DIY

When I was young I told myself that when I was grown up I wanted to be able to do lots of things on my own, and never pay someone to do something that I could do myself.  Which is pretty much the basis for 99% of all DIY projects.

Anyhow, here are some of the project's I've done in the past year: 

THE RETRO PI

A Raspberry Pi is a miniature computer, the size of a pack of cards, that is very simply and cheaply built with basic components.  People have taken them and created modifications of both software and hardware to create home theater hubs, security systems, programming teaching tools, and (my favorite) retro console machines.

Basically people have created software programs that mimic old video game systems like the NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Atari, and pretty much anything and everything built before 2000.  So with some birthday money I bought a Pi kit, put it together, and now I can enjoy Mega Man X, Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, many other wonderful games of my childhood.

All of the pieces.

The assembled gaming machine. 

OPERATION HD EXCHANGE

Our home computer is a 2012 model mac mini.  In 2010 Apple changed from this mac mini design to this slightly smaller configuration.  Then in 2011 they decided to get rid of the CD drive and that's been the design ever since.  The reason I tell you this is because while Apple got rid of the CD drive, they didn't do anything with the space that it previously took up, so every mac mini has room for an extra hard drive in that compact design.

My 2008 macbook has had a broken screen for a few years, and the power supply has seen it's last legs, but I've kept it around because it has all of my music and pictures from college and my mission.  Well, it just so happens that the hard drive in a 2008 macbook fits perfectly into the open spot in the 2012 mac mini, so I  got a mounting kit, and dismantled my computer to add this new drive inside so I could get rid of my laptop and add the additional storage to my desktop.

Opening up the laptop was the easy part.

Following along with the iFixit guide.

Action shot

It all went back together, a very good sign. 

Then I spent an hour copying files, backing up, formatting, etc.

Major League

Over the weekend of June 8th-10th over 20,000 people gathered at the Anaheim Convention Center to watch people play games.  I was able to count myself among those present and got the chance not only to watch people play, but I did a little playing myself.

The event was the Major League Gaming (MLG) Spring Championship, with most of the focus on the Starcraft II tournament.  There were also tournaments for League of Legends, Mortal Kombat, and Soul Calibur V, as well as a North American Starcraft Championship sponsored by Blizzard.  All the games were streamed online for millions of viewers, but as an added bonus for those attending, there were playable demo stations for the new Starcraft II expansion game set to be released later this year (Heart of the Swarm).

Most of my attention was focused on the MLG tournament, watching games and playing HotS against my friends.  We were there for all of Saturday and watched the finals online Sunday afternoon.  It was a great experience something I would definitely do again.

I'm sorry for the lack of quality pictures.
It was fairly dark all over, so lighting was less than ideal.

A high view of the main viewing area.

Leading up to this I have been getting really into the pro-scene of starcraft.  There are certain celebrity  like players and commentators.  It was cool and weird to be so close to them because they are very much just normal people.  Also the best players are Korean and many of the don't speak much english so its not like you could talk to them much or anything, but whatever.

There are tons of games going on at any given moment, this is a row of computers facing each other where two players face off.  

The most important game going on (with highly seeded or more popular players) is put on the main stage.  The players are in those little lit booths at the front, the screens show to the audience what either player's screen looks like on the sides, and then the commentators screen in the middle.  The commentators (who's voiceover is heard, are actually in little booths of their own behind the stage) have access to information about both players units, production, mining, etc. basically everything needed to commentate and say who is probably ahead and say how engagements will end up.  If you're not familiar with Starcraft at all... I'll explain it sometime later.

The next two most important matches at a given moment are played on a semi-stage where there are no commentators, but you can see either player's screen above their head so you can watch the big battles, also you can watch close up their fingers on the keyboard and mouse and really watch them play.  That dyed haired Korean is MarineKingPrime (aka MKP, aka Lee Jung Hoon) the winner of MLG Winter championship.  Here at Spring he came in 3rd.

This is SK-MC (aka Jang Min Chul, aka The Boss-Toss) talking to his coach and getting ready for a game against Quanitic-SaSe (aka Kim Hammar, he's Sweedish).   MC recently won a Red Bull tournament, SaSe went to take 4th place here at MLG (and I said 'hi' to him).

This is EG-ThorZaIN (aka Marcus Eklöf, a Norwegian) who came out of nowhere a year ago and started winning tournaments.

And this is Grubby (aka Manuel Schenkhuizen, Dutch) one of the few pro-gammers not on a team.

The finals were super amazing!  Even though it was just back at our hotel with the 3 starcraft nerds, then a handfull of girls, we got them all to be a little interested.  We watched some of the quarters and then the semi final matches and everyone started rooting for certain players.  Alicia made an astonishing climb through the losers bracket to make it to the finals where he was pretty much crushed by DongRaeGu (aka DRG, aka Park Soo Ho).  We were mostly rooting for Alicia, but DRG was pretty awesome to watch since he really was just soooo good.

A great way to spend a weekend :-D

If you're still interested here's an article from Forbes.com about the event, including an infographic on viewership and attendance.  It's a big deal because at one point over 400,000 people were watching live or on the internet, which is more than many major tv programs that happend at the same time.

Globes and Maps

"...and globes and maps they chart your way back home"  -Something Corporate

I like that song.

And speaking of songs vaguley related to traveling that I also like... A Plain Morning by Dashboard Conf.

Ok, now onto our présentation principale!

New desktop background!

After The Hunger Games had come and gone, I wanted to change my desktop background, but I had trouble coming up with a new theme.  I was tired enough of all the changing and rearranging of geeklets that I wanted to pick something that I could have for a while, something that wouldn't expire (you know, like when the movie came out or holiday passed, etc.).

I remembered that my very first attempt into geeklets was built on top of one of the default desktop backgrounds that comes with a mac (The Great Wave).  So I turned to that folder to find something simple, beautiful, and lasting.  Though I sorted through many amazing pictures, the black and white set stuck out to me and I chose two of those to be my backgrounds (since I have two monitors now).

The geeklets I arranged all on one screen (the secondary) so I could always see them.  The second screen has become somewhat of my status screen now, I look there to check the time, battery level, calendar and weather.

Pretty nice, eh?  

Now, my main screen was just this cool, lighting desktop picture that I never actually saw because I always had windows covering it.  However I got this idea in my head that I really wanted to try.  I wanted to make this apear on my desktop... so I did.  In case you're wondering it does auto-update every 15 minutes so it shows the current sunlight spread over the earth.  I felt so proud I uploaded it to the official geektool forum/geeklet sharing site.

See that, globe and map, in the flesh.. hence my title, and completely random opening.

cheap as free

I was scrolling through my past posts, and noticed that I last updated you on my desktop background before The Hunger Games came out.  Well it's been a while since it came out (I've even seen a new movie since then) and I have since updated my desktop background.

However before I tell you about that I have to go back in time and tell you about my current electronic situation.  Over the past years I've slowly been accumulating odds and ends that would make a great home office someday, and it had finally taken shape.

Most of these Items were purchased from the BYU Surplus Sale that happens every month.  A great way to get cheap stuff.

So as you can see I now operate my laptop as more of a desktop with two monitors.  It's nice, I usually have a web browser open on the main screen with music controls, chat windows and other extras open on the secondary side (my laptop screen).

Also the soundbar/speaker that came with the monitor is very nice as far as computer sound goes.  The monitor also functions as a 4 port USB hub, which is nice for plugging in and charging my phone, ipod, kindle, and camera.  It's for sure worth a lot more that $60.

So with that in mind... I'll make a new post about my new desktop background.

new theme!

You all may remember my infrequent updates on what my desktop background looks like.  My last update was in August, but it's changed since then (twice actually, not counting today's).  For the past three months I've had my desktop background a wintery Christmast theme, which was great for December and even part of January, but now that Groundhog Day and Valentines Day have come and gone it was well time for an update.

This weekend, tickets for The Hunger Games movie went on sale.  I'm pretty stoked for this, and I'm planning on buying tickets soon.  In honor of such, I have created this:

I'm still playing around a bit with some of the fonts, but that's the gist of it.

For those of you who care, all the updates to my desktop have been chronicled in my flickr photostream. (yeah, just those 5)

BCS comps

So I like computers, and I like college football, and college football uses a lot of computers to determine rankings.  It logically follows that I would be very interested in these computers, which is why I have bookmarks to the sites for all six BCS-used computer ranking systems.

In looking ahead to tonights BYU game against TCU, I though I might go see what the computers thought might happen, so....

One computer (Massey Ratings) actually has links for 'predictions' and 'matchups' where you can enter in particular match-ups and see who would win, as well as see predictions for the upcoming games.  It says that TCU has a 78% chance of winning the game, and by a predicted score of 34 to 24.  Maybe not the best chance, but it's the same percentage that said Notre Dame should have beat USC last week, just sayin'. (btw Massey has TCU and BYU ranked 53, and 54)

Moving to more promising news, two computers have BYU ranked higher than TCU.  The Colley Matrix BYU 41, TCU 42 and the Anderson-Hester computer, BYU 41, TCU 45.  Close margins, I know, but still.  (Colley Matrix is 'unbiased' meaning high scores don't matter, and A-H prides themselves on being the best rater of what a team has accomplished to date, not a great predictor)

Then there's the other three computers that have TCU above BYU, but again, by pretty close margins. The Billingsley Report TCU 41, BYU 50, Peter Wolfe TCU 43, BYU 47 and finally the Sagarin Ratings TCU 46, BYU 55.  And finally there is a page on the Massey Ratings site that shows the ranking of teams based on the averages of all the computers (both BCS official and others), there TCU is 33, and BYU is 51.... not boding so well for the cougars in this one.

But really, computers can only take you so far.  They fail to truly predict the outcome of games though they come close.  From a more human perspective, neither team has won any super difficult games, TCU's 'best win' came over #51 SD[iego]SU, while BYU's is over #76 SJ[ose]SU (basically the same team, minus Ronnie Hillman). Their strength of schedule and records are actually pretty similar.  Both have lost to two good teams (ok, so Utah's not so great, but the were better before losing Wynn) and both teams have beaten up on inferior opponents to look good (Idaho St., New Mexico, Portland St.)

If I were a betting man, I might put a few dollars on TCU.  But it is a really, really close call.  I still believe that BYU can win this one, they are an improving team, and this will be the big test for them (since their next three games they will actually be favored to win).

And now it's only 7.5 hrs until kick off.  :-D  I'm excited.

Uni-forms

You may not know this, but I love sports uniforms, more to the point I love college football uniforms.  Considering that Nike, Under Armor, and others are spending millions, possibly billions on creating cool, trendy, and stylish uniforms that college recuits will like, it's not a surprise that I (a near-college age male) like them.

Because of my slight obsession with the college uniform scene I found a blog called The Uni-Watch.  It is run by uniform enthusiasts who are quite thorough in their coverage of uniform changes, updates, discrepancies, and specialties.

Through this blog I stumbled upon a very narrowly minded site tracking the Oregon Duck uniform changes (most would say it was the ducks who began this national uniform trend).  I also found The Gridiron Uniform Database, a complete collection of NFL jerseys worn every game for the past several years.

After this years explosion of college football uniform advancements some devoted uni-watchers decided to expand the gridiron database to include college football, and this is the result.

If you notice the second team on this list, Boise State, (the were second at the time of this writing but that could change) who's uniforms were reproduced here by none other than you're truly, me.

I will say, I do believe they are quite the work of art.  And hopefully I'll be able keep up weekly with the new uni-combos they wear and make improvements eventually to those currently 'done.'  (I forgot the name on the back of the first two, oops.)

The Holy War

You might have to em-biggen the video to see it well enough.

Basically I thought it was silly to hear BYU fans say, "We've won 3 of the last 5."
While Ute fans retorted, "We've won 6 of the last 9!"
And really, you can manipulate that statistic to serve your team anyway you want.
(BYU has won 26 of the last 39, including a 18 out of 20 stretch!)

So the only way to truly understand the game and the record of the teams is in a dynamic fashion, charting wins overtime.  I made this graph in Excel and animated it using Visual Basic.  I'll try to get the file uploaded somewhere somehow so you can download it and play with it yourself if you like.

For now, enjoy this upload.  It has some explanatory notations and I've included my analysis afterwards.

What do we learn from this?  

We learn that the series has been VERY close for the past 6 years.  

From 2002-2005 Utah took over (surprisingly the time  when Championship machine Urban Meyer took over and the Utes BCS-Busted the Fiesta Bowl).  

It was pretty even again for a while until the early 90's throughout the 80's and into the 70's (the height of BYU's program under Lavel Edwards) when BYU won 18 out of 20 ('72-'92).  

Ute fans will of course point to thier recent success saying they've won 6 of the past 9, but oh wait, not a single player on their team played for the 2005 team, so really they can only claim more recent history of which BYU has won 3 out of 5 (some BYU players have been on the team for all 3 wins).

So... It's close game, and an AWESOME rivalry.  I'm glad to see that The Holy War has even gotten some national media attention over the past few years, and I hope to never see an end to this great game.

This link should be an excel file, right click to download.

Remember to ENABLE MACROS to have the buttons work properly.

Also, sorry I was too lazy to make a 'reset' button.

Apple and Amazon

Two of my very favorite tech companies, that until recently, have held their place in very different parts of the technology world.  Slowly though, over the past two years or so, Amazon has been creepin' in on Apple's turf, and even going beyond in someways.

Amazon started with mp3 sales.  Something they've really promoted with college students.  After I bought some books from Amazon (using my free 1-year amazon student account) I was awarded with $20 towards mp3s at their online store.  I think in all I've recieved about $35 worth of free mp3s from Amazon, showing that they really want me to explore their store, and they often have really good $5 albums (two of which I've bought).

Then this spring the launched their cloud player, a huge step up and above almost any other company's cloud based music services.  (The greatness or lack thereof is still in debate after some server blackout issues).

Amazon also began to offer movie downloads/streaming and soon created an app store for both Android devices and general PC applications (I got the free AirPort Mania, not a bad game).  And now they're poised to strike at the near monopoly Apple has on the tablet market.

Everyone knows that the iPad rocks, and that all the imitators really just don't cut it, especially when they're just as, if not more expensive than the iPad.  This is where Amazon steps in and slashes away at the tablet market

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/02/amazon-kindle-tablet/

With prices to beat the iPad and an online media store (probably bigger than Apple's) the next generation Kindle is likely going to become the next hottest device in America.  I already think the Kindle has some great stuff going for it, and it is only going to get better. 

So now I am faced with a hypothetical dilemma, if I were to stumble upon several hundred dollars to be used in the purchase of a personal media consumption device, which one would I pick?  $499 for the baseline iPad, or $250 for the Kindle, but then you get the rest of the money ($249) to spend on accessories, apps, music, and movies...  That's a tough choice!  You know that if you bought an iPad it would be nearly worthless without at least some money put into useful apps...  It's a tough decision, and luckily not one I have to make anytime soon.

On a strictly media standpoint, Amazon offers media at lower prices, so I might be inclined to go with that.

Desktop Update

Since HP7.2 has come and gone (great movie btw) I decided to update my desktop background:

I thought about creating countdowns for each game... but I don't really have the time (or need) for that right now.  But in also exciting news, the apartment we will be moving into has internet and cable as part of the rent, so I'll have the ESPN channels I need to watch all the BYU games :-)

Also, I got this background from this page on the Cougar Board

1 weeks

I recently got really geeky, and I created something so wonderful I just have to share it.
For the past three months or so I have had various pictures of BYU basketball players as my desktop background, but as BYU basketball ended, so too did the backgrounds.  I didn't feel like finding any special pictures at the moment so I just opened up the default picture folders that Apple gives you, browsed through some of the pictures (they give you a lot, some cool B&W pics, some weird nature ones, and a couple classic pieces of art).  I ended up picking this Japanese looking wave painting called "The Great Wave."

As I enjoyed my new background I began to fantasize of how great it would be to have a truly functional background, one that could display the time or date perhaps, or maybe show weather or have a calendar even.  So I began a google search for 'function desktops' or 'live desktops' even 'auto-updating desktop pictures'...  and although it took me a bit I was sitting in a boring class, so time wasn't an issue.

Eventually I stumbled upon GeekTool 3.0, and well, it's a tool for geeks!  With the program (a simple system preference pannel) you can create "geeklets" that allow you to take auto-updating images, files, or unix-shell commands and paste them on top of your existing desktop image.  It's really a great and amazing little tool, and as far as I'm aware it's for mac only, which makes me feel special.

I browsed a website where people had uploaded pictures of what they had done to customize their desktops and also uploaded files and scripts of their geeklets.  Some of them were really cool, and eventually I made my own desktop collection:

Now, the most exciting part of this is in the front and center of my desktop, a countdown!  This I'm particularly proud of because I had to do a hefty bit of editing to the geeklet I downloaded inorder to get this one to show up just the way I wanted it to.  I however did not go in depth enough to program it to read of singular times with singular units (1 hour, instead of 1 hours).  And this is why I am pleased to announce that I have precisely 1 weeks, 1 days, and two hours until my last class is over :-)

(Sorry this post is so long, but another new toy of mine is Bowtie, a desktop-level iTunes controller/identifier.)