Recycled Electrons - Blog of Keith Horowitz

Look out Energizer Bunny! Alien in 30 seconds with bunnies. Found on ElectricBugAloo Blog

We watched a couple of rented DVDs lately. At the beginning of the weekend, we rented one of Mel Brook's best movies: Blazing Saddles from the video store to share with some friends. My eldest son's best friend's parents. It seems the friend's mom had never seen it. I had been quoting from the movie earlier in the evening, so we decided it was time to share. My wife was surprised that it wasn't in my DVD collection with Young Frankenstein and History of the World Part I . It belongs in my collection, but I just haven't gotten around to it. I thought about buying it a couple of times, but for a while there I wasn't sure which one I was missing! Well when I opened the DVD case, I was interested to see the shiny side of the DVD facing me. Turns out this is one of those double-sided DVDs. In a lot of cases, including this one, the two sides have to do with TV formatted or letterbox (aka widescreen). Well, it was the widescreen side facing me. ...

No not the movie. This is a continuation of my mad scientist story, trying to get my computers working. Yesterday, I recieved the new P3 that I ordered, to replace my cranky P3-450. I had paid for 2 day shipping. It got there on the fouth day. Annoying, but mostly it was bad timing for the weekend. I don't think it would pay to make a fight about it. It came well packed. There were static warning stickers on the plastic box and the the anti-static bag inside. So I made sure to touch the frame of the PC lots of times while I was working with the CPU. In theory I should get a wrist-grounding strap, but I'm pretty good about discharging before I handle chips. (Watch, next time I handle a chip, I'll burn it out with static, just to prove me wrong!) It turns out the CPU I bought was a P3-733 with a 133 bus speed. That means that the CPU expects the bus frequency is expected to be 133Mhz. My old PC is set to a 100Mhz bus. Well, I hoped the fact that the CPU w...

Picture Theme: Modern - Picture of one of the Denver Tech Center monuments, through a chain link fence of a bridge over I25, close to the I225 interchange. For Photo Friday .

Well, it seems that I managed to get noticed by some of the internet big guys. I had written an entry about Embedding Web Fonts on the blog TechChatter I set up with a friend to post techie stuff. The kind of thing we used to occasionally share by email with each other and sometimes with other friends. The two of use get a lot of 'how does that internet thingy work' kind of questions a lot. Well, I noticed that we were getting a lot of comments (relatively speaking: 3 from people I didn't know) on the entry. So I checked the sitemeter . I thought the counter had jumped up about a hundred since the last time I had checked. I didn't think that sounded right. I checked the details on the sitemeter for TechChatter. It had jumped up 110 since this morning! I was amazed. I checked the references. Almost all of them were coming from LockerGnome . So I checked the link that kept coming up: Pirillo's Weblog mystifies 'Net citizen . It was a whole e...

Well, the brain transplant turned out to be a failure. Frankenstein couldn't handle the Abby Normal brain. I had an old computer that I took in a few months back. It has a P2-200. I had tried the P2-200 in my desktop (the one I call Mobius ) a few weeks back, but it wouldn't boot. I tried this in the Frankenstein yesterday. It booted up! It took a bit longer to boot up. When my son went to play Age of Mythology, it became pretty obvious that the mini-me brain was not a good option either. The deal was sealed when it crashed. So I took the 700 back out of Mobius and put it back into Frankenstein . My son is happy. But I'm not very happy. I tried the P3-450 (Abby) in the P2's case. No luck. I tried the P2-200 in my desktop again. Still no luck. But it may not be working due to jumper settings on Mobius' motherboard. I wondered if a P2-200 would be good enough for what I use Mobius for. I use Mobius primarily for a file server and CD/DVD burner. So it might be...

I wound up joining another online survey site. This one is called MySurvery.Com . This one looks to be points based. Hopefully I won't be slammed with annoying emails. If I do, it should be easy enough to block. As usual, I made up an email alias on my domain. If they get annoying, I just filter that alias at my domain.

I ran across a blog entry. It seems there seems to be a few people out there creating blogs, and posting entries from other people. As in copying an entry from someone else's life, and posting it as their own. In the case described in addressing the theif , it seems a woman has created a blog that is filled with plagiarised work. Not only did she steal a few from tequilamockingbird (who has successfully fought plagiarism before), but she stole from some commercial sites too. It is a sad, sad thing when someone has so little to say for themselves that they steal life from others. I guess I need to add a copyright to my blog and check that noone is stealing my work. Or maybe I'm kidding myself that my writing is worth stealing. Of course there is that one site that copied text from an entry I made - but I was mostly flattered at the time. As found on

You may have noticed that I haven't written all that much in the last few days. I've been spending time working on a web site for a friend. It is for their class reunion. I had a little fun playing with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets - a way to set the font and layout on a web site, potentially using a single control file for the site). In the end I would up just putting the style inline. But I did have a little fun. I set up the main page with rolling updates. I did this through blogger. But I didn't call it a blog :) You can check out the work at Coronado Class of 1975

I found this ability to put custom fonts in a web page. Read more about what I found on TechChatter

Picture Theme: Bird For Sunday Shoot

Picture Theme: Clean For Moody Monday

Well the new brain isn't working quite as well as I thought. What kind of brain did I transplant into the kid's Frankenstein computer? Abby. Abby what? Abby something. Abby something?? Abby Normal. Abby Normal? Abby Normal?? You mean I put an abnormal CPU into the Frankenstein??? Yes, the 450 is not acting as nicely as it should. Or more accurately, it is acting about the same now as it did in the other computer. Why should it work fine when it is freshly put into a computer, but get crabbier and crabbier when left in? One possibility is that there is some sort of build up that is causing the pins to misbehave. Another possibility is that the board is not seating perfectly, and heating and contracting is causing shifting in the socket until it becomes unreliable. Perhaps there is solder joint that isn't quite right, and reseating the board is temporarily making the circuit work better. I tried cleaning the contact on the CPU, but that...

I realized today that I'm a bit of a mad scientist when it comes to computers. A while ago I built up a computer for the kids to use. I called it a Frankenstein. It was built of parts of many of my old computers. Most of the parts were from a couple of dead computers that were thrown out at a job I worked at. The main case, power supply and motherboard were from a Gateway. The memory was a spare from another computer. The first hard drive came from small, dead rack mounted computer. The video card came from an old Pentium 1 computer I had around. The CD drive was a 2x CD writer that was an original drive from my main desktop. The monitor and speakers were from my dad's old computer. The sound card was from an old 486 I still had. And the network card I had lying around from some other project. It turned out to be a pretty good system. Eventually, I transplanted a hard drive as I'd upgraded my desktop unit. I also bought a cheap DVD reader drive, $10 after r...

Picture Theme: Painting, for i-gizmo Doing schoolwork with my son 2 years ago, he painted this for his online art class.

As you may remember from a recent entry , I mentioned that I have switched sides in the Cola Wars. For somebody with partial heritage in Atlanta Georgia, switching off Coke is a bit sacrilegious. Yes, I admit: I've gone to the dark side -- I've been drinking Pepsi. Diet Vanilla Pepsi, to be specific. Of course I was already a bit let down by Coke way in the past with the whole 'New Coke' debacle. And now with the new flavor wars, Coke has again let me down. I think they worried too much about keeping the core Coke flavor, and just kept the flavors too muted to be valuable. Hey Coke - here is a hint: 15 years ago I perfected the art of flavoring Coke -- 2 parts Coke, 1 part Sprite = Lymon Coke - perfect. Well, switching to Pepsi was a double-sided switch. I had switched off sugar too. It happened when I was trying Atkins. Atkins made me too cranky, but drinking diet soda is the one habit I've kept from Atkins. I found that both Dr. Pepper and Vanilla ...

A free web based version of boggle on WEBoggle . You can play 4x4 3+letters or 5x5 4+letters. Totally free - no ads. Only a link to donate. Very neat! Found on This blog .

I found a blog where all that is posted are images of documents. What is scary about it is that the documents that are posted are not the blogger's own documents. These documents, which have critical identifying information blurred out, were documents the blogger found on P2P networks. P2P is a peer-to-peer network. One of the most famous peer-to-peer networks was Napster. Peer-to-peer networks, are applications that let users share files, like music, between computers, without having to load the files up to a central server on the internet. Effectively, what is on See What You Share site is a warning to anyone who uses a file sharing program to be careful that you aren't sharing personal documents. Because there are likely less scrupulous people on the internet who would be glad to use the bank and credit card information that is obviously available on documents shared out by some P2P file sharing programs. This link originally found on Chris Pirillo's Blog .

Larger Image 20040807 - Train Picture On the way back from Denver, I found trains backed up along the highway. So I took advantage of the trains being stopped to take a bunch of pictures. I took a couple with my camera along the rail. I think this picture turned out very well. I think the reflection of the train in the rail looks really neat. I think the other details that came out in the picture really add to the composition: Pikes Peak in view directly behind the train, the surrounding foothills and route 25 highway traffic, and the phone poles along the other site of the track.

www.safetycenter.navy.mil Doing a little web surfing, I came across a web site with a whole bunch of wild pictures. It is a US Military Safety site. But the pictures in this section are showing all sorts of unsafe things. A lot are funny. Some are sick. Most will make you shake your head. And the descriptions, being for a safety site, can get a little trite.

Diet Vanilla Pepsi Can, on my desk at work - Picture for Theme: Addictive at Moody Monday . I am a long time Coke fan, but since switching to diet soda, I've fallen in love with Diet Vanilla Pepsi. I have to admit, that Pepsi got the balance of Vanilla a lot better, and it helps hid the diet flavor. Now if only they would switch to Splenda!

This weekend I worked on a few different projects. Saturday and Sunday morning I worked some more on prototyping a circuit with a bunch of LED displays. I am using the same CPU as I have on my Tuna-can wheeled Robot . I've gone through a lot of different designs. The last time I worked on it, I realized that I might be overloading the circuits to drive so many LEDs. So I had researched using transistors. I had a bunch of small transistors in a grab bag, so I had started wiring up the circuit using 8 of them. But during initial testing, I saw that hooking up more than 2 LEDs caused a significant browning out on the light coming out of the LEDs. So I decided to check how a circuit on a microcontroller board I had drove 4 of 5x7 LED displays. They drove directly from the latch chips, without any transistors. So I went back to my prototype circuit, and wired it up directly to the chips without the transistors. On the second morning, I got the whole circuit put together. I...

Head of a dandilion - for picture theme: Head on i-gizmo

Water dripping off the roof and ice - for sundayshoot Theme: Drops

Relaxed Snakes for Photo Friday Theme: Tranquility. From the local Zoo.

Photoblog of the pictures During the summer, it is not unusual for storm clouds to come over the mountain in the late afternoon. This week there was some spectacular looking clouds at sunset. On Monday, near sunset, the sky was filled with different clouds, and the sky went from a dark pink to a wild purple. On Tuesday, the weather was even wilder. All of a sudden the wind picked up very strongly and there was hail and rain. I went around the house, looking out different windows. I saw up to 2 inch hail. Considering the wind and hail, I scanned in all directions for funnel clouds. Eventually, I noticed the weather radio flashing red, and displaying a thunderstorm warning message. I turned on the radio, and it warned of rotation, and that rotation had been spotted in my section of town. Rotation is a precursor to a tornado. And considering how the clouds looked and the sudden speed of the wind, I wasn't surprised. After a short while, the hail stopped. I we...

Yesterday was the start of school. Yes, they start a bit earlier in the year out here than back East, but they end much earlier too. It takes some getting used to. Taxes are much lower here too. But when it comes to sending kids to school, you find out some of the impact of lower taxes. The schools send a list of supplies for you to bring in for each kid. Yes, I know back East, you get a list of supplies. A list of school items each kid needs for themselves. No, out here this list is the list of supplies the parents have to provide to the teachers for the year. Things like dry-erase markers, paper towels, storage bags, etc. There is quite a list. The teachers stock this away for the year, and have to make it last, as there is no budget for supplies if they run out. I guess there is some sense to this method. It means that the families with kids actually going to school have to bear a little more costs. And the cost for supplies is a lot less than how much more we were...

Orange, theme submitted to WednesdaySnap A few more Orange Pictures

Pictures of the more-complete Tunabot You can see the pictures I took of the Tunabot as it exists today. The pictures show the wheels with the full rubberband tread treatment. The new alignment of the IR sensor system. The new second battery for driving the drive servo motors. A closeup of the optical line sensors hooked up to the analog inputs. A closeup view of the paperclip frame, and the servo-horn wheel attachment.

Construction Cat Road Grader, Briargate, C.Springs, CO The photo theme for i-gizmo this week is 'Cat'. I figured most people would have cute pictures of pets. Instead, I chose a non-pet pictures of 'Cats'. I remembered that the road grader had the word 'Cat' on the side, from the manufacturer.

August 2004 Meeting of DARC Today was a slightly smaller meeting, but that can be expected during the summer months. Most of the working robots were actually just remote control vehicles and not autonomous. But some of the techniques were pretty neat. There was a remote control robot that was designed and built by a 13YO niece of one of the participants in just 2 days. It was very neat. Another participant brought in legs that he is prototyping for a walking robot. There was a Handy Board, which I recognized as being a 68HC11 based board. We talked a bit about my need to get a [working] USB to RS232 solution for my laptop for robotics.

Artistic Black and White picture of a young girl at the top of her arc on a swing I took this picture last summer. The picture is 'perfection' to me because on the fifth try I got what I thought was a perfect artistic picture. Submitted to: Photo Friday Previous Entry: Flooding in the Basement Master Index of Blog Entries My Photo Blog

Wednesday I stopped at home depot on my way home from work. I needed to pick up some hardware and board to repair the gate in my backyard fence. The latch, then the hinges had been broken loose by I assume strong winds. Only the closer spring was holding it to the fence. I needed to fix the gate before our home inspection tomorrow for refinancing. I was waiting online forever. They only had one regular cashier. Of the other two cashiers, one was for contractors only, and the other was at the self-checkout. I like to use self-checkout at the supermarket. But I had some bolts that had no lookup number, so I figured it would make more sense to be online to a full service cashier. We the person two in front of me had some sort of special needs. It must have taken 15 minutes to check him out (well at least ten, it felt like an hour!). While I was standing on the line, the sky grew darker and darker. I had seen a thunderstorm brewing over the mountains as I drove from work. ...

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs (and aggregation sites) are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below). Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate — the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs. The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t99 87898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawst The above GUID enables anyone to easily search Google or other search engines fo...

Hiking Black Canyon - Butterfly closeup Closeup of a cactus - stopping for a picnic on the way home Select the title or one of the pictures to see all the pictures, and to be able to select larger versions of the pictures.

We went camping for a long weekend in Gunnison Colorado. We got in late Friday night, so all we did was unpack and go to sleep. The first day was my birthday. We are suppsoed to do more of a celebration this weekend. Right next door to the Gunnison KOA where we stayed was the smallish airport. Saturday there was an airshow going on at the airport. We saw a lot of planes flying around. There were a bunch that were flying right over the campground. I got a really neat picture of a biplane flying right overhead. Just at the moment I clicked the picture, I noticed the sun glaring in the camera. When I checked the picture, the sun glare made it a really neat picture, with a little rainbow glare in the picture. Select the picture to see all the pictures from the first two days. You can see larger versions of all the pictures by selecting the pictures on the photo blog. Sunday we went rafting. We took a 'mild' rafting trip, level 1 and 2, so all of us could go. ...

Pictures from May 2004 Meeting of DARC - Denver Area Robot Club

Locked gate For Sunday Shoot