Categories: Exploits
Friday, June 5. 2009
My apologies for the belated post. This was my first, though I certainly hope not my last, visit to the famous endurance races; I'd like to offer my thanks to our gracious host Bell Microelectronics, sponsor of the Panoz team that took third place in the GT2 class, for making it possible.
The pictures are all the work of my cousin Torm.
Categories: Good Ideas
Sunday, May 31. 2009
It's true: you can sprinkle them on anything to make it better. Some examples:
Certain technologies seem to have this magical quality of near-universal applicability to engineering problems. They not only make possible what would have been fantasy otherwise (space elevators, in the case of nanotubes) but also have a knack of improving everything they touch, or of being applied to a breathtaking variety of already-familiar applications.
Categories: Administration
Monday, May 25. 2009
I'm sure that all three of my regular readers will notice the long-in-coming change now visible at eikimartinson.com. Most of my friends are probably sick of telling me what they think of innumerable design mock-ups, so I just went ahead and implemented one of my ideas, and I'm actually happy with the results. It's not too fancy, but I think it'll get the job done.
All the pages are valid XHTML and CSS, or they should be; if there are any exceptions to that, I'm interested to hear about them. That contact page, by the way, is a new feature; I've implemented a mailer form and script for purposes of spam protection. The site is composed according to the vertical rhythm concept (click the check box in the footer to see for yourself) with a new addition of my own—a bit of javascript to maintain the rhythm across images of any possible height.
Categories: Exploits
Saturday, May 16. 2009
I spent some time after my training session in Denver driving around with my co-workers in the Rockies, seeing some worthwhile sights; I apologize for the pictures but all I had was a disposable camera.
Categories: Vittles and Libations
Sunday, February 22. 2009
Nothing fancy, this; but that's okay: dinner was done and on in the table in exactly 15 minutes (disclaimer: I had to go to the supermarket, wash dishes, clean the cast-iron pan, etc—you didn't think it would really be 15 minutes, did you?). Take your tilapia fillets, add salt and pepper and squeeze out a lemon onto both sides. Meanwhile, get your well-seasoned cast iron skillet to medium-high temperature and coat the bottom with olive oil. Lay your fillets down in the pan, away from you to avoid splattering yourself with hot oil. Try to avoid flipping or moving it more than is strictly necessary as it will fall apart when it gets close to done; I'd recommend flipping with a spatula rather than tongs for the same reason.
Cook for three minutes per side, which should give it a golden-brown surface and just-barely-done center; the thinner parts of the fillet will get crispy, but that's part of the appeal. Serve with salad and rice or whatever you want. Some brown crispy bits will be left in the pan which just cry out for deglazing and making into a pan sauce, but I haven't experimented with that just yet.
I promise not to let this site become a recipe blog. I post things like this really more for my own reference (the three minutes per side number is something I tend to forget).
Categories: Exploits
Wednesday, December 31. 2008
in the smallest of ways. I was an extra (excuse me, "Background Artist", as they like to be called now) in the Twentieth Century Fox movie Marley and Me while it was being filmed in Fort Lauderdale. Observe closely the scenes in the Sun-Sentinel offices and you might just catch a brief glimpse of the back of my head, say. If you want your money back because the movie made you cry or disappointed you, address your demands elsewhere: I just stood where they told me to stand. All I added to the picture was a handful of photons. Of course I'll still get the blu-ray disc when it comes out, if only to freeze-frame through the scenes I was in!
Categories: Administration
Sunday, October 19. 2008
I recently created a subdomain on my Mediatemple DV service, but for various reasons, I wanted to have a separate user responsible for that subdomain, with FTP and shell access. The user can be created along with the subdomain in Plesk as normally. Unlike the creation of users associated with domains, however, there is no option in Plesk to give this subdomain user shell access.
Fixing it is trivial if you have root access. Just edit /etc/passwd, find the line that starts with the username you just created, then change the last field of that line from /bin/false to /bin/bash (or whatever shell you like). This will allow you to su to the subdomain user or login via SSH, as you prefer. Easy, I know, but I noticed the option wasn't present in Plesk and well, maybe this tip will be helpful to somebody else out there.
Thursday, July 31. 2008
I am no longer the only one in my circle reporting to the Internet. Fellow FAU electrical engineer and roboticist Melissa Morris has recently launched her site with a name I wholeheartedly endorse: melissatronic.com! Visit for information about her robotics research and other engineering projects.
Sunday, June 1. 2008
In the interest of saving my soul through good works I have recently taken in a family of unfortunates: two lost kittens! They are street cats, brother and sister, 6 weeks old and a shade over a pound each. I have given them the unlikely Estonian names of Miuks (the girl) and Murakas (the boy).
Murakas is all black with blue eyes and is bigger and more adventurous, leading the way into all sorts of danger. He also sleeps a great deal and seems to be visibly growing by the day.
Miuks has white paws and white whiskers, and green and blue eyes. She has a bit more of a nervous temperament, hopping into the air on spindly legs when alarmed, but she purrs like a motorboat when petted and enjoys chomping on her brother's tail.
It is an open question as to which one will be the most trouble.
Both kittens have their first shots, de-worm-ings, and de-flea-ings; they are using the litter box regularly and in already disturbing volume (probably a consequence of the six square meals a day they require). When not locked in furious combat or spelunking in search of ever more unlikely crevices to hide in, they sleep on each other's heads in a fuzzy little pile.
I promise not to let this site become a catblog.
Categories: Out and About
Saturday, May 3. 2008
Not great photos this time; the light was flat due to an overcast sky. Beautiful place, though - oldest cypress swamp in Florida, with trees over 500 years old in places. The swamp was bone dry this day as the beginning of May is the end of the dry season.
Categories: Exploits
Wednesday, April 23. 2008
An instant classic from the Busch Gardens log flume, with Jay Wilson and myself. This one was just too funny to leave behind.
Friday, March 28. 2008
Of all the 500 series modular scopes made by Tektronix, the 547 is one of the most desirable due to its 50 MHz bandwidth and innovative dual timebases. When released, this machine was way-hot high tech, crammed with a mix of vacuum tubes and discrete semiconductors, and worth as much as a new car. I got mine through a friend who found it at a church rummage sale and paid $10 for it, complete with cart, some extra modules, and manuals for everything. Any problems? Well sure - the thing's been in service for 40 years, knocked about by at least two private companies (judging by the calibration stickers) and its original owner, the United States Navy. A short list:
Categories: Inventions
Friday, March 7. 2008
Our New Year's Eve fireworks shows are something to see—or so I gather from the reactions of the crowd. I don't really know, to tell the truth. Running around with a blowtorch lighting fuses doesn't give you a chance to watch the show for yourself and see what everyone's ooh-ing and aah-ing about. So for the last couple of years, my friends and I have been working our way towards the holy grail of backyard pyro—complete, automated computer control of the fireworks show. We started out the usual way, with a variety of electrical ignitors hard-wired into a "nail board" or a console of switches; I'll have to write a more complete history of these attempts sometime, more for my dear readers' laughs than for their technical edification. This year, however, we rolled out the first version of something completely different—a 12-channel, serial-controlled, microcontroller-driven, battery-powered, pyro ignition device!
On to the engineering, then: the microcontroller is an Atmel AVR, a 90S8515 running at 8 MHz to be exact (obsolete chip, sure, but I had one lying around—the next version uses an ATMega16 instead). This accepts RS-232 serial via the MAX-232 driver, interprets the byte it receives and fires the appropriate squib by pulling the gate of a NMOS high. The MOSFETs are STI P16NF06L's in TO-220 packages, good for 16 amps of drain current each; this high-current capability is built in to accommodate some types of very low resistance squibs that need a lot of current to fire.
As a temporary kludge for New Year's (I ran out of time as usual), I packaged the board and a 12V Sealed Lead-Acid battery in a tupperware tub. Since this was sited close to my mortar rack, which might spit out flaming bits onto the plastic box, I protected the top with a folded piece of sheet aluminum.
Sunday, January 27. 2008
Friday night the boys and I spent some hours immersed in a weird mix of high-octane drag racing and electrical engineering geekery—the Florida Electric Auto Association took over a "run-what-you-brung" drag racing event as part of their Battery Beach Burnout weekend. The venue was one Countyline Dragway, an 1/8 mile strip of pavement in the middle of the woods in northwest Dade county. One of the competitors brought this homebrew 240 volt electric bike, with 20 batteries driving a shifter kart tire hard enough for a smoky burnout - in the picture I'm holding the brake down to keep the bike from moving as he tensions his drive chain, which unfortunately broke on his first run of the night.
The following picture is of a Porche 912 with an improbable modification: two DC motors inline and hanging out of the back like a rocket engine. This car set the Countyline Dragway electric record at 67 miles per hour at the 1/8 mile.
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I am an engineer, programmer, designer, and all-around obsessive geek living in the state of Florida, USA. You may be interested in some of my projects and experiments in the fields of electronics, special effects, and dangerous Mad Science. Take everything you read here with a grain of salt and remember to wear your safety glasses.
