arrival

  So this is written sittin’ at Haneda airport with no wi-fi. I’ve still got that bobbing feeling in my head from yesterday’s long plane ride. Strange how that happens isn’t it? It’s like that ghost feeling you get at night after you’ve been at the amusement park riding roller coasters for a day. Or is that just me?... Anyway, check-in for my domestic flight to Fukuoka doesn’t start for another two hours…

  So the flight to Japan was a pretty interesting one, to say the least. Well, the beginning of the flight from LA to Narita was. Here’s what went down.

  I had bought the airplane ticket pretty early – early enough to get a nice isle and bulkhead seat. Good legroom + aisle access. Anywho, of course these seats usually accommodate those with little children. And a few minutes after getting situated, I was approached by an attendant who asked if I wanted to exchange seats to accommodate a parent with a child. It would be in exchange for an aisle seat. Who am I to refuse that without looking inconsiderate.

  Anyway, walking back to the other seat revealed a sticky situation – the seat was occupied and the people there were in the process of swapping people around so that families could sit together. I thought, whatever, I just needed a seat to sleep in. So I sat in the seat next to the isle seat, no biggie.

  So later, the attendant who offered the swap came back and was like, why aren’t you In an isle seat? This isn’t good, I feel bad. After more searching, and not being able to find an isle seat, she said she would continue to see what she could do. Flight takes off.

  After climbing to altitute, she comes back and says “We’re going to move you to 10D” and then she whispers “business class”. Hiding smiles, I gracefully accept. And so! My first business class experience was on a plane from LA to Japan. Unfortunately, I was too modest to take full advantage of the services – I dunno, something feels off about requesting a ton of food/drinks after being upgraded for free. What would you do? Hey, I did get a complimentary travel kit and slippers though…

  Still, the reclining chair and fancier meals were fantastic – couldn’t have asked for much more. Though, the people next to me had at least eight glasses of wine… But then again, they paid for it, I suppose. No pictures from the flight though – I might have had I been in economy section, but I got more self-conscious from the fact that I was upgraded for free. You’ll just have to believe me on this one.

  Since I arrived yesterday, and my flight to Fukuoka is today, I stayed at a hotel near Haneda airport. And you know what the first thing I did when I got in? Checked out the toilet. Heard stories and seen pictures of fancy toilets with water that shoots up your butt. This one wasn’t too fancy, but it certainly filled the water shower requirement… Yes, I tested it out. And yes, I was surprised at the velocity of the water stream. [SHOWER] is a bit misleading… It’s a… different feeling… unless you’ve been shot in the butt with a supersoaker before.

  On another note, I already knew I was bad at speaking Japanese, but coming here further reinforces the fact. (Yeah, it’s a little bit harsh assessemtn – being my first time in a Japanese environment – but that doesn’t change the fact that I suck). So yesterday at the airport bus stop, after getting the courage to ask the bus driver whether or not it was the correct bus to my hotel, I went up to him and asked something along the lines of, 「これは「おとりいしんかん」行きのバスですか」And he replied, 「Yes」. I was like, man, my Japanese must’ve been really bad if he had to reply in English. And then today, I thought at least my listening comprehension was OK. But nope, the lady at the check-in desk talked too fast for me to catch everything. *Sigh. We’ll see how this goes over the course of the summer.

Until next time!

japan!

  So! I've probably already let a lot of you know about this, but I'm going to Japan this summer!  Well, to be more accurate, my flight leaves Monday morning.  That's... less than four days away!  It's been quite the rush recently as well.  People keep asking me if I'm excited about the trip.  And honestly, I think I've been too busy to have built excitement in my mind.  Though, if I sit down to think about it, yes, I've been looking forward to this study abroad for quite some time now.

  Anyway, I proposed to keep a blog about the experience for one of the scholarships I received, and that's what took all of yesterday to create.  At first I was toying around with my own design. 

But I was never truly artistic, and halfway through, I decided it looked too amateur. That and I also thought about having to create the entire CSS for it and gave up. Instead I went around looking for templates to modify.

  Oh but before that, I wanted to try out Wordpress.com instead of blogger.  It looked more professional and I thought it would be a good feel for the blog.  Unfortunately, I didn't know about how limiting Wordpress.com is in regards to javascript and extensions.  I really like Lightbox (that image viewer that comes up when you click an image), but there just wasn't a good way of doing it at wp.com.  I spent some time searching and found a workaround, but it required an advertisement module to be placed on the sidebar.  Looked pretty ugly to me.  But I really really liked the theme I found on there.

  So, it was back to blogger, where I could use link external scripts.  Luckily I found an adapted version of the same layout and modified it a bit.  Right now, though, it has a random banner from my own picture collection, but I will be sure to update it with a pertinent image once I get to the host university (Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University) in Japan.  Since it's basically on a mountain overlooking the shore-side city of Beppu, I'm hoping I can get a nice shot of the sea and city.  Oh, here's the link to the LBAT Japan 2010 blogspot.

  My guess is most of my updates over the summer will be on that blog, but since it's associated with my university, there might be some posts here that might not be appropriate for the other blog.  No, no naughty stuff; but maybe more personal thoughts and observations.

DEE ESS ELL ARR

  Two posts in one day! Er, yeah.... Another one of my wishes from the past 3 years or so has also been granted!  Yup, finally got my shaky hands on a nice D-SLR.  At first I was going to give myself a little graduation present.  But then my dad offered to help me out with it.  And I was like.... kinda hesitant, so we settled on half.  And then after more discussing with both parents, it turned into a full on graduation present from them!  But then I felt bad, because the camera I picked out was kinda pricey.

  I picked the beastly Canon EOS 7D.  Good video features, pretty good image quality (I had to compromise a bit on this one for the video features - but I'm not pixel-perfect critical on my images anyway), and a fairly rugged body.  Those 720p videos of our Senior Design project were filmed on that baby.  And I also got some very pretty pictures of us completely trashing our apartment.  Yes, we had a little senior design lab in our living room.

  So anyway, I'm not graduating just yet.  I will after the summer.  But I got the camera early because of the Japan trip.  (I keep saying trip, but I really have to remind myself that this is a study abroad program).  But, there will be two weeks after the summer semester is over for me to trek around!  There will definitely be pictures from that.  So, I'll be vacationing in and around Kyoto and Tokyo from the 5th of July through the 17th of July.  If anyone else is gonna be in the area, we could meet up and hang out - wouldn't that be awesome?

  Speaking of vacation time ... I seem to be vacationing at the wrong time.  Everything seems to be happening after I go home.  It's quite sad.  A lot of the big summer festivals are at the beginning of August.  Something I am slightly disappointed about, it seems I went in the wrong year, because the Green Tokyo Gundam Project would've fallen into my vacation schedule... had I gone one year ago.  But to make matters eeeeeeeeven worse!  They're re-erecting this beast in Shizuoka this year. On July 24th.  A week after I go home.  I suppose it's a little out of the way of my vacation plans, but still! I'll have an unlimited rail pass...  And to top it all off, the life-sized model gods are taunting me.  This time, its a life-sized Evangelion unit.  And it opens on the 23rd of July.

  So, if I had stayed about a week longer, these would be a part of my picture collection. But unfortunately, 3 weeks is a long time for vacation.  It would've been better if the summer study program had lasted another week.  *sigh.  Oh well.  There should be some good landscape and scenic pictures though.  Hopefully I can grab some good night pics of Tokyo.

ouch

Before I get around to putting up my next post that was planned, I got an email today - along with all other kids at Georgia Tech - and I'm sure it's not unlike other institutions as well. Here's some choice excerpts from the email (and I promise nothing is being taken out of context).

These additional cuts bring the total reduction for Georgia Tech over the three most recent fiscal years — FY09, ‘10, and ‘11 — to $67.2 million, or 23.8 percent of our FY09 base. In addition, it is important to note that the federal stimulus funds we received to date are not expected to be available in FY12 or the following fiscal years.

In a separate but related action yesterday, the BOR also approved a $500 per semester increase in tuition for both resident and nonresident students at Georgia Tech, excluding those students on the Guaranteed Tuition Plan. For in-state students who qualify, this increase will be covered under the HOPE Scholarship program. This tuition increase will move us closer to the market value as determined by comparison with our peer institutions and will provide some limited flexibility in budgeting for Institute programs.

Seeing that first part just hurts - nearly a quarter reduction... add to that an additional increase in tuition... we've already been tacked with an extra fee on top of tuition (which actually got around the HOPE scholarship thing), but now it's getting officially added to tuition huh? At first they mess with me by adding a fee - not covered by HOPE scholarship. Now that I'm just getting into graduate school, they add to the tuition - of which I no longer have HOPE to cover. !!!

I certainly can't say that I'd have a better solution, but what does irk me just a little is the rationale statement. This tuition increase will move us closer to the market value as determined by comparison with our peer institutions. What's wrong with being cheap AND good? Either say: we're just as good as the other universities, but we cost less! Or... don't say anything at all. I'll accept the second part: [this] will provide some limited flexibility in budgeting for Institute programs. But us students are good at detecting BS. We write it all the time. And worse yet, this one deals with our money.

Anyway, I'm sure many of you are in the same situations with your respective universities, so all this is probably a moot point. Back to getting that original post done.

catsup

Hello hello! I've been quite dead the past semester haven't I? No one's bothered me about posting either, so I was happy to oblige. Really though, a lot has happened, and I often found myself thinking of taking some time to relax and type up randomness on this blog. But alas, the call of coursework is just too strong... So let's play catch up shall we?

The last four months have been spent primarily on my Senior Design Project. Oh yes, that lovely course - the culmination of one's undergraduate career. The course that people 50% love and 75% hate and despise. Yes, that's right, that's over 100%. Hatred causes the laws of math to break down. Mainly it's because they require us to write reports and give presentations. And while, yes, these skills are necessary to some extent, that doesn't mean we can't hate its guts.

But, instead of /ranting, how about some background and fun facts about the project. Well, now that I think about all I have to catch up on, I think I'm going to break it up into separate posts so each has their own heading.

PACMAN

Forenote: I make liberal use of 'we' in this post. This simply refers to the team I was in for the design project. It started off as just me and my roommate, but we managed to pull two others in from our section.So at the beginning of the semester, we needed some sort of idea for a Senior Design Project. Something that would show off all that we've learned over the past four years. Something that would show off our skilllllllz. Various ideas were thrown about:

• USB Thumb Drive RAID controller: We thought this would've been an interesting project. After all, I'm sure we weren't the only ones who had a ton of random 1GB or 2GB flash drive lying around. Wouldn't it be hilarious to have a ton of these in RAID? The idea was scrapped because we didn't think it was encompassing enough. At its core, too simple. It looked like it would be more working with learning and implementing codes and standards.
• Depth sensor in large barrels: This was something that was pitched to us - I don't exactly remember the details; something about monitoring oil or liquid levels in a large container. While technically challenging, I didn't enjoy the topic too much.
• Passage Tone Analysis: This was a cool idea from one of the advisors (and another group actually did pick this one up). So in band or music in general, there are good tools for tuning a single note. But a unique twist is to analyze all the notes in a passage. Record a passage, process it, figure out which notes are sharp, flat, or trends in flatness/sharpness. Very cool idea; but we knocked it down. Reason being: it's almost completely software. We wanted some hands on stuff too.

So I happened to say jokingly, let's make RC CARS DRIFT autonomously. Wouldn't that be badass? Set it on a track, let it find the right lines, and watch it drift. Wouldn't it be even more awesome if we had multiple RC cars do synchronized drifting? Yeah yeah! We could use gyros to keep track of our momentum and head and tail and.... yeah this isn't going to work; we know jack crap about drift physics.

But all was not lost, we liked the idea of RC cars. So what we settled on was an autonomous convoy - a Path-following Autonomous Convoy with Multiple Asynchronous Nodes - PACMAN. And there was the inception of this crazy system. We got these wicked awesome RC cars. They were actually drift cars too! but no drift tires. Anyway, just go to the Hardware section of our website to see the awesome build. If you're software inclined, the Software page has details on our VHDL design. And if you don't care about any of that stuff, at least go to the Deliverables page and watch the Demo videos there. Especially the last one - I taped my camera to the front of one of the cars, and it's really awesome.

We were kinda being masochists in using an FPGA to control the car; hard to develop for, but a great exercise in logic optimization. But at the same time, it was a good decision in that we could customize all our input and output processing - concurrently running blocks - no fear of varying loop time or interrupts screwing up other parts of the system.

Anyway, just one small little anecdote from this project before I end this boring post: Let's set the scenario up. It's the midnight between Saturday and Sunday. The final presentation is in 40 hours. We are reconfiguring the vehicle for some tweaks to steering and throttle control. The power to the FPGA board is off. Push the button to power on. The board isn't turning on. What's thAT SMELL? Turn it off! It IS off!
Something on the board fried. And we still have no true idea how it happened. Only educated guesses.

At the time we were freaking out: what happened? what shorted? how did it short? dust? We left the windows open, and it rained earlier: air moisture?!?! HAS THERE BEEN ANY RECENT SOLAR ACTIVITY?! (I kid you not, I actually checked). Multiple voltage regulators on the board were gone - that was our best guess. As to how it happened we weren't totally sure. Ok, well we're not completely screwed yet, we still have an extra board. There's only one day left to tweak this thing, let's just get it good and then leave it alone. We can get an extra board from the design lab on Monday.
1 hour later, while further refining the control system: Lights blink erratically on the board; it dims; DUDE, what'd you just do? Nothing! wait, oh sh--. Yanks power jack from board. Did what I think just happen, happen? Yes. It did.

Second board fried. Ok, half fried. This board still had its 5v voltage regulator working, however, the 3.3v and maybe even the 1.8v were gone. It didn't matter. We only had one board left, and two cars in need of said control board.

Anyway, our best guess at this point was a bad battery somehow pushing current into the board and killing the regulators. How this happened, I don't really know. There are protection diodes on the development board, but they must've been after the point of failure. We searched online, and to our (somewhat) relief, we weren't the only ones who experienced this issue. It still didn't explain why this happened though.

And so we were depressed for a very long time. Decided to call it a night. We would have a very busy Monday morning. Get to Senior Design lab, profusely apologize for killing two boards, get a new board, install protection fuses on the connector from the battery to the boards, get footage of the system working, edit the footage, give the presentation. We somehow managed to do it, but it was a very nerve-wracking experience - Murphy's Law at its worst.

I hope that as entertaining for you as it was horrible for us. Time to move on to my next post - it might come out tomorrow, because well.... I'm reformatting my laptop - it's been at least a year and a half since she had her last wipe; and you can tell it's been that long.