Top ten in 200 fly!

At the November open meet I placed in the top ten with a final time of 2:17.19! Here is the final result with my split times;


Zachary Yarashus  (15)  M
2:17.19Y BB F #  30B Male 15 & Over 200 Fly  place: 9 with a drop of 7.63 seconds from last swum time.
Splits:
29.49   34.77   36.05   36.88

Blender release logs

I found the release logs for blender, and it's rather interesting going through and seeing when they added what features. It's really an amazing program. It seems to be able to do anything you can think of if you can just figure out how. Here's a link;

The current version is 2.60a.

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/

Note; the picture and the link below are not the same link.

Jupiter and three moons with binoculars!

Last night Jupiter was so bright that even right next to a very bright moon I could see not only Jupiter but three of its moons with binoculars! Two were reasonably clear, but the third was on the other side of Jupiter, and was very faint. I was using these binoculars just handheld from our front porch. As the person who sent out an e-mail about it said, it would have been nice to have a decent telescope, but it was still amazing that it was so close to the moon, and was still so bright.

Banjo update

I am making progress again on the banjos. I think I have a way to make the banjo head without all that hardware, which while it may look interesting is harder to get right and adds more complication (which I could really do without) It was suggested to my by one of my friends from church, and the way it works is simply to fasten/glue a plastic skin to the metal ring, and then bake it to shrink the plastic to tighten it. It of course requires that the plastic you are using shrink when it is heated, and that it is heated more or less evenly. I have tried it, and it works very well so far, now all I need to do is to see if it can hold the tension of the bridge when it is tuned.
Here is a sound sample of me tapping the head to see how tight it is.

I have my doubts whether it will hold up under strain, the reason being that the two head pieces are metal and plastic, and are glued with wood glue. I wasn't trying to make a permanant version, just to test, but it is holding much better than I thought it would.

Photos will come later.

Swim meet results

2011 PVS November Open - Meet Sheet

Event Info for Zachary Yarashus	Seed Time	Heat	Lane	Official Time	Change	Standard Met	Goal Cut
Event 30B Boys 200 Fly SCY Indiv Timed Finals	2:24.82	4	2	2:17.19	-7.63	BB	2:24.49 for BB
Event 34B Boys 50 Free SCY Indiv Timed Finals	0:26.50	8	8	0:26.15	-0.35	BB	0:27.39 for BB
Event 36B Boys 200 Medley SCY Indiv Timed Finals	2:33.38	5	4	2:19.99	-13.39	BB	2:26.39 for BB
Event 38B Boys 100 Back SCY Indiv Timed Finals	1:08.17	6	6	1:04.04	-4.13	BB	1:06.19 for BB

Created by iSwimTimes • The iPhone Swim Log App • http://www.go2telecom.net

I think I need to work on the formatting before posting it to my blog...

I was hoping to make an A time in something, but I think this is still pretty good.

Now that is a rocket!

http://ddeville.com/derek/Qu8k.html

Top ten in 1000 SCY free!

Tonight I made the top ten in the 1000 free!
It was my first time swimming it, and my time was 11:44.0.
It's 2315, and I'm getting up at 0500 tomorrow to go swim again!

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory play is now on YouTube!

SawStop

Now just how do they do that?
Stopping the blade is one problem, when to stop the blade is a whole different matter!

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.

Courageous, the movie

Mozart makes kids smart

I know this piano piece!