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I realized something today about blogging. Titles are evil. When I come up with a title. It sets the direction of the entire post. I always have trouble veering from that direction to write anything else that’s on my mind. Well, I shouldn’t say “always”… sometimes I write things that are quite random indeed. Anyway, I think without titles blogging becomes easier. If I just wrote short posts perhaps I could stay on topic, hit the post button, then move on. If I have more to say there’s no problem with starting an entirely *new* post. However, there’s a point at which one can post too many things. Perhaps an appropriate balance is the holy grail of blogging. Or, perhaps it’s all relative and I can post as much as I want without anyone even reading it in the first place.

I’ve been watching the olympics. Table tennis mostly. I don’t really participate in any of the other sports so I just kind of stare in awe when i watch things like swimming or gymnastics. Table tennis, on the other hand, is something I play quite a bit at work. So much, in fact, that maybe it should be on my business card. Perhaps the job title of “Software Engineer” underneath the text “imeem.com” presumes a certain level of table tennis skill and I should just leave it at that. Perhaps…

This weekend was quite a weekend in San Francisco. At least from where I was standing. Saturday the city performed a simulated terrorist attack in which many local and federal agencies participated. They even got some students to come out and pretend to be dead or dying from the adverse effects of said attack. Cool huh? I got pictures: simulated terrorist attack on San Francisco

After that, zombies started to take over the city. Starting at 2pm, zombies (and a few people wearing masks and fake blood) met at SFMOMA to begin terrorizing helpless citizens. At the rallying cry of BRAAAAIIIINNNSSSS, the zombies began following a predetermined path through downtown up to the Transamerica Building. At this point, the zombies saw a large group of scientology protesters and attacked mercilessly. I’ll leave out the gory details suffice it to say, there was a zombie/protester dance-off. Then the police showed up and the zombies quickly shuffled off to Chinatown.

Ah Chinatown. A few blocks of which are year-round tourist central. Turns out it’s actually a lot like China because actual Chinese people live here. But don’t mind that, there are plenty of trinkets and dim sum. I always wonder how much tourists have heard about San Francisco. Sure they’ve heard it’s a beautiful place and there’s a lot to do and so many cool things to see and the weather is always pretty good. Do they know about all the protests? The crazy homeless people? The Castro? I’d bet very few of them have heard of the flash mobs. They’re such a local thing and by their very nature, don’t exist for long enough for any big news crews to show up. Anyway, getting back to the point, a flash mob through Chinatown is hilarious. All the tourists, of course, have cameras so you’ll see them clicking away happily without a care in the world. Maybe they think something unusual is happening and it’ll be on the news later and they’ll be able to say “oh I was there, I have pictures!” Maybe they’re just confused and they need to take pictures so they can go back to their hotel and digest what has just transpired. They’re certainly not afraid that zombies are taking over the city. That’s rather unfortunate…

After Chinatown, the rallying cry came again and the mob continued through Union square, interrupting a Korean Day festival that was taking place and causing quite a stir among the attendees. For the final stop, the zombies proceeded to the cable-car turnaround at the end of Powell St where some performers were playing drums. Everyone got into the zombie spirit of things and… just stood there waiting in line for the next cable car. Oh well, at least we tried. Pictures are here: zombie mob

On Sunday, Barack Obama came to San Francisco and made a record $7.8 million. I didn’t make it out to that event (the $2,300 entrance fee was a bit high for me) but I did take pictures of the Gumball 3000 start just one week earlier at the same location: Gumball 3000 Pictures. Of course, the entrance fee to that event was $100,000 but they let people hang out and stare at the cars for free. I’m all about the free.

In other news, I’ve fallen somewhat in love. It’s going well. I was getting so sick of caring about myself all the time it’s nice to have someone else to care about. Perhaps there will be more on that later. Perhaps…

In even other news, they’re now selling absinthe at Safeway. It’s the good kind too: Lucid Absinthe Superieure from France. And the not-quite-so-good-but-still-absinthe-kind from Alameda (just across the bay): St George Absinthe Verte. I’m excited that people are catching on and actually stocking this stuff instead of being afraid that it’s still illegal or something. It’s good stuff, and quite a bit different than any other kind of alcohol.

In even other news, I’m reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. It’s pretty classic (seeing as it’s 30 years old and #1 in the Genetics and Zoology categories on Amazon). I like it a lot.

In even other (looks like I’m running out of text-alterations) news, I’ve been working on a fancy perl script lately that makes Meevoos. You can see my most recent example here: Aphex Twin - Come to Daddy (Meevoo). The process involves extracting each frame from a video, then recreating each frame using tile-size versions of other frames. It makes more sense if you look at it. So, just do that.

Since I’m running out of text-alterations, I’ll just treat this “other” news as a new paragraph. Hey, look at that, more news! I’ve been meeting with a local group of hackers called NoiseBridge. We’re trying to pull together enough money and people to create a sustainable “hackerspace” where people can go to be creative and make things using computers, or microcontrollers, or lasers, or anything really. The group will incorporate as a non-profit once we get the paperwork finished up and we already have a promising location to begin operations in the office upstairs from the EFF.

Well that’s probably enough news to keep you busy for a while. It’s certainly keeping me busy.

I’ll leave you with a cut off of Sting’s new album:

Yeah, like underwear.

t’has been a while. Wow that contraction didn’t work at all. For more examples of strange contractions, see urban dictionary’s entry on “t’would”:

James: Wanna go hang out at the mall next week?
Jill: T’would be cool.

But I digress, it is my pledge to make a post with more substance than content. Or vice versa, whichever sounds better. Underwear aside… eh, let’s try again.

Hi, I’m Brian. This is my blog and it hasn’t seen the light of my thoughts (I’m conceited that way) in about… let’s see here… just shy of five months, all told. No doubt when I started I didn’t imagine I would suffer quite a dry spell all at once, but there you have it. I’ve gone quite inward about the whole thing. What is a blog? Why do I need to use it? Is it possible to swallow one’s pride, as it were, and still commit one’s thoughts to paper for everyone else to see? Maybe not, but I guess I don’t care anymore for I’ve given up seeking the answers to such questions.

I work for a company that recently bought another company and you can read all about that over here. I neglect the mention of specific names because that would mean SEO which gets on my nerves. I’ve been doing all sorts of neat work on new features, new designs, fixing old things, and staring out the window in anticipation of the massive crowds set to arrive on April 9th. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about, let’s torch this joint!

“Olympic Torch” this joint, that is! That’s right, the torch is coming to San Francisco and I’m gonna be at ground zero when stuff happens. I’m not sure exactly what will happen, but if you’ve been watching the news recently, you know it will be worth a few photos.

Security heightened at Golden Gate Bridge
Olympic Torch Relay Descends Into Chaos
Olympic torch relay should be confined to host country says IOC official

Officials in Paris were today forced to extinguish the Olympic flame and carry it by bus when protesters against Chinese policy in Tibet tried to seize it.

Can a protest ever ‘win’? Perhaps in time, a ‘win’ can be felt. In Paris, a more immediate win was experienced when the Olympic flame, nay, spirit which travels the world for everyone to see, amidst thousands of security personnel had to be put out and confined to a bus. My friends in Paris, I say to you, “good show”. We Americans now have a protest to out-protest.

But I digress, (yes I did that twice. Don’t tempt me should you not wish a third.) there are other things on my mind as well. Doctor Who, for instance. It was recently revealed that Richard Dawkins would appear in an upcoming episode, as himself!

“People were falling at his feet,” says Davies, creator of the BBC’s flagship show. “We’ve had Kylie Minogue on that set, but it was Dawkins people were worshipping.”

I guess I can’t imagine how Dawkins fits in to all of this but I hope it at least involves a turtle that can fly.

And on that note, Battlestar Galactica was good, if not a bit uneventful in light of all the promises made. I suppose that’s how they get you hooked for the entire season. Maybe I should just wait till the season is over. It’s much more fulfilling to watch a whole season over a few days than feel cheated at the end of each 40-minute segment. Though I suppose to make it a social occasion would be a good excuse to have “Friday night plans”. Oh who am I kidding, I don’t know anyone else who watches this show.

Well, back to my life, which, at this moment, includes me going to bed.

Ooh, doesn’t it just give you the chills? I can’t wait!

As seen here - The Dark Knight - Teaser

I’m building a projector based on the guide and forums at http://www.lumenlab.com . I’ve been visiting this website off and on for about a year now and never really had a complete desire (or money) to carry this project out. Now that I’ve got more of both (and some rather big white walls) I figured it was a good time to really start on my own projector.

What’s a Lumenlab projector?

To see for yourself, click here. Of course, that one is quite a bit more expensive than the one I’m gonna be building but then, that guy was building a theater in his basement. I’m just hooking up a projector in my studio apartment.

Lumenlab started as a DIY community website which offered some very active forums and detailed projector instructions. The instructions were $20 but the prospect of building a higher-quality projector for hundreds less than most projectors on the market was enough to draw quite a crowd. Nowadays, the instructions are free and the place makes money by selling lenses, lamps, kits, etc. They even sell a whole projector for $500 if you’re not up for building it yourself (and don’t mind a lower-quality picture).

A Lumenlab projector relies on two fresnel lenses, an inexpensive lamp, and a focusing lens in addition to an LCD monitor (stripped down to the glass itself). Most members build a 15″ monitor (for a resolution up to 1024×768) because these monitors tend to be lower in cost than ones both larger and smaller. Any LCD monitor will work, in theory, because we rely simply on taking the back off of an LCD and shining a much brighter light through it. In reality, many monitors have very complex arrangements under the hood. On the Lumenlab compatibility database (see below), there is a column to show you whether the monitor has “FFC Issues” or not. Here’s the description according to the website, “FFC issues are when components (most often controller boards) cannot be moved out of the light path and make the construction of your projector difficult. Sometimes these issues can be impossible to overcome.” Luckily, I found an LCD without these issues.

Searching for the monitor

I’ve been on ebay for the past few days and weeks trying to find an LCD monitor that would be perfect but they all seemed too expensive (for used 15″ LCDs on ebay) or too broken. I wandered around some other price-listing sites for regular-old online stores and found an Acer AL1516AB 15″ LCD monitor from TigerDirect for $150. I would have gone for one a little cheaper, but the specs on this one (600:1, 12ms) impressed me. Also, according to the lumenlab compatibility database, this monitor is “Easy to Strip”.

So, now I await my new monitor (3-7 for shipping days so, Saturday 3/24 at the earliest). I also need some lenses (along with every other part for the projector) so I’ll probably order those on the Lumenlab site within the next day or two.

I’ve always got some projects going. I’ll try to stay current on what I’ve been doing lately as well as post some older projects including source code, images, etc.