The Adventures of Eiki Martinson

Sketchbook: a Thatched Hut

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:38:45 -0800

This is an older drawing of a hut from somewhere in Southeast Asia, after a photograph in Architectural Digest. I drew this with a black Pilot G2 05 pen in the sketchbook I was using at that time.

A New Design

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:53:44 -0800

I've redesigned my personal site and blog, and would appreciate criticisms or comments. The layout adapts to a wide variety of screen widths using CSS media queries; try scaling your browser window or looking at the site on your mobile phone to see what I mean.

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Colebrook Equation GNU Octave Script

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 19:32:37 -0700

As a way of trying out github for myself I uploaded a small script that iteratively solves the Colebrook equation for the Darcy-Weisbach friction factor, which can be used to estimate head loss due to pipe friction; this played a very minor role in my recent MSEE thesis. The script runs in GNU Octave and it certainly should run in Matlab as well, although I haven't tested that.

Link Love from MAKE, Others

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 09:59:39 -0700

Some of my projects have been drawing attention from Maker circles lately. I'm very excited that the Color Changing Doorbell was featured on the blog of my favorite magazine MAKE.

Also, a website called BuildLounge was kind enough to link to my serial-controlled fireworks igniter, under a category of "Explosions". Welcome, new visitors from these sites!

Audi Caravan to Key West

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Mon, 23 May 2011 16:43:00 -0700

These pictures are from an Audi Owner's Club caravan to Key West on May 21, 2011 using Jay Wilson's brand new Audi S4; a fun trip!

Leaping into the Present with the Samsung Galaxy S

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Mon, 16 May 2011 19:29:31 -0700

Those who know me personally have come to expect a certain amount of frustration when trying to contact me on my phone, which until recently was a Motorola W755 clamshell phone which frequently lost connections, often failed to ring on incoming calls, and had a broken USB connector requiring me to remove the battery and place it in my previous Motorola phone whenever I needed a charge!

Enter the Samsung Galaxy S (“Fascinate” in Verizon's lineup). Yes, I'm aware that the S2 should be arriving in the USA in the third quarter of this year, but it will probably be priced around $300. The original S already has all the features I'm interested in, such as 6-axis inertial sensing and the OLED screen; 4G is less valuable than one might think given a lifestyle that affords constant wi-fi coverage as mine does; finally, at this late date, any smartphone at all is such an enormous discontinuous jump into the present that I can't really lose with any choice at all in this market!

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Ruminations on Leviathan, Prompted by the Film Potiche

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Sun, 08 May 2011 16:06:55 -0700

As an excuse to try out FAU's new Living Room Theaters I spent some time Sunday seeing a French film named Potiche, which was surprisingly and tediously political at the same time. The surprise was my own fault: I didn't research it too closely before buying my ticket. Blame for the tedium falls elsewhere! Whereas most of the audience, I expect, saw Potiche as a charming and funny celebration of female empowerment, I saw mostly a nightmare in which everything was politics, everything from business decisions to paternal pride to tender moments between husband and wife tainted with the tawdry operations of socialist democracy.

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Curiously Vulgar

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:55:42 -0700

Altoids mints have for many years been marketed under a brand that has successfully conveyed an image of Victorian understatement, exaggerated politesse, and quirky humor. I would think these lovely characteristics, which carried the mints to such success in the US market, would be enough for Callard and Bowser. Apparently not! A reckless experiment in marketing has resulted in what strikes me as more of a misstep than previous Altoids attempts at boundary-pushing. Recently I opened the familiar tin of peppermints expecting to be soothed by anachronistic charm, instead to be assaulted by an earthy imperative:

“Open your mint hole”? How of-the-moment. Thank you, but I don't think I will.

Moon Shot

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:50:25 -0800

I took these images of a total lunar eclipse early in the morning on December 21, using the intervalometer on my Canon G6. You can see how the autofocus lost it on the last exposures, probably because the moon became too dim by that point. The individual photos were taken three minutes apart and screened together in photoshop to make this image.

MSEE, Finished

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:40:53 -0800

“Master of Science” is really very grandiose-sounding, isn't it? I promise I won't insist on being styled as such, now that the unthinkable day is here and I actually have my degree in hand.

For new readers: I've been working on a master's degree in electrical engineering for the past 5 years or so, acquiring along the way a textbook case of ABD (“All But Dissertation”, a disease which is actually a formal status in some parts of academia). This summer, growing weary of the debilitating symptoms of this illness, I sat behind my computer and effected a cure, which required every scrap of free-time available from August to November. Hence the lack of updates on this blog in recent months.

Now, of course, I have all the time in the world—time enough, at least, to start on some exciting new projects. Come back soon for details!

Fixing Subdomain Configuration on Mediatemple DV

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Thu, 20 May 2010 17:30:38 -0700

I recently found myself having to make some php configuration changes which are specific to a particular subdomain on my Mediatemple DV web host, and found that yet another part of subdomain setup is mildly broken out-of-the-box. This is the sort of thing that most people who need it can probably figure out for themselves, but I'm posting the solution hoping someone will find it useful.

On my DV the domain specific apache configuration is located in /var/www/vhosts/domain-name/conf/, where domain-name is of course replaced by your actual domain name. In this directory you should find at least httpd.include, and possibly vhost.conf as well. If you open httpd.include you'll find the following alarming warning at the top:

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Letterpress and Bookbinding: Book Arts 101

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Sun, 16 May 2010 11:13:15 -0700

I recently took a workshop titled "Book Arts 101" at Florida Atlantic University's Jaffe Center for the Book Arts, which, besides introducing us to a world I had only barely-glimpsed before, that of artist's books, taught us to dabble in those arts themselves, using the techniques of letterpress printing and hand book-binding.

After ogling the extensive collection of the Jaffe Center, we printed covers on a vintage proof press (a Vandercook 4) set with wood block type, then bound them into neat pamphlets using needle and thread. The residents of South Florida are truly lucky to have such a world-class collection at hand. I extend my thanks to John Cutrone of the Jaffe Center and Lake Worth's Convivio Bookworks for teaching this workshop and allowing us to experiment with this at-once anachronistic and up-and-coming craft.

12 Hours of Sebring, 2010

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:44:29 -0700

On Saturday, March 20, my friend Jay Wilson and I were guests of Bell Micro at the famous 12 hour sports-car race. As always, this was an event that combined world-class endurance racing (it is probably second only to the 24 Hours of Le Mans in significance), with the following sideshows:

Car-show-type exhibits from some of the most interesting auto manufacturers
A broad range of individually-owned vintage sports and race cars in various states of repair and respectability
An absurd redneck carnival decorated by what can charitably be called 'folk art' and fueled by a biblical deluge of beer and tequila

Despite the absence of Audi this year, Peugeot deserves all respect for their flawless one-two victory in the LMP1 class and in the race overall, which makes them the first French manufacturer to ever win at Sebring — that Tricolor on the grandstands will certainly stand out at the end of a long line of German and Italian flags! Congratulations (and enthusiastic thanks for inviting us!) are also due to Bell Micro for once again finishing on the the podium, this time in third place in the GT2 class with the Rahal-Letterman BMW M3.

Thirty Stories of Demolition in West Palm Beach

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:55:20 -0800

This building at 1515 Flagler Drive has been a bit of an eyesore since it took hurricane damage in 2004. It was brought down with explosives on Sunday, the third tallest building to ever be demolished so in the United States. And I was lucky enough to be there!

I set up my Canon G6 on multiple-shot mode for this—it did pretty well, especially given that I was just holding it above my head in the tightly-packed crowd.

Inkscape Criticism

nospam@example.com (Eiki Martinson) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:34:41 -0700

First, let me preface this tale of User-Interface Woe with a disclaimer: I am far from an Adobe fanboy. I love open-source software. And of course, like everyone else, I really hate Adobe's prices. But I've learned to use Illustrator and Photoshop pretty well, so now, of course, switching to anything else causes work not-so-much to grind to a halt as to slam into a brick wall while I figure out all of the different metaphors, keyboard shortcuts, and little tricks I need to approach anything like my former productivity.

Trust me, I yearn to cast aside all Adobe products! Which brings me to Inkscape, the open-source vector illustration program. I really, really want to like it as a replacement for Adobe Illustrator. It's one of those open-source apps I install every couple of years to see if it's There Yet. And, yet again, I'm starting to think that it's not. Which brings me to the first problem I encountered on my most recent attempt at mastering Inkscape.

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