Resources

Here are things that I find interesting or helpful, or both: 

www.blender.org

     Blender is a free, full-featured, open source 3D suite. It has some amazing tools, and with a little work, you can make some pretty neat things. (projectredwall.blogspot.com...)

https://ninite.com/
    Ninite is a great website if you want to do a batch install of a selection of common programs.
    Sadly it only works on Windows now.

www.grooveshark.com
    Grooveshark is a great free music streaming site with good variety and quality.
Stay away from their HTML5 version though. Last I checked it was awful.
The flash version is pretty good though. Grooveshark finally shut down :(

www.pcpartpicker.com
    Fun website if you like building computers. Targeted at desktop users, but there's a little bit of server class hardware on there too. You can also see price trends for the items you choose.

www.microcenter.com
    Nothing special about the website, but it's really nice having the store nearby.
They have the absolute best prices on CPU's, and their motherboard combos are really good too. They've also been expanding into the DIY market some, they carry Raspberry Pi's, Arduinos, and Intel boards. They even have a model rocket section!

www.servocity.com
    Not cheap, but if you can afford it they have some really nice aluminum channel for building. Servo mounts, gears, driveshafts, gear chains, etc. Erector set on steroids.

http://www.freenas.org/
    FreeBSD based OS for file servers.
I wasn't able to figure out how to set all the user permissions like I wanted when I was using it, but it keeps improving, and for a home NAS it could work pretty nicely. ZFS filesystem too.

www.dreamspark.com
    Students: Free Microsoft software.

http://expresspcb.com/
    Schematic and PCB design software. This is what I use. Nothing fancy, but it does the job and it's free.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/jpegview/
    Nice light photo viewer.

http://www.magiclantern.fm/
    For the Canon camera owners, this is a really cool website. RAW video on a 5D MKII(I)! Lots of added functionality. And if you do the raw video this is a nice viewer/converter: http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=9560.0

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
    Free video editor. It's serious about the minimum specs though. While not strictly required, you should have at least 16GB of RAM and a good GPU for this.

http://powernotebooks.com/
    A good place to look for a new laptop. Some of the best prices, and lots of options.

http://billfitzmaurice.com/
    Horn loaded speaker website. Some really good info on there about sound in general too. I have a pair of the DR 250 and Titan 48 speakers, and I'm pretty happy with them.

This may be updated as I come across / remember other things.

Spring Break!

Hooray for Spring Break!
Even if it's only a week :(

None the less, I have plenty to do. (In addition to homework...)

(One of) My big projects for this week:

It's starting to make sense :)
This is a great mixer.
If everything goes well, it gets installed this week. Then I have to document and explain the new system. Should be fun, I've been working towards this for a while now, and I think it will significantly improve the church's audio system.

I also have a update on the speaker. I finished typing everything out, and then something weird happened and it all got deleted... So that should be coming soon, when I feel like typing it again.

It's hard to realize just how connected I am at college. It's just been a few days, and I'm already starting to miss some of my friends. On the other hand, I have enough to catch up on it's not such a bad thing. (my to-do list is about a page long, written in paragraph form...)

In unrelated news, I really like working with HDPE plastic. It machines very nicely, it's easy to work with, and finishes decently. I got about a 12" sheet a while back from onlinemetals.com, (good place for raw materials) and was able to use a scrap from that to hand make a replacement part for an old camera, but that's a different story.
Every time I work on something round like that I think I should make a lathe sometime. I've got a wonderful 3hp motor sitting around, and I could build a controller easily, but the chucks are quite expensive last I looked. GMU is planning a hackerspace, and I'm really looking forward to that. No timeline yet though. I put in a good number of suggestions for it :)
I like working with my hands. With (a lot of) luck, my speaker will be finished this week, and I can build the cabinet for a custom guitar amp I've been asked to make. If you're curious, I'm going to try the XF 212. It should be a fairly easy build, (all straight cuts) after what I've been doing. The custom electronics are a different matter. I have an idea of what I want to do, but I'm still working on it. All I really know at this point is that it will be a tube amp, and I want to try this: http://tubelab.com/articles/circuits/power-drive/ I built the SSE (Simple Single Ended) amplifier for a science fair project a few years back, and I still have it. I might use it on this project with an input transformer to drive the powerdrive board. I'll need to figure out power though. good HV transformers are expensive. I'll have to see if I can find a suitable one in my collection.

Anyway, more soon.

Blender

Blender is amazing! Here's their 2013 demo reel which should serve well as inspiration:

Every year it just gets better!

Default Programs

When I install a new operating system, there is usually a set of default programs I want to install. Since I do this fairly frequently, (this may not be such a problem for many people!) it's nice when a distribution comes with most of the software I want so I don't have to go through a lot of installations. This is most noticeable on Windows, but many Linux distros come with a minimum of software too.

Enter Ninite!

What this website does is provide a single installation file to install multiple programs. You just select the programs you want, download the file, and install once!

Also, one of the really annoying aspects of some software installers is that they try to to install lots of junk software by default. (ASK toolbar for example) This website not only runs the installer automatically, it says no to the surplus extras!

It also detects whether the OS is 32 or 64 bit, and installs the right program version.

Want to update all the programs? Just run the file again! No matter when you made the installation file, all the programs will be up to date when they are installed.

Here are most of the Windows programs I like to install: (hyperlink)

Here's a file with most of the Linux programs I generally install (hyperlink)

If I remember I'll make a full list at some point.

Transistor software

Note to self (and all interested):

Here's a piece of software that looks like it could be quite useful: http://en.transistoramp.de/

It works fine running on WINE too.

Whole room projection

Every once in a while, Microsoft does come out with some neat things, and this is one of them:

Seen here: http://www.redsharknews.com/technology/item/381-will-the-xbox-720-have-surround-video

It looks like a really cool idea, if they can get it to work and to market.

Video Editing

Well, since I have access to two HDSLR's with a manfrotto video tripod/head, and a 24bit/96KHz four channel audio recorder, I figure that if I'm going to be putting them to good use I needed some better software. I can use apple's imovie, which is pretty good for most basic things, but if I wanted to do chroma keying, DVD menus without the imovie logo, 3D transform, etc. I needed something else. I've looked around for a good free video editior, Linux or Windows, but without much luck. I found a few that look promising for linux, but either they are too hard to use, or don't have enough features. One works nicely, but puts a running timestamp over the top quarter of the video. I decided to just buy a video editor for windows. The one I bought was from Magix. The software was their Movie edit Pro MX Premium bundle with Red Giant Magic Bullet Quick Looks, NewBlue FX light blends, and ProDad Vitascene 2. The Red giant and ProDad effects work great, but I'm having trouble activating the NewBlue FX. The rest of the program is working very nicely, and the simple addition of chroma keying adds so many more possibilities! Another program that looks like it would be worth getting is their Reallusion iClone 4 Standard + Virtual Studio Vol.1. (FYI not happening anytime soon) I think I can do all the same things in Blender, but it will probably be a lot more work. If I remember I will post more about blender later. It's an amazing program.