Still figuring this stuff out. I think I found most of the stuff yesterday. The default theme is the only good one [no offense to the creators], and I managed to get a simple little avatar. I recieved my first commment [yay Mushu!]. Pretty productive, all things considered.

Today is dedicated to figuring out how to post images, which should double as a good test of the personal webspace feature.



Walking Machine
Although I said yesterday was productive, I lied. I'm like that. In reality, everything I touched failed. In the walking machine arena, despite five hours messing with it, the silly relay never properly switched. Not only did it not switch, but when it did switch the power supply would shut down [its a PC power supply, I assume its got an internal fuse or something that keeps it from catching fire]. If I actually have the motor running, the primary transistor gets hot.

How hot was it?

Let me show you [promised image test]:

That is a standard TO-220 package. There's no scale in the picture, but its about the size of my thumb. How do I know? I have a blister that looks surprisingly like it, and it fills my entire thumb.

In the poor transistor's defense, it didn't melt. I suspect a heat sink will keep it sufficiently cool. Unfortunately, that's under no load. The current's just going to go up from there.

The circuit I actually built was pretty hacked, though. The offending transistor was a P-type FET when the diagram called for an N-type [no big deal, I modified the circuit appropriately], and I accidentally used a FET instead of a BJT elsewhere in the circuit [big deal, as I did not modify the circuit appropriately]. Later today, I hope to get hold of a Basic Stamp to give me proper signals, and rebuild the thing using the right parts. Hopefully, it'll work this time.

I was going to try and post these pictuers imbedded, but they're big and I don't know how to make them thumbnails. So here's links instead. Isometric and overhead views of the walking machine. Keep in mind that I had no part in the design [this project is in its fifth year, and I just started in August], and two of the legs are missing.


Hex Terrain
I did some more coding on the isometric engine, and for some reason I can only call new twice before it starts returning null. This is our concern Dude. I sat at my computer for about three hours, running the program over and over again hoping that if I got the exception enough times, it would eventually start working. It didn't. Stupid deterministic compilers. Stupid Microsoft insists on putting out a program that produces the same code no matter how many times you compile the source. Damn them to hell.

So I played Final Fantasy 7 until 3 AM. Its been years [7, I believe], since I played this game. I thought perhaps it would suck less the second time through, but it doesn't. If somebody could please explain to me why, exactly, Cloud didn't cut Cait Sith's balls off, I would appreciate it.

CM