Sean Colyer - PrometheusX

I realize I haven’t written much of anything lately, but things have still been going on..

I’ve spent a lot of time working, this is good because I get money, this is also bad because it is quite time consuming. However, I have had enough time to do some interesting things.

I went to New York last weekend, which was a great trip. The Chinatown bus however is becoming a less pleasant experience. Since gas has gone over $4/gallon, apparently the buses are becoming increasingly swamped which resulted in my friends and I not getting a seat on our originally scheduled bus. The way home on Sunday evening was quite good. There has been a lot of talk of new buses ( www.boltbus.com and www.megabus.com are two of the big ones ) that offer $1 rides or other gimmicks — however this appears to be only if you book signifigantly in advance, which in my mind defeats a large part of the convenience of Chinatown buses which provide cheap ($35 ROUND TRIP DC->NYC) spontaneous tickets.. I’ve attached a picture from the top of the Met, one of the best views of NYC.

So, I’m sure there are many other runners out there who would be disappointed that a treadmill cuts off after a certain time (particularly one runner I recently read about who was attempting to break a treadmill marathon time…), but I have a new found appreciation for the cut off. My treadmill cuts off after 30 minutes, and when you get that thing moving (Around 9 or higher speed), it’ll start sounding quite loud.. It’s somewhere between an econobox trying to drive the hills in San Fransisco and a jet preparing for takeoff, either way it sounds like its trying — almost as hard as I am. After you’ve been running hard on it for awhile and it cuts off at 30 minutes it gives up and cuts off. I realize it is programmed to do this, but it still provides me satisfaction, perhaps more than it should.

I’ve just posted the newest version of GAMVL. It now has YouTube support (searches top 20 hits on YouTube) and sorts the results alphabetically. Otherwise there are no major changes that most people would notice.
As noted on the page, I’ve slightly improved Linux support but it’s still iffy (I’d recommend using as little desktop acceleration as possible if using Linux).

I saw Mark Warner the other day (former Virginia governor), and shook his hand. He was very charismatic and a good speaker. I am confident he will be a good person to have in the Senate for the entire US.

Jay-Z and Beyonce got married recently (both are very talented artists) — and I saw an article mentioning that they sang both duets and solos at their wedding.  I really want to know if Jay-Z sang 99 Problems.

Also, I’ve been a growing fan of DC based Wale, I think he’s gonna make it, check him out.  He sounds a lot like Lupe Fiasco. He’s performing at Rock the Bells, which I went to last year but probably am not gonna make it to again this year..

I was interested in waste, and decided to see how well it would work on my Mac using wxWidgets. Answer: not very well.  The source didn’t compile, it ended up needing another import line to compile properly and then when it did the windows wouldn’t focus and allow them to be clicked.  I tried Ubuntu, with the import fixed the program compiled and ran but any operation resulted in a seg fault — not sure what’s going on here but perhaps I’ll try to work on it when I get some time.

I realized the other day that most websites had a major vulnerability in that while sending passwords may be secure they do not secure cookies, therefore allowing the entire network to see the cookie traffic. I tested it out and successfully duplicated one of my own sessions. I went on to realize that this is called Sidejacking and was covered at the Black Hat conference last year.

I have not put much work into any of my projects on this page. I’m looking into acquiring another laptop which I can use exclusively for development and my side projects, hopefully that will surface soon.

I’ve been pretty busy — mostly with school stuff. Projects have been hitting hard as the semester winds down.  Made a digital thermometer in electronics, kind of cool.  We had a CS project that was to create a kind of online game, but really more closely resembles a glorified IRC.

I was inspired by NSA@Home and other similar projects to start learning about FPGA’s.  I got a Nexys 2 to try out. Verilog is the programming language of choice for FGPA’s and has taken a little getting used to.  I’ve been too busy to make real strides with it, but hopefully when I have more time, something interesting will come of it.

Today, I bought a motorcycle.  It’s a 1996 Honda CBR F3 600.  I’m pretty psyched about it, I’ve been wanting a bike for a long time and finally have one.  I have my license already but I definitely need some more practice… PICTURES are posted in a gallery..

Unfortunately, I also washed my car today for the first time in months.  This is unfortunate  because it (inevitably) proceeded to downpour due to a thunderstorm.

As you might have noticed, I’m in the process of reworking my page layout. I hope to achieve a slightly more intuitive interface with better handling of pictures and permanent subpages.

I have added pages for GAMVL and another project, jab2web, that I have been working. Pages are available either at the top of the page or in the sidebar. I will try to add more of what I’ve been working on to these when I get a chance.

Pictures are similar, they will now be accessible either at the top of the page or the sidebar, I hope to also include some picture functionality in posts but haven’t really had a lot of time to get it to the way I would like.

Feel free to let me know how you think it’s going or anything else I should add while I’ve been working at it.

So, I just got back from Mexico for our spring break. It was lots of fun and coming home I already miss 80 some degrees, blue water, and lots to do. I just went with a couple of friends and it was a nice break from school.We saw the ruins of Tulum which was a Mayan fortress of sorts. It was pretty cool and had an awesome cliff overlook to some beautiful Caribbean water. We went snorkeling and jet skiing on a different day which of course was pretty fun and spent a lot of time lying around on the beach. I wish I could go back sooner than later.

This post is inspired by Tommy Murphy’s post of the same name, inspired by the Engineering School t-shirts… Lately there have been some major communications issues and general items that make little to no sense.

First, I shall start off with the bathroom situation in our main building — check out the attached pictures. You will notice that there are two women’s bathrooms RIGHT next to each other, literally, and a sign (which is hard to depict) on the wall which says that the mens rooms are downstairs.. Thanks.

Second, is my ECE lab reports. The lab is completed with partners. We received guidelines with what is expected in the lab report, where it is nowhere indicated that the report is done individually and not with your partner who you did the whole lab. A section of the guidelines say
“· Names of group members

· Date on which the experiment was performed

· Signed pledge

/Pledge and Sign: “On our honor, we have neither given nor received unauthorized assistance on this report nor have in any way falsified or plagiarized experimental data.”/”
Which implies to me that WE having not received unauthorized assistance on this REPORT implied in fact that WE had done the report. Luckily, my TA was so gracious as allow me to redo the lab report by the next day, not allowing it to go for the first report, but rather rewriting a new report overnight.

Lastly, in my CS class (this is what Tommy posted about orginally) our assignment for writing a report about an assignment we just did said
“We really think you it will take one one-and-a-half pages at most to do this. If you find yourself writing more than that, try to make explain it more briefly. Also, it’s important for this class that you communicate clearly and concisely, and that padding reports or documents with extra words makes for bad written communication.”
I’m not sure which free translator was used from what language but the irony is quite amusing..

As noted below, I have started a small project. It is known as GAMVL, Get AOL Music Videos Leech, which is powered by the GAMV, Get AOL Music Videos, search at fernyb.net. I plan to stop posting this here and set up a separate page for this and perhaps real version control if I get ambitious..

Distributed under GPL V2.0

This version updates a number of bug fixes and adds some functionality. Now it includes PS3 transcoding support, however as VLC is limited in its divx transcoding, it uses mpeg2. A progress bar for downloads was added. The old instructions still apply:

1. Unzip the binary (Or run the source if you have python/wxPython installed)
2. Run GAMVL.app / GAMVL.exe depending on your system
3. Select the Directory you would like to save music videos to
4. Search and check off the desired items
5. Check the iPod/PS3 encoding box if you wish to view these videos on your device. NOTE: VLC must be installed, preferably the NEWEST version, for this to function properly, if you have it installed in a non-default location or are running a different operating system, select the “Set VLC Location” from the file menu bar to find the proper file.
6. If you select iPod/PS3 encoding and desire to keep both the source and iPod video files, check the box that appears.
7. hit Go/Queue!
8. Wait for them to finish, and enjoy.

Please leave comments with any problems, suggestions, appreciation, etc..

Here is the source code.

Here is a Mac OS X binary

Here is a Windows binary

We had our first good snow of the season yesterday We got ~4 inches which was certainly nice. I went by the Rotunda to take pictures, but I only had my cell at the time so the pictures aren’t that great, but still look good The lens started to fog up a bit, I didn’t notice until I had already left though.
On a related note, the ski team canceled practice because of the snow. I’m not kidding.

This post introduces a small project I started yesterday. Yesterday, being done with exams I decided to write a little program. Based on the search at fernyb.net, I decided to write a user interface to make this process at least in my mind, more useful. Thus was born GAMVL (Get AOL Music Videos Leech), with the GAMV being the search used.

I wrote the program in python using wxPython as the gui and urllib2 to search for the videos and acquire them.

Distributed under GPL V2.0

To operate the program:

1. Unzip the binary (Or run the source if you have python/wxPython installed)
2. Run GAMVL.app / GAMVL.exe depending on your system
3. Select the Directory you would like to save music videos to
4. Search and check off the desired items
5. Check the iPod encoding box if you wish to view these videos on your ipod. NOTE: VLC must be installed for this to function properly, if you have it installed in a non-default location or are running a different operating system, select the “Set VLC Location” from the file menu bar to find the proper file.
6. If you select iPod encoding and desire to keep both the source and iPod video files, check the box that appears.
7. hit Go/Queue!
8. Wait for them to finish, and enjoy.

Notes: You can search and add more videos while some are going. The status bar at the bottom doesn’t properly indicate when an operation has finished so it is best to check the actual files. Transcoding into iPod format is rather strenuous on the computer, so the computer may slow down and fans start to spin faster. An average video is ~30mb.
If you’re having trouble getting trasncoding to work, make sure your VLC is the newest version available.

Update (12-19-07): I realized there was a problem with how multi-threading of VLC so changed that. Unfortunately, this doesnt fully work under windows yet but Mac/others should be able to take advantage of it

Here is the source code.

Here is a Mac OS X binary

Here is a Windows binary

Here is the link to the older files

So I realize that I have not posted in a long time .. oops!I shall start off with my car. Someone hit my car long ago, and I had been meaning to fix it up and upgrade from the 95 style front end to the newer 1998+ front end. Finally, this summer I took the opportunity to do it and am pretty pleased with the results.Only afterward did I discover that I had a firebird formula front bumper and Firebird Trans Am pieces for everything else which has led to some extra space between the bumper and the hood which I am not satisifed with, but have not yet found an adequate solution for.The process took several weeks, more than a few trips to the hardware store, and help from my dad but it was finally completed. My garage was so gracefully transformed from a standard garage into a makeshift paint booth, the pieces were all sanded, primed painted, and put into position, until finally the car came out looking much better.

As you probably know, I am going off to Europe for the next few weeks with my brother, Matt. We will visit Barcelona, London, Paris, Rome and Venice.I will have pretty limited access to the internet, but feel free to write me an email or leave a facebook message (I would love to hear from you) or whatever, I’ll try to check them periodically. I think I will be on enough to upload pictures here periodically so check back frequently for updates :)Hasta Luego. A piu tardi. A bientot. See you later

I realize I haven’t written on here for awhile so here it goes..

I went to Boston a few weeks ago to visit Matt before he graduates. It was a really fun time — we saw the Red Sox come back in the bottom of the 8th to hit 5 runs and take the lead as Fenway went crazy. It was unbelievable. It was nice to visit Boston and luckily I didn’t have too much homework that weekend which made the trip even more enjoyable.

After coming back to school, the work was pretty busy for awhile and now I’m finishing up my finals — I’m more than halfway done with them and am moving home at the end of this week. It’s hard to believe that a year (well, a school year) has gone by already. Looking back on it it’s been a good year. It is a lot of work, often unrewarding, to follow the engineering path, but it has been a good year.

I am ready for summer. Unfortunately, dad has let my car go out of inspection but it will be nice to have it again. I’m very excited to go to Europe and should work more on plans for that soon…

I realize I never put pictures up from Spring Break so some of those are included here. Our seats for the Wizards were really far away — though the zoom on my camera at times makes it look like we had much better seats than we actually did.

In Boston, Matt and I found random stick-your-head-in-the-hole cardboard photo things in the basement of the Boston public library randomly? So we decided to take full advantage of course. The Red Sox were wearing green in tribute to Red Auerbach, the famous coach of the Celtics.