GSB Mennonite

Hosting Transition

This site will be moving to www.notblog.com; check out Dave's blog at www.notblog.com/blog. Once it's back up I'll be posting more...often.

New Year's Deal

This past weekend we 'celebrated' the New Year with a deal on granite at Home Depot. We happened to be there Sat night as they were closing and thanks to a thoughtful associate was informed of a granite sale on one of the types $.40/sq ft. Four trips in the Integra and three days later I had acquired more than half a pallet and it was sold out by the time I got back for more. Looks like our kitchen might end up with a granite floor...

Clustr Maps

I added a mini Clustr map the other day. Pretty cool stuff.

Noguchi Coffee Table

My attempts at making a Noguchi coffee table (ok having it made for me) are over. I had the glass surface priced and it was $1500...surprising since the table sells for around $1200 (much cheaper reproductions available). This is what it would have looked like along with my scale drawing (made in Visio).

Captcha

I've been a bit blog weary as I spend time each day cleaning up comment spam - becuase I didn't have the time to find and figure out a decent captcha install. Thanks to some help from bloggenspiel I think I'm good to go, which also means I hope to spend previous spam cleaning time posting instead of cleaning. :)

Coffee Table

I'm thinking about building a Noguchi coffee table. I first saw it in a DWR catalog and had wanted to see the Noguchi exhibit in Seattle this past summer (never did).

I thought I'd start on it over break, but only finished up the diagrams and figuring out a way to produce paper versions of the diagram for the base. I also need to find a source for the glass top because it is a unique shape and also because it might require grinding?

Comments 2

I have more successfully updated the numerical entry install (no error message now) however it may not actually be working. :( If anyone has any experience with this and just happens to have time on their hands... Thanks!

Comment Changes

I've semi-successfully updated the commenting process to include a 6 digit entry...unfortunately it was semi-successful as I obviously have an error of some kind on line 51... It's a temp directory issue I don't know how to fix.

None the less, thanks to James Seng for the update and the detailed readme file. :)

Blog Maintenance

Quarter break is a great to time to get caught up on desired blog maintenance - including getting rid of the irritating pop-up links (I don't know why I did that in the first place). Hopefully I'll get some time to update some of the project pages too. And I really should post a picture of the growth of my irises!

Gmail Drive

I don't know if this is acceptable under the Gmail EULA, but the Gmail Drive is awesome. Get a Gmail account, then get the Gmail Drive shell - it adds a Gmail drive to Windows Explorer just like an additional drive. Very cool. Unfortunately file size is limited to 10 MB, so I can't backup my Outlook file.

By the way, if anyone needs a gmail account let me know; I've got a few.

Google Searches

Anyone else periodically check their rankings in Google searches? Just curious... I know Google plays with the algos so it definitely flucuates.

Wireless SAN

About a year ago I was working on a design for a wireless SAN system (using off the shelf equipment), and it looks like complete kits for it will be coming to market soon. This one from Buffalo Tech looks like an interesting first generation device.

AdSense

As you can tell I've started to play around with AdSense from Google. I'm curious about anyone else's experience with it or any comments. If you hate it, let me know.

Thanks!

Laptop Project - Complete

The laptop project is now as complete as it probably will ever be. I spent a few hours playing around with some programs and after updating video drivers have a decent slideshow system. However, the passive matrix screen leaves me waiting for the next version. :) Also, it's not Wifi-enabled yet, but I'd need some new drivers for that. I haven't updated the projects page, but here's a shot of the finished product.

Facebook

The Student Facebook is now called the Student Directory. I thought it might be valuable to have the entire list of the Class of 2006 in my Treo, so yesterday evening I started down a lengthy path of exploring contacts and the Facebook.

It wasn't too difficult to capture the entire Class of 2006 thanks to the download option in the Facebook and then import into Outlook for syncing to the Treo. I did have to mess with the 15 category limit for a bit though...

Then I thought it might be interesting to have the Facebook images included in the Outlook contact files in the contact picture area... I spent some time figuring out the html structure in the Facebook pages (unfortunately it only displays 20 people at a time, so the use of mouse macros came in handy).

Ahh, I must say this was an interesting project and I'm pleased with the results, but because I don't want to incriminate myself I'll just end it here. I may bring this up as an 'idea' to the Dean's Office and see what the response is. Unfortunately I'm a little concerned about possible legal obstacles to what would be the most logical use of the information.

Corks

It's won't fill a whole project page, but I thought I'd post a picture of a cork board a made late last year. I haven't found it's place yet in the new apt.

Progress

A number of my projects are seeing good progress.

The transparent mirror (one way mirror) for the mirror project was received in one piece, although it is tinted, which I did not want at all. Hopefully it'll still work out.

I've successfully removed the front bezel from the laptop frame (after discovering small star-head screws under the rubber nubbins on the frame). And I've started to cut out the wooden box frame to mount the laptop in behind the frame. I'll check Michaels for a decent cheap frame that I like, and if not successful there I'll build one from a nice wood - poplar or cherry.

Dad and I started on the barn on Saturday. Actually he had already dug the holes and poured in concrete for the footers last week. I plan on setting up a project page dedicated to the barn raising, with a progression of pictures that I've been taking. So far it's been a safe working environment with only a few scrapes, banged fingers, and occasional non-OSHA-approved ladder use.

Mirror Project - Update 2

I am getting a new piece of glass shipped to me, thanks to Torstenson Glass Company. I'm looking forward to working on this - starting in about a week and a half when I spend a couple weeks in northern Indiana before heading to Hyde Park, Chicago.

Mirror Update

I ordered the transparent mirror (one-way mirror) the other day and had it shipped to my parent's place. Unfortunately it arrived broken, at least one pane of it, due to some very very poor packing. Now I have to go through a UPS inspection process of some kind.

Hopefully it gets worked out in the next couple weeks...

Tax

In case anyone was wondering the little piece of code below was modeled after a line from an example in the Excel help file of the IF function. This is a nested IF statement (four actually, so is that three nested and one statement?) that looks at tax backets in the referenced cells and calculates Federal tax based on taxable income input.

Two reasons this is valuable (if you do your own taxes or tax planning) -

1. You don't have to do visual table searches of the Tax Tables (actually a final lookup would be required since the tables are the standard and I think it's $50 steps)

2. More importantly, since the calculation is in Excel you can use Solver and/or Goal Seek to find answers to 'what if' scenarios

Finally, the references in the forumula make it relatively easy to update the process as the tax brackets change every year (at least the dollar amounts that define the boundaries of the brackets).

Financial Planning IP

Today's small piece of intellectual property...

=IF(D3<=D8, F8*D3, IF(D3<=D9, E9+F9*(D3-D8), IF(D3<=D10, E10+F10*(D3-G10), IF(D3<=D11, E11+F11*(D3-G11), "Error"))))

MT & Browsers

I've started converting to a different browser (away from IE) called Firefox (Mozilla). Unfortunately MT doesn't seem to like Firefox. The helpful little buttons above the Entry Body box (URL, B, etc) aren't visible and don't seem to exist in Firefox. So I'm left running IE when I post.

Comment Spam

I apologize for the comment spamming that has been occuring over the last couple days. I will be working to install MT-Blacklist as soon as I can. In the meantime I will delete spam comments as soon as I'm notified.

Mirror Project

In advance of the long holiday weekend, this post kicks off another project that has been in mental development for the last couple years. If all goes well, this summer will see the 'mirror project' take tangible shape thanks to a couple weeks off before classes start and the availability of tools and work area at my parents home.

Original credit for this project should go to an artist in the DC/Baltimore area. Unfortunately I don't remember her/his name, but I saw the exhibit sometime within the last two years.

See the Mirror Project page for more info. Here's a sneak peak...

Laptop Deconstruction...eventually Digital Picture Frame

I've been thinking about this project for more than year, really since the keyboard on an old laptop failed - Compaq Presario 1220. At that time very few sites were dedicated to constructing a digital picture frame. Now a search of Google for - digital picture frame - results in many interesting sites.

I had an idea of what I wanted the finished project should look like...and after the Google search found an actual product out there that looks very similar to what I had envisioned.

The nicest is Wallflower, but at $859 it is a little more than what I can afford for a project. Instead I'll use an old laptop with a slightly smaller screen and less impressive specs to achieve a similar function.

I don't plan on running video or audio with the frame, but that would be possible, and content could potentially be pushed to it if I would buy one of these cool toys from Linksys in order to provide FTP support.

See the updated Projects page for the first step in the transformation from laptop grave to digital frame.

Updates

I have made slight alterations to the site - including comment and archival reporting functionality - and added content over the past couple days, thanks mostly to three sites.

1. Elise's Learning MT page (a Stanford GSB grad by the way)

2. HTML Made Easy

3. And the associated HTML Testbed that enables me to test my pitiful efforts at HTML without breaking my blog

I've also added some new index pages - About (which is empty), Test (for testing layouts, etc), and Projects. The Projects area is a simplified layout for pictures and text about misc projects - ideas, construction, destruction, etc.

Hopefully the Project page will be updated tomorrow with some pictures of the beginnings of an end-table picture device (i.e. a stripped down laptop remounted to serve as a living room slide show device).