Fighting with computers

This project is a 5x5 RGB color matrix controlled by an Arduino processor. However, I've used my own RGB controller I mentioned on a previous entry of this blog. Being controlled by serial communications I was able to develop the project on a computer and to try the different light patterns (I used Processing for this). Later, I transfer the code to an Arduino (Processing and C++ syntax are quite similar so it was easy to adapt the code). Details can be found here .

In case you didn't know, OS X and Linux now have Google's Chrome 5.0 browser available . My first impression was good till I was writing this post. Then, an oops screen was shown while editing this message with Blogger (I think it was when switching from HTML to preview mode). Anyway, browser seems to work nicely. It seems fast, imported nicely my password database,bookmarks and digital certificates from Firefox. Flash worked ok too. I've only got a minor problem with Vimeo videos that do keep the browser window on top of the full screen video when switching to full-screen.

Last time you used tweezers they were made of steel, weren't they? Well apparently there are " other ways ". I think that a video will explain it better than my words. In the videos small (reflective) smoke particles are captured by the laser beam.

I've just qualified for Round 1 on CodeJam 2010. I've found the exercises interesting but I was stuck with Fair Warning and I failed the large problem set for the Theme Park. Snapper Chain was the easiest (IMHO) as far as you saw the connection with binary numbers. One more year I'm ready to bite the dust on Round 1. Update : Yep, as expected I failed to move beyond Round 1. I solved two first problems but failed the large data on the second because of my insistence to use int instead of long integers.