To Do List for David

get high-speed camera, to look at things like fly landing and takeoff, flame burning,

look at operating bare die at UV, visible, IR wavelengths.

clean out "public_html\needs_work" directory.

MEG "holography" using SQUID

Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996
From: transhuman@umich.edu
Sender: transhuman@umich.edu
Subject: >H Digest
...
I think SQID array (MEG "holography") imaging in vivo is one of the
hottest things, since it tells you nothing about structure but lots about
function. At the very least a very valuable fingerprinting method apart
from stuffing your archive with microfishes & Co.  A complementary
technique to destructive scan, see? (There is lots on MEG on the web).

'gene
...
| Eugene.Leitl@uni-muenchen.de        | >H transhumanism, [...]       |
...
| http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~ui22204 | >H: "alpha-->omega"           |
...

Mind Uploading

Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 00:00:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: transhuman@umich.edu
Sender: transhuman@umich.edu
Subject: >H Digest
...
From: Eugene Leitl 
Subject: >H URL: uploading pointer
...
  http://www.access.digex.net/~kfl/les/cryonet/kUploading.html
...
 http://sunsite.unc.edu/jstrout/uploading/MUHomePage.html
...
'gene
...
| http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~ui22204 | >H: "alpha-->omega"           |
...

Mind Uploading research group

Date: Sat, 6 Jul 1996 00:00:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: transhuman@umich.edu
Sender: transhuman@umich.edu
Subject: >H Digest
....
***************************************************************************

From: Anders Sandberg <nv91-asa at nada.kth.se>
Subject: Re: >H Gradual extension of the mind

Transhuman Mailing List

On Fri, 5 Jul 1996, Algimantasfoo2 Malickas wrote:

> On Thu, 4 Jul 1996, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> This and many other questions could be answered using computer
> simulation of gradual extension of neural network. Let us assume, that we
> have trained a neural network using computer. After this, would be possible
> simulated a connection of this network with other. In that case many
> properties of interface could be simulated (includind neurons activities
> pour problems using EEG, first network adaptation problems etc.).

Sounds a bit complicated, but it might work.

> I thinking how I could realize this model myself. Unfortunately, I'm
> very busy at this time. If any persons could help me (or realize this
> work independently), I would be very greatful.

You might be interested in contacting the Mind Uploading research group:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/jstrout/uploading/murg.html

I'm myself very interested in this area, and it ties neatly into BCI,
EEG-simulation, neural networks and HCI.

> > A good idea, although there is some risk that the network learns the
> > wrong thing, like only trying to send information when the human is
> > happy. Training of machines is going to become an important skill in the
> > future!
>
> Yes, if the external system could directly influence the brain emotions
> centers. But if the computer => brain interface would be implemented
> through external sensations (tactile for example), this danger would be
> dissapeared, I think.

The external systems might still misbehave. If they have been programmed
to deliver information that makes the user happy, they might just deliver
good news and don't tell the bad but important news. How to create a
balance here is a complicated question.

> P.S. What is a SQUIDs ?

Superconducting QUantum Interference Devices. Small superconducting loops
that react very sensitively on magnetic fields. Apparently they can
detect very small and localized events in the brain.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa@nada.kth.se         http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y

[FIXME: find "Anders Sandberg" on my web pages, make them all point to his new address: Anders Sandberg http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ ... http://www.aleph.se/ ]

Consider signing the Compact for Responsive Electronic Writing http://raven.ubalt.edu/features/crew/

read the paper version of the *New Scientist* article by Ian Stewart, on cellular automata (the web version http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980829/contents.html is offline).

get Mac hardware FAQ; give info on Mac serial ports.
Frequently Asked Questions about Macintosh Hardware ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/macintosh/hardware-faq

Dr Geo unoffitial homepage http://www.cs.ut.ee/~anton_g/drgeo/drgeo.html Dr GEO is a freeware ... Dr GEO is an interactive geometry software. http://members.xoom.com/FeYiLai/dr_geo/doctor_geo.html (source available here) mirror: http://drgeo.home.ml.org/ "hacked the allegro library to handleunicode font,"

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

rstevew's FAQ sites (!) DAV: look at and email improvements to his FAQs, esp. his keyboard FAQ ("scancode.tut") which appears to be missing crucial stuff (data frame/clock signals and the serial protocol.). (X-10 information, DTMF chips, ... giicm.zip ... serial port FAQ, parallel port FAQ, ... LCD FAQ ... television IR controller FAQ ... ) [FIXME: link schematic.html#isa to his ISA bus tutorial]

a collection of software related in some way to the amateur satellite program. http://www.amsat.org/amsat/ftpsoft.html includes satellite tracking programs for a variety of different computers, including "Satellite Tracking for HP-48 (64K) Real time tracking of a single satellite, or future time tracking of multiple satellites. Provides fisheye "planetarium" views graphically. Written by Al Gerheim, K1QN (ex-N4QN)."

Inventors Report http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JohndeR/invent.htm Ever think up a clever idea, but never had the time and energy to do anything with it ? Add it to this list; maybe you'll inspire someone else to flesh out your idea. [FIXME: crosslink with halfbakery]

Engineers Without Frontiers http://www.ewof.org/ seems like a worthwhile organization. "Engineers Without Frontiers (EWOF) will provide the engineering skills of volunteers throughout the world to non-profits and others who are doing humanitarian work but lack the funding to pay for professional engineering services. The project is somewhat modelled after Doctors Without Borders."

Eric S. Raymond has a interesting "online will" http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/continuity.html .

some ... possibly illegal projects. http://www.hackers.com/html/projects.html

learn more about linear motors

exercise

add "about" link on main web page (and perhaps some sub-pages).

GigaPops and the Internet 2.

make simple ee/serial port debugging tool: somehow (?) get a set of bits into the tool, then it repeats the bits over and over. (simulating a string of ASCII characters on a RS-232 line, or a string of keypresses on a keyboard line, or ...). Sort of a logic-analyzer-in-reverse.

consider helping with deep-sea robotic probes. (Alvin, etc). Rather than trying to protect everything with pressure domes, can't we just use things that are inherently pressure resistant ? Lights: LEDs are completely solid state; surely they would be uneffected by pressure. Camera: ???

Is it possible to just (via spinning mirrors ?) "scan" an area of the sky on a "linear" CCD, then use *frequency* analysis to remove light pollution ?

study context of: self-controlled; humble; pray.

"good projects", "good causes"

get my own domain name link_farm.html#getonline , perhaps "carybros" or ...

buy lamp timer

buy battery for my PowerBook hardware_david_uses.html

Learning new languages. Lots of them.

"little steps".

write program to draw Appolonian gasket -- -- perhaps with happy faces rather than circles (see http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~callahan/wacky.html ) (looks very similar to http://trixie.eecs.berkeley.edu/~chaiwah/digital_filter.html although the description is totally different)

install the PlainTalk text-to-speech software http://speech.apple.com

The International Telementor Center http://www.telementor.org/

SELF-DISCIPLINE: Towards better News discussions Bertrand Meyer http://www.eiffel.com/discipline/ "This document describes a voluntary program, called SELF-DISCIPLINE, of which people who post on Usenet may want to become members if they feel that it can help the News mechanism fulfil its extraordinary potential while avoiding the aberrations that threaten it. "

install The KDE Office Suite http://www.mieterra.com/article/koffice.html or better.

Download the CritSuite software and install it on my own server, as reccommended http://crit.org/openness/CritFAQ.html#anchor61959 .

• THINK/WYDE[tm] http://www.thinkwyde.org/ "THINK/WYDE is a not-for-profit on-line journal focused on exploring, analyzing, and modifying all scales of systems, ranging from particle physics and nanotech to global politics and terraforming. The underlying theme is circumventing limitations. It will serve as a forum for reports, implications, insights, patterns, tools, news, opinions, works in progress, and cool stuff."
• design a integrated power supply / ups. When power goes out, convert car battery *directly* into 12 V, 5V, etc. instead of converting to AC and then back to DC. (1 glitch: What about the monitor ? perhaps this is fine for headless servers. Or use one of the motherboards that has "standby mode".).
• upload aoc and other utilities to Mathworks.
• return library books
• Jon Howell http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~jonh/ Linux on PowerPC; built some cool robots controlled by a 3Com Palm III personal organizer (schematics online); maintains info2html; maintains The Faq-O-Matic is a CGI-based system that automates the process of maintaining a FAQ (or Frequently Asked Questions list). It allows visitors to your FAQ to take part in keeping it up-to-date. A permission system also makes it useful as a help-desk application, bug-tracking database, or documentation system.

  the Faq-O-Matic http://faqomatic.sourceforge.net/fom-serve/cache/1.html [FIXME: make section ``building a user-modifiable encyclopedia'' targeted at people who want to put one on their server, with this, source code for Wiki, etc.]

• learn more high-voltage, high-power electronics (thyristors, etc.)
• consider building a magnetoelectrohydrodynamic water pump.
• consider building a mass driver / coil driver / mass-driver (do I have links elsewhere ?)
• think about marking my pages appropriately http://www.weburbia.com/pg/safety.htm
• what is the "fast Walsh transform" ?
• "Big Man Store" -- but instead of selling large *clothes*, sell all the other stuff tall (and large in other ways) people need: heavy-duty reinforced chairs; toilet seats; bicycle seats; padding for low-flying chandeliers; ... anything else ? 3d_design.html#furniture
• Write programs to manipulate cellular automata, including "Conway's Life". Rather than Yet Another simulator, make tools to do more abstract things like "given a certain pattern, what are its predecessors (if any) ?" That question is asked on page http://personalwebs.myriad.net/jpf/life.htm John Paul Fullerton has a simulator that "manages an array that is nine times the size of the screen and is supposed to move toward the area in the array where the most change has recently occurred."
• airplane pilot's license
• [possible TTD] http://www.vim.org/html/uganda.html
• install Star Office
• install the Amaya HTML viewer and WHYSIWYG HTML editor. Open Source. http://www.w3c.org/
• lossy text compression data_compression.html#lossy
• tell matlab newsgroup about http://oil.okstate.edu/~caryd/program/KIEFFER/ABOUT.TXT
• Build 2D barcode printer local.html#barcode

  Of course, before I do that, I want to build a 2D barcode *reader*. I haven't decided yet if I want to start with a Handspring + camera, or a laptop + camera. See local.html#barcode

• It would be cool to implement Miss Rosette http://www.apple.com/education/LTReview/current/elephant/elep8.html a "word processor" for this visual language logographic language.
• Computer Generated Music music.html
• Linux Home Automation http://members.home.net/ncherry/
• http://slashdot.org/articles/99/11/16/1151244.shtml MD applications (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 16, @12:59PM EST (#54)

  It's a bummer that what they're really selling is just a MD recorder and some software. I was hoping that somebody would have wised up and made a MD player that could decode the MP3 format. If some engineer out there wants to make money, build me a data audio player based on the MD format. Support MP3, ATRAC, WMA, SDMI, and all those other acronyms in hardware, and make it so it uses off-the-shelf MDs and you've got yourself a market. Throw in a USB adapter for data transfer, and you'll have a true hybrid device. But since others have seen fit to comment on the impending death of the MD format, let me suggest that there are still plenty of potential applications for a MD like storage system. For example, consider the handheld video game market. Maybe Sony should leverage their Playstation enterprise to produce a portable Playstation based on MDs. You could save your games in a non-volatile format, and with the extra data space games could have voice clips and maybe even a real soundtrack! With some intelligent caching strategies, the disc motor wouldn't need to turn all the time, which would preserve the battery life. Imagine a handheld device with more data space than most Nintendo 64 games, but still small enough to fit in your pocket. Or what about a MD drive that interfaces to your Palm Pilot. You could offload your memos and notes or backup your address book without having to connect back to a computer. Need to copy your friends notes from that important business meeting but don't have enough free space? Just have them dump it to a spare disc. My point is, you can never have enough storage space, especially when it's rewriteable. For their size, the Minidisc format is a good storage system.

  MP3 and E-Text (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 16, @02:06PM EST (#73)

  Someone has to build a E-Book which uses E-texts that include both text and recorded voice. It would offer a screen and headphones. You could then switch between reading and listening as needed. (Read on the bus, listen while walking between the bus stop and the office.) You could read and listen at the same time. And it might be handy if you want to review what was just said without interrupting.

  Text-To-Voice wouldn't work as well, since a good reader can make a world of difference. I'd rather listen to Christopher Walken reading Poe's The Raven than a computer. (Actually, though, Text-To-Voice would be a nice option for texts which haven't been recorded by a professional. For example, your own notes.)

• Check out the Mac shareware at http://www.barebones.com/
• Resources in Social Gerontology http://www.trinity.edu/~mkearl/geron.html [Does the >H page already have a link here ? if not, email to >H list.]
• Make a priority list (and/or organize by state) of Places to Vist. Some ideas at: Sightseeing for Geeks http://www.cs.unc.edu/~tell/travel.html
• TeLa the Tensor Language http://sumppu.fmi.fi/prog/tela.html a new freely usable numerical computing environment
• Interesting. http://linuxtoday.com/stories/13495.html says

  Helix Code http://www.helixcode.com/ (Miguel and Nat's company) is offering to purchase copies of the book _GTK+/GNOME Application Development_ http://developer.gnome.org/doc/GGAD/ for any hackers that need one. ... If you'd like a copy of the book, mail Nat (nat@helixcode.com) or track down Nat or Miguel on IRC or in person.

• Graham Seaman 1999 suggests http://technocrat.net/944515192/index_html

  Rather than working in isolation, why not combine the virtual and the physical by working with one of the free hardware design groups? Find a design that interests you and help by building/debugging/developing... You can find lists of such groups at (shameless plug): http://collector.hscs.wmin.ac.uk There are groups with board designs for radio applications, robotics or microcontroller systems; or if you want to work more on the purely design side, there are groups working on FPGA-based designs (getting hold of an FPGA card is another problem :-( ). A few specific suggestions: Microwave: http://www.qsl.net/ke5fx/#uwave : try building Luis Yanes' board Packet Radio: http://www.microlet.com/yam/index.html Tiny microcontroller system: http://www.ee.leeds.ac.uk/homes/NJB/Software/CREAT/creat.html But there are many more possibilities.... Good luck Graham

• Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) http://www.tapr.org/
• write program to index and make Table of Contents of my entire web site -- see to_program.html#index
• subscribe to the f-admin sub-group of the Freedom CPU group.
• Dan Kaminsky said

  As the tools evolve for simplifying documentation maintenance--to the point where the entire system is cross referenced and searchable with the kind of hit potential we see out of Google--code documentation quality for the entire software industry should increase dramatically. A long while back, I used a (closed source) tool to attempt to analyze the Samba codebase. It actually came up with some interesting results--check out http://www.genitor.com/.

• http://www-graphics.stanford.edu/papers/spacetime/paper_1_level/paper.html ???
• magnetic bearings
• http://www.egroups.com/group/weblogs/895.html http://www.egroups.com/group/www2k/

  The idea is to do our best to build a solid consensus by the end of the year, about which *Web design principles* are the most important problems that currently need *fixing*. We'll first hash out a methodology for debating and testing the principles, and then brainstorm ways to get the worst major sites to clean up their acts, and even more important to get the major design-theory sites to correct their bad advice-giving.

• write an interpreter for qUark and my misc instruction set (maybe start with a BF interpreter ). Or perhaps even a compiler (pipe to ``cc'' ? emit standard 6 byte chunks of compiled assembly language that emulate each instruciton ?) minimal_instruction_set.html . Perhaps port the "factor.asm" program to qUark assembly.
• find a section on my web page about quines. For example, Quines http://www.catseye.mb.ca/esoteric/ ``In the world of computing and informatics, a tar pit ... Turing tar pit, is a Turing-complete machine with an arbitrarily low number of discrete instructions.'' (does this have anything useful to say about cellular automata ?) [FIXME: add pointer to this page from my minimal.... page] [FIXME: email author with links to Core Wars ... surely the ``split'' and ``reverse'' instruction qualify it ...]
• build some simple circuits with interesting chips. LM3914 Dot/Bar Display Driver http://www.national.com/pf/LM/LM3914.html The LM3914 ... senses analog voltage levels and drives 10 LEDs, providing a linear analog display. ... Current drive to the LEDs is regulated and programmable, eliminating the need for resistors. ... operation ... from less than 3V. ... 2 drivers can be made into a zero-center meter. ...
• Perhaps learn more about "a spectrum for each picture element", which I believe is a height field in 4D, i.e. a scalar field in 3D. Keywords seem to be "Hyperspectral Imaging", "hyperspectral remote sensing", "imaging spectroscopy", "NASA's Airborne and Visible Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS)". Also consider polarization.
• Perhaps learn more "solar electric propulsion": "NSTAR, the first deep space solar electric propulsion system"
• Visit the Bakken Library and Museum ? http://www.bakkenmuseum.org/ ... apparently founded by Earl Bakken, inventor of the wearable cardiac pacemaker, co-founder of Medtronic, Inc. ... "currently the leading medical technology company" [-- 1999] ... bioelectronics
• buy Lego Mindstorms 2002-01:DAV: Mark bought this for me last Christmas. Yay !
• "You could probably make a million dollars with a snoop container that actually works." -- Mark Petteys, 1997 Jun 14.
• It would be cool to make hard candies in educational shapes -- -- start with something simple like red blood cells and the Great Pyramids of Egypt. Later consider other Wonders of the Ancient World, and space-filling models of the artificial banana scent molecule (banana-flavored, of course) and other aromatic molecules. -- David Cary 2000-03-19. ``chirality--if you take a molecule of spearmint flavor and flip it left for right, you end up with a molecule of caraway flavor'' -- Larry Wall http://www.perl.com/pub/a/1998/08/show/onion.html

  future related products: astronomy-theme desserts. "chocolate globular clusters: a galaxy of goodness" -- DAV.

• Put together a web page of bit sequences, and search for "optimal sequences" to see if anyone else has done the same.
• "energy aware sampling schemes"
• Get a PIM. Look at http://www.airwindows.com/staccato/ (some of its philosophy at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/07/22/1455258&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=172 ).
• the ISEF (International Science and Engineering Fair) which is: http://www.sciserv.org/isefairs.htm [volunteer to be a science fair judge]
• todo: download and play with "Alliance" chip design software.
• http://www.simputer.org/ looks like they're doing interesting things I could help with. http://www.msnbc.com/news/779559.asp?0dm=B18MT&cp1=1
• look at `anacron' Unix utility.
• "The Bioperl Project is an international association of developers of open source Perl tools for bioinformatics, genomics and life science research." http://bioperl.org/ ... Bioperl is supported by the Open Bioinformatics Foundation http://www.open-bio.org/
• http://www.genesis16.net/ astronomy CCD camera
• Taniwha Flight Computer Home Page http://www.taniwha.com/~paul/fc/ Paul Campbell ``the DAC is no longer easily available - we need to lay out a new board for a more modern part'' (DAV: would it be good for me to help with this ?) ``a small cheapo flight computer designed to be flown in a high-power (or model) rocket'' ``However everything in these pages,the design itself and the software that runs on it (at least the stuff I provide) is hereby provided it for anyone's use -- but I retain ownership and copyright(even feel free to build them commercially if you want).'' ``Dimensions: 3cm x 21cm (1 1/4 " x 8 1/3 ") (it can be shaved down to 29mm with care).'' (DAV: i.e., long and skinny, to fit in those rocket tubes ... it might be interesting to try to reduce this even further, so it can fit even smaller rockets).
• Dynamic, real-time robot. Perhaps start with a broom balancer http://arsrobotica.com/display.php3?blogid=118
• look up ``font'' on SourceForge http://sourceforge.net/ ; install and play with the font editors; how can I contribute ? Link computer_graphics_tools.html to the good stuff. computer_graphics_tools.html#fonts lists a font editor ...
• Todo: check out this signal analysis software (for Linux): http://www.baudline.com/ ``Baudline is a real-time signal analysis tool and an offline time-frequency browser. It has a built in tone generation capability and it can play back audio files with a multitude of effects and filters.''
• http://piclist.org/techref/ideas.htm has some interesting and strange ideas for projects to do.
• Ed Roberts, M.D.: "And at about that time, I was ready for something new. I believe about every five years people need to make a radical change." http://piclist.org/techref/history/roberts.htm
• astronomy photos using ``reasonable'' equipment and free Astro image enhancement software. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010714.html ; http://utopia.ision.nl/users/rjstek/english/software/index.htm
• Any useful tools here ? Widget Supply ... Hobby Tool http://www.WidgetSupply.com/html/jt-watch.html | http://WidgetSupply.com/
• [general section on time management ?] http://www-jcr.lmh.ox.ac.uk/~roney/tqe/neal.html

  ...At this point in my life, do not have any time whatsoever to spare for any new activities, regardless of how fascinating, remunerative, and/or meritorious they may be, and regardless of how small the actual time commitment might seem. ... In order to do what I do, I require immense, unbroken slabs of time. Time that is broken up into little bits, or that is frequently interrupted by small distractions coming in at unpredictable moments, is useless to me. In other words, what is really at stake here is my ability to continue writing books for a living. This is the reason that I am, with all due gratitude, declining your invitation.

  Sincerely,

  Neal Stephenson

• http://www.bigbrothers-tulsa.org/
• The Open Science Project http://openscience.org/ [FIXME: check this out]
• ``How to win the war against spam'' By C.C. Holland, September 6, 2001 http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2810853,00.html
• Setup Appletalk server. Perhaps http://macfixit.pair.com/ can help ?
• Get rid of old, obsolete hardware. Perhaps sell to http://www.hackersalvage.com/ ?
• News Addiction http://slashdot.org/articles/01/09/15/0642202.shtml ???
• Todo: build some very simple IR communication circuits, perhaps starting with http://diamond.gem.valpo.edu/~dgoodman/ge100/workshops/infrared.html and moving on to ``a long range infrared link for analogue signals & digital data'' article by David Castles http://members.ozemail.com.au/~amicronics/Projects/IR_link.htm which says ``Pulse Position modulation: Used for the transmission of high data rates (4M bits/sec.) ... involves the position of a pulse with a time cell (or time period). There is usually 4 possible positions of the pulse within the cell enabling 2 bits of information to be sent per cell. This results in high peak power of the transmitter and a reasonable average power. This kind of modulation is the future of high rate, short distance IR data transmission.'' (DAV has extended this to an even more sophisticated ``reverse huffman'' coding data_compression.html#reverse_huffman ) DAV: In the same way that radio systems can probe different frequencies (in the frequency domain) and pick one that is relatively quiet, perhaps IR communications can probe different time offsets (in the time domain) to find one that is relatively quiet. In other words, watch the ambient lights, figure out whether it's 60 Hz, 50 Hz, or (???) Hz flourescent, and communicate during those points in the cycle that you have the best chance of being ``heard'' (seen ?). [FIXME: Once I get some circuits, put them online ... probably in machine_vision.html, but link to them from schematics.html]
• Morse2000 http://www.uwec.edu/hss-or/Morse2000/ has some interesting stuff for using Morse code rather than a keyboard to control a computer. (mostly aimed at blind students).
• ??? BackFire http://backfire.sourceforge.net/ BackFire ... an application to do backup/restore of files from a hard drive to a digital camcorder (DV or D8) via FireWire (IEEE-1394, iLink), and vice versa.
• $24.99 microprocessor-controlled flashlight ... ``including one minute auto shutoff''. http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/gadgets/38d4.shtml
• Consider helping develop AbiWord task_help.html#AbiSource Also check out how they use Doxygen and other tools.
• What is this: ``Programmer's Webliography and Index'' http://www.rocketaware.com/ ?
• write some haiku link_farm.html#haiku .
• topics of interest: interactive artspaces, artificial life, hypermedia, animations, MIDI, raytraced images,
• the Yamada Language Center http://babel.uoregon.edu/ includes ``An extensive archive of non-english fonts.'' and other language information.
• http://icontown.de/ ???

• Submit claim on ideosphere about probability of ``internet taxes''.

  Submit claim on ideosphere about probability of global (U.N. ?) taxes/tarriffs.

• [perhaps comment on this ... rant about *comparing* various classes, and doing things that tear everyone down to the lowest common denominator -- mediocrity, excellence, etc. ] "But other critics disagree. These technologies raise questions of class and social structure, they say, because they will most likely be available only to those who can independently afford them. [This is true of almost anything that parents can do to shape/help their children - unless they're proposing outlawing private education, for instance.]"
• [others todo lists] http://www.freedos.org/freedos/software/
• How to pack a shoe box http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.asp?section=Operation+Christmas+Child&subsection=How+To+Pack+A+Shoe+Box
• pen pals http://www.plastic.com/comments.pl?sid=01/10/31/1255250
• learn to fly http://learntofly.com/
• play with toys http://www.amasci.com/amateur/toys1.html
• Consider making a page of all the stuff cluttering my apartment that I'd be willing to sell, something like http://www.solorb.com/gfc/gsale/ , and perhaps a list of stuff I'm looking to buy. Maybe recommend everyone do a page like this in html.html ?
• Check out Anjuta http://anjuta.sourceforge.net/ ``Anjuta is a versatile Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for C and C++ on GNU/Linux.''
• [gifts wanted ?] http://www.leatherman.com/
• http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SunirsReadingDeficit Think about mailing books ...

• "Which language should programmers seek out and learn?"

  1. Learn (or read) at least one every year or two so you don't get pigeonholed into the limitations of the language you use every day. Different languages promote different approaches - and different approaches/designs are the toolchest of this industry.

  2. At least try out one functional language (Lisp/Scheme), one OOP language(C++/Java), one procedural language. None is better than the other, they have different takes on the world and shine at solving different types of problems.

  3. Sticking with one language (at the total exclusion of others)limits your output and stunts your learning curve. Looking at more than one also reminds you what languages are for -- expressing more succinctly and clearly the instructions you want the computer to heed.

  -- Bjarne Stroustrup 1995 (slightly paraphrased ?) http://slashdot.org/developers/01/12/01/0110233.shtml
• [slide rule] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SlideRule
• http://www.networkforgood.org/ ???
• todo: build simple narrowbeam ( focused LEDs ? laser ? ) communication demo. Does Ronja 115 Loopipe http://opencollector.org/collector.php3 | http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/twibright/ronja/ have useful schematics ? Also see _The Forrest Mims Circuit Scrapbook: Volume II_ book by Forrest M. Mims III 2000
• http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/hpcalc/ needs scanner ?
• also, anyone want a "please don't start world war III" sticker? toss $2 in an envelope & send it to Unamerican, PO Box 1697, New Bern, NC 28560 http://www.unamerican.com/
• http://www.stickernation.com ???
• http://www.opensecrets.org/ ??? [no more secrets: emperor campaign promise]
• consider starting a ``lending library'' of engineering tools. http://www.utne.com/bPractSeeker3.tmpl?command=search&db=dArticle.db&eqheadlinedata=Don%27t%20Buy%20These%20Myths
• Todo: build ``pacing lights'' that turn on and off in sequence at a steady (adjustable) rate. http://www.jab.org/www/track.html Or maybe there's a better way ?
• ``I am a programmer, and I want to help, what can I do?'' http://developer.gnome.org/doc/FAQ/html/community.html GNOME
• Every year or so, check my credit report at: Equifax http://www.equifax.com/ , Experian http://www.experian.com/ (formerly TRW), and Trans Union http://www.TransUnion.com/
• Consider scanning in the covers of my favorite books, to illustrate book.html.
• Todo: consider building a radio telescope.

  Many antenna arrays attempt to ``beam form'' to get the most energy from the point of interest. Perhaps it would be useful to ``beam form'' to attempt to *reject* the most energy from known terrestrial noise sources -- since it's harmless to have sidelobes in directions where we already know it is quiet.

  • Amateur Radio Telescope http://my.integritynet.com.au/purdic/radio-telescope.htm
  • Amateur Radio Astronomy http://www.nitehawk.com/rasmit/ws1_4.html
  • [here's some idea that could be combined with the GNU radio ... can these ideas be applied to a heterogenous array of radio telescopes ?]

    ``Space-Time Algorithms for Gbit Wireless LANs'' Project Staff: Everest W. Huang, Professor Gregory W. Wornell

    ... wireless communication is hindered by signal fading (loss of signal energy) ... The frequent lack of line of sight signaling and time-varying nature of the communications channel ... One way to mitigate these effects is with arrays of antennas at either the transmitter or receiver, or both. Space-time codes are a class of codes which provide signal diversity in both space and time (as their name implies) by "spreading" information bits over many samples in time as well as over the spatially separated antennas to provide redundancy to aid in decoding.

    ... wireless indoor LAN ... developing and designing ... gigabit data rates over an indoor wireless channel. ... subchannels ... A central server with many antennas is used as a global relay ... By exploiting the spatial diversity of the many antennas available at the central server, the network is able to simultaneously support many nodes communicating simultaneously over the same frequencies without cooperation or collisions. As long as there are sufficient antennas at the server, adding more nodes in the network does not affect the available bandwidth of the existing nodes.

    ... building an actual system ... by examining the fundamental characteristics of the analog hardware in the system ... we are looking for ways to improve performance in novel ways.

    -- http://rleweb.mit.edu/Publications/pr144/02.htm

    ``Cooperative Diversity in Wireless Relay Networks: Algorithms and Architecture'' Project staff: J. Nicholas Laneman, Professor Gregory W. Wornell

    In contrast to the more conventional forms of single-user space diversity with physical arrays -- co-located antenna elements connected via high-bandwidth cabling -- this work builds upon the classical relay channel model and examines the problem of creating and exploiting space diversity using a collection of distributed antennas belonging to multiple users, each with their own information to transmit. We refer to this form of space diversity as cooperative diversity because the users share their antennas and other resources to create a virtual array through distributed transmission and signal processing.

    Our work to date has developed low-complexity cooperative diversity protocols that take into account certain implementation constraints in the relay mobiles. We develop and analyze a variety of cooperative protocols in which the relay either amplifies what it receives, or fully decodes, re-encodes, and re-transmits the source message. We refer to these options as amplify-and-forward and decode-and-forward, respectively. ... Our schemes are close to optimal in certain regimes and offer big power savings over direct transmission. More broadly, the relative attractiveness of amplify-and-forward and decode-and-forward, and adaptive versions thereof, can depend upon the network architecture and implementation considerations, which we continue to explore.

    -- http://rleweb.mit.edu/Publications/pr144/02.htm [FIXME: #protocols ; low-power]
  • Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers http://www.qsl.net/SARA/
  • Amateur SETI: Project BAMBI (Bob And Mike's Big Investment) http://bambi.net/ "If you have some familiarity with analog and digital electronics as well as programming, you should be able to build a system similar to BAMBI. ... amateurs can obtain sensitivities comparable to NASA's all-sky search"
• todo: add ``crit me now !'' links to my web pages, like the one at the bottom of http://www.imm.org/Parts/Parts2.html
• todo: install and play with Free Molecular Visualization Tools http://www.imm.org/Parts/MolVis.html
• todo: install various programming languages on my PDA(s). Why ? see iankerickson:

  Look for portable, interpreted software: Java or Waba, Forth, Postscript, Python, maybe Perl (if you have the room), or even VB or JavaScript. Then you can download programs for those languages and run them on your PDA. ...

  With portable languages, you will have much more software available (especially freeware), and you can at least make an attempt to fix any bugs that bother you by editing the script or decompiled bytecodes. Newer PDAs are modern enough to host a compiler, but it takes too much space and time to be convenient to fix things, especially when you're "in the field". Recent Psions had Java built-in.

  http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24376&cid=2642764
• http://www.tummy.com/security-howto/Security-HOWTO-2.html recommends periodically glancing at /var/log/messages
• [quick projects] razor blade foxhole radio http://members.aol.com/djadamson7/articles/foxhole.html very simple: coil, razor blade, safety pin, pencil lead, ground and antenna connections. Crystal Radio: The Xtal Set Society http://www.midnightscience.com/
• flying model rockets http://members.aol.com/djadamson/pad17/index.html
• The ``scope pocket watch'' looks like a interesting project. Technically challenging, although not particularly useful. http://www.cathodecorner.com/ a strange mixture of modern surface-mount parts and extremely retro CRT displays. Unlike any display DAV has ever seen before, the electron beam moves in a perfect circle and circular arcs when drawing circles and arcs on the display.
• Blinkenlights Archaeological Institute http://www.blinkenlights.com/about.shtml ``established in 1997 to excavate, preserve, research, and present interesting and historically significant computing devices. ... we often do accept donations of pre-1981 computer-related material''
• [tosurf] http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/
• Todo: install AskiArt 2.0 or something similar: ASCII art for the Palm. http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-10123-100-8509467.html?tag=st.dl.10123-106-1.lst-0-13.8509467
• Do I need MegaWiki on my Palm OS box ?
• consider installing FreeBSD http://www.freebsd.org/
• check out http://www.software602.com/ ``FREE Alternative to MS Office''
• Consider building a simple 60 KHz AM receiver to receive WWVB time signals. http://www.howstuffworks.com/question461.htm . Consider building several other clocks (one of them simply counting the 60 Hz power line frequency) and comparing their short-term stability, long-term stability, temperature effects, etc.
• http://www.globalideasbank.org/ ``Your Ideas Wanted for the Global Ideas Bank! A Global Suggestion Box for socially innovative non-technological ideas and projects, with £1,000 UK sterling awards annually for the best ideas or projects submitted'' ???
• Consider volunteering / donating my spare computer cycles for one or more of the distributed computing projects listed at linux.html#distributed
• Does Adcomplain http://agora.rdrop.com/users/billmc/adcomplain.html really reduce spam ?
• todo: build a Jacob's ladder inside a glass jar (I've been saving a pickle jar for this purpose ... perhaps a glass soda bottle would be nifty. Also, perhaps I can tune the frequency ...)
• JEdit http://www.icewalk.com/app.php?id=1016 ``JEdit is an Open Source programmer's text editor written in Java. It is released under the GNU General Public License'' ``The best IDE for linux''
• todo: check out procmail. http://www.icewalk.com/softlib/app/app_00974.html ``Procmail is a mail processing package which can be used to create mail-servers, mailing lists, sort your incoming mail, preprocess your mail, start any programs upon mail arrival, or selectively forward incoming mail automatically.''
• search for ``medical'' at and see if I can help.
• http://mensa.org/ ???
• [languages] ``java'' © 1997-2000 Jamie Zawinski http://www.jwz.org/doc/java.html ``I think Java is the best language going today, which is to say, it's the marginally acceptable one among the set of complete bagbiting loser languages that we have to work with out here in the real world.''
• [user interface ?] consider a different email client: ``The Perfect Email Client?'' http://slashdot.org/articles/02/04/06/1313224.shtml?tid=95
• Consider downloading the validator source http://validator.w3.org/source/ to speed up maintaining my personal web pages.
• [FIXME: move natural language info to idea_space.html ?] ``The Translator's Home Companion is intended to serve as a focal point of information about resources available on the Internet and elsewhere for translators, interpreters, and all those interested in the arts and crafts of foreign languages.'' http://www.lai.com/lai/companion.html
• PEERS ( Pre-college Educator/Engineer Resource Site ) http://www.ieee.org/organizations/eab/precollege/peers/ ``If you are an engineer, teacher, administrator, or anyone else interested in helping make technical subjects and technology come alive for students, you will want to explore the resources within this site. IEEE has developed PEERS to encourage collaboration and sharing between engineers and educators, and to provide resources to facilitate joint efforts to encourage students in the study of science, math, and technology.''
• Read http://email.about.com/ and see if there's better email tools available. SeeMail http://email.about.com/library/ec/pr/aapr_seemail.htm looks like a nice little tool.
• ``Ask the Guru: A Third-Generation Printer'' article by Don Lancaster 1990-02 http://www.tinaja.com/glib/guru60.pdf lists specifications for ``An acceptable third generation PostScript printer.'' Would this be a good ``open hardware'' project ? Specifications such as

  11. There shall be no secrecy. Everything on all levels must be fully documented, fully unlocked, and fully available in plaintext form.

  12. An optional hard disk shall have a fully documented, reliable, and user-friendly operating system that does not blow up during routine use. All disk files and formats shall be totally SCSI standard and fully documented. A mix of up to eight disks and CD ROM devices shall be allowed. ...

  15. Service manuals exceeding current Hewlett-Packard quality standards shall be readily available to the end user. These shall include full schematic diagrams, complete memory maps, and fully disassembled ROM listings. All source code shall be optionally available.

  ...

  Dozens of manufacturers seem to be on the verge of releasing a bunch of brand new PostScript laser printers. Sadly, most of them seem about to offer some monumentally stupid features for precisely the wrong reasons. Arrghhh.

  seem like they would be hard to meet unless it is ``open hardware''. Once we have open hardware to do this, it would be cool to extend to cut thin sheet metal ...
• Check out the Open Projects Network http://www.openprojects.net/
• ``Being Popular'' article by Paul Graham 2001-05 http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html

  Is it worth trying to define a good programming language? How would you do it?

  I think the answers to these questions can be found by looking at hackers, and learning what they want. Programming languages are for hackers, ...

  ... Programming languages are not theorems. They're tools, designed for people, and they have to be designed to suit human strengths and weaknesses as much as shoes have to be designed for human feet. If a shoe pinches when you put it on, it's a bad shoe, however elegant it may be as a piece of sculpture.

  It may be that the majority of programmers can't tell a good language from a bad one. But that's no different with any other tool. It doesn't mean that it's a waste of time to try designing a good language. Expert hackers can tell a good language when they see one, and they'll use it. Expert hackers are a tiny minority, admittedly, but that tiny minority write all the good software, and their influence is such that the rest of the programmers will tend to use whatever language they use.

  ... I wonder how large this group has to be; how many users make a critical mass? Off the top of my head, I'd say twenty. If a language had twenty separate users, meaning twenty users who decided on their own to use it, I'd consider it to be real.

  ...

  A programming language does need a good implementation, of course, and this must be free. Companies will pay for software, but individual hackers won't, and it's the hackers you need to attract.

  A language also needs to have a book about it. The book should be thin, well-written, and full of good examples. K&R is the ideal here.

  ...

  ... I think language designers would do better to consider their target user to be a genius who will need to do things they never anticipated, rather than a bumbler who needs to be protected from himself. The bumbler will shoot himself in the foot anyway.

  ...

  ... When you make any tool, people use it in ways you didn't intend, and this is especially true of a highly articulated tool like a programming language. ...

  ... I think a lot of the advances that happen in programming languages in the next fifty years will have to do with library functions. I think future programming languages will have libraries that are as carefully designed as the core language. ... Languages are for programmers, and libraries are what programmers need.

  ...

  ... in practice, the way to get fast code is to have a very good profiler, rather than by, say, making the language strongly typed. ...

  It might even be possible to write a profiler that would automatically detect inefficient algorithms. ...

  To write good software you must simultaneously keep two opposing ideas in your head. You need the young hacker's naive faith in in his abilities, and at the same time the veteran's skepticism. You have to be able to think how hard can it be? with one half of your brain while thinking it will never work with the other.

  [FIXME: move to design-in-general ? or computer language comparisons ? ]
• Check out this ``blob'' data structure (invented by David McCusker) http://www.treedragon.com/ged/map/ti/new.htm Seems to be (somehow ?) improved B* tree. [a short discussion on unsigned arithmetic ... any ideas for YARMAC ?]

• THE SECRET of INNER PEACE

  from: Rita Yeazel

  My doctor told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start.

  So far today, I have finished 2 bags of chips and a chocolate cake . . .

  I feel better already.

  -- http://joe.mehaffey.com/secret.txt
• http://freenetworks.org/ looks useful. Somewhat related to ham radio ...
• [very interesting...] http://openscience.org/
• "The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it." - Benjamin Disraeli
• Consider donating my time and money. Is http://networkforgood.org/ a good way to search for non-profits / charities ?
• [software to write] W3C Validator: To Do List http://validator.w3.org/todo.html lists ways people wish the (open-source) W3C validator would be improved.
• the BioPerl toolkit ... [for] biological sequence manipulations in bioinformatics. http://www.bioperl.org/
• [book][computer graphics] http://www.scantips.com/books.html recommends a few books for graphics artists. At least one of the recommendations is ``Must-have''.
• [ham radio ?] http://www.sustainableworld.com/cotlre.html
• Jean-Michel FRIEDT http://lpmorh04.univ-fcomte.fr/jmfriedt/index.html doing interesting things with the QuickCam and image processing (Hough Transform) (includes C source to perform line and circle detection on pgm images.); simple circuit to read the serial memory of a telephone card; Working on ultrasonic ranger ( http://lpmorh04.univ-fcomte.fr/jmfriedt/isa/isa.html ) [FIXME: perhaps give my ultrasonic info ?!!!!!!]; etching away the outer package of a IC to see what's *really* inside; QuickCam astronomy;
• Maybe try a digital camera on Paul's airplane, before getting into full-motion video.
• [todo: read about Kalman filters] http://joe.mehaffey.com/kalman.pdf
• [antispam] http://joe.mehaffey.com/antispam.htm
• Consider snapping some photos for the http://www.confluence.org/ project.
• Think about ways to organize tools ... see ``Color Coding Your Tools'' article by Sheldon "Rainbow" Brown http://www.sheldonbrown.com/colorcode.html
• [antispam] http://www.sheldonbrown.com/spam.html
• Hey, this looks pretty cool -- the Bailisk open source Macintosh emulator http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/B2Main.html running on a tiny Libretto palmtop. http://www.silverace.com/libretto/ [FIXME:]

  ``The Toshiba Libretto, slightly larger than a VHS video cassette, is the second-smallest computer I know of that can run Linux.'' -- Linux on the Toshiba Libretto 70 George B. Moody http://ecg.mit.edu/george/libretto.html

  The Libretto Webring http://f.webring.com/webring?ring=libretto&list

• todo: install XEphem Source Code http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/
• http://ksl-web.stanford.edu/htw/dme/tour/02_Active_Documentation.html What is ``Active Documentation'' ???
• Install a modern Linux distribution. linux.html#distributions
• Contribute to the Tom's Root Boot project. http://www.toms.net/rb/ now has a wiki -- http://not.toms.net/twiki/bin/view/Tomsrtbt
• Check out these free software reviews; anything worth installing ? http://freebies.about.com/cs/freesoftware/
• Open Hardware Movement http://robots.net/article/497.html
• Donate to charities. Consider helping charities set up online donation tools, such as http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=111392 .
• Make a list of my favorite browser pet peeves. A list of URIs into the Bugzilla database.
  • [FIXME: add to Bugzilla database] mozilla bug: dropdown URI (when I click the down arrow to the right of the current URI for history, or when I'm typing a URI and autocomplete lists URIs in the dropdown list) is truncated -- should be as wide as the widest URI shown, up to the full width of the screen, *wider* than the current location bar. related to Bug 154772 and Bug 115118 (show entire URI) Bug 49543 (change UI to allow URI the full width of the Mozilla window)
  • Bug #16206 Initial value for 'quotes' property could be nicer ( Bug #210457 "please render quote tags better with curly typographic quotes" is a duplicate of Bug #16206 )
  • Bug #88023 Gif colors are different from inline colors
  • Bug #88791 HTML 4.01 named character support tracker
  • Bug #117077 Improve visual association of 'X' close button with current tab
  • Bug #201753 crash when I click on whuffie link
  • Bug #76648 All prefs should display Default Values, so user can go back to them later
  • Bug #107551 [Evangelism ] firstcitizens.com - popup menu on page is not displayed
  • Bug #168534 [Evangelism ] hondamotorcycles.com Image of motorcycle is misplaced for CBR600F4i
  • Bug #105963 popup window incorrectly claims ``Clock requires Netscape''
  • Bug #108465 fontlab.com - javascripted links don't work, CSClickReturn() false
  • Bug #193011 Some tabs unresponsive/won't close when many tabs are open
  • Bug #
  • Bug #
  • Bug #
  • Bug #157199 [META] toolbar customisation and separation tracking bug [customize] depends on
    • Bug #49543 Separate Toolbar from Address Bar [urlbar]
  • Bug #126201 incorrect wording for COMPLETE setup option
  • Bug #7954 [META] outstanding issues for full HTML 4.01 support
  • Bug #214320 voting discards information with no warning

  discussion near http://groups.google.com/groups?group=netscape.public.mozilla

• "Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them." - Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian statesman (1889-1964)
• Image Restoration and Inpainting: An OO project about image processing providing ideas to enhance, denoise, restore and remove parts of images ( Film cracks, image characters) http://sourceforge.net/projects/restoreinpaint/
• Project: Rodney - An open source humanoid http://sourceforge.net/projects/rodney/ Rodney ... stereo vision, speech recognition, and a wide variety of body and head movements. [FIXME: robot]
• The Computational Beauty of Nature - Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/FLAOH/cbnhtml/
• Todo: Install Firewire on my PC. Then consider running Linux video editing apps like Kino. See ``Light, Camera, Action... Kino!'' by Katja Socher http://www.tldp.org/linuxfocus/English/July2002/article254.shtml
• QCAD: Technical drawing with Linux http://www.tldp.org/linuxfocus/English/January2002/article132.shtml
• ``fast FireWire CD-RW drives'' article by Gene Steinberg (6/27/02) http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-1095-8-20091335-1.html?tag=st.ne.enterp.xpro-txt.ba for under $200.
• http://www.PCsForKids.org/
• http://www.activism.net/ ???
• extract any good bits from 2001_email , trash the rest.
• Consider hiring an online backup organization... xdrive ... [online backup] Skydesk www.backup.com Connected www.connected.com
• http://www.gmu.org/Publications/Pray/Pray.htm
• http://www.sci.fi/~iltzu/ ???
• ``Moveable Objects, Mobile Code'' thesis by Kwindla Hultman Kramer http://el.www.media.mit.edu/projects/tiles/msthesis-formatted.html These ``Tiles'' sound like fun to play with. interesting hardware / software / programming to think about.
• http://language.perl.com/
• [todo # ham radio] From: Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk) Date: Mon Jun 11 2001 - 11:34:12 EST ... > What someone *really* needs to do is design a Z8530 adapter with a USB > interface. The amateur radio community (well, the 56K'ers, at any rate), > would love such a device. The PI2 card is a flakey beast, at best. You would be much better off attaching a straight ADC/DAC at say up to 256Kbits/8bit sampling and some control lines to the USB. That would also let people dumb the ridiculous 1960's technology they insist on using and run serious stuff like adaptive encoders, golay codecs and the like and bring amateur packet radio out of the stone age Alan - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" -- http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0106.1/0417.html [ham radio ???] www.wa4dsy.org
• [todo C ? benchmarks ?] http://www.mail-archive.com/newbie%40linux-mandrake.com/msg69611.html * From: chamster * Subject: Re: [newbie] Is windows REALLY easier to install? * Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 12:45:49 -0700 ... What I am afraid of is that Linux advocates get comfortable with the ease of use issue when there is work to be done. ... What would be even more interesting would be to have install or task-oriented bake-offs in a mall with various computers and grab people at random to see who can install a base system or app faster with pre-determined benchmarks. Good publicity stunt if you really believe your stuff is better. Steve
• ??? http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zine/cproj-list.html
• do google search on ``ascii calendar''. Consider selecting the best parts (like http://www.ourpla.net/john/CalendarBuilder.html ) and improving my JavaScript calendar.
• look up Buckminster Fuller patents: 1961: geodesic dome.
• consider building something similar to this: ``Handheld Delivers the 411 on DNA'' article by Kristen Philipkoski http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,52501,00.html

  The device is so simple and elegant that it almost looks like a toy. A tiny magnet jumps into a well of fluid, grabs some DNA, jumps into another well to rinse itself off, then another. In the last well, it spins around and releases the DNA of interest and makes it ready for a clinician to identify.

  Electromagnetic energy carries the magnet from well to well. Several tiny coils of wire situated along the bottom of the device generate a magnetic field energized by an electric current from a computer.

  The device requires no mechanical moving parts, no filtering, no valves and no fluid pumping of any kind.

• todo: read ``Eight Technologies That Will Change the World: What happens when today's tech trends begin to intersect and feed off one another? They'll spawn new fields of knowledge that will transform everything.'' article by Brad Wieners, June 2002 Issue http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,40435,FF.html
• another todo list: ``my constantly-growing description of what I would do if I had huge amounts of funding!'' -- William J. Beaty http://www.amasci.com/amateur/kidsite.html
• Ultra-simple Electric Generator (c)1996 William Beaty http://www.amasci.com/amateur/coilgen.html
• Free Geek and other computer recycling centers

  the National Cristina Foundation, a national group that matches donors of computer equipment and recipients http://www.cristina.org/

  http://www.eiae.org/ ``recycling and reuse opportunities for used electronics.''

• Duck-plunge Mechanical Fountain

  When a large rock is flung into a pond, the waves spread into a series of ripples of descending wavelength, as if the water has "Fourier Transformed" the splash signal. It has! The water surface is not a linear medium, therefore any signal becomes "chirped" in a similar way to the "whistlers" produced in ELF radio sets by distant lightning pulses. If an "antichirp" series of ripples could be made on the water's surface (a temporally-reversed version of the ripples from a big splash,) then as the ripples moved, they would slowly compress together and finally create a little explosion of spray.

  Ripples also take the form of an expanding circle. Rather than just reversing the "chirp", we could also reverse their direction. If water ripples could be created as inwards-curving rings, so that they focussed themselves to a point, so much the better.

  Therefore build a bicycle-powered wave generator which can be placed at the shore of a pond. It would slowly vibrate a long, curved wall which floats half-immersed in the water. When aimed at a distant unwary duck, a series of ripples is created. The duck sees the distant ripples approaching, and contracting, and concentrating, then... DOOOSH! WAAAK-Aaak quaaak quackquack...

  Or build the device onto a large fountain pool. Design the wave-generator to produce several superimposed "antichirp" patterns per revolution of the flywheel. Then, if you pedal at the right speed, a mysterious zone of violent splashing would appear out in the middle of the pool.

  Suppose the wave-generator was adjusted to produce a *line* of splashing, and every so often the antichirp waves would contract and produce a long burst of "chop". This line might act to reflect other water waves, ... Design the wave generator to temporarily create a square *hole* in the water. Make a really big one, so small 3rd-world countries can tickle the ocean for awhile and have it swallow approaching aircraft carriers.

  -- http://www.amasci.com/hoax.html
• DAV: When I was at OSU, I thought it would be cool to build a fountain that rapidly turned on and off many parallel streams of water, spelling out words ... similar to a dot-matrix printer or one of those scrolling light signs. Apparently Tom Igoe has thought more in this direction:

  When I started on the fellowship, I had a couple ideas I was interested in. One of them was what I call the body-scale interface. The other was alternate output and display surfaces, specifically water-based ones, like fountains and mist.

  http://fargo.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/~tigoe/interval/narrative.shtml

  Rather than building letters out of *falling* raindrops, Bill Beaty has the interesting idea of building letters out of *rising* warm smoke rings / artificial water clouds http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/freenrg/ideas.html#smoke . Bill Beaty says ``If I were rich (or if somebody gave me a few $K) I would build one of these for next year's BURNING MAN festival.''

  The Antigravity Waterfall is the amazing Liquid Kinetic Sculpture where hundreds of water droplets defy gravity by appearing to float upwards through the air. http://www.laser-magic.com/AGWF.html 2002-11-26:DAV: this page mentions the term ``Liquid Kinetic Sculpture''; this is the first time I've heard that term. [FIXME: holograms]

  Water jets could be lightning conductors 10:45 31 January 02

  In June, a group of American engineers plan to fire supersonic jets of salty water towards storm clouds in a bid to trigger lightning. If it works, they say their system could ultimately be used to protect people and property from lightning strikes.

  The National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, says lightning hits around 600 people each year in the US, killing 100. The majority of victims are in sports grounds or playgrounds when struck. The strikes lead to insurance claims of an astonishing $5 billion per annum. ...

  ...

  Doug Palmer, founder of a company called BoltBlocker in San Diego, California, reckons lightning could be drawn to a safe spot by squirting an ultra-thin jet of water-- mixed with salt and soluble polymers--towards the storm cloud. The salt boosts the water's conductivity while the long-chain polymers help prevent the jet breaking apart into a stream of droplets.

  http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991860
• SOUND CAMERA http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/freenrg/ideas.html#cam might be a low-cost way of implementing ultrasonic imaging ...
• help the sfWiki http://sfwiki.sourceforge.net/ project.
• consider making a Foucault Pendulum.

  ``The Foucault Pendulum'' discussion by Professor B. Nickel http://www.physics.uoguelph.ca/foucault1.html This document mentions 3 different ways to compensate for non-ideal support:

  ... H. Kamerlingh Onnes (famous now as the discoverer of superconductivity) ... introduced a mechanical modification that would compensate for a faulty support and built a short pendulum of 1.2 m that he ran in a vacuum to verify the theory --- ... for his dissertation in 1879. This mechanical compensation is not incorporated into our pendulum and instead two other devices are used. One is a variant of the Charron ring introduced in 1931 and the other is a simple magnetic device invented by H. R. Crane in 1981. ...

  the analysis of Foucault's historic experiment is simplified if one uses the theory of rotations developed by Euler a century earlier. Thus we, at our latitude y = 43º32', should consider the rotation frequency of the earth we = 360º/23hr56min about its axis relative to the fixed stars as compounded from a vertical component of magnitude e' = e sine(y) = 10.36º/hr and a northward pointing horizontal component of magnitude e" = ecosine(y) = 10.90º/hr (see Fig. 1). The latter corresponds to a tilting of the floor and can be observed as the rate of the passing of stars viewed directly overhead. It has an effect on the vertical motion of objects; a stone dropped down a mine shaft will land eastward of straight down as defined by a plumb line because in the time it has taken the stone to fall, the mine shaft has tilted. On the other hand, for predominantly horizontal motion such as that of air in the atmosphere or the bob in the Foucault pendulum its effect is negligible. We ignore this term in what follows.

  The vertical component e' = 10.36º/hr can be observed as the horizontal passing rate of the stars on the horizon. It is important for dynamics involving horizontal motion. Objects thrown in any direction will appear to drift to the right [DAV: in the N hemisphere] when viewed from behind because the earth has rotated to the left. In particular, the plane of oscillation of the Foucault pendulum will precess clockwise at exactly 10.36º/hr when viewed from above because the earth is rotating counter-clockwise at this rate. ...

  ...

  After an initial period of testing, modification and adjustment of our pendulum, the data recorded in Fig. 4 were taken in the early part of Dec. 1995. These measurements show that the average turning rate of the pendulum is nearly equal to the predicted e' = 10.36º/hr. The origin of the random fluctuations and the small drift, an advance in angle over the expected by about 0.5º/day, is not understood. On the other hand, the variations of the turning rate with an apparent period between 8 and 9 hours seen in Fig. 4 are directly correlated with the direction of the plane of oscillation of the pendulum and arise from small imperfections in the pendulum wire support and holder. ...

  ... our pendulum is designed with a maximum displacement angle of about 4º; museum pendulums can operate with displacements of 1º or less and so for them the anharmonic effects described below are much less important.

  Unfortunately one cannot guarantee b/a will remain small for the following reason. No pendulum wire support is perfect and the bob, pulled back in two particular and nearly perpendicular directions will be found to oscillate at two extreme frequencies ω1 and ω2 rather than the single common w = 2/T. The frequency difference is small for a good support but not zero; for our pendulum the difference period dT = 2π/(ω1 - ω2) equals approximately 9 hr. ... [This causes] the b/a ratio for the ellipse grows from 0 at release time to b/a = 1 at 2¼ hr when the ellipse has become a circle.

  ... The solution adopted by most museums is to use a much longer pendulum. ...

  A second solution and the one adopted here is to introduce a Charron ring; this is the large brass ring our pendulum strikes near the end of each swing. Ideally the Charron ring would stop the pendulum completely and then release it from rest so that the motion is again like that shown in Fig. 2. Such an ideal ring would not affect the Coriolis turning of the plane of oscillation because the Coriolis force acts only while the bob is in motion and produces most of its deflection of the bob as the bob passes near its equilibrium position. A real Charron ring however cannot stop the pendulum ...

  ... Crane's experimental discovery in 1981 was that to eliminate this residual precession one need only modify the force law to make it harmonic on average. He also noted that this could be done very simply with a pair of magnets, one on the bob and one on a fixed support underneath. The magnitude of the force modification is adjusted by changing the magnet separation.

  ... Finally there is the magnetic drive coil ... to keep the pendulum going against friction. ... An LED under the base support flashes on whenever the drive is in its push mode.

  ...

  Wire: length to bob center of mass = 83 cm

  The Charron ring limits the pendulum swing angle to = 3.9º.

  ... [by] measuring over the period of a week ... An accuracy of 5 x 10-3 or 0.5% on we' means we can determine the latitude of our Foucault pendulum with an uncertainty of about 30 km.

  DAV: What other ways are there to build a ``good'' support ? [FIXME: what exactly was the method used by H. Kamerlingh Onnes ?] I'd like to eliminate the magnets used by Crane. DAV: is it possible to (? electronically ?) completely halt the bob at the Charron ring, then release it, every time ? Or perhaps just periodically ? This would also presumably add energy to the bob to keep it swinging. Then the space in the ``middle'' (where the Coriolis force is working its magic) could be completely open, away from any influences. The kludges to (a) keep the ellipse ``small enough'', (keep it from expanding into a circle), and (b) drive the pendulum against friction -- these kludges could be kept at the edge, where the pendulum velocity is close to zero, and hence the Coriolis force (proportional to velocity) is also zero. [FIXME: unknowns] DAV: the article describes the standard case: the pendulum is released ``at rest'' (in the frame of reference of the room it is in), which causes it to trace out (in the frame of reference of the fixed stars) a narrow ellipse. (in this case, the ellipse is about 120 mm long by about 20 um (micrometers !) wide. ). The article also describes case where the pendulum passes *directly* over the plumb-bob center of the apparatus, and hence traces out (in the frame of reference of the fixed stars) a straight line segment is also mentioned. (The difference is probably negligible). This second case is easier to visualize (and I suspect it's what Foucault originally imagined).

  Other ideas: Rather than trying to force the minor axis of the ellipse to as close to (plus or minus) zero as possible, perhaps it would be interesting to force the ellipse to be as close to a *circle* as possible. Then what ? I don't know ... measure the time it takes to travel (a few hundred) revolutions clockwise, compare that to counterclockwise ? This sounds similar to the ring laser gyroscope machine_vision.html#ring_laser .

  Um... the ``pointer'' that the pendulum pushes around is very clever. The only mention of it is ``The pointer has two clearly distinguishable ends so you can tell whether the pendulum has turned 180º or 360º while you slept.'' But DAV suspects that perhaps that pointer helps keep the pendulum swinging in a line (rather than expanding the ellipse into a circle). If one or both ends of the pointer funneled into a point (so any expansion of the ellipse makes the pendulum vibrate the pointer at both ends), then perhaps that would add enough tangential friction to reduce the minor axis -- doing exactly what the Charron ring does, perhaps making the Charron ring unnecessary. Or if the pointer funneled into a very narrow channel at the center, forcing the pendulum to swing over the plumb-bob center of the apparatus (so any expansion makes the pendulum vibrate the pointer at the center). ... ummm... perhaps the force of pushing that pointer around is so large that it overwhelms the Coriolis force, making the pendulum swing in only one plane -- or at least slowing it down. Q1: can these ``funnels'' be made narrow enough so they work just as good as the Charron ring ? Q2: Does the force of the pendulum on the pointer (or, in the frame of reference of the stars, the force of the pointer on the pendulum) -- is that *large enough* force to keep the ellipse basically linear, and is it *small enough* to avoid messing up the normal rotation ?

  DAV: I don't know exactly how that pointer is mounted, but I'm imagining that if I built it it's just a simple metal sheet with a slot punched on it, slipping on the metal outer ring. The pendulum itself keeps it rotated in the proper direction and more-or-less centered over the plumb-bob center.

• http://www.ieee-uffc.org/ ???
• what is ultrasonic B-flow imaging ?
• Consider building a little gadget which balances itself on (and is held up in the air by) a thin stream of water from the ground. (I heard NASA tested something like that in the 1960s)

  phase 1: several simple fixed streams, high pressure water + orifice, turned on and off.

  phase 1: charge water droplets, use mass accelerator to accelerate the droplets to really incredible velocities (is this really possible ?) and electrostatic steering (TV).

• what is

  ... unmanned underwater and air vehicles (UUVs and UAVs) ... the Vortex Combustor under development at Penn State's Applied Research Laboratory, which burns nanoscale aluminum particulates and sea-water to provide inexpensive air-independent propulsion (AIP) for both submarines and very long range UUVs.

  -- ``The Shape Of Things to Come? : Top NASA Scientist Discusses The Future of Undersea Warfare'' by Dennis M. Bushnell 2001 http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/cno/n87/usw/issue_10/bushnell_shape.html

  robot_links.html#swim

• FireWire and video editing under Linux http://slashdot.org/articles/02/10/02/2359254.shtml?tid=167 [FIXME: move to #firewire]
• Consider buying my own copy of the software recommended by Paul L. Hutchinson (he's on the PICLIST and uses Protel, just like me) http://www.paulhutch.com/cad.htm
• http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/reviews/ ???
• http://www.red-bean.com/kfogel/ | http://www.red-bean.com/software.html has some interesting pieces of software I ought to check out:
  • LabelNation, software for printing mailing and return address labels.
  • Ale, an editor for genetic sequences. It supports nucleic (DNA) and amino sequences,
  • cdlabelgen by Brian Fitzpatrick: Perl script to output attractive postscript covers for CD jewelboxes. But he recommends ``Use Disc-Cover instead.''
  • Orbit-Sim by Mike Sussman... and others: An ANSI-C library for galactic gravity simulations; demoapps for GTK and Win32 included.

  Also check out the pro-free-information Thomas Jefferson quote christlib.html#interesting_people

• http://homepage.cs.latrobe.edu.au/image/ [FIXME: check this out: fractal coding, remote sensing, etc.]
• Donald Norman http://slashdot.org/articles/02/10/07/0318244.shtml?tid=126 | http://www.acm.org/interactions/vol2no2/interview/dnorman.htm ???
• todo: read book: something on Johnny Appleseed
• http://history.org/
• http://www.handhelds.org/z/wiki/LittleToDos
• http://franklincovey.com/
• The way you clean house says a lot about you http://www.kxoj.com/am0700.shtml ???
• todo: Listen to an interview with Joni on human cloning. http://www.joniandfriends.org/
• Consider signing up for the http://groups.yahoo.com/group/embeddedengineering/ mailing list.
• Consider signing up for the protel-germany · Deutschsprachiges PROTEL Benutzerforum http://groups.yahoo.com/group/protel-germany/ mailing list.
• todo: check out the TV Linux Alliance. http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-10-28-012-31-PR-DV
• package manager for OS X http://www.sf.net/projects/fink
• Who is this David Carey ? did Kristofer Straub completely make it up for this parody ? http://www.nightlightpress.com/switch/
• Check out some of the shareware / freeware at http://www.webattack.com/ .
• todo: search for:

  Questions I am asking myself
  What questions are you asking yourself
  

  DAV is asking many questions, listed on unknowns_faq.html
• calender: yearly anniversaries. http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Cultural/Fun/holidays.html
• Get more organized. http://www.axel-and-alice.com/ddcl/ddca/ddca0205.html
• Paper Discusses Circuitry For Quantum Computing http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/10/021024070245.htm
• Look at the software in braille.html , see if I can make any improvements.
• Steve Wozniak http://www.woz.org/ [move to #interesting_people]
• "Slogans to Help Keep Macs in Your School" by Jeff Adkins, 2003.07.10 http://www.lowendmac.com/lab/03/0710.html
• After building magnetic levitation, look at this: ``Propulsion Without Propellant'' by Karl Dahlke http://www.eklhad.net/kdahlke_t.html
• [#tiling] Tiling Rectangles With Polyominoes by Karl Dahlke http://www.eklhad.net/polyomino/ ``Let me know if you have some spare CPU cycles -- there are still plenty of unresolved polyominoes.'' [FIXME: check out the C program here ... trec.c ... any clever speedups ?] [unknowns: many, many unknowns here.] ``In most cases we can assert an even order. The existence of an odd order polyomino is still an open question.'' (i.e., is there *any* polyomino (``A polyomino is a shape that consists of unit squares pasted together'') that can repeated to completely tile a rectangle using an odd number of copies ? Other than the trivial case of 1 copy when the polyomino is already rectangular. Other than cases where there is a different rectangle that can be completely tiled using smaller number of copies) DAV: I'm not so interested in completely filling a rectangle, with no overlap; I just want to tile the plane. Perhaps it would be interesting to investigate polyominos that *can* tile the plane, but *can't* tile any rectangle. Can I modify that program to find them ?

  Iamonds are shapes made from equilateral triangles. http://www.mathpuzzle.com/iamond.htm

  [3d#tiling ?] Ed Pegg Jr. http://www.mathpuzzle.com/

  [???] http://www.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de/~sillke/ many puzzles, Mathematical Competitions,

• [music ; science] http://www.math.toronto.edu/mathnet/questionCorner/music.html
• buy some math software (mathematic software): ``Geometer's Sketch Pad'' software ?? Mathematica (has a Linux version) ? Matlab ?
• consider ATI courses: Adaptive Multi-Channel Processing Hands-On MATLAB course Mathematica course Finding Powerful Solutions: creative problem-solving techniques Multi-Sensor Correlation & Kalman Filtering course http://www.aticourses.com/professional_courses.htm

  Acoustic, Noise & Sonar Engineering Courses and Technical Training Seminars http://www.aticourses.com/acoustics_courses.htm

• consider getting / making an infrared camera.
• advanced prosthetic devices
• what happened to http://crit.org/ ?
• check out ``the Generosity Game'' http://www.generosity.org/
• Cosma Shalizi is interested in far too many things http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/notebooks.html . Perhaps I can help him prune his list, and he can help me prune my todo.html list.
• electronic devices to build: ``Scott McCloud describes ... a drawing tablet that will serve as a portable digital comics studio'' eye_candy.html#scott_mccloud ... are the "tablet PCs" available in 2003 close enough ? What else is missing ?
• [Tulsa] http://www.john316mission.org/
• buy the book _The World of Patterns_, ISBN 981-02-4619-6, recommended by by Karl Dahlke http://www.eklhad.net/polyomino/
• [FIXME: read] ``a good motivator for classes in matrix algebra since it shows how search engines like Google use eigenvectors to do their searches.'' http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~wilf/
• Todo: Play with the various projections of the sphere onto the plane. Rather than mapping the lines of latitude and lines of longitude, as if they were real objects, map * Earth * the edges of various ``inflated'' platonic solids * an ``inflated'' Rubik's cube (more colorful version of the hexahedron above).
• http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/known-math/collection/how-to-read
• check out ``the Open Standards Repository'' http://www.openstandards.org/
• Should I even bother trying to put Linux on my old Mac ? ``What version of Linux would work on my Motorola 68k-based Macintosh?'' http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#m68kmaclinux
• Check out the free version of ``MuPAD: The Open Computer Algebra System'' http://www.mupad.de/ | mirror http://www.mupad.com/ | http://www.sciface.com/
• Check out symbolic algebra software http://directory.google.com/Top/Science/Math/Algebra/Software/
• http://arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/01q2/quantum-1.html [quantum ? hologram ?]
• MinGW: Minimalist GNU For Windows http://www.mingw.org/ ???
• What Can I Do to Support MathWorld ? http://mathworld.wolfram.com/helping.html Eric W. Weisstein
• [another list of things to do, asking for help] http://www.basiceng.com/needs.html
• SC UniPad: a Unicode(TM) plain text editor http://www.unipad.org/main/ consider installing this freeware.
• http://www.designnotes.com/ the only Free Interactive Site on the web for Electronic Design Engineers, Programmers and Enthusiasts to Share, Earn and Learn. [schematic] [FIXME: read]
• http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ ... the famous Chicago Manual of Style ... ... _Wild Cats of the World_ book by Mel Sunquist and Fiona Sunquist 2002 ...
• After building a Lego robot or 2, check out LEGO Mindstorms http://mindstorms.lego.com/eng/ and http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics/ and http://www.techno-stuff.com/3wire.htm
• Check out Chuck Moore's VLSI design tools vlsi.html#design Are they available for download ?
• play with FPGAs ... computer_architecture.html#FPGA
• database ...
• ArsDigita University http://www.aduni.org/ ``offer the world's best computer science education, at an undergraduate level, to people who were otherwise unable to obtain it. ... an experiment in curriculum design, free education, and the effect of the Internet on the future of education.''
• http://www.ultratechnology.com/aha.htm ???
• [???] Applix http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Network/6778/applix/ http://www.uow.edu.au/~andrewm/1616.html a kit for building a 68000 based single board computer, with video output. It ran the GNU C and C++ compilers and their libraries...

PIC

[FIXME: merge with robot_links.html#pic ]

[#pic] The PICmicro ring homepage http://members.tripod.com/~mdileo/pmring.html NitPic http://www.iox.co.za/cat/_nitpic_pic_compiler.html ??? Micromint http://www.micromint.com/ sells some PIC stuff and PC-104 stuff.

• check out OpenOffice.org ... http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2817381,00.html
• consider buying the QEd editor for PalmOS http://trio.rpg.net/rf08/read.php?f=1100&i=16&t=3
• http://www.writingonyourpalm.net/
• make ``ballistic illumination'' demo with spinning mirror and slit and strobe light. See also "Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR)" by Tomi Engdahl http://www.web-ee.com/Schematics/TDR/tdr.htm [FIXME: I have more ballistic illumination and TDR info elsewhere ...] [faster logic families: SN74F04; ECL]

  From: Dave Tweed (pic@DTWEED.NotNeeded.COM)
  Subject: Re: [PIC]: How would I build a reflectometer?
  Newsgroups: comp.arch.embedded.piclist
  Date: 2003-02-20 13:12:01 PST
  
  ...
  
  In the October/November 1992 issue of Circuit Cellar, there's an article
  that describes a contest-winning design for a TDR that's based on an 8051.
  It uses a PAL and a delay line to get timing resolution down to 20 ns.
  See http://www.dtweed.com/circuitcellar/caj00029.htm#409
  
  As presented, it didn't draw the waveform -- it just calculated the length
  and termination impedance from the height, polarity and delay of the first
  reflection. However, a few small changes to the design would allow
  capturing the full waveform.
  
  You can order back issues at
  Print: http://www.circuitcellar.com/products/b92_93.asp
  CD:    http://www.circuitcellar.com/products/cd.asp
  
  -- Dave Tweed
  
  --
  http://www.piclist.com
  

  Time-domain reflectometry (Brian Kenner ?) http://www.sss-mag.com/pdf/maxej22.pdf | http://www.maxim-ic.com/appnotes.cfm/appnote_number/647

• todo: build some of the more interesting circuits / tools in schematic.html
• consider building a LED clock, perhaps a simplified version of ($19.99 - $22.99) http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/lights/59e0/?cpg=10126 or http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/6658/ or http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/664e/ (these watches conserve energy by using *lots* of LEDs, but only turning 2 or 3 at a time ... rather than encoding the time into fewer LEDs and sometimes turning them all on at once)
• consider building some "persistence of vision" linear LED arrays that display 2D text.
  • [FIXME: add these links to the links already at] http://massmind.org/techref/idea/sx.htm
  • "Propeller Clock" Mechanically Scanned LED Clock by Bob Blick http://www.bobblick.com/techref/projects/propclock/propclock.html with 7 LEDs, a PIC16F84 processor has all the documentation I need: The hardware design and software are covered under the GNU General Public License.
  • ``Floating Time'' by Adam Bovill and Ned Guthrie http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/~cokino/classes/ES62F00PROJ/FLOAT/GuthrieBovill.html also has source code and schematic diagrams for a clock based on the clock by Bob Blick
  • AVR Propeller Analog/Digital Clock by Sylvain Bissonnette http://www.microsyl.com/AVR/Clock/Clock.htm Atmel AT90S2313 ... based on the clock by Bob Blick ...
  • ``An Analog & Digital propeller clock'' hardware by Luberth Dijkman Andijk Holland; Assembler Code written by Don Zehnder; inspired by Bob Blick http://www.luberth.com/analog.htm links to several other propeller clocks
  • PIC Microcontrolled 'magic wand' hardware by Luberth Dijkman Andijk Holland; http://www.luberth.com/analog.htm a 'magic wand' which will display a message in mid air when waved in front of you.
  • Persistence of Vision shoes http://www.insomedia.com/povshoes/
  • $47 Infoglobe http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/phones/5c83/
  On a spinning device, how to detect position ? Some possibilities:
  • have a semi-directional light sensor, and hope there is enough variation in the ambient light in different directions to be able to synchronize to a consistent direction (avoid aliasing).
  • have a light sensor slide past a more structured "notch" or full encoder wheel. (2 light sensors to give direction and speed).
  • have some sort of accelerometer (simple mercury switch ?) to detect right-side-up or up-side-down.
  • capacitance sensor, and hope enough variations in ambient objects to synchronize to a consistent direction.
  • capacitance sensor with a more structured "notch" or full encoder wheel (is this even possible ?).
  • ...
  2 types of motion: * spinning motion with practically identical cycle over and over. * one-shot motion, like a hand-waved wand or lights on shoes.

unsorted

• Check out the cool software mentioned in the ``Linux Astronomy HOWTO'' by Elwood Downey and John Huggins http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Astronomy-HOWTO.html . Add to it when I do the various astronomy projects on my todo list.
• Consider building a digital VCR: ``VCR-HOWTO - Using your GNU/Linux computer as a VCR'' by Brian Hayward http://tldp.org/HOWTO/VCR-HOWTO.html ``a guide to setting up your GNU/Linux workstation as a digital VCR ... and ... creating VCD's that can be played in any DVD/VCD player'' (similar to Tivio and ReplayTV)
• todo: fix the FIXMEs in wearable_electronic.html
• todo: read the German Howto http://tldp.org/HOWTO/German-HOWTO.html
• Anything interesting about handhelds in ``HP HOWTO: Configuration Guide and Use of HP Products under Linux'' http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HP-HOWTO/ ? It was apparently written by someone who does not speak English as his native language -- volunteer to help ?
• todo: set up Apache on my Linux box;

  "Chrooting Apache" by Mike Peters http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/05/24/1450203

  Java CGI HOWTO by David H. Silber http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Java-CGI-HOWTO.html

• synchronize my Palm OS devices with my Linux box http://tldp.org/HOWTO/PalmOS-HOWTO/ and http://www.pilot-link.org/
• todo: play with chirplets. [machine vision] Could this help with ultrasonic imaging ? http://wearcam.org/chirplet.htm The paper http://wearcam.org/perspective.html mentions Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR).

  The Chirplet Transform: Physical Considerations http://wearcomp.org/wearcomp/chirplet/

  Adaptive Chirplet Transform (1992) http://wearcomp.org/wearcomp/adaptive_chirplet1992/ specifically mentions ``marine radar''

  Apparently wavelets, Fourier transform, time domain, ... can each be shown as a special case of the chirplet transform.

• support http://www.nyx.net/ ?
• connect Mac up to my Linux fileserver [somewhere I've written more about this ...] http://www.geocities.com/jmarkevich/macnetwork.html
• build minimal Forth processor: serial I/O (or perhaps just IR I/O ?), a few LEDs, speaker, microphone (must handle into ultrasonic), ... (morse code ...) ... bar code reading ... can I squeeze this all into a keychain blob ? how about a highligher case ? Is a PIC + Flash sufficient ? computer_architecture.html#pic+EPROM For a ``minimal complete development system'', add a PalmOS device for the screen, and (optionally) sort of keyboard -- perhaps the pocketop keyboard hardware_david_uses.html#pocketop ... able to get several of them to communicate acoustically; maybe even syncronize with each other to locate birdsong ... or to send directed acoustic waveforms for ground-penetrating radar ... . ... want the full source code on the device itself ... check out ``pleb''.

  DAV: Morse code training: use *both* speaker *and* LED.

  perhaps work with Peter Strobel http://www.pstec.de/logger/ ... this sounds like the ``parachute'' project mentioned on http://electronsoup.com/xcom/Wearables/Projects/ (offline ?)

  ``Newer isn't necessarily Better'' article by Elliott C. "Eeyore" Evans 2001-05-31 ``I don't want to see traditional serial connections disappear from PDAs.'' http://geek.com/pdageek/features/serialvsusb/

  what was that very tiny CPU ? was it the 8mm x 8mm MicroConverter(R) from http://analog.com/ ?

• Install the HP48 emulator on my Palm device ``Power48 is a PalmOS based emulator for the Hewlett-Packard 48SX and 48GX ... GPL'' http://www.mindspring.com/~hildinger/Power48/ (When you run this on a ARM-based PalmOS machine, the ARM is emulating a 680x0 emulating a Saturn CPU emulating a RPL interpreter ...) [emulation][HP48] ``core of Power48 is a major candidate for conversion to ARM native code, and when that happens the speed of Power48 should easily exceed the real thing.''
• todo: build a bug blower and send one to http://www.crazygrrl.com/blog/ where I originally saw the idea.
• GPS Java coding for the Palm http://www.palmgear.com/news/shownews.cfm?sid=90505620021217083619&resID=24779 ... http://www-105.ibm.com/developerworks/education.nsf/wireless-onlinecourse-bytitle/9D4833F6EB44F12886256BF7007121A7?Open&t=gr,p1=GPS1
• TuxPad - TuxScreen goes wireless http://tuxscreen.sourceforge.net/ ... http://www.iptel-now.de/HOWTO/TUXPAD/tuxpad.html ???
• look at other text editors, such as JED http://oasis.frogfoot.net/geek/jed/
• todo: check out shinemicro (... wearable.html ...)
• setup a test machine with Plex86

  `` Plex86 is THE opensource free-software alternative for VMWare, VirtualPC, and other IA-32 on IA-32 "Virtual PC products."

  Plex86 ... run multiple operating systems concurrently on the same machine.

  Plex86 is able to run several operating systems, including MSDOS, FreeDOS, Windows9x/NT, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD. ''

  http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/plex86 ... http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/plex86.html [FIXME: #os] (unfortunately, http://www.plex86.org/ seems to be offline ... ) (Is the latest Plex stuff at savannah or at sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/projects/plex86/ ?)
• todo: put some sort of robotic do-dad online. Hopefully something at least half as cool as http://8ball.federated.com/ (I found this from a link on The Magic 8-Ball(r) An Unofficial Home Page http://8ball.ofb.net/ ) Five Ball http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/five_ball_intro.html
• look at uClinux computer_architecture.html#uClinux
• install DJGPP http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/ ``DJGPP is a 32-bit program development system. DJGPP runs on 386 and newer PCs running DOS or dos-compatible operating systems'' (including windows)
• consider playing with VectorLinux computer_architecture.html#os
• [finish reading about Machin's formula]
• http://www.geocities.com/leon_heller/ ... lots of interesting electronic stuff ...
• read the book _The Invisible Future_ book edited by Peter J. Denning with Ray Kurzweil, Douglas Hofstadter, Rodney Brooks, etc.
• todo: read Jonathan Bartlett http://www.eskimo.com/~johnnyb/ and http://www.eskimo.com/~johnnyb/spiritual/UndirectedSystemicEvil.xml and http://www.eskimo.com/~johnnyb/computers/

• http://www.tulsaworld.com/classifiedssearch/webclass1.asp
  http://www.bestjobsusa.com/index-jsk-ie.asp
  http://jobs.ieee.org/recruiter.html
  http://www.jobs.hp.com/content/search/search.asp?Lang=ENen&Region=AM&area=US
  http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=1002&dockey=xml/2/8/289acb1fdc6ed258d7efd401bbc176ab@activejobs0&c=1
  http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=1002&dockey=xml/1/7/17a719b6f651443b8f1b3d0c730cbf94@activejobs0&c=1
  http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=1002&dockey=xml/4/d/4d4b5ae32d89e29ab150caa3680b54c8@activejobs0&c=1
  http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=1002&dockey=xml/e/b/eb737f5b24238fa2f4d100b33b903391@activejobs0&c=1
  http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=1002&dockey=xml/6/4/64b71db4ad01f7ec08ae916962a7375a@activejobs0&c=11
  http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=1002&dockey=xml/4/a/4adb1d8ad258f978f0132037120b09e6@activejobs0&c=21
  http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=1002&dockey=xml/a/e/ae4a0693b9afbc5c3f7b8bac19a0c6eb@activejobs0&c=31
  http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=1002&dockey=xml/2/8/281b0badfffe8f270a97ff195e75d6ce@activejobs0&c=31
  http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=1002&dockey=xml/f/b/fbc489e7230cac9bbc2755e4b18e288d@activejobs0&c=31
  http://www.jobbs.com/
  http://www.devicelink.com/
  http://www.medzilla.com/
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• [email to gEDA and nanocomp; suggest we use these tools] We released the source code to a number of ancillary tools, such as our bug system, source-control interface, and build tools. These are very good (and complete!) tools in their own right. Though they were critical to us in the development of Mozilla, and we created them in support of Mozilla, they are not tied to Mozilla, and others are finding them useful with their own non-Mozilla-related projects. These tools, and the development model they represent, are a valuable contribution in their own right. -- Jamie Zawinski http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html
• [make into Foresight claim]

  The Institute for Social Inventions is circulating a petition for the signatures of scientists, particularly cyberneticians, and others, for submission to relevant political and scientific bodies. It is worded as follows: "In view of the likelihood that early in the next millennium computers and robots will be developed with a capacity and complexity greater than that of the human brain, and with the potential to act malevolently towards humans, we, the undersigned, call on politicians and scientific associations to establish an international commission to monitor and control the development of artificial intelligence systems." NICHOLAS ALBERY The Institute for Social Inventions London

  --- http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19990130/letters2.html
• [jargon file] some systems let you access the jargon file online with $ info jargon --node byte
• http://www.xnet.com/~blatura/linapp3.html#science has some molecular modeling tools
• todo: buy some cool posters. $10 A New Kind of Science Poster http://store.wolfram.com/catalog/posters/
• [simplicity] ``Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can do without thinking about them.'' --Alfred Whitehead http://socrates.math.ohio-state.edu/about/acknow.php3
• Near Infrared Digital Photography http://www.echeng.com/photo/infrared/
• what is ``freetype'' ?
• [to_program.html : compression] Mergemem Project http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/ulrich/mergemem/
• consider installing BOA ``Lightweight and High Performance WebServer. boa is a single-tasking HTTP server.''
• todo: link to computer buying guides. There's a ``buy vs. build'' discussion at http://www.infohq.com/
• check out the cool toys at http://the-gadgeteer.com/ [move link to wearable ? but there's also robotic stuff here ... and keyboards ...]
• Roomba iRobot Vacuum http://www.powerpage.org/story.lasso?newsID=10361
• VOGONS: very old games on new systems http://vogons.zetafleet.com/ [FIXME: #emulators; email munn]
• [FIXME: put in ``building desktops'' section] http://www.motherboards.org/

  How To Build a PC Billy Newsom · 01-01-1997 http://www.motherboards.org/articlesd/how-to-guides/21_1.html

• todo: install car lights on my car schematic.html#car_lights
• play with burning ``small CDs''. Some form factors: * rectangular business-card size (does this really work ?) * same size as 3.5" floppy * what is the minimum size that can still boot something useful -- say, tomsrtbt or trinix ? * large hexagonal
• download the human genome (gene sequence). try using various visualization tools (and convert to sounds).
• what is 3Com doing now, now that they've spun off Palm ?
• consider searching for recently-expired patents http://www.uspto.gov/
• consider doing consulting. http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~dranch/TRINITY/trinity.html
• futurist speakers http://www.mammoth.org/~davinci/archive/futurist_speakers.htm
• todo: trash obsolete stuff in link_farm.html , perhaps split out some sections into their own files.
• http://freespace.sourceforge.net/ ???
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) X-ray computed tomography, ``Electron-Beam Computed Tomography ... EBCT is an especially fast form of X-ray imaging technology.'' Positron Emission Tomography Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) http://www.americanheart.org/downloadable/heart/10148338654401013191236985HSfacts02.pdf Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN.
• [todo: read] Introducing the Dvorak Keyboard http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/
• Consider building a small aircraft that spins like a frisbee.
  1. initial step: take standard frisbee, wire it up with LEDs around the perimeter, and blink the LEDs counter-rotation so the lights appear to be stationary.
  2. Later: add some sort of control surfaces.
  3. Later: add power source.
• install OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org/
• play with installing all the software this article http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6169&mode=thread&order=0 mentions: http://www.icewm.org ``# Dillo is a web browser project completely written in C. # Dillo is small: source is less than 300 KB, and the binary is around 200 KB!'' -- http://dillo.auriga.wearlab.de/ AbiWord http://www.abisource.com/ Siag Office ``Scheme in a grid'' blackbox / fluxbox window manager rxvt instead of xterm mutt (console mail client) sylpheed / sylpheed claws (GUI email client) gnumeric Rox File Manager (graphical file manager) http://rox.sourceforge.net/ Ted, an easy rich text processor (wysiwyg) http://www.nllgg.nl/Ted/ Lyx Qtopia and QtEmbedded ??? Vectorlinux ??? LoFat ???

  seems related to "Building The Lo-Fat Linux Desktop" article by John Murray 2002 http://users.netwit.net.au/~pursang/lofat.html

• 5 prong forks ?
• Check out the (open source ?) projects hosted at http://www.bkbits.net/
• http://www.alphadriven.org/ [Alpha]
• http://www.alphalinux.org/ [Alpha]
• is this morse code or what ? http://www.crystalinks.com/crop2002.html
• http://cropcircleconnector.com/2002/windmillhill/windmillhill2002a.html pretty.
• is it possible that Tesla ever met Einstein ?
• consider getting KVM switch http://cablesnmor.com/autosw.html
• consider bonsai http://BonsaiSite.com/ ... http://BonsaiWeb.com/ [FIXME: move to functional_compression ?]
• http://starnix.org/ a dynamic, informative, and fun portal for fans of BSD, Linux, OS X, Solaris, and any other *nix-like OS
• someone said

  It is my opinion that NASA should get their act together in the PR department. A media rich All NASA All The Time cable channel would be a great start.

  Imagine a NASA version of the History Channel combined with live mission footage and engineering / design stories. I'd watch it.

  Something like this is necessary to educate the public as to the progress being made, as well as the dangers being risked. Perhaps news and broadcasting like that would result in the next big innovation in space travel due to capturing the minds of the next generation of engineers and astronauts.

  -- 2003-02-01 http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=52510&threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=160&mode=thread&pid=5205293#5205587 DAV pretty much agrees. How could I start such a TV broadcast channel ?

  Hey, maybe this channel already exists: http://www.broadcast.com/learning_and_education/sc ience/space/nasa/nasa_television/ | http://www.unitedspacealliance.com/live/nasatv.htm

• Anton Sherwood http://www.ogre.nu/
• recommended software applications http://www.ganns.com/Top1Percent/ recommends AutoIt by Jonathan Bennett
• "The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese." -- G. K. Chesterton
• [make Foresight claim:] The international community has committed itself ... eliminating tetanus and polio entirely "World Resources 1992-93" http://www.ciesin.org/docs/001-233/001-233all.html
• "reading code is like studying Talmud, in that it is best done in pairs, puzzling through and arguing about the meaning of the text. ... the "link" form of the weblog has similarities to the classical Jewish form of text commentary." http://levin.blogspot.com/2002_11_01_levin_archive.html#85674808 todo: add this link to PairProgramming at Extreme Programming Wiki
• share how to do something
• An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding. -- Robert Louis Stevenson
• Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no bird sang there except those that sang best. - Henry Van Dyke
• "The Voice of Her Eyes" by Karawynn Long http://www.sff.net/people/karawynn/the_voice_of_her_eyes.htp DAV: a very sad story. But with moments of unexpected beauty. im·bro·glio : A confused heap; a tangle.
• http://www.robotic.dlr.de/Smagt/research/cerebellum/cerebellum.html [#robot ? or #brain ? or both ?]
• Biomedical Informatics Medical Informatics

  the World Congress in Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering
  that will be held in Sydney from 24-29 August, 2003.
  
  The WC2003 is the Triennial Congress of the IUPESM/IFMBE/IOMP.
  The deadline for abstracts and/or refereed conference proceedings is the 10th March, 2003.
  
  Conference tracks include:
  
  1 Diagnostic Physics, Medical Imaging
  2 Image and Signal Processing, Analysis and Visualisation
  3 Radiation Oncology Physics
  4 Hadron Therapy Physics
  5 Radiation Safety and Protection
  6 Medical Informatics and Biomedical Information Technology
  7 Artificial Organs and Biomaterials
  8 Tissue Engineering
  9 Cardiopulmonary and Respiratory Science and Engineering
  10 Cardiovascular Science and Engineering
  11 Neuroengineering and Neuromuscular Systems
  12 New frontiers in MP and BME
  13 MP/BME, Education, Industry and Society
  14 Drug Delivery and Pharmacokinetics
  15 Biomechanics
  16 Rehabilitation Engineering
  17 Health Technology Management
  18 Bioinstrumentation and Biosensors
  19 Signal Processing
  20 Special Topics
  
  ...
  
  Full details are at http://www.wc2003.org
  

• FPGA development kit http://www.xess.com/
• $99 Xilinx FPGA development kit http://www.digilentinc.com/Catalog/digilab_2e.html | http://www.digilentinc.com/
• Lord I Lift Your Name on High http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1051411 "spiritual geeks" ?
• consider buying PostgreSQL book from http://www.opendocspublishing.com/
• "For a while I've wanted to put together a list of all of the books that I own, to make a sort of catalog for myself." http://www.tylerdave.com/weblog/archives/cat_programming.html
• Build a Virtual Retinal Display (VRD) wearable_electronic.html#displays

  "by 2009, computers will disappear. Displays will be written directly to the retina." -- Ray Kurzweil 2002 [FIXME: crosslink to context of Ray Kurzweil quote I have elsewhere]

• Riverside Telescope Makers Conference (RTMC) http://www.rtmc-inc.org/
• http://www.typographic.com/ ???
• http://www.portfolios.com/ ???
• todo: browse the Wikis at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PublicWikiForums and help move the text on that page to http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiForumsCategorized -- how much of the information I hoard would be better placed on one of these Wikis ? esp. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyClublet ...
• consider giving Legos to http://www.peregrinehw.com/downloads/
• http://dnsstuff.com/ ???
• http://www.justlinux.com/ ??? online forum for answering Linux questions
• todo: read "We Are Becoming Cyborgs" article by Raymond Kurzweil http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0449.html then read the commentary at Mind-X http://www.kurzweilai.net/mindx/show_thread.php?rootID=5781
• Implement some ideas from Dr. Krauter (sp?). Estimate: How sensitive must the sensors be -- is it even physically possible ?
• todo: for each of the ideas listed on page http://www.emeagwali.com/interviews/capstone_press/ , make a pointer to a fuller explaination of the idea. Some of them I (DAV) think I understand and could give a brief explaination. Others I don't understand and would like more information:
  • Formulated the counter-intuitive speedup paradox which states that there are two different but correct theoretical speedup of parallel computers. (The problem had two answers and it was believed that only one of them could be right. I proved that both answers are right).
  • Discovered the counter-intuitive hypercube paradox. (I got the idea by an studying unrelated question: What is the tightest way to pack oranges in a box?).
  • Demonstrated that the most communication-efficient parallel programs must be computation-inefficient. (by observing how bees build their honeycombs).
  • Discovered chirality in parallel programming. (by observing the structure of living things in nature).
  • Discovered enantiomeric networks. (by observing the structure of living things in nature).
• From: "L. Walsh" Cc: "'ML-spamassassin-talk'" Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 23:24:23 -0700 Subject: [SAtalk] RE: "From" header being rewritten ... I guess my next place to explore is to see if somehow fetchmail relies on something in perl that got updated or changed. Computers used to be understandable, but now there are so many different interlinks and dependancies I'm not sure how one would design a self-checking fool-proof system (but that's sure is what is needed, because computers aren't getting any less complex, that's for sure!) ... Ouch....my problems tend to be like that. 93% of the the time they aren't something obvious but some insidious interaction that probably had to do with some planetary alignment or something causing a stray gamma ray to hit 1 bit in my Dell, expensive, no-parity RAM. :-=/ ... linda
• Open Data Format Initiative http://www.odfi.org/ commentary: http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/06/04/2119235.shtml?tid=103&tid=99
• Douglas Crockford http://www.crockford.com/ JavaScript; synthetic languages; "JSON ... The Fat-Free Alternative to XML"; The Crockford Keyboard is an arrangement of letter keys for non-typists, or for environments (such as touch screens) where conventional two-handed keyboarding does not work. The order of the keys is strictly alphabetical. The vowels are aligned in the left column. ... The Crockford Keyboard was first designed in 1981, and has been placed into the Public Domain. , "WRMG Base32 Encoding: a 32-symbol notation for expressing numbers in a form that can be conveniently and accurately transmitted between humans and computer systems."
• http://www.decafbad.com/ ??? programming ... the sense that other people just "don't get" computers, not getting all they could out of it ... check out the Wiki.
• What does it mean when says In that case the optimum number of signal levels is 5 (pets) instead of 2 (bits). _The Mathematical Theory of Information_ book by Jan Kåhre http://www.matheory.info/questions.html#quantum%20per%20bit
• Neon Lamp Multivibrator http://members.misty.com/don/sillyne2.html looks simple and fun to build.
• Don's Xenon Flash and Strobe Page http://members.misty.com/don/donflash.html
• Create new routines to speed up common requests. Get rid of old routines that were created for events that no longer occur. -- DAV's paraphrase of something from http://www.getmoredone.com/tips11.html
• [language] Alexander Gross essays on language, translation, machine translation, etc. http://language.home.sprynet.com/
• (about ToDo lists in general ... recommends using a Wiki to manage the ToDo list) http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiToDoList
• [todo: read; ... move to idea_space.html ... ] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?IdeaSpaceAsAnEvolutionarySystem
• "Piezo buzzers are strong ... but they don't move very far. You can use them to actuate a tiny punch to write on steel." Doesn't this sound like a fun project ?
• What I really want is a cheap user friendly cnc drill/engraver to enhance my home prototyping . Under $500.00. This might help with drilling, but I really want it to engrave panels and make clean cutouts in enclosures. I could probably do it for $1000 to $1500 with a sherline and one of those stepper retrofits. Just a bit pricey for me at the moment. -- H. Carl Ott 2002-12-07 http://massmind.org/techref/postbot.asp?by=time&id=piclist\2002\12\07\160209a&tgt=post (by "drilling", he means drilling holes for through-hole components on PWB boards ) (his homepage: http://users.rcn.com/carlott/

  Advanced PCB (or almost any other board house) will nick you for a healthy charge for excessive drilling density if you do that. IIRC, their maximum drill density for the $33/ea. proto PCB's is 40 holes/sq. in. -- anything more is an extra charge option. Drilling time is their most expensive step in the manufacturing process. -- Matt Pobursky 2002\12\08 piclist http://massmind.org/techref/postbot.asp?by=thread&id=Comments+wanted+on+PCB+prototyping+idea%2E&tgt=&key=%22advanced+PCB%22&from= It's quite easy to make... -- Roman Black 2002\12\09 piclist http://massmind.org/techref/postbot.asp?by=thread&id=Comments+wanted+on+PCB+prototyping+idea%2E&tgt=&key=%22advanced+PCB%22&from= which points to

  • old, cheap, heavy-duty printer chassis http://massmind.org/techref/mimedecode.asp?url=piclist%5C2002%5C12%5C09%5C033619a%2Etxt&part=3
  • "Microstepping Stepper Motor Driver Kit" by Roman Black - Aug 2002 http://www.piclist.com/techref/io/stepper/linistep/index.htm

  ... an interesting home made pcb drilling machine on Elektor Electronics magazine from marh 2001 http://www.elektor-electronics.co.uk/ http://massmind.org/techref/postbot.asp?by=time&id=piclist\2002\12\09\132545a&tgt=post

• toread: http://www.rentron.com/ lots of interesting PIC projects
• "What version of Linux would work on my Macintosh?" http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#maclinux
• what is http://www.xandros.com/ ?
• todo: refactor http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TrueRandom . Perhaps list several different definitions of "Random", and indicate which ones basically talk about the same thing, why some of them conflict, and why others are physically impossible. Perhaps also give examples of various processes (weather, dice rolls, coin flips, fingerprints, snowflakes, strange attractors, pseudo-random number generators) and indicate whether or not each definition includes or excludes each one. ... http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RandomNumbers ... http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?UnitTestingRandomness ...
• Make custom rubber stamps http://www.rubberstampmadness.com/ [no time for this now. Sigh.]

• If you only read one mind-blowing, prescient essay today on the architecture of the internet, read Karma Vertigo: or Considering The Excessive Responsibilities Placed On Us By The Dawn Of The Information Infrastructure (1994) by Jaron Lanier [via Heckler & Coch]. http://people.advanced.org/~jaron/essay.html On democracy, the formative nature of the network design and how abstraction layers are calcified in, and - wonderfully - a vision of the net that encourages a version of the free market that helps everyone, rather than merely interating the old one ... http://people.advanced.org/~jaron/writings.html

  -- http://interconnected.org/home/
• http://www.ecomorder.com/ ??? mirror of massmind ???
• todo: build atomic resolution microscope (scanning tunneling microscope; atomic force microscope, or something similar). Perhaps even start a Wiki dedicated to homebrew STM.
  • homebrew STM "Quatech 800-553-1170 has some of the most cost effective D/A and A/D boards." -- recc. E.A. Rietman http://discuss.foresight.org/critmail/sci_nano/0034.html
  • "Homebrew STM: Parts sources needed!" Jim Rice http://discuss.foresight.org/critmail/sci_nano/0308.html
• build "The Ideal Student Computing Machine" as described in "Computing Devices in the Elementary School" by Ken Myers 2000-04 http://members.aol.com/KMyersPsion/edcom.html . Some of the desired features (paraphrased):

  Portable; Instant Access to Work; Useful Programs ( Word Processor; Spell Check/Thesaurus/Dictionary; graphing Spreadsheet; Day Planner); Communication ( easily send and receive data to PCs, Macs, email, World Wide Web, and print to printer ); Small, Light and Rugged; Easy to Use ("Time should be spent working, not learning how to work."); The battery should last through a full day's work; Economical.

  [to read] "Fritschi's Assistive Technology Tools Chart" http://fritschi.home.mindspring.com/tools2.html has a subsection on "Portable Note Takers" (competitors to #Dana)

  "Barrier Free Computing" has a section on "Alternative Keyboards" http://www.nssed.k12.il.us/parentscorner/UIC_KMC/cahs.htm and a section on "Portable Keyboards" (competitors to #Dana)

  "Comparison of features of several models of battery-operated portable keyboards, April 2000." http://gwiseman.home.mindspring.com/keys/keyboards.html

  Technology for Education http://tfeinc.com/

• "Where we clearly need to be, October 2002" by Brad E. Guth http://guthvenus.tripod.com/images-2.html seems to have photos of all the planets, to scale (but all packed together to fit in one image). ... http://guthvenus.tripod.com/ | mirror http://geocities.com/bradguth ???
• http://www.organized-living.com/ organization tools (filing systems, storage systems, time management, etc.)
• _The Coming Race_ fiction by Edward Bulwer Lytton ( available from Project Gutenburg) ) mentions books... mostly very small... bound in sheets of fine metal. I wonder if anyone has tried metal hard-covers for books in reality, and how well they worked ?

  "The Coming Race" novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton 1871 https://www.ebookmall.com/34920133439569634540/Coming-Race-AD8312.pdf

• [todo: read, then consider buying the tools he recommends] "Firmware basics for the boss, part 2" article by Jack Ganssle 2004-02-05 _Embedded Systems Programming_ http://www.embedded.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=MHP2VXF1PLPVSQSNDBCCKHY?articleID=17602061

  [FIXME: to email] [christlib: voting] "Voting Computers and a Paper Shredder" article by Darren Ashby http://www.chipcenter.com/eexpert/dashby/dashby028.html

  ...

  Under New Mexico law, if the candidates end up tied, the winner could be determined by having the two men sit for a hand of poker -- with the state going to the winner. ... In practice, the usual method for this rare event has been to play one hand of five-card poker. This was last done in December 1999, in a local judge's race. Republican Jim Blanq and Democrat Lena Milligan played ... poker in a courthouse with dozens of people watching, and Blanq won.

  ...

  I wonder if we wouldn't have a better leader by just having all the candidates give their campaign money to the nation to pay off the debt. Then make them play a game of poker. You certainly need poker skills when you deal with other countries.

  ...

• http://www.plethora.net/~seebs/faqs/manager.html [FIXME: toread]
• http://www.seebs.net/log/ [FIXME: toread]
• "Making Accessible Minds" by Mark Siege http://www.the19thfloor.net/archives/000139.html [FIXME: toread]
• 43. The complexity of a weapon is inversely proportional to the IQ of the weapon's operator. 47. The tough part about being an officer is that the troops don't know what they want, but they know for certain what they DON'T want. 57. If it's stupid but it works, it isn't stupid. 66. Things that must be together to work, usually can't be shipped together.

  Cooke's Law In any decision situation, the amount of relevant information available is inversely proportional to the importance of the decision.

  -- http://www.vision.net.au/~spick/murphys.htm (a mirror of http://www.cpuidle.de/by_topic.htm ?) [move to video_game_tips]

• [move to creed] The 10 Commandments of the Frisbee http://www.vision.net.au/~spick/murphys.htm 3. One must never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than, "Watch This!".

  ...

  Captain Penny's Law: You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.

  Emerson's Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.

  Flon's Law: There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad programs. [FIXME: move to programming_languages ?]

  Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab: Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.

• Your Computer Does the Walking... Tired of shopping around for the best prices possible on books? Well, consider using the Web for all of your price comparisons. The following sites act as "agents" or "middlemen" for any number of booksellers, although their services don't cost you anything. All of them take into consideration prices being offered by online booksellers like Barnes & Noble (www.bn.com) and Amazon (www.amazon.com).

  You can search for new, used, and out-of-print books at the following sites:

  www.bestbookbuys.com

  www.bibliofind.com

  www.abebooks.com

  www.bookpricer.com

  www.addall.com

  -- from http://slj.reviewsnews.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA153060&publication=slj
• check out "qFileSync" to sync files between desktop and laptop. http://www.geocities.com/Qwertie256/
• robots http://www.natew.com/juice/ RC helicopters http://www.natew.com/rcheli/
• todo: make dynamic balancing robot. Perhaps start with "simple" broomstick balance.
• http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~bach/bookmarks.html ??? circuit design software; ... CORDIC algorithm ... GNU Octave ... ... pretty-printers to convert C++ source code to HTML ... ... reconfigurable computing ... ... compilers for DSPs ...
• -- [SGT] Simon G. Tatham: "How to Report Bugs Effectively" http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html

  [ESR] Eric S. Raymond: "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

• ??? http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/vplanet.html http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/uncgi/Earth/action?opt=-p http://www.genealogy.com/help/?Welcome=1075670939 http://www.bfi.org/map.htm http://geek.com/ http://www.geni.org/geni97/framer_products.html http://www.jimloy.com/math/math.htm http://www.DeepChip.com/ http://www.newbie.org/
• ??? http://www.industrycommunity.com/myforum/jw_childers/messages/467.html PWB electronics design: discussion forum
• ??? Nanotech: Self-assembling molecular RAM: http://www.ZettaCore.com Nanoscale Materials Workbench: http://www.Arryx.com Carbon Nanotube flash memory: http://www.Nantero.com MEMS: 3D MEMS rapid manufacturing: http://www.MEMGen.com Digital 3D MEMS Switches: http://www.SiWaveInc.com

  ??? Aladdin StuffIt Deluxe

• "Cat 5" t-shirt http://www.cafepress.com/thebabywhisper.11326858
• todo: read: Ka-Ping Yee http://zesty.ca/ wrote the Crit annotator; has links to other stuff I find interesting.
• "simple" beef recipes http://www.laurasleanbeef.com/reluctantChef/

• i want a programmable keyboard. something with LEDs under the keycaps which i can switch between various country layouts on command, and which will show the keycaps in that layout. it's a bitch to type umlauts otherwise. -- piranha

  http://www.gooroos.ca/piranha/ [FIXME: keyboard design]
• Mass mind http://massmind.org/techref/idea/websites.htm , PersonalTelco http://wiki.personaltelco.net/ , the free encyclopedia http://www.wikipedia.com/ , the free encyclopedia http://everything2.com/ , grass roots wireless broadband community http://www.seattlewireless.net/ , OIki: The Open Inventor knowledge index http://oiki.coin3d.org/
• Ternary Search Trees "faster than hashing for many typical search problems" http://www.ddj.com/articles/1998/9804/9804a/9804a.htm
• http://www.ddj.com/ has articles and source code online
• John W. Krupansky http://www.basetechnology.com/ "Check out our new site for Enrepreneurial Engineers. It's for technology people who are interesting in running their own businesses. Hopefully, this site will partially fill the void left by Midnight Engineering magazine. If you have a cool new technology idea that you think would make a great business, check out the site." http://enteng.com/
• [Python] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BackWardLanguage
• [Java] Villu Ruusmann http://www.ut.ee/~bill/ freeware development in Java.
• Magic Sinewaves http://www.tinaja.com/magsn01.html one of many fascinating articles on Don Lancaster's The Guru's Lair http://www.tinaja.com/ There's some info on very-low-distortion sine waves being generated with digital on-off bit streams much like DaLe's 1 bit speaker at: Magic Sine wave Library http://www.tinaja.com/magsn01.html This seems to confirm the idea from Joe Jared <joejared at webworldinc.com> that specific harmonics can be eliminated given a sophisticated enough encoder. The mysterious Me stesso medesimo <l.raiser at deathsdoor.com> went up several notches in my estimation when he posted real code. I hope I'm actually improving it when I modify it to (hopefully) better simulate the hardware 1 bit ADC / 1 bit DAC process: unsigned long int position = 0; signed int x := 0; while( there are more bytes left ){ x := x + sample[position] - average; if (x + R() < 0){ output( 0 ); x = x + 1; }else{ output( 1 ); x = x - 1; }; position++; } Rather than setting R() to zero, making it a random number from -0.5 to +0.5 might give better quality. This only outputs 1 bit at a time; perhaps your HP expects 8 consecutive bits to be packed into a single byte. The HP48 ? Interesting little calculator. I believe it is actually *more* powerful than my first desktop computer. I'd like to see your HP program, DaLe. (What do you mean by "97" and "157" ?) <DaLe at gmx.net> further clarified: >Perhaps I asked the wrong question, my intention was to generate >an uncompressed 1bit-sample for playback on a not so sophisticated >device, my HP48 calculator. >This handy thing is able to switch its beeper with a frequency of 55kHz >while reading out the sample bitstring. >I believe that there's not much space for calculate the decompression. ... > - I declare the x-variable as unsigned byte (unsigned char in c) > - I wrote a 97 for output(0) and a 157 for output(1)
• " How to Write Computer Programs" by Gary D. Knott http://civilized.com/ (The "Inventions Needed" page is also interesting)
• [fpga] Subject: Re: General FPGA introduction needed Date: 16 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMT From: "Steven K. Knapp" <sknapp at optimagic.com> Organization: OptiMagic, Inc. Newsgroups: comp.arch.fpga I can recommend The Programmable Logic Jump Station at http://www.optimagic.com as a good place to start. It has . . . Introductory material: http://www.optimagic.com/faq.html Free or low-cost design software: http://www.optimagic.com/software.html Books on programmable logic, etc.: http://www.optimagic.com/books.html Tutorials on VHDL, Verilog: http://www.optimagic.com/tutorials.html FPGA boards: http://www.optimagic.com/boards.html ----------------------------------------------------------- Steven K. Knapp OptiMagic, Inc. -- "Great Designs Happen 'OptiMagic'-ally" Web: http://www.optimagic.com -----------------------------------------------------------
• Re: Mettler and Open Source Security Author: Christopher Browne <cbbrowne at news.hex.net> Date: 1999/01/06 ... -- Personally, I think my choice in the mostest-superlative-computer wars has to be the HP-48 series of calculators. They'll run almost anything. And if they can't, while I'll just plug a Linux box into the serial port and load up the HP-48 VT-100 emulator. (By <jdege at winternet.com>, Jeff Dege) <cbbrowne at ntlug.org>- <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
• http://web.mit.edu/brlewis/www/ ??? cgiemail - a program in C for Unix that converts form input into any e-mail format you design.
• [earth maps ?] http://www.esri.com/ ??? catalogs Web sites offering live mapping applications that can be viewed with ArcExplorer or a Web browser. Many free bits of software. http://ipfu1.bau-verm.uni-karlsruhe.de/Personen/weisbr/grass/grassu/subject.html#926 ??? http://listserv.cesnet.cz/lwgate/IMAGRS-L/archives/imagrs-l.log9709/subject/ ???
• "token human"
• WiSCy99: Scientific Calculator/Graph Suite ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/win95/calc/wiscy99.zip "WiSCy99 v.4.15 Calculator/Graph Suite (Windows 95/98/NT) is the complete and easy-to-use scientific calculator. The results of calculation can be visualization, printing as graphic, as text or saving to disk." ???
• http://www.analog.com/pdf/ad9830.pdf "digitally created sine waves up to 25 MHz" can be used to create stereo FM ?
• http://www.freewave.com/ wireless modems (spread spectrum, 2.4 GHz)
• consider installing something like pgp or gpg, not to hide my mail, but to sign the mail and show it is not spam. http://wwwkeys.pgp.net
• [data acquisition] http://ueidaq.com/ (Linux friendly)
• http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:Serial_Data_Communications
• [programming challenges] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AlgorithmsWanted
• "Examples of interactive documents" by Stephan Houben http://www.win.tue.nl/~stephanh/dictaat/index/index.html (examples in numerical analysis) [Java]
• consider getting a life

Started: 1997 Jul 28.
Original Author: David Cary.
Current maintainer: David Cary.

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