Starting as of now, I’m seriously evaluating any new future events, conventions, meetings and such. I’ve got to start concentrating on what is important to me and where I want to spend my time. Before it was all about quantity. Now that the quantity is exceeding time available, it’s time to focus on quality. Also, it was recently pointed out that I have hardly any free time. That has awakened me to what all I have going on and that I need to lighten up my schedule. It’s pretty bad when you have to schedule free time a week or more in advance, even if it’s just to sit down and play a video game.  Not to mention being able to go out from time to time.

I’m not looking at canceling anything at the moment. Anything new, expanded, or coming up in 2015 is going be closely scrutinized to see if it fits within my Goals. Those Goals are still being defined. Once the list is complete, they should help guide me to what and where I will be directing my efforts. Anything that doesn’t fit-in with those goals will fall off or not added to my already full calendar.

Luckily, I’m looking at all of this voluntarily this time. About 4 or 5 years ago I was overwhelmed and felt I was spinning my wheels. It took its toll and I (briefly) decided to drop EVERYTHING I was doing. I had to look closely to what caused me to stop and what made the most sense to continue. Of course I’ve added more to my plate over the years after that point. Guess I’m a glutton for punishment.

As much as I hate that I’ll be missing events, I love the fact that there are starting to be TOO MANY geeky things to do in Arkansas. About 5 years ago I couldn’t say that. Events & Conventions are starting to conflict on my calendar. There’s been times where hard choices had to be made for what I wanted to do and go. And that’s fine.

Another thing I’ve been fighting is too many ideas/projects that has bogged me down and made me mad at myself for spinning my wheels. I realized I’m not able to be able to do them all. Some of these ideas I’d still like to see happen. Going to need to share them out. Maybe other people will pick them up and run with them. Then I might get to get the benefits of the ideas without having to put all the time into them. This isn’t something easy for me. My ego isn’t wanting to let go of them. I wanted my name tied to them, but, barely anything has been getting accomplished. The more I have going on, the less I want to sit down and do them. These ideas might blossom into something bigger/better than I originally thought about if I get them out there for someone else to work on. Then again, they might just die on the vine. Better that than having them rot inside my brain and clogging up the works.

A while back I ranted about Radio Shack pretty much being worthless.  While this is still almost the case; it’s gotten better. They’re carrying Arduinos, and, from what I heard, Raspberry Pis. Their component selection is as bad as ever though.

Speaking of Raspberry Pis, we’re working on another Raspberry Pi Bake Off in March 2014. I had to adjust my plans for an upcoming convention to make this work out.
I’ve been constantly working on various projects to get games and other programs to work on the Pi with varying success. I’ve gotten Daphne to work on there. It runs pretty slow since I’m not using any hardware acceleration. Hopefully I can figure out how to get it working. The creator of Daphne has gotten it to work with acceleration, but, I believe, he is not sharing how or the source code.
openArcade has been kind-of on hold. Been waiting on progress of a few games and other OpenGL ES ports. I’m working my way back to it slowly, but I’m beginning to see it on the horizon. With the Bake Off coming up in a few months, the need to get back to it is increasing.

I’ve been working on several other projects mostly involving Starship Bridge Simulators such as Artemis SBS and Space-Nerds-in-Space. I’ve been running Artemis at several of the conventions in the state as well as a few outside. I also started a forum for discussing not only Artemis but all multi-player Bridge Sims.
I’m hoping to see a SBS working wholly on the Raspberry Pi without any other computer hardware. Been evaluating different ways to get it to work, but haven’t decided on one.

It’s been crazy busy this last year. Mostly I’ve done it to myself. Keeping busy drives away the boredom and any depression.

Hopefully it won’t be another year before I get back to posting on here. Don’t hold your breath though.

Thursday March 14 is Pi Day. (March 14 = 3-14. Pi = 3.14)

Raspberry Pi Bake-off is happening on Pi Day from 6PM – 9PM at Hendrix College Student Life and Technology Center in Conway, AR

More information and Free Registration at http://raspberrypibakeoff.eventbrite.com

Check out the videos from Arkansas TV Stations KTHV and KATV talking about the Raspberry Pi and the Bake-Off.

Friendica is pretty cool so far. Need to do some more testing before I release the install on my server into the wild.

Apparently, RadioShack® no longer knows what a “radio shack” is supposed to be. Wikipedia lists Radio shacks as ‘a slang term for a room or structure for housing radio equipment.’ RadioShack® doesn’t even carry Radios anymore, Ham or otherwise. I don’t even think you can even get an FM Radio there now days, much less a radio scanner. I’m glad they got rid of the slogan “You got questions, we got answers” as usually for me it is “You got questions, we got blank stares”. It’s hard to find the right resistors lately at their stores. About half the stuff I look for they either no longer carry or are out of stock, and usually don’t refill it. Cell phones are what they push now days.

Best Buy® (or as I call it: BuyMore) sales people haven’t a clue. Or at least most of them. I was looking at Blu-Ray players a while back and a “sales associate” came up asking me if I needed help. I told him I was looking for Blu-Ray players that had wired ethernet, Netflix and hopefully Divx support. I don’t like running things wireless and I couldn’t get thru to him that wireless can be unstable. I was also looking for one with composite outputs so I could run it on my old non-digital CRT TV. He couldn’t fathom that I wanted to hook up a Blu-Ray player to my old TV. I know it won’t show up as HD on a non-HD TV, and I told him that. I want to build up my setup slowly and not jump in with both feet. He then started to try to get me to get a Best Buy credit card… ugh.

Android

I picked up a Samsung Captivate (Galaxy S) phone a few weeks ago. It came stock with Android 2.1. 2.2 was the newest at the time (2.3 was just released today), and of course AT&T/Samsung is being slow on releasing the update in the USA. There was a slowdown on the GPS, so I decided to root it and put in a 3rd-party patch. I filled up the phone’s primary storage when trying to over-write the files to fix the issue. This caused the phone to not boot-up properly. Luckily there was a how-to out on the Tubes to fix it. So I restored the phone after a few tries. I figured since I when as far as fixing the phone, I should be able to upgrade it to a community ROM of Android 2.2. I re-rooted the phone and installed a couple of apps. After downloading and putting the new ROM on the phone, I then rebooted the phone into it’s restore mode and loaded the new program to install the fresh RPM. This took about 4-5 minutes, a bit longer than I thought. I thought I hosed the phone again. Then it started talking. Told me it loaded the 1st & 2nd stage of the OS. It finally came up to Cognitive 2.2beta.
I’m loving the phone so far. The GPS could get its lock a bit faster, but, I’m still pleased with it. I got most of the apps I had on my iPhone 3gs. And some things that even the iPhone can’t do. I’ve got Python installed and will soon be making some scripts to do some home automation as soon as I get the hardware. The mobile wireless AP is nice too.

Twitter

I finally got WordPress to update Twitter. After fighting an authentication issue with the Dev site. I got WP to talk to oAuth. Posts should now be appearing on Twitter.

I installed a Minecraft server on Saturday at CGC Hobbies & LAN Center, so I bit-the-bullet and purchased an account on Minecraft.net. I’ve seen many people play it at CGC and I messed with ManicDigger a few weeks ago, so I went ahead and did it.

I logged on last night to test the connection to the server, and, the game was thrashing the heck out of my PC. It ate up 110-180% of my CPU for some reason (this is how Linux reports multiple cores). Took 512mb of my ram too (out of 1gb). CPU temp was the highest I’ve seen so far. My machine isn’t the most top-of-the-line computer, but, that’s a bit much. I wish they didn’t write this stuff in Java. Seems like every java app I’ve seen just kills computers.

The game is still a bit buggy, but still playable and very enjoyable.

I’d never think I’d say there’s too much to do, but, this month is crazy with geeky stuff going on in and around Arkansas.

Weekend of Oct 16

In Arkansas

• pyArkansas
• Central AR Model RR Club Open House
• Central AR Roller Derby Double Header
• Halloween Spookfest

Oct 23

• Burlesque On The Go-Go

Oct 28

• Rifftrax LIVE: House on Haunted Hill

Weekend of Oct 30

In Arkansas

• Conway AR Zombie Walk
• Little Rock Comic Con
• 1st Annual Syndicate Zombie walk

Outside of Arkansas

• Anime Karnival’s Tokyo Shop of Horrors (Memphis, TN)
• Oklacon (OK)
• Oni-Con (TX)

These events don’t count the last couple of weeks, there were many things going on then too.

All these events are from the Arkansas Geek Central event calendar. Make sure you check out the site as it’s constantly having events added.

War is coming.

The weather is really nice, so, I guess it’s time to go brave the Evil Day Star and do some fighting. Saturday, October 2, 2010 is the Nerf War. Bring your Nerf guns (and clones) to Laurel Park in Conway, AR at 10:00am.

Leave the Nerf swords, maces, etc at home. Only weapons compatible with Nerf ammo are allowed.

I’ll will be bringing my Lazer Tag guns along too. If it’s too windy we’ll switch to those.

I have re-enabled the Arkansas Geek Central Website. I also created a Facebook page and linked Identi.ca & Twitter to it as well. I’ve been posting like crazy on the website with all the upcoming events that I can find for Arkansas on the main page as well as the Calendar. Surrounding states aren’t being left out either. TN, MS, MO, TX, LA, and OK events are being added as I find them.