Colin told me about laser microphones, and the idea tickled me in a way that most times I’m tickled like that, I have to cuddle afterwards.

At any rate, I happened upon a metacafe video of how to make one yourself. I skipped down to Radioshack and bought the photoresistor and a cheap laser pointer.

I had some troubles getting any signal off of it at first, but I decided to try to set it up like I thought it should work and try the whole shebang without trying to get each piece to work. I was able to pick up taps on the glass (though they had to be amplified a great deal, giving me a surprisingly clear signal), but I was unable to record any voices. I expect this just has to do with the intensity and spread of the laser, and I imagine that a higher quality laser might be able to pick up speech. If I ever get one of the nice Think Geek laser pointers, I’ll certainly have to try it again. I wonder what my neighbors have to say.

Here are another couple of little blurbs I wrote for another scholarship.

1) What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

If I weren’t afraid, I would actually do very little worthwhile. For me, fear is an enormous motivating factor - from driving me to be more competitive to encouraging me to accomplish more. Somewhat ironically, if often pushes me to do things of which I am tremendously afraid - the fear of not doing it outweighing the fear of the deed itself.

Many things worth doing are pretty frightening - from skydiving to going down that ski run that makes you wet yourself; and still other things are worth doing exclusively for the fear they engender. It helps me learn things about myself: how do I act under the pressure? Do I have the stones to take the jump? What’s worthwhile enough for me to do that for?

Being afraid of losing my edge or not besting competitors and colleagues or not self-actualizing lights a little fire under me to accomplish. A fear of not getting to do what I want to eggs me on. It all generates a competitive attitude that benefits me in a big big way. Even evolutionarily, fear can help us to perform.

Besides, very few things beat the rush of being scared out of your gourd as you speed almost uncontrollably down the mountain.

2) How are you going to change the world?

My biggest strength as an empiricist and a person and what I hope to bring to those around me is a clear understanding and an appreciation for science. It’s essentially a formal definition of how we as humans come to understand the world we live in, and everyone should at least foster a minimalist awareness of the basic principles that drive it.

In raising kids, I want them to be very aware of how useful science is in terms of technological advances but also in terms of its efficacy as a methodology in it and of itself. “Indoctrination” is such an ugly word, but I really do want my children to understand the tremendous importance. And it’s not just limited to my children - friends, family, co-workers, and I’m totally bringing it to the blogosphere.

I hope that eventually we will live in a world that can take a more rational approach to the problems that face us individually, as families and even as countries. That’s not by any means saying that I want to do away with things like religion or art, and certainly not wanting to take a completely utilitarian approach to life. I just think the world would be a much better place if people would appreciate the mechanisms that underly the madness and how we ultimately know and understand them. Short of curing cancer and AIDS and feeding the hungry, I think it’s one of the most important things in the world today.

It’s CSM’s census day today, which usually means one thing for me: changing classes at the last minute. Sixteen credits turned into fifteen (I really don’t want to take Senior Seminar). I wanted to take Database Management, but the professor left Mines, and the class was cancelled. Next on to my next choice Compiler Design (I’ve been wanting this class since I took Principles of Programming Languages, and it’s only offered once a year. You get to write your own Java compiler! How awesome is that?

I would really like to make it out of Mines in a timely fashion, and I’ll have some graduate school requirements, so… on to the next really enticing class: CSCI562 Applied Algorithms and Data Structures. One of my favorite classes was CSCI406 Algorithms, and Dr. Mehta is teaching this one as well.

I hadn’t turned in my grad school application when it was due, so I was planning on starting my grad work this spring. As it turns out, there’s a mechanism for allowing undergrads to take graduate courses. Unfortunately only seniors are allowed to, and from my first two years at Mines, I had only 88 credits (two credits shy of seniorhood). My transfer credit from my year abroad hasn’t come in yet (all up to 12 credits of it). A signature from the prof of the course, my advisor and the man in charge of grad school, and I’m in the class!

My first graduate class! In the of the l337, “w00t.”

His name is Robert Paulson.

Who doesn’t love Tyler Durden and Fight Club? In the spirit of the Paper Street Soap Company, Kevin and I decided we would try to make our own soap.

Unfortunately, we didn’t render human fat, and as Kevin is vegetarian, we had to use vegetable oil. After doing a little research, we picked some oils, ordered four pounds of lye (NaOH), and got to work. It’s apparently a very long process, starting with combining your fats and heating them until the mixture homogenizes, mixing lye into water (never putting water into lye), mixing until “trace,” and letting it sit… for 4-6 weeks.

Our recipe called for 175 grams of lye into about 514 ml of water (~8.5 M). The highest concentration of NaOH I’d worked with (in Quant lab) had been only .4 molar, but that wasn’t so dangerous, so why should 20 times more concentrated do any harm?

Our handywork is sitting in my basement, and over the course of the last few days it has hardened from about liquid soap to a substantially thick paste. Hopefully when it finishes, we will have usable soap.

My friends and I almost got beaten with a baseball bat setting dry ice bombs off while in Japan, which just made Alan and me want to do it even more. Alan Throwing

The premise for a dry ice bomb is simple: dry ice sublimes in a closed container and when the pressure is sufficiently high, boom. We add warm water to speed up the whole process, but still pretty simple.

Safeway sells dry ice (as I understand it, you must be 18 or older to purchase it, but we did not get carded) at a rate of $0.99 per pound in up to 8-pound blocks. We got ourselves three pounds, and headed home, where we had plenty of bottles, gloves, a hammer, and a couple of airsoft guns waiting for us.

One of the advantages to living in the boonies is that you can set off these explosives and shoot BBs in your back yard. Although, the neighbors must have wondered what in the hell was going on.

In general, a lot of fun, and relatively safe. I’ve had some of these go off in my hands, and while there’s a bit of a sting, all your fingers are still there. As long as you’re not using a nalgene, other hard plastic, glass, or metal, it’s pretty benign. Shooting them is just an added bonus, and beats the hell out of setting out empty cans to hit. These targets explode.

I recently put in a 3.5 mm jack in my car stereo that I might listen to my iPod without an FM transmitter (with which I’ve had no luck) or one of those cassette tapes (my tape deck does not work). In using my bulky soldering iron which I am certain came from the 50’s, I soldered two pins together, and I’m sure I came close to breaking something on several occasions. Frankly, I’m surprised the whole thing worked in the end.

I had seen the ColdHeat soldering iron on ThinkGeek (my nerd toys site of choice), but found out that RadioShack sells them, too. (And at RadioShack, it was even the same price!) Being one who hates to wait for / pay for shipping, and seeing as Kevin and I are going to do the same little experiment on his car stereo this weekend, I hopped on down to RadioShack to get it. I had some other things on my RS shopping list for other projects that this store didn’t have, but so be it.

I got it home, turned it on, and overly-trustingly touched the tip. Nothing. I touched the tip to the solder, and it melted and a blob fell to the counter. As soon as I could, I touch the tip again. Room temperature. It’s pretty neat. Check out some of the videos of it out and about on YouTube and Google Video.

For those interested, I got the car-stereo jack idea from Lifehacker, who apparently found it on Make.

This is our first assignment (due this coming Wednesday), and seems relatively appropriate. I’ll let Wikipedia give you background.

I pounded it out in about 10-20 minutes in Ruby, and seems like a good chance for me to refresh my Dr. Scheme (it’s been about a year, except for a pop quiz from Matt Matteson). Although it’s really not a difficult problem to solve nor that much of a feat to code for it, I really enjoy the simplicity of the solution. It reminded me a lot of a really elegant solution to the Tower Of Hanoi problem that Prof. Rader showed us in Data Structures.

Additionally, it’s always fun to take first steps in a buzz-word-titled class: Artificial Intelligence.

I’ve been moving my blog around a lot, but it will have the following resting place for the next two years (I own the domain for at least that long): http://dan.lecocq.us/wordpress

It is not unlikely that you’ve run across this technique on the internet (http://www.metacafe.com/tags/bump+key/). It involves taking a key that fits a given set of locks, and then for each pin, filing down to the lowest pin setting. Relatively simple, and the process on the whole is something that supposedly any mildly adroit beginner should be able to complete successfully.

Interviews of lock-picking hobby groups are filled with comments about the absurd ease and dull simplicity of this method. Admittedly, to a certain extent, I was skeptical.

I went to Lowe’s and bought a set of files (~$5) (the one I was after was axially triangular), and made a copy of key (~$1.50) I had laying around and to whose corresponding lock I had access. As per a suggestion in one video, I marked with a permanent marker the placement of the pins along the key, and then filed down to the lowest setting at those points, leaving a sawtoothed edge.

Cautiously, I inserted it to the first pin in the lock and tried to remove it. Down the fourth pin I was able to remove it. Upon inserting it completely, however, I was stuck. Opened the lock, removed the pins and slid it out. I filed down more so that the peaks between the pins were no more than approximately 45º. Thereafter, I was able to easily slide the key in and out. While removing the pin, I noticed that on top of the driver pins, there were springs, making me even more incredulous. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin_tumbler_lock)

The first dozen attempts or so on one lock proved unsuccessful, but it was kind of an awkward setup - in order to unlock, the key had to turn counter-clockwise, and holding the key in my left hand was more conducive to turning it clockwise. I tried instead to lock the lock with the same method, and it worked! A second time! After those successes, it was harder to duplicate, but this lead me to believe that it was simply a matter of improving technique at this point. I moved onto another lock that they fit, and it was able to unlock it repeatedly.

From what I’ve read, and now from experience, the biggest difficulty is simply applying the proper amount of torque in the key when bumping it. On all attempts, however, when I released the torque in order to withdraw the key, I could very clearly hear pins being sprung back into position.

It amazes me that these kinds of locks are so vulnerable to so simple an attack. All in all, it was a fun and revealing experiment, and I encourage people to try it out themselves.

It’s that time of year again - overly zealous and naive freshmen and buying books.

One of the biggest things to help me pay for my books has been softcover international editions. Some of my friends in inferior disciplines (not engineering) say that they can’t find international editions of their books - it might just be a technical book thing. At any rate, I recently ordered three of my textbooks from Abebooks, and spent a total of $137 (shipping included) for three books that the campus book store would have charged me $400+ for. All this for getting softcover international editions as opposed to U.S. hardcover editions.

The prize of this collection is my Artificial Intelligence book ($90 at the book store) for which I paid the mere pittance of $16 U.S. (including $8 of shipping).

I’ve done this in the past, and the books are identical, page for page, and word for word. They even come adorned with a warning that they are not for sale in the United States:

This edition is manufactured in India and is authorized for sale only in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Circulation of this edition outside of these territories is UNAUTHORIZED.

Or the more specific:

RESTRICTED! Not For Sale In The United States.

I can only hope that this is not to squeeze more money out of us.

Oh. And I suppose I should mention that these books that I bought are all brand-spanking-new.