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Piano Star
Woke up today with a great idea for a piano learning application. A program that would display songs in a format that is familiar to me, guitar hero. My plan was to make a scrolling music application written in C++ that would take xls files as input and display note names on each bar. I am not much with OpenGL/DirectX programming, so I would need help. It then dawned on me to search sourceforge for a similar application already in development and offer my help. I found one, Synthesia. Synthesia completely blows me away. Does everything I wanted and takes a huge step forward by using MIDI files, making it…
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Pedometer Enthusiast
New widget added to the main page for tracking my personal exercise activity (below the right side menu bar). Hosted by Walker Tracker, one glance shows the last 14 days. This new plan was inspired by an old article. I am keeping a step goal and increasing it by 2000 each month, but the simple act of tracking how active you are makes you self aware of when you need to be more active. "It takes about six months to "lock in" a new behavior." I am using a freebee pedometer that came with a brita water filter. I am about three months in and promised myself a new pedometer…
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Ghostbusters Costume
This was a joint project between myself and my brother, Dale. I am good with electronics and he has access to sticker industry machines. Although I spent two months working on this costume, there is no reason it couldn’t be done faster and with less effort. Having said that, this costume did win me a costume contest in two out of four catagories. Best Costume Most Original Costume http://www.westaby.net/ghostbusters.html
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Coffee Table Arcade Machine
No end result here, just some concepts. Current research progress and link archive. http://www.westaby.net/coffee.html
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Halloween Construction
With halloween 2 months away I figure it is time to start working on a costume. My brother asked me to help with his Ghostbuster costume and also gave me permission to copy him so we can go together. Check out our current progress in the Costumes & Props section of the forum. Project Forum Update: November 3, 2008: Project complete, costume contest won, details and pictures available. http://www.westaby.net/ghostbusters.html
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Forum Online
Forum has been offline since February, but recently I was able to fix the database error on the old host and get the backups restored on the new host. Took the chance to update to the latest 3.0 phpBB too.
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Arcade Renovation
I started building this cabinet years ago, but only got as far as making it functional. To me it was never complete, until now. http://www.westaby.net/arcadeRevisted.html
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Home Theater PC w/ XBMC
The idea here is to build a pc from scratch that’s sole purpose is to play HD or HR videos using a port of XBMC. All for under $300. http://www.westaby.net/htpc.html
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New Site Design
Finally made the move to CSS with a template from styleshout. Enjoy.
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Cleaning Water Damaged Circuits
This guide will attempt to walk you through how to fix water damaged circuit boards using a dish washer and some caution. I wrote this guide while doing research to clean my own water damaged main board. Most people should be able to follow this guide, but if you don’t have experience with electronics be warned; you can permanently damage the many individual components by exposing them to water like described by this guide. Don’t follow this guide if you still have options for service. Check your warranty with the store you bought it from, the manufacturer’s warranty, and even your credit card company may have water damage insurance built…