Lee.org

I’m still working on this a project where I want to find and continue to know the location of 10 robots moving up to 10kph in a field about 100 yards square with 0.2-1.0 meter accuracy. RFID-Radar is -almost- a solution in a box except that it takes many seconds for it to do range-finding.

GPS isn’t accurate enough.

I’m now envisioning 2 sets of antennas using angle of arrival interferometry. I’ve been googling (and the library) my head off and not coming up with too much thus far. Do you know of an interferometry system that might detect 0.1 degree difference or so? I figure that with 2 sets, one on the X plane, one on the Y, we can get an accurate location. I’ll ping the RFID-Radar guy on this but I think he’s focused elsewhere.

There was a guy in an SBA class a couple nights ago that had Tourettes Syndrome. I had seen documentaries about it but never met someone with it. It must be a horrible way to go through life.

He was sitting about 20′ from Charlotte and I. At first, it sounded like he was using a cell phone while in class. He’d say something quietly every couple seconds. I listened closer and could tell that, in general, he was occasionally echoing the words of the speaker.

Whenever he looked around the room, especially if he made eye contact with someone, he’d say something… like the kind of thing you might think for a split second if you were looking around, nervous at a party. Things like, “Don’t look at me!”, “What are you looking at?”, “What’s your problem?”

He’d sometimes feed off his own words and actions. At one point, he made eye contact with Charlotte and started scratching his eye with his middle finger trying to “subtly” give her the finger. The scratch grew into a spasm. The spasm grew into thrusting his finger across his face repeatedly and forcefully such that he was just as likely to hurt himself as insult Charlotte.

He made many people in the classroom very nervous. Several people left. Someone suggested that he was schizophrenic.

I couldn’t imagine how sucky my life would be if I had no choice but to voice every emotional thought I had. There aren’t any very effective treatments for this one in a million disorder.

I got this email just today. You might be interested. It’s a movie casting call in Boston. Warren is a friend of mine. This is his second film. His first was certainly completely odd… think Toxic Avenger. It looks like his second is shooting for oddness as well. Though more polished (maybe). With luck, think Evil Dead….

Straight to DVD feature B horror comedy “Snurg Hunter”, budget $150,000, shooting this summer (July-Sept) 2007 in greater Boston. We have guaranteed distribution via our last feature “Pony Trouble”, and so when finished, “Snurg Hunter” will be in stores nationally and internationally. Hopefully with your name in the credits :)

(more…)

After trying out Snap Previews on TJIC’s site for a while, I find them useful. If you disagree, tell me.

If you dislike it, it can be turned off of all the sites you visit by clicking on “options” when a Snap-thingie pops up. I’m still wondering whether letting Snap look over my users’ shoulders is the right thing to do… hmmm.

I had a little trouble installing it with my theme. My custom theme didn’t initially have the following standard code in the footer template: <?php wp_footer(); ?>

update 6-22-07: I removed it after using it for a while.

• While the popup is coming up, you can’t click on the link; this happened a lot.
• I started seeing some semi-pseudo advertising going on. I forget exactly what. Maybe it was “search for pages like this one” or some such. And there is a Firefox “search plugin” for users… so they’re using the plugin to get data from me.
• Why in the world would I want the Snap popup to have a “search the web” text box? -That- is advertising.
• It was kinda annoying.

Here are (in no particular order) links to the web sites of many of my friends.

Shameless Heather
Warren - Committed heart and soul to his insane desires, he earns my highest respect.
WoTW
Maura
Nick
Scherzoid
Petal
Geri
Marah
Lukas W. Sullivan - AKA Spanks T. Clown
Rosa Carson
Homeport - a very very good place.
Travis James Ignatius Corcoran
KathyPhrog - a fantastic human bean and Daaaark Hobling!
Shara Zoll - my friend and ex-housemate!
Mitchell Gross - a good person.
Eric Berntson - on the short list. You should check out the artwork on his site.
Tom Limoncelli - Tom Limoncelli
My sister

PS. Sorry about the song playing in the background (if you’re running IE, that is. If not, feel free to annoy yourself by playing the background music) I can’t recall hearing this on the radio in the past 10 or 15 years (it came out in ‘84) but I just can’t get it out of my head! It’s been floating around in my subconscious mind for years. All that anyone has to do is say the word “friends” in the right tone of voice and the little evil bastard in my head sticks this track on REPEAT PLAY 999. I figure that if enough people come to this site and hear the song, I’ll get it out of my head and into the collective unconscious. So there.

Update 10-1-04 I am happy to report that putting the song on my web page has been a success! I haven’t gotten it stuck in my head for a good long while. As a pre-emptive measure against future bouts of this song, I’m going to leave it online.

A long time ago, I ran a Guestbook. It has since been replaced by blogs and such but I thought you might like to take a peek at my old Guestbook

Please note that I changed it so that if you want to subscribe to comments while you are leaving your own comment, you have to check the check-box.

(this should reduce the number of bounces I get from fictitious people like WinFreeViagra@yahoo.net.

I have been starting a business with my girlfriend, Charlotte. We are tentatively calling it Safe and Secure. It is an earthquake preparedness business where we go to people’s homes and institutions and ready them for the kinds of earthquakes that we inevitably have here in northern California. It’s turning out to be quite interesting and fun. We are becoming experts in the field. :-)

In my personal/art life, I have been working on several projects getting ready for Burning Man. One is called Swarm. You can take a peek here: http://www.orbswarm.com/. I am also helping to rework the Serpent Mother… that is the giant snake that we worked on last year. You saw pictures of that, yes? Take a peek: http://lee.org/blog/2006/10/03/serpent-links/

What we did this morning:

1 woke up
2 lazed
3 enjoyed the feel of the sheets on our skin
4 lazed in that eyes half-open perfectly comfy manner
5 mmmmmmmm
6 talked about what we might have for breakfast
7 snuggled
7b felt at one with… something
8 lazed
9 snuggled
10 started making the scones
11 started making the bacon
12 fresh orange juice, REALLY fresh, like nectar
13 started the fluffly scrambled eggs
14 steaming chocolate mocha!
15 everything steaming on the table at the same moment (except the orange juice of course)
16 yum bliss

Phew, we’ve had a busy day! Where’s my pillow? And it’s only 1:30pm!

Charlotte and I rushed to Fort Funston to catch the sunset. We both needed the rays. Unfortunately, we missed the sun by 5 minutes. But there were a bunch of folks with fancy camera gear. I kept overhearing them talking about something moving really fast and such. Charlotte finally asked what they were doing. They were looking at Comet McNaught!

It was discovered just last year and it’s orbit isn’t known precicely, though it is extremely eccentric. It won’t be back for hundreds, thousands or maybe tens of thousands of years. NASA site on it’s orbit

I’ve only ever seen a glimpse of another comet, and that was on a hazy night. With my own eyes, I could make out the comet, streaking along just 15 million miles from the sun. And through binoculars, it looked “just like they do in the movies” :-)

So it’s a good thing we showed up when we did!

We’re going to go out just after sunset Sunday night to try and catch it. But it might already be gone.

The Flaming Lotus Girls are taking the Hand of God to Australia. No, I’m not going :-(. But a groovy Flaming Lotus Girls Blog was created around it :-). Take a look.