Archive for May, 2008

I am such an engineer…


15 May

Look at what I did:

I used Google Sketch Up to make a 3d render of my apartment.  Google even has this virtual “warehouse” of user submitted stuff.  A lot of people have rendered a lot of IKEA furniture.  Which is great because that’s what I’ll be getting for my apartment.  I determined I couldn’t fit the dresser in my actual bedroom, so I’ll put it in my closet.  I also figured what desk could go in my room (it’ll have a glass top = sweet) and what size bed I can fit.  Then I took the liberty of seeing how best the living room could be arranged (for both furniture and speaker placement).  Placing 7 speakers in an odd shaped room is pretty difficult.  I couldn’t believe how handy the user generated ikea furniture was.  Now I know what tv stand and everything I need to buy

Hmmm what else.  Oh yeah, I graduated last weekend (again).  Long ceremony.  Pics are up on my flickr page.  Amy and I walked, then us, our parents and billy met up at O’Charley’s for a post-graduation dinner.  Good times.

Oh!  I also finished my ninja report.  I got it printed at kinko’s… and it cost $150 to do it.  Wasn’t expecting that.  Definately should have done it on campus, probably could have gotten it done for free.  Live and learn.  I defend May 27th

I also bought my first bass guitar.  Should get here next week.  I’m pretty excited about that because then Adam and I may able to finally start recording some stuff for Cascade to Chaos.  Ron said he wants to join in on the action too.

Mike moved out too :(   He’s back in Jersey for now.

Jarvis from Iron Man


08 May

I’ve seen Iron Man twice so far (it’s only been out for a week) and it’s a great movie.  I keep telling my friends that it’s my biography from the future, but they changed my name to Tony Stark for my protection.  One of the coolest things from the movie is Jarvis, the Artificially Intelligent “Butler” that interacts with future me Tony Stark.  They have conversations and Jarvis can basically do anything.  Very natural conversations… Jarvis can find out anything.

As soon as I got home from the movie (the second time) I started messing with the built-in voice recognition on my mac.  I now have a new side project once my thesis is done… Build Jarvis.

Granted… I won’t have anything remotely close to what is in the movie… but maybe I can figure out something that could have a reasonable conversation… I could add in “learning” later (if it’s even possible).  I would need something that resembles ALICE or Smarter Child… I used to mess around with those a couple years ago… maybe I can tie it together with the speech recognition.