Unity 3D is now free!

It really pays to read tech news. Today, I stumbled upon an article that claimed that Unity 3D, the powerful 3D game engine, was free at last. I thought it was too good to be true, so I investigated further.

For those of you who don't know, Unity 3D is a really powerful enviornment that allows developers to create interactive 3D content. It can be embedded in a web page like Flash, or made as a download for Mac or PC.

Unity 3D originally has been $199 for the Indie (independent developer, kind of like Lite), and the pro version has been $1499. There's also an iPhone and Wii tool available for an elevated cost. Now there's a few reasons why I did not buy this earlier:

1) cost

2) I already own Flash CS4

3) I'm really bad at art, so I'd need a 3D artist, preferably someone I could get away with paying really little (least I'm honest)

However, now that it's free, I might as well download it.



I haven't had more than a few minutes to play with it, but so far it seems pretty awesome. It seems like it has a pretty big learning curve, and I'm inept with 3D art by nature. I'll also need to be careful about investing my time in Unity, as I need to keep up with all my other favorite programming languages and projects.


I really do feel bad for the guy who downloaded this the day before it became free.

Download Unity 3D

The Picaxe 08- my favorite little chip

A few months ago I bought a 08 pin picaxe protoboard from Sparkfun. I soldered all the components in place and hooked it up to my PC to program. And of course, I got an error, because it would just be too easy if things worked the first time, wouldn't it? I spent a good long while resoldering all the leads and switching the chip out with other microcontrollers I had on hand to make sure it wasn't the chip's fault.

I recently bought a second protoboard to retry what I had previously failed. I soldered up the components for the new board, and 1/2 way through I realized what I had done wring the first time. I had soldered everything in correctly, but I had placed the chip in backwards! I find it annoyingly funny how I spent so much time redoing my solder joints (at least 2 or 3 times per lead) when the whole time I had just inserted the chip wrong.

Well, I learned from my mistake, and now I have not one, but two working prototyping boards. These chips are coded in BASIC, an infamously (in a bad way) old language, something like forty or fifty years I think, which translates to about 550 programming years. Be that as it may, coding in BASIC is really easy, as its just a bunch of barebones commands. I got a LED blinking demo working in about 2 minutes to test the chip.

The code looks like this:

do
high 2
low 1
pause 500
low 2
high 1
pause 500
loop


Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?


All I'm doing in this is directing current to the LED, making it turn on, pausing 1/2 of a second, turning off the LED, pauseing it for 1/2 of a second, and continue doing this until I unplug it, it runs out of batteries, or the universe implodes.

There's something oddly rewarding about programming hardware. Sure, writing security utilities in Python is fun, making games in ActionScript 3.0 is profitable (or at least for other programmers), and coding lord-knows-what in JAVA is interesting, but actually having a physical object that can do something cool in the real world is pretty unique. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an LED to watch blink...

Dual Power UV LED kit Ready for Sale!

Many LEDs and resistors selflessly gave their lives in the development of the BW Science Labs Store's newest kit, the Dual Power UV LED Flashlight kit. Their sacrifice has not been in vain...



While developing this kit I uncovered my true love for Ultra-violet LEDs. There just plain awesome! You can use them to detect counterfeit money, kill germs (now that's pretty impressive for a LED), authenticate drivers licenses (and passports?), and stun an assailant (*cough* *cough* shine it in their eyes). Not to mention Ultra-violet light produces a really neat effect on its environment, like making white objects eerily glow (there you go, another idea for Halloween).

I have some kits already neatly put together in packages, ready for sale. However, it may take a day or two for me to put it on the Store site as most of my time is wasted away studying for an endless barrage of Spanish tests, also known as "¡examines!". Interestingly enough, the exclamation points don't make me feel any better.

I'm really happy with how I balanced cost with awesomeness, as this little guy in relatively inexpensive (I intend to price the kit for around $11.99), and as you can see, it packs a pretty powerful punch.

Sunday Status: Flash 10.1's Mobile Debut and Some BWSL News

Global

At MAX 2009 Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch shows Flash 10.1 on a bunch of mobile devices.



Micro

I've spent the weekend working on the next BW Science Labs Store kits, including prototyping a mini UV LED kit and designing a line following robot.

I've also been able to work a bit more on my AS3 game, though not much. Apparently, the phrase, "4 day weekend" loosely translates into teacher as "4 times more homework".

UV LED kit- coming soon to the Store

I spent most of my day packaging Vivus the Robot kits, which involves unpacking lots of boxes, taking out the microcontroller, plugging them into my PC, and programming them one at a time. However, I did manage to find the time to continue working on BW Science Labs's next kit, a mini UV LED kit that can be used to sterilize your hands (and your prized action figure collection in the basement of your mom's house), detect counterfeit money (now hey, that's pretty darn cool), make your teeth glow white (the most useful of all) and a bunch of other really cool stuff.

I have a working prototype and I've got the right PCBs, resistors (that one took awhile, darn resistance calculator lies!), etc. However, I'm working on finding a better power source. The prototype currently uses a 9v via battery clip, which really stinks seeing that I'm trying to make things as small as possible. However, once that problem is solved the mini UV LED kit will be ready for purchase on the BW Science Labs Store.

SFXR- Free sound effects for Flash games!

Here's the thing, I love programming. I love the whole process of writing code and building a functional program by speaking a language the computer will understand. However, I really do not like painstakingly drawing art one little image at a time. On top of that, I have no idea how to generate sound effects for any of my programs. While I still have to brave out the whole art thing, at least I've solved the sound effects issue. A software engineer named Thomas Pettersson created a program called SFXR, which generates sound effects really easily.

The program lets you fiddle around with the dials to create the sound you want, or better yet you can keep hitting the "random" button until you hear something you like.



As you can see, I resort to clicking the "explosion" button a million times until I'm satisfied. While it would be nice to know what "Phaser offset" (Star Trek reference of some sort?!) means, I'm completely content with my "random" button.

Click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click

Palm Pre Development? Meh.

I am a proud owner of the Palm Pre. It's slick, fast, and pretty cool. There are only 136 apps in the Pre's app store, compared to the iPhone app store's several thousand (or more), that's not much at all. So, naturally I was inclined to want to write some apps and sell them, hopefully making a nice return. If you don't already know, the iPhone Developer program has you pay a one time fee of $99 and you're free to post up your apps to the iTunes App store, and make a fantastic 70% of profit. I was hoping for something similar with the Palm dev program.

I went on their site to download the Mojo Software Development Kit, and found this:

Recognizing the value of the on-device catalog as a distribution channel and as a friction point to control the flow of apps into it, we’re going to charge $50 for each app you submit to this channel.

Really? To add friction? Seriously? A lot of the complaints that the Pre App store has gotten have been based around a lack of good apps, and Palm wants to add "friction" to this?


The SDK is just as annoying as the cartoon character.


I hate to say it, but I'm kind of disappointed with Palm, guess I'll stick with iPhone development.

Vivus the Robot Instructions Now Available

After much time and effort this weekend, I finally managed to put together the very detailed, hold-your-hand style instructions for the Vivus the Robot kit, being sold in the BW Science Labs Store.

You can also read the Vivus the Robot Instructable if you prefer that instead.

I had to take apart my own Vivus, and rebuild it from scratch to get all the images. It took a looooooong time, so enjoy every picture.

Happy robot building!

Sunday Status: MIT's New Toy and BW Science Labs Goes Global

Global

Those of you who know me, know how much I love MIT. Hey, who doesn't? The first Rapid Prototyping machines came from them, along with the first robots to learn like a human child, and having an on-campus nuclear reactor is pretty darn cool too. MIT unveiled their newest toy this week, a robot that can autonomously navigate through and map 3D terrain using lasers. Now this is the kind of work I want to be doing when I'm in college.


[or watch this video on MIT Tech TV]

Micro

This has been a fantastic week for BW Science Labs. The BW Science Labs Store visitor increase is up 1,884% this month, and BW Science Labs is up 99%. I've spent the weekend managing the flood of orders for the Vivus the Robot kit, and while I don't particularly enjoy being on the "service" end of "customer service" things are going pretty well.

This week, BW Science Labs was featured on Boing Boing Media and MAKE Magazine's blog.

I managed to make an LED explode (it was actually pretty cool) while prototyping the BWSL Store's next kit. I'll be sure to write more on it when I have something working.

Robotics for Beginners: words of wisdom from a hobbyist who's still alive

I've been burned, electrocuted, and attacked by a rampaging robot* enough time to know the basic "do"s and "don't"s of robotics.


I think we forgot to solder in the off switch...

I'm by no means an expert, but all the same I have a bit of advice for the beginner robotics hobbyist.

I recommend that if you go the book route you avoid most of the "Build a bot" titles. I got the most out of books and manuals on the microcontrollers I was using. The 3 picaxe manuals rock and are free (available at picaxe.co.uk) and I hear that there's a great Arduino book out, but I haven't had the chance to use any Arduinos yet (namely due to cost).

MAKE (makezine.com) has some great stuff on Arduinos in their blog and video series called "How-to Tuesdays".

Here's what I recommend: start with a cheap picaxe (don't forget the motor driver chip!) and figure out how to get the wheels to move with the online manuals. Then, add a bumper switch and move on from there!

If you feel to afraid to even do that, then you should probobably go with the "have your hand held" route and follow a tutorial or buy a kit. If you do buy a kit, please, for the love of all that is good, do not buy a Lego NXT. They are drastically overpriced and won't teach you nearly as much as others. I enjoyed my experience with VEX hardware, but their microcontroller ($50!) drove me absolutely crazy. You could, of course, get the brand-new ever-so-popular Vivus the Robot kit from the BW Science Labs Store.**



Footnotes:

*: called my brother
**: I really don't want to toot my own horn, but the reason why I'm selling this kit is because I've found its good for beginners.

Woot! Woot! I Won the Digital Open Competition!

This is usually the time where I'd post a Theoretical Thursday on my thoughts and ideas, however today something awesome happened that merits overwriting theories.

I won Sun Microsystems's and IFTF's international youth competition, the Digital Open. I won a laptop, a video camera, and a bunch of other cool things. The Boing Boing Media team came to my house and interviewed me about the win, and made a pretty cool video.


[or watch this video on YouTube]

Here's what they quoted me on in their post on my win:

"The BW Science Labs Store is an idea I've had for a while now, but it has taken a lot of work to get it up and running. There is currently 1 kit available, the Vivus the Robot kit. I"ve seen a lot of those really low-quality $20 robots where you clap your hands and they twitch, and I've seen $400 robots with a great deal of functionality. I wanted to make something in between, and that's exactly what Vivus is. During prototyping I wanted to make a "real robot", one that was autonomous and could truly act on its own, while trying to keep the cost down as well. "

A very special thanks to the folks at Sun Microsystems, Institute for the Future, and Digital Open for making this possible.

In Honor of Nerd Day: Some Crazy Math Problems.

Today was Nerd day at my school. For many, this day promotes new possibilities in wild apparel, and for others it presents no change. However, to honor the spirit of Nerd day, I thought I'd post some problems from this year's National Mathematics competition. I originally had a packet of problems from my school's math club (a.k.a. the Neighborhood), but of course I lost that packet after about a day. For those of you who do these things for fun, happy nerding. The rest of us can at least imagine what it would be like to solve these. Hey, imagination is more important than knowledge... right?





If you are cackling at your monitor right now, let us know, I'm curious to see how a mathematical mind would solve these.


Nerd warfare: more casualties than you might imagine.



The credit for these problems and image goes to UNL: where nerds plot our destruction.

Flash Catalyst: Programming without coding?

As a registered Flash developer, I get emails from Adobe here and there begging me to take one of their 1,000 surveys, promising that the 200 multiple choice questions will only take 2 minutes of my time. However, today (or rather 20 minutes ago) I was alerted of a new Adobe product called Flash Catalyst. Something caught my eye in the email, the phrase, "Without writing code." I was terrified, as the whole reason I love software is because of the awesome code behind it.

I downloaded the Beta testing version for free to see what it's like, and I've assessed that there are 2 possibilities:

1) Catalyst may be popular for a little while and then will die out quickly without any real applications, much like Carnegie Mellon's Alice program.

2) Catalyst will eclipse Flash and ActionScript 3.0 and put nearly every Flash programmer in the world out of a job. Fast food restaurants will be populated with millions of would-be programming geniuses, and the world will stop spinning as a result.


Call me old fashioned, but I'm rooting for scenario #1, were's the fun in programming without writing code?

Of course, there's a middle ground to this, maybe Catalyst will be only a little popular, and only a few hundred thousand programmers will lose their jobs.

You can download Catalyst off of Adobe's website for free, here's my impression after 10 minutes of using it.

Catalyst looks a lot like Flash CS4, its pretty clean cut and elegant, as with most Adobe products. The user draws or imports an object, much like in Flash, and selects what the object is (i.e. button), then chooses what role it plays (i.e. onClick), and finally decides what action it takes (i.e. play video). No code. At all.



I'm a bit worried, and annoyed after buying Flash CS4 which may become obsolete (worst case scenario) as a result of Catalyst.

DIY Laser: (almost) out of Star Wars

I could not keep my engineering side at bay for long, even with a malfunctioning soldering station I had to do something. I wound up using my very-sub-par Radioshack (of course) soldering iron until I can get my real station replaced. It was worth the pain of using a Radioshack product, as my most awesome laser yet was created.

I know it as the Uber-Laser, the rest of the world knows it from one too many Star Wars episodes as a Blaster, and isolated tribes in East Africa and my brother know it as, "That shiny thing."


Say hello to my little friend!

I started off with a 3-5 mw green laser pointer I got from Amazon for about $20. I spent a great deal of time taking the assembly off with my diamond cutter (seriously, they really don't want people taking apart their laser pointers), and got it down to just the laser diode and circuit board. I spent another few hours fiddling around with the circuit board until I found something that works, and I managed to get the power output from about ~3 mw to approximately a little less than 100 mw.

I don't really feel comfortable explaining what I did with the circuit board to make this thing shine, for fear of some child blinding himself with the info he got off BW Science Labs. However, I should say that what I DID NOT do is fry the "03" chip with my soldering iron as some crazy Youtube video suggests. I also had to bypass the embedded ON/OFF switch in the circuit board, which took a bit of careful soldering. I then used a 3v power supply, a ridiculously awesome looking switch, and an enclosure to build the rest of the laser module.

I was able to kill 2 birds with one stone (so to speak of course), as I used this laser in my Physics presentation today, where I discussed the National Ignition Facility and how it uses lasers to create a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. I couldn't tell if my teacher was amazed or terrified by my laser, however it seemed that my peers thought it was pretty darn cool.

At one point a student asked if it could burn anything or start a fire. I was careful to mention that I made this laser to output as much light as possible without actually being destructive enough to pose a danger. And while the pyromaniacs in this world may be disappointed, I still am pretty happy with how this laser functions. At the same time, I feel a bit guilty with the title promising something out of Star Wars, but that's why I put the "(almost)" there.

This laser is incredible at night, and it produces a very solid-looking beam straight out of, dare I say, Star Wars!


Reminder:

While I used phrases like, "fiddling around with the circuit board", I did have a pretty good idea of what I was doing. I also took the proper safety precautions while soldering, and I wore laser safety goggles during testing because I wasn't in the mood to go blind today. If you're not responsible, have little respect for safety (or your eyes), or simply don't know anything about lasers, please find someone smarter who does know what to do, if you try to do this at home. Consider this my disclaimer.

Sunday Status: Steve Jobs's Fiesta and Building the Uber Laser

Global

I'm not completely sure if this really counts for global, but this week Apple announced that their 2 billionth iPhone app had been downloaded. Wow, 2 BILLION iphone app downloads, that's a lot of Fart Applications...

I can picture Steve Jobs right now with a little party hat on, toasting his victory.


Don't even try getting into my party without muffins.

Micro

I spent all day today building what I lovingly call the Uber Laser*. I managed to reconfigure 5 mw green laser diode to output nearly 100 milliwatts, while that's not enough to do anything really cool, its still an impressive feat. I'll be sure to give it the full post it deserves** later this week.




Footnotes:

*: I know, I know, I'm pretty bad at naming things. "BW Science Labs", not my most creative name. Seriously though, if you have a better name for it then let me know.
**: We all know what happens when a science project feels like it doesn't get what it deserves... It becomes aware.

Teaching yourself ActionScript: Books I recommend

I've been using Flash and ActionScript (never forgetting JAVA, PYTHON, and all my other favorite languages of course) since late this summer, and I've been surprised as to how quickly I've learned it. It's a great feeling, knowing that you can achieve something without having to have someone hold your hand all the way through. Fortunately, ActionScript is a lot like JAVA, so having some experience there made AS3 a lot less difficult to learn(I actually find AS3 more convenient than JAVA). There are three books that gave me the Flash know-how:

1) ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University by Gary Rosenzweig:

Good reference book, though this would not be the book I recommend for a completely new programmer. Most of the book is just a collection of tutorials, making it a bit harder for the new guy to grasp all of the core concepts 1st. However, there is some great depth to this book and it touches on some fantastically deep topics like 3D racing, mapping, and so on.



2) Game design with Flash by Rex van der Spuy:

This is the 2nd Flash book I read, and I really wish it was the first. It is perfect for beginners, and the first 5 chapters laid out the basics of ActionScript really nicely. The rest of the book was still a good read, and touched on topics that other books missed like using trigonometry to find the angle of an object and use it to fire bullets, missiles, or glowing smiley faces.



3) Creating a Web Site with Flash CS4 by David Morris:

A good primer with Flash, this book is a fun, short, and easy read that a ferret could understand*. However, this book lacks the code power needed to run a truly good Flash site. For instance, Morris shows the reader how to make a form by dragging text boxes out from the side bar** and place them on the design. However, he ends the section abruptly saying, "To function properly and transfer data as intended, a form requires advanced ActionScript programming and connection to a database- complexity that is beyond the scope of this book." (122) Which is a really fancy way of saying, "I have no idea how to do this, but I can teach you how to draw a text box!"

Regardless, this book is sufficient for the beginning Flash designer, and I still got a lot out of it.






Footnotes:


*: Why hire people to build Flash sites anyway? Timone and Pumba will do it for half the cost.
**: Hey, don't laugh. Clicking and dragging is an art.

Theoretical Thursday: My Thoughts On Free Software

Imagine this:

Radio frequencies are scattered with the ever popular band Survivor, suspenders are still in style, and computer code is just waiting to be written. You explore the world of code and watch the debut of the internet as a way for scientists to share data and evolve from there. You consider a new way to communicate from computer to computer, like writing digital letters. What will you call it? Amail? Qmail? How about... Email? You figure your career is set, and millions will pay to use your low cost communication service. Then, 1996 rolls around and some guy from Stanford named Larry Page has an idea to create something called Google. You think "no big deal" and publish your Email program to the world.


It's no big deal.

However, soon Google creates their Email service, Gmail, and gives it away to everyone for free.

13 years later you're teaching hordes of rowdy high school gamers Java, reminiscing about the "good ol' days" as you tighten your suspenders and select "Eye of the Tiger" on your Walkman.


While this scenario is purely fictional, there is some truth to the idea behind it. Software is becoming completely free, namely thanks to Google. While the goals of the Free Software Foundation are noble, they tend to make life a bit harder for independent developers. As free software becomes more available, people expect everything to be free. Just look at the iTunes App store, reviewers seem angry and any developer who dares charge more than $0.99 for his months of coding. Worse yet, consumers become critical of free software. Look at the reviews on my first game ever with ActionScript 3.0. The user is getting the software for literally nothing, and yet yet they often are angry at the developer if it does not meet their standards.

While free software makes it nearly impossible for developers to take advantage of the consumer (no, only big companies are allowed to charge their users $999.99 for software. *cough* *cough* Adobe) it also makes it hard for the developer to earn enough to support himself.

I fear the day when everything is free, and the only money circulating through software is via advertising or worse, only goes to Microsoft, Apple, or Adobe.*


Footnotes:


*: Don't get me wrong, these are three great companies, they just make the indie developer's life a bit more interesting.

Robotic Cars: Taking over the world (right after they can move 20 ft without crashing)

Today, while driving home from school, I saw a car with some sort of spinning sensor on the top. I recognized the design from a NOVA episode I saw in 2007 about the yearly robot car races. From what I remember, the rotating block on top most likely uses sonar to rapidly send out sonar pings as the module rotates. The sonar waves bounce off of objects and return to the sensor. The elapsed time since the ping was sent out is calculated and determines the distance of the object. And of course, there is an on-board computer that gets the car from point A to point B.

The NOVA episode was quite entertaining as most cars had extreme difficulty moving around stacks of hay, much less driving on the open road. Kudos to the engineers who finally got one of these things to work.

I assume this isn't just a Halloween prank because it appeared that no one was touching a steering wheel (cruise control?). The sensor on top is pretty high-end. There were two extremely nerdy looking guys* in the front seats and only Target advertises for Halloween this early in the month.

And of course I was able to snap a couple pics of it before we passed them.**


It's only a matter of time before it becomes self-aware... and enslaves us all.


This is one of the big pluses to living in the Bay Area. Only in San Francisco will you see a robot driving people home.




Footnotes:



*: I mean this in the kindest of regards, meaning they're Not Even Remotely Dorky.
*: The robots may take our freedom, but they'll never take our highway!

Flash development for the iPhone?!

Today is one of days I am overjoyed that I read the MAKE Blog, as I found an incredible bit of news today. As I scrolled down MAKE's page I found an article that nearly made me explode with excitement (Not literally... that'd be pretty weird). Adobe recently announced that Flash and ActionScript 3 developers (like me) will soon be able to deploy their applications on the iPhone. Yes, the iPhone. You may now take a moment to wear a black turtleneck and hold your hands up in the air like Steve Jobs and declare "All this.... coming to the iPhone!" and get roars of approval from fans who have no idea what you're saying and will later dig through your trash to find a half-eaten banana with your precious DNA on it.


Worship me!!!

Is this too good to be true? Will Flash developers finally stretch beyond the limits of your PC's (or Mac's, make Steve Jobs proud) browser? Can I go right now and code for the iPhone to my heart's desire? Yes, yes, and NO.

As far as I know this isn't too good to be true, because there's a catch. Though yes, Flash developers will be able to bust their way out of your monitor's confines and leap onto your iPhone, it ain't gonna happen any time soon. Of course, typical Adobe, we have to wait and buy the Flash CS5 upgrade to build iPhone Apps, until then only the special developers will be able to build iPhone apps with Flash.


[or watch this video on youtube]

The beta test will be released this year (hopefully sooner than later), and will be (promptly?) followed by the actual release of CS5. Unfortunately, I doubt I'll be a Beta Tester, as there are about 5 million* other developers slobbering over their keyboards trying to become one of the first to use it. Not to mention I haven't really made a name for myself in the Flash community other than my one sub-par game.

I personally think that to make things truly fair Adobe should put all 5 million of us Flash developers into one giant pit and have us fight for a single Beta copy of Flash CS5.



Footnotes:

*: I made up this number all by myself.

The Marshmallow Test

Today I stumbled upon this fantastic video of a psychology experiment called The Marshmallow Test, where kids had to decide if they would eat a marshmallow immediately or wait for a few minutes. In return for waiting, the kids would get a second marshmallow along with the first.

This experiment has several applications to the real world like the stock market and religion, but rather than go into it now let's just enjoy the video.



[or watch the Marshmallow Test on Youtube]

I found it interesting how kids would deviously pick off small pieces of the marshmallow after being told not to, and then lying about it to the woman afterwards. A book was published a little while ago (can't remember the title now unfortunately) where the author asked kids under age 10 questions like "what is marriage?" and "What is love?". The author's rational was that kids under age 10 could not lie. Apparently the author never thought to temp the all-knowing toddlers with a marshmallow.

Sunday Status: Water on the moon? and ActionScript Development Continues

Today marks the first ever Sunday Status post on BW Science Labs, with many to hopefully follow. In a Sunday Status I'll talk about science news on a global scale, and then a micro* scale at BW Science Labs.

Global

The other day I got an email from NASA that boasted new discoveries on water on the moon. I figured that it was probably another "on August 27th Mars will be as big as the moon!" hoax**, so I disregarded the message. However, sure enough word of water on the moon spread and turned out to actually have merit. The Apollo mission 40 years ago brought moon rocks back to earth for study, and though trace amounts of water were found researchers assumed that it was from contamination in the cargo crate.

One way water is detected on other planets or moons is by looking at the light that reflects off of one's surface. By looking at the wavelengths of the reflected light there were indications that hydrogen and oxygen had bonded, meaning either water or hydroxyl.

In actuality the craft that picked up the traces of water, Deep Impact, was the 3rd craft to have detected water/hydroxyl, the first being Chandrayaan-1 and later Cassini. Now that 3 separate crafts have detected water on the moon NASA scientists were sure that there was water.***


Micro

I've begun development of a new game that's being programmed in ActionScript 3.0 (a programming language similar to Java) featuring a little robot that has to save its base from armies of other robots. This may not be an award winning concept, but its proving to be a great learning experience. As of now I've only had a chance to work on it 20 minutes here and there, so I've only written a bit over 500 lines of code for it.



Above is some of the code I wrote for the built in store where the player can buy upgrades, health, and other fun stuff using the currency earned after defeating robots.

As of now the world is not yet ready for my terrible drawing skills, so I'm trying to convince someone else to do the game art, until then the place holder images look like they've been drawn by a three year old.



Footnotes:


*: and I do mean "micro". All of the BW Science Labs employee(s?) can attest to that.
**: I was so excited. Such as shame as I stood freezing outside on August 27th hopefully staring up at the empty night sky.
***: Apparently the first two times they detected it they forgot to email me. Oh yeah, and tell the rest of the country too.

Final Thoughts on Linux

I've been using computers for a while now, but always running Mac OSX or Windows. However, recently I've tested the Linux waters. I installed both OpenSolaris and Ubuntu to see what all the Linux hype was all about*.

OpenSolaris

Open Solaris is pretty cool looking. It has neatly structured top and bottom bars that are simple and avoid clutter. The workspaces are useful as the user can easily switch between 4 desktops. I especially like the idea of having a built-in software catalog which can be used to find all kinds of programs to download.

I have a strict policy on free things: never complain about something that costs you nothing. This is something that seems to have slipped the minds of a lot of free software users**. That said, OpenSolaris is not without flaws. When I was entering my information into the computer after I first turned it on OpenSolaris asked me for a username and password, which the computer said were optional. I decided to enter in a password later, so I left the text fields blank. Later when the computer restarted there was a prompt for a username and password, which did not exist. I reinstalled Open Solaris from a disk that I fortunately had on hand. When my computer was fully operational several errors popped up on the screen saying that it could not connect to the wireless network I had. I used Sun's tech support forum at opensolaris.org and this is the response I got:

Do you have security enabled on your wireless network (ie router or access-point)? Your driver may not be capable of security like I just found out with the iwh0 driver....

Alternatively are you using DHCP or static as you would need to turn off nwam if using static.

Or if go to console and su to root, then use ifconfig coupled with wificonfig to create a profile and setup auto-dhcp or plain dhcp for your adapter - that may help!

Just a few thoughts anyway :-)


Rather than go through all of the "coupling" and "ifconfiging" I decided to try out Ubuntu next.***

For the record, it seems that my case was an isolated incident as I found very few other reports with the same errors, all in all OpenSolaris isn't a bad Operating system.


Ubuntu

When I installed Ubuntu it connected to my wireless network with ease, and Firefox was neatly tucked in the top bar. The username and password prompt screen looked really cool, I almost felt like I was in 24****. For some reason my sound was not working on Ubuntu while it worked on other Operating Systems I tested. However, like OpenSolaris it has an easy to use software installer built in which I liked using, along with a built in internet radio and some kind of iTunes-like music software. Ubuntu is fun to use and very aesthetically pleasing, especially all of the super cool 3D sleep mode animations.

Linux is fantastic as it is free, and there are all kinds of open source variations out there. I'm glad to see that there are options extending beyond the world of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.



Footnotes:


*: Seriously, have you seen these Linux guys wearing their "Hacking is not a crime" T-Shirts?
**: Just look at all of the less-than-constructive criticism new game programmers get on the App Store and on Flash portals.
***: You may be chuckling at my wifi ignorance, but to me most of that message was like spanish to me (ask my spanish teacher and you'll know what that means).
****: Minus the dramatic sound effects and spinny chairs (I have to keep dreaming about a chair that can rotate a full 360 degrees).

Theoretical Thursday: My Idea Formula

BW Science Labs has been a great place, and a lot has been done throughout the past ~16 months, however there was a problem. Posts were diminishing as if all the good "scientificy" (a phrase I coined long ago) articles had been used up. I was often nervous to post an article that was not completely perfect, and as a result many great posts never saw the light of day. Should I post about something if its only an idea? What if the experiment failed miserably?

I believe I have solved this problem. Theoretical Thursdays are relaxed, and hopefully fun, articles on ideas and thoughts I've had over the past week that will be published every* Thursday.

Late the other night I was thinking of what new articles to write on BW Science Labs and what I was going to have for breakfast the next day when an idea storm** hit me. I got 6 new solid article ideas along with the idea for Theoretical Thursdays and perhaps a second type of post which you'll see on Sunday.

I have a weird way of coming up with ideas. My peak for brainstorming is at about 10:00 to 12:00 pm, which is about the time I'm supposed to be dreaming about a flying spanish tests or yet another oh-so-tempting Apple iTouch update that cleans out my wallet. However, with my totally accurate not at all made up Idea Formula*** I can utilize this time to figure out how to build my next robot or use RFID tags to track my brother****.


(Number of Awesome Ideas) = [(Hours Past Bedtime)² x (Liters of Caffeine)] / [(Homework) x (Number of Tests Tomorrow)²]


The original idea of BW Science Labs, Science Quarterly, and Sliced Bread***** was formulated through this equation.

On a more serious note I would like to say that Theoretical Thursdays are simply something to look forward to once a week, and I'll be sure to keep up the normal articles, hopefully at an accelerated rate.



Footnotes:


*: unless zombies are at my front door or I'm stuck in the middle of the wilderness hundreds of miles away from the nearest wi-fi hotspot.

**: Yeah, I coined that phrase too.

***: Use Einstein's Special Relativity equation E = mc² to find out how relatively accurate my equation is and then Émile Borel's probability equation to figure out if the above answer is probably true.

****: Currently under development.

*****: Did they have caffeine back then?



If you think Theoretical Thursdays are a good idea or a bad one please let me know by commenting below or emailing me.