gets right up there with LB. So getting some fresh faces in here would be appropriate at this point... and there's some good ones out there.

Bryant McFadden, Steelers - Best CB on the market. Aggressive and good in zone coverage. Somewhat of a project player and would probably do well to learn under Barber's tutelage while he's still around.
Ronald Bartell, Rams - A big, physical corner. Think Talib.
DeAngelo Hall, Falcons - We all know who he is. Could be nasty goodonce again.
Keiwan Ratliff, Ron Bartell - Either one would help fill out the ranks.

In any other year, I would stop here. But since the Bucs can afford to hemorrhage money this year, why not go out and spend it on some big names or positions we could also use some help in.

Albert Haynesworth, DT, Titans - No brainer. Best defensive player out there. Would make Gaines AWESOME. Bucs just need to man-up, grow a pair, and go toe-to-toe against the 'Skins in a bidding war for him.
Khalif Barnes, OT, Jaguars - Arguably the best LT in the market. We just (today) resigned Penn to a contract. And our line is already pretty stout. But we could always use the added depth.
Derrick Ward, RB, NY Giants - He doesn't really replace what Dunn was in abilities. But with Caddy's health problems, he would bring a lot of stability to the position. I would love it if Chris Wells fell to us in the draft, but that, as they say, is another post.

Eclipse lovefest

2008-08-04T12:31:00.003-05:00

I have been using Eclipse for about four weeks and I think I have fallen in love with IDE's again. When I first started programming, like many of my generation, I began with Visual Studio. Actually I think it was Visual Studio 6.0 that I started with. As my programming expertise grew, I gravitated away from Windows and its defacto IDE to Linux and simple text editors. When my work forced me back to Windows, I discovered Notepad++. Combined with CMake, I have been using that to program in Windows. But now I have come full circle and been using Eclipse. Its fantastic, still a little buggy at times, but for the most part its rock solid. Here are the features I love:

Its integration with SVN is flawless. Its a snap to add/remove/rename files or folders.
Its refactoring capability. Really beats Find/Replace!
After living in the text editor world for so long, I have grown to do without code completion. While Eclipse has occasionally run out of memory when adding a new project, all in all its code completion mechanism is pretty good. Beats the pants off what VS 2005 was offering (I actually gave up on VS 2005 because its code completion was unbelievably slow).
Its cross platform! Whether I am on my Mac, at work on my XP machine, or on one of our Debian boxes, it works flawlessly on all of them!
Mylyn... its a wonderful plugin and very sci-fi. Check out the Google Talk on it. I couldn't do it justice here.

The only minor drawback is that on Windows, Eclipse doesn't automatically find and use the Visual Studio build utilities (as a similar cross platform IDE's like Codeblocks does). Actually it probably can, I just might need to find the right plugin!

Here she is!

2008-07-09T06:50:00.001-05:00

Took me long enough to get this posted for everyone to see, but here she is!

BO comes out against free speech!

2008-06-30T09:13:00.004-05:00

I wanted to avoid getting political on this blog and while I am not going to come out in support of one candidate or the other, I just can't let this comment from B.O. slide. When recently asked about the D.C. gun law case, he had this to say:

As a general principle, I believe that the Constitution confers an individual right to bear arms. But just because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right, in the same way that we have a right to private property but local governments can establish zoning ordinances that determine how you can use it.

Give me the liberty to modify this quote a bit to show you my point:

As a general principle, I believe that the Constitution confers an individual right to free speech and freedom to assemble. But just because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right, in the same way that we have a right to private property but local governments can establish zoning ordinances that determine how you can use it.

Sounds a bit ridiculous right? Even the mere utterance of something like that would turn him into an immediate political outcast. However, why his original quote did not produce even a blip on the media radar is beyond me. Well it isn't but still I thought someone might pick up on it. Where the Ronulans at??

By the way BO, eminent domain (5th amendment) and free speech and the right to bear arms (1st and 2nd amendments) are not comparable. The former simply states citizens must be compensated when private land is seized for public use. The latter, however, are concessions of power and control from the government to it citizens.

While I am on my soap box, check out the "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" petition over at AmericanSolutions.com. Sign it!

A Bygone Era..

2008-06-25T08:39:00.008-05:00

I started messing around with computers, in earnest, when I was about 10-11 years old. Sure we had an Apple IIe when I was real young, and while I played a few games on it, it never really captivated me. At the time I was too enthralled with Donkey Kong and my Atari I guess, but that is another post.

Actually a good friend of mine introduced me to the next generation of personal computers. His dad was a part-time programmer and he picked up what he could by watching him work. While we mostly played computer games (he favored Ultima VII while I was hooked on Civilization), the real excitement was the underground world of Bulletin Board Systems or BBSes. Well it wasn't underground - in fact it was really just the precursor to the modern internet. But we liked to imagine we were privy to some unspoken secret society. Here's how it worked. On your computer, you'd use a program to dial up another machine. It would answer and then you'd be presented with a login screen. Once you entered your credentials, you'd be free to use whatever applications the "board" provided - this could be a simple form of email (you could leave messages for other users to get when they logged in), forums (public version of email), games, files to download, etc.

As a collection, BBSes has a lot of the functionality of its eventual successor (the Internet), but it had a totally different feel. Most were totally legit - some even run by cities or local governments. But then there were the really cool ones. Ones, which when you first connected, presented you with some ANSI art like what's displayed on the left. Go ahead, click on that. Take a look at how that is made!

In the modern era of Google and Wikipedia, its really hard to describe the culture surrounding BBSes. First of all, you needed a phone number (not a web address) to access one. So unless you wanted to run up a huge phone bill, you were confined to your local area code. Secondly, discovering new boards was not quick trip to Google. Some operators advertised their board on other boards, but more likely we would find out about one through word-of-mouth. This made belonging to a board a much more personal affair. There's a strong analogy here to the "mom-and-pop" stores before the era of the big department stores.

We had a lot of fun exploring the services our local boards had to offer. But we couldn't sit on the sidelines for long. So when my parents upgraded to a fancy 486 machine, my friend and I decided to use the old 386 to setup our own BBS. He was in charge of the ANSI artwork and some programming while I struggled to keep the phone line open and the machine running. We advertised our new board where ever we could. Sure enough, after a few days, some calls started to trickle in. Luckily, long before we setup the board, my parents had grown very tired of their four children hogging the main phone line and had a second one installed just for us kids. This second line is what I had been using for all my outbound calls. Now it served as a private line for our board. And this was a good thing because withing a few weeks our little board was getting something like 20-30 calls a day. And we had almost 100 registered users. That was nothing compared to the big boards but at 13 years old we felt really proud of our little creation.

Like all great things, our humble little board meet its demise. During a typical Florida summer storm, my house was hit by lightning and the motherboard and harddrive of our little 386 was fried. I would kill to have the ANSI artwork we made or play TradeWars one more time. (I'd even settle to remember what we called our board!) Actually TradeWars survived and can be played online with telnet - no modem required!! I warn you though! Don't start - you will become addicted!

Sysop out!

Fan Fest 2008!

2008-06-16T09:21:00.002-05:00

I was in Tampa this weekend and decided to stop by my first Buccaneer Fan Fest. Since I literally decided to embark on this adventure 20 minutes before the official start time of the event, I knew I wouldn't be in line for any autographs. However I thought it would be cool to walk around the stadium and hopefully get a glance at some of the players. Well I wasn't too disappointed..

Above was this view walking into the stadium. All those people down there are in a line for something! Lots of different things to do down on the field including one attraction that I wish I would have gotten in line for. They had a green screen set up to take people's pictures. Then they would super-impose you into some famous in-game Buccaneers photograph.

Walking on the field I started thinking about the tremendous 62 yard field goal by Matt Bryant. I marched out to what I thought was the 50 yard line and then, through the crowds, tried to count off 12 yards. I actually may have been 10 yards off but regardless, that is one helluva kick.

Now I was way late to pick up a voucher which would have allowed me access to the more famous players. However, they did setup a really long table for the lower tiered guys here. But as you can see in the picture that line goes on FOREVER. I pondered it for a minute though.

Finally they also had a table setup for Buccaneer alumni. Alstott was behind another voucher area, unfortunately, but I did recognize a few at the table like Mark Royals.

Standing at the threshold of another summer..

2008-04-22T16:27:00.003-05:00

Summer is almost upon us again. For the working professionals its just another time of year. But for those of us still ~~hiding in~~ pursuing our higher degrees its something of a breath of fresh air. While its coming does not herald the beginning of that endless holiday from our past, it does, at least in Gainesville, signal a much anticipated max exodus. Like locust moving on from what was once a endless sea of green wheat fields, droves of undergraduate students will be heading somewhere, anywhere but here.

Its really an amazing thing to witness. Wait times for a table at a local restaurant on weekend night will plummet from 1-2 hours to 15 minutes. And I'm talking about places like Chili's or TGI Fridays. Theaters will again have enough parking spots for all its patrons. And traffic (yes we even have traffic in Gainesville) will almost be non-existent. Top all this off no classes to worry about (and if you can ignore the oppressive heat), Summer in Gainesville is actually a really great environment to get a lot of research work done.

New Yamo on the way!

2008-03-18T08:35:00.004-05:00

This is terribly old news at this point and apologize if any of my vast audience is finding this out for the first time like this.. but I am going to be a Dad in August! That is probably the strangest thing I have ever heard myself say let alone type. Scary and exciting all at the same time. And until recently it really hasn't seemed all that real. Sure we have had doctor's visits - even heard the heart beat (which made my heart stop!). But now Christine is starting to show - albeit just barely. I think its terribly cute but the weight gain is stressing her out. However when you are as small as she is, even one pound is noticeable.

Christine has been running a "baby blog" here and been doing a much better job than I at keeping it current. Suddenly my blog has taken on a new meaning... I mean I would love if I could go and read my father's blog - if they had such a thing when I was a newborn. The concept to me is fascinating. If nothing else it could be a voice from the past that my child can point to and laugh, "Dad you were such a dork." Music to my ears...

Next week we *might* be finding out the baby's sex. I say "might" because it is completely dependent on Christine's mood at the time of the sonogram. Until recently she was committed to waiting until the birth to be surprised. But lately she seems to be receptive to getting the news at the sonorgram (what I want to do!). The current compromise is to have the technician write the sex on a card, place it in an envelope, and then open that envelope on my birthday (April 9th - as if I had to tell you all). In any event, I will keep you all posted!

Almost 4 months later...

2008-01-29T22:45:00.000-05:00

Yea so far too much time has passed since my last post. No excuses, but I have been very busy... research, life, etc. But I promise to post some new content soon. I've got lots to talk about!

One small step for man..

2007-10-30T12:23:00.001-05:00

This is a test post from my phone!

Saying goodbye to Rice and others

2007-07-27T12:53:00.000-05:00

We hate to talk about it, but the truth is that every NFL fan eventually learns to not become too attached to any one player. In this modern era of free agency, business decisions all too often dominate team transactions. Despite this common knowledge, all of us, like a B-rated movie star in a cheap horror flick, blissfully ignore the crazed axe-wielding G.M.’s lurking in the dark hallways of off-season war rooms across the NFL.

This week we are saying goodbye to another leader and fan favorite with Rice. As these players move on to other teams, we are left like a dumped girl on prom night trying to pick up the pieces. Many turn to anger, a few rationalize the decision with logical arguments. But as time passes, however, new heroes and fan favorites emerge and we all move on.

But under the surface, do we ever really? All the time spent in the stadium or glued to a TV, all the emotion we vest into every season, game, and play, all the trust we place in our team's leaders in the hope that they will once again lead us to the promise land, how could we? Instead, to justify our emotional investment, we hope that, like us, the players view their career defined by the time spent in our home at RJ. We hope that our former heroes enjoyed playing here just as much as we enjoyed watching them. Like that girl on prom night, this at least offers some closure. Ultimately, complete vindication comes in the form of those oft ridiculed one-day contracts that I believe many fans secretly cherish.

In 2002, it was impossible to believe that Lynch or Sapp, could ever play for another team, yet in 2003 the unthinkable happened. For me, Lynch was an unreplaceable leader and possibly one of the best players the league has ever seen at his position. And say what you will about Sapp, but he had skills and added an undeniable swagger and personality to an already prolific defense. Saying good bye to them was tough (we definitely have not prospered without them). Then the other day I ran across the videos at the America's Game website. Those who have the NFL network, I am sure probably already know about the associated TV program. They have about 18 short videos, all interviews with Lynch, Sapp, or Gruden reminiscing on our glorious 2002 season. Some are kind of humorous, others sad - particularly the video on the departure of Sapp and Lynch. But in it, especially from Lynch, I was reminded of the nod he gave us fans as he departed One Buc Place – all I could do was smile.

The players come and go, but what will always remain consistent is my support for my team - the Bucs. I look forward to every new season with new players - rookies and veterans alike. I revel in the clean slate we start with and wonder about the possibilities. Yet, like everyone I take a moment to consider those fan favorites who have come and gone, and can only hope that they enjoyed their time here as much as I enjoyed cheering for them.

2007-07-21T12:20:00.001-05:00

My first mobile bloggin' post. Stay tuned because I promise to send something more interesting next time.

Holy time warp batman...

2007-07-14T22:23:00.000-05:00

Has it really been this long since I last posted! In this order, sparged (slowest ever!), brought to boil, pizza came, ate pizza, noticed beer was boiling out of the corner of my eye, noticed it was also now raining outside, added starter hops, got wet, smelled the sweetness of the hops, got wet some more, and now inside waiting for the dry hops to go in.

Quote of the night

2007-07-14T20:03:00.000-05:00

"Taddy is like a warm hug" - F. Casper

Amazing description for a beer like this one. He's referring to Taddy Porter. If you haven't had the pleasure, go one and get yourself one.

10 minutes until we start heating water for the sparge. By they way, my mash color was fluorescent yellow... that's right whole new direction for me.

Sach rest started

2007-07-14T19:29:00.000-05:00

Sitting here to figure out how we are going to sparge two brews at the same time... details, details. Mine just started its sach rest at 152oF and I am going to let it run 45 min. I say that now but it will most likely be 1.5 hours before I start the sparge.

Disaster averted..

2007-07-14T19:27:00.000-05:00

Well there was almost a disaster with Fritz's protein rest but we might have him back on track.

So total time for my pre-protein rest was 40 minutes at 112oF. Now I have been at a protein rest for 36 minutes and waiting for my water to boil to get me to the promise land.

You know.. this always ends up happening. We miss the step-up temps because we never start heating water until its too late. I've gotta get some sort of automatic temperature control system in this cooler. For christ' sake, I'm suppose to be a controls engineer.

TADDY TIME!

The vitals

2007-07-14T18:29:00.000-05:00

I forgot the numbers.. mine was 111oF and Fritz's was 104oF for the protein rest. Right now we are approaching 36min for the rest.

Real-time beer bloggin'

2007-07-14T18:02:00.001-05:00

A few months ago I was impressed by the pseudo real-time blog done by some reporter at ESPN during the Florida/Ohio State football championship. No, no, no.. I wasn't sitting at my laptop mashing the refresh button during the game, but while basking in the post-game coverage, I came across it. I thought it was such a neat idea that I knew I had to give it a try during some personal 4-hourish event.

So here I am, during a sports drought (yes, that's right.. baseball is no longer the American past-time), 15 minutes into a protein rest of a double brew with the mad-hatter (aka the Commordore). Double brew.. man what was I thinking.

I did it.. now officially a PhD candidate!

2007-05-03T11:56:00.000-05:00

Today at 12p, I was officially declared a PhD candidate. In other words I just past my oral examination.

No time to celebrate right now though because I am off to a T.A. meeting to turn in my grades. But I will post more later, as well as catch up on my beer stories.

Computer woes

2007-04-23T23:31:00.000-05:00

I really, really want a new computer. Anyone got a spare, I dunno, $1800 laying around?

To keep my desires in check, I am going to post my dream lineup here and update it once a month or so. Here is what I have spec'ed out so far:

Intel 975X ATX motherboard - $209.00
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66 GHz, 4 Mb cache) - $515.00
Lian Li PC-61 black aluminum mid tower - $89.99
Seagate Barracuda 320Gb hard drive, 3Gb/s - $89.99
Lite-on 20x DVD+/-R DVD Burner (w/ LightScribe Tech) - $35.99
BFG GeForce 8600 GTS, 256 Mb - $219.99
Patriot eXtreme 2Gb memory - $175.99
Enermax Liberty 500W power supply - $109.99
ViewSonic X series, 22" 5ms DVI widescreen - $379.99
Hauppauge WinTv HVR-1600 - $120.00
Arctic cooling Freezer CPU cooler - $59.99

Total (all prices from NewEgg.com): $2012.90 (w/ taxes and shipping)

Ok, ok, so I am a tad over $1800 right now, but I can probably pinch a little on a few of the components to get it back down. Speaking of pinching pennies, I could really save a lot by going all AMD - but who wants to go with a loser?

But let me put this in perspective - my current timetable for purchasing this machine is somewhere out in December of '07. By then 16-cores will probably be on the market, AMD may be back in flavor, and nVidia 8 series will probably be two generations older.

Exploding oats, Part I

2007-04-23T19:47:00.000-05:00

So my first foray into all-grain brewing was a complete disaster. Here's the complete story, with pictures!

the Preamble

After doing some on-line research (gotta love Google), I settled on an oatmeal stout recipe. It sounded good and I certainly don't know enough yet to be criticizing recipes. However, I did what homework I could: Beerecipator.com and ProMash (de facto program for home brewers) both predicted 5.9% alcohol for the amount of grain the recipe called for - well at least they were within 0.1% of each other.

So armed with my new beer recipe and a confident smile, I trotted down to my local home brew store to fill my grain list. Always looking for adivce, I asked they guy what he thought of the recipe and handed over the sheet. He looked at, raised an eyebrow and then proceeded to punch in all the numbers (just as I had done) into what looked like some custom Excel spreadsheet. After doing so, he turned to me, still with raised eyebrow, and asked, "What sort of % alcohol are you shooting for?" I jokingly replied, "As high as I can get it." At least I laughed. There wasn't much reaction from the other side of the counter - still all eyebrows. "No honestly, I was hoping for around 6%." He responded, "Well with 8 lbs of American 2-row (the base grain - for the most part its quantity dictates the amount of sugar available for conversion into alcohol) you are looking at around 3.9-4.0%." What?!? Two independent programs told me 5.9%?! Oh well, I thought. So I had him calculate how much grain he thought I needed (12 lbs instead of 8 lbs!) to hit 6% and just chalked it up to beginner's error. (But remember this for later!)

the Construction

Before I could make my first all-grain, or AG as the insiders call it, I had to make some equipment. Nothing to fancy, just a cooler with a special drainage system otherwise know simply as a mashtun. I found a nice article on the web with a lot of good tips for constructing one, so I pretty much followed it verbatim. Certain tools available in certain shops made most of the construction painless. But, being an engineer, I did fuss over the details in an unhealthy manner. In the end, total build time, using CPVC components (the next gen I will do copper) took me about 8 hours.

So with my new mashtun, a new 6 gallon glass fermenter, a new 7 gallon turkey frier I got for my birthday (thanks Mom!), and 16 lbs of grain I was ready to conquer my first AG beer... or was it the other way around?...

In other news..

2007-04-23T19:45:00.000-05:00

I was recently thinking of moving this blog to Wordpress. It would make my life easier because our lab's internal blog is hosted there right now. But then maybe I won't limit myself to wordpress... maybe I should shop this around...

Catching up on the rabbit

2007-04-23T18:36:00.000-05:00

Its been a few weeks since I last posted - I know I left all my devoted readers (ha!) at the edge of their seat with my final impression of "What the bleep? Down the quantum rabbit hole". But I am finally back! Having survived a beer explosion and back from another adventure in Boca Grand (both posts for later), I am ready to finish my impression of that crazy movie.

My summary
First the basics. As I mentioned before, the movie (or documentary?) is five hours long and split into two DVDs. The format of the film is a collection of interviews with several experts in fields such as physics, medicine, and spirituality. Those interviews are then edited together into shorter segments which have some self-consistency. Finally interspersed among the interviews, is the story of a deaf photographer and her slow, self-realization of the premise of the film.

Except for portions on the "story" of quantum physics (e.g. How does it work? And importantly, what are its odd implications?), the basic premise of the whole film is that at the smallest level, the world is ruled by quantum physics, true statement. But from here they began to disappoint me: consciousness is a quantum process or the result of a quantum process (seemed to be several explanations) therefore by actual quantum principles (such as quantum entanglement) we are all one and all part of the universe - no me or I or even we. Sound familiar? I am not a religious scholar myself, but doesn't this have overtones of many of the Eastern religions?

Anywho, the rest of the film attempts to flesh out the implications of this line of reasoning. For instance, there are interviews with a researcher who hypothesizes that we can effect the outcome of random processes through mental activity. He doesn't go this far but implies that those comic book mental powers we all dreamed of as kids are actually real and can be described by the minds interaction with quantum principles. Then there are some fairly convoluted descriptions of depression, self-image, and addiction. But if you cut through all the high-flying verbiage, the conclusion was that you can effect your life through mental outlook - wow, what a concept! So if you are success orientated, guess what? You are going to be successful. And can you imagine what happens if you are depressed or self-defeating? Honestly, I think a 4th grader can tell you that. (Is this the kind of stuff people pay therapist for? If so, I am in the wrong line of work!)

In five hours of couch time, there was obviously a lot more - way more than I can summarize here, but I think you get the point. However there was one off-the-wall quote from one of the interviewees that I thought was funny, "sex is an invention to allow us to see into the future". Interesting choice of words, but still not sure what he meant.

My conclusions
To be honest, I was really let down by this title. I thought it was going to follow in the footsteps of Greene's wonderful PBS special, but instead it was hijacked by a bunch of pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo. Following a well known template, the proponents of this film started with tried and true scientific theory and then warped, extrapolated, or entirely misinterpreted the implications. This pattern happens all the time. Someone or some group with just enough knowledge to be dangerous but not enough to be an expert, latches on to real concept or shred of evidence and then extrapolates absolutely fanciful theories to support a whole host of other wild hypotheses. Sound like the 9/11 conspiracy theories to you? - it should.

The power to create reality...

2007-04-11T21:21:00.000-05:00

So I am watching "What the bleep: Down the quantum rabbit hole". I rented it from Blockbuster this past weekend and so far have made to the second DVD of three, in other words I am in 2.5 of 5. Yes, I said 5 hours of this movie/documentary/fictionary.

More to come..

Oden wins championship and M.O.P. in same night!!!

2007-04-02T22:27:00.000-05:00

Ha... not really, but if you listened to CBS announcers on a radio, you would have thought this was the headline.

Open source all the way

2007-03-11T22:07:00.000-05:00

I have been using Linux at work for some time now. We use Linux as a programming platform for our robotics research. Unlike the M$ or Apple world, the Linux operating system comes packaged with other open-source programs (such as a windows system, word processor, etc.) from many different distributors. The most popular of these are Redhat, Debian, and Suse. At work, we tried out Debian first - it worked "out-of-the-box" and we liked their package management system. But just recently I decided to reformat my laptop and fully embrace the open-source lifestyle.

Due to my experience with Debian at work, I tried installing it on my home laptop. Now I don't know exactly why, but the experience wasn't really pleasant. Maybe it was this laptop's crappy hardware combined with some minor bugs in Debian's packages. So I went and downloaded openSuse. I was excited to try it out for really one reason - it packaged the latest version of my favorite desktop environment Gnome 2.16. Debian also had Gnome but didn't ship with this latest version. Now that everything is installed, I am so happy I made the change! Here's the things I am loving/loved:

YAST - Suse's installation program and package manager
Gnome's new eye candy - Just like Vista, Gnome can take advantage of a graphics card 3D rendering to do some neat things. But unlike Vista, its doesn't require 10-15 gigs of HD space, 2 gigs or ram, and the latest and greatest graphics card.
Overall much nicer interface than previous Gnome desktops

Highlights of my PhD proposal

2007-02-02T13:45:00.000-05:00

It is fun to post articles about software. People have told me there is a software engineer trapped in this mechanical engineer body - but I digress. I have recently finished a draft of my PhD proposal and here is a current summary. Of course, things are subject to change as I near my final draft. By the way, ignore the we's below - why they are there is another story.

To fight soaring health care costs and simultaneously increase the quality of health care, many researchers are turning to the technologies of robotics and intelligent systems to find solutions. Over the last decade, there has been an explosion of robotic applications in health services. Given the increasing adoption of robotics technology in health care, is there reason for concern? There are in fact two reasons. The first involves the safety associated with autonomous robots. Future systems, will yield more autonomous control to the robotic system. Starting with routine tasks such as suturing, future systems may be capable of completeing full procedures. The concern is that when robots are required to perform autonomous actions in close proximity to humans, serious issues of operator and patient safety arise. The second reason for concern is that all systems are subject to failure. Current systems notify the operator when a component nears the end of it reliable lifetime. However, there are no methods employed in practice which address issues of patient or operator safety if a component was to fail during use.

The objective of this research is to address these concerns through several technical and experimental specific aims. To make robots safer during autonomous operation, we propose to develop an inherently safe, real-time control and planning algorithm based on novel velocity field control algorithms which will avoid collisions with people in the workspace of the robot. We understand that no safeguarding system can ever be perfect, that is, risk free. Therefore we will also apply qualitative and quantitative methods from safety engineering to fully characterize the relative safety of the control and planning algorithms we develop. To make robots more robust to component failure during operation, we are proposing the development of novel fault models and nonlinear estimation methods to detect and quantify/identify unexpected behaviors from the human and robotic system. Finally we will experimentally assess all developed algorithms on a novel, roboticly actuated X-Ray imaging platform being developed in parallel at the University of Florida.

Never paying for software again?

2007-01-26T17:56:00.000-05:00

Here are the applications I use ever minute of every day which replace M$ or commercial software.. all are GPL'ed unless otherwise noted by * which are LPGL or free for non-commercial use:

Inkscape, replaces Freehand (vector graphics)
Lyx, replaces Word
JabRef, replaces EndNote
Thunderbird, replaces Outlook
Firefox, replaces IE
GIMP, replaces Photoshop
Notepad++, replaces notepad.exe
CMake* and Notepad++, replaces Visual Studio
SVN + Google code hosting, replaces M$ Code Safe
SciLab, replaces Matlab
Blender, replaces Maya
Cinelerra, replace Adobe Premiere
Google Calendar, replaces Outlook
Google Reader, replaces any news reader out there
GMail, replaces Hotmail

Programs absent from this list that I am still waiting for are,

1. A decent CAD program. Front runners are FreeCAD (still in alpha) and OpenCascade. I guess Google's Sketchup is also a contender but its not Engineering enough for me.
2. Good simulation software (e.g. FEA). Front runner is Salome but its only available on Linux.
3. A really nice IDE (e.g. Visual Studio). I really do like my CMake and notepad++ combination, but I learned programming through an IDE. CodeBlocks is nearly mature enough but recently it seems they are stuck in some sort of major re-write. Hopefully when they emerge from that it will be a great program to add to my list.

Music tagging software, Part I

2007-01-15T21:13:00.000-05:00

The grant writing is going well enough. But in my past time, I have decided to resurrect my music collection. Long ago, in a rare moment of brilliance, I had backed up my mp3 collection on 15-20 CDs. Since then I have been through multiple computers and hard drives, along the way losing my collection, save my CD backup. Now I have decided to load it back on my current clunker and how disturbing it is! So many songs untagged or missing a field here or there.

Being a perfectionist, I wanted to try and clean it all up. So I hit the net looking for a good tagging program. Certainly, after being out of the mp3 scene for the better part of seven years, there had to be some good software out there... Boy was I wrong.

First, let me say what my requirements were (in order of preference),

1. Automatic lookup of tag information against the various music databases out there.
2. Renaming of file and folders.
3. Add album art to tag if available.

Armed with these requirements, I hit the web and downloaded as many polished looking programs I could find. Here's what I have tried out and my reactions (I must add the caveat that if the program was not free, I based my review entirely on the demo version of the program):

Tag Tuner (version 1.8.0.1036)
Overall this one was a big let down. It had the ability to rename the files and folders based on specified templates, but looking up tag information was absolutely mind numbing. There was no way to specify the root folder of my music collection and have it recursively search the sub-folders, suggesting fixes as it went along. Instead, I was required to navigate to each sub-folder where I could then instruct it to look up by folder (treat all files as belonging to an entire album) or by file (one track at a time). But once I realized I was stuck fixing folder by folder, I gave up and moved on to the next program.

FixTunes (version 2.72)
I defer my review to another. I really don't have much to add. Not too impressed.

Media Monkey (version 2.5.5.980 BETA)
Wow, so many features. Only if Winamp was like this when I was an undergrad! But as far as tagging goes, well that might be another story. First you must learn a few of the keyboard shortcuts. That definitely helps speed things up. And I like the tagging by filename/foldername interface. Best I have seen so far. On the down side, however, Media Monkey relies on Amazon for its online database. Furthermore, doing lookups online doesn't seem to always work right. Its as if the program sometimes freezes when it goes out to Amazon. Or even for relatively simple tracks/albums it comes back with the completely wrong CD.

Picard Tagger (version 0.72)
This one is a clear winner if you can ignore the frequent crashing and non-support for m4a file extensions. Its automatic lookup of tag information is the best I have ever seen. And what is key is that it treats all your files as if they belong to albums. So its always trying to cluster files together, and in my mind this is the best approach I have seen. Its strength behind the scenes is the MusicBrainz online database. Like CDDB's beginnings, MusicBrainz is a community populated database. However, digging deeper it looks like this excellent app, which is so close to perfection, is languishing in an open source development environment. There has not been a new release in several months, but word is a single programmer is re-writing the entire program (moving the GUI to QT apparently). Someone throw this man a bone (or some more coffee)!

Godfather (version 0.71 Beta)
Extremely high learning curve to get started! Definitely best award for most confusing interface! But once you invest about 30 minutes tinkering with it, it may be your best option. It relies on FreeDB for online lookups, which I feel better about than Amazon (It can do Amazon as well if you like, but when in doubt, go open source). And its tagging from filename/folder information looks pretty good. It also supports simple VB script writing to automate repetitive tasks.

Final conclusions: Godfather seems to be the best all-around program. It doesn't excel in any particular category but it definitely doesn't suck in any either. I will probably end up using a combination like Godfather + Media Monkey. But I really wish Picard was more stable!

In the coming weeks I will post my final experiences after I have finished re-tagging my library..

Congradulations OSU fans, Troy Smith gets more accolades!

2007-01-12T17:25:00.000-05:00

Let me know if you all like my latest creation!

We are the champions!

2007-01-09T12:29:00.000-05:00

I can't stand poor losers. Already I am hearing a myriad of excuses from Ohio State fans for their team's abysmal performance. But no worries because I will answer all of them in this post.

Excuse #1: Troy Smith wasn't focused on the game. He ate at too many banquets.
Reply: Note to Tressel: A better offensive strategy would have been to place Troy Smith's Heisman trophy under center. He was a Heisman trophy winner right?...

Excuse #2: The loss of Ted Ginn Jr was too much.
Reply A: Can you tell me what position Ted Ginn Jr plays on a defense that allowed 41 pts?

As I hear more, I will continue to post them here.. stay tuned!

Creative writing for engineers, Part II

2007-01-05T11:07:00.000-05:00

As promised, here is my first contribution:

Somersault

My nails shimmer like the water below.
Uncontrollable and contagious laughter
As their feet leap and bound
On my planks pulled tight like metal springs.
Somersault after endless somersault.
They hurl their bodies into the cool spring water.

Tides ebb and flow underneath
And creatures burrow deep.
Families of birds take refuge in my spaces
From later summer storms
While his mighty horses tumble and play.

Calm returns in the fall, but children no more.
Their bones, like mine, more brittle than before.
I do my best to control the splinters
And moan a bit when the north wind blows.
But we sit in silence
And enjoy the warmth of the eve
As he stables his steeds for the coming night.

The people are now gone,
Nails rusted and my planks as gray as her longing tears.
A few perch on my supports for a rest
During their long trip south.
Their presence warms my columns,
Distracting from the cold water lapping at my feet
Reminding me of a time gone by,
Full of laughter, bouncing children and somersaults.

Creative writing for engineers, Part I

2007-01-05T10:14:00.000-05:00

If you have a friend out there who is an engineer, try out this little experiment for a quick laugh. Ask them to read a poem they have written and then gauge their reaction. It will probably be either a) an insult to deflect your request such as "Poetry is for those liberal arts majors who work at the supermarket", or if they are more introverted b) they will simply turn pale and laugh apprehensively like you just told them to jump off a bridge.

Engineers, who probably had a disposition towards logic before college, are intensively shaped and molded into hammers to attack any problem with logic and reason. We are always looking for that next nail to bash in. However, when presented with a screw (aka poetry or art), you end up with a pretty mangled half-driven in screw as well as a pretty worn out hammer.

As with anything, there are exceptions to the rule. While I don't consider myself any sort of literary genius, I do enjoy dabbling in the arts. I am sure anything I have done would not even make the cut for a Who's Who in Middle School Poetry. Nonetheless, in acts of self-embarrassment I will start posting some of my more creative works.

Fujimofiles online!

2007-01-04T12:02:00.000-05:00

Tired of logic, structure, and research? Check out the Fujimofiles blog run by none other than the Commodore himself. Dabble in acrostic writing experiments, browse his extensive artwork, or strike up a conversation on anything from seamanship to his latest endeavor in beer-making.

Link: Fujimofiles

The blockade is broken!

2007-01-03T15:56:00.000-05:00

Well its a new year, and I have been chugging away at my research proposal. I still have a lot more literature review to accomplish but I get through 5-8 articles a day. Right now I am slugging through artificial potential field (APF) techniques. APF what? Here's a quick description from my proposal:

"Artificial potential field (APF) techniques attempt to address the planning and control problems simultaneously. Obstacles and a goal location are assigned user designed repulsive and attractive potentials, respectively. A virtual control force, normally applied to the manipulator's end-effector, is generated by summing the negative gradient of each potential field. By following the negative gradient of each field, the end-effector will be repulsed from obstacles and attracted towards the goal location. Placed in a discrete control system, the composite potential field can be updated in every control cycle to account for not only static but also dynamic obstacles and yields real-time collision avoidance and regulation behavior. APF methods can be better understood as a subset of impedance control or more generally, force control. Conventional impedance control is a well studied techique for controlling the response a manipulator to an external force normally generated from contact with the environment. APF methods substitute the external forces associated with contact forces for those generated by the virtual potential."

Writer's block

2006-11-14T18:54:00.001-05:00

As promised (but a little late), I am slowly getting back to a regular blogging schedule. Besides pure laziness, the main reason for the lull in postings is really because I have been stuck in PhD writing limbo. The short answer is that I am just not happy with the direction my research proposal is heading. Here is the long-winded story: At this point in my graduate career, I am suppose to be constructing my PhD proposal. It will basically serve as a contract with my advisor and committee by outlining the research that I am going to accomplish in next few years (hopefully less than 2). But a proposal is a big deal - it plants a flag in a problem area around which my future research career will revolve. Well this isn't entirely true, as I am sure there are plenty of PhD's out there who have gone on to new topics or entirely different fields when they finished their dissertation. But nevertheless, it will define my expertise for the short term and I am not so sure I want to be an "expert" in robot control (which is where my current proposal is headed). My real research enjoyment comes from improving people's well being. Like all starry eyed graduate students, I want my research to make a difference in someone's daily life. But unlike 99% of PhD topics out there (take for instance the hardcore math or physics buffs), work in Biomechanics can directly make an impact in someone's life (e.g. new surgical tools or procedures, design of new implants or materials, etc.). The main reason I am so drawn to my current work is because it is a robotics project with a clinical application. Don't get me wrong, we have our share of tough robotics problems to solve. My issue is that I don't think I want my career to be based on solving these problems. Rather I want my career to be based on the final platform we construct which will help to better diagnose and treat people.

Lull in postings...

2006-10-19T09:58:00.001-05:00

Its been about two months since my last post. My apologies. But that just means I have been extremely busy with school/research/life. Actually I have been doing a lot of blogging, only on our lab's internal blog site. I set up a Wordpress blog for researchers in our lab to commit weekly updates of their research. So that one has stolen a lot of the posts that normally would have been destined for this site. However, now that I have made a clear division with research blogging, I am going to devote this space to my other thoughts - musings on topics such as AI, physics, programming, Bucs, etc..

JointTrack sourceforge page up!

2006-08-14T16:32:00.000-05:00

Well today, I pretty much wasted most of it struggling to setup a website for one of our opensource projects. Recently, several labs (mostly in Europe) have expressed interest in collaborating on JointTrack (that opensource project I mentioned). Therefore, I thought a wiki-style website made perfect sense to foster this collaboration. Unfortunately, Sourceforge made installing a wiki package a little difficult.

First, I started out with DocuWiki. However, I quickly discovered that Sourceforge does not (easily) allow writable access by the webserver in the www root directories. Instead, they strongly urge developers to put site content into their MySQL database. Their motive is purely security related, but I really did enjoy the look and feel of DocuWiki.

So, reluctantly, I decided to go with the 1000-pound gorilla, MediaWiki. This is the same wiki-package that powers the immensely popular Wikipedia and related endeavors. As much as I love Wikipedia, I am really not a fan of its structure. I guess it works for such a large project like Wikipedia, but it all is overkill for our project. Nevertheless, I went ahead with the install which did not go very smoothly. Turns out there is a 2-year old bug with MySQL that gave me (and looks like hundreds of others) the same headache during install. Eventually I got it all figured out and now the site is up and running! There isn't much there yet, but here is what I have to show for ~5hrs of work!

JointTrack website

First pre-season Bucs game today

2006-08-11T11:25:00.000-05:00

I am heading down to Tampa tonight for the Bucs first pre-season game. After going to one of their practices in Orlando, I have been dying to see them in a more game-like setting.

But on the research front, some intersting things have been happening. I will post more about them on Monday.

Bucs looking great!

2006-08-07T21:38:00.000-05:00

So I took a last minute trip with a buddy this weekend down to Orlando to catch the Buc's Sunday morning practice. All I have to say is wow! The offense looked great. Simms was sharp, hitting his recievers in stride and airing out a few deep balls that were right on target.

Clayton also stood out. He was running good clean routes and had the softest hands. The other recievers look great as well, but Boston wasn't there.

Unfortunately the secondary (except for Barber), looked a little too relaxed in coverage - a sentiment shared by Gruden as well. But all in all, it looks like they are on track to better than many of the "experts" are predicting. At least thats my opinion.

Still playing in the tree

2006-08-04T15:57:00.000-05:00

Well the quest continues to determine what I am doing wrong with this RRT algorithm. Today I tried a couple of new things out, none of which seem to fix anything. The primary change I made today was to remove the optimization method the algorithm uses to drive the robot to the sampled state. I replaced it with a stochastic method - I first generate a normal distribution of random control inputs with a mean that is about the torque required to keep the robot in its current pose (essentially the torque required to fight gravity). Then from this sampled set of control inputs, I determine which one moves the robot closest to the sampled state. I also played a bit with how I actually measure the distance between two states. I have currently settled on the following for now:

dist = w * || q1 - q2 || + (1 - w) * || u1 - u2 ||

qi - joint angles
ui - joint velocities
w - weighting factor
|| . || - 2-norm

I have tried several values for w, including 0.7 and 0.9. I have a feeling however, this metric may be where I need to concentrate my investigation.

To move backwards, is to move forwards?

2006-08-03T17:07:00.000-05:00

After more testing and observations, I think I have begun to narrow down the problems I have been having with this RRT algorithm. Remember that to add a new state onto the tree, first a random sample is generated. The RRT algorithm then attempts to incorporate this new sample by driving the robot with a constant control input from some current state already in the tree. The problem is that for certain pairs of states, there does not exist a single constant control input that will move the robot any closer to the desired state.

To illustrate my point, consider the simplest robot imaginable: a one degree of freedom robot whom we control by specifying three possible acceleration values (-1, 0, 1) for each time step. Lets assume that its current state is [0,0] - that is 0 position and 0 velocity. Now let's pick a new "random" state, say [2,2]. For the first time step, what is a good control input which will move us closer to desired state? From [0,0] to [2,2] we need to move in the positive direction and need to have a positive velocity. Therefore 1 unit of positive acceleration would move us closer to our random state. That's easy, but what if the desired state were instead [1,-1]. To move in the positive direction we would need a positive acceleration. But to achieve a negative velocity, we need a negative acceleration. So which is it?? Well the correct choice would be a positive acceleration. In fact we would need to pass the desired position (e.g. go to [3,X]) and then come back at with a negative velocity. A simple diagram below illustrates the problem. I think this is at the root of the problems I have been having with my RRT algorithm. I have been using an optimization algorithm to find the best constant control input that will move the robot towards the sampled state. But as this simple example illustrates, sometimes a constant solution that would move you closer does not exist. So either I need to lift my assumption on the constantness of the control input (which would slightly complicate my current implementation) or just try and live with this fact and find some other way to fix it.

Playing with Trees

2006-08-02T16:27:00.000-05:00

Today, I finally started fine-tuning the RRT (rapidly exploring random tree) algorithm to solve a 6-DOF manipulator motion planning problem. Well I might not be at the fine-tuning stage just yet...

It seems as though the planner is very particular about the details of the incremental simulator. Without going into all the gory details, RRT works by first selecting a random state in the robot's state-space (basically a random set of joint angles and joint velocities). Then it finds the state within the already existing tree that is closest to this randomly selected state. Using a dynamic model of the robot, it tries to then drive the robot from this near state to the randomly selected one. And its this dynamic model that seems to be giving me some problems right now. At least that is my assumption. Here are some pictures which should make more sense. Each graph is the paths that the RRT algorithm has generated for a given simulation. The lines represent the approximate location of the robot's end effector in the workspace. Also, if you have a magnifying glass, each image has an X and an O. The X is the goal location and the O is the initial location.

In the above attempt, the paths look like a pile of noodles. Each time the algorithm tried to drive the robot from the near state to the new random state, it only checked that the desired joint angles were achieved (only half of the state information). And looking at the data, it did exactly that, except at the cost of using extremely high joint torques. So I tweaked some things in the model by placing a penalty on high joint torques, and got this:

In this simulation, you can actually see the X, but none of the paths really seemed to make it up in that direction. It puzzled me for a minute. But if you stare at anything long enough, it will eventually makes sense. What was happening was that since I was now penalizing the algorithm for using high joint torques, the robot could not overcome the force of gravity (in the negative z direction). Thus all the paths seem to go down and stay down. Back to the drawing board. In my next attempt, I removed the torque penalization, but added the requirement that not only should it achieve the correct joint angles but also the correct joint velocities. Doing so gave me this:

Which is what I am puzzling over right now. Looking at the data the algorithm generated, it matches the desired joint velocities very well. However, it has a tough time simultaneously matching the desired joint angles. In the above image, it appears as though the robot is pretty much driving around at the boundary of its workspace - why, I am not quite sure yet. Oh well, back to staring!

Introduction

2006-07-29T10:46:00.000-05:00

I am a (almost) PhD canidate at the University of Florida in the Mechanical and Aerospace department. I have been working here now for close to three years. For the first two years, I worked on my master's research but last year I decided to take the leap into the PhD program.

Currently I am preparing my research proposal and should be presenting it at the end of this semester. Once accepted by the committee I will *officially* be a PhD canidate. In the coming days I will post more about my research (but the title of this blog should give you a good hint!). This blog will be more of a journal about my life here at UF.. hopefully only two more years to go! After that, I am not sure. We will just have to see where life takes me (and this blog).