Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Geek

Another Geek Project

I've gotten a lot of questions lately about what my “next project“ is now that the movie is done. You may have already noticed the new link to the right there called iPod Car Stereo. I'll be chronicalling the potentially disastrous results of my attempt to install an iPod in my car.

Also, it looks like the battle over Terri is over. 14 days is about the longest you can live without food and water and that's how long Terri lasted. It makes me think that she was pretty healthy physically, but you can make your own judgements from that. Keep up the good discussion in the comments on the last post.

benmartens March 31, 2005 Commentary, Geek, Projects

iPod Revolution

I've finally jumped in and joined the iPod Revolution. It's in it's fourth generation so I figure they've got it figured out by now. RadioOne killing off Y100 pushed me over the edge. Now I'm in control of my own music. I just got it last night so I haven't had a lot of time to play with it, but I'm already impressed. Apple knows how to market products. Everything in that tiny box is perfectly designed and well-packaged. They don't skimp on packaging material or the even the design of the box.

Setup and copying music to my 30GB iPod Photo was straightforward and simple. I used the included USB 2.0 cable to download all the music and charge the player at the same time. I dumped Outlook contacts onto the iPod and even a few photos so I can show off the nice color screen.

I plan to give it a full workout this weekend while I'm on the train up to NYC, but I don't see myself being anything but impressed. The next plan is to hook this into the stereo in my Mustang.

benmartens February 26, 2005 Geek

Halo 2 RSS .NET Web Control

If you understood the title of this post, then you've got issues. But so do I so keep reading. I just wrote a web control that reads the RSS feed of my Halo2 Xbox Live stats from the Bungie site. It scrapes out the last 10 games I played and shows them in a list. If you mouse over, you'll see the results of the game. If you click on the link you'll be taken to the Bungie site and shown detailed stats about the game.

I based the code on a similar RSS web control reader I found on Andrew Baum's site. I modified it to read from the Halo site and changed the structure of things a bit. Feel free to take my code and modify it. You can download a ZIP file here. The code is all in the ASCX file.

benmartens December 4, 2004 Geek, Projects

Upcoming Projects

The new house is coming together (aside from slight techincal difficulties with the dryer last night … there's no room in the breaker box for another circuit breaker.) There are two geek projects currently underway.

Mach Video

Jay and I will soon be making a trek to Virginia along with the other 2002 LDP's for the LDC3 conference. Along the way, we're going to stick a webcam in the car and take pictures with it about every second. We'll then combine the pictures into a video and you can see what it looks like to drive at about Mach 3 down to Virginia. This sounds kind of dumb, but I've seen it done before and it usually comes out looking pretty cool. I wrote up a program last night to control the webcam and store all the images.

Theater Room

I believe this is the first time I'm officially announcing this. Jay and I will be turning the first floor living room in our new house into our very own theater. Last night we hooked up the projector and planned out the stadium seating. Before long I will be making a separate page for updates about this project so you can follow along if you're interested. If it comes out even half as good as we're planning it should be a sight to behold.

benmartens June 22, 2004 Geek, Projects

Terrain Generator

The OpenGL terrain generator is moving along nicely. I talked to Matt today and figured out how to average my normal vectors so that the lighting looks more realistic. The simulation currently allows you to move around in the world, flip from shaded to wireframe, add/remove water, and change the water level. I think it looks pretty good right now. The next job is to use the diamond square algorithm to dynamically generate clouds.

benmartens April 3, 2003 Geek, Projects