Category: play

rubik’s cube

guess what ?!? i solved a rubik’s cube the other day without looking at instructions or anything for the first time !!  and did it several times, just to make sure that i could.

it’s crazy how easy the thing really is when you finally figure it out. when i started playing with a cube at my friend’s house, i had to look on the internet just to get the thing solved, and because i was reading instructions or using the cube explorer, i couldn’t look at the cube to see what the various moves were doing.

but then i got the first face and the first row all figured out and had troubles with the second row (but i was pretty drunk when i was trying to do it, so don’t blame me).  then  i got the second row and it was pretty easy as well, once i figured that out, but the final row…  man that one’s tough. so i looked online at a rubik’s solution and solved a rubik’s simulator on my computer (i don’t actually own a rubik’s cube) while looking at the instructions. i solved it a few times looking at the instructions, then turned them off and tried to solve it without looking. when i got to the end, i didn’t even realize that i did it until i was sitting there looking at the cube, wondering what move to make next, then noticing that all of the sides were solid. i even turned the cube over and over to make sure i hadn’t missed somthing, it seemed so unreal. so i did it again, and again. then i met a situation i hadn’t seen before and had to consult the instructions. but i’ve done it several times since then and feel pretty confident i can solve the cube any time i want now. which is dope.

but now i need to learn how to solve the 4d magic cube.  i’ve solved up to five moves, but after that it gets all messy and i have no idea where to flip the thing. it’s tough, it’s like a rubik’s cube on steriods.

but i think the ultimate rubik’s solver is the LEGO rubik’s cube solver built by j.p. brown !  man that has got to be the coolest thing on the planet !  and it actually works, too !  i’ve seen video of it working.
it brings together everything that is geek and puts it all in a nice neat package to exclaim to the world, “I AM GEEK !!”

it uses lego’s in cunjunction with computer code and function to solve a rubik’s cube, how much more geek do you need?

moonshine skin finished

now you have no excuses for not using my skin on your desktop.

the skin has a clock with the background of the clock being the current phase of the moon. the skin works on both light and dark backgrounds, and is super easy (no editing required) to install. so there ya go, no excuses.

you can still download rainmeter from rainy’s site: download
and you can get my new skin from here: download

here is a preview image of the clock

moonlite skin images

i recieved an e-mail from jer, who downloaded my moonlite skin, and he had updated the images to work on both light and dark backgrounds as well as increase the size and add a nice gloss over the front and a shadow.

when i first saw it it blew me away. it looks so good. it will be added to the zip file as soon as i get a chance, but it will be worth it.

i’ll keep you posted here.

sample image:

marriage

“mawage. mawage is what bwings us toogevah, tooday … wuv, twooo wuv…”
The Princess Bride

so my future sister-in-law got married yesterday, as part of a week long wedding fest that they’re having…
holy crap, how much more stuff can you cram into a week?  we had the bachelor/bachelorette parties on saturday,  then we had a dinner at RedRock on sunday, then a rehersal dinner on wednesday, the wedding yesterday, and an open house/reception tonight followed by a party at our house later on.

man, it makes me glad that my wedding is gonna be as short and sweet as possible.

don’t get me wrong, i’m having a great time, but dang, enough is enough.

the way i feel about it, it should be: do you? yes. do you? yes. YAY!! eat cake. go home.
simple.

*UPDATE:*
wow that was a lot of beer i drank at that party…  i bonged like 8-9 beers and a beer’s worth of champagne, and to be honest, the champagne was really, really smooth going down.

but the whole lot was not so smooth coming back up  :(

anywho, i’m swearing off alcohol… again… until the next big party.

the party was a lot of fun though.

blog theme

well…  wordpress 1.5 came out not too long ago, and i’ve upgraded the blog software as you may be noticing right now. the only thing that sucks is they changed the whole skinning process and started to use themes. i’m sure it’s a step in a positive direction, but now i’ve got to figure out how to skin the darn thing and get my old skin back (which was based on Human Condition by Ian Main)
so i’ll probably be working on that soon, and i hope that this new version is everything they say it is…

but it should be, the people over at wordpress are super cool and probably the best developers anywhere… keepin it real, just like it should be.

*UPDATE*:
as you can see, the theme is coming along nicely, i’m learning some cool things about wordpress and have implemented a few upgrades and plugins to make the iohelix blog experience even better.

MoonFeed and Rainmeter skin FINISHED

well, i finally finished my rainmeter skin that shows you the phase of the moon on your desktop. took me long enough.

the skin is available for download on my site, and rainmeter is available for download on rainy’s site.

if you need any help setting it up, don’t hesitate to ask.

i hope people find this as interesting and informative of an addition to their desktop as i do.

rainmeter skin and moon data feed

i’ve been working lately on a feed for astronomical data on the sun and the moon that has taken up pretty much every waking moment of mine for the past couple of weeks and it’s nearing completion !

aren’t you excited ?!?

yeah, figured you would be.

the feed was created for the sole purpose of running a rainmeter skin that i am creating to go with it that will display the moon in its correct phase on your desktop (these files will all be available on my site as soon as i am done).  so i figured, while i’m writing all this code to figure out the phase, why not do the major phase dates for the current lunation. and while i’m doing that, why not sunrise and sunset times, as well as transit times, and altitude and azimuth values for those times, and do all that for the moon, too.

needless to say, it got pretty big, and every bit of data needs to be output in several different versions, too.
for instance, decimal degrees, as well as degree, minutes, seconds; local time, universal time, julian day, modified julian day, and terrestrial time. all these different values get calculated in the process, why not output them to the user?

so anywho… i have a working prototype on my desktop that pretty much kicks all ace. i will clean it up, as well as the output of the feed, and make it available for everybody. one thing though, it will only run with rainmeter, so click the link above and get it.

i’ll keep you posted. shouldn’t be too much longer now, just some minor additions, and a little tweaking and its ready to roll out.

p.s.- i’m not a geek.

spinnin at the club

i found out a little while ago that there is an open table night at a local club where i live and decided that i need to play my music on a big system again. so i grew me some balls and went down last night. i don’t know why i was so nervous, but there was something about it that made me a little bit apprehensive about going down there.

anyway… i got down there and got my time, which was 11:55-12:40 (45 min).  cool. i got a little time to kill, so i get some drinks and hang out.

my friend started playing just as we got there, so that killed some time, but then more and more dj‘s showed up and they were friends of the people who were in charge of this little thing and so they got put on the list and everybody got bumped down to 30 min.  pretty lame, but whatever. so i’m now supposed to play from 11:50-12:20. then some other guy started getting ready at around 11:45 and i was like, wtf? so one of the guys in charge told me that i would be after him at 12:20. not too bad, so i finally get my turn, and up till then, not many people were dancing so i figured i would just play some music and have everybody just sit there and watch me while i spun.

i get myself  one last shot to calm the nerves and head on up and start getting ready.

i throw down my first record and it doesn’t match with the record that’s playing (the guys who was before me), so i pull a quick fade mix and start my set, not the smoothest, but it was my first song, so…
the first song i threw down has a super phatty bass line and dope energy and everybody in the place went crazy !

it was so awesome, it got me totally psyched for my set. i threw down the next song with a pretty clean mix, and it all went uphill from there. i think i was the only dj that night to have that many people dancing. it felt so awesome, and i was on a high from it for the rest of the night. the only bad thing about it was when i tried to mix into a cd the cd player they had was super touchy and very sensitive, so i couldn’t get the beats matched up very good and train wrecked into AND out of the cd, although the song i played was dope as hell.

i found out after my set that the sensitivity of the cd player could have been adjusted, but i’d never played on one before, so i had no idea.  =/  oh, well.

anywho, just wanted to let everybody know that.  =)