I increased the speed of the web page. I don’t know why, but my .jpgs weren’t optimized.
Site was down due to IpowerWeb (again!). Looking to change web host providers.
I haven’t worked on this site in a while because, well… I don’t know what direction I want with this site.
A Portal for Czanik family members, a gallery of my artwork, a blog, or just my personal web developer sandbox?
This website wasn’t intended to be used for job searching, but I’m forced to make do. Companies have asked for some online websites to show as my porfolio. Most of my stuff was developed for company intranets. Please keep that in mind. Thank you.
My website is pretty much a big mess right now. A lot of unfinished projects. Either I got distracted, or found some better projects to work on (like ARCHI). Biggest problem with this website is a distinct lack of direction. Hopefully, this will change during 2006. So, I made some updates. It should look a little cleaner, and give insight to where the website is heading.
When you have a blog, you’re supposed to document the important things that happen to your life. I rarely post in my blog to do anything but post on ideas I have. But, this time, I had to post. I’ve put it off, but I need to say it.
My friend Steven, found me on myspace and asked me if I knew that our mutual friend Christopher Alfama died. This sentence hit me like a ton of bricks. I had no idea. We had emailed each other a while ago, and I knew why he never replied back.
Chris Alfama died, hit by a hit and run drunk driver while driving home.
Read the rest of this entry »
Nintendo’s Revolution looks to be, well… a revolution. *IF* they can make it work just like their commercials show it.
If you don’t know about the Nintendo controller, google it. The controller is nice and all, but will it capture the “non-gamer” market everybody wants?
Well, they can if they do the following:
1. Release the console at $149 (and lower it to the magical $99)
2. New games come out at the magical $19.99 price point.
The reason why? Well, that’s the point of this article ….
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Users are now deleted!
Why, well, if my own family and friends don’t even take the time to register, than anybody else who had registered were probably spammers.
Spammers seemed to have bypassed my current authorization of images, so I’ve made some changes again. The trick is smart, but their idea is stupid. I can just rename a file and your silly little code is broken. I hope the spammers read this.
YOU CANNOT WIN. I WILL NOT LET MY SITE BE SPAMMED. QUIT IT!
I’d rather spend 10 hours stopping my site from being spammed, than one spammer get a single cent. That’s how much I hate them. They don’t even deserve to live.
Some Russian spammer was brutally murdered. Beaten to death. Karma is a bitch assholes! A warning to spammers: For every 1 person you make a dollar off of, there’s a person who wants to kill you because they’re sick of it all. Sooner or later, you’ll get what’s coming to you. And, I won’t lift a finger to help scum like you.
CARL is almost at a stage where I feel comfortable. We’ve made a wooden box to hold it all together. We haven’t put the pieces all together yet, but we’re getting closer and closer.
TO DO:
I. Create Head Unit (possible going to use this for a 3.0 project):
1. Have a USB Connector in the front (for Memory sticks or whatever)
2. IR Reciever?
3. Flashing LED (false alarm light)
4. 10 Buttons For Radio Stations/Genre Playlists. (Rock,Talk/Ebook,Oldies,Pop,etc.)
5. Buttons for Volume,FF,Play,etc.
6. Motorized Monitor for PS/1 screen. (more info on this later)
7. Slot Loaded DVD player
II. Steering Wheel Control (Nextrack,Volume, Play/Pause, etc.)
III.Install Micraphone for Voice Control. (Simply for the cool factor!)
IV.Install all wires and everything in the box, then in the trunk, holding the PC by Earthquake straps or something.
The Car PC has been cut down, and now fits under the seat. This is a problem though. Taking it in out and out is a huge pain. The PCI cards are too tall. So, we may have to put it in the trunk. I simply don’t have a good place for it.
I still have a full size keyboard occuping the passenger space though. Still, the progress has been exciting!
Okay, we got the PC running on the power supply. It’s only a 90 watt power supply, but it still turns on the motherboard. It turns on when you turn on the car. Then, it tells the PC to shut down when you take out the key from the ignition. The only problem was lack of cable length. We’ve had to actually install the PC in the front seat.
What’s great about this, is I don’t have to push any buttons to listen to music. Turn the car on, music will play. And, it will never drain the battery if I forget to turn it off.
Well, work hast started on Stage 2 of the Car Audio Research Lab (CARL project). My Carputer! John & I got the PC working with the PS/1 screen. We’re using an Inverter to power the PC, but it’s complicated right now to use.
To turn on the Stereo:
1. Turn on Car.
2. Turn on inverter on passenger side floor.
3. Reach around back of passenger side back seat and hit the power button.
4. Wait for PC to boot.
5. Use full size keyboard to change tracks and stuff.
The PS/1 stopped working though. The reason? Well, John dropped it. We’re going to try to fix it. It worked for 10 minutes. Technically, I don’t need a monitor (though it would be nice!)
- Damon
At Work, I’ve created Dynamic VCards, a PDF Phonelist, and a machine schedule Graphic.
Everything is grabbed from the database, and inserted into vastly different formats, using PHP.
Ah, PHP… I salute the original beauty, and celebrate the complexity I can create.
But, work is all nice and great… I’ll need to post about my storage area getting broken into!
Strictly speaking from my ass, (and doing no research) I think I realize how fuzzy logic works.
Most programs and algorithms I can grasp without looking at them. However, Fuzzy logic programs always held that aura of mystery. How does the computer know who Bob is? How does a computer recognize the letter “A” as an A? Then, when I was thinking about it, it hit me. Statistics!
Fuzzy logic can be programmed by simply having the computer check the statistics of an item and make it’s best guess. For example, If I insert the letters of the alphabet into the computer, and then entered in a drawn letter, the computer could analyze the letter, and find the closest approximation of the letter. Results can be fined tuned with further tuned by training it.
It was so simple, I don’t realize why I didn’t see it before. Using a statistical based approach, we can identify people, letters, cars, etc.
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Ideas for our children:
The problem with the kids of today is not the kids. I believe most people are deep down good people. The problem is, when they wish to grow we treat them like children.
Children have no rights. Parents don’t believe they are capable of making tough decisions. Parents are wrong. They forget that a young man of 17 used to own land and had children of his own.
Cavemen died at an average age of 30. Our brains are developed enough at 15 to go out on our own. What adults forget is these kids are ignorant enough that they can suceed because they don’t know yet they’re not supposed to.
Creator of Napster: in college.
Creator of Microsoft: started his company at 18.
History is filled with such people.
So I believe we should NOT postpone a child from working if they wish to. A highschool kid of 14 can get your McDonald’s order just as well as a 16 year old. I challenge anybody to tell me a good reason why a 14 yr. old can’t legally work.
If you had Einstein and Bill Gates working for you would you keepmthem if they were 14?
So! my site has changed. It’s a whole lot easier to read from a palm pc. In fact, I’m typing this on my palm pc right now.
I still find it hard to believe that I can make a site compelling enough for people to read regularly. There are thousands of blogs out there. Yet, I only regularly read one. She doesn’t really blog anymore. If I had more time (and determination) I could do it.
I got the X-10 stuff working using the Active home software. However, I plan on using the misterhouse software. The light turns on almost instantly. (Some people said it can take several seconds, I had no problems).
I had problems connecting it. First, I couldn’t find the CD, but downloaded the software. When I ran the install. It still didn’t see my USB connection. The solution? I simply had to unplug the unit from the outlet and plug it back in. From then on, it worked great.
I can’t have a STAR WARS site, without having some review about revenge of the Sith.
I tried to remain spoiler free for much of this movie, so you didn’t see posts about this movie. But, now the movie is out… And, my verdict? It’s fantastic!
I loved it! It’s the birth of VADER. The birth of Vader’s kids. My only complaint is that it whizzed by so fast. Some stuff seemed to happen too fast. But, this always seems to be a problem with Star Wars for me.
Empire Strikes Back: Yoda teaches Luke all these great Jedi tricks, in what… a couple of days?
Attack of the Clones: Padme “truly” falls for Annakin after ………a few days?
Phantom Menace: Annakin spends a few days with Annakin, only to think about her for a decade?
In Revenge of the Sith: Annakin’s turn to the darkside seem to happen a bit too fast for me. I believe that if Lucas had completed the scripts for Episodes 1-3, he would have changed Episodes I & II to fit better. You can tell Lucas just had notes for what was going to happen.
It sounds like I’m bashing Revenge, I’m not. I can’t wait to see it again, and again. I loved this movie. Those that didn’t like the first two movies but loved the original trilogy might really enjoy this movie. I loved it. So, by Netflix ratings, it gets a 5/5.
High Points:
Emperor fights.
More Yoda fights.
Annakin vs. Obi-Wan
The rise of Vader.
The birth of the twins.
R2 kicking some butt.
Chewie!
Low Points:
No Boba Fett 
Went by so fast!
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Okay, I’m using Wordpress 1.5 for my blog.
As you can probably see. I started a program to automatically add RSS feeds in.
I thought, “Great, now I can put all my favorite sites in one site, my site!”
Wrong. They include ads in their RSS feeds. I can write programs to eliminate those ads, but I feel that’s unethical.
Also a problem was my database was filling up. Apparently I’m limited to how many database connections I can setup. So, If 50 posts were done in one day, my website database would shut down. It sucks, and my hosting server sucks because of this, but I would rather not host everything myself.
So, I’m taking out the auto-RSS News aggregator. I also felt my site was (already) starting to lose its identity. My few posts were losts in a sea of posts from slashdot and engadget. So! No Posts from me!
I will put back in my original website pages………later. I also plan on using some sort of theme chooser. That’s for another day though.
We know some of you were (less than) excited about that edition of the
HP R607 that Gwen Stefani “designed”, but we just wanted
to shoot you a memo letting you know that the little bugger’s finally available. And not a moment too soon—we have a
strong feeling that a couple-hundie dollar gadget will help slow down that inevitable chart slide she’s facing any, uh,
month now.
We’re not even going to go on and on how about typically, uh, utilitarian all of Nextel’s cellphones are, but
they’ve just introduced another new handset that’ll fit right in with their current line up. The Motorola i275, a
cameraphone that sports a 65,000 color LCD screen, GPS, Nextel’s new Group Connect service, which lets you do that
push-to-talk thing with up to 21 other people nationwide (party line!), and their relatively new Direct Talk feature
which lets you use the phone like a walkie-talkie when you’re outside Nextel’s coverage area (the range is up to six
miles).
