Static electricity

(I thought about naming this post ‘Electricity in bed’)
I had a fever yesterday, and had an extra blanket on me when i slept to “help the fever” without draining my body of energy. Anyway, during the night, i was of course hot, I went up and had a glass of water. Then i decided that i did not need the extra blanket anymore, so i removed it.
When i removed the blanket there were sparks of static electricity and because it wast pitch black in the middle of the night they were really visible.
Big spots, from 5 to 10 cm^2, shone yellow on the surface of the felt blanket.
It made the same sound that you sometimes hear when you remove a woollen jumper.

Halo 3

I guess that sometimes next spring that Halo 3 will be. Some rumors say February 9th. But anyway, it’s exiting.

Halo, is a very popular xbox game series, the original halo was released on pc, mac and xbox, Halo two only on xbox, and for Halo 3 you must have xbox 360.

The most fun think with halo are the multiplayer games, where you can hook up xboxes in a local network, or over the internet. Wen we play we usually play in teams and are all in the same room.

The most revoluting change from halo 1 to halo 2 was that you could have dual weapons in your hands (two of the smaller weapons simultaneously in either hand). One change for halo 3 seems to be that you can see what other multiplayers have as their secondary weapon (or the one they are not using), it used to be invisible, but now it is hanging on their back, this means that when you sneek up on someone that is let’s say sniping, you won’t be overwhelmed if they suddenly draw up a shotgun (designed for close combat) and kills you with one shot, because you see that they have a shotgun, and maby change tactics.

For those that don’t know what halo multiplayer is, and for those that haven’t played in a while, here is a sample for you.

3D desktop - BumpTop

This is quite interrestion. A new way of using the desktop.

God is incredible

Why don’t you read some of these testimonies

Tomorrow is the actual Roomba race

On thursday at 13 pm (helsinki time), the annual (this is the first year) Roomba artificial intelligence robot race will be held at the department of computer science at the univerity of helsinki.

You can follow it on the net

• here is the official race page
• The races can be viewed from here (if you have realplayer or quicktime), you will see me.
  • you can log in with the Conference-Id: 3031 (the other fields are left blank)
• Here you can see the what the onboard cameras see
  • if you encounter “Internal server error” during the race, just refresh the page
  • If you increase the fontsize of the browser (ctrl +), the images also get bigger
  • i recommend to have both the onboard cameras/scoring table plus the live stream visible
• Here are the starting positions of the cup
  • We are group nr 10
  • We start against group 7, they performed really well

Although, i must add that when we tried to fix a couple of bugs this morning (our last chance to make changes) we just messed it up more. So i just changed it back to yesterdays settings (thank God for version control), and made a couple of changes “in blind” because we can’t test it. So tomorrow will either be a complete success or failure for us. So if you want to see a humiliated, or happy Toffe tomorrow, check it out.

I can only imagine

I can only imagine
What it will be like
When I walk
By your side

I can only imagine
What my eyes will see
When your face
Is before me
I can only imagine

Surrounded by Your glory, what will my heart feel
Will I dance for you Jesus or in awe of you be still
Will I stand in your presence or to my knees will I fall
Will I sing hallelujah, will I be able to speak at all
I can only imagine

I can only imagine
When that day comes
And I find myself
Standing in the Son

I can only imagine
When all I will do
Is forever
Forever worship You
I can only imagine

Surrounded by Your glory, what will my heart feel
Will I dance for you Jesus or in awe of you be still
Will I stand in your presence or to my knees will I fall
Will I sing hallelujah, will I be able to speak at all
I can only imagine

I can only imagine
I can only imagine

I can only imagine
When all I will do
Is forever, forever worship you

- MercyMe

Robot race school project

Hi. I’m taking an Artificial Intelligence course this fall. It was in that cource we made the eliza homework among others.

But the really cool thing with this course is that we are going to have a robot competition. The “robots” are Roomba vacuum cleaners equipped with a camera-cellphone.

Today at 4 pm (helsinki time) are the time trials held. Where each team’s roomba shall navigate on a track on time. (When we tested our roomba this morning, it got as far as through the second gate, sometimes it has performed better, and sometimes worse). But today are only the qualyfiers and you just have to pass the startingline in order to qualify for the actual race. We are group nr 10.

The reace will be held on the same track with roombas competing against each other 2 on 2. It will be held on thursday at 2 pm.

You can follow the competition and timetrials from here
The races will be filmed and streamed, and the images what roomba sees will also be shown. So follow the link i gave you, there are instructions how to view it at the top of the page.

Thank you for visiting

Yey. Two days ago this page had most visitors/views up until that day, that was 27 views. Today (or yesterday, depending how you look at it) it was 70.

So thank you for visiting, I hope that you will enjoy what you read. Feel free to comment the posts if you wish.

Design a car, win an Xbox 360

at http://www.peugeot-concours-design.com/ you can participate in a 3d desgn contest to design a peugeot car that should have the following criterias

Pleasurable (to drive)
Lively
Efficient
Accessible
Simple
Ecological

The winning design will be displayed at the 2007 Frankfurt Motor Show as a full scale model, the winner will receive a cheque for 6000 euros and a miniature version of the model will be mass produced. The winning model will also accour in an Xbox 360 Game (i don’t know which one though). Those who come first, secon or third will also recieve an Xbox 360 console.

12 steps to better code

Joel Spolsky has on his blog a checklist how to make better code, as a programming company (development team).

It’s called the Joel Test

1. Do you use source control?
2. Can you make a build in one step?
3. Do you make daily builds?
4. Do you have a bug database?
5. Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
6. Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
7. Do you have a spec?
8. Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
9. Do you use the best tools money can buy?
10. Do you have testers?
11. Do new candidates write code during their interview?
12. Do you do hallway usability testing?

Give your team a point for each yes-answers to those questions.

A score of 12 is perfect, 11 is tolerable, but 10 or lower and you’ve got serious problems. The truth is that most software organizations are running with a score of 2 or 3, and they need serious help, because companies like Microsoft run at 12 full-time.