Fairly Useless…

My kids said that the last maze maker was too easy. Here is a new one, micro maze. It will generate a smaller maze. You can still use the original for the younger children.

I had a break-though in my Pocketmod ( PocketMod is a standalone flash player) module programming experiments. I have away to have user customized mods. Here is my first one in the series. Weather forecast, download the swf and modify your xml. Here are the rules:

1. The label in the xml must be “Weather”
2. You can only have one copy at a time, it will use the last one in the list
3. Rename the swf to zipcode of the forecast you want.

Hopefully the next version of wordpress will allow me to post xml snippets better.

It’s a little large for a pocketmod, because of the graphics and the fact the fonts are embedded (for print rotation).

Each Halloween I try to match Jack O’Lantern to my kids costumes. I have even bought the pumpkin for this year. Time is running out. I usually spend half the night transferring the pattern and cutting and carving. This year each child get their own pumpkin. It just means we have more seeds for roasting!

This should tide you over until “dashcode” come out.
Amnesty Generator is a free utility from Mesa Dynamics that converts any Google webpage gadget into a Dashboard widget.

Here is a project I might try to build, WiMP. I will get to it after I finish building a laptop picture frame. Or after hacking a juicebox.

http://devices.natetrue.com/musicap/
http://wiki.openwrt.org/
http://www.musicpd.org/

That is pretty much it. This pocketmod generates a new maze each time you reload it. Uses maze algorithms to generate maze. Download it from the site and grab the xml for your flash PocketMod app.

Here is an example below of a maze generator in one line of code by John Tromp. It hard to see from the post, but the code spells out the word “MAZE”, incredible. Visit his site for more details.

char*M,A,Z,E=40,J[40],T[40];main(C){for(*J=A=scanf(M="%d",&C);
--            E;             J[              E]             =T
[E   ]=  E)   printf("._");  for(;(A-=Z=!Z)  ||  (printf("n|"
)    ,   A    =              39              ,C             --
)    ;   Z    ||    printf   (M   ))M[Z]=Z[A-(E   =A[J-Z])&&!C
&    A   ==             T[                                  A]
|6<<27^rand()||!C&!Z?J[T[E]=T[A]]=E,J[T[A]=A-Z]=A,"_.":" |"];}

(I had to change one character to get wordpress from “eating” the code. It was the caret in front of rand on the last line, it was supposed to be a <)

A container of pitch has been slowly dripping, this experiment has been running for over 76 years at the University of Queensland. Maybe this can be made into a new kind of clock, one drip every nine years. I love things like this were someone can setup something to last after they are gone. The page seems to have been forgotten, it has not been updated in awhile.

Pitch Drop Experiment 

Ha, just a day after I posted my excuse for missing a day of blogging. Boingboing posts this list of excuses. Much more creative than my lame excuse.

Sorry for missing a few posts, but I was working on a new design and layout for my PocketMod website. I will be adding a few more next week and decided to give it a face-lift. It was a pain to create a new graphic for each entry. Now it is a bit plainer but, easier to maintain. Plus it now contains a xml snippet to paste into your file.

I would use this on DVDs and xbox games from the library, so I don’t have to pay any fines. I had something like this for my video cassettes, my argument was that it would save wear and tear on my vcr motor for rewinding tapes on separate device, I sure it would be the same for DVD players.

DVD Rewinder