I’ve been a pretty busy person since the beginning of this year! Most noteably, I’ve got a Masters Thesis project lined up and started – which means the end is finally in sight (July or so). It’s for a company called EADS and it’s a LIDAR (they like to call it a LADAR) that identifies power lines and obstacles in real time for avoidance. Pretty cool! It’s something like what I’ve worked on before (in the general sense, since it uses a laser and the same basic method for range detection). It’ll probably be installed in the NH-90 Helicopter. Not that I’m into military aircraft, I’d much rather be working on a de-mining robot or something – but it’s not so easy to find such a project.

Anyway, this should be an interesting project. Read on for my (maybe) more interesting story about the computer explosion I just experienced.

I was assembling some old parts together to make a “new” PC for my hobby room – and I had a PC asplode for the first time ever! Well, part of it was my own stupidity, really. I connected one of those 80-pin IDE cables from my Soundblaster to the LiveDrive thingy (it should only be a 40-pin cable) and the Soundblaster started smoking. I’d venture that it’s not a good idea to do that (but the card still works! One of the traces is fried, though). Then, for some reason, during one of the next reboots, one of those big caps on the motherboard decided it was tired of being chained down all the time and ASPLODED while my head was stuck in the PC looking at the Soundcard! That was quite a shocker. And THEN – as if that wasn’t enough – after several minutes of running, the power supply started making a funny noise. I turned it off and didn’t realize that the glue inside the power suppy had melted onto the fan and stopped the fan from turning! The next time I powered up, BAM! Another asplosion!

After all of that (and a new power supply), my hobby room PC is operational. What i really wanted to use it for was music. I’ve got this really excellent sequencing program called “Fruityloops” and a newly-purchased MIDI keyboard. The possibilities are endless… that is, until something else asplodes. But it’s something I’ve wanted to do ever since I discovered “ModTracker” (I can’t find it around anymore) in the old DOS and PC speaker days. Actually, I really wanted to write computer music ever since my VIC-20 (and even more so after I got a C-64!). It has always appealed to me, and I’m spoiled now that I could do it if I wanted to, whereas when I was younger I would have given anything to have the tools I have now. Man, am I spoiled. All of this talking about it makes me want to go to my hobby room and get started! I’ll let you know how it goes..