Alex's Blog

Winter Break

Well, break is almost over. I had every intention of posting two or three times, but I ended up getting busy and sidetracked. Oh well...I got a lot done. I don't know that I'm ready to go back to school, though. My schedule is still all messed up. My chemistry lab is scheduled at the same time as all three of my computer science classes, so that needs changed.

I spent most of my break working, so I guess that means it wasn't much of a break. I do have a pretty nice arrangement. I intern at a place in Indianapolis called First DataBank. The company sells databases of drug information to pharmacies, stuff like drug-drug interactions, contraindications, and patient education. During breaks from school, I go there and do computer work. Typically, I perform maintenance on a desktop deployment system I put in place several summers ago, but they also have me do other miscellaneous work that comes up while I'm there. It's pretty fun most of the time, and it is way better than sitting at home bored all the time. Plus, I can always use a bit of extra money.

One of the biggest things I accomplished over break, outside of work, was a bit of progress on my senior thesis. Almost a year ago, when my friend and I decided to do a computer animation, we began work on a test animation of Dr. Frankenstein's lab. The sole purpose of the animation was to learn to use the tools and how to put all the steps in an efficient pipeline. We worked on it a ton last spring, but progress halted over the summer and fall. We finally "finished" the test animation, and are ready to begin the actual thesis in the next few days. I say "finished" because the test animation has a lot of problems with it, but since we are running out of time we must move on to the real project.

I'm not going to write a lot about the test animation in this post, but I will post a link to the youtube video. A detailed post will follow.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ctexTN7UQ7c

Last Week of Classes

It's hard to believe that the semester is almost over. I'm usually really busy finishing up projects and papers and studying for tests. However, I've lucked out this semester. My only end-of-semester computer science assignment was to give a presentation, and I did that last week. History 150 has no papers or projects. I have a chemistry lab Thursday, but that doesn't really count. I'm just coasting until next week, when we take all our tests. I hope the rest of my semesters are like this. Aside from chem 112, all my classes from here on out are computer science. We don't really write papers in the CS department, but we do big projects from time to time.

My History 150 final should be pretty good...it is going to be 70 multiple choice questions, 60 of which were on the three quizzes we had throughout the semester. The test is open book/open notes, and because I have the answers from the quizzes saved, I'm guaranteed a 60/70 at minimum. The other ten questions are over new material that has been covered since the last quiz. To prepare for this, I wrote a short program that will index every word in the notes that the professor handed out during each lecture. The index tells what lines each word appears on, making it really easy to search through the notes to look up answers. I also plan on running the Wikipedia articles on the material through the indexer. The only problem with indexing the lecture notes is typing them into the computer. There are ten or so pages worth of material, so I may try to recruit some classmates to help me out, then make the whole thing available to everyone. We'll see...

Last Friday I went to Emens to get tickets to Hairspray, which was showing Monday night and was free to students. Unfortunately, they were sold out. I was a bit disappointed, and resigned myself to missing it. Then Monday about 5 pm, I got a call from a friend; she had an extra ticket to see Hairspray. Of course, I went. It was really good and really funny. They made more dirty comments during the play than were made in the movie that came out a few months ago with Travolta and Walken, so that was interesting. On the back of the program we were given is an ad for "Moving Out," which is apparently a musical based on Billy Joel songs. It's playing in January, so I'm going to have to go get tickets when they go on sale.

On a non-educational note, I recently discovered a PlayStation emulator. Several have been around for a while, namely PCSX and ePSXe, but both of those are old and unmaintained, and both use plugins. The plugins are a real pain; different plugins perform better (or worse) on different games, and are hard to change around and install. The new one that's out, pSX, is not plugin-based. It's available on Linux and Windows, and doesn't require installation. You simply unzip the downloaded file, copy a BIOS image to the right directory, and start playing. It's really simple and works great. I have had a couple minor problems with it. Certain parts of Final Fantasy VIII don't operate exactly like they do on a real PlayStation, but it doesn't affect the experience. Sound is also imperfect; it stutters from time to time. I don't usually have much time for video games, but now that my semester is pretty much over, I've found myself playing them a lot lately. The other PlayStation emulator I've been playing with is the one that comes with the PlayStation Portable. By default, you have to have a PlayStation 3 to use the feature, and you have to re-buy PSone games that you may already own. Fortunately, the PSP homebrew community released a hacked PSP firmware that lets anyone rip an old PSone game and encode it as a PSP game. It, too, is pretty easy to use once installed and runs games just fine. Now I can justify buying that PSP...until I got PSone games on it, it was basically an (expensive) mp3 player. Most of the actual PSP games are pretty lame, except Lumines, a puzzle game sort of like Tetris. The PSone-on-PSP games are nice to have between classes, especially when I don't have enough down time to go home.

Past Projects: Xbox Modding

Long ago, when I was a Junior and Senior in high school, I got into my first serious hardware modding. Sometime in December of 2003, I read that the Xbox game console was capable of running Linux. I had been using Linux for a couple of years at that point, and thought that getting Linux on an Xbox would be pretty cool. In early January of 2005, I went and bought an Xbox with the sole intent of installing Linux on it.

With much help from the Xbox Linux project, I had Linux installed and running within a couple of days on my new Xbox. I initially did a "soft" mod, which means that I didn't have to open the Xbox in order to install Linux on it. Opening the Xbox voids the warranty and I wanted to avoid that as long as I could. The soft mod also lets Linux run alongside the default Microsoft software, so at this point my Xbox could still play games (but I had no intention of using it for games).

After a month of using the Xbox with Linux on it, I decided to see what else I could do with it. The 30-day return policy was up, so I decided to open the Xbox and do a "hard" modification. A hard mod gives you complete control over the system, which lets you remove the Microsoft software and replace it with alternative software. In my case, I chose to use software from the Xbox Linux project, which doesn't allow you to play games (but it is legal). Software from other projects lets you play backup or pirated games, but is not legal to distribute.

I did the hard mod and replaced all of the Microsoft stuff with Linux stuff. It was pretty neat, and I used it like that for a couple months. Then I started looking at another modification: a memory upgrade. The Xbox comes with 64MB. It's enough for Xbox games, but not really enough for running an operating system and desktop environment. While the Xbox is very similar to a PC, it has many notable differences. One of these differences is the memory. PCs have slots that you can easily add and remove memory to and from. The Xbox was never intended to be modifiable, so its memory is permanently soldered to the motherboard. The motherboard has eight "pads" for memory chips to go on....but from the factory, only four have memory chips. The other four are empty. The four empty pads can accept four more memory chips, doubling the Xbox memory from 64MB to 128MB - plenty for running a Linux desktop. The memory upgrade has two big obstacles; obtaining the extra memory chips, and installing them. There are two main ways to get the chips. You can either extract them from another Xbox, rendering that Xbox useless, or you can track down a component distributor and buy them new. Extracting from another Xbox is expensive and difficult; I tried it once months later but it didn't work and I almost ruined two Xboxes. The best solution is to track down a seller and just buy the memory new. That's what I did for my first upgrade. I didn't have much trouble finding a seller, it's just a matter of making some phone calls. The sales reps thought it was a little strange that I only bought 4 parts; usually their customers buy hundreds at a time. Once I obtained the parts, I had to install them. That was the hardest part. It ended up taking about four months. The basic process is place a chip on the pad, line it up, drown the pins in solder, and then remove the excess solder. It's much easier said than done. Even one short between pins renders the Xbox inoperable. It took a couple days to get the chips in place, then several months working on and off to get rid of all the shorts. I thought I had ruined my Xbox, but it finally booted and reported 128MB memory. It was amazing. I've since performed three more memory upgrades. The next two took about a week each, and the fourth one took 2 hours and booted on the first try. A fifth attempt, about a year later, failed and I only saved that Xbox by removing the extra memory and ruining the pads in the process.

I ended up with four Xboxes that had Linux and memory upgrades, and decided to try to make a cluster out of them. A cluster is a group of regular computers that process data in parallel in order to speed up processing time. I had some moderate success with it, mainly for rendering images using raytracing.

My freshman year at Ball State, the Computer Science department had a showcase event during parents weekend. They sent an email to all the CS students, inviting us to present our projects at the showcase. They were looking for class projects, but said that independent ones were fine too. I took my Xboxes, and got a pretty good response from the department and from the people who came by to see the showcase.

I hadn't done much with my Xboxes since then, until a couple weeks ago. A friend from class had a bunch of Xbox parts and told me that if I could assemble them into a working (modded) Xbox, I could keep the other parts. I needed a power supply for one of my original Xboxes, so I agreed. He wanted a program called Xbox Media Center installed. XBMC turns an Xbox into a multimedia device. It can play DVDs and CDs, it can browse your home network to play files from your computers, and it can connect to the internet to get weather and YouTube videos. I couldn't get the YouTube feature to work, though. But I didn't play with it long before I gave it back to my classmate. I now have enough parts left from that project to build another working Xbox, but I need to find the time to do it...

Restaurants

There are lots of places on campus to eat, but the only one I visit regularly is Chik-Fil-A. It's conveniently located in the Atrium in the center of campus. The Atrium also happens to be close to the Robert Bell building, which is where I spend the majority of my time. With the addition of the Letterman building, I can now get from Robert Bell to the Atrium without going outside. That is going to be fantastic this winter when it's freezing cold outside and there's snow on the ground. I'm pretty sure Chik-Fil-A is the only place I've eaten on campus this semester, and probably last semester, too. It's delicious and reasonably priced. It's also the only Chik-Fil-A I know of aside from one in Indianapolis.

I usually try to cook my own meals, but when I eat out, there are several top choices in Muncie. One of my favorites is Penn Station. They give out free cookies on Tuesdays during lunch. Unfortunately, it's still pretty expensive. The large steak sandwiches are about $10. But they are delicious. There is a Jimmy John's in the village. It's good, but also expensive. And way better than Subway.

Muncie also has some good "sit down" restaurants. I ate at Scottie's in the village last weekend, and had some delicious walleye fish. The Landing in downtown Muncie is also really good. The last time I was there, I got fish. I usually try to get fish at nice restaurants; I don't get to eat it often.

When I'm working in Indy during breaks, there are a few really good places my coworkers and I go to eat. One is Kona Jack's, a seafood place in Nora. Their beer-battered cod is my favorite. There is a place in Carmel called Bub's Burgers and Ice Cream. They sell elk burgers in 1/4 lb, 1/2 lb, and 1 lb sizes. If you eat a whole 1 lb elk burger, you get your picture taken and hung on the wall. My photo is on there somewhere. Both of those places are kind of expensive and take a long time, so we don't go there often. There is a fast-food hamburger joint we go to sometimes called Five Guys. Its good, and fast, but kind of pricey. Their regular orders of French fries are big enough for two or three people to share.

And one place I almost forgot: Bird's Smokehouse Barbecue in Daleville. It started as a trailer-based business that sold barbecue sandwiches at outdoor events and on a lot in Daleville. I used to buy BBQ pork there when I was in high school. A couple years ago, they opened an actual restaurant down the road from the lot the trailer parked in. They seem to do a lot of business, and I go in there and eat every once in a while. 

Lost and Found

A few weeks ago I was walking to class and I found a laptop power supply laying on the sidewalk. I have no idea what to do with it. It was outside Lafollette.... but not right in front of the doors or anything. It was way out on the sidewalk, like someone walking past Lafollette had lost it. The honors dorms are back that way, but so is the commuter lot. I didn't think turning it in to the front desk of one of those buildings would be productive. I'm not even sure if Lafollette has a front desk or anything. I checked Ball State's website, and I didn't find any "official" lost and found. A lot of buildings have their own, for stuff left in classrooms and labs and such. But no campus-wide lost and found.

Upon realizing this, I got to work. Within a few hours, I had a rudimentary lost and found site set up. Right now I'm hosting it on my server, but I'm hoping to be able to host it on the computer science server on campus. (iWeb won't work because it doesn't support PHP or mysql, both of which are needed for websites that deal with saving and modifying data.) I've tried to make it very simple to use. Anyone who finds something can easily post a short description and some contact info. People who have lost things can browse the item listings. If they find something that looks like their's, they simply contact the person listed next to that item. Once a lost item is returned, the finder can go back to the site and delist the item. No registration is required at any point; registration would be a huge barrier to finders. Finders would go to the site with the intention of helping return the lost item, but upon encountering the hassle of registering and such would give up and just keep the lost item. One suggestion I've already gotten is to make people who lost an item contact the finder through the site. The site would send an email to the finder on behalf of the other person, and would give that person's email address to the finder. Then the finder could decide if the claim is valid and/or serious, and contact the claimer via normal email. Keeping the finder's email private stops spammers from collecting email addresses from the lost and found website, which is a good thing.

Hopefully other students can get some use out of this. And maybe someone can get their laptop power supply back... 

Mythbusters

Early last week, a friend of mine, Parker, asked if I was busy on Sunday. I told him no. He mentioned that he had an extra ticket to go see the Mythbusters speak at Purdue and if I wanted to go, it was mine. I was solidly in. Then on Friday, he found out that the tickets were VIP All Access, which meant we would get to go backstage and meet the Mythbusters. Awesome.

We left Muncie at 8 o'clock Sunday morning. It took about two hours to get to West Lafayette. We found the auditorium, but it wasn't open so we went to McDonalds, then went back and got our tickets and backstage passes. At 11 a.m., they let us and the rest of the VIPs backstage. There were about 100 of us. Most seemed to be distinguished (read: wealthy and generous) alumni and their families.

Only Adam and Jamie were there; this was disappointing, as I was hoping to get a photo with Kari to use as my Facebook profile picture. Parker and I managed to get our pictures taken with them, but unfortunately my picture didn't turn out too well. The line for taking photos was pretty pushy and unorganized. We had to just jump in there when we saw an opening.

The main event started at 1. It turns out that 2007 in the Centennial for Purdue's college of science, so the dean gave a short talk about that. Afterwards, Adam and Jamie came on stage, along with a moderator. Most of the rest of the program was just those two talking about the show and how they got their jobs, with the moderator prompting questions and such. At the very end, microphones were set up around the auditorium so that audience members could ask questions. Most of the questions were well thought out and prompted really good responses from the Mythbusters.

The drive home was uneventful. Highway 28 is just a long boring stretch of road. We did see a conservation officer blow past us at about 80 or 90 mph. Conversation on the way home (and on the way there, too) consisted largely of computer talk (Linux, php, etc.) I think Parker belongs in the computer science department...

Me and the Mythbusters. Jamie is making a funny face... 

Parker and the Mythbusters. 

The Mythbusters on stage. Our seats were fantastic; third row. And yes, the moderator has orange hair...and green shoes. His wristwatch was the same color of green. Apparently, he's a high school math teacher at a high school in the area. 

Course Request

It's time for course request and, well....I don't have it done. And I still wouldn't have it done, but the bloggers have been asked to write a themed blog about selecting classes. So really, I should be grateful for the motivation to pick classes. I only have two non-computer science classes left to take, and I'm going to sign up for both of them next semester. One is Stats and Probability, and the other is Chemistry 112. I added the math class tonight, but for some reason the system won't let me take the chem 112 lab that I want. Hopefully it's only a computer error. I think certain lab sections are matched with certain lecture sections. I'm going to ask someone in the chem department tomorrow if it's possible to take the (disallowed) combination that I want. If not...well, I guess I'll have to redo part of my schedule. I usually try to take my classes as close as possible together and as early in the day as possible. Then I have the rest of the day to do whatever I want to.

So far I've only decided on one computer science class to take next semester. It's a seminar on game design. It is really two classes collaborating on a single project. The CS339 section (my section) has computer science students in it, and we will write a game over the course of the semester. The other section is an Honors colloquium, Honors 390b, I believe. That class will design the game and present my class with the specifications. It should be an interesting experience. The two professors teaching it, Dr. Gestwicki and Dr. Sun, were also my professors for CS120 and CS121, respectively. I really like both of them, and I'm looking forward to having class with them again. Last fall, I was in a different seminar that also spent a semester writing a game, but that's a story for another post ;-). I'm curious to see how different (or similar) this project will be. I think my experience from my last project like this will be a great help.

Since I've got most of my core stuff out of the way, I need to find a couple other computer science classes to take to get me into the 15-18 credit hour range. I'll talk to some CS professors tomorrow, and see if they have any advice. Something to do with databases would be interesting. I think I also have to take a programming languages course. We'll see.

 Update: I talked to the Chemistry department today and they are going to let me take the two sections I want. Sometimes you just have to ask about things and they'll get it sorted out.
 

Smoking Ban

I got an email several minutes ago, saying that the proposed campus smoking ban is going to go into effect on March 17. It's about damn time. There is nothing worse than passing someone on my way to class and breathing cigarette smoke for a few seconds. Fortunately, Ball State will now protect me from that dangerous toxic substance. I think this will save hundreds of students from getting lung cancer from breathing the secondhand smoke that is so prevalent on campus.

Ball State does a lot to protect its students, and each new policy makes me feel safer on campus. For at least as long as I've been a student, and probably much longer, Ball State has had a 'no weapons' policy. This means that nobody is allowed to have things like firearms, bows, and large knives. With a gun-free campus, there's no chance of anyone committing a crime with a gun. The police, of course, are excepted; they need firearms to protect themselves from unruly or drunken students. And besides, the police are professionals and would never misuse a weapon. Some people argue that students who have the proper license should be allowed to have firearms. They say that students who are responsible with guns can protect themselves from, say, the rogue gunmen that turn up from time to time. That's a bad argument for toting a gun around, though. First, students are too young to make the decision to use a firearm responsibly. And second, the police are there to protect students. This isn't the Wild West. Protection comes from the police, not from being a gunslinging cowboy. The one weakness in the system is that I haven't ever seen the police patrolling the buildings. At Virginia Tech, the gunman locked himself into the building. If schools had several police officers patrolling every building, the students would be and feel much safer.

Even the different educational departments at Ball State implement well thought-out safety regulations. The chemistry department, for example, requires students to wear safety goggles in the labs. During the first lab of the semester, I forgot to put my goggles on right away. Thankfully, the woman supervising our lab section reminded me. That day, we were separating the components of a three-part mixture of water, table salt, and sand. Getting any of those things in my eyes would have been really painful, and could have left me blind. I'm very thankful that the chemistry department was watching out for me. I had no idea that salt, water, and sand could be so dangerous. Several weeks later, we had a lab that used diluted bleach. Again, I had forgotten to put on my safety goggles. Fortunately, the lab instructor advised me of the hazards of diluted bleach and had me put on my safety glasses. I later spoke to a friend and found that the dorms don't require residents to wear safety goggles when doing laundry. I need to contact the administrators of the housing department and see if that rule could be implemented. Letting students go blind from handling hazardous substances would open the university to lawsuits and criticisms.

There are a lot of safety aspects the university is lacking in, and I hope that this blog can publicize some of them and encourage the administration to find a solution. Somewhat related to secondhand smoke are strong colognes and perfumes as well as exhaust from automobiles. Most students walk on sidewalks bordering streets to get to class. Hundreds of autos pass by every day, and all of them emit poisonous fumes. If Ball State could get those roads closed to all vehicles with internal combustion engines, then I think the health of all students and faculty would improve. It would also help the environment by reducing pollution on campus. I think the next step, though, is to ban perfumes and colognes. Now that the smoking problem is being taken care of, which affects everybody, other strong airborne substances should be prohibited. While such things don't affect most people, they can have a profound effect on asthmatics and people with other respiratory diseases. It is unfair to allow fashionable substances to be worn that cause breathing problems for some students. By disallowing the use of cologne and perfume, Ball State can make classrooms a safe and comfortable environment for everyone.

Beyond airborne threats, there are many unsafe things at Ball State. The food courts all sell snacks and candy, which can lead to obesity and other health issues. All unhealthy food should be removed from the cafeteria areas, and students should be disallowed from having unhealthy food in the dorms. I see lots of students not using crosswalks to cross the street. The university should impose fines or some sort of probation on students who do so; it's a danger to the students themselves and to motorists. Having a zero-tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol might also be a good thing. All students, regardless of age and location of residence, should be randomly drug tested to ensure they are choosing not to consume drugs and alcohol. Those in violation would be expelled or required to attend rehabilitation classes. Such a policy would improve the health and lifestyles of all students.

I applaud Ball State's commitment to the safety of its students. Without Ball State looking out for us, we might be making poor decisions about our health and our futures. I hope that the university continues to expand its interest in our well-being and to strive to impose sound judgment in all of us. Academic education isn't the only thing we are here for; we should also be learning how to live responsibly. What better way to learn than by bureaucratic fiat? 

REO Speedwagon

Sunday night, REO Speedwagon gave a concert at Emens. I bought two tickets weeks ago, but had no idea who I'd go with. Sunday turned out to be a day when everyone I knew was busy, so at the last minute I found myself with an extra REO Speedwagon ticket and nobody to take with me. After many phone calls and Facebook messages, my friend's girlfriend convinced one of her friends to go with me. We had never met, but she turned out to be pretty cool.

I had seen REO Speedwagon once before in Ft. Wayne, about four years ago. I won those tickets on the radio station. The concert was Journey, Styx, and REO Speedwagon. I went for Journey and Styx, but REO Speedwagon was may favorite that night. While I like Styx and Journey's music better, REO was much more energetic and talkative on stage. Probably the best part of that night was the way the concert began. The very first note out of the speakers was the siren from "Riding the Storm Out" by REO Speedwagon. I was half expecting the concert at Emens to begin that way, but it didn't...

The guy who opened was pretty lame. From what I gathered, he is a bar singer from somewhere near or south of Indy. He played acoustic guitar and harmonica. I had heard that .38 Special was touring with REO Speedwagon and hoped that they would open, but that turned out not to be the case. Anyway, the crowd heckled the opening guy a bit, requesting "Freebird" and "Stairway to Heaven." The guy responded to the "Freebird" comment, saying that if he was in a bar, he would flip off the requester and say "Here's your free bird." He said since it was a real show, he would refrain from making the gesture. Later, someone yelled at him to send out REO Speedwagon. A small auditorium like Emens makes for more interaction with the performers...which is entertaining, if nothing else.

 REO Speedwagon was, as expected, amazing. They have a new CD out, and played several songs from it. The new stuff was all right, but nothing compared to their old stuff. They played all of their popular songs, but by the time they said good night to everyone, they hadn't played "Riding the Storm Out." At most of the concerts I've been to, the crowd stays standing and cheering until the band comes back and plays another song. As soon as they "left" without playing "Riding the Storm Out," I knew they would come back on stage...and I was right. They played "Riding the Storm Out" and a song I wasn't familiar with, and then the concert was really over. (Or at least I think it was...we left after that.)

I took several pictures, but because it was so dark only one turned out really well. At one point, I snuck down to the stage and took some close-up pictures until an Emens employee told me to knock it off. I went back to my balcony seat before I got my camera confiscated. I also managed to film all of "Keep Pushin'," which is one of their older songs. I'll soon post at least part of the video.

The Furnace

I finally got a hold of some coal last week, and spent my Saturday melting copper with several friends. We took lots of pictures and video, so this should be an interesting (and lengthy) post. All images link to bigger versions.

We got to my house about 9:30am. Typically, firing the furnace is an evening endeavor, but this time we started early because two of the guys, Mike and Ben, brought about 45 pounds of copper. We figured it would take at least a whole day to melt it all. Also, the furnace hadn't been used since last spring, so there was a lot of work to do to get it in shape to light.

The furnace before we started. 

 

A toad we found living inside. We put him near a tree, away from the fire. 

This is the hole we found the toad in. It is the entrance for the bellows. 

The copper we set out to melt. 

The furnace is constructed to allow air to be forced up through the bottom to make the coal burn hotter. The hollow part at the bottom fills up with ash, and has to be cleaned out before every firing. Typically, several bricks have to be replaced as well. Since I just use cheap Wal-mart brick, they melt away after one or two sessions. A lot also crack from the heat, and cracked bricks make the furnace unstable and allow heat to escape. After rebuilding the furnace, we put pea gravel around the sides to help insulate and seal it. The seal serves two important functions. The first is to keep air in. The second is to keep hot coals from dangerously flying out.

Once complete, we add the bellows. This device is a modified bathroom vent fan. We originally used a leaf blower, but the leaf blower moves too much air and causes the coal to burn too hot and too fast. It also has no flow regulator. The vent fan moves much less air, but still enough to make the coal burn hot. It also has an opening that can be adjusted to regulate the air flow, allowing for even more control over the temperature. The bellows ducting is also sealed with pea gravel.

Starting the furnace has been hit-or-miss in the past. Coal can't be lit directly, so we have to step up from newspaper to sticks to coal. Sometimes it doesn't catch right away, but Saturday it fired up on the first try. Once lit, we allowed the bellows to run at full blast for several minutes to heat up the fuel, the furnace, and the crucible. This process drives off moisture, which can cause problems like cracking and explosions.

 

Starting the fire. Coal is filthy and stinky. 

The fire is now hot. (Actually this was taken late in the afternoon.) 

We started the melting process with some finely-divided pieces of copper. Small pieces melt faster than larger pieces because they have a larger surface area and contact more of the crucible, which helps conduct heat faster. Once a pool of molten copper is present in the bottom of the crucible, it gets much easier to melt larger pieces just by submerging them in the liquid. The melting process takes a long time, but once we have enough molten copper, we pour.

The small pieces of copper we melted first. 

Pouring is a dangerous process. It involves getting close to and moving about ten pounds of 2500° F material. And it's liquid, so if it spills on you, you get covered with it. I once poured some copper into a wet mold. The water boiled instantly and flung blobs of molten copper all over the place. It missed everyone, fortunately. Ever since then, I've been wearing pants, sweatshirts, gloves, and a face mask to pour. They provide the additional benefit of acting as a heat shield, so I don't burn my hands up while pouring. The crucible tongs may look long, but the heat radiating off the crucible is astounding. Our pouring operation was pretty well-coordinated. We typically had one or two men filming, one covering the mold, and one standing by to add fuel to the furnace and operate the fire hose if something went wrong.

This copper is just about ready to pour. 

 

Me pouring. I forgot my gloves... 

 

A brand new (and very hot) copper ingot. 

 

Pouring again. I had gloves this time. 

 

An action shot of the pour. 

 About 3 o'clock, we went in to town to eat and buy new bricks. Some of the bricks at the top of the furnace were cracking, making it difficult to seal the top of the furnace. The fragments were also getting in the way of refueling. We bought some broken concrete landscaping stones at Walmart. We only paid half price because they were broken, but we still got ripped off. Oh well, they held up pretty well for the rest of the day. We then went to Pizza Hut. Two interesting things happened there. First, the waitress asked what we had been up to that afternoon, and got the unexpected answer of "melting copper in [my] back yard." Second was the only injury of the day. One of the guys chipped his tooth on a fork. He was eating his pizza with a fork (yes) because his hands were dirty from the coal.

When we rebuilt the furnace, we built it higher than before. It proved to be a big engineering mistake. We had the bellows running full-blast, but the copper wouldn't melt at all. Turns out the extra space between the crucible/fuel and the top of the furnace allowed the heat to escape easily. After taking the brick down a level, things started working again.

A night shot of the flames coming out the top of the furnace. 

The first several bars we poured came out kind of lumpy on top. We eventually figured out that the molds were too cold and were causing the copper to freeze to quickly. Once we started heating the molds to about 1000° F, the copper cooled properly and made the top nice and smooth. In the 10 hours we were outside, we only melted about half of all the copper...maybe less. But now that we know more about controlling the temperature and pouring the copper properly, we think we can go through the rest pretty quickly some weekend. We'll probably wait until it gets much cooler. Standing next to the furnace in 85°+ weather is miserable. Wearing pants, sweatshirts, and gloves is even more miserable. There will certainly be another post when we melt again.

 

The steel plate covering the furnace got so hot it was glowing. It's very cool at night. 

 

From left to right: Josh Gevirtz, Ben Behnkendorf, Mike Broom, Alex Corn, and Ryan Wampler.

The photos above were not all taken by me. In fact, most weren't taken by me. Credit goes to whoever was behind the camera, and to Ben for letting us use his camera for many of the shots (including the amazing shot of the toad). I have video of the pours, but I haven't gone through it all yet. It will be edited into this post when I get it uploaded.

The Pink Floyd Experience

Last weekend was Parents' Weekend at Ball State. Typically, a lot goes on during Parents' Weekend. Many departments have showcases of student projects, there's a football game, Dean's List ceremonies, etc. This year, there was also a concert at Emens Auditorium. The group of musicians who performed recreated a Pink Floyd concert, including music, a light show, and a flying pig.

Saturday afternoon, I was at Bracken helping a friend with a class project. As we walked toward the entrance, a bus drove up to the rear of Emens (which faces Bracken library). I had seen lots of trucks and buses and such at other concerts, and thought that this might be the Pink Floyd Experience. I walked up to the bus as some of the passengers were exiting, and asked if they were who I thought they were. I was right. I talked to the saxophonist and the lead guitarist for a few minutes. Sadly, I didn't have my camera on me or I would have tried to get a picture with them.

The concert was fantastic. The band opened with a song I was unfamiliar with and "Another Brick In The Wall," then played The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety to finish out the first half of the performance. They did a really good job recreating the music. The most outstanding thing I heard was the sax solo in "Money" during Dark Side of the Moon. It sounded exactly like the sax from the album. It was impressive, and I think the highlight of the night (even though I don't particularly care for the song "Money," it doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of the album, but that's another story). I was surprised that they played all of Dark Side of the Moon; I kept expecting them to jump to some other songs, but it never happened. I was very happy with this because that album is the defining Pink Floyd album, and one of the greatest albums of all time (if not the greatest).

The second half consisted of mostly popular Pink Floyd songs, like "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and "Comfortably Numb." All were very well done. Some of the songs in the second half I didn't recognize, which was disappointing. I think they should have played more of the popular songs, like "Learning to Fly." My other major complaint is that it was deafening. The sound system was up way louder than was necessary. The show ended with the song "Run Like Hell" and a giant inflatable radio-controlled pig. I think the pig is from Pink Floyd's "Animals" album. It was pretty cool.

The auditorium wasn't as crowded as I expected it to be. I'm pretty sure Wednesday's "100 Years of Broadway" attracted a bigger crowd. "Broadway" was free to students, which could explain part of it. But the Pink Floyd Experience was during Parents' Weekend, which I would expect to draw a larger crowd, especially since most parents grew up with Pink Floyd. Who knows? I would definitely go see these guys again, if I had the chance. I wish I was old enough to have gone to a real Pink Floyd concert, to see how closely Saturday's show compares to the authentic experience. Maybe they'll get back together and go on tour someday...

100 Years of Broadway

Last night there was a show called "100 Years of Broadway" at Emens. A friend of mine had an extra ticket and asked me to go with her. I'm glad I went; it turned out to be a very good show.

The performance consisted of selected songs from the last 100 year's worth of Broadway shows. They were performed by five current Broadway stars. A couple of the singers performed songs that they had personally done before on Broadway. I wasn't familiar with most of the songs, as I don't generally watch musicals or pay any attention to Broadway. I did like most of the songs, and a few of them were outstanding.

My favorite of all was "Gethsemane," a song from Jesus Christ Superstar. First of all, Jesus Christ Superstar is one of the few musicals that 1) I have seen and 2) I think is awesome. Unfortunately, I think Gethsemane is one of the weakest songs in the movie. There are tons of better ones. However, the man who sang it last night, Danny Zolli, did a fantastic job. He was much better than the actor that sang it in the 1973 movie version. It was a great way to end the first half of the evening.

The other songs that stood out were in the second half of the show. The same singer who sang "Gethsemane" also sang Billy
Joel's "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant." Here is Billy Joel's version:

(apparently the blog software won't let me embed youtube videos. link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=XGqgZgdkzoc ) 

Then there was "Phantom of the Opera," the title track of the show of the same name. I haven't seen the movie, but I fully intend to rent (or buy) it soon. It was amazing, rivaling "Gethsemane." The night closed with a "Seasons of Love" from Rent. I haven't seen Rent, either, but if "Seasons of Love" is representative of the rest of the movie, I'm missing out. I'll probably be buying it, too.

iPod

All of us (the bloggers) were given iPods for being part of this program. I had never used an iPod, so I was excited to get mine. However, it was a bit disappointing at first. The iPod requires use of iTunes, which is only available for Mac OSX and Windows. I run an operating system called Linux. Linux is a free operating system written by a worldwide community of volunteer programmers. It is very similar to UNIX operating systems, and has been growing in popularity in recent years.

So I had this shiny new iPod, but no way to put music on it without Windows or OSX. I tried copying files directly to it, but that didn't work. A friend recommended a program called Rockbox. It's a replacement firmware/OS for portable mp3 players, including video iPods.  It was pretty simple to install. There is an installer program, and it just copies some files to the iPod hard drive. There is no modification of the iPod hardware or BIOS, so the process is 100% reversible. After installing Rockbox, I was able to copy my music to the iPod and play it right away. Awesome.

After a little more tinkering, I got videos to play on the iPod, and after that, I got Doom running on it. Yes, the classic shooter from years and years ago. It's a bit hard to control, but it's also a good way to kill some time (and monsters) between classes. Rockbox also comes with a bunch of other games, like tetris and solitaire.

So why don't I just find a Windows machine and use iTunes? There are a lot of reasons. The iTunes license agreement. The inability to manage my own music collection. My music is already organized the way I like it, and I don't want to let iTunes start shuffling things around or creating copies of all my music. I want it to stay in a single central location. I want to be able to copy the files I want from my music archive to my iPod using a terminal or a file manager. Opening up a special program just to copy a few files is a waste of time. With Rockbox, I can do all this in Linux. There is no longer a Windows or OSX requirement. It now behaves exactly as I think an mp3 player should. After all, which of the following is simpler and more elegant?

• Copying a music file (or files) from your music directory to the iPod.

Or:

• Launching iTunes
• Browsing to your music files and importing them into iTunes (What does that even mean, anyway? It's already on my computer, why do I have to "import" anything?)
• Waiting on the "import" to complete
• Copying those songs to the iPod playlist
• Telling iTunes to sync.

I suppose using iTunes could be advantageous in some cases, like if it was used to rip your music from CDs in the first place, or if your entire music collection was purchased through the iTunes store. But launching and using iTunes is still far more complex than issuing a simple copy command.

First Post

My name is Alex Corn. I'm a junior at Ball State majoring in computer science. I'm also in the honors college. I've got a lot going on this semester, so hopefully this blog will be fun for me to write and for everyone else to read.

 I live just outside of Muncie with my family. In a lot of ways, I'm glad. I don't have to deal with a roommate. I get to save my money. I can cook my own food, rather than eat campus food constantly. I always have a car. My things are more secure. Campus housing rules don't apply to me (noise, fire, firearms, alcohol, electrical rules, etc.). The disadvantage, of course, is that I'm not constantly surrounded by my peers. It's not as easy to hang out with friends. Living 20 minutes away makes it hard to walk to someone's door on a whim to see if they want to go get dinner, or work on a project, or just hang out. I do think I'll rent a house next year with a friend, so we can more easily collaborate on our honors thesis.

Two friends and I have begun our honor's senior thesis. Yes, we're juniors, and we are already working on it. All honors college students must complete such a project in order to finish the honors college program. The requirements are very open-ended, which is the kind of project I like. Rather than writing a paper (boring), we are making a computer animation based on "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We're going to be using the same software that Dreamworks and Weta Digital used for Shrek and Lord of the Rings. I will likely be posting about that project quite a bit on here. In the next couple of weeks, we'll have finished a short test animation of Dr. Frankenstein's lab. The purpose of the test animation is to give us an idea of how an entire project, from beginning to end, will work out. It's looking pretty good, so far.

I'm in a network programming class this semester, which is mainly web development. I was never really interested in web design before, but got into it a bit last semester and have been learning more about it. I've got some neat ideas for web-based applications, so we'll see where that goes.

I was also asked to be the computer science department representative to the Grade Appeals Committee, which sounds boring but which is actually right up my alley. I had to file a grade appeal between my freshman and sophomore years. It was a complete nightmare, a story for another blog post. It will be interesting to see the other side of the process.

I've also got a lot of things going on outside of school. Though I'm in a network programming class, much of my web development knowledge has been self-taught in my own time. I do a lot of tinkering with computers here at home, mainly Linux work. I've also been playing with Windows domains and virtualization. During breaks, I have an internship at a company in Indianapolis. I've been working there since spring break of my senior year of high school. It's a great place to work. I mainly do desktop and application deployment for new users. The company, First Databank, Inc., sells drug information. Prominent products include drug-drug interaction databases and patient education. Drug-drug interactions notify pharmacists if a patient is prescribed drugs that interfere with each other, and patient education information is paperwork that is distributed with drugs that tell a patient what the drug does and what to expect, like side effects.

Non-tech related hobbies include melting metal, shooting, and model trains and airplanes. I will certainly be posting photos of the blast furnace and the resulting molten metal. I'm a bit short on coal right now, so that won't be until I resupply . I've also got a couple of crossbows in the works. I haven't had time to work on them for a LONG while, but maybe sometime this semester? I'll post pictures/howto of the new ones and the first one I built later.

It's going to be a good year.