A Matter of “When”

On Thursday, I spoke at NCUR (National Conference of Undergraduate Research) about my neural network battery prediction model.

Me in front of the UW-La Crosse clock tower

It’s been a long time since my last blog entry. I thought I would use this entry to post a few of the things that I’ve been doing over the Summer. I’ll keep it short and sweet and let the videos do most of the talking.

I spent the past month on the 2008 North American Solar Challenge. WMU’s car is called the Sunseeker. Here is a video of Alex, one of our drivers, doing a figure eight:

I am visiting my parents in China for the next three weeks, and I just got into Shanghai on Thursday. I spent my first whole day here yesterday. Here is a video from the window of the restaurant that we went to last night (Laris):

Laris was right on the Bund, and you could see Pudong from the windows. The lights on the buildings were unbelievable. Two of the buildings (on the right) turn into huge video screens at night. They also had video screen ads on boats. Here is another video from the window:

After having dinner, we went next door to the Glamour Bar which was built inside one of the original Bund buildings:

We plan on going to Pudong today. I’ll try to post some pictures or videos. Also, we are leaving for Beijing tomorrow.

So, I turn 21 tonight at midnight. As you may be unaware of, all persons of 21 years of age or more may consume alcohol in accordance to US law. From what I hear, I think I’m going to like this substance they call “beer”. I am going to be introduced to this “beer” tonight with some fellow members of the Computer Club. If you would like to join us, give me a call. I’ll be sure to post some pictures.

I woke up to a fire on my floor today. I heard the alarm, and thought it was just a drill at first, but then my room started to fill with smoke, so I got my computer and ran out of there. The hallway was completly filled with smoke, and I saw firefighters spraying foam in a room as I ran by. Apparently, their refrigerator caught on fire. Basically, it was something like this:

If you can’t see the video, here’s a link.

So I installed XGL and Compiz the other day. They both rock pretty hard, and it’s a stable enough system for everyday usage. I’m thinking that by the time Vista is finally released, we’re already going to have a better desktop. You’ve probably already seen a video or two of it in action, but I went ahead and made my own video anyway. Enjoy the desktop pr0n!


Edit: If you don’t see the video, click the direct link to the post.

Xbox modding has been around for a few years now, but I’ve just now gotten around to trying it. There are a some really nice modding communities around, and they’ve done a lot of work to make modding an Xbox as easy as possible. Nevertheless, I ran into a few problems along the way.

Along with an Xecuter3 modchip, I got an adapter to allow for a solderless install. It turns out that I couldn’t use it because I have a version 1.0 Xbox. 1.0 Xboxes (Xboxen?) have solder in the holes where the attachment was supposed to rest, so hack and I removed the solder from the holes, but then the solderless attachment didn’t work at all. I tried to solder the chip in using the intended method, but then it would only boot the Microsoft bios. Frustrated, I removed the chip and tried the solderless method again. At this point the xapt3r’s screw to attach it to the motherboard was stripped, so I had to just hold it onto the motherboard with my thumb. This allowed it to boot the modchip. It turned out that I needed to solder 3 additional wires onto the back of the motherboard in order to make it boot the modchip’s bios while it’s soldered in (It has to have a ground signal, which the xap3r provided via a small wire, for it to work). I resoldered the chip into the motherboard and attached the wires to the back. Finally, everything was working, execpt it would power off after a few minutes of usage, which turned out to be a heating problem (I forgot to plug the case fan in ;p ). So, after a long weekend of burning my fingers with hot soldering irons, here is the final result:

teh hax!1
The dvd drive is shot, but I ordered a new on on Ebay. Oh, and since everyone else is probably blogging about it, here’s a short summary of what I thought of Bush’s State of the Union Address tonight:

pros:
-more investments in alternative energy
-more investments in technology
-Bush actually acknoledged that we need to teach more math/science
-Iran is a problem that needs to be dealt with
-The far-left defeatists aren’t really helping the war effort

cons:
-Bush still speaks wierd
-Bush is still commited to keeping stem cell research down

Overall, I thought it was a good speach. He touched on a lot of important issues and commited to cut spending by cutting government programs and taxes, and he talked about his plans to cut the national deficit in half by 2009. If our government can actually pull all this off, it’ll be great (except for the ban on stem cell research. Seriously, what’s up with that?)

PS: I’m going to try to start blogging more. maybe…