This morning Yahweh told me, rather reminded me, that I need to start writing things down. A few days ago Alisa started coughing especially at night.  Kayla reminded me of it last night, so I'm praying for Alisa now.  We have a GOD that cares about us and answers prayers.  I want to start logging the prayers we have and those answered for review and praise in the future.  He hears and answers us!  Praise Yah!

So, now we hear that the government is using very inaccurate numbers when it reports the nations GDP!  This type of incompetence has no excuse.  GDP is supposed to represent the combined productivity and wealth of the nation.  When the US cannot be trusted to report it's own numbers to the world, confidence in our monetary system is sure to plummet.  Think about what we are tell the world.  We are now saying that the US, the country that used to be the world's greatest economy, is so ashamed of what we've done, that we are now lying about our own financial status.  Not so long ago the fed chairman was very vocal about the need to maintain confidence in the us dollar.  Hmmm, think about it a minute.  If you were about to invest in a foreign economy and just go the news that they were lying about their production, would you invest your hard earn assets into that country?  The New York Times ran an article discussing how we are MISREPORTING the US GDP by ignoring the fact that companies are outsourcing work overseas!  OK, so now we know that we are NOT actually producing much of anything and all our jobs are going overseas, but we are lying to ourselves and the rest of the world about our own productivity.  The country is now full people that want to work, but cannot find jobs.  It now seems the real jobless rate may be as high as 17%.  Get ready my fellow Americans.  If you think we are pulling out of this depression, if you are betting financially on a quick recovery you are about to get burned.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/business/economy/09econ.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&ref=business&adxnnlx=1257778806-1tAfXz2HKH0IQ2tIQakAtA

These books are a great start into the linear algebra, planning and motion control of robots.  A firm grasp of these subjects will allow you to understand how to program robots that are location aware and able to explore their environments.

The elusive SOS and other low level debugging tools explained.

http://www.vistarwebtech.com/vistarwebtech/Intelligent/

When I bought the HP 2140 one of my goals was to learn how to interface with the built in accelerometer.  What a neat tool device to use for a variety of applications.  For instance, how about dead reckoning of location for the device?  This could be done with or without GPS.  Very cool! 

Anyway I?ve found out that the device is made by ST and is the model number LIS3LV02DL.  Here?s a link to the application notes http://www.st.com/stonline/products/literature/an/12441.pdf

And someone who wrote a Code project article on interacting with with one over a com port? http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/STMemsParser.aspx?msg=3072098.

More to come as I learn to interface to the one on the 2140.

Here?s a great little script for importing CSV data into Blender.  Talk about useful!

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=103587

Blender Source Pack (300MB) http://www.blendernation.com/mike-pans-blender-source-file-pack/

Blender Artists http://blenderartists.org/cms/content/view/12/30/

Game Engine Tutorial http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Game_Engine/BSoD

I found this great little timer tool.  It let?s you create and customize all types of timers.  I use it for tracking the time I work on a project, to measure the performance of applications I build, to notify me when an ebay item auction is ending and more. It can count up/down sound an alarm and more.

Enjoy :)

http://www.timeleft.info/

No more empty space?

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=10792&st=0&p=106120&#entry106120

Faq for online server http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=10792

Map of others online.  http://xfsd.ansorg-web.de/fsdmap/

Flight Plans http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?autocom=downloads&showcat=4

Scenery DSF : http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?autocom=downloads&showcat=80

Map of Scenery : http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=30718

Aircraft : http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?autocom=downloads&showcat=87

Flight School : http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showforum=33

Flight Plans : http://lemon.x10hosting.com/fpd/

This is a very nice LGPL SDK for projecting geospatial objects to a 2-D space. Written for .net.  A geospatial library handles the translation of geo based vector data into it?s 2-Dimensional representation.  This allows you to render your own maps from vector data in different projections.  What this library does is very similar to what happens when a 3-Model is rendered unto the 2-D screen by a 3-D rendering engine, only this is for map data.

Sharp Map  

Free Geo Spatial data is available from www.openstreetmap.org.  Now you have everything you need to build your own Google maps, or virtual earth replacement.  (Well, that and about about 100,000 hours of developer time :)

This is how you calculate the distance between two points on on the earth.

Haversine formula:  (^  = Change in)

R = earth?s radius (mean radius = 6,371km)
^lat = lat₂- lat₁
^long = long₂- long₁
a = sin^2(^lat/2) + cos(lat₁).cos(lat₂).sin^2(^long/2)
c = 2.atan2(Sqrt(a), Sqrt((1-a)))
d = R.c

(Note that angles need to be in radians to pass to trig functions).

JavaScript:

var R = 6371; // km
var dLat = (lat2-lat1).toRad();
var dLon = (lon2-lon1).toRad();
var a = Math.sin(dLat/2) * Math.sin(dLat/2) +
        Math.cos(lat1.toRad()) * Math.cos(lat2.toRad()) *
        Math.sin(dLon/2) * Math.sin(dLon/2);
var c = 2 * Math.atan2(Math.sqrt(a), Math.sqrt(1-a));
var d = R * c;

More info (including bearing)