Reid's For Fun

Short and sweet. Monthly mini-build for Jan 2012 rendered with POV-ray. Interesting that these in-store promotions are now numbered.


40036 Cobra by SafePit, on Flickr [ View Article ]

Although I like my existing weather userbar, I really wanted an easier city search. I decided to stick with NOAA and the NWS for now and ran across a nice all in one weather page with an XML link. The XML requires latitude and longitude meaning I need to find a way to find your city from a search string. Here is where the mash-up comes in. After a quick search, I found the Google Geocoding API. It accepts just about any search string and returns the closest match with the coordinates I need. The result isn't much different, but the location is easier to read.



Note that this API provides a lot more information than the original one I was using. I will be able to create forecasts, give more detailed weather information, etc. However, there is a minor bug in the current conditions icon that shows partly cloudy instead of clear. Another problem is that the weather is only for the US. I might look for other API's, but I do like the detail provided by NOAA. If you want to give it a try yourself, hit up this link and let me know what you think. [ View Article ]

You know you've been spending too much time playing HALO when Microsoft names you a VIP. Interestingly, they offered me a badge to prove it.



Some interesting statistics:

HALO GAMERSCORE: 3415
TOP 2% ALL OF XBOX LIVE MEMBERS

HALO ACHIEVEMENTS: 148
TOP 3% ALL OF XBOX LIVE MEMBERS

HALO MULTIPLAYER TIME: 147 HOURS
THE AVERAGE XBOX LIVE MEMBER HAS SPENT 37.4 HOURS

CONGRATS! ONLY 7% OF XBOX LIVE REWARDS MEMBERS ARE HALO VIPS. [ View Article ]

When I first created my re-visioned ZX81 site, my goal was to integrate it as a sub-site of my existing one. However, the CMS I use doesn't lend itself to easily do that. Technically, that wasn't a show stopper in and of itself. I really just wanted to put my time and energy into converting my old programs. With the original goal in mind, I didn't bother to create an RSS feed for my ZX81 site. I was going to cross-post to my main site instead. Unfortunately I tend to forget to do that. Removing that goal from my mind I've created a feed for Steven's ZX81 Posts.

I've used Feedburner to manage and watch my RSS feeds. Since Google has taken over, more statistics are available and I can turn on other features without having to code them myself. That is a plus given that I want to focus on writing articles and not tweak XML. In setting up a feed for ZX81, I found an option to use my domain instead of Feedburner's. It was surprisingly easy to configure. I quickly configured it for my new feed and found it worked well. So well in fact that I decided to use it for this site.

One option I've started to explore is combining my feeds into one. Sadly, Feedburner doesn't support that option. There are other services available, but it seems like a lot of work for little return. As I am probably the only subscriber to my feeds, I'll leave them as two feeds for now. You'll see them both to the right, now below the Main Menu. If I ever bother to redesign my LEGO oriented site, it might be the excuse I need to look again. I have code that can create feeds based on filters, such as my post tags, that would work just as well. For now just subscribe to the feed that suits your fancy. [ View Article ]

Another great build from the architecture series rendered with POV-Ray. I was trying to add some back light, but I'm not sure I'm happy with the results. It took 3 days to render and it still has anti-alias artifacts. Overall, it looks pretty good though. Besides the title brick, I only had to model a few new pieces: the fence pieces and the 4 stud brick on top. The tap on top is actually from the LGEO library since I was too lazy to build it myself.


21011 Brandenburg Gate by SafePit, on Flickr [ View Article ]

Today, like most Fall Sunday's, is a great day to watch Football. It was fun watching San Fransisco play, but I often hack around on the computer during games. Fortunately there is plenty of time between commercials and time-outs to work on code. I wondered how hard it would be to pull football scores into a dynamic usebar. Surprisingly, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.

First off, I had to find an API. I ran across this Accidental APIs: NFL edition article that linked to some open JSON API. I decided which API would fit the bill and started to program. Since I use Perl, I updated my CPAN library with the latest version of JSON routines and parsed out the games, progress, and scores. After figuring out some image libraries to pull from, it was only a matter of updating my scripts to display the information as a animated GIF. I did have to tweak my libraries a bit to display two images. I think the end results came out better than expected.


Put in image or UUB tag: http://3v.reids4fun.com/football.cgi

I do need to put some effort into a better background image. I did accomplished my goal of displaying the scores. That is all that matters, for now. [ View Article ]

I recently started using FlashControl for Chrome to control which site use flash. I was getting annoyed with sites I ran across sucking up my computer's CPU with flash programs. It is annoying how many sites use flash, my own included. I'd swapped out my original JavaScript slide show some time ago for Flickr's slide show to show off my recent LEGO renderings. It always annoyed me that Flickr wrote the slide show using Flash and wouldn't display properly on my iPod. I didn't bother me much until FlashControl started blocking it. It was time to do something about it.

To fix the problem, I actually resurrected my slide show script. I wrote a little Perl package to parse my Flickr feed and updated the slide show to use the new list. I now have a nice little slide show that is fast, works on Chrome, my iPod, and even my Android phone. No, I didn't install Flash on it either. I was also able to update the script to display the title of the image. I used some caching as well to speed up later page displays. I'm pleased enough with the results, but I would still like to add some nice transitions in the future. [ View Article ]

Sometime back I created an animated userbar that showed the current PPV movies on Dish. Sadly, soon afterwards Dish changed their support pages to require a login, breaking my script. Sure, I could log in to get the information, but that kind of defeats the purpose. I decided to try to at least get the UB working again, even if not the full movie list. So, instead, I now pull the highlight information from their PPV page. Cool thing is that includes events, not just movies. Unfortunately, it doesn't include all the movies. Oh, well. At least it works again:


Put in image source or UUB tag: http://3v.reids4fun.com/dishppv.cgi [ View Article ]

LEGO Stores Lighthouse is the Monthly Mini Model Build for July '11. I thought this would be a nice quick and dirty build, but I ran into a minor problem. I didn't have the wheel element in the build modeled. I tried to shortcut by using LDD/LDRAW, but sadly I couldn't find it there either. So, this model sat for awhile until I got around to modeling the part. I'm not 100% happy with the wheel, but overall I am happy with the end product.

Lighthouse by SafePit, on Flickr [ View Article ]

I actually started 21009 Farnsworth House before my last model, but made the mistake of rendering it on my older desktop. It took over a week to render due to the glass and higher anti-alias requirements. I should try this on my daughter's iMAC to see if how fast it renders with a newer computer.


21009 Farnsworth House by SafePit, on Flickr [ View Article ]

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