Literal Total Eclipse of the Heart

RT: @notspam1: Give it time, but literal version of Total Eclipse of the Heart is great: http://tinyurl.com/nacjd8

UPDATE: A good follow-up is the literal version of "Anything for Love"...

YouTube video of helicopter control project of a student

For anyone who doesn't understand what "control" is, the following is a small example of the work of a "control engineer". In this case, the engineer is one of my students. He's an undergraduate in a class I taught last quarter; this YouTube video is a demonstration of his final project for the class:

As shown, his controller manages to keep the helicopter stabilized in a position that gets set by the joystick. The computer "flies" the helicopter with a heading set by a human via joystick. When they push on the helicopter, they're simulating a disturbance like a heavy wind gust. The helicopter's controller quickly brings it back to its old state. What you don't see is that the controller has been designed to do this as smoothly as possible (e.g., to prevent "jerkiness" within the helicopter).

This is a concrete example of classical control design. What I do in particular in my own research is quite a bit different. However, the video is a nice demonstration about what "control engineers" (like me) do.

Our 2008 solstice photoset on Flickr

Check out our Solstice 2008 photoset on Flickr. There are a lot of nice shots of Fritz:

Including a video or two, like this one:

That's one cute dog.

My Brother Kenny on YouTube

A YouTube video of my brother Kenny and his family is now available. It is an interview segment with them for the MDA telethon held on Labor Day. My brother has ALS, which is also known as "Lou Gehrig's disease."

The MDA is one of many organizations fighting this disease, and yet the general public knows very little about it and researchers are having a hard time getting positive results from animal models to perform equally as well in human tests.

PLEASE help support my brother and ALS research in general by donating to my d'Feet ALS walk page.

Great 2-port USB KVM switch: IOGEAR GCS632U MiniView Micro USB Plus

A while ago I made a couple of posts about KVM switches [i.e., 1, 2]. In that case, I was searching for a PS/2 KVM switch that supported 5-button mice. Several KVM switches failed me, including a switch from Belkin that looked great on paper but was awful in practice. In the end, it was the cheapest switch that worked like a charm. Well, here's how things went this time.

• Again, Belkin makes crap: Last week I went through virtually the same process with 2-port USB KVM switches. This time I needed a USB switch to go back and forth between my Apple PowerBook and my Dell Workstation (I'm spanning the PowerBook's second monitor onto the Windows machine). Because it looked to be the cheapest, I tried the Belkin F1DK102U 2-Port USB KVM Switch with Built-In Cabling first. It said it supported OS X and XP. Strangely, it also required software to be installed in order to use it. This should have been my first clue that I was wasting my time and money with this awful Belkin product. I don't remember the last time I was pleased with a Belkin product (I suppose I had some UPS's from them that weren't that bad). Despite being OS X compatible, booting with the product connected caused the PowerBook to crash pretty bad. It gave me that little black window of death on bootup. Again, because it required software in order to use, that made uninstalling it (while the monitor was still connected to it) was a pain. PLUS, when it was connected, it wasn't able to emulate my monitor and mouse and keyboard, and so Windows and OS X weren't convinced that I was using the monitor, mouse, and keyboard that I was using. Oh, and on TOP of that, one of its attached cables (you can see this in the picture) is only about a foot long, and it's the DEFAULT PORT! This was a lousy product.


• IOGEAR is lovely as always: Luckily, I had to go back to the store for a different reason, and I noticed that they had four IOGEAR GCS632U MiniView Micro USB Plus 2-port KVM switches, and two of those switches were marked at a price CHEAPER than the Belkin piece of crap. I had someone check, and the correct price was the low price. So I took the Belkin back and got the IOGEAR instead. This switch said it was Mac compatible (Mac mini compatible, even). Heck, it even said it was SUN compatible! It also had ANALOG AUDIO support, which is kinda nice. Finally, right on the box it said, "USB sniffing technology allows complete USB mouse and keyboard emulation for error-free boot-up." This feature was one of the major things I LOVED about the old QVS PS/2 switch. Plus, I figured this meant that it would crash my PowerBook like the Belkin thing did. Both of its cables were the same length (6'), and it would choose a "default" port based on what was powered on. Oh, and did I mention it didn't require software?

The result? The IOGEAR GCS632U, the cheapest 2-port USB KVM switch that was available to me, worked EXACTLY as I wanted it to. It's beautiful. It's slick. I love it. I love IOGEAR.

NOTE: IOGEAR also has a PS/2 version of this switch that I'm guessing works as superbly as the QVS KVM-12CK (the PS/2 switch from the previous posts) that is still working great today.

I found my KVM!!

After a long search, one of the cheapest damn KVM's ended up being the one that worked!

The QVS KVM-12CK was the one that did the trick. It's great! It supports ALL the features of my Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical (all of the 5 buttons plus the scroll wheel) plus all of the features of my Logitech Media Keyboard Elite. I BET it would work with the cordless keyboard and mouse I was using earlier with a crappy Belkin OmniView (DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM BELKIN EVER!! EVER!! BOYCOTT THIS AWFUL COMPANY!! BOYCOTT!!).

However, I do have a gripe or two about this new KVM switch. My biggest gripe is that its connectors come out the back (console) and two sides (each computer) and it's a square meant to sit flat, so it looks a little ugly and is a little inconvenient. I might rig up some sort of holder for it to hold it vertical attached to the hutch going around the monitor. It also has a single toggle button rather than a button for each PC, but since it's only 2-port then that's not so bad (it might even be preferable).

So this is exciting. It works. I'm pretty happy about it.

NOTE: IOGEAR also has a PS/2 version of this switch that I'm guessing works as superbly as the QVS KVM-12CK that is still working great today.

HELP! KVM+IntelliMouse Optical?

UPDATE: I found the wonderful QVS KVM-12CK KVM switch, and it works perfectly.

I have been pulling my hair out trying to find a good keyboard and mouse combination for my parents'. They just added a second computer to their rec. room -- the old one was just for the grand kids -- and want a KVM switch to switch from one to the other.

I have a few KVM switches that worked well 10 years ago, but none of them support 5-button mice.

So I keep trying new KVM switches that **SAY** they support "Microsoft IntelliMouse" (they have a Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical) but I get them home and find that that was a lie. I search on-line (needle in a haystack) and eventually find lots of other people with the problem.

Is there *ANY* KVM switch out there that can work?

I really want a KVM switch that has PS/2 connections to each computer since the grand kids' computer is hidden and can only be configured to be turned on from the keyboard if the keyboard is connected via PS/2. I suppose I could try a USB-to-PS/2 converter (which is correctly on the end of the current keyboard), but I don't trust converting *AFTER* the KVM since this keyboard has some fancy keys.

HELP?! SOMEONE!! PLEASE!!