My Pet Dragon

Here is a video I took of a dragon I made:



The video can be found at Google Video here. A high quality version of the video can be downloaded from my FTP server here (8.39 MiB). In case you are impressed/confused by my dragon, here is another video which explains the illusion.

Katamari Madness

Yesterday I captured a time lapse video of the last level of Katamari Damacy. I mixed together a few songs from the official soundtrack for the audio. Enjoy!



A high quality version of the video can be downloaded from my FTP server here (137 MiB). Here are some links to a few of the videos I have uploaded to Google Video:
-Sket
-Flaming Shadows
-Katamari Time Lapse

Psychology Study

Today I was a research subject in a psychology study called “Learning Probabilistic Sound-Object Associations.” After filling out a few forms, I sat in a small dark room receiving instructions from a speaker. In front of me there was a huge flat screen monitor, a wireless mouse, and a video camera. The experiment consisted of two parts. During the first part different objects appeared on the screen accompanied by a sound. The objects were all colored three dimensional shapes, and the sounds were just random noises. A new object appeared on the screen with a sound every five seconds. During the second part of the experiment two objects were displayed on the screen accompanied by one sound, and I had to choose which of the two objects best matched the sound. The entire process took less than one hour.

Rain

As usual, it is currently pouring rain outside. However, yesterday was surprisingly sunny. Had there been rain yesterday, we would have tied Vancouver's previous 53-year-old record of 28 consecutive days of rain. I preferred the sunny weather over the bragging rights of breaking some record. At least we don't have a rain record comparable to Hawaii - 247 consecutive days of rain!

Ennui

I am using this blog entry to publicly release two programming projects I have been working on. These programs were made using Java, so they are operating system independent. Most of the time just double clicking on the .jar file will execute the program in Windows. To execute the file in the command line type "java -jar filename.jar".

Music Library is an mp3 player I made for an assignment in Computer Science 211. You need XMMS for the program to work in Linux, and Windows Media Player for the program to work in Windows. Execute MusicLibrary.jar to run the program (the other 4 files also need to be present in the directory).

Padomni is a simple text editor with similar functionality to Notepad. I made this program two days before my Computer Science 211 exam to review my Java coding skills. I originally wanted to call it Omnipad, but since that name was already taken...

The files can be found on my ftp server at ftp://byronknoll.dyndns.org/Programs. My web server is at http://byronknoll.dyndns.org, and my ftp server is at ftp://byronknoll.dyndns.org. These servers should be up and running most of the time, but I do occasionally turn my computer off. I am currently learning C, C++, and Unix shell scripting in my Computer Science courses.

Louis Braille

I was just looking over the traffic statistics of my Braille Generator web page and saw a large increase in traffic on the 4th. Surprisingly this increase in traffic was due to the fact that January 4th is the birthday of Louis Braille, the inventor of the Braille alphabet!

Work, Study, Sleep

I am now sitting in the middle of a deserted hallway with nothing to do for the next two hours except for composing this blog entry. The official job title is "Audio Visual Orientation Guide," and I am supposed to give support to any professors who need help operating the classroom equipment. The only problem is that there are no lectures being held in any of the classrooms on my hallway, therefore I am not receiving any requests for help. I have signed up for a total of nine shifts from 5:30pm to 8:30pm over the next two weeks. I have decided that tomorrow I will bring a book to read during my shift...

Tomorrow is the first day of classes for term 2. I am currently in my second year of "Cognitive Systems - Intelligent Systems and Design." This is a program option part of the Computer Science Department, and combines the fields of Philosophy, Linguistics, Psychology, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science. Here is a copy of my course schedule for term 2. I am going to be frantically searching for alternative methods of acquiring textbooks for my courses over the next few days. I have decided that I no longer wish to pay 600 dollars every term.

My sleeping schedule was abruptly forced 5 hours out of phase this morning because I was unable to make reservations for the ferry. With all available spots on the ferry already reserved, Nath and I had to wake up at 5:30am to ensure that we would be one of the first standby passengers. We were the second last car on the boat. The trip to UBC took a total of about 5 hours. I spent most of that time on my PSP, finally beating Day of The Tentacle (using ScummVM) after many hours of frustration. It is now 7:30pm and I am already starting to feel tired. I guess I will spend the next hour in a blank daze like the girl sitting across from me in the perpendicular hallway (who also has absolutely nothing to do during her three hour shift).

// Triple Verbs!