Be careful with advice

What you say has a bigger impact on others than you often realize. Think before you speak.

The value of time

As a whole, time is the most valuable commodity that we can own. But, your personal time is never as valuable as you perceive it to be such that you cannot afford to spend it with friends and on giving back and helping others.

Encrypting your zip files

Useful for encrypting your zip files via password protection. Was done using 7zip.

http://www.medicalnerds.com/how-to-encrypt-zip-files-securely-using-7zip/

Reprogramming your mouse buttons

Reprogramming your mouse buttons. Was useful because I got a new mouse but the middle click was acting as an alt-tab ("flip"), whereas I wanted the middle-click functionality for side-scrolling in eagle.

http://www.cadalyst.com/hardware/reprogram-your-mouse-buttons-13866

The early bird doesn't always get the worm

It doesn't matter if someone does something first, as long as you can do better.

The Magic of Motivation

"I've got a friend. He's an astonishingly talented front-end coder. His design chops are out of this world. With that said, he's not done all that much web development though.
He's never configured a server. He's never built a web app from start to finish. He's never touched a database.
He decided to teach himself the MEAN stack for the fun and joy of learning. That's Mongo, Express, Angular and Node.
He started work around 7pm last night, and kept on working and writing code and reading tutorials. And he never stopped. And he wrote comments, and made notes and took screenshots and he made sure that he understood what he was doing each step of the way.
He didn't even get tired. He just kept on going for the love of what he was doing. He worked through the night, and he just finished his first ever web application.
It just shows that you can accomplish anything you want. All you need is motivation, discipline and a love of the task at hand.
Write some code."


source: http://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/1dsa1d/ive_witnessed_something_incredible/

Goal for talking to people more

Everyday, talk to one new person, and catch up with one old friend who I haven't spoken to in a long time.

Deleting Autocompleted Links in Browsers

Delete unintentional autocompletes by using shift+delete

source: http://lifehacker.com/5893908/how-to-banish-embarrassing-or-annoying-autocomplete-suggestions-from-your-browser

Undergrad Reflections

"A few quick reflections having just finished college schoolwork:
-Sometimes you gotta suck up your lack of motivation and power through
-Sometimes you gotta suck up your pride and ask for help
-The best teachers don't need to make attendance required
-The best learners are motivated by more than A or A+
-It's more efficient to skip the complaining
-It's more fun if you can laugh along the way"

--Joseph Vento

Protoboard vs. Breadboard vs. Perfboard

Proto == Perf

Bread

Useful Conversions

1 meter = ~3.3 feet
1 metric ton = ~2200 lbs

Issues with Eagle - UAC virtualization on Windows 7

In EagleCAD, I had issues with UAC virtualization on Windows 7, which occurs when saving files to protected areas of the file system. The libraries that I created were not showing up outside of Eagle, and could only be viewed and opened while in the Eagle program. This problem can be resolved by saving in a different, unprotected location.

In reality, the files are saved at the below location when you write to application folders under program files.

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For example, if an application attempts to write to “C:\program files\appname\settings.ini” and the user doesn’t have permissions to write to that directory, the write will get redirected to “C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\appname\settings.ini”.

source: http://eagle.support.eng.narkive.com/IK8lBTzp/storing-custom-made-lbr-files

Just Do It

Robots and Insect Flight

http://io9.com/roboticists-discover-the-secret-of-insect-flight-and-i-476242076

Insect flight is dependent on the motion of the body in addition to the lift generated by the wings. Further study may lead to insight on how to design better aerial vehicles (especially with hovering).

Turtle Robot

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/beware-the-unstoppable-robot-turtle#.UXmEYsekeMY.reddit

Bio-inspired turtle robot for studying how to traverse granular media.

AC vs. DC Motors

In my opinion, the main difference: AC is fixed speed, DC is not:
"Most AC motors run at a fixed speed determined by the AC line frequency. In the US, this is 60 hertz. Current determines a DC motor's speed, so most applications requiring a variable-speed motor use the DC variety."

sources:
http://www.ehow.com/facts_6324935_difference-between-ac-dc-motor.html

A Link Between Artificial Intelligence and Thermodynamics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22261742

"The simplistic model considers a number of examples, such as a pendulum hanging from a moving cart. Simulations of the causal entropy idea show that the pendulum ends up pointing upward - an unstable situation, but one from which the pendulum can explore a wider variety of positions.

The researchers liken this to the development of upright walking."

Best Answers Possible

http://blogs.kcrw.com/whichwayla/2013/04/cheating-to-learn-how-a-ucla-professor-gamed-a-game-theory-midterm

Students need some way to value learning more than school systems value grades.

Favorite Foods 4/21

japanese, mexican, alfredo, hummus, wings

words of encouragement

http://lifehacker.com/10-things-to-stop-saying-to-your-kids-and-what-to-say-474962146

Build Your Dream

Article: Wearable Technology

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/apr/03/wearable-technology-machine-to-machine

Technology in clothing is ripe for revolution. Definitely something to watch.

ECE Day 2013 T-shirt

My submission for the ECE Day 2013 t-shirt. 

Edit: withdrawn in light of events that occurred this year...

Random Thought: Adding Apples and Oranges

You can't add apples and oranges, but you can add the electrons, protons, and neutrons within them. In turn, you can add the subatomic particles that compose each of those...

So... I'm not sure how to respond to "you can't add apples and oranges".

Product: Solowheel

Found out my TA has one of these. SO COOL! A tad steep for my price range though...

http://www.amazon.com/Inventist-The-Solowheel/dp/B007Q3FZYK

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On the other hand, this guy built his own segway using only analog components. Very impressive.