I Am. When?

Forty. That is the minimum number of hours I am working each week, usually it is more. Sixteen. That is the number of credit hours I am enrolled in at school this semester. What does this have to do with anything except as an excuse as to why updates to this here blog-thingy are so few and far between? The answer, simply put, is to let you all know just how insane I really am. Bonkers.

Aside from all that I have been emailing with a few people on the Proverbs Web Calendar 2.1. A long time ago, in a life far, far away, I goofed in my coding. In my own defense, the part I goofed on was how the web event calendar handled some of the special characters in languages other than English, and I only speak English (as can be seen by how poorly translated the language files are). So a few boo-boos slipped past and some language packs did not work correctly.

The good news is that I took a little time away from my very busy schedule and fixed those "undocumented features." While I was fixing that problem, I went through and made a few other minor changes to the event calendar. The full list of changes is included in the download or on the calendar page up there ^. Just like that and we are now up to the Proverbs Web Calendar version 2.1.1.
Continue reading "Miscellaneous Crap" »

The previous Herbert robotic life-forms all had a single logic circuit and while some made use of different components, the results were the same from a logic point of view. If the robot has enough power then do something. Not a very exciting logic circuit, but something necessary for all life, even artificial life. We can continue to use this simple logic design in one form or another, even with very advanced life-forms. Slightly modified it can become: If you are hungry then eat. For now we will leave it as is and continue by adding more logic circuitry to the robots.

The simplest logic circuits available are the same as the logic operators taught in any introductory computer class: NOT, AND, OR & XOR. These logic chips can be made to suit the purposes of the next stage in robotic life-form evolution, but would require a lot of additional support circuitry. Lacking space on the demo platform, we will instead opt for an integrated circuit that can accomplish our next task: which direction is the better power source?

To answer this question Herbert 1701 Species D will make use of a comparator chip. In simplest terms, a comparator takes two inputs and determines whether one input is higher than the other. Generally the inputs are voltage levels that are being compared. The comparison between the two voltages usually produces one of two outputs, either a ground level or an open circuit.

Continue reading "Herbert 1701 Species D Generations 1 & 2" »

As life would have it, the Maxim Maxim kicked in during my search to find the items needed to create a proper Photovore competition arena. I had figured the 250W halogen bulb would prove the most difficult to find, but it was the first item knocked off my list. The "common items" -- such as wooden dowels or Melamine board -- seem to be outside of my reach; short of paying a hefty shipping cost. Instead, I have decided to move on.

Based upon the tests and competition I was able to perform with the Herbert 1701 Species C robots it was pretty clear that the variable trigger solar engine is the route to go, proving far superior in most tests, particularly low-light and bright-light conditions. Therefore, this will be the species and generation that continues forward. At least for the time being.

Seeing as I have little wish and no money to create new circuit boards for each generation of the Herbert 1701 Species D robots, I have opted to build a simple test platform. While this is nothing fancy -- consisting of a solder-less breadboard, a sheet of plastic, a wheel and some motors -- it will work for the purposes of testing different circuitry configurations, as well as varying components.

As can be seen in the platform images, I have built out the variable solar engine using the Maxim MAX8212 voltage monitor. Throughout this species of Herbert artificial life form I will continue to use this same circuit and will be changing around everything else.

Continue reading "Herbert 1701 Species D" »

Sometime around the end of 2001 I volunteered myself to write a script for team NHB's website, which was the Half-Life TFC clan that I competed with at the time. The web server the script would be running on was Linux based, thus the script had to be written in PHP and capable of using text files or a mySQL database to store the information. It was to be used to show the team's schedule for practices, competitions, etc. I suppose Perl was an option at the time, but even in 2001 PHP was a phenomenal programming language.

That script eventually became the Proverbs Web Calendar 1.0 and was released publicly Dec 31, 2001 on the Proverbs, LLC website; back then located at www.proverbs.biz. After a few updates, one major security flaw, and a few bug fixes over the course of several months, something I was definitely not expecting happened: the calendar became a popular download. Immensely popular.

At the time, around May of 2002, the websites touting the "most popular web event calendar" were bragging about 10,000+ downloads per year. Five months after the initial release and I was seeing 5000+ downloads a month, not to mention being inundated with questions, comments and suggestions from users of the calendar. I was particular amazed at the number of overseas users that were writing to me for help or with suggestions.

Continue reading "Proverbs Web Calendar 2.1" »

Oil and water do not mix. It is just one of those chemical composition things. You can pour them both into the same container and the water will settle to the bottom with the oil floating on top of it. Shake the container up and after a few minutes they will revert back to layering; oil on top and water on the bottom. Separate entities in the same container.

Both compounds are needed in this world. Water quenches thirst and is needed to survive. Oil, among other things, lubricates the gears and joints for movement. Even once you have both in the same container you can still separate them back out again and they will fulfill these basic tasks just as well because they do not mix.

There are ways you can force the two to combine, to bond as it were, but in doing so you wind up with neither water nor oil. Instead you have something else. Something that neither quenches your thirst nor provides lubrication for movement. A bastardized compound.
Continue reading "Oil and Water" »

I might as well just come right out and say it upfront, during Part 2 of this series on Computer Security I lied when I spoke about the most common methods a malicious person uses to get a user's password. In this day and age of rapid information and application sharing, the number one method of gathering user passwords is through viruses and spyware. I would hazard a guess that it is also the number one method of gathering information for identity theft as well.

I am sure that some organization or another has put together specific definitions of what constitutes a virus versus a bot versus something else. For simplicity sake I'll provide my own definitions:

Virus - any malicious program capable of automatic self replication between computer systems, either through network links or removable media. Viruses can range from harmless pranks to programs that destroy computer files.

Spyware - any computer application or portion of an application that is designed to gather personally identifiable information from a computer. This can range from gathering the information on what websites you visit to recording usernames and passwords entered into various programs or websites.

Adware - any computer application designed to automatically display advertisements on your computer or redirect your web browser to alternate (competitor's) websites from the page you intended.

Bot - any computer application designed to perform nondestructive tasks on a computer system without the user's intervention. Bots can range from small programs that download and install other programs automatically (without the user's knowledge) to programs that perform coordinated attacks on Internet websites.

Continue reading "Computer Security 101 - Part 8 - Malware" »

At 8:00am I wake up, drink some coffee, shower and am into work at 8:30am. You work directly with me and spend the entire morning from 8:30am until 12:00pm along side me, following my every movement. At 12:00pm we go to lunch together, returning to work at 1:00pm. From that time until 5:00pm you never leave my side. At 5:00pm we leave work and head out to dinner together where we discuss the day's findings and observations. At 9:00pm we depart the restaurant and each head to our separate homes. At 9:15pm I have a few glasses of mead at home and go to bed at 9:30pm.

While this is completely unrealistic for my actual schedule and does not allow for separate bathroom breaks at the work place it will suffice for the topic at hand; and that is the nature of light. Of a 13 hour and 30 minute day, you would have spent 12 hours and 30 minutes with me, or 92.6% of my waking day. From the time spent with me you could observe that I am capable of walking in a straight line. As a matter of fact, you could infer that 100% of the time I am capable of walking in a straight line. With me so far?

What you do not see is the 2 minutes when I first wake up and wander to the coffee pot for my first cup of coffee, often bumping into the walls of the hallway on my journey for caffeine. Nor do you see the 2 minutes between when the alcohol from the mead kicks in and I make my way back into bed. For those 4 minutes or 0.49% of the day I am not capable of walking a straight line. 4 minutes of the day that 99.99999% of the world will never observe, unless you were stationed with me in the Navy, at which case you saw me stumbling drunk a lot.

Continue reading "The Nature Of Light" »

I already covered firewalls during part 3 of my computer security series, but now that we are focusing on desktop security we once again have to review the subject. For part 3 the firewall topic was in regards to the perimeter, or network; which is usually a hardware based device. In part 7 the topic is desktop or personal firewalls.

I won't bore everyone by going into detail on firewalls again, but if you have not done so already, please read the original topic Computer Security 101 - Part 3 - Firewalls. Instead, I will be covering the importance of having a separate personal firewall on each and every desktop computer.

To most people, including many industry professionals, a personal firewall is considered overly redundant. There is a hardware based firewall keeping your network secure already, why would someone want a firewall running on their local computer? It is also an extra application running on the computer, taking up resources and slowing everything down. So why have one?

Continue reading "Computer Security 101 - Part 7 - Personal Firewall" »