Founded in 1999, OverClocked ReMix is an organization dedicated to the appreciation, preservation, and interpretation of video game music. Its primary focus is www.ocremix.org, a website featuring hundreds of free fan arrangements, information on game music and composers, resources for aspiring artists, and a thriving community of video game music fans.
Basically, they host free video game song remixes. What follows is a list of some of my favorite remixes.
There are several freely available programs I use for Overclocking my computer. These utilities are great for verifying your computer’s overclock (such as the ram and processor speed) as well as your computer’s stability.
I have recently started using quite a bit of open source software and I wanted to take the time to dedicate an entire post towards it. Often times, open source solutions are often better than their pay based/commercial alternatives.
One thing that I absolutely *HATE* in either freeware or pay-based software is attempts to subtly corrupt your browser or computer. This is typically done by having default installation options include sending you spam, manipulating your browser to add unwanted tool bars, changing your home page, or using your computer resources. These options by default should be turned off, not on.
Currently, a list of programs (both freeware and open-source) I am using is listed as follows…
Greetings!
I come with excellent news today! This Friday, October 30, from noon to 1pm, I will be giving a talk at the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) about my dissertation research, specifically my work with unsupervised building detection from Irregular LiDAR data. Dr. Georgios Anagnostopulos, one of the professors who served on my Dissertation Defense Committee, asked me to give a talk at FIT.
The talk will be in Room 118. FIT has a campus map hosted <here>.
I recently went to Disney with my girlfriend Amanda. In Epcot, they have a minature train set setup I think near Germany. I took this picture from the ground level view of the miniatures on that set (you can see a Godzilla like tourist roaming in the background). If you click the below picture, you’ll be able to see a 1920×1200 resolution version.
I recently implemented a triple redundant backup system to back up over 500 gigs of data. After some reflection, I realized if I ever lost the data stored on my machine, I would be quite livid. I ended up buying 2x Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drives – OEMWD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drives – OEM and 1x Western Digital Element 1TB 3.5″ Black External Hard Drive – Retail. The two Caviar’s are mirroring one another via Raid 1 while the external drive is backing up the entire raid about once a week. My motivation for implementing triple redundancy is as follows. Raiding the drives was because I wanted to have a live, real time backup in case one of the 1TB internal drives dies. The problem with having an internal drive is if a power surge or lightning strike fries your computer, you lose both hard drives. Given the fact that I have my entire dissertation, all of my research, thousands of pictures, and all sorts of other awesome data on these drives, losing both drives simultaneously would be unacceptable. So, I stepped up my backup game and upped the ante to triple redundancy. The pros of having the external drive are to overcome lightning strikes, power surges, or the computer being hacked and all the data deleted, etc. The external drive is only connected once a week for a period of about 8 hours for the backup, and then it is disconnected the rest of the week.
Question: So how do we sync the data onto an external drive? Answer: <Cobian!>
Ok, so one of the primary objectives of this blog is to report particular, awesome internet tidbits to the rest of the community. After my hiatus, it is time to resume this blog’s function in that role.
I’m really excited to report that Mike and Jerry (aka Gabe and Tycho with PA), Scot Kurtz (@ PVP) and Wil Wheaton have again recorded another Podcast with noneother than Chris Perkins serving as their DM (dungeon master)!
I really enjoy these podcasts, Chris does an amazing job bringing his characters and encounters to life while tolerating the other four’s crazy antics. Even if you don’t understand the mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons (which I didn’t for the longest time), the podcast is still a blast.
So far, the <first> and <second> episodes have already been released.
This will be a giant catch up post on the life of Nick. I have grossly neglected this blog for about 90 days and am finally making a return to the blogosphere. Of course, my returning to the blogosphere is none other than to continue to document random aspects of the internet with an occasional blip about me.
Speaking of me, if you haven’t heard already, I finally did graduate with my Doctorate of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering (PhD EE)! I moved from the Orlando area out to Rockledge (small town in Florida south of Cocoa and north of Melbourne/Palm Bay) this past June and started my new job!
Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen or Good morning I should say if you’re still awake,
At this hour of the morning I am literally glowing with excitement! Today I come with an epic announcement: My Dissertation Defense Is This Semester!!!
Earlier this evening, I just completed testing on the last two components of my dissertation and both are working! I have now accumulated enough novel contributions throughout my entire research career to defend my dissertation. I feel highly confident that I will pass knowing what awesome material I will be presenting. This marks the closing of a gargantuan portion of my life as I have been researching my chosen topic and going to school for my PhD for the last 3 years and another year before that for my master’s.
I have a date in mind for my defense, but I have to check with my committee first. If this date jives with their schedules, I will announce it and would be absolutely delighted if you attend (as everyone in the ‘general public’ is invited).
In this hour of triumph, I am reminded of Eisenhower’s words (which will appear at the end of my actual submitted dissertation manuscript) in which he delivered to soldiers departing to the D-Day invasion:
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
If you have two windows based computers where you want to control both systems with the same keyboard, I would highly recommend the Input Director freeware over Synergy. Input director has a whole slew of advantages over synergy:
1. The mouse seamlessly slides from desktop to another without the use of hotkeys.
2. Special mouse/keyboard functions for my logitech mouse such as the document flip not only work on the host but the client as well.
3. Input director doesn’t cause the mouse input to flip out when a Direct X application is open (unlike synergy).
4. Support for both computers (master and slave) having multiple monitors.
The only disadvantage about Input Director is that it works for only windows based OS’s (unlike synergy which works for multiple OS’s – ie Linux, Mac, etc.). If you are controlling multiple computers which are all running windows OS’s, I recommend Input Director over Synergy. Also, Input director had an update this past September whereas Synergy hasn’t been updated in years…I have tested both and got both working but I can only vouch for Synergy’s functionality on two windows machines.
Here are some other pages comparing Input Director and Synergy: [1] and [2].
I use Vista. Despite the tons of negative press it gets, it’s actually a pretty good OS if you can spare the resources to handle the little bit of overhead it has over XP (which is less than what some people gargantuanly blow out of proportion). One feature Vista has is the ability to run ‘Gadgets’ (much like apple’s widgets) off to the side. The widgets I have used are as follows:
Windows Uptime – shows, at a glance, how many hours your computer has been running since its last restart.
CPU Usage – shows at a glance, how much of your ram is being used and how hard your processors are at work.
Weather Underground – Let me preface this with I hate weather apps that claim to be just simply weather apps and are actually spyware that maliciously infect your computer with all sorts of virtual STDs. 
This particular Vista gadget does exactly what its description details – it tells you the local weather, nothing more.
Top Processes – I find this gadget helpful because I code. Instead of having to hit CTRL+ALT+DELETE, I can see form a glance, what applications are eating up the most processing power.
Twitter Explorer – Let’s you tweet and re-tweet from your sidebar. The app has a nice black skin option to it. The only thing I don’t like about it is it’s a little big for my needs. All I want is simply a small screen to post tweets to.
Sphere Timer – This gadget will allow you to set several alarms and will count up and down, displaying the time in second increments. It is great for a desktop timer/stop watch.
In addition to the above Vista gadgets, I also wanted to share about a Pidgin plugin I found. I use pidgin as an IM client to talk to my friends on MSN, AIM, MeeboMe (with this plugin), and now Facebook. You can actually install this application and facebook messages will show up as instant messages through pidgin. Pidgin is a free, open source IM client – one in which I highly recommend. 
The only drawback to pidgin is it is rather difficult to skin.