Hex Wallpaper

It's time to switch up the wallpapers again so I've come up with a new concept for everyone to enjoy Hex WallPapers (in the same vein as the carbon fiber wall paper before it).

Download

Windows Carbon Fiber Wallpaper

I decided today that I needed a new carbon fiber themed wallpaper. After failing to find one that I wanted I decided to create my own.

1920:1080 (16:9 aspect) Download Zip Here

1920:1200 (16:10 aspect) Download Zip Here

And here's a bonus one for android.

I've included a blank carbon fiber so you can use it with the windows login changer for a clean login experience.

Radeon HD 5870 Quiet Mod

I noticed that the squirrel cage fan in the HD 5870 can at times make a medium pitched wirr. After some messing around I realized it was the plastic shell that was very good at transmitting the noise.

So I got out some foam board and created a sound damper.

 

 

 

 

 

The end result is that frequencies are now isolated to much lower end of the spectrum and the video card generally remains barely audible.

This also has not yet shown to affect thermals in any way so it’s the best of both worlds at the moment.

iTunesMonitor 2.5 (Update)

I've recently updated iTunesMonitor to 2.5 status you can find the original description here (The download link was updated there as well).

The main difference is it now respects Windows 7's UAC controls so no more crashing due to permission issues. Keep in mind you will need .NET framework 4 to run this now.

Among other nice features 2.5 iTunesMonitor finally gives iTunes the ability to work with your media keys even when iTunes does not have focus for those die hard iTunes users.

The system is "install free" meaning as long as you have iTunes installed detection and launching is automatic.

Download iTunesMonitor 2.5

RC Day Out

The more RC's you get the long it seems these RC days out get. Today's RC'ing lasted over 1 hour! I had a chance to run everything in my fleet once. This includes both helicopters (Blade CP, and Blade 400) and the RC car (Tamiya TL01 using aircraft lipo for insane power).

 

 

I finally learned nose-in hover today. The funny part was I've been able to nose in hover for over 1 year now in the simulator. But whenever I took it out into the real world I always felt like I didn't learn anything and chickened out. Today I took the "learn or bust" strategy with the Blade CP. Basically I was going to force myself to learn it or allow the Blade CP to be destroyed in the process. After a slight initial adjustment period of about 1 minute it turns out I could hover nose in semi-accurately for as long as I want without returning to a more comfortable orientation. I was very startled by how long I avoided doing it but at the same time not too surprised as I know I could perform the same skill for very long periods in the sim. After confirming my skills on the Blade CP with the training gear I decided to give it a go on the Blade 400 a much more scarier bird. The results were even more impressive since the Blade 400 is more stable to begin with I hovered nose-in for the entire pack with only slight periods of drift and correction.

I think the lesson is if you have been able to perform the same skill in the sim but always felt uncomfortable with it in real life and have been stuck. Sometimes just forcing yourself to do it and accepting that your heli might be sacrificed has surprisingly positive results. When your brain realizes it can't just retreat it steps up to the plate and performs amazingly.

I also had a chance to try out my RC car with a very modified power plant. It's a standard RC car but it runs a 200A aircraft lipo compatible speed controller. The speeds were spectacular off the helicopter power packs which have much higher discharge rates than the car motor normally runs off of. Today's test was several runs that would stress the speed controller and motor to find out if any of the components would burn up after prolonged use. Although the motor did go above 125 degC and the speed controller equally toasty at 80 DegC none of the components started smoking or failing so I'm going to cautiously give this configuration a pass for race use. The car can now reach speeds beyond 70Km/h and you will quickly run out of space in even football field sized parking lots at top speed. I've noticed with this incredible amount of power the 23T pinion is starting to show signs of wear, I assume that I will have to change the pinion out periodically if I still choose to run the car in "insane" speed freak mode.

I thought about selling the Blade CP before I'm glad I didn't I would never dare force myself to train with the Blade 400 under do or die conditions the Blade 400 is far to dangerous to allow a crash on purpose with it. The Blade CP is still an awesome trainer regardless of what everyone says.

Dual Speaker Setup

Theory: If speakers all have their weaknesses (High, Low, Midrange) then would combining speakers with different strengths improve things?

 

Setup:

(outer)

Logitech Z-2300 THX speaker set:

Strengths: Highs, Lows,

Weakness: Speech, Mid range, Rumbling bass

 

(inner)

Yamaha MS201:

Strengths: Mid-Range. Accurate but weak bass

Weakness: Highs, Ultra low

 

(Connector)

Standard single 3.5mm to Dual 3.5mm splitter jack.

 

 

Result? Well I've yet unconfirmed a true result but I do notice slightly improved midrange when compared to the stock Z2300 setup the vocals come through clearer and are more center stage rather being drowned out by the accompaniment.

I wouldn't recommend you go out and buy a setup to get this effect though the reality is that the Logitech Z-2300 does a pretty good job already. The Yamaha's do a very good job of filling in the mid range which was lacking in the Logitech. In particular the bass is now not only loud and thunderous but also accurate and fast which would be impossible with the vented setup. But now with two subs one vented one unvented I get the best of the mixing.

The satellites are more interesting it takes a bit of adjusting to get the mix right depending on your preference the mixing is about 40% Yamaha 60% Logitech now.

Do I see a sizable gain?: A slight gain yes, a sizable gain no certainly not if you didn't have the extra equipment on hand. However if you do have 2 speakers that you both like different qualities to it might be worth a shot to bring them together.

iTunes Monitor

iTunes on the PC is quite popular but iTunes has a nasty habit of more often than not eating up way too many resources even while it's not running.

The culprit?

iTunes needs several services that it doesn't shutdown when it closes these are:

iTunesHelper

iPodService

AppleMobileDevice

BonjourService

(and a few others)

 

I found this unacceptable so I wrote a little program I call the iTunesMonitor. It's sole job is to set all these services to manual so you don't get them on startup and to launch them when it's started and then launch iTunes once all the services are up.

The program then sits idle in the background checking every 5 seconds to see if iTunes is closed. When it sees this it will immediately clean up any remaining services.

What about the media keys they don't seem to work one you don't have iTunes in focus. Well since my program has to sit in the background and wait for iTunes to close anyways I felt that I should fix the way media keys behave. Now iTunes will respond to media keys regardless of if it's in focus or not and the media keys are unregistered when the program is closed.

 

Try iTunesMonitor for yourself. It requires no configuration other than an installation of iTunes. It will automatically detect your installation of iTunes and launch it along with the supported services. No configuration is required however it is recommended you replace the iTunes icon in your start menu with the iTunesMonitor for transparent operation.

 

Download iTunesMonitor 2.5

A Better Game Sound Engine For AnyKey tojam#4

Today I had a thought about something quite interesting leading up to our game competition. Since none of us are music experts and all music loops are quite short and designed to be connected to each other I'm proposing a very interesting change to our game music engine.

Our original music engine was monolithic as in it only played one massive track.

< Level >
[Songfile]

We could in simple terms switch to a basic shuffle system

< Level >
[songfile1][songfile2][songfile3][songfile4][songfile5]

But then I thought of a much better idea which I hope to be able to be able to implement today or tomorrow. Each song data will consist of 2 parts the track itself and a linked list reference to another part. Music then becomes a sort of directed graph with cycles. Edges then can be taken randomly. This kind of thing is better explained with a picture.

 

The advantage to using this system is that we can prevent one obvious section from continuously looping and we can enforce tracks that sound better after each other to happen. The end result is a pseudo-random music that will make the listener think it's more intelligent than it is.

ToJam 09 (pre-event info)

ToJam #4 is taking place this weekend from Friday to Sunday. I always enjoy this event but there are currently a few lingering issues:

1. The organizers via twitter have already stated that there is no wired internet and there might not be wireless.

When someone says might not be wireless, what they mean is some fool forgot to secure their open wi-fi and it's now going to be bombarded by 100 participants of the event. The organizers are looking into tethering but I doubt one device will be able to support the rates required for things like downloading art assets or free soundtracks.

For that reason our team is considering also having a tethered option for this event.

I'd personally imagine teams by now will have their game idea done, and I'm hoping there won't be any of that "tape giant sound blaster posters on the sun facing window" fiasco we had last year.

Hopefully mickey the mouse was cleaned up too.

At the same time team Any Key this year will probably not bring a mountain of snacks making us by far the snack team.

Currently I'm debating if I should bring my linux box to the event with it's sole purpose to act as a GIT repo

SpeedStream 4200 Cooling MOD

After having the SpeedStream4200 around for about 2 weeks I decided that the tiny diminutive DSL modem has serious cooling issues. Under normal conditions when it's allowed to lie flat on the table the bottom will get too hot to touch.

 

The problem became more serious when the modem was taken apart, the main processor on the board was hot enough to give you a burn.

 

Although I have no doubt the modem is operating within operating ranges it's still inexcusable how sometimes a simple heatsink that would've cost less than a dollar would've remedied the situation and greatly reduced the number of these modems that have been known to fail.

An easy fix for those of you DIY'ers is to take some aluminum thermal duct tape and to fold your own semi-pro looking heat sink.

 

 

Remember the trick when trying to create your own is to start with an accordion fold. The higher you can get the cooling fins the better your cooling will be. The denser you can pack them together likewise will help as well. Passive cooling is a function of surface area so when designing your heat sink try and maximize that. Although I haven't done it another good idea is to mount a cooling fan nearby to encourage airflow over the chip.

I hope in the future manufacturers won't take shortcuts after an hour of testing temperatures appear to be dramatically reduced.

Lego Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat!

With the early details of the capstone project in hand we know it'll be lego and we know it will be mindstorms.

I was thinking of markets for our project (part of our assignment) and I realized that if I build one of the lego attachments below then I'd definetly be scooped up by Darpa.

Following a recent traumatic event in which my cell phone shot out of my jacket and bounced off every stair in BSB/108 I now am able to view the insides of my battery. I own a VTech A700 

The project synergy background although much more complex and arguably better done had one fatal flaw. I was staring at myself all day. And to tell you the truth that was a bit erie, so I took my photo on the right did an enlargement put scanlines on it and the end result is what you see here. 

This one is from the Project: Synergy desktop background. Simply put it's a depiction of my multiple personality syndrome. I thought it was a good joke to build a wall paper off of and not be too boring. The end result turned out well and is now available for your viewing.