Kevin Hjelden's personal blog
I've created a new YouTube channel called Xtreme Yak Shaving . This channel is about software engineering and hopefully a light-hearted take on things going on in the technology industry. The first video is about that terrible 1 Billion Nested For Loops benchmark, and how I created an ahead-of-time compiler to make Javascript 400 times faster than C or Rust . Don't forget to like and subscribe :)
PDF To Foundry version 4.1.1 was just released yesterday. This should fix all the remaining FoundryVTT v11 issues. On top of that, I made a spiffy new website for it, since I shut down the Patreon and all those posts are effectively lost. Check it out .
As part of investigating what things that are hosted on this website that people are actually using, I noticed a few people are still using the Pathfinder Encounter Builder that I created years ago. I have recently updated it to use React Hooks as well as gave it a shiny fresh coat of paint. Five Goblins Encounter Builder The naming was inspired by "Kobold Fight Club" which is a similar tool for…
Earlier this year, my web host (Dreamhost) forced me to upgrade my web server to the latest supported version of PHP (or else!), which was incompatible with the version of Wordpress I was running. Thankfully, they didn't just upgrade the server without telling anyone like what happened with the RoboGames website a few weeks before the event. I updated the version of Wordpress to the latest, but…
Botgeddon logo On October 1st, 2016 my dad and I are going to be running the first ever Botgeddon event. It's happening at the Rocklin Mini Maker at Sierra River College. For more information, go to http://botgeddon.com .
Last weekend, OkCupid has launched CrazyBlindDate , which is a website that allows you to go on blind dates with people in your area. There have already been a few discussions about it on Hacker News and other websites, so I'm not going to discuss the web site itself because most of those conversations have already been talked about. I checked out the site after getting an invitation in my inbox.…
I just got back from the BattleBots event this past weekend. It was pretty fun, and I got to see a few good fights, but it was somewhat stressful to have to run the brackets for the 15lb robots. On the plus side, they allowed recording of the 15lb weight class, so I got a few good fights, which I will put on youtube, like this fight of Blender Mini and a vertical spinner (I think it was…
Over this weekend, Joe and I decided at the last minute to take the carcass of Emsee Frypants and fix it up enough to be able to compete at the Fifth annual Smackdown in Sactown event. We were going to be there anyways since I was running the brackets, and we wanted to bring the Sentry Guns and our 30 pound robot to the event, and figured it'd be fun to take Frypants back for one last spin (no pun…
I was checking my RSS feeds today and came across this article about swarm robots , with this video attached: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJOubyiITsE It kind of reminds me of an episode of Numb3rs where Charlie uses swarm bots to map out a train to allow rescue of the passengers . I know that it's well-meaning research and all, but I can't help but laugh at the video. Not because it's overtly…
I know, I'm terrible at keeping up to date on these blog posts. What usually happens is there's something I want to post but don't want to take the time to do it right now and it gets permanently stuck in my queue of stuff to do. Then I want to post about something else but don't want to go out of order. Then it gets to be 9 months later and I post a large backlog of things. This is another one of…
Over the weekend Joe and I made a video showcasing the sentry gun we made for defcon. See the defcon bot on the right side, or read the digg story
We got back from DefCon last weekend. Our Sentry Gun didn't do very well (tied for last place), but the trip was a lot of fun overall. We knew before we went that we weren't going to win, so coming in to it with that mindset made it a lot more enjoyable. The robot was mostly finished a few weeks before the competition, which was good compared to the 30 pound combat robot where we stayed up until 2…
We made it back from RoboGames. We lost both fights with Big Bloom. The first fight was against Billy Bob, a vertical drum spinner, which took a bunch of big chunks out of our frame, however it seemed to hold up pretty well since it's half-inch thick, and the chunks were only a sixth of an inch thick at the deepest place. He cracked the polycarbonate piece on the top though after a big hit. We…
Another little video after we put it the components on a 'frame' and got some decent motors for it. There's no mixing on the remote (so up-down controls one motor, left-right controls the other), so it's really hard to drive. This is also filmed on Joe's awesome camera he got for his graduation present, so it's a lot higher quality than the other videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-XJKWopqFw
It's been a long time since my last update, and I figure I should post something. Hopefully updates will be more regular. I've had a few things I wanted to post on my blog, but I didn't want to do it without posting a more comprehensive update, and didn't really want to post a comprehensive update, so nothing got done. A deadlock so to speak. Anyways, I'll start off with what's happened to me…
Pictures of the car I got in June 2002: 1998 Mustang 1998 Mustang 1998 Mustang
Emsee Frypants and Marin Ant Wars First Place Trophy Woot! I went to Marin Ant Wars V yesterday and got first place in the antweight division. I went undefeated, thoroughly defeating (and destroying some the best bots in the competition. We even saw a rainbow on the way back. After I got home, I laid down and got a full night's sleep, which I haven't got in 2 weeks. Yesterday was a good day.…
Note: I just erased the whole thing I typed out, so I have to start this over again. It was much better the first time :( I've spent a lot of time coding lately. It's probably because I want to procrastinate on my sociology assignment (read a book by final exam) and my philosophy assignment (write a 5-7 page paper on an "outside topic" in philosophy, and use a book as the source). Both of those…
I've recently got over a bit of business I had recently, so I have time to write one of these things now. My last week, I procrastinated and finally finished my robot for the RFL Nationals in San Francisco, which I qualified for a while back. I planned on making a new frame for it, and using the new drum that Joe is making me, but since I procrastinated that didn't happen. Instead, we replaced the…
This won't affect most of you, but I have disabled trackbacks on my blog. I'd like to give a big EFF YOU to all the spammers that spam my web page trying to get google pagerank (you won't, since the trackback links don't link to you), and spam my email with "new trackback received." Off to delete 200 more now :(. It's especially sick since almost all of them are transexual related, with about half…
I created a new fighting robot thanks to my dad and my friend Joe. It's called Emsee Fry Pants, which is an homage to the robot MC Pee Pants since they're similar and was part of the reason that the robot ended up as it did. If you don't know, MC Pee Pants is also a character on the cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force (ATHF). I took it to an event this Saturday in Gilroy and placed second out of…
Dear Life, I am currently playing World of Warcraft. Talk to you in a few years. Sincerely, Kevin
Half Baked is the best ice cream ever. That is all.
In other news, I was parking my car Tuesday (ya ya, I know it's Thursday but I forgot about it) in the parking garage. Normally I go straight to the roof because it's easier to park there and I need the excercise anyways. It was raining that day though, so I thought I should park on one of the lower levels that wasn't the roof so I wouldn't get rained on. And when I say wouldn't get rained on I…
I'm dissapointed that Bush won the election yesterday. I am not scared or worried or anything else that other people may say. We already have suffered through four years of his terrible administration. He lies to us. He thinks he's better than us. I'm disappointed that people think that Bush is "saving" our country for terror. Someone said to me, "how could anyone vote for Kerry after 9/11?" How…
I just uploaded coverage of the CSUS event on KOVR 13 that I just copied from my PVR today. It was recorded on the day of the event, but I was lazy. So sue me :). Sadly, I'm not in any of it, but that's ok, you can kind of see my tournament bracket thingy in its broken state before the break if you look carefully :)
I got back from my AI class yesterday and found out that my program tied for second place along with 3 other programs (including the teacher's, so I don't know if that counts). Li'l Brudder made it on his own! (that was the name of my program, and watch this cartoon if you don't understand the reference). Speaking of which, Joe and I have been brainstorming on names for the Micromouse that we are…
Some pictures I took of nationals I forgot to post Pictures of Sac State event Also I got a thing in the mail from the DMV to get the new license plate I ordered a while back, so I'll have a personalized plate now :)
Looks like one of my hard drives crashed today. I turned my computer on this morning and went in and took a shower before going to school, and when I got back it was doing scandisk and got stuck and my hard disk was making crashing sounds (motor trying to spin up then hitting something). It was the one with about half of my applications on it (some programs refuse to install anywhere but in…
I got to looking at my notes file for stuff to put in my blog from the last entry and I noticed that a) there's a lot of stuff there, and b) it's been almost 2 months since I've made a serious blog post. I suppose now is a good time as any to do. School has started during the interim. Parking was only bad for the first week thankfully, and not near as it has been in previous semesters. I'm taking…
I went to the Marin Ant Wars today held by Andy Sauro at his beautiful house and ended up going 0-2 and not qualifying for nationals. Oh well. I still won the rumble and got Andy's second place prize money since he donated it to the rumble. You can see pictures I took of the event if you want. I stopped taking pictures after a few fights because my batteries died and there were two video recorders…
I've posted some more pictures of FryDrumBot . I got the polycarbonate frame for it so I figured it was appropriate to post some early pictures :). Update: Some more pictures added to the archive linked above. Joe came over today and helped me put it together, so it's all assembled except for attaching the gear/endcaps to the drum, and the wheel to the motor. Currently it's at 15.25oz on Joe's…
My friend Joe who is super leet from the CSUS Combat Robotics team (and we went to high school together) came over and modeled an inside frame for frydrumbot since the original way I designed was going to work. Overall the total weight of the inside frame in polycarbonate was less than 2oz which is good because I only had 2.5oz to work with. Hopefully it will still be stable though. Here are some…
Just showing a picture of the work done so far on my new camera.. For those of you interested. Basically the alluminum tube has been machined down using the ME machine shop at Sac State -- thanks for letting me use it. Also I used my dad's drill press to make the inner end cap (the clear plastic/acrilic) with some device I don't know what it's called (a drill bit in the middle with an arm and a…
I saw this neat puzzle on google's blog . I mistakenly read the problem as the first 10 consecutive digits of e which are prime, which the answer is of course 1838606261 after a quickie c# program to determine that (I thought the number would be much deeper honestly). Grr.. I'll have to go into work on the harder problem now to figure it out. Thanks google for keeping me up so late working on…
It looks like spammers have been using spam bots and putting their web page in my referer thing.. That has to go so I'm going to remove it. Sorry to all the folks that liked it (I liked it mainly). Also, Poker Saver alpha 02 is coming along nicely for those of you that are interested. Also, I've got all the parts for FryDrumBot, including the aluminum tube, but I'm not sure if it'll be the one…
I've decided to release version alpha 01 of poker saver. Right now all it can do is import the complete game information about Party Poker games only and display the game information back, with filters for game types, money type, and limits. Not much yet, but I can see it coming together. If anyone wants to, then you can download Poker Saver alpha 01 . Simply extract the zip file to a new…
I've been working on poker saver throughout the day. Just wanted to post another screenshot. screenshot no longer available As you can see, I've got the money and icon columns working to display the proper kind of information for their column. There is still a bit of work to do on this screen though. Currently the data is still from the SQLite database imported from the php script. I should be…
It's about time for me to add a favicon for this site. I lost the original .psd of the burntpopcorn logo that a friend made for me (thanks Scopes), and he lost it too, so I decided I would attempt remaking the image in the copy of Fireworks that I won . I couldn't figure out what font he used though, so I scrapped the entire thing and decided to just use the .gif and clean it up a little bit and…
I've put up a small utitlity just now to calculate odds and the required pot size for calling bets. You can go to it by visiting the link to it on the right. I've also added a link (unworking) to the site I've just registered, pokersaver.com. I plan to use it to write a c# program similar to Poker Tracker but more extensive than it, including tracking for games other than hold-em. Originally it…
Thanks to Ross Hironaka, I now have some videos of the Gilroy Bot Gauntlet. Click the Robot Videos link on the right side to go there. If anyone else has any other videos from the event, let me know and I can put them up on my web site, or link them from here.
I recently got back from the Gilroy Bot Gauntlet (held last Saturday) and did surprisingly well. I went 5-2 much to my delight, even though I thought I would quickly go 0-2 and then sent packing like I did at Robolympics. Fortunately this bot fixed much of the problems with my first one, even though I couldn't get the weapon finished on time and underweight. Instead of having the hammer, I found…
It's been a while, but I thought I'd post that my robot did very poorly at robolympics, going 0-2. There are no videos yet, but I can recap it. First I went against Senior PITA and getting a bit of damage against his drum, then going up against Punked out Puppy which did a lot of damage to the foam, bending an axle, and doing a bit of damage to one of the wheels. The bot is disassembled now, and…
I went 2-2. Here are the videos (no sound, need divx): Win vs. Magical Hobo Loss vs. Pushy Little Bugger Win vs. Cardboard Box Loss vs. Overdrive
With the help of my dad, I've built an antweight robot for robot combat like in battlebots or robot wars if you've ever seen either of those. It's built using foamcore/foamboard/posterboard and is covered with a layer of carbon fibre. Here are pictures of the finished robot: Frame curing in the oven Assembling the foam-core pieces Armor assembly and drive assembly Finished build
I just made a few changes to fry_laser2k3 and compiled it for another beta. The changes include: Brightened up lower lobby Remove battlements entrance You can download it on the maps page if you're interested. Also, I'm going to hold a playtest on it to see if it's more balanced. Hopefully it is.
Traffic today went much smoother, but parking was only slightly worse since I had to park in the overflow lot instead of the non-overflow lot. I like that they have had traffic people waving people through stop signs since that speeds it up a lot. Too bad they stopped right as I walked to the crosswalk to get to the parking lot where my car was parked to leave. Campus is huge though. I forgot how…
The first day of school has come and gone. So has the second. Parking was much more bearable than I thought it would be, as the parking lot hadn't filled up by the time I arrived there. Traffic was much worse though. On the first day it took over an hour and a half to get to the parking lot, whereas normally it takes 30-35 minutes. On the second day it still took a little over an hour, but it was…
With the recent SoBig.F worm/virus outbreak, my email started getting flooded with silly emails asking me to look at an attachment. Since I know better, I didn't bother opening them. However, it's still mildly frustrating to have to be deleting spam again since using SpamAssassin . SpamAssassin went to the rescue though, since by adding a high score to MICROSOFT_EXECUTABLE, I haven't gotten any…
I participated in a PHP coding contest a week or so ago and the results have been released. I got 6th place, so I'm happy :). In other news I'm developing code for the Spades Contest on codewalkers.com . If anyone wants to write one and test their scripts against mine, feel free to post a comment and I'll look at it.