Valley of Fire: The White Domes

Once upon a time in Spring Break, I found myself waking up at 6 A.M. on a weekend. It's a common theme that this should be the "go-to-sleep-time," but today I was traveling. I headed to campus to pick up a few colleagues and carpool over to the Valley of Fire. Some could not make it, but meh. The trip continued. The commute from UNLV to the visitor's center was roughly 60 miles. It was time spent chatting, and rocking it to Led Zeppelin

At the visitor center to the state park, we looked around at the mini museum they had set up. We met these little guys. The formal one is Dipsosaurus dorsalis a.k.a "desert iguana." I forgot which species the latter one was. It was eating broccoli from a water tray after this photo was taken. We seen many more of these, mostly around 4-7inches throughout the park. At one point, we spotted one that could only be between 2.0-2.5 feet from head to tail. This was an estimate made from 50+ ft away, but it was gigantic (and it moved fast for it's size). The thing was big enough to hunt sparrows. Poor sparrows. These two lizards are known to typically grow up to 16 in. in length.

From the visitor center if you take the adjacent road northward, you'll pass through several trail heads. At the very end, there's an area know as the "White Domes." There's a short ~1.2 mi. trial here that leads to a unique place known as a split canyon, or "narrows." It was such a beautiful place, and I reckon the area would have looked even better under direct sunlight. So around 11 to noon. We arrived here roughly at 9 A.M.

These are probably some of the best photos I took of the park.

This one is of a view above

 

 These slit canyons are of particular interest to me. I've seen some of the most beautiful photography come out of them.  It's worth read more into.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_canyon

Yours truly on the left, my amigo companion on the right. I had the better camera :X

Unflitered Thoughts

It's 4:01, and the first sip of coffee has entered mouth.
I'm getting philosophical right now. I think, the mind is trained to react to the caffine like this. I'm so inspired! Also, turns out, I don't have 4 exams next week. Just two, so the load just got off my shoulder, but it's a good thing too because it reveals to me just how nervous and uncomfortable I am about two of those exams in particular.
4:02
Okay so, the mind is conscience right? And most would define consciousness as being self awareness. I'm recalling a conversation I had with Derick over at a buffet a couple months back. We were talking about mediums of consciousness, how, in us humans, it's the organic brain and how the mechanism for consciousness is the neuron impulses subjected to it every millionth of a second.
4:03
 Now, that medium could be anything, a computer, an animal, plant, virus. We diverged into a conversation of self sustaining mediums, and reckoned if that's how a god could exist. What if god, or "G"od was a sort of 4th dimensional consciousness existing through a self sustaining medium?
4:06
It isn't something entirely new, it's just all this thinking about photons and radiation. Light, for example is nothing more than a variety of electromagnetic radiation with it's properties being delivered through the two "kinds" of interacting waves. It's a mathematical phenomenal, yet one we're able to graph and calculate it to a level of certainty. In the same context that we can theoretically create a computer out of nothing but water pipes, what if somewhere, in the biology of existence such a "conscience" came to be? It's a plausibility that at somepoint in the noise of chaos, a god might actually exist.
4:10
Consider the fact that are known universe is sifnicantly bigger than..
4:11
Okay, not a valid argument. But, coming back to the point of this. Being self-aware is a vague area. I was looking at the treeoflife website and noticed how they put dashes "---" on the virus taxon. They're not self repulicating, they're not "organisms", they're not "alive", but they're able to exist, and act based on the chemical interactions they're coded for.
4:14
Humm.. that would imply there was a purpose. By coded for I mean, well, chemical interactions really: the potential for electron transfer. Okay, "coded for." A virus is just as conscience as a computer. A computer is potentially another type of primitive life form. I would also argue that a computer was intelligently design, thanks to the wonderful engineers over at IBM.
4:17
And then how would we define being self aware? A simple definition usually comes by the question, "know I exist?" I'm sure a virus doesn't ask itself that. Conscienss through an electrical-semi-conducting medium a.k.a com-put-ter, is almost like creating life, or something living. Life, is defined in biology with a certain list of attributes. Being able to reproduce, etc. etc. I think such definitions as these are conservative and need to be relooked at. These.. axioms, are too restrictive. In fact, they're not MY axioms. Someone else just made them up, and I'm wondering why we continue to silently agree with them. Let's rethink our axioms, except for when they show up on exams... =[
4:21
I just did a google search on "virus vs computer" and did not get what I was expecting.
4:22
This is something worth looking into more. I think the proper phrase is, "..certainly, something worth further investigation."
-jbf

Another day at CES

Friday, at 4pm, the announcement was made through the speakers. "It's 4 P.M. The exhibit halls are now close," Cheers, claps, and "WhooHoos!" came from every booth within North Hall. Of course, many of the exhibitors had begun packing long before the 4pm shutdown. Lenevo had been out before 2pm, and nearly all of the booths in the Las Vegas Hilton had a box out by 2:30p. It's quite a feat to see every booth out on exhibit. I didn't manage to see each and everyone, but then again, I never woke up before noon to put in the effort. I'd say, 70%.

I uploaded around ~< 200 photos onto the Facebook. album = "2012 CES", profile = "/Oilxuj", privacy = "public". Feel free to use the photos for anything your heart desires. If you want the originals, I have most of  'em saved onto a hard drive. Send an e-mail and I can look them up for you.

A 2012 Entry

The point of having a webog is to share. Usually a well written log differs from a simple enough comment post on a social site. But, this is a social site. The only thing I'm thinking of selling is fragmented thoughted ideas. My ideas, or remarks. It's a personal web log. Perhaps this thing can serve as an alternative to social networking postings? But, Blogger dosn't seem so integrated with the typical services that I normally use. That anybody normally uses for that matter.

I fought against eg.machine yesterday. The privilage was mine and so was the loss. To my defense, I am a noob and have not done a melee 1v1 game in 10 months. Regardless, they gave me a signed poster and I'm contemplating ebaying this. How much is a man's signature worth?

Remember To Do Some Good.

It was probably Saturday morning 4:00 A.M. the week of when I was taking one last look at my inbox out of shear bored-i-ness. I remember getting the e-mail from Jean about volunteering for another robotics camp, and that I had forwarded the information to some of my colleagues and friends. No responds from either group..

4:15 AM

There wasn't anything on my agenda for the upcoming week, not in the mornings anyways. I just had to meet with a potential employer on Monday. I told myself I would go only if I could get another friend to come, but after waiting for several days with no reply, I thought about just sending a courtesy response in case they were hopeful about having extra volunteers. I wasn't going to do it.

4:25 AM

One Piece on Hulu.com. Amazing anime. It was probably on the war with Whitebeard saga that I was on.

4:45 AM

I was getting sleepy and tired. Only my fellow night owls were active on facebook. Not less than 24 hours ago, I had returned from a bicycle trip from Lake Mead. My body was still recovering from the sun and 45+ mile ride. Still in front of the desktop, I looked down at my hands to read a that message written down on my keyboard.

I guess putting it there did it's purpose. Reading something is all the motivation you need sometimes.

4:51 A.M.

The e-mail was sent, and that was it. 

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The event was a girl scout robotics camp. Apparently it was my 2nd time doing it. Or not - a year or less ago they told me, I had done the same thing. It was called something different back then and was less formal. Throughout the week I was there, I got to meet and re-meet some interesting people. Among them Ms. Gari Lindsey, the current VP of the LVV section of SWE; Josh Mauro, who I discovered was also a mechanical engineering undergrad at UNLV; and Monica LeFebvre, a lady who helped coordinate programs with the girl scout group. They're shown in the following photo.

Everyone was so serious. Notice the serious face in the foreground. Such seriousness.

Josh kept getting hassled by the younger girls. They loved us, maybe a little too much. I was quickly reminded of old times with my baby sister after seeing them jump him and fight for his attention. This was the reason why I stayed away from the younger girls. There were around 35 girl scouts working on a series of tasks. By age range, they were divided into two groups. 

Most of my time was spent offering advice on the NXT Lego Mindstorm kits assigned to the older girls. The most challenging task they were assigned to including using a 3rd motor to control an arm that picked up objects located on a mat and placed them at another location. All of them wanted to used pre-routed programs. My IEEE friends would've panicked >.<

On Friday, came judgement day. Kim Womack came by to judge one of the events, and I was assigned to aid. My performance as a judge was less than that of an educator. I believe the main goal of it would be to perform a professional evaluation on a list of required task in order to showcase to the parents what the girls have learned. She was indeed a professional.

At the end of the day, there was a pizza party and Josh and I were handed this.

I was appreciated and have the certificate to prove it.

We  received "Thanks-A-Lot" cookies by the girl scouts. By the way, if you haven't tasted them, they are delicious! If memory serves right, the chocolate fudge has a sort of minty taste to it which makes these cookies unique. The accompanying mug was unexpected as well. Aside from the material stuff, earlier in the week an 11 year old girl scout had said "Thank You" to me and smiled. The first of many thanks received. All the rest actually had diluted the value of the phrase, but that first one had made my day. It was totally worth volunteering my time throughout the week. These young ladies will grow up and build weapons of war one day. And cure cancer. They'll also cure cancer. With robots*

Wall-A's "Arm" and V_o

Greetings world!

For at least one person, it'll be obvious why I've posted this. Several months back I began working on a project involving an ATMEL based micro-controller, some servos, and a few sensors. The goal of the project was to experiment with different differential-drive algorithms, and to gain experience with the spiffy soldering iron I 'burrowed' from my step-dad. Originally, the project ran on a homemade augmented micro-controller, but later moved onto an Axon II because I was a noob and the thing had more documentation than the relic tomes ATMEL offered.

The baby I brought into the world was given the name of "Wall-A." She is a 2 wheel differential drive critter with an ultra-sonic sensor, and 2 homemade light sensors made out of cheap cadmium sulfide (CdS) photoresistors that are cheaply available from the Shack. I'll be giving a brief overview of the schematics involved with the photoresistor set up.

First off, this is a CdS photoresistor.

In absolute darkness, you can consider it to be in the off position. The voltage potential running through the leads would be 0. If photons from light hit the surface of this circuit element the pathway for current running through the leads is opened. Effectively, higher levels of frequencies correlate to a decrease in the resistance this pathway offers. In the photo below you can see me holding a photoresistor connected to a multimeter and pointing it towards a lamp.

In order to make a useful application of this for data logging, it's best to take advantage of something known as the voltage divider rule. The standard equation governing this circuit is set to calculate what the out voltage is.
(eq1.1) v_o = R*v_i/(R+R_p), where v_o = voltage that gets read by the micro-controller, R = resistance provided by a static resistor, v_i = voltage coming in, R_p = the variable resistance provided by the photoresistor which is correlated to the intensity of the light hitting the circuit element. It is R_p which we are trying to solve for. The schematic and soldered circuit looks like this.

The voltage across each resistor in a series circuit divides in direct proportion to the individual series resistances. Thus, you can always determine the proportion in which voltage drops are distributed around a circuit. Since we are solving for R_p, eq1.1 rearranges to
(eq1.2) R_p = ((R*v_i)/v_o) - R

Again, R_p correlates to the intensity of the photons hitting the surface of the photoresistor. In plain English, it gives you a calculated value based of an analog reading from the circuit. Ahh.. It would tell you how dark or not dark it is outside.

So this is how you would create your very own light sensor. Typically they sell for ~$5 on the market, but if you have the materials at hand, you can make your own in as little as a couple minutes. These sensors are currently being used on the Wall-A prototype to help the little guy stay hidden in the darkness. He is a photophobe you see.

Yes, that is a 2x4, duck tape, and cardboard you see. Wall-A is an incredible advanced high-tech prototype and will be doing stuff like curing cancer, or harassing neighborhood cats one day.

Busy Monday

I've never had a busier Monday. Mentor meeting, 330 exam, SWE stuff,e-mails, bio lab, library study, and walking around all over campus.. Today will be a busy week, especially since we're hosting a SPDC conference this weekend. Come to think of it, I was even at school on Sunday. And, in the chaos of it all, I saved a life.

Two actually. She was pregnant.

I made arrangements a week ago to take my bio lab Monday instead of Friday since I'd have obligations to attend to. My lab partner and I were conducting sinister experiments on life. We tortured and nearly froze a crayfish to the point where it gave up trying to 'right' itself up. It gave up on life.. And then we boiled a pregnant mother. All in the name of science. We were Nazis. Seriously, I've been through the books. Nazi scientists would put prisoners in ice pools to register their physiological responses. It was the same thing we did today on a legally defenseless cray fish.

The mother, She came from the species known as daphnia. The picture above was taken by a htc 3.2 MP camera shot through the lens of a dissecting microscope. What you can't see from the picture is a blue figure near the bottom curve of her spine. Attached to her brood pouch was a little mini version of herself with a little black dot on it. It moved inside her as she did, and you could even make out the underdeveloped thoracic appendages wiggle. There was a tiny blue heart in there as well. Beat.. beat.. beat..

Our job was to record the beats per minute made by her heart. My lab partner got a base number under room temperature. Next was a beat number under saturated water. We didn't know.. The boiling drop of water that came from the pipette was already around her by the time we noticed she wasn't alone in there. Her heart's beats per minute did increase though, from 160 bpm to 180 bpm average. We didn't record data on her child's heart though.. darn.

So yeah, instead of throwing her down the sink where she would've faced certain death for her child, I took out the pipette again and located her from where she came from, a fish tank full of a 100 more daphnia. Forget about the fact that we purposefully boiled her and the fact that their existence take up less than (1/10)^3 mm in volume. I am a hero to an unborn daphnia.