failing like never before

26Jan/090

Weekly Biking

Distance Traveled: 6.475 Miles

Max Speed: 29.2 MPH

Average Speed: 12.7 MPH

Time Traveled: thirty minutes

I walked to class twice last week, and Monday was MLK day, so I didn't bike very much.

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19Jan/090

Weekly Biking

Another week, another set of biking stats.

Distance Traveled:12.772 Miles

Max Speed: 28.8 MPH

Average Speed: 12.4 MPH

Time Traveled: 1 hour and two minutes

So I didn't bike nearly as much this week, as twice this past week I walked to class. My average speed for this week was just slightly higher then last week, which is nice to see.

The unfortunate thing about my campus, is that its all hills. The road leading out of campus has a very slight downgrade and so I can average about 26 MPH on it for about ten minutes without a problem, whereas coming back to campus I average only about 18 MPH. The short sprint down to class from my room is all downhill, and so I can coast most of the way down at around 25 MPH, once I hit the main part of campus I have to slow down substantially so that I don't hit people or cars.

Coming back to my room from class is always a trial for me however. When I'm carrying a few books and my laptop, I'm lucky to average eight miles an hour trudging uphill.

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15Jan/090

Seven-Segment Display in VHDL

I wrote my first VHDL project last night during lab, andgot to see my design come to life when I programmed it into a Spartan3 FPGA. It was a pretty basic program, that changed a seven-segment display (like those old LED screens on old calculators) based on which switches were flipped. The four switches used were a BCD (Binary Encoded Decimal) value, so if the first and fourth switches were on and the second and third switches were off, then the BCD value would be 9 (1001). The seven-segment display would then display the value "9" if the switches were in position 1001. Fairly simple to design and program, but quite fun to play with. My VHDL code is below.


entity seven_segment is

port(
    x3,x2,x1,x0: in std_logic;
    a,b,c,d,e,i,g: out std_logic
);

end seven_segment;

architecture Behavioral of seven_segment is

begin
    a <= NOT( x1 OR x3 OR (x2 AND x0) OR (NOT(x2) AND NOT(x0)) );
    b <= NOT( NOT(x2) OR x3 OR (x1 AND x0) OR (NOT(x1) AND NOT(x0)) );
    c <= NOT( x3 OR x2 OR x0 OR (NOT(x0) AND NOT(x1)) );
    d <= NOT( x3 OR (NOT(x0) AND NOT(x2)) OR (x1 AND NOT(x0)) OR
        (x1 AND NOT(x2)) OR (x2 AND x0 AND NOT(x1)) );
    e <= NOT( (x1 AND NOT(x0)) OR (NOT(x2) AND NOT(x0)) );
    i <= NOT( x3 OR (NOT(X0) AND NOT(x1)) OR (x2 AND NOT(X0) AND x1) OR
        (x2 AND NOT(x1)) );
    g <= NOT( x3 OR (NOT(x1) AND x2) OR (x1 AND NOT(x0)) OR
        (x1 and NOT(x2)) );

end Behavioral;

12Jan/090

Weekly Biking

I thought that since I now have a bike computer, I could post how much riding I'm doing weekly. I generally go down to campus at least twice a day and maybe two other short trips out to town every week. Unfortunately, I forgot my computer a few times this past week, so my numbers aren't quite accurate, but still surprisingly higher then I would have thought.

Distance Traveled: 18.805 miles

Maximum Speed: 29.0 MPH

Average Speed: 12.0

Time: 1 hour and 34 minutes

Another surprising fun fact: after only three weeks, I had to pump my tires up again.

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5Jan/094

Twilight and More

I read all the rest of the Twilight books and even Stephanie Meyer's draft for Midnight Sun. It was like a sickness, I wanted to throw the terrible stuff away but I simply couldn't get over how bad it was. But now after reading more of Meyer's writing, I feel I need to rant again. Once was simply not enough.

Lets start with Meyer's newest Twilight book, Midnight Sun, which is basically just Twilight but written from Edward's perspective. Apparently, realizing just how successful Twilight has become, Meyer's decided the easiest way to make more money and sell some more books was to rewrite the series from a different perspective. That's marketing genius right there, since rabid Twilight fans are probably willing to buy anything that Meyer decides to pull out of her butt right now. I'm not going to tear into Midnight Sun too much since I realize its still only in draft stage right now, but after reading the draft I can predict with high certainty that the book is going to be pretty bad. Seeing Meyer's sickingly stupid story through Edward's eyes doesn't make it any better then seeing it through Bella's eyes; it was a lame story to begin with and Edward's mind isn't much more complex then Bella's.

I simply cannot get over how amazingly stupid and boring Bella is. Throughout the Twilight series, Bella can be characterized by two attributes: her clumsiness, and her love for Edward. In my lifetime, I've had to have stitches on my head three times, once from hitting my head while jumping on my sister's bed, another from running into a gate, and another from slipping and hitting my chin while playing capture-the-flag. So I think I definitely deserve to be classified as clumsy. But Bella takes clumsiness to a whole new level, she hits people in the head with a tennis racquet when she tries to hit a ball, falls off motorcycles, and manages to even trip over her own feet numerous times when walking on perfectly flat surfaces. Meyer's takes great strides to point out just how clumsy Bella is, how needy she is for Edward the Perfect to come and save her and be her guardian angel. When Bella became a vampire, I wondered whether her special mutant superpower was going to her mind shield thing, or super clumsiness. Super clumsiness would be an awesome power if one could control it. Just imagine, that faced with a terrifying foe, Bella attempts a roundhouse punch but instead trips and punches a hole in the ground all the way to the earth's core, sending her opponent sliding to a fiery death. Or when playing vampire baseball, Bella attempts to hit a home run, but instead throws the bat into the pitcher's head and knocks him unconscious (yeah, I know, Edward the Perfect doesn't get concussions), forcing the opposing team to play a human as their pitcher. Disappointingly, Bella's mutant vampire power turned out to be an ability to shield her mind and others from external intrusion.

1Jan/090

Happy New Year

Happy New Years!

I've noticed that the number of visitors to my blog have dropped significantly over the last half of December. Hopefully it'll start picking up again with the new year.

I'd also like to tell everyone about the super-fun-exciting things I did on New Year's eve:

  • Watched Batman: The Dark Knight with my sister
  • Showered at about 11:50 and got out just after midnight
  • Went to sleep

Yeah!!!

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