Mad Men... I may be falling for you...
Several years ago I watched the first three episodes of Mad Men, decided it was crap, and never watched it again.
Tonight I tried watching the fourth episode. It was a lot better.
Also, if you haven’t seen it, this is very funny.
Per Whosawhasis’s suggestion, I installed AdBlock in my FireFox browser. I also installed a Facebook tracking blocker, since Facebook was really creeping me out. In this short time, it really feels like the internet just became a friendlier place.
Awesome. Thanks Whosa!
This is actually my second post with the same subject/topic/title. :/
As a joke I did a google search for “cell phone for elderly” because a friend of mine has this ridiculous habit of taking pictures with his iPhone UPSIDE down. Sure, it’s easy enough to turn it back upside right – but wouldn’t it just make more sense to simply hold the phone correctly in the first place?
Anyhow, now all the google ads I see are for cell phones for the elderly. Great.
I missed out on several episodes of The Walking Dead when the second half of season two returned in mid-February. Since AMC was going to re-air season two episodes before last night’s season finale, I figured I’d just wait until the marathon was mostly over and watch everything, including the finale, without commercials. The second half of season two was great with all the scares and drama I’d come to expect.
I’m just not sure it was worth an entire nighttime of dreams about trying to surviving the zombie apocalypse. Lemme tell you, I coulda used a commercial break a few times.
I use a FireFox extension that tells me the Google PageRank, Alexa rank, and Complete ranks in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. What I noticed today is that my main page has a PageRank of 3, but that one page on this site has a PageRank of 6!
What the heck?!
Because I would have just taken to living inside it. Like a hobo.
Like an AWESOME 8 year old hobo.
When using my DrawBot to draw pixelated drawings (versus TSP or vectors)1 I don’t really notice a pause from the machine between each pixel. It takes a few seconds to shade each pixel, then it moves to the next spot and starts over again. However, when trying to draw TSP art I discovered that the time spent shading a picture obscured the amount of lag time that occurred between each drawing point! As I tried to draw a TSP portrait of my family I found it was taking about 3 seconds between each little point – which translated to a VERY VERY long time for a VERY small drawing.
When I asked Sandy about this, he suggested that this lag would be eliminated by drawing from an SD card.
Sandy’s current setup, which allows for computer free printing, consists of an Arduino Mega 2560 R32 , a MicroSD card breakout board3 , and an Adafruit Motor Shield4 . Thus, the electronics setup would cost about $100 if you were starting from scratch, or another $80 if you have been following along at home and have a similar setup to mine. Apparently the problem is you can’t just shove a MicroSD card into an Arduino. If you try to add one to an Arduino, then the card shield will end up taking up the pins necessary to use the Motor Shield. Since the Arduino Mega has a lot of extra pins, some of those can be used towards accessing the MicroSD card.
However, I thought I had seen an Arduino that had a MicroSD slot on board. 5 When I searched around Adafruit, I found this Ethernet Shield R3 with MicroSD connector6 . Not only does this little shield fit my existing Arduino Uno, have a MicroSD slot, and have an Ethernet port, but it also has input pins so that it can be stacked! This makes me then wonder… Could I just pop this $45 board between my Arduino Uno and Motor Shield, add some software and get cooking? I have to admit, the idea of spending $45 more, rather than $80 more for a Mega and MicroSD breakout board appeals to me. I suppose there’s the added benefit that I might be able to run a REALLY long ethernet cable to the ‘bot if I so desired since it would have a built-in ethernet port on the Ethernet Shield.
Now, I’m the first to admit that I know next to nothing at all about programming Arduinos or fiddling with such things. I’m just a fair hand at slavishly following some other person’s excellent directions. Please do me a favor and let me know whether you think adding this Ethernet shield between my Uno and the Motor Shield will or will not work.
Doctor Who Season 6 TSP Single Line Drawing
I have been having SO MUCH FUN with traveling salesman problem / single line art! I can’t wait to draw some of these with my DrawBot!
And, really, how much more perfect could this project get? It’s a TSP nerdy math single line art drawing of my favorite sci-fi show for drawing with a robot I built using printed parts from my 3D printing robot. 1 2 3
I’ve enjoyed this program on Fox called “Breaking In.” It has this affable young guy who has been in a lot of cancelled shows, Christian Slater acting like what I can only imagine is what Christian Slater is really like, and it was always quite entertaining. Since it was a pretty good and funny show, of course Fox cancelled it. 1
I’m glad they uncanceled it, but less glad that they “improved” it. While I generally like Megan Mullally, she’s not adding anything to a show I already liked and her presence distorts those aspects I used to like.
