Lewies Blog

Wierd Dream I just had.

I was tring to make my way through many people in a hallway. I had a child with me who was constantly causing a lot of trouble. He was very much out of control. I couldn’t hold his hand and rag him along. I tried to pick him up, but he squirmed a lot. Anything I tried just wouldn’t work. Somehow I was able to get him to a little room behind a doorway at the end of the hall. On the opposite side of the hall was the entrance to the building with many busses outside. An older man in a suite was alone setting at a desk. There were not any chairs that I could try to set the boy down in. As the man started asking me questions from a form, the boy still squirmed, unaware of what was really going on. I had no idea about the boys background except for his initials “J. E.” I left the man to continue asking questions as I looked behind each door within to room to see if I can put the boy in one of them until I was done. Each room smelled of web paint. Some rooms still had many half-empty paint cans in them along with cloth covering things. I came back to the man while holding the boy upside down in my arms. The boy slipped and bumped his head on the hard floor. I was shocked with what had just happened, but looking the boy over seemed to show no problems. The man seemed to pay no attention to it, as if he had seen it many times before. THe last question was the boys name. “John Ellis” I said, not quite sure if that was his name. I was not sure if I was of any relation to the boy. Was I his father, a relative, or simply delivering him? “You will be called upon once more to vote for the queen once this is all over”. The man was referring to a war that was happening and an election of people to represent us to the queen. My mind wasn’t really paying much attention to the gentleman or what he was talking about.I looked at the boy. He was strangley calm now that all the paperwork was done. I wasn’t sure if I had done the rite thing. Was I abandoning this boy? Could I visit him? Where was he going? I took him to a bus which had words on the side saying “all the queens children”. As I buckled him into a seat on the bus, I was wondering if I should explain what was to happen to him, and why I had sent him on his way. They were questions that I didn’t know the answer to myself. I didn’t know if I could come, or if it was too late to take him with me. All the other boys on the bus were not making a sound, perhaps knowing their fate.

I’ll have to say one of the most powerful features of iTunes is the Genius playlist builder. iTunes sends a list of all music in your library to a centralized service. From there, it determines which songs go best together based on other peoples preferences. Afterwards, the results are sent back to iTunes. Any time there after, you can choose a song and tell it to start Genius to build a playlist of 25 songs.

Let’s look at a few things first. Many songs are categorized into Genre’s. This is often to perform the same process. Play a list of music from the same genre, and you have a better chance of it going well together. Think of radio stations here - they are often classified by the genre and/or year (Oldies, Country, Rock, Blues, Hip Hop, Electronica, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s). Genius is more of a social media aspect that improves upon the idea of classifying music manually, in that it classifies individual songs instead.

In the past (and present), iTunes lets you build up your own playlists. Mine were simply filled with only songs that i liked regardless of Genre. I didn’t have the patience or commitment to determine what songs went well with each other. I haven’t made a mix tape, but others who have may excel at this. Genius takes all the guess work and time out of the equation, or more or less depends on the guess work of the community at large.

The downside is that not every song is recognized. There is also a chance that some songs actually do not go well together at all.

With the sidebar, Genius also recommends songs based on any song you have selected. This helps you find tunes that you would otherwise not have considered. It’s a big plus for Apple, since there is a direct link to purchase music from their store. I’ve actually purchased a few tunes myself while listening to my favorite songs. This leads me to start considering the future of iTunes, streaming media, and radio stations. At one point in time, there will be a direct correlation between streaming media that will enable individuals to purchase the song that they are currently hearing. iTunes is currently able to display the song and artist that is broad casted from many internet radio stations. Why not put Genius to use and show the Genius side bar with a link to the current song (if not in the library), along with recommended listening?

About 10 years ago, I was looking into different ways to promote my website. I used a product called wolf surfer to help me improve my ranking in various websites. Afterwards, I stopped using the program, as it didn’t help much at all. Today, I received an email out of the blue:

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THIS IS NOT UNSOLICITED EMAIL! You are receiving this email because you or someone using your email address created an account at WolfSurfer Traffic Exchange. Please see the bottom of this email for removal instructions.
===============================================================
Dear Lewis,

You probably forget about your credits in your wolfsurfer account.
It’s a waste of traffic to leave them. So you login and surf again to get your account active and your credits flowing again.

And we do miss you !!

http://www.wolfsurfer.com/

Username : l17066
Credits : 0

Hope to see you surfing soon !!

Regards,

Nathy Curiel (Owner)
Catherine Heiter(Admin)
————————————————————

The Best Autoresponder:
http://www.GetResponse.com/index/tradegenie

————————————————————
To be removed from our mailing list, please login to your WolfSurfer account and use the “Delete Account” function to remove your account from our database. Doing this will also delete any sites, banners, text links and all credits and impressions. This is NOT reversible. Please consider carefully before taking this step.

WolfSurfer Traffic Exchange is owned and operated by:
c-Lin Services, Inc.
Nathy Curiel, Owner and CEO
Jacob van Akenstraat 128
zip: 3067 xk
Rotterdam, Holland

Telephone Contact Information:
Catherine Heiter, Admin
Sunday - Tuesday and Thursday - Saturday
8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Central Time (GMT or UTC -6)
(903) 893-8981

Ok, so I had a hard time understanding why they sent me the email. They said it was because I had credits in my account. But then they go and say that I have zero credits. What is up? And they have the nerve to suggest that I forgot about them and was wasting them. In turn, I sent them a nice email back their way.

Have you gone mental? 0 == none, zip, zero, nada, nothing, nil, null, naught, nix, void, ziltch - thus meaning NO CREDITS. Please retain a certificate from grade school before you send me your next email claiming that I have credits when at the same time you obviously prove that I do not.

Last night I was preparing to load up a lot of GPS markers into the Garmen eTrex and Magellen Maestro 4040. The problem I had was that the Geocaching site only allowed me to download a LOC file of about 20 locations. With a 25 mile radius, this left me with almost 90 files to combine into one. On top of that, the Maestro doesn’t understand LOC files, and the eTrex didn’t come with software to import/export waypoints.

The software for the Maestro was able to understand GPX files. I created a utility to search for all LOC files within a folder, combine them, and save them to a GPX file. It took me a few tries before I got the format setup correct. Once it was all setup, I was sailing fine and saw all the points show up in my local area on the Maestro.

LOC 2 GPX Converter C# Source Code

I then found some software called Expert GPS that claimed to work with the Garmin eTrex (but not with the Magellan Maestro). Much to my surprise, I was able to import the same GPX file and transfer the coordinates to the eTrex using the 30 day trial software. I had a limit of only 500 waypoints, so I had to cut the list pretty short. Switching between types of data to display continued to make the Expert GPS crash.

With both GPS devices in hand, my nephew and I headed out to find some treasure. We drove around into dead ends and discovered a bit of my neighborhood. When we got out to walk around, a police officer pulled up behind us with lights flashing. I was a bit confused until he started pointing to six guys driving around on ATV’s up by the power lines. I assume he thought we may have been with them at first. He got back in his car and we walked off.

We headed over to GCQVYX with the only information of “Lego Land Pearl Jam”. It didn’t make much sense. It took us over to the side of a local Wall-Mart. We saw a guard rail, some trees, and the pole to a road sign that must have been taken down recently. We spent about 20 minutes, but couldn’t find the whereabouts of the cache. We decided to head back and grabbed a bite to eat at Burger King.

Looking at the details after we got home, it appeared that the guard rail was the main thing we should have concentrated on, and to look for a micro cache. In turn, it would have led us to a second cache. I may return tomorrow to take a second look. There are a few problems with what we have available. First, the eTrex is often only good to about 20 feet at best (it’s old). Next, waypoints that I saw in the Magellan didn’t show up in the eTrex (500 limit). Maps of roads in the Magellan is severely out dated, or were just never entered. Even main streets are not present. And last - the lack of details. I may start looking into creating a lot of text files (one for each cache) and saving them to my phone. This way, we can look up the details in a text file when we arrive at each cache to get some clues and background information.

The optimal solution would be to just get a new GPS that can hold more waypoints, be a bit more accurate (within 3 feet), contain current maps, and allow me to import topographical, arial, and/or street maps of the area. Something like this would be around 300 to 600 dollars (ouch). Since I’m broke, I’ll make due with the toys I already have.

Money is tight at the moment so I went hunting around the house for loose change. I was interested to determine how accurate the Coinstar machines are, so I decided to count each denomination and record how much the grand total would be. I worked it out the the following.

That works out to roughly 4.3 kg and converts to just under 9.6 pounds. My nephew and I dumped all the coins into a bag and headed over to Wegmans to cash in/out. To get free coin counting, we looked at the different gift cards available, but did not find anything of interest. A gift card for the store we were in would have been perfect. We decided to get cash with a service charge of 8.9%.

All the numbers came up fine except for the dimes. It short changed me by 10 cents. My nephew had a dime with is spare change and threw it into the machine. With a service charge of 8.9%, we were able to get a coupon for 97.92. Great, I just paid eight cents for nothing since I’m getting 92 cents in change back. The cashier was a bit confused with our coupon. He entered it into the system, but the computer wouldn’t let him process it. I had noticed that the coupon stated that a manager signature was required. The manager who came by agreed with me and said that the cashier did everything correct.

When I got home, I started moving the original containers for each coin to the side of my desk. I noticed a rattling in one of the boxes and found the missing dime! I showed it to my nephew and he got a silly look on his face as I handed him the dime.

Shortly after purchasing an SUV a couple years ago, I also purchased a Magellan Maestro 4040. This thing has been very handy with traveling directions. After playing with my Garmin eTrex tonight, I started looking at what I could do with the Maestro in regards to Geocaching. The benefit of course would be that it would help me better plan where I should park before walking into the woods. In addition, the map capabilities would help me greatly understand where I am. Even with a GPS, I have gotten very, very lost due to one-way traveling (steep slopes / deep rivers) only to find myself coming back to civilization very far from where I originally started out. A GPS with map software built in - priceless.

I couldn’t find a way to enter GPS coordinates accurately except by touching the map far enough from roads. I updated the firmware and still didn’t have much luck. I downloaded something from the manufacturer called VantagePoint, but it was incompatible with the hardware. Afterwards, I learned that the device was supposed to come with a disc that contained Magellan POI File Editor. I had no idea where the disc was, and the manufacturer wasn’t making it available either. I found a post that helped people to create a custom POI file for Magellan GPS in which it had linked to the Magellan POI File Editor. One of the links were broken, but the other actually downloaded a binary file.

I got the program running. At first, I was having trouble trying to figure out what type of format the longitude/latitude was supposed to be. After a few tries, I found that it expected mostly decimal, but only using unsigned numbers where N/S E/W would be used to indicate the sign instead. What a pain. Anyway, I got past that and the next step was figuring out where exactly I was supposed to save the new MGLN file. The correct location is G:\USR\CPOI\file.mgln, where “G” is the drive that it attached as to the operating system.

Once the file was loaded into memory, the trip planner created a route to the nearest place to the cache with a flag. Then a trail was routed from the flag to the target waypoint.

I think this will be very interesting to play with my nephew. He can use the Garmin eTrex GPS, and I’ll use the Magellan Maestro 4040. Once we get in really close, he can take over for more accuracy. The eTrex has a compass that can point to the waypoint and tell us how far we are by feet. The Magellan Maestro will simply tell us that we have arrived.

Every now and then I talk a walk around the neighborhood to get some exercise. The fresh air helps a bit as well. I was curious as to how long the walk is in distance. It occured to me that I could probably use a GPS device to track a trek. I have a Garmon eTrex that I used to use for Geocaching a few years back. I discovered it’s whereabouts the other day when going through a few boxes in the back room.

The trip worked out to be 1.16 miles in length. It took me 24 minutes with a moving average of 2.9 miles per hour. Even my wife was a bit surprised at the distance. The two of us thought it was much shorter. It worked out that the back half of the trip turned out to be a greater distance then the first part.

The accuracy of the signals turned out to be between 18 and 32 feet due to the clouds covering the area. I wonder how much of an effect this has on the reported distance. The maximum speed reported was 10.6. On foot, I doubt I was moving this fast. I was casually walking the whole time. The big hill in the back half slowed me down even more.

Maybe I’ll start up my hunt again soon. I see a few new caches near my home. My geocache profile could use a little bit of updating. I still have a few bugs that I need to release into the wild. It would be something I could log into my Wii Fit as well.

I am still on a hunt to find useful programs to help guide me to learning how to play the guitar. Today I started going through open-source software for Guitars on SourceForge. I haven’t tried them all out, but these are the ones that interested me.

• Absolute Guitar Trainer: Absolute Guitar Trainer (agtrainer) is the first interactive electric guitar trainer capable of recognizing the sound from the user’s music instrument (basically an electric guitar) and use it to estimate the user’s advancement.
• CP Guitar Effect Proccessor: CP-GFX is simply a Cross Platform Guitar Effect Processor. The aim of the project is to create an extensible and easy to use program which is easy to port to different platforms an operating systems.
• GNUitarra/Guitar helper: GNUitarra is a light-fast all-in-one helper for the guitar player. Has more than +4000 scale types, +60 chord types, +60 string instruments (i.e bass). Can automake solos, learning excersises, etc. Works even in a 386!
• DGuitar: a Guitar Pro viewer, player: DGuitar is a Guitar Pro (*.GP4,*.GP3,GTP) viewer and player that works under Linux, MacOs, Solaris, BSD, Windows, or any other operating system with Java Runtime 1.4.X.
• GNUitar: GNUitar is guitar effects software that allows you to use your PC as guitar processor. It includes the following effects: wah-wah, sustain, distortion, reverberator, echo, delay, tremolo, vibrato, and chorus/flanger.
• Guitar Scale Assistant: Guitar Scale Assistant is a java based guitar application. This application allows guitarists to display, create, hear, and search for scales based on chords, progressions, note sequences, or names. A useful tool for guitarists at all levels.

In my search to find computer programs that are interactive with “real” guitars (Guitarware?), I have found Guitar Rising, and GuitarGames.net. Today I just found another one that is free (for personal use) and available rite now called Little Big Star.

I downloaded the beta and quickly discovered that it wouldn’t run on a 64 bit operating system. The fix is simple and I left instructions with the author in how to fix the problem. Hopefully the next release will have the fix in place. As for everyone else who runs the application, I keep seeing good feedback. The visuals are starting to look like the actual Guitar Hero and Rock Band interfaces of the popular video game consoles. In fact, the software states that you can even hook up one of the video game guitar controllers and play with that instead of a real guitar if you like.

The software has a few problems with chords. This isn’t surprising since Guitar Rising has been delayed until 2009 for the same issues. (This is cutting-edge technology). One trick that the author is experimenting with is to dampen the guitar using a sock at the base of the strings so that the notes do not interfere with each other. It appears a bit odd to me, but then again - I don’t know much about guitars in general.

Hopefully Little Big Star and Guitar Rising will really help a lot of folks (including myself) to learn guitar. The author of Little Big Star is learning guitar as well and has identified some interesting techniques to help people learn songs. One mode is to wait for someone to play a note before advancing to the next note. Both games offer the ability to slow down the speed of the songs. This is really going to be an exciting time watching the technology jump from video game simulation to real-world teaching tools that are fun. Guitar Rising comes with songs, but LittleBigStar does not (to avoid copyright issues).

I met my brother over at Guitar Center. We saw a few guitar kits. The website seems to have more choices then what we had seen on the site. Some kits appeared to have the same guitars as others. We saw slight differences in the guitar itself, but the price tag between two kits was over 100 dollars. I assume that it had something to do with the amp included. The expensive one had drums and loops built in so you could play along. It reminded me of how a lot of keyboards have similar features to start up a tune with a beat while you can play along.

I didn’t buy anything, but I have a better idea of what I am going to get. Fender appears to be the popular brand with these kits with their strat. It’s a pretty popular model in general. The only real options between them appear to be more of the amp included in the kits rather than features on the guitars themselves. I saw one with an extra coil pickup, and another had the same number, but laid out differently. That appears to be the physical difference that I could see. I’m leaning towards a metallic blue body.

Lucas came with an interest in keyboards but started leaning towards getting a guitar at the end. He’s been getting an education on guitars from a friend of his in regards to model shapes, materials, quality, etc.

We looked around and found a few other nick-knacks. The two of us left without any new guitars, but we now have a few plans and a better idea of how much to budget for a guitar.