Learned How to Program using the Accelerometers on my Playbook

June 3rd, 2011

Today I spent some time learning how to get sensor data from the accelerometers in my Playbook.

Back Story:

In December, my brother told me about a deal that Research in Motion had going on wherein you could build an application to put out in their tablet’s App Store upon release and they would send you, the developer, a free tablet.  Being nerdy, and on Christmas break from school, I decided I could complete this.  I built a Flashlight App to learn the language (I went with Actionscript 3.0) and went on to build an Etch-a-Sketch.  It was much less difficult than I was expecting.  The difficult part came when I was trying to actually submit it.  Being a new system, RIM had not yet streamlined their developer approval and submission process.

Long story short, I got both apps submitted before the deadline and received my free tablet in the mail in early May.

Today

So, why am I learning to use the accelerometers? First of all, I wanted to make updates to the Etch-a-Sketch such that you could shake to erase (make it authentic).  In the initial release, I couldn’t do this because I didn’t know how to access or test the sensors. Second, I felt that I could make another game, like labyrinths of old.  I’m getting there but so far the ball can only stay within the screen.  When I add walls it starts to become unpredictable.

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Car Repair – Replace the Lower Ball Joint

June 1st, 2011

While I’m not terribly excited about cars, I do drive them and should probably learn about them so I do occasionally try to learn how to diagnose and fix certain parts of them.

Until about a week ago, I didn’t know how to replace this animal.  In fact, I didn’t even know it existed.  As it turns out it wasn’t horribly difficult and cost less than $100.

My fiancee and I drive a 1993 Suzuki Swift.  It has a lot of distance on it and is rusting in a large number of places, but it gets us from point a to point b.  We don’t drive it that often as we both take the bus to our respective jobs or schools so it generally holds up pretty well.  This year it seems to have needed quite a lot of love (read money). In the last  12 months we have had to replace the master cylinder, the catalytic converter and the clutch and today the driver’s side lower ball joint.

Basically, in this car, the lower ball joint is the pivot point that allows the car to turn while still being attached to the car.  While we were removing the snow tires and replacing the normal summer tires, my father, whose knowledge of cars greatly exceeds mine, noted that there was a lot more motion on the wheel than there should have been.  After quickly diagnosing it and saying we’d need to replace it soon, he left on vacation.

Upon his return home, he had visions of the whole wheel being ripped off violently while we were innocently driving home one day and phoned me up to say we should get to work replacing it today if possible. (Actually, I may have dramatized his visions). Some internet research (how did anyone get anything done before google?) we determined that we needed to replace the whole lower control arm.

In any case, after spending some time removing the lower control arm and hoping that we didn’t break any of the bolts while removing them, we determined that two of the bolts were quite worn and will need to soon be replaced.  One was almost not recognizable as a bolt! While I searched Home Depot and Canadian Tire for these specific bolts (tapered M10 – 1.25 30mm lag bolts), to no avail I might add, my dad installed the new one. When I returned to the car we decided to just put the old ones back in as they held well enough.

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Historical:Surgery

May 30th, 2011

I remember being a child.  That in itself is something I think more people would benefit from remembering.  One of the things that I remember was thinking how I might be invincible (something like Bruce Willis’ character in Unbreakable) because I didn’t ever need stitches.  One brother got stitches as a toddler and got an awesome forehead scar all because of a piano bench while the other one got stitches because his reaction to a ball being thrown at him was to run into furniture rather than duck.  I, on the other hand, was invincible.  Shortly after thinking this of course I got launched off of a see-saw and landed on my face, very much needing stitches thus disproving my invincibility, but I digress.

The point of this post is that until I was 25, I had never been to a hospital for my own medical history.  Was I invincible? Again this was proven to be false when I went in for pacemaker surgery.  Why does a 25 year old need pacemaker surgery you ask? Better yet, why does this fit into the subject of this blog? I’ll get to both!

The Pacemaker – Beatzy to my Friends

Throughout my life, I would eat starchy, carb heavy foods as any good North American child is wont. French fries, potatoes, pasta, toast, garlic bread,… you get the idea.  Contrary to most though, when I ate them, I occasionally got a bit light headed on swallowing.  I didn’t think a lot about it because, as I said before, I was invincible though I seem to recall trying once to describe the feeling to one of my parents who reassured me by telling me that everyone felt a bit lightheaded after a big meal.

Fast forward to June 2008 when I was enjoying a bit of crackers and cheese and television after work.  I was polishing off one of the last snacks when my vision started to blacken and I thought I guess I’m going to pass out.  With my last conscious thought I managed to check the time on the video clip I was watching.  Now I’m not sure if that was to gauge the length of my outage or so that I could rewind to that point when I came to but, in any case, using this information I was able to determine that I was out for about 5 seconds.  Not a long time but still alarming.

After three months of doctors and specialists, I was diagnosed with deglution syncope, a fancy Latin phrase meaning I pass out when I swallow.  My heart was actually stopping for a measurable length of time when I ate.  Amazingly enough, this diagnosis also seems to correspond with my fear of choking and my sometimes violent reactions to people touching my neck but again I’m getting off track.  November 7th, 2008 I was implanted with a fancy new pacemaker making me the first cyborg in my immediate family.

Relevance to the Blog

Why is this relevant to a blog about learning things and pursuing exciting adventures? If you have ever had surgery, you will understand how terrifying it can be.  While I wasn’t completely knocked out for the procedure, minimizing the overall threat to my life, it was still something I was rather afraid of.  At any time I could have just died because I was eating but now surgeons were going to open up my chest and put in a device that will give me a mild electric shock if my heart decides not to beat in a timely fashion!

After having such a surgery, I am able to look at many other things as much less frightening.  Less than one year later I went bungee jumping and remember thinking how it wasn’t that big a deal in comparison but that is another story.  Public speaking seems much less daunting. So many things just seem to pale in comparison.

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Step One of Breaking my Fear of Calling People

May 30th, 2011

I hate talking on the phone. I’m not sure what it is about using the phone but I specifically am afraid of phoning people I don’t know.  I could never be a phone salesman that’s for sure, cold-calling would drive me out in minutes.  You know the old joke, “Most people would rather be the one in the coffin than the one giving the eulogy” well I’d rather be in those positions than calling the funeral home.

This has really become a problem for me right now because I’m trying to organize my wedding in 6 weeks and trying to get an unposted job in robotics for the summer.  It is an amazing number of people you have to call to organize a wedding and what’s more, they expect you to do this; it’s their job!  I think the problem I have is that I don’t like to impose on people so not only am I taking their time by interrupting whatever they were doing to answer the phone but then I’m immediately asking them to take more time to do something at a later date.

Trying to ask someone for a job is even more of an imposition however as I’m asking them to take me on for only a few months as well as train me in their business for that time.  All of this is on top of the initial phone call.

Often, I’d rather talk to their voicemail because they’ll check it when they have time, they can phone me back if they have time and if they don’t want to do it they don’t have to do anything.

So today’s feat was making phone calls.  I know it sounds pretty boring but I made quite a few.  This is brave for me!  That was just the beginning, tomorrow I have to make even more!  Related to this is my fear of interrupting people behind closed doors but that is best left to another day.

On a related note, if you happen to have need for a student roboticist for a few months and you’re located in the Vancouver area, please send me a message!

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Started the Blog

May 30th, 2011

I suppose this is the first exciting thing that I’ve done.  You’ve got to start some where when you’re going to be writing a blog!  Mind you this post will count as Sunday’s post even though it is 1:30am on Monday…

It really remains to be seen what I make of this blog.  It may change my life by making me aware of the incredible things that I do every day or by making me do incredible things every day (I doubt that) or I may just abandon in tomorrow never posting again.  Only time will tell.

Depending on if I’m feeling up to it, I may post some historic things I appreciate. You know, just to start things off with a bang!

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About

May 30th, 2011

Introduction

The idea behind this blog is for me to spend a few minutes each day reflecting on what I did that day that makes life exciting!

There is a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt that goes, “Do one thing everyday that scares you.”  While I think that is maybe a good concept I don’t think that it is something I can live by every day.  I can, however, find something every day that I appreciate; something that makes that day special in someway.

Some of the things I’m looking for (and this is by no means an exhaustive list) will include a skill I learned, a daring adventure that I went on, a small act that made someone else’s day, project I have completed, etc. (read the blog for a bit and you’ll get the picture).

Reasons

There are a few reasons behind my wanting to embark on this journey. The first reason is that I have had this domain name (yes related to my nickname) for many years and have never really had anything to put on it.

Second, I sometimes get to feeling down and sometimes that sparks me on to complete interesting feats (like organizing an annual, overnight party for 50 close friends) but other times I just get to wondering what mark will I leave on the world.  The idea of the blog is that I can look back once in a while and see what I have done or read of some of the fun times I’ve had.

Third, I feel lucky to be alive and feel like I should appreciate that more sometimes.  There was a close friend I had who recently (at the time of writing) passed away quite suddenly.  We grew up together and while he was not very old (younger than thirty) he developed colon cancer which when found was already in the late stages and lived less than three weeks after the diagnosis.  He was a very busy and full of life young man who always did the things he enjoyed and appreciated the people he was with, a true inspiration.  Merely two years before him, my fiancee’s father passed away, coincidentally from colon cancer as well.  He always had projects on the go, usually an art project, a science project, a programming project and something physical.  Between the two of them I have found enough inspiration and motivation to live up to a lot.

Finally, I would like to have a log to show my children one day of the maybe crazy maybe normal things that I have done.  I know I would love to have a log of some of the interesting things my parents and grandparents did in their lifetimes and I’m sure some of it would be a complete surprise and amazement while others would seem utterly banal.

As my brother would say, “Everyone’s got a story, what’s yours?”

Layout

I’m not going to be too particular, at the beginning at least, about the layout and structure of the posts.  I will try to be diligent and update daily (or every other day if I’m away for a weekend or something) but I clearly can’t make promises. Life is fickle.  If suitable I’ll try to include a picture or video. In other cases I may include a link or just text.  We’ll see what strikes my fancy.  I may even decide to make the background more exciting!!  If all of this wasn’t enough to make me fall off of the horse, I’ll try to remember to attach tags to each post as well.

If there is a day when I’m feeling really eager (why that might happen I have no idea) I’ll maybe try to put in some of my historic thoughts just for added colour but I’ll tag those with out-of-sequence or something just to distinguish them.

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