Gregarius » Superpositioned

Superpositioned

Write your Congressman!!

Posted: September 25th, 2008, 1:19pm CDT

Do you think Bush’s $700 billion bail-out plan is a load of bull? If you do and you are an American, then it is time to act! Just last week our President, his advisors, and our financial leaders were still covering up the problems. $700 billion issues do not materialize in less than a week. We should be investigating fraud. Instead, the financial barons are working a plan to distribute their losses among the US taxpayer. This is your time to stand up.

Right now, the website for the House of Representatives is being hammered by people like us. People who want their congressman to know that they will no longer accept this tyranny. Join in the fight. Let your voices be heard, if you can manage to access the site… [house.gov]
Superposition.com Revamped

Posted: September 18th, 2008, 4:37pm CDT

I finally changed to a theme that isn’t broken. I finally fixed the comments. I finally updated to the latest Typo.

I may write some new content soon. I would like to write a few things about the Chevy Volt. I may post a few more challenges. I do have a small project going, but it is related more to physics and programming.

My PhD pursual is almost over. (I last posted a couple months prior to confirmation of my Masters.) Unfortunately, education will be keeping my engineering cells busy for the next few months. After that there will be moving and the real world, again…
Another RCX-based balancer

Posted: November 13th, 2006, 10:38am CST

I’m a sucker for interesting robots. Especially if they are built out of Legos. Everybody loves the Legway, but you have to admit that the concept is overly simplistic. The real challenge is building the system around the limited resources of Lego’s RCX.

Now meet another balancing robot courtesy of Maurits Kooiman on Lugnet. This one balances on one wheel and apparently uses two RCX bricks and four sensors along with three tires to maintain balance on the axis perpendicular to its unicycle. The robot balances on the main axis by directly powering the wheel. The axis perpendicular to its unicycle is balanced by the set of rotating tires. The fourth tire seems to be a freely swingy pendulum, but it may in fact be controlled by yet another motor. Check out the video!
Another RCX-based balancer

Posted: November 13th, 2006, 10:38am CST

I’m a sucker for interesting robots. Especially if they are built out of Legos. Everybody loves the Legway, but you have to admit that the concept is overly simplistic. The real challenge is building the system around the limited resources of Lego’s RCX.

Now meet another balancing robot courtesy of Maurits Kooiman on Lugnet. This one balances on one wheel and apparently uses two RCX bricks and four sensors along with three tires to maintain balance on the axis perpendicular to its unicycle. The robot balances on the main axis by directly powering the wheel. The axis perpendicular to its unicycle is balanced by the set of rotating tires. The fourth tire seems to be a freely swingy pendulum, but it may in fact be controlled by yet another motor. Check out the video!
Finally a new layout!

Posted: November 11th, 2006, 6:56pm CST
I officially declare this site back in action! I been ignoring it for too long. Over the past week, I have updated Typo and designed a new layout. This is not the completely final version, though. The header/logo and advertisements need some work. The previous layout performed very well in that department. Hopefully this layout will make up for the difference by attracting more repeat visitors.

As you can see, the new layout is significantly better on the eyes. Unfortunately, it has some issues with Internet Explorer 6. Hopefully I can figure out what is causing the extra space to appear. Here is a quick list of the updates:
1. Windows Vista Typefaces: Vista includes some “cute” fonts. If you have them installed, then the new layout uses Calibri. The best way to describe it is “semi-serif.” It actually replaces Times New Roman as the default font in Office 2007.
2. Fluid width and resolution independence. Go ahead, resize your text. The sidebar automatically resizes as well! Of course I also added fluid width. (Fixed width is useless.)
3. The colors are kinder on the eyes. I grew tired of deep red and flashy magenta.
4. Better readability around the ads. I might regret this one, but at least you can read through the copy without getting a headache now.
Watch for a new post detailing my upcoming endevors!
Finally a new layout!

Posted: November 11th, 2006, 6:56pm CST
I officially declare this site back in action! I been ignoring it for too long. Over the past week, I have updated Typo and designed a new layout. This is not the completely final version, though. The header/logo and advertisements need some work. The previous layout performed very well in that department. Hopefully this layout will make up for the difference by attracting more repeat visitors.

As you can see, the new layout is significantly better on the eyes. Unfortunately, it has some issues with Internet Explorer 6. Hopefully I can figure out what is causing the extra space to appear. Here is a quick list of the updates:
1. Windows Vista Typefaces: Vista includes some “cute” fonts. If you have them installed, then the new layout uses Calibri. The best way to describe it is “semi-serif.” It actually replaces Times New Roman as the default font in Office 2007.
2. Fluid width and resolution independence. Go ahead, resize your text. The sidebar automatically resizes as well! Of course I also added fluid width. (Fixed width is useless.)
3. The colors are kinder on the eyes. I grew tired of deep red and flashy magenta.
4. Better readability around the ads. I might regret this one, but at least you can read through the copy without getting a headache now.
Watch for a new post detailing my upcoming endevors!
A long month

Posted: July 10th, 2006, 6:51pm CDT

June was a very long month for me. Between vacation, studying up for my thesis, packing, moving, and internet issues I barely had any time to play with my toys. Unfortunately, I lost all the projects that I was working on during the move. My oscilloscope, multimeter, and soldering iron are here though. Hopefully they turn up soon. Either way, I do have some material coming up.

Hope you’re having a wonderful summer.
Generating Electricity from Sugar

Posted: June 1st, 2006, 11:48am CDT

The Digg.com headlines for today include research about bacterium that produces electricity by consuming sugar. The Escherichia coli bacteria actually excrete hydrogen after consuming sugar. An electric fuel cell is then powered by the hydrogen.

The team fed Escherichia coli bacteria diluted caramel and nougat waste. The bacteria consumed the sugar and produced hydrogen, which they make with the enzyme hydrogenase, and organic acids. The researchers then used this hydrogen to power a fuel cell, which generated enough electricity to drive a small fan.

They are also using the bacteria to recover palladium metal from the spent catalytic converters of older vehicles.
Generating Electricity from Sugar

Posted: June 1st, 2006, 11:48am CDT

The Digg.com headlines for today include research about bacterium that produces electricity by consuming sugar. The Escherichia coli bacteria actually excrete hydrogen after consuming sugar. An electric fuel cell is then powered by the hydrogen.

The team fed Escherichia coli bacteria diluted caramel and nougat waste. The bacteria consumed the sugar and produced hydrogen, which they make with the enzyme hydrogenase, and organic acids. The researchers then used this hydrogen to power a fuel cell, which generated enough electricity to drive a small fan.

They are also using the bacteria to recover palladium metal from the spent catalytic converters of older vehicles.
Are you logical? (Digital logic puzzlers)

Posted: May 17th, 2006, 2:16pm CDT
Clive Maxfield recently posed the Black Box Brain Boggler in the Logically Speaking column of May’s EE Times. The original article was incorrect and posed an overly simple problem. In fact, the real problem is much more difficult, but possible none the less.

At first, this appears to be deceptively simple. We start with a black box with three inputs–A, B and C–and three outputs (see below). The outputs, which we may name !A, !B and !C, are the logical inversions of the inputs.

The challenge is implementing this black box with only two inverters, a bucket of basic gates, and without a hard coded binary 0 or 1. The bucket of gates presents two levels of difficulty. The former being far easier than the latter. In fact, the first bucket should be easy for any digital design student to solve.
1. The bucket of basic gates contains AND, OR, and XOR gates. Remember, you cannot connect any of the inputs directly to a binary 0 or 1.
2. The bucket contains only AND and OR gates. The solutions are extremely complex, but do exist!
He recently posted the clarifications and some purposed solutions on DesignLine. If you are curious, here are the spoilers for challenge one and two. If you enjoy proofs, there are some more logic puzzlers for your unsatisfied brain.