Jzoe Blog

I’m excited. I had the opportunity to jam on friday night, and it was good. I enjoy playing with these guys, Brandon and Rob. I recorded the jam, too. I’ve got a couple of songs, too.

http://jzoe.com/songs/softjam.mp3
http://jzoe.com/songs/fridaynight.mp3

I really like one of the drum fills I did on that second one. I’ve always sucked at drum fills, so when I do a good one I feel kind of proud. Also, friday night I never really went to sleep. The crazy thing is that around 4 in the morning on saturday I started doing homework. I really got a lot done, and I did a good job with it. I’ll probably do more tonight.

I think that what really changed is that I got an architect style swing-arm desk lamp, and now my papers are really well illuminated. I can totally see what I’m doing, and with no glare. I was going to build myself a lamp, but do I really have time for that? I’ve got 90% of the electronics sorted out…. it just would have been weird to get the physical part to work like this swing-arm. I still might do it, if I have some sort of a personal crisis- but for now I think that this lamp is money. I guess that this post is a little too much like a journal, and too long. I’ll stop now.

Oh, and here’s a random thought- really just a rehash of something i quoted earlier- it’s the fault of writers for the internet that they write as though someone is listening. You REALLY don’t have to type “i’ll stop now” because the reader could just look and see that there aren’t any more words.

Hektor: the Graffiti Robot

Ok, so some of the slashdot comments from where I saw the website- they say that this has been done before, numerous times. I wasn’t really claiming that I came up with it all by myself when i said I wrote it in my notebook… I’d just never seen something like it before, and was really surprised that I never had.

Oh wait… I saw a bumper attachment for a van once… wow, i’m low on sleep.

Hektor.ch is under construction.

These people definitely did it first… but I definitely wrote this idea down in my notebook a couple of years ago. I’m glad to see someone’s done it.

President Bush Speaks with Nation’s Mayors at Winter Meeting

I like to stay informed of the issues, but it’s just too hard to read anything that GWB says. I’d like to believe it’s possible to have some intelligence and still talk like a moron- but that doesn’t make any sense. I wish we had a strong democratic or independent candidate.

Ouch.

Maudling the cat, beer connoisseur…

I haven’t even read this site yet, but my first glance told me I had to share. Oh, and props to Melissa for showing to it me!

Note to self: Girls are tricky.

Not to girls: Sorry about self.

Cup O Noodle soup is one of my guilty pleasures. I have food that I could eat here, but it’s just so tempting to go and waste my money. Still, it’s 39 cents for a hot steamy bowl of noodles. It’s just soooo easy to make. It probably doesn’t have any nutritional value, but it makes me feel warm inside for a little while.

Top Five engineering equations, that everyone should know:

1) force = mass times acceleration
2) voltage = current times resistance
3) kinetic energy = one half mass times velocity squared
4) torque = force times distance from the center of rotation
5) efficiency = applied output divided by total input

Now, here’s the explanation why they’re important.

1) Why does a motorcycle always out-accelerate a car? Why is it harder to stop when you’re driving a bus? Why should you drive more carefully in the rain? Beause the motorcycle weighs less, the bus has more mass to accelerate (decelerate, depends on your frame of reference) and the car has less force available for steering and braking because the road is slippery.

2) Maybe people don’t need to know this one, but if you ever wondered why something electrical caught on fire or didn’t do anything, this equation probably could have told you. The variaton is that current equals voltage divided by resistance. Current is really what messes you up and lights stuff on fire. The equation that follows this one is that power equals the current squared times the resistance.

3) Did you know that somebody traveling at 60 mph has four times as much kinetic energy as someone at 30 mph, but somebody traveling at 90 mph has nine times as much? More kinetic energy means that you go SPLAT a lot more when you hit something. It’s the part of the reason why a small person can break boards if they know karate, and much larger people can break their hands in the same situation if they don’t know what they’re doing.

4) One time my friend’s mom was trying to loosen a nut on her tire. She had a big wrench on there, and she was standing on the wrench jumping on it. That didn’t work, so she got us both to jump on it. The nut broke off and we fell down. All she really needed to do was get a pipe on the end of the wrench to make the arm longer.

5) People are always buying bigger and bigger things- but they aren’t always getting more for their money. What would you think if you bought a 200 watt stereo and a 5 watt stereo was louder? It’s more efficient because it puts out more sound from less electricity. You can also drive farther (or in theory, faster) in a more efficient car because the ratio of output to input is better.

I don’t know why I decided to write about these tonight…. I guess it’s because if I ever got a tattoo it would have something to do with one of those equations.

Top Five Bands to listen to after that painful breakup:
1) Five Pointe O
2) Chemical Brothers
3) Stabbing Westward
4) Cake
4) Red Hot Chilli Peppers

I wrote some really witty explanations for some of these in the style of the movie, High Fidelity- but then I went to grab my stupid 5 button mouse and inadvertently erased them all.

Anyhow- five pointe O. These guys are angry, loud, agressive- you’re angry too, so you might as well them do some of the screaming for you.
Chemical brothers, because you’re still trying to figure out what the hell happened. It makes sense, right?
Stabbing westward… misery loves company. Pull up a chair. (Note- if you are prone to depression, stay away from these guys)
Cake, because these guys made it through whatever they’re singing about- and you will too.
Red Hot Chili Peppers, because you really do need to get your mojo back.

May you progress through the list quickly.

Another word on Aerogel… though it costs a ton, it is possible to make some amazing capacitors out of it. Today’s technology allows us to make a Farad capacitor the size of a small fire extinguisher When I took physics in higschool, my teacher told us that a Farad capacitor would be larger than his desk. Anyhow, Aerogel allows a capacitor the size of a AA-cell battery to be 10 Farads with a peak discharge current of 35 amps. (cooper electronics).

The cool thing is that aerogel is 99 percent air, so these capacitors would be fairly light. Also, there is no chemical reaction occuring when they charge and discharge, so as long as they are kept within their range of safe operation they should provide an extraordinarily long service life. If aerogel is ever mass produced and its cost goes down to something reasonable, I could see this type of capacitor as an amazing asset for power hungry devices- for power smoothing and even power storage.

What does all that mean? It means that we could have an electric car that drives like a Porsche, but gets gas milelage to compete with a motorcycle.

A capacitor can provide a lot of current in a hurry, and an electric motor can provide a lot of torque (mechanical force) if it’s got a supply of current. The Mitsubishi concept car uses lithium ion batteries to augment its engine in this way. The technology isn’t all here yet- but just wait. If you’ve got any foresight at all, you’ll think about what’s possible, and not what’s just around that next corner.

And… that was definitely a ramblin’ post.