some random text about funky things

Wikipedia has a problem. The number of active volunteers has been slowly decreasing for a couple of years. There are several reasons for this, and one of them is that it has become more difficult to edit Wikipedia. When you click the “Edit” button on some page, one expects to see an interface like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Exactly the same appearance as when viewing the page, only now with a cursor and controls to edit the text and insert links and media. However, the opposite is true: you see a huge text box containing something that looks like a programming language.

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Last time I talked about my photoframe and room control setup. It was a laptop modification, and some hacking around in cheap remote controlled switches and simple scripts. I rebuilt most of the system now: a silent PC with normal screen serves the photos, it can control the lights and devices using a commercial product, there are cameras in the room and on the street, it’s all being shown and controlled by a slick webinterface, and my grandparents are quite happy with my old photoframe in their living room. :-)

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In 2007 I decided it would be cool to build a digital photo frame, out of a broken laptop. I bought the laptop from a friend of mine, as it was pretty old and useless, considering the keyboard didn’t work. With some help of my grandpa and his tools, I built it. Later, I added speech recognition and control of the lights in my room.

Most of the original source code is lost, and the system doesn’t work well anymore, so I’m redesigning it. In a few months you can expect another blog post on this, but I thought a writeup of the old design would be nice.

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In the last few years I’ve competed in a few algorithmic programming contests, which are great fun! Sometimes performing well, sometimes screwing up, it’s always a great learning experience, and you meet people who are really, really good.

Right now I’m with some guys in a house in Putten, working on the CodeCup, so this is a nice time to take a break and write down what I think are cool contests, and what makes each contest unique.

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One of the coolest projects I have worked on resulted in the turning of heads when biking through the city, and was also a great challenge as it involves some tricky hardware and software. The result was pretty darn amazing though.

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Well, there you have it. I started a blog. Now I think only people who actually have something to say should begin blogging. And I’m not sure if I’ve got something to say. So the first few posts will be postings of old projects, for my own reference and to get the hang of it. Maybe you’ll like it too!

My writing skills are average, as is my knowledge of the English language. So if you have suggestions of any kind, please, don’t hesitate to leave a comment!

That being said, let’s look at a fun little project I worked on about two years ago. I had a bet with Marcel Vlastuin that I could produce a self-enumerating pangram. This is an example of such a pangram:

This sentence contains three a’s, one b, three c’s, two d’s, thirty three e’s, seven f’s, one g, six h’s, ten i’s, one j, one k, one l, one m, twenty four n’s, sixteen o’s, one p, one q, nine r’s, twenty six s’s, seventeen t’s, five u’s, five v’s, four w’s, four x’s, four y’s, and one z.

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