so it goes.

It has been one month since my last post. Don't worry I'm still alive, if you cared :p
And don't think that I'm going to make up for all those missed posts. Your nuts if you think i would, I do have a life. Allot has happen, more rockets went off, even one blew up, there will be a you tube video soon. I been busy with school and i still want to post some of my homework, so you still can expect that. As for coding, i had no time, but it still something i want to do and post. I have a small program that is a proof of concept that i might show off. OK that summed up the pass month.

But the main reason i post today is in memory of one of the greatest writers. He died on this date last year. Kurt Vonnegut. At first i never was a big reader, but this author has changed my out look on reading. And in his memory i have read about 5 or so of his stories in the last two weeks. Kurt Vonnegut is a prolific writer with a quite a few of works with a range of themes and messages. Just because he has alot of works, does not mean they were put together in a rush. Keep in mind that most of his works are short stories and he had lived along successful life. From a scout in World War II, that got held as a POW during the Firebombing of Dresden, Writer, teacher and artist. Kurt Vonnegut is well... Kurt. Just like i have said before to truly understand a person read his works. Even though he disagress that Billy Pilgrem is not a represtive of him self in Slaughterhouse Five, obviously his fealings and what he saw is expresed though his writtings. Another event, that i think that shaped his life, was the lost of his mother, at a young age due to suiced.

He was a great writer
so it goes.

on board camera

We had a first successfully larch with an on-boarder CVS camera last week. After 4 tries we final got it right! Turned out the battery pack was the weak link. The G-forces on take off would compress the spring, resulting in power interruption. Solution custom battier pack.

From the ground it looked like this:

On the rocket it looked like this.

As you see it was wild ride. We are trying to think of ways to prevent the rocket from spinning so much.

Ops: Windows XP sp3 and DayLight savings time

Doh, some one must be saying at Microsoft. If you know mw, you know I use allot of beta and alpha software that still in development stages. At any one given moment I'm testing about 10 or so application in it's primordial stage. I know and expect problems, butt his problem I have with Service Pack Three for Windows xp was unaccepted. By now you know that George Bush passed an act in an energy saving bill, moving daylight savings date. It was not to big of a deal, there were patches well planed for the changes for both OS and software. There a few hick-ups with some automatic clocks, but no big deal. This patch was a part of SP2, and you would think that in SP3 they also would included it, since it is just a roll-up of all the patches to date. But nope some one for got it. Well not really from what I read they decide to not include it and release it as an extra to SP3. Don't ask me why, but it stupid. What is even worse, that the patches that do fix it in Windows Xp don't work with SP3.

So this what you have to do.

A.) Modify some regs, good for several computers since a bat script could easily be made (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914387)

B.) Download this GUI based time zone editor for windows.(http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/8/a/58a208b7-7dc7-4bc7-8357-28e29cdac52f/tzedit.exe)

 

I went with B since only one computer is bad, and I only live in one time zone.

Little screen shot of what it looks like, and the changes that has to be made.

Rant :: Proprietary Software as a Standard

This one really bothers me. I'm slowly transferring from proprietary software to GPL and open source software. There for I dropped Microsoft Office for Open Office. Open office has just as much power as it counterpart, and the best part it is free. I'm so use to Ctrl+S to save, that I save every thing in the Open Document standard. This became a problem when I tried to e-mail a professor a paper, and she could not open it. I new the reason, she was using Microsoft Word, that does not fully support or even recognize the odt extension. Now with Open office I do have the power to open and save doc files, but that is not the point. Why should I save it as a doc? I'm using the open stander for documents! it is what should be used for passing files around.

The problem I see, What if Microsoft Office decides to secure and lock down their file format and use some type of encryption. I bet it would only take a few day to break, but that is not the point. In a way it force people to buy software, so they can share and communicate with others.

More ROCKETS!

This I some what a old video mash up of our rocket launches. I forgot to share this, but here it is now.