julio jimenez

my tinkerings with technology

[ak4vl-blog]

GoPiGo Phase 1

So I finished configuring my Raspbian Wheezy distribution to work for the GoPiGo, quite painless actually. What I did with my brand new NOOBS SD card, after booting and connecting it to the Internet, can be summarized in the following:

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y

$ sudo reboot (probably not necessary but just in case)

$ git clone https://github.com/DexterInd/GoPiGo.git

$ cd GoPiGo/Setup

$ sudo chmod +x install.sh

$ sudo ./install.sh

$ sudo reboot (in case it doesn’t restart on its own, like mine)

You can find these instructions here under Option 3.

[ak4vl-blog]

Getting the Raspberry Pi B+ configured for the GoPiGo. Yes, we are very festive at work :-)

[ak4vl-blog]

I don’t usually take selfies, but this is a legit beard I’m growing here! Too bad I have to shave it off first week of January :-(

[fouriestseries]

Lonely Runner Conjecture

Imagine n runners on a circular track of length 1. The runners start from the same spot at the same time, and each has a distinct, constant speed. A runner is considered “lonely” whenever it is a distance of at least 1/n from every other runner. The Lonely Runner Conjecture (LRC) states that each runner will eventually, at some point in time, be lonely.

Said differently, the LRC states that for each runner, the spacing around it will eventually be greater than the spacing it would experience if the all of the runners were equally distributed around the track.

The conjecture has been proven to be true for 7 or fewer runners, but, interestingly enough, has never been proven to work for all cases of 8 or more runners. [In my 8-runner simulation above, I’ve only shown that it works for a specific set of runner speeds — I haven’t proven that it works for all speeds.]

In the GIFs above, an arc appears around a runner whenever the runner is lonely, and the color of a runner fades after it’s been lonely at least once.

Mathematica code posted here.

Additional sources not linked above: [1] [2] [3]

[ak4vl-blog]

I think this would make a neat web application, let's work on that :-)

[ted]

Can’t win ‘em all. 

This is a match at the RoboCup, an international competition for soccer-playing robots. By 2050, roboticists hope to have full-sized humanoid AI robots compete against the champions of the World Cup. Sounds crazy, right? It’s not as insane as you’d think.

Learn more about hyper-intelligent robots»

[ak4vl-blog]

So inspiring.

[ak4vl-blog]

The Code Zone

I'm sure other coders have experienced this.  Those occasions where you're totally in the zone with the right music, right location, right frame of mind to just code for a good hour or two, maybe three, and get shit done.

Just had one of these tonight (26 Dec and a little into the 27th), music was my latin station on Pandora, one of the two stations I have (the other is Country...go figure :-), location was the couch in my garage, and went for a good 3 hours fixing vulnerabilities and doing maintenance on our web servers at work.

Now, is it just me, or do y'all also have these moments of hyperfocus late at night?  I'm telling ya, it would be awesome if I had these during regular work hours!

[techhumor-blog]

another classic.

[ak4vl-blog]

I never get tired of this one!

[timeforsomewebdesign]

[ak4vl-blog]

My swearing slice is larger :-)

[ak4vl-blog]

This is what runs through my mind in most meetings.

[ak4vl-blog]

[ak4vl-blog]

Many content management systems are focused on developer or site owner needs, but concrete5 is a CMS that truly delivers the best to both worlds. An in-context editing toolbar makes it easy to make changes as you navigate the live website. A truly MVC architecture and API make it easy for developers to truly use the CMS as building blocks.

Testing concrete5 as a replacement for my IHL's public site CMS.  

[ak4vl-blog]

Failure is not an option - it comes bundled with Windows.