helicopters that fly upside down

One of my big goals this year was to study machine learning. I worked my way though Andrew Ng’s Stanford Machine Learning course. One of his demos is flying a helicopter upside down using reinforcement learning.

Technologies used: Python’s NumPy, Octave

transformations in 3d

I quickly learned that in order to grasp most machine learning algorithms, an understanding of linear algebra was a must. I put Machine Learning on hold and took Gilbert Strang’s MIT Linear Algebra course next. This guy can describe your haircut before and after in terms of a matrix operation. I earned 83,802 Khan Academy points mostly working through semi-advanced mathematics.

Technologies used: Python’s NumPy, Octave

the basic tools of science

I think everyone should own the basic tools of science, that’s why this year I set out to buy them. I acquired a 1600x microscope, a digital thermometer, a magnetic stirring hotplate, lab glassware and a balance that is sensitive down to a thousandth of a gram. Somehow in modern media portrayals home science equipment has nothing but bad connotations. I wholly reject that idea. Science belongs at home! In a great article Bill Nye put it best

People who want to make meth will find ways to do it that don’t require an Erlenmeyer flask. But raising a generation of people who are technically incompetent is a recipe for disaster

combine at 80 degrees celsius

Women’s deodorant is bad. Not because it doesn’t work, it does, but because it contains aluminum. For those with sensitive skin, its awful. There are also a few potential hazards with applying nano sized metals that are easily absorbable into the human body.  My brother is a PhD chemist, so he helped me with my lab technique. I asked a large chemical company for a sample of sodium sterate (they sent me 2 kilos free!), bought some propylene glycol locally, and made a variant on old spice. Colorless, odorless. My wife loved it, but it needs some work.

wingdings and matisse

An Android app that uses Wingdings AND Matisse? You’re thinking “No you didn’t” but in fact I did. I did. In case you forgot these fonts.. let me give you a refresher:

I built a task manager with Android push notifications for a client who really really wanted one. I wanted to build an Android app, so we had a deal. A few weeks later it was done. I don’t know why people complain about Android development, I found it fairly painless.

Technologies Used: Java, Android SDK, Eclipse, PHP (client backend), Google’s Android Push API

no pie for you

A friend of a friend approached me with an idea, and I took it on as a co-founder. We built out a QR powered profile site for hot-rods called www.qrmyride.com. After printing up some stickers we got some enthusiastic responses. We even applied for PIE, an incubator here in Portland but we were denied. There was stiff competition, but perhaps they were right. This site never really took off as planned. It costs next to nothing to run, so my partner and I will continue to let it run, but it was a good lesson in the cost of prototyping. I still think the idea is good, especially if adopted by a whole car club for the purposes of a unified car show.

Technologies Used: Google App Engine, Java, Groovy, QR codes

Next Post: Un-Shredding and Electronic Brain Surgery

1. Don’t run IIS, run Apache or generically “Don’t run the GUI one, run the daemon one.” Version control your configuration. Version controlling your config in a usable way is way more difficult than it has to be or impossible using point and click tools. You’re running a server, not a candy store. It doesn’t need to look good, it needs to be reproducible. Ask someone who uses IIS to show you the changes that have been made in the last couple weeks, and why each one was made; they can’t. If you version control your config, thats all in your commit history. Love those log files.
2. Don’t run FTP, run Rsync, and use that to transfer files to and from your server over the internet. But don’t install the windows rsync server because thats not secure. More on point 3.
3. Install ICW Copssh instead, it is an openssh installation for windows packaged by ITeF!x Consulting. Next you install the rsync package on top and then you can ssh/sftp/scp/rsync to the box in the normal linux fashion complete with public key authentication. Use the same rsync client package that you installed on top of ICW on the other end to connect to your server from another windows box.
4. Never install server applications that are cross platform (aka not built only for windows) in the default location. Programs that are developed to work on multiple platforms will often miss conventions that apply only to windows paths. Recent default paths for 32 bit programs on newer Windows contain not only spaces, but parenthesis as well a.k.a C:\Program Files (x86)\My Program Blah\blah. Use your own convention, lower case, and keep it simple: D:\apps\mysql5\ for example.
5. Install the excellent sysinternals suite. Microsoft bought it, but this labor of love by Mark Russinovich was developed long before they got their hands on it. Process explorer in tree view is an excellent alternative to task manager. Junction is a great way to get simlink behavior.
6. Install notepad++ or use textpad. Notepad ++ is an excellent notepad alternative because it replaces notepad inline so whenever you would have seen notepad, you’ll just get the better one.
7. Use volume shadow copy to snapshot your data. Its nice. Good job Microsoft.
8. Put both the ICW and Sysinternals binary directories on your system path. This will give you many useful tools to use on the windows command line. If for example you type ls on accident, you will actually get a file listing back just as you had expected. “tail -f _filename_” will just work. Junctioning (symbolic linking) will be nearby.
9. Script administrative tasks, and version control your scripts. I don’t have experience with it, but the Windows Power Shell allows you to script many things, and if you’re serious about windows it is the strongest system platform. Good old bat/cmd is also available and still useful for many things.
10. Last one is a double bonus! Shut down services you aren’t using. The indexing service isn’t helpful if you aren’t searching for example. Run an anti virus, love those Microsoft system updates and lock down a firewall to only the ports you need; 22 for ssh, 80 for a website plus a few others.

I somehow broke my launch key setting by resetting it to an invalid combination. Alt-Space is the default, and I had set it to something that simply didn’t bring up the Launchy window. This is a problem with Launchy because there is no ‘official’ way to reset the hotkey without first bringing up the launchy window.

In short, if you ever have this problem, instead of attempting a reinstall, which doesn’t work just do this:

How To Fix Launchy’s Hot Key:

1. Kill Launchy.exe from the task manager.
2. Open launchy.ini in your users application data folder.
   For windows XP users, this is:
   C:\Documents and Settings\yourusernamehere\Application Data\Launchy\Launchy.ini
3. Add or replace these ini style keys:

   [GenOps]
   hotkeyAction=32
   hotkeyModifier=134217728

4. Save the file, and restart Launchy.exe
5. Use Alt-Space (which is what you just reset the hotkey combo to be)

Here is a breakdown of the url I used

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart

Chart Size
chs=375×175

Chart Title
chtt=Superdelegate+Endorsements

Chart Type
cht=p

Chart Data
chd=t:288,260,244

Chart Labels
chl=Uncommitted+(288)|Clinton+(260)|Obama+(244)

Color
chco=929AAF

Full url:
http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=375×175&chtt=Superdelegate+Endorsements&cht=p&chd=t:288,260,244&chl=Uncommitted+(288)|Clinton+(260)|Obama+(244)&chco=929AAF

API:
http://code.google.com/apis/chart/

they have a simple iso list,

http://www.maxmind.com/app/iso3166

and a database of world cities

http://www.maxmind.com/app/worldcities

free.