Thoughts

The last time that I worked with Fourier Transformations was in Linear Analysis, nearly 3 years ago. Now I am taking a class in Mechanical Vibrations, and we are returning to this theory. The other week, while learning to use a spectral analyzer, we had to derive the first 3 Fourier coefficients for a sine wave, square wave, and triangle wave. All of that aside, after lab I played around with some fourier theory in Maxima. Maxima Maxima is a symbolic math program (similar to Mathematica) that I ran into last quarter in order to supplement Octave (Matlab equivalent). Like Octave (which does only numerical analysis) Maxima is completely free. I like the version of Maxima called wxMaxima , and I have that installed on Ubuntu. You can define an equation in maxima such as: s: a^2 + 7 = b*4 + a/3 Then you can solve for b in one step: solve(s,b) And it simply returns b = a^2/4 + a/12 + 7/4. You can do other cool things such as summation, integration, ...

This is quite a late post, but I wanted to finally post my videos that I took over the summer at my Internship. I was working at Alta Devices the entire summer on a project which I called the Wafer Analysis Station (WAS). The company uses GaAs wafers to make their solar cells, and these wafers are used over and over again, as many times as possible. Therefore, the surface must be inspected regularly to make sure it does not need to be resurfaced and is still suitable for the necessary processes.

I've begun to learn a little bit of python because I'd like to make a script (that works in Windows or Linux) for finding duplicate files (whether the filenames are the same or not). This will mostly be useful in cleaning up my music library, for I'm suspicious that playing around with different programs has created more duplicates of my music files than I have already found. Yes, I realize that someone out there has probably already written a script for such a task, but where would be the fun in using that? This is how I practice my love for programming.

So, a certain unnamed project that I am working on requires the use of a solar cell to charge some batteries. I got these solar cells from an "over-supply" store in Santa Clara for $4 a piece. As seen in Figure 1, its one of those typical solar cells from a garden lamp that charges batteries during the day and turns some LEDs on at night.

I'm currently working on an unnamed  project which requires the integration of tri-color LEDs (RGB). These are merely four-pin LEDs with a common anode or cathode and an input pin for red, green, and blue. With varying currents, a multitude of colors can be produced. So I created a C++ (arduino) library for handling such LEDs. Since most of my knowledge of programming is in C, learning about classes in C++ is a significant accomplishment for me.

Indeed. My 21st birthday is coming up. This year, I've decided I am going to ask for birthday presents in a slightly different fashion, though. I'm going to compile a bill of materials on this blog-post that I would need to make my own little robot. I'll split it up into two categories: parts I need (because I don't have an alternative), and parts I want (but for which I already have an alternative if I don't get them).

It was a while ago that I made these, but they turned out decently. I wanted pizza, but I didn't want a whole lot of bread, so I decided (I owe credit to my mother for this) to make the pizza on tortillas. I made some pepperoni and margarita pizza-dillas. The fresh ingredients The uncooked, not-yet-finished product I'll admit my original influence for the meal was to make something quick and easy. It would probably have been so if I could have cooked more than one at a time. Also, were I to make this again, I would probably trying making it open-faced, rather than like a quesadilla. Ingredients: pizza sauce shredded mozzarella cheese pepperoni log, thinly sliced 1 tomato, thinly sliced fresh basil leaves tortillas