DSP Development Boards

So, our school came out with the new TI 64x DSP Testboards, pretty sweet stuff. Runs at 350 MIPS, those things are really quite marvelous. Finally something to work with.
I used the older boards last year in making a nonlinear adaptive speaker equalization system. With an accelerometer attached to a speaker's diaphragm, I used feedback from that accelerometer to determine how much the speaker's off from the original music/speech being played, and how I can make up for it by doing stuff before I pass them on to the speaker. Say if the bass is too quiet, then the system can turn the bass up a notch before passing it on to the speaker, so that it would come out equalized. This system needs to do this real-time, and that was a challenge. I had to use the newer TI 62x DSP boards then, implementing my nonlinear filtering algorithm was a pain because not many people have done it before. This one was particularly interesting, because my professor, Douglas Jones, had a student do a master's thesis on it with him, which is the filtering configuration I ended up using then.
I am looking to do some pattern classification tasks with these guys, such as pitch detection, timbre detection, so on and so forth. I don't know where the projects will go, but they might evolve into something.

So, 14.25 CAD HD Projectors...

So much for 14.25 CAD HD Projectors... I found them at megaxport.com, really nice projector. Going for 14.25 Canadian Dollars, makes no sense, right? I know, but I tried to get one, keeping an eye out for anything that looked fishy. There were a couple of parts where they want you to check the box for an Xbox 360 Pre-Order (I do not understand this, they have been on the market for almost a year now), and I carefully avoided marking those. By the end of the order, they sent me an email detailing the purchase, which is 28.* CAD including shipping.
Then I went back to the website, logged into my account, and there is an additional $999.* charge placed on 2 Xbox pre-orders. That is most intriguing and outrageous. I do not want to acknowledge that they deliberately added those costs in there, but I am not naive enough to believe otherwise. This is very dangerous. After a certain period of time elapses, getting the money back would be very difficult. If and when that charge appears on my credit card account, I can get the bank to talk to them. Amazing. This glaring disregard of the most basic of business etiquette and more importantly, common human decency, just left me speechless for a while.

Playing a Game Called "Overlord"

It's an interesting game. Well, after I got my video card upgrade on my computer, this game runs much much better. It's got beautiful graphics and pretty unique interface. The concept though, is somewhat borrowed from the "Dungeon Keeper" series.
So you are an overlord. I don't know how you came to be this "overlord" figure yet, but apparently you are in possession of absolute trust and loyalty of a bunch of minions. They aren't too impressive, though; just small, goblin-like creatures that go around and ravage at your whim.
At the beginning, you are quite weak. You don't know any spells, your attacks are harmless, your resilience low, constitution frail, and your minions few in number. As you progress through the game, though, you collect artifacts and spells that make you and your minions better. In particular, you can find these forges in which you sacrifice your minions' lives to forge magical weapons (this is a pretty cool part of the game, you say "forge" and you tell how many minions, and what kind of minions you want to sacrifice, then a cut-scene appears where the exact number and kinds of minions would rush through the door and jump into the forge, while making wild noises. If you said sacrifice 500, then it will take a long time for them to all jump in, one after another). Your minions will pick up anything that they happen upon along the way, say put hollowed pumpkins on their heads to increase armor, you get the picture (unpleasantly, sometimes they are dumb about this - they will see something clearly on the ground without picking it up - and you need to explicitly send them out to do so). Their effectiveness goes up as more items are collected and equipped.
Ah, the interface. You fight like any first-person RPG, but no pausing. The unique thing is the minions. You send them out straight by left-clicking in a direction, but they will just rush out and auto-kill/smash/loot everything in the way. However, if you want them to be more careful about things (because they will rush into a fire and die, if that's where you are pointing), or more strategic, you can group them, and "sweep" them across terrain - guide them with gentle mouse movements - to arrive at the destination, where they will commence auto-kill/smash/loot. A lot of monsters in the game are much tougher than your average minion, so it is important to use them with tact.
I'm not sure what the plot of this game is yet, so far I have been trying to restore my tower after the latest hero came in and smashed it up. I found myself a mistress who is kind of weird. That's all, maybe I will write again if I come across something interesting.

New Blog Host

Now my blog is hosted on a new SFTP server, more secure, easier to maintain, for I have access to everything. Better things will ensue, I am sure of it.
I have recently started reading Samuel Beckett, and it is rather fascinating. I will try to explain more if I get the chance.
Until next time,