Adaptating

"Adaptating" is the sort of word you get when you have been awake too long. In my case the specific time involved was probably around 20 hours when I made the slide that contained the offending word. Spellcheck occurred, or rather did not occur at around Waking+28 hours. I finally made the discovery at Waking+30 hours, in the middle of my presentation. That's not a fun time to discover such an error. The misspelled word was highlighted in blue just to make it more prominent. Also, it repeated since I had copied that slide for use towards the end of the presentation.

Oops.

Next time I'm working harder to get things done ahead of time so I can actually sleep before my presentation. Thank goodness for my experience with midnight shift transitions. I'm pretty sure that's a large part of how I managed to actually stay coherent enough to give a presentation after 30 hours without sleep.

My Other Life

This is one of the projects that has absorbed my attention this month (and which, you should infer, are preventing any serious blogging):



It's for my 3D Computer Modeling class. I made everything you see in there and then added and modified skins as necessary. I still have a few to go (the book covers to the right, for instance, aren't supposed to look like cardboard) and some general tweaking to get the look right.

Here is the other:



It's a heads-up-display built into a pair of safety glasses to assist the homeowner with repairs and upgrades.

This one is actually the bigger of the two projects. It looks less impressive here because most of the work is going into the physical model. Also, I need to work on designing the interface and creating the presentation to go along with it.

I did get a chance to play with the laser-cutter today when making the goggles depicted above. Now that is an impressive piece of equipment. It was my first experience with a machine that is NOT from the project-ruining family (or at least hides its connections very well). I loved every minute of it. Having that victory early in the day helped me get through my actual encounter with real project-ruining machines later (the bandsaw version claimed at least two models today and would have claimed my third if I hadn't realigned my intentions to more closely match what I actually produced).

EDIT:
This is the final version of the desk scene.

(Bruce you might recognize that top book...)

Another List

I have a hard time focusing on homework sometimes. I try, but get distracted and wander off to do something else. The best way to make sure this doesn’t cause real problems for me is to do something else productive with my “procrastination time.” I’m good at this, but I could be better. The following is a list of the things I’ve found myself doing instead of homework this weekend

A load of laundry
Load my dishwasher and run it
Wash the dishes in my sink
A second load of laundry
Unload the clean dishes from the dishwasher and set them out to dry
Check to see if the dishes are dry
Make my bed with clean sheets
Download Turbotax
Make a to-do-list and cross off the items I had already finished (I seed my to-do-lists with finished items the same way salespeople sometimes seed tip jars with their own money)
A third load of laundry
Research how to make windchimes
Set up music list to “work” to
A fourth load of laundry
Check to see if the dishes are dry
Put dishes away
Read a short story
Read another because the first one was only so-so
Make lunch
Read my friends’ blogs and respond “appropriately”
A fifth load of laundry (I’ve been putting off my laundry in favor of homework)
Wander around the apartment to see if there’s anything that needs to be put away
Prepare trash to go out
Check to see if the dishes are dry, remember I already put them away
Do a sixth load of laundry (my laundry machine is tiny)
Color in a photoshop image I conceived of yesterday
Write a list of everything I’ve done today and post it on my blog