arduino

vesicular, you might be interested in this. Remeber we were talking BASIC Stamp.

Well, this project, Arduino, is actually a small serial PIC... It uses, however, a USB port for it's serial interface (it has an onboard USB to Serial converter). It's got a couple analog IO and 13 digital IO. I think that's the count. Anyways, that page has a nice simple series of PDF tutorials, plus more advanced stuff.

Another reason you'd probably find it interesting is that it uses a variant of Processing called Wired. It's pretty nifty from the little bit I read.

There's also discussion of using arduino as a digital interface to control Processing (so you can hook up Pots and shit for analog control).

Anyways, check it out! :D

Ugh... a flipout... *sigh* meds to be needed forever, I guess

So, I've been off my Effexor for about a week, and did fairly well overall. Had a little argument last weekend with sophy over holiday stress type stuff, but things went well after that.

Did mostly OK all last week, even when the boss was in.

So today, I go in, because, it's Sunday, and I like to go in and have my space to work without people in there.

Who shows up 15 minutes later? My boss. So I get very pissed. I don't blame him, he's just doing his job. He's looking pretty worn down, I can tell. So I feel bad for him. But... I only got 3 booklets printed, as well as attempted to upload a file (which apparently we don't have the proper format for, so that sucks, because we gotta get that in like yesterday... so tomorrow I'm going to have to deal with that. I got 2 cards for one village entered. There were no more than 10 for that village. I also had another roll to work on, as well as enter the books for the boss's brother (which is about 2-3 hours worth of work). So, I definitely had shit to do, and could've used the time to get it done. Also, since I took off early Thursday (expecting to come in and put in a decent amount of time today) and Friday (landlord showing the house to sell... except, the damn realtor never showed up, so we let the guys who supposedly are thinking of buying it, through... where the fuck was the realtor? So we're going to call our landlord and let her know he wasn't there, and that if the property is to be shown, we'll need to have a realtor there. That's sketchy to just have people traipsing through our house with no other verification except "we're the dudes buying the house"... wtf?)

Anyways. Long story short, I flipped out, punched the bathroom stall (that's now 2 metal objects in the bathroom at work that have been dented by my rage), had a breakdown and started to leave. The boss said "bye" to me, on my way out (I don't think he realized I was only there for like a half hour total). I never got anything finished, except printing those booklets.

I came home repeating "I hate myself, I hate myself" over and over. Popped an effexor, and am now calm after letting the rage/anxiety out, and the meds are running it's course. So, looks like there's no chance of me getting off this shit. Sped like 85 on the beltline (which is a 55 zone)... Not a good day.

That said, now that I'm calm, I figure if I can not be stressed and don't beat myself up over today, I can get my home chores done, and I'll just let the stress pile on tomorrow. As it would be anyways, cuz it's gonna be a full-house in the office, again :(

Since it'll be a stressful day anyways, may as well let it just be one day of heavy stress (and I can have my meds in my system then, too, by then), instead of one day of irrational anxiety-induced stress (that is to say, not really a stressful day, but my brain reacts as if it were), and then another day where it will be moderately stressful.

Bah. That said... I don't hate myself. I just feel like I do sometimes.

Also, I shaved my head last night (not using a mirror for the back...) In the dim light, Rose said it looks fine, but now we notice there's some stripes of unevenness. So that's kinda sucky, but it's not terrible looking... Just kinda funny. Since I'm only going to be out today at the co-op, I should be fine. And who gives a fuck about work.

(no subject)

This post at gamedevblog is generally how I feel about IM.

I mean, I've used it a bit recently, but I only do so in spurts. Maybe talk to a person or two every few months. I'm pretty anti-social (ya don't say!)

So, don't be offended if I don't really say much if I'm on any IM system and you're there. That doesn't mean I won't say hi if you msg me, or that I don't wanna talk. I'm just shy. And a lot of time, if I do log on, I'm usually there to talk to one specific person. But as I said, if you're on my list, then I know you and don't mind chatting, ultimately. It's just that I'm always feeling stressed for time, (I'm very big on personal space... see "anti-social"). So I can relate to him. I kinda feel that way about LJ. Somedays I never get caught up on all the posts, I just have to skim... And I don't even have nearly as many people as some of you do.

It might explain why I hate the whole "twitter" trend. Because it's not just "hey here's what I'm generally up to in life, feel free to reply if you care, or whenever you can..." like LJ, it's like HAY GUYZ!!!!1!!!1! I'm doing this... RIGHT NOW! And I'm so important, that you totally need to know what I"m doing this minute. If I had a twitter account, I'd just set it to "taking a shit" and leave it there all the time.

So fucking dumb.


Here's the full text if you don't care to follow the external link...

I didn't even know what "rich presence" was until a couple of days ago and I've got to tell you, I'm not crazy about it. Or even presence, period. Here's the thing - I log into Trillian or my Xbox 360 and a bunch of my friends are online. If I stop and say "hi" to all of them I'd never get anything done, ever. I'd suddenly find myself in the grave after having wasted my life IMing people. But if I don't say "hi" to them, I have to wonder - are they offended? Maybe they said "hi" last time and now it's my turn? Is there an etiquette for these things? My solution is to log in as little as possible. But now I've got the same thing on my 360 - "Hey, Jamie's online! I wonder why he doesn't want to play Gears of War with me?"
Or am I just weird?

(no subject)

Soviet engineering at it's finest...

See more if you follow the link... I was trying to find info on Soviet Computing, because I was curious as to the work Soviet Computer Scientists did. After reading from Code about William Shockley and Bell Labs and the early work on computers (ENIAC, EDVAC, UNIVAC, etc...) A lot of stuff was stolen from the US, but there was a book on it, originally in Russian, but available online in PDF format in English, but I don't see it readily now (I closed the tab... ugh)

Here's some interesting links.
ACM PDF
MIT's "Computing in the Soviet Space Program"

Here it is!
sovietcomputing.com

I'm too tired to follow up reading all this right now, but I'm fascinated by this, especially early work that wasn't merely just copied... I've seen some stuff on East German arcade games and computers before, too.

Clarification, interesting things about personal space, and bemused awareness of the term "broken"

Reading up on Anxiety... As I'm not sure vesicular quite gets what I'm talking about. Anyways... I have a mix of panic disorder, social anxiety disorder and intermittent explosive disorder, combined with what is another compulsive behavior (scalp picking)...

This is interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_space

I have a co-worker who interferes not in "personal space" but "intimate space" (that is, when she's showing me stuff, she's literally bumping up next to me... That's irritating. Anyways... That's just an anecdote...

I've thought about CBT, as an approach. But it's so methodical... And that's another issue of mine. I tried to do journaling for two different therapists, and never was able to get into the habit. Supposedly CBT is very effective. Exposure and Response Prevention seems like another option... A subset, I guess, of CBT.

This leads me to... "Flight Zone":

Tame animals have no flight zone; that is, they will allow a person to approach and touch them. Wild, feral, and unbroken animals can have very large flight zones.

Funny how wild animals are "unbroken" and that we have to "break" them in order to make them tame. (Slave Screams! He's being beat into submission... I should note I accidentally wrote "we wild animals" in the sentence above, initially.)

I also have a very strong startle reaction, which I've noted in a somewhat recent post (in the past month, I believe).

Anyways, I wanted to clarify, in a sense, that I don't just feel "anxious" or "nervous" around people. I have very strong space issues and anxiety issues which lead me to be very sensitive to conditions, including startling noise, violations of personal space, panic, and rage. It's not merely being "inept". It's much more and much scarier. People are not supposed to hit metal objects and dent them out of emotional rage. They are not supposed to ram their bumper into a truck that's preventing them from parking in their appointed parking spot.