This printer is made entirely out of legos. It writes with a felt tip pen. Wow.

Grade: B

The new Robin Hood movie is pretty mediocre. It is lacking the adventurous feel of the old Robin Hood movies, and orphans too many interesting threads of plot. In the end, it really doesn’t convey a memorable story.

This movie is the precursor to the Kevin Costner Robin Hood movie that kicked ass in the 90′s. That movie was tight, concise, well written, and action packed the whole time.

This new movie, while the acting, especially Russel Crowe and Maid Marion, is quite good, falls far short. It is good entertainment though. A few good action scenes and some amazing trick-shots with a bow and arrow.

My major gripe is that there are too many characters introduced, too many “short stories” told about them, and very few of those stories ever conclude. Robin’s father, for example, gets about 5 minutes of screen time. The point of his appearance is to explain why Robin becomes a fighter against the tyrannical monarchy, but even a computer scientist like myself knows that writers need to develop a character more for him to impact the viewer. This such quick flash story happens at least five times. Big wonder why I can’t remember the exact count: The story just wasn’t that memorable.

Plus, who does a PG-13 action movie anyway??. No blood and no breasts, what a letdown!

The arch villain looked just like my girlfriend’s ex, and when he inevitably dies, we got a good smile.

I just discovered that you need to set your facebook albums private, one by one. They are set to visibility “everyone” by default. Their privacy policy is ridiculous. On one hand, I wouldn’t have posted these pictures if they weren’t ok for everyone to see. On the other hand, can’t FB have some common sense before using default setting “everyone” if the rest of your profile is fairly locked down? Some people will someday have to look for a job, and may care about their web persona!

This code makes a Concept Map with the Processing library / Java. Processing library makes it easy and quick to make graphical representations and animations, among its many features.

    /**
     * setup is called implicitly by the library when rdraw is called
     * it sets the size, drawing method, then in this case draws the graph
     */
    public void setup() {
      size(boxSize,boxSize);
      smooth();
      drawGraph();
     }
    /**
     * Draws the graph. req and neighbors must have been
     * previously set through the construtor or the setters
     */
    public void drawGraph()
    {     
        int halfBox= 150;
        //processing uses radians, not degrees
        float angle = 2*PI / neighbors.size();
        for(int i = 0; i < neighbors.size(); i++)
        {
            float cur_angle = i*angle;
            String s = neighbors.get(i);
   
            //calculate an even dispersal around the central objet
            //it depends on how many objects are in your list
            float xpos = halfBox*cos(cur_angle)+center;
            float ypos = halfBox*sin(cur_angle)+center;
       
            //color=black, draw a line to new item
            stroke(0);
            line(center,center, xpos,ypos);
            //put the item last, on top of the lines
            drawCircle(xpos, ypos, s);
        }
        //put the item last, on top of the lines
        drawCircle(center,center,result);
    }

    /**
     * draws a circle with specified text at (x,y)
     * @param x the x position of where the circle will go
     * @param y the y position of where the circle will go
     * @param word the word that will go in the middle of the circle
     */
    public void drawCircle(float x, float y, String word)
    {
        fill(255);
        ellipse(x,y,word.length()*10, 40);
        fill(0, 102, 153);
        textAlign(CENTER);
        text(word,x,y);
    }

/**
     * Makes a graph with req in the middle, surrounded
     * by neighbors n. calls the library's super, Papplet.main
     */
    public void rdraw(String req, ArrayList<String> n)
    {
        result = req;
        neighbors = n;
     
        PApplet.main(new String[] { "--bgcolor=#ECE9D8", "BrainH.client.ConceptMap" });
    }

Compete Source here [ConceptMap.java].

School is wrapping up for the semester. Lots of work, but all of it is enjoyable. My Thesis proposal is being put through the wringer this week.

If anyone wants the password for the post below, just drop a comment and I’ll send it to you.