Most of the traffic to my website appear to come from people interested in my Senior Design RFID Project that I finished back in 2008 to graduate from the University of Iowa Engineering Department.

They search fairly typical keywords: RFID, manchester, decoding, hid, hack, spoof,  125kHz or other basic parameters of RFID technology.

These key-word searches increase during the middle of the semester, when I surmise the students are scrambling to figure out how to make their OWN RFID Senior Design projects work.

It’s cool.

Recently, some guy going by sketchsk3tch on Instructables referenced my senior design project. It was VERY kind of him to add my project to his list of references, but wasn’t to happy with what he mentioned in reference to my project, stating, “School project, cool ideas, missing some details though.”

Missing some details? Like what? The entire schematic is up on that page! What more does this guy need?

Which brought me to another issue: Why didn’t he ask me for those missing details? Because, I would not have provided the REAL missing piece: The Arduino Code. Yeah, he would have “stolen” the Arduino code (the Java-like code that instructs the Atmega168 PIC we used for the project). Well, maybe he wouldn’t have “stolen” it, but I’m confident any bits he used would NOT have been attributed properly.

…and that is precisely the reason the entire RFID project is NOT up on my website. I hate leachers. Period.

As much attention my Senior Design Project seems to get from across the globe, I refrain from providing some of the critical pieces to make the entire project work. It’s self preservation.

So, to those seriously interested in my project, skim through my website and have fun. It’s for the community to enjoy. Ask me questions! I’ll answer, but don’t be surprised if I make you work at it. How else are you really going to learn?

Rockwell Automation

It’s no secret that I spent several years in the Engineering Labs of Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, who I owe much of my enthusiasm for doing so to my father.

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Dr. House

Lately, I have been rather busy with LIFE stuff…and we all know how THAT goes.

Over the past few weeks, my eyes have been rather puffy and I haven’t been able to get a decent nights rest in over 6 months. So, last week I took a few days off from work and met with my Family Practioner. Following the exam, made an appointment to get some blood-work done the next day. In the mean-time, I was prescribed a rather powerful sleep-agent, Trazadone, and a Prednizone variety for the puffyness around the eyes.

Of course, I found the Trazadone to be rather effective. But, when I met with my family doctor the following week, the steroids did little to reduce the swelling around my eyes. Fortunately, the blood-work indicated that my 40-ish body was doing rather well. My cholesterol is good and my liver and kidney functions are doing fine as well. So, why the swelling? Lord only knows. My doctor made an appointment with an opthemologist next week, so hopely this all may only be allergies. In the meantime, my doctor gave me a sample of an antihistemine eye-drop that I’m supposed to take once-a-day.

Hopefully, we’ll get this all figured out.

I am a geek by nature, so I browse many geek-related websites: engadget, ThinkGeek, Wired or Switched. During the last couple weeks my kids were back with during the summer, we became fascinated with the craziest commercials we had ever seen. The folks at HowStuffWWorks released one of their first television commercials featuring the nearly impossible: a scuba-diving cat.

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It’s been a busy semester as Team Wombat has been working at a feverish pitch in order to successfully complete their senior design project: The RFID Hacker.

For those that don’t visit this blog often, our senior design project is a device that will read and write RFID tag information. What is RFID? Well, you know when you walk into FootLocker at the mall and the security alarms go off? That’s an RFID tag system. The book you bought at Barnes & Noble still have an active RFID tag embedded in the spine of the book because the bookstore clerk forgot to disable the RFID tag. An RFID tag is much like an electronic barcode, except you don’t need to wave a laser at the purchased item in order to determine it’s sale price.

Why build an RFID hacker? Well, RFID is used for security purposes and we at the University of Iowa Engineering College have an RFID security ID card so that we can access the Seamans Center during off-hours. RFID technology is great, but since it is an open-source technology, almost anyone with enough time and electronics background can defeat RFID security measures.

So far, our project is going well. We’ll be populating our 2nd printed circuit board throughout the upcoming weekend, not to mention the final project report AND a huge poster for our final presentation. For more information regarding our progress and more about RFID technology, visit our senior design project website here.

Spent last weekend at the folks house. Mom is doing much better since i last visited two weeks ago. She’s getting around MUCH better than before. Mom has pretty much discarded the walker and was pretty pleased with herself when she found she able to get in-and-out of the rocking chair that’s been a fixture in the living room.

Larry was gone much of the weekend on one of his many bowling excursions. Beth, John and Emmett watched over Mom from Friday through Monday. Christine came over Monday and hung-out until Larry got back on Tuesday. Things went pretty well.

I’m still finishing my last semester at the University of Iowa. Much of my time is taken up integrating the PIC18F452 and EM4095 for my Senior Design Project: Hacking RFID. To learn more, just visit here and you’ll get a gist of what I’m dealing with.

On Tuesday, July 31st of 2007, one of the finest people I have met here at the University of Iowa will be boarding a plane in Cedar Rapids and flying back home to Libya. I have no idea why Tariq has decided to leave this fabulous jewel of the Midwest, but I’m sure he knows what he’s doing. I’ll have to trust his judgment. In all likelihood, I will never see him again and it is just now starting to sink in. Until last week, I had never hung-out with him outside the Engineering Building at the University of Iowa. Until our dinner with Mehmed, Ahmed, Ahmed, Mike and myself, I had never chatted with him extensively in a more social environment. Of course, he was always picking my brain on the latest audio/video editing software or clues to solving his Data Structures homework. I was always more than happy to add my two-cents worth. He has always maintained a very relaxed sense of self that was refreshing and a tad addictive. I’m sure he was just as stressed as the rest of us, but he seemed to take it all in stride. Tariq has always appeared a rather level-headed guy.

During my tenure here at the Univeristy of Iowa, I had never had a class with the guy. He was always one semester ahead. We became acquainted through mutual friends, Mehmed Diken (“Bill” for short) and Ahmed Halaweish. I had gleaned from several conversations that Ahmed was a native of Egypt, which unwittingly caused me to assume that Tariq was from Egypt as well. Oddly enough, this facade continued for an entire year and I was none the wise. It wasn’t until shortly Angie’s graduation party did I realize my unintentional assumption. I had posted a photo up on Facebook with the title, “Two Egyptians, a Turk and a Cowboy walk into Buffalo Wild Wings…” I had struggled with the title; then realizing that there is a general “rule of threes” in common joke writing (i.e. “A Lutheran, a Catholic and a Protestant walk into a bar…”) I had inadvertently tossed Tariq into the “Egyptian” category and he called me on it less than a week later. “You know I’m not from Egypt, don’t you?” I had to admit that I had failed to ask where he was from… I just assumed. Fortunately, Tariq has one of the most forgiving attitudes, so he let my “faux pa” slide.

The joke continued later that summer when Tariq, Mehmed and myself went out for lunch at The Airliner. While we were waiting for our pizza (sans pork products). We were chatting about the last semester and the many difficulties that we had to overcome when I simply looked over at Tariq and stated rather dryly, “You know, you were so much cooler when I thought you were from Egypt.”

I remember Mehmed nearly busting a gut on the other side of the table as Tariq simply sat there with a slight smile on his face. “Dude. Why you gotta’ do me like that” was all that Tariq could muster.

Now, all these guys call home somewhere near the Middle East. Mehmed and his brother, Ahmed, are from Turkey (via Saudi Arabia), while Ahmed is from Egypt (close enough as far as I can tell) and Tariq (obviously) from Libya. Chilling out with this bunch has been the best thing for me because they have broadened my horizons and broke every stereotype that a guy like myself from the Midwest could ever possibly conceive. They are a funny, generous and intelligent group of guys that I can’t conceive of a life without having a chance growing to love and admire.

Hopefully, Tariq will continue his Libyan Mentality TV blog while back home. He’s been working on it as “…a venue to show sides of Libya that are unprecedented, whether it is in depth interviews of common everyday characters or events that rarely take place.”

So far, it looks like he’s off to a good start. Tariq. I’ll miss you, dude. Thanks for being a fine friend. Allah willing, perhaps I will get the chance to chill-out with you again.