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?

Over the last few weeks, I have been working on a chat-bot that acts much more than a simple echo server. With the plethora of Instant Message clients on the market (Yahoo, AIM, GTalk, Pidgin, Adium, etc.), it was difficult to determine which IM client suited my needs. First, the client needed to be available across several platforms (Windows, Windows Mobile 6, Linux, OS X). Second, their needed be an existing publicly available API in order to write the chat-bot code. Third, it was imperative that the API was actively being deployed and developed. Why mess around with an IM client that nobody was using?

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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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Monday started off with a series of emails regarding a morning talkshow that, quite frankly, I never watch. However, I would killed somebody or given someone a a couple of quarters, to have the chance to watch one particular episode of “The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet.” Apparently, while taping the show, someone in the studio booth pressed the wrong button which caused a picture of a cat eating spaghetti to be displayed briefly over the airwaves. It was so quick, that barely anyone noticed, except for the guys on “The Soup.” Here’s what “The Soup” had to report:

On a more technical note (and even creepily funnier), somebody has gone and done the impossible: Create a wearable PC. No. I’m not talking about strapping a PDA to one’s arm. I’m talking a full-blown Personal Computer. Check this out:

The Wearable Personal Computer

Please insert your own caption. For more on this engineering feat, check it out here on Engadget.

I ran across this article on one of my favorite geek-sites, Engadget. Being a huge fan of Mythbusters (along with the rest of my family), I was struck by how frustrated and animated Jamie became when discussing a squashed episode involving them taking a closer look at how hack-able RFID technology can be when not implemented properly.

Being as I now work in the RFID business and that my senior design project involved hacking an RFID tag, I am still astonished that large corporations can put the ‘kabosh’ on a story that needs to be told in order for us in the engineering business to work to make it [RFID] better.

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 early Wednesday morning and I have finished tackling the mind-numbing task of upgrading my WordPress engine to version 2.5. Not only that, I’ve finally uploaded some of my blog’s pictures that were missed when I transferred this blog over to my new domain.

This should be a fine summer; with my kids with me for almost seven weeks this year. It’ll be different than previous summers since I am not living in Van Horne. Living in Iowa City should be really good for no only myself, but the kids as well. I’ve already planned a series of events to get them accustomed to the downtown area. I have the kids making periodic trips to downtown Iowa City (only a few blocks away) to take snapshots of the real locations depicted on the University of Iowa‘s version of Monopoly. The entire family has been playing Iowaopoly for a couple years. I’m looking forward to see how the pictures turn out.
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