Jon's Blog

2010-07-31T09:48:00.000-07:00

I realize I've been kind of quiet about it on my blog, but for the next few months, I will be in Belize learning electronics from my Uncle, who works quite a bit with electronics. Today is close to my third week in Belize, and it's been pretty busy so far. I don't have much opportunity to use the internet, so that's why I'm just now writing for the first time.

Living out here in the jungle, there are no public utilities, so my Aunt and Uncle provide their own infrastructure. For electricity, the house is powered off of two large arrays of solar panels, which charge an array of 12 lead-acid batteries. The DC voltage is converted into 120 V AC supply using a converter and inverter. During cloudy days and days during heavy energy demand such as when the washer and dryer are being used, a gas generator is used to power the house up. I've found I have to be very careful to turn off lights behind me and unplug all unused electronics, because it is easy to overload the system and cause it to shut down. I simply need to plug in my laptop sometimes, and the entire house loses power.

Water is collected from rain water. The roof of the house is designed so all the water that hits the roof flows into gutters, and is collected in large tanks. The water is then heavily filtered and supplied to the house at 40 psi. There is no hot water, so all my showers have been cold lately; it's not a big deal in this climate, anyway. Right now, I'm staying in the guest house, which is its own separate building apart from the main house, consisting of a bedroom and bathroom. The house has it's own separate water collection system, and the electricity is supplied using an extension cord from the main house.

The first few days here, I worked through a few Electrical Engineering problems, refreshing myself on concepts that have been taught to me during my time at the University of Washington. After my crash refresher course, I was put on a project of getting a 6502 microprocessor emulator device my Uncle built before I was even born to work again, and to upgrade the memory on the board. Originally, the project entailed just getting the circuit working. I was a bit intimidated looking at the tangled mass of wires, some of which have become disconnected, so I need to figure out where they used to go. Also, I was relatively new to soldering when I came down, and the last couple weeks has been a crash course into how to solder together prototype circuits. Soon, the project evolved into modifying the circuit to include an updated SRAM, since they evolved since he designed the circuit. Later, I found there were major revisions to the circuitry I needed to make to cause the circuit to run properly, so I ended up taking a lot of the circuitry apart and rebuilding it, and improved on the design quite a bit. I'm in the process of testing the logic and rewiring the circuit, and I have a feeling this project might take a while longer before I'm even ready to start programming it with Forth (a stack-based microcontroller programming language which very few people use, because it was oversold in the 1970's). After that, I might design a control circuit for a gas generator, which automatically starts and shuts down the generator to ensure adequate battery voltage. Also, one of the Mennonites at a hardware store is requesting a microprocessor-based grain dryer controller, which might become one of several entrepreneurial opportunities I'll have while down here in Belize.

Being here with my Uncle is like having a personalized electronics tutor. I have been learning about electronics pretty much non-stop the last few days, and my brain has sometimes been in information overload mode. I have been learning all sorts of things about power electronics lately, which my uncle is currently writing a book on.

Anyway, I have a lot more to say, but I'll save it for a future post. I will at least attempt to write once in a while, and I'll try to upload images some time.

Graduated

2010-06-12T18:42:00.000-07:00

Hello to all... Yesterday I finally graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering after 2½ years at the University of Washington, Seattle. I don't know if it would have been possible without the support of my friends and family, and especially my Mom and Dad. Anyway, here's a small selections of photos from yesterday...

Left: In front of Suzallo Library.

Right: Me with Dr. James Peckol, with who I've had for a total of four classes, EE 271, EE 399, EE 472, and EE 478. He has a reputation of being one of the most demanding professors in (especially in regards to documentation), although, he perhaps prepares you better for industry than most professors.

Now that I've graduated, I have to now do a lot of organization, moving, and preparing for my Summer ventures to Central America for a while.

Embedded Keyboard Project, Part 6

2010-06-08T21:46:00.001-07:00

Since my last post, our team has completed the final project. On Monday, we conducted the final demo, and just today, we submitted the lab report. Here is the final layout of the keyboard:

Completed keyboard project

As you could see, my lab partner Whitney did a fine job organizing all the electronics, securing them to the keyboard. He made a nifty stand for the LCD display using plastic risers and hot glue. As you can see, we're now using a Seeeduino board instead of the Arduino board -- which is for the most part the same circuit, except it has a few added features and a slightly different board design. Also, note the use of the infrared optoelectronic distance sensor on the lower left side of the board. We decided to make the circuit a little more complex, so we added what is known as a D-beam, and it is used in a lot of Roland synthesizers, for instance, the Lucina AX-09 (video -- WARNING: click only if you can handle extremely cheesy product infomercials). We implemented the D-beam using a Sharp 2Y0A21 distance sensing device, and we freed up an analog input on the keyboard controller for the analog sensor signal. We programmed the keyboard to process the same range of pitch bend as the Roland model in the video clip I posted above, which is about a whole step of range. The analog data coming from the sensor is really noisy, so it adds kind of like a chorus effect to the sound quality which we really couldn't filter out very well.

We reconfigured the entire keyboard to run off of USB power, which is 5 volts, 2.5 watts. The entire circuit ended up only running off of 1.2 watts. We could probably cut down on power even more, especially with the LCD, which consumed a half a watt.

Since our synthesizer output standard MIDI out, it was compatible with another group's project, which was designing the actual synthesis. In the following video, I used our project as a keyboard interface to their synthesizer using our MIDI output. Here is a video I shot of us connecting our projects together:

The overall cost of all the circuit components is just short of $100, which is more than the original keyboard was worth. We actually probably had the cheapest circuit out of all the groups. If we had more time, ideas I had for further developing our design would be to add a recording / playback feature, which I could very easily do with an SRAM chip, integrating the controls into the LCD menu. Since we ended up getting the synthesizer chip working in serial mode, all the parallel signals could be freed up to drive an SRAM chip. Here are the files that we created for our project:

final_presentation.ppt - Class presentation (Microsoft PowerPoint)
final_report.pdf - Final lab report (Adobe Acrobat)
source_code.zip - Project source code (zipped)

Some of the other groups in the class ended up creating really cool embedded projects. Perhaps the most expensive project implemented was a series of robots which implemented swarm intelligence. The robots would scan an area for a target of a specific color, and when it found the target, it would wirelessly broadcast a message the other robots that it found the target, and emit infrared radiation in all directions. The other robots would then turn and locate the robot, and move in towards it. Here are some photos I took of their project:

Another cool project was one group that worked with a touch-screen LCD, which had applications which allowed you to draw pictures, play music, and operate a remote-controlled toy car. Here are some images of their project:

Another group designed an automatic plant watering system, which allows you to automatically water your plants when it senses the soil is too dry. You can also monitor if your plants are being watered on Twitter. I thought this was a really creative design idea.

Also notice the very creative white-board artwork. Over the weekend, there was an art competition in the lab. Here are some examples of peoples' creativity:

Notice that sleep is a common theme in the artwork. No doubt, many groups had to pull overnighters this weekend on their projects, and sleep deprivation seems to be a common theme in classes like this. Working on these projects, you completely lose perspective of time, and can easily spend over 10 hours on a project in one sitting. Well, continuing on with the artwork... One group decided to take their artwork a little further and etch their artwork onto a circuit board.

And here is my team's artwork, which my lab partner drew. It isn't nearly as creative, simply because we didn't have to spend overnighters in the lab this weekend, since we had our entire circuit working last Monday and completed on Friday.

One of the most amusing pieces of art in the embedded classroom is the "Wall of Death", which is a hodgepodge of broken microcontrollers, comic strips, and student artwork.

There were some other cool projects created this quarter, some which worked others that didn't. Dr. Peckol usually publishes all of our embedded projects on his web page. Our projects should be up and running on his site within a week or two. You could visit our class project showcase here (if it is even up yet). More photographs can be found on my Flickr page.

Bach Prelude and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 539

2010-06-06T21:39:00.000-07:00

It's been six months since I posted an audio recording of an organ performance... so here is a new audio recording I made using my Roland C-330 organ just this past weekend. It's not perfect, but enjoy!

Prelude and Fugue in D Minor, J. S. Bach BWV 539 (6:47)

The fugue is Bach's own transcription of one of his solo violin works, BWV 1001 (YouTube), and seems to be more commonly played on the guitar.

Embedded Keyboard Project, Part 5

2010-06-01T00:06:00.000-07:00

Today, we made some last touches on our final project. We threw together a quick video with my new Canon Rebel T1i camera, demonstrating some of the capabilities of our project.

Embedded Keyboard Project, Part 4

2010-05-30T02:34:00.000-07:00

Hello, this is just another update on our keyboard project. I feel we got a *LOT* done since the last time I posted. The project is now going very smoothly, and we feel we are meeting our schedule very well. I feel like we are around 80% done. Anyway, I wanted to share with you the following recording:

Okay, I guess that's not my best recording yet, but after a few frustrating days of trying to get our ATSAM2195 Atmel synthesizer chip to work, we finally were able to produce sound output. This note was our first recording of the sound output off the chip.

Our final project circuitry actually fits on only one breadboard. We have a pic microcontroller, which has the task of reading all the key states, and generating NOTE ON and NOTE OFF commands to the synthesizer chip whenever a key changes value. The commands are then converted to MIDI messages, and sent to the ATSAM2195 synth chip.

Final project layout

In the image above, you can see our entire final project, minus the Arduino and LCD display, and minus the audio amplifier my lab partner built for this occasion. We decided to switch to parallel mode communication with the synthesizer chip, simply because we felt it was a bit easier to get going. Anyway, here is a quick and dirty c file we wrote for the PIC18LF4525, with which we were able to communicate with the synth chip:

midi_output_parallel.c

Next we need to integrate all the code for the keyboard controller, so actual key events on the keyboard trigger MIDI commands.

What I spent most of my time on lately was creating drivers for the Crystalfontz CFA533-YYH-KL LCD screen, which is a 2-row 16-character LCD display with 6 navigation buttons. We're having an Ardueno Duemilanove control the LCD through a RS-232 connection. The navigation menu allows configuration of various things such as instrument, master volume levels, reverb, and chorus. We uploaded a list of the 128 different instrument sounds incorporated on the synthesizer chip.

We also incorporated commands to save current settings into the Arduino's EEPROM, and restore to default settings. The settings are coordinated with the keyboard controller via I²C connection.

Testbench for LCD display controller

The I²C communication ended up not being straight forward, since I had trouble getting the Wire.h Arduino library to trigger interrupts in the PIC controller when the Arduino is asking for a byte of data. I ended up writing my own Master I²C drivers, which pretty much bit-bang the SCL and SDA signals. Using my library, I was able to get the Arduino talking quite nicely with the PIC controller.

Our current code files for the LCD display and menu drivers are as follows:

arduino_module.pde - Arduino project main file

common.h - Shared constants between keyboard controller and LCD driver

menu_items.h - List of items in the LCD menu

As of now, the LCD driver is mostly complete, besides some later proof-reading. Also, I can think of a few more features I would like to incorporate if I find the time such as transposition, and I want to change some things about how the menu is displayed.

Anyway, next time I post, the project might be completely done, perhaps just over the 3-day weekend. I have just one more week to work on this project, during which time I'll be finishing the final project, preparing a 20-minute presentation on the project, writing one of Dr. Peckol's typically long lab reports, and conducting a demo of our design.

Last day at RPC

2010-05-24T14:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my last day as an organist at Resurrection Presbyterian Church, after 2½ years of providing services on the piano and organ. Members of RPC threw on a really nice reception for me, where I was given a farewell greeting. Thanks for everybody who put this together!

The reason I'm leaving is because I will be interning in Cayo, Belize, with my uncle, who is the head of a small Electrical Engineering company, Innovatia Laboratories. It's pretty much an internship, and I'll be getting personalized training from him. As of now, I'm not sure how long I'll be down there, but it'd be too much of an expense to fly up and play every Sunday. Although I'm not leaving until some time mid-July, these next couple weeks are packed with busy work for all my classes (if you haven't noticed by my other blog posts). I have to think about moving out of my apartment into storage, and figure out a way to get down there.

It has been my pleasure working with Pastor Scott. Now Saturday nights and Sunday mornings feel a bit awkward, since all the days of waking up super early to set up and practice and talk to Brooke for half an hour are now over. I've received a lot of positive feedback over the past couple months. I will definitely miss working there, and hopefully, I will find a similar job in the future. My goal is that as long as I'm alive, there will be at least one church with good music and good theology. Maybe one day, if I find a stable job in the Seattle-Tacoma area, I will be able to use my talents once again at RPC.

Embedded Keyboard Project, Part 3

2010-05-22T23:54:00.000-07:00

Today, I put several hours into the embedded project. My lab partner extended the 15-wire band by soldering on longer wires, then running the wires outside of the keyboard case, where they're much easier to access in a bread board.

In the picture, the black wires are for the key matrix rows, and the red wires are for the key matrix columns. We also broke out controls for the power switch on the keyboard and for the two speakers, and we think we probably will try to incorporate them into our design.

After probing the 15-wire keyboard bus, we determined the overall schematic for the keyboard matrix:

This matrix design is exactly as I had speculated in an earlier post. I got keyboard drivers working, which as of now, detects when any of the keys have changed state, and which keys changed. The driver works by driving one of the rows high and the others low, then reading in the columns. This happens repeatedly for each of the seven rows. The old values of the columns are saved and compared to the new values, and when a change is detected, that is when we process a key change, and send MIDI commands to the Atmel synthesizer chip. Here is a PIC16F877a microprocessor wired up:

As you could see, we found we needed pull-down resistors for the column pins. We found without them, we got misread key strokes, since the voltage on the column pins wasn't falling fast enough. We speculate the diodes introduce capacitance to the column pin nodes. We found 10 kΩ resistors are small enough to discharge the nodes in time for the next read.

The keyboard driver is currently written to toggle the LED on or off every time a key event is detected. The idea is, you press down one key, the LED turns on; press down another key, it turns off; release a key, it turns on again; etc. The current drivers for the keyboard controller can be found using the following links:

keyboard_controller.c

keyboard_controller.h

After pounding around for a while, we're now pretty certain that every key event is being processed correctly, since after all keys are released, the LED always ends up in the off state.

Pressing down one key turns on the LED

As of now, we're still using a PIC16F processor, which runs off a supply voltage of at least 4 volts. Our synthesizer chip runs off of 3.3 volts, and we don't really want to deal with level shifters, voltage regulators, or use multiple logic supply voltages. So we requested some free PIC18LF samples from Microchip, which should be arriving early next, which can run off of a 3.3 volt power supply. Once those arrive, we could begin to try to send key commands to the synthesizer chip.

So I feel the project is falling together pretty well so far. Next week, we will begin trying to interface the ATSAM2195 chip, and we're really hoping that we figure it out fairly quickly. As of now, I think all the soldering and modifications to the keyboard are complete. Just out of curiosity, I'm thinking about having my blood lead levels tested.

Embedded Keyboard Project, Part 2

2010-05-20T12:29:00.000-07:00

For my Embedded capstone project, we ordered and are us using the ATSAM2195 Atmel synthesizer chip. This chip comes in a 44-pin QFN (quad flat no leads) package, and with this chip, you input MIDI commands using 31,250-baud serial communication, and the chip simply provides the output analog signal. The chip is only 7 mm × 7 mm × 0.9 mm large, and the pins on the chip are only 0.3 mm wide, making it is virtually impossible to use a soldering iron to attach the chip to a PCB.

Three ATSAM2195 synth chips

Since we were prototyping on a breadboard, we had to order an adapter, which converts a QFN-44 case to a DIP-44 (dual in-line package) case. Searching online, I found a kit with adapters, a stencil, alcoholic wipes, a tube of solder paste, plastic tab, tin headers, and a header spacer.

QFN-44 to DIP-44 adapter kit

The first step of the process is to apply the solder paste to the minuscule pin plates on the adapter. To do this, we taped the QFN-44 stencil to the PCB, then wiped a layer of solder paste over the holes using the plastic tab.

If we were lucky, when the stencil is taken off, the PCB would then look something like this, where each pad had just the right amount of solder paste on it, and there were no solder past bridges between pads.

The next step which required perhaps the finest motor skills was placing the QFN package on the PCB, without smudging the solder paste, and aligning the pins just right.

Once we felt the chip was aligned squarely on the pads, the next step was to start our 'reflow oven'. Actually, it's more of a 'reflow skillet'. Strangely enough, the Electrical Engineering department at the University of Washington doesn't have any tools for PCB printing, so we had to think of something else. So we found a tutorial on SparkFun for using an iron skillet for doing reflow. So we got the exact same model skillet as used in the tutorial, from Target, and put it to work.

Our reflow skillet

After a few minutes, the solder will melt and turn shiny, and after that, we removed the PCB, and inspected for bridges and continuity.

After reflow

The final step is to solder the header pins on, which is the easiest part. The header pin spacer is used to ensure the header pins are the correct distance apart, so it will easily fit into the solderless breadboard.

Abofe, we show the chip connected up to the bread board. The oscillator is there just for show, since unfortunately, the ATSAM2195 chip runs off of a 3.3 volt 9.6 MHz oscillator, but I've been finding it impossible to find one in a DIL package, so we're sticking to the function generator until we find one. Below is another one we made, just for backup.

So, right now we're crossing our fingers that the chips actually work, and they're connected correctly. If using the chip is as straight forward as I hope it is, we should be making music with it by early next week. As of now, I've been working on drivers for the keyboard interface, which we're going to implement on the PIC16F877a microcontroller. My other lab partner is writing display drivers for an Arduino Duemilanove (don't ask me to pronounce that) for a hierarchical menu on an LCD screen. The idea is that the Arduino will be used as the user interface to set MIDI options, such as reverb, volume, instrumentation, etc..., and hand the options over to the PIC, which outputs the MIDI commands to the synth chip.

On a completely different topic, here is a C programming challenge I found online published by the company RapLeaf, and it took me around three hours to figure it out. I thought I would throw it out, because I found it fun to think through, and maybe some of my readers who are programmers would like a little bit of a challenge. They're looking for programmers that are good at solving problems like this. I'll be interviewing with them this coming Saturday since they liked my solution, although just for fun. It looks like their positions are geared heavily towards Computer Science majors, which I'm not.

Embedded Keyboard Project, Part 1

2010-05-15T19:49:00.000-07:00

Hello,

This is the first of a series of posts detailing our EE 478 final project, which is to create a MIDI instrument. The idea is to dismantle an electronic keyboard, and rewire all the keys in order to make our own keyboard instrument. I'm feeling more free to publicize my work on this project, since my lab professor Dr. Peckol publishes our work on the class web site for future classes to use as reference, anyway (link).

For this project, we're creating a 49-key digital keyboard instrument. The keyboard is equipped with an LCD screen interface which shows a navigation menu, and is navigated with pushbuttons. The navigation menu allows the user to change musical settings, such as instrument, reverb, chorus and volume. The system is designed to be low-power and low-cost. We are running all components in the system on a 3.5 Volt supply (except for the external speakers). The 49 key musical keyboard input is controlled by a PIC microcontroller, which converts the keyboard input into MIDI serial data that is sent to a synthesizer chip. The microcontroller is also responsible for interfacing with LCD and pushbuttons for musical configuration settings.

Today, we made our first leap into the project by purchasing a used 49-key MD-500 'Optumus' Radio Shack keyboard on Craigslist for $20.

As you can see, the keyboard is equipped with all sorts of features, including a MIDI recorder / playback feature, metronome, prerecorded songs, auto-rhythms, MIDI-out, and more. For our project, we are creating our own features, so all of that stuff is going to be removed.

After taking apart the keyboard, here is what is in the inside:

As you can see, there are five visible main sections. There are the two speakers, which we may not end up using. There is the panel for all the buttons, which we won't need either. On top of that, there is the LED screen for the front panel, which is not useful. The keyboard is powered by a battery pack, which we probably won't use. There is the keyboard section (bottom), which has groups of 8 diodes, each for a section of eight keys. Total, there are 49 diodes on this board. Connected to this board through the large gray ribbon is the 'mother board' for the keyboard.

The ribbon consists of 15 wires, connecting the 49 keys to the keyboard controller. I needed a soldering iron to completely remove the mother board to see the circuitry on it, but by peeking under, here was what was uncovered:

As you could see, the keyboard wires feed into a 38-pin DIP adapter, which feeds into some mysterious ball of black glue. What's under this black glue is probably the keyboard controller / MIDI synthesizer.

Hmmm... 15 wires and 49 keys... how does that work? Well, I found an informative site online, for creating a simple keyboard controller with the PIC16F877A microcontroller, which we now have quite a bit of familiarity with:

(Credits for this diagram go to Thomas Scarff, Lecturer at Dublin Institute of Technology, School of Electronic and Communications Engineering)

http://www.electronics.dit.ie/staff/tscarff/Music_technology/key2midi/key2midi.htm

The circuitry in the keyboard is probably very similar to the image above. The keys are arranged as a matrix with rows and columns. On the keyboard I got, the notes are probably grouped by rows of 8, not 16. The keyboard controller polls only one of the rows of eight keys at a time by asserting high one of the row selector pins (pins 34 through 40 in the image). When a row is selected, the values of the notes on the row will appear on the column pins for the keyboard controller (pins 2-9, and 19-30 in the image). For 49 keys, you need 7 columns of notes to select out the individual row of eight notes (49 / 8 = 7, rounded up). Doing the math, 8 rows + 7 columns = 15, which accounts for all the wires in the ribbon. Our next step is to figure out which wire corresponds to which row or column on the key matrix.

The keyboard controller continuously loops through all the rows of keys and collects data on the state of all the keys. When one key is noticed to have changed, a on or off key event will be triggered, depending on the new state of the key.

Well, that's all for now, I will continue to give updates as our project progresses.

Spring Quarter, 2010

2010-05-08T22:01:00.000-07:00

Hello, friends and family,

It's mid-quarter now, and it's my last quarter at the University of Washington. There will be a department celebration on Friday, June 11, at 7:00 in Kane Hall, room 130. You need a ticket to get in, and I'm allowed to give out 3 of them; there might possibly be more available in the future. The University Graduation is on Saturday, June 12. If you want a ticket, let me know, and I'll try to get one for you. More details could be found here: http://uwgraduation.com/.

Lately, I've been sprucing up my résumé and cover letter, and I've been looking into all sorts of employment opportunities. I'm trying to find somewhere preferably in the area. Sometime this Summer, I may be heading down to Belize to intern for Innovatia, my uncle's company, during which time I will be put on interesting projects, hopefully to build up an eye-catching résumé for when I return.

This quarter, I'm only taking one engineering class, EE 478, which is the capstone course for embedded computing systems. It's been proving enough of a workload, especially since one of my lab partners decided he didn't want to come to class or participate in group meetings. So I've been working hard to keep up with only one lab partner; but we've been pulling along alright. EE 478 does have a reputation as being one of the most time-consuming classes at the University of Washington. It even has its own Facebook page! My professor Dr. Peckol is known for his high expectations, especially on his lab reports, which tend to average around 50 pages each. Overall, in the four classes I've taken with Dr. Peckol, I must have written well over 500 pages of lab report; and more still to come!

This past week, we had due a project to design a micro-controller based scanning and imaging system to be mounted on a probe to be used for extra-planetary exploration. This probe has three cameras and a 2-Kbyte SRAM partitioned into two buffers. When one buffer is full, the contents are uploaded to a 'mother ship', then transmitted to an Earth data collection center. This lab was just an introduction to the PIC16F877a microcontroller, and to synchronous and asynchronous communication, namely I2C and RS-232 (which you wouldn't use for space exploration). Anyway, after pulling some overnighters, we got our circuit working perfectly. Besides that, we Here is what it looks like:

I've learned in the past week that troubleshooting the PIC could be at times time consuming. A couple times during this project, we narrowed down to problems to lines of code that look perfectly normal, but cause the PIC to crash for some reason. The PIC controller has a lot of quirks that if you're not familiar with them, could lead you to pull your hair out wondering why the processor keeps crashing. The most time consuming problem we faced is when we discovered that the breadboard we were using at the time was broken, and wasn't connecting things together properly.

The last few weeks of class, I'm going to be working on the EE 478 final project, which entails creating a fairly complex embedded system. My lab partner and I are thinking about using one of the Amtel synth chips (particularly, the ATSAM2195) to create a musical instrument. I was thinking about tearing apart a cheap keyboard, and then designing the system that generates MIDI inputs for the chip. We're in the planning phase right now, but there's many ways we're planning to increase the complexity of the system if we so desire. These projects tend to cost people around $200 to $300 for parts.

Anyway, I'll try to blog more often when something pops to mind. Take care.

Spring Break

2010-03-25T22:39:00.000-07:00

It's Spring Break now. I officially have only one more Electrical Engineering class left before I graduate, EE 478, which is the capstone for Embedded Computing taught by Dr. Peckol, who I would have had for a total of four courses during my time at the University of Washington.

This past quarter was perhaps my busiest quarter yet... I took three 400-level Electrical Engineering courses. I took EE 477/525, the VLSI capstone course in designing digital integrated circuits. The class ended up taking massive amounts of time for the projects. There were three projects in total, which amounted to over 150 hours of work each. We used the FreePDK45 design kit to lay out the first two projects, which were a 256-bit SRAM cell and a 20-bit adder.

For each of the projects, we were graded competitively on a certain Figure Of Merit (FOM), which was a number we got from multiplying several measurements of our circuit. For our first project, which was to design a 256-bit SRAM cell, the FOM was Area×Delay², which you calculate by measuring the total area taken up by the chip and multiplying it by the worst possible delay for storing data in the chip squared. The team that got the best FOM got full points for the competition portion of the project, the group with the worst FOM got no points, and everybody else was graded in between on a linear scale.

For the first project, the 256-bit SRAM, my lab partner Kaitlyn and I did pretty well, and got the second-best FOM in the class. The following image shows our final circuit, which measures 19.38 µm × 13.78 µm (267.1 µm²). For reference, the smallest size square particle a person with 20/20 vision can see is 100 µm × 100 µm, so you can fit around 35 of these cells in that area.

Our 256-bit SRAM cell (click to zoom in)

This SRAM consists of five distinct parts: a 5-to-32 decoder, 16 bit-line pre-chargers, 16 high-skew inverters, and 8 bit-line write drivers. With our design, we measure a maximum read delay of 1.055 ns.

For our second project, we were required to design a 20 × 20 bit adder. For our design, we designed a delay-insensitive carry-lookahead with speed-up circuitry (DICLASP) based on an IEEE article we found online. What attracted us about this specific adder design was that it implemented an O(log(log(n))) algorithm, whereas most tree adders we encountered used an O(log(n)) algorithm. We deviated a lot from the implementation used in the article, whereas we made it not self-timed, and used N-P domino logic. Looking back, that might have not been a good idea, since we found out it took an extreme amount of time to lay it out, since it required 11 unique cells. One of the only three overnighters I pulled this quarter involved starting the layout for our design at 8:00 AM with my lab partner, and not finishing the layout until 1:00 PM the next day (29 straight hours of layout). Unfortunately, our effort on this project was not worth the results, since we learned N-P domino logic is not the best choice if you have long wires in your circuit.... Anyway, here is our final project layout:

20 × 20 bit delay-insensitive carry look-ahead adder with speedup circuitry (click to zoom)

I feel if we had more time, we could have optimized this circuit to have a much better delay, but we ended up with a delay of 1.898 ns, area of 453 µm², and power consumption of 322 fJ per computation. We ended up having the second-worst FOM, which was Area×Power×Delay² for this project. I felt that we really chose one of the hardest designs to lay out, and if we had more time for the project, we could have done a lot better with the FOM.

By the end of this project, we felt we really didn't have much time to spend on the final project, which was a 10×10 2's compliment multiplier with modified Booth encoding, so we stuck with a static logic implementation for the entire circuit. The most time-consuming part of this project was figuring out how to do 2's compliment signed multiplication, since all the examples we were shown were for unsigned multiplication. We had to figure out on our own how to implement the partial products for signed multiplication on our own, pretty much, since there was nowhere in our text book or on the internet which explained how to do signed 2's compliment multiplication.

Fall Quarter

2009-12-12T13:32:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, this is one of those blog posts where nobody knows what I'm talking about, so feel free to not waste your time trying to read it.

Anyway, I took three engineering classes for Fall 2009 Quarter; EE 341 - Discrete Time Linear Systems, EE 473 - Analog Integrated Circuit Design, and EE 476 - Digital Integrated Circuit Design. In EE 341 - Discrete Time Linear Systems, you pretty much cover many of the principles needed for most audio, image, and video processing. The course pretty focuses on applications of Z-transforms (which are Laplace Transforms for discrete signals), Discrete Fourier Transforms, Discrete Time Fourier Transforms, and Discrete Time Fourier Series.

In EE 473 - Analog Integrated Circuit Design, you essentially learn how to create amplifiers using 23o nm CMOS technology. For our final project, we developed an 80-dB fully-differential amplifier with several design specifications for input and output capacitance, phase margin, power consumption, output swing, and unity-gain frequency. We used a folded-cascode topology with a common-source second stage, biased with low-voltage cascode current mirrors. The circuit also implemented common-mode feedback, which we just included as a couple resistors and an ideal op-amp, and also Miller compensation. Unfortunately, we only had one week to do the project, and we ran into a pretty time-consuming problem, but eventually we got something that met most of the specifications after a rather frustrating overnighter. We could have done better if we had a little more time.

In EE 476 - Digital Integrated Circuit Design, we worked on a 45 nm CMOS process. Our final project was to design an arbiter circuit in behavioral Verilog, then using software tools to convert the Verilog code into logic gates. We drew out a series of 9 logic gate standard cells, with which we actually drew out all the transistors and connecting metal layers, and used an automated process to convert the logic gates into a layout using standard cells. Below is our resulting integrated circuit, which measures only 15 x 15 μm², consists of 91 standard cells, for a total 362 transistors.

Here is our design for just one of the standard cells, the D-Flip Flop, which measures 1.235 x 3.23 μm². A Flip-Flop is essentially a memory storage cell, which holds one bit of information.

D Flip-Flop Schematic

Layout of the D Flip-Flop

It would take a long time to explain what's going on here. All the blue rectangles are the lowest metal layer, the pink rectangles are the second metal layer, all the red rectangles are polysilicon (used for the gates for transistors), the W's indicate the p- or n-doped wells, the triangles indicate p- or n- heavily doped regions. The layout image directly translates to the schematic above. Each of the colors represents a different mask during the manufacturing process. Since it costs well over a million dollars to manufacture an integrated circuit, we mostly relied on simulation software to test our design.

Most of the work in this quarter was learning how to use the Virtuoso design suite to design and simulate our circuits. Unfortunately, the University of Washington file servers were running extremely slow, and so we wasted a lot of time waiting for the mouse to catch up. It was also frustrating, since there were three classes all trying to use the University of Washington's only 20 Linux computers at the same time.

Roland C-330 Home Organ

2009-12-05T21:18:00.000-08:00

I need to introduce you to the newest member of my family, the Roland C-330 Home Organ. I'm officially the first one in Seattle to actually own one. My Dad and I went down to pick it up from the Rodgers factory in Hillsboro, Oregon over Thanksgiving weekend, and we were quite confident that it would fit in the Toyota RAV, since the Rodgers salesperson we met with earlier mentioned that it was small enough to fit in a car. As we figured out, JUST BARELY. We had to remove all the packaging. After getting it back to my apartment, I set it up and started to crank it up to see how loud it would go. Less than 30 minutes into playing it for the first time, somebody knocked on the door and complained I was being too loud... Oh, well, I guess that's why I got head phones!

Below, I made a few recordings in my free time, to illustrate some of the sounds of this magnificent instrument. I will post more as I make them. The recordings came out perfect quality, and may have created some background noise and lost a little bit of high-frequency information as I converted them to MP3 format, so they sound a little different. They're not perfect, but they should at least give you an idea why I fell in love with this instrument. I recorded using the Line-in audio port on my Powerbook G4 using SoundStudio3.

O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig (O Innocent Lamb of God), J. S. Bach BWV 1095 - Uses mostly flute stops

Prelude and Fugue in G Major, J. S. Bach BWV 557 - Set with a high amount of reverb, to mimic a cathedral sound

Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (Come Now, Savior of the Heathen), J. S. Bach BWV 599

Herr Christ, der einge Gottes-Sohn (Lord Christ, the only Son of God), J. S. Bach BWV 601 - Illustrates full organ sound

Looking for organs

2009-09-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Hello, everyone!

Yesterday, my Dad, sister Diane, and I went down to Oregon to visit Rodgers Instruments LLC. Rodgers of course is the company that produced the organs for Faith Presbyterian Church. I have been having in my mind to pick up a good home practice organ, since I was losing valuable sleep on Saturday nights practicing for church service on Sundays, usually hindering my ability to stay alert in the service the next day.

I had a couple major criteria looking for an organ. Firstly, it would have to be compact and easy to move around, since there isn't much space in the apartment to fit it. Also, I wanted something that didn't sound like an electronic instrument, and had a good variety of instruments. After wasting time on Craigslist and being terribly disappointed by the terrible selection at Prossers Piano and Organ, began looking into the major Classic Organ companies (Johannus, Allen, and Rodgers), and actually got to go preview the Johannus 37 SE at somebody's apartment in downtown Seattle. Johannus has been having a half-off sale for sometime, so some of their organs were attractively priced, including the Opus 7 I was looking at. Frankly, I wasn't impressed with the Johannus organ tones, which still sounded very electronic to me, especially the reeds. To me, there really is no comparison with the Rodgers organ sounds.

I discovered the Roland/Rodgers C-330 organ while surfing online, which just started selling a week ago and there has been a wild internet buzz for a while. Roland is coming out with a Classic series, where they are trying to make authentic-sounding harpsichords, pianos, and organs for homes. After looking into this organ a little bit, I discovered that it is a very special piece of equipment. For starters, it had packed in it over 100 different Rodgers pipe sounds. The organ had excellent acoustics for what I wanted. And the tone quality was phenomenal (hear samples here).

Here is a photo of me trying out the Roland/Rodgers C-330 at the Rodgers plant in Hillsboro, Oregon:

New Apartment

2009-07-21T07:58:00.000-07:00

Hello, everyone;

Yet again, I need to apologize for not blogging in a really long time. Time just tends to fly between posts, and being in Engineering, it feels like I can never find any leisure time to update.

I just moved into my new apartment in the last week. I promised I would upload some photos of my new place. I decided to move off campus for several reasons. One of the primary reasons is that the UW Housing and Food Services decided on a new rule that if you live in the residence halls, you have to subscribe to the university meal plan. The food really isn't that great, and it is way overpriced. To illustrate, for a simple breakfast of a waffle, scrambled eggs, bacon, and orange juice, you can be charged over $10. I found myself in the habit of eating out every day, since it was cheaper and higher quality than provided by the HFS.

So after a week of searching, a fellow Electrical Enginner colleague and I found a good 2 bedroom apartment at Travigne Apartments. Our place is located on 11th Ave in the University District. After spending a week of searching, we decided on this apartment, since it is unusually high quality for the low price. I'm paying just a little more than I was for the residence halls, but now I am able to cook for myself, plus it is a significant increase in quality.

Main entrance

Our apartment is the one with the balcony on the top floor.

Inside the lobby area

Coming out of the elevator, our apartment is the first door on the left.

My futon, which until just recently, served as a bed rather than a couch. I got the blanket when I was on my first deployment with the USAF to Qatar.

Bookshelf containing the textbooks my roomate and I have been accumulating over the years, as well as leisure reading.

Looking outside to the balcony

Looking down from off the balcony.

My roomate's grill, so we could eat lots of barbecue.

Kitchen area

The coffee pot, which is now used primarily for making tea since I quit coffee.

My desk and dresser area

My bed.

The apartment opens up rooftop access to the residents.

Views from the roof of the apartments. Blessed Sacrament Church (catholic), and a view of downtown Seattle and space needle.

Right now, I'm taking the Summer off from school. I began the Summer Quarter out taking a full load of classes, although I began to have really bad anxiety attacks for some reason while performing coursework. I think the main causes for this anxiety are because for Spring Quarter, I was pushing myself too hard, pulling too many overnight study sessions, and drinking coffee. This combination can make you really go crazy after a while. A couple weeks ago, I decided to quit drinking coffee, because I think that was the main culprit. After I quit coffee and went through a period of withdraw, I felt a lot better.

Now that I'm off, I intend to catch up with a lot of things that due to my course load, I never really could find much time to do: reading, learning new music, exercising, research employment opportunities and organizing unsorted computer files and stacks of papers. I'll also be looking for Summer jobs painting and doing yard work.

I intend to be complete with all my coursework after Spring Quarter next year, and I will have a Bachelor's of Science in Electrical Engineering. This next year is going to be my toughest year, since from the looks of it, I have a capstone design class every quarter. I'm intending on getting completing at least two areas of knowledge in the next year in Embedded Systems and Analog Circuit design, and if I feel like it's not too much, attempt VLSI (Very Large-Scale Integration).

A couple weeks ago, I got called last minute to put together music last minute for a wedding. Due to a misunderstanding, the organist who was expected to do the wedding wasn't in town for that day, so I was called up as a last resort a week before the wedding. I pretty much chose out all the music, and I got together with a good friend who plays the violin, and we put together a prelude. I recycled pieces I had used for another wedding a couple years ago on Bremerton Naval Base, and tried a couple other pieces that I used for Resurrection that I thought would work. Overall, I got very positive response for the music, so I was glad I could help out and remove that burden from the family.

Speaking of weddings, congratulations to my sister Rachel for her recent engagement to Alex! She is getting married on January 2 at Faith Presbyterian Church. May God shower his blessings on both of you.

In September, my Dad and I are once again hiking the Wonderland Trail (110 mile hike around Mt. Rainier), and we're planning to spend a week doing that, so I'm trying to put together camping trips and day hike trips to make sure I'm in shape for that. Later this week, I will be at Eagle Creek for two days with my dad and some good friends.

Anyway, that is my spiel for the time being. I'll try to update more often, although when classes pick up again, I really won't have any time, so I'll apologize in advance for not posting in so long, and I hope you understand.

Update

2009-01-14T03:26:00.000-08:00

I just happened to notice that my blog was horribly updated, and my last post was from back in August. Last year I took a web programming class to motivate me to create a really decked out web page, but it only taught me that it's way too time consuming and too much effort. So here I am, using Blogger.com still.

I'm now on Skype, which seems like a really nifty online phone service. If you want, you can reach me with my user name, jfeucht82, and I'll try to leave it on as much as possible. My philosophy is that I should pay as little on telephone communication as humanly possible. If you've ever tried calling me, you've probably noticed that I rarely carry my phone on me wherever I go, and I respond to email a lot faster than I do via telephone. I currently own the cheapest AT&T pay-as-you-go phones I could possibly get, and it's malfunctioning because the ringer doesn't work anymore for some reason.

I was just looking through my online degree audit (or a listing of classes you still need to graduate), and I figured if I take the right classes, I might be able to graduate the end of Spring Quarter in June. I've been following mostly the program requirements of VLSI (Very Large Scale Integrated) Circuits, although the final courses I would need for that program aren't offered until the Summer or Fall quarter. On the other hand, I could take two engineering courses next quarter, and be done with the program requirements for Embedded Computing Systems, which is another field I have quite a bit of interest in. And I kind of want to exhaust the funds in my GI bill before I get out of the University of Washington, and I have funds to cover me through Fall Quarter this year, if I take classes over the summer.

So that's something I'm going to have to start thinking about. I've been prettying up my résumé and cover letter for possible internships and jobs coming up, and I have some career fairs to attend...

This quarter, I'm taking two engineering courses, and a writing course (I have to take two technical writing courses). I'm also taking my first 400-level UW course, E E 471 Computer Design and Organization. This class seems like it's going to be quite a bit of work. We're learning how to design our own microprocessor using Verilog, which is a computer language designed specifically for modeling digital circuits. Over the course of four lab assignments, we will design critical components of the processor. The class pretty much deals with figuring out how a processor processes machine code, and how all the components in a processor interact with each other.

The other engineering course I'm taking is E E 332 Devices and Circuits II, which is a continuation of an engineering class I took last quarter. This class deals primarily with designing circuits with BJTs (Bipolar Junction Transistors), which are pretty much electronic parts that amplify signals. Our final design project is to design and build an audio amplifier.

Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. Sometime in the near future, I might come up with something that's actually interesting to talk about and blog about it, but as for now, if you're too bored, you can check out my AC to DC in my previous post and marvel at how incredibly interesting it is.

An AC to DC Converter

2009-01-14T02:55:00.001-08:00

In one of my classes, E E 331 Devices and Circuits I, our final project was to build an AC to DC converter. Our design specifications were to take a 10 Vpp 60 Hz DC input from a center-tap transformer and have an adjustable 10 V to 20 V DC output. It was expected to have output noise of maximum 100 mV, and able to deliver 1 mA current for all voltage settings. Also, we were graded on how cheap the circuit was to build.

Above is a block diagram of our design. The circuit works by rectifying an AC input, creating a high frequency square wave, and using that wave to drive a boost converter to amplify the rectified input signal to a level dictated by a differential amplifier you could control using a potentiometer.

And above is the circuit schematic as viewed in PSPICE schematic and simulation software. The circuit was designed mostly on computer, then built later when the simulated circuit met specifications. The square wave was provided by a 555 timer, and the differential amplifier was built using a LM741 operational amplifier. The amplifier compares the voltage at the anode of a 5 V zener diode with the output voltage, and increases its output voltage when the output voltage falls too low, and decreases its output when the output voltage gets too high. This feedback system maintains a constant output voltage, which is calibrated using a network of resisters to operate within the specified range.

Above is the circuit built on a breadboard. The total cost of all the electrical components is a little under $8. Our design had barely any noise in the output, and it met all performance requirements within a narrow error margin.

Summer Break

2008-09-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

I'm out of school until the 24th of September, which means I have time to spare until then... I figured I have time to make another contribution to the blogosphere. During the break, I have yard projects I am doing for my parents, I'm working on several organ and piano pieces, read, blog, and try to get my window fixed on my car (finally!!!) I've been waiting so long because I had a ton of large expenses due by the end of August, including annual health insurance, car insurance, rent, and vehicle registration renewal, so I wanted to make sure those were paid off first. The temporary window I fabricated out of clear packing tape (which I consider to be a milestone in my fledgeling engineering capabilities) continues to serve it's purpose extraordinarily well.

I did a bike ride up to Sunrise on Mt. Rainier the other day with my Dad and a friend from Church. I haven't been much of a bike rider, especially since my bicycle was vandalized at the University of Washington. I was using my Dad's 'rain bike' for this ride, but I am thinking about getting another one some day when I don't have a lot of expenses due and it's relatively good weather. Ever since my dad had stents placed in two constricted arteries, he has taken up bicycling, and even completed the Seattle-to-Portland this year.

Brahms Sonata No. 1

2008-08-23T16:28:00.000-07:00

Here is a video of Rosie and I practicing Brahms Sonata #1 in G Major that I shot the day before our performance at Faith Presbyterian Church. I have been working with her for the past year and a half. Enjoy!

End of Summer Quarter

2008-08-22T23:24:00.000-07:00

Hello, friends and family!

It's been several months since I last posted. This summer has been pretty laden with school work. This quarter I took two classes, E E 271 Digital Circuits and Systems, and IND E Probability and Statistics for Engineers. This is the second time I'm taking a Statistics class; the first I took at Pierce Unfortunately, the credits didn't transfer for the course. The courses were pretty much the same material, except for that the one I just took uses a little bit more advanced mathematics...

For the past two weeks, I have been spending long hours and late nights working on a final project for my engineering class. The project is to design and build a game using digital logic. We were given a list of 9 different project ideas (or you could create your own). Here is the description for the particular game we chose:

This game involves dealing with some disgruntled chemistry and aero students who have teamed up and have taken over Bagley Hall. The are dropping balloons filled with synthetic and noxious scents…raspberry, strawberry, eau de skunk, greasy hamburger, cold pizza, Budweiser, oops InBev, …oh retched…, on the people passing below. Your mission is to stop this olfactory attack as quickly as possible.

This game is played on a 4 by 4 grid. Balloons are randomly loaded at the top of the grid and fall to the bottom. You can move a paddle left or right to block the balloons and thus prevent them from bombarding the folks below. If 3 balloons hit, the scent police haul you off to work in a paper company for the summer.

My instructor, Dr. Peckol, obviously has a really dry sense of humor. Anyway, my lab partner and I decided to build the project on an 8 by 8 grid, since there were compact dual color 8 by 8 LED (light-emitting diode) Matrices available at the UW parts store. The biggest challenge of the project was figuring out how to get the LED Matrix to work. Here is a schematic of the LED Matrix taken from the data sheet:

Since most of my readers aren't familiar with electronics, all of the triangle/line things are diodes, meaning that current can only flow in the direction of the arrow. When you apply a positive voltage to any column, and ground any row, current is allowed to flow through the diode at the intersection between the selected row and column. The problem is, how do you get two lights on at the same time that aren't in the same row or column? If you applied voltage to two of the rows and grounded two of the columns, you will have four LEDs shining, not two.

The trick to using an LED matrix is only having one column on at any time, and cycling through the columns at high frequency. The human eye can only notice a flicker of up to 50 Hz, and due to one of the properties of the human eye known as persistence of vision., an LED needs to be on for only nanoseconds in a 50 Hz cycle in order to appear as though it is continuously on. In our project, we have up to three objects on the screen during the course of the game, although the column and row display drivers cycle through displaying only one object on the screen at any given instance. We built a 555 Timer circuit outputting a pulse of 6.9 kHz, which is used to cycle through the objects on the screen.

Here is a block diagram of our game design:

The larger components of the circuit, including the Control, Sequencer, Row Driver and Column Drivers, were written in structural Verilog (programming language), then written onto generic array logic (GAL) chips. The random bit generator is a 3-bit linear feedback shift register, which is a common method for generating pseudo-random numbers. Here is a photo of the final circuit:

Well, I won't go too much deeper into all that boring electronics and stuff... I could go on for 26 pages (that's how long our lab report ended up being). Here it is in action!

There is one glitch in the final version I discovered last minute that I think is an easy fix... Once in a while, a balloon skips a row. I think this is because the clock signal to the Sequencer module has a race condition.

Anyway, that was my project. Digital Circuits is really a fun class. I get a month-long Summer break, so I think I'll do some hiking trips and some other fun things. Next quarter, I'm taking E E 331 Devices and Circuits I, E E 361 Applied, and Electromagnetics, and AMATH 301 A, Beginning Scientific Computing. It's not going to be an easy quarter! :(

Finals week!

2008-06-07T21:19:00.000-07:00

This coming week is finals week, so I have been doing my last-minute cramming. It's been a while since I posted last, so I decided to take a little break and update my blog. I have four finals next week, E E 233 on Monday, E E 235 on Tuesday, Math 308 on Wednesday, and CSE 190M on Thursday. In my E E 233 class, we learned how to design filter circuits, and how to understand the signal produced by a circuit using Fourier analysis. E E 235 was pretty much the same material, except it was for general signals.

My E E 233 teacher, explaining the Laplace transform. (I sometimes take photos during class so I don't have to take notes.)

In CSE 190M, we got experience with all sorts of different areas of web programming, including xhtml, css, javascript, php, sql, and more. Looking back, my understanding of web development dramatically increased this quarter, and I'm convinced I can now build a pretty high-quality web page.

I am now working full time playing the organ and piano for Resurrection Presbyterian Church. Resurrection is now leasing the property of Summit Methodist Church in Puyallup. My brother in law, Andrew, maintains the home page at http://resurrectionpc.org/, as well as print the bulletins.

Here is one of the tracker organs in the practice rooms at the University of Washington that I do some of my practice on.

I have been involved with the Alliance of Christian Musicians, which brings musicians from different churches in the area to promote more traditional forms of music. Last weekend, they had their third meeting at Faith Presbyterian, and a couple violinists (Rosemary and Austin) from Faith and I put together a chamber transcription of a Bach concerto for the opening of the third meeting. After which, Mr. Bechtel, the organist at Faith, moderated a conversation among four professors from surrounding churches.

I'm waiting to hear back from Crane Aerospace and Electronics. A week ago, I had an interview for an internship position at the company. If I don't get the job, I will be taking TC 333 Advanced Technical Writing, MATH 390 Statistics, and E E 271 Intro to Digital Circuits during the summer. I hope I get the job, because I need a little break from school -- I have been taking at least 15 quarter hours for the past 2 and a half years now!

My mad refinishing skills

2008-04-27T22:59:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I embarked on a project to refinish one of my grandpa's old desks. It had scratches all over the surface and nail polish and glue stains because of a special person I know (who will go unnamed, since I just now found out that he/she apparently is extremely sensitive to being called out on the internet for smearing nail polish on antique furniture and certain expensive musical instruments some time last decade). So I did a bit of research, got the necessary materials, and set to work on this project. I spent days sanding down the desk and all the drawers, during which the air in the garage became so saturated with sanding dust that my sanding masks were useless at filtering all the sanding particles, and I felt congested for an entire week. Unfortunately, I got sanding dust pretty much everywhere, and my dad wasn't too happy about that...

Anyway, I picked out a "special walnut" stain and glossy polyurethane, and by the end of spring break, I had the first clear coat of polyurethane on the desk and all the drawers. This was a ton of work for one week.

The next weekend, when I came home on Saturday, the top of the desk was smudged up a little bit, possibly to somebody setting down on top, destroying the finish. I guess I didn't give enough of a warning to my parents that it needed time to dry. I found it impossible to correct the blemish by sanding it down, and ended up destroying the stain. This is the destroyed finish after my failed attempt to fix it:

I ended up sanding down the entire top surface again, and applying a new stain and clear coat. I decided to take more precautions this time, and post some warning signs.

And hence, the final layer of clear coat, and the now fully restored and re-beautified antique desk. It is surely a work of art.

I am praying that nothing unfortunate happens to the desk this week. I am a bit tired of working on it. I didn't think to take pictures of the disk before I started working on it, which is a pity, because I didn't realize how unusually few pictures of the desk we actually have. I searched briefly through our family album of scanned and horrifically disorganized .jpeg files, and I could only come up with this one ancient photo dating from last decade (wow, computer screens used to be that big???):

Until I find better photos of the desk, you'll just have to take my word that it was quite unsightly.

(Help me out, family. If you know of any digital pictures of the desk before I started working on it, please email them to me. There might be a special prize.)

Ah, the smell of cherry blossoms!

2008-04-07T21:42:00.001-07:00

I was walking home from class today, and I brought my camera along. It was a beautiful spring day, and the cherry blossoms in the "Liberal Arts Quadrangle" were in full bloom, so I decided to slow down for once and take a few photos!

Left: Miller Hall. Right: Raitt Hall (left), Art Building (right)

Left: Art building. Right: Music building

Smith Hall

And here are some more photos of my dorm, Hansee Hall. It's always good to know there are gargoyles on the roof scaring away evil spirits! (Actually, it is a chimnera; gargoyles in architecture are ornate gutters used to spout water away from a building!)

My bad omen car...

2008-04-07T19:03:00.000-07:00

Hello, everybody.

This may be old news for some of you. I got one of my car windows shattered some time between March 14th and 15th.

If you remember, I've had my drivers side power window smashed in before early in the morning on Thursday, May 3, 2007. The repairs cost around $350, none of which my insurance helped out with. I'm hoping that repairs this time will be a lot cheaper! Ironically, both incidents happened before the Sunday when me and a friend, Rosemary, played part of the second movement to Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata for church offertory. Just out of fear to losing more windows on my car, I don't think I will ever play that piece again. Anyway, here are the photos from a year ago which I haven't uploaded yet:

As you could see, this time, it was a much smaller window. Other cars in the same parking lot were also broken into, and some cars actually had their main driver power windows knocked out. I'm not sure when I'm going to finally get the window replaced, but for the time being, I have constructed a nice sturdy patch out of clear packing tape. It has been pretty weather resistant, and I wasn't expecting it to last this long.

At first, I thought they only got away with a 30 pack of top ramen packets. But I found out a week later that they stole a backpack full of ski equipment, including a new coat I had just gotten, ski pants, a hat, gloves, and ski goggles, which was in the trunk. Last time I had the car broken into, they got away with my iPod, which was in the glove box. I guess I finally learned my lesson to have nothing of value in my car. I also think I might just leave my packing tape patch on, so thieves have an easy way to break in that isn't going to cost me $350 to repair. Hopefully, they're smart enough to realize they don't have to break my windows to get in.

These aren't the only times my car has been vandalized. On four separate occasions, my car has been pelted by a total of 7 eggs, the most recent time (believe it or not) this past Friday night! I was driving home for the weekend, and a car coming in the other direction pelted my driver window with an egg. It didn't cause any damage, and it washed off pretty easy.

Four of the eggs that hit my car left marks, but here are the worst two:

This happened in August 2005 while I was in the military. I found it after I had come home from leave in Washington. I think the eggs may have been sitting on my car for three or four days, because it had completely cooked to the car and was beginning to smell pretty gross. It gets pretty hot in the summer in North Carolina. I could still see the stains where the egg had run down the side of the car. You can see the paint has been removed from where two of the egg shells had been sitting the entire time.

I also had my car shot with a BB gun some time in 2006. I'm not sure if I had gotten shot while I was driving home from JiffyLube that day, or if I had been shot while I was parked in front of my house. But I was typing up a report and my my roommate Matthew got home from work and asked me if I knew I had a hole in my passenger side door. I was shocked, and sure enough, there was a deep dent where the paint had been stripped. Here is a photograph:

I am so used to having my car vandalized that I'm starting to expect seeing something wrong every time I go to it. Every time this happens, I start telling myself that I should have gotten a beater. I just got a steering wheel club on my mom's suggestion, since Honda Civics are one of the easiest cars to steal.

Anyway, that is my bad omen car. If you like people breaking your car windows, throwing eggs at your car and shooting your car with BB guns, then you may be happy with a Honda Civic 2002 4-door, green with silver pinstripe.

The new Spring Quarter

2008-03-31T19:26:00.000-07:00

Hello, my most esteemed readers,

I am just back from my Spring break, during which I labored all week to refinish one of my grandpa's old desk. I spend a ton of time sanding off the old finish, staining the bare wood and applying the new clear coat. This Saturday, I will place the final layer of clear coat on.I will be sure to post pictures of the final results so you could see the beauty of my amateur woodworking skills.

This quarter, I am taking four classes, which amount to 18 credit hours. The classes are Math 308 Linear Algebra, E E 233 Circuit Theory, E E 235 Continuous Time Linear Systems, and CSE 190M Web Programming. Unfortunately, my organ teacher told all her non-major students that she was unable to give organ lessons this quarter because of an overwhelming schedule over the next few months, especially with her doctorate students. For this reason, I decided to add on web programming as just a fun side class. (Although, she's allowing us to keep the keys to the practice rooms!) The class is around 200

The web programming class would actually not count for credits for my major. Although this is a freshman-level course (and I'm probably older than a good 95% percent of the roughly 200 students), I really haven't had much experience with developing web pages, which is something that is very useful to learn. The class covers a wide range of topics such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, PHP, and SQL (don't ask me what that means, I don't know). My current experience with web page design is to use crutches (Microsoft FrontPage). After this quarter, I will once again create a web page, and it will be totally AWESOME. And you will all marvel at my supreme web development skills. I decided to take this class because it got really high ratings, and everybody I've talked to that have taken it said it was a very fun course.

The web programming class is in Guggenheim hall, a really nice-looking Tudor-archetecture building completed in 1930 and just recently renovated.

And just a stone-throw away, the rest of my classes are in the Electrical Engineering Building, which is a six-story building which was built only 5 years ago, a labyrinth of staircases and elevators which I get lost in every time I go in. The Electrical Engineering building as well as the Paul Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering right next door are only five years old, and was a project that costed around $72 million.

Just for reference, I live in Hansee Hall, which is right here. It even has its own Wikipedia page with some very interesting information! Yeah, I realize I have to walk a long ways to my classes. I have to factor in at least 15 minutes of speed walking whenever I have to go to class. Unfortunately, my new bike got robbed, so I'm force to use the slower old-fashioned mode of transportation, using my feet. :(

Just for April Fools Day, click here for a compilation of some of my favorite pranks! I haven't tried all of them yet, but I got a rather strong reaction from my sister Diane when I tried prank #4 on her. I'll just say she is rather sensitive when you bring up the subject of broken laptop screens. That's all I'm going to say.

Happy April Fools Day!!!

Ron Paul shows up to UW Campus

2008-01-31T18:05:00.000-08:00

Today, Ron Paul stopped by the University of Washington to campaign. I brought my digital camera (I was meaning to bring my camera recorder, but I found out until too late that it was out of battery). But here are photos and my video from the event on YouTube. It was quite a wild crowd, I guess over 500 people, including a group of global warming activists. Anyway, here is the footage:

My new life at the University of Washington

2008-01-17T09:43:00.000-08:00

Hello, all.

It's been obviously quite a while since I last posted. Just a quick catch-up with my life for anyone who might be wondering if I'm still alive, I finished up at Pierce College with an Associates of Science Track II degree, and now I'm living on campus at the University of Washington.

This is my second week at the University of Washington, and I've been enjoying it so far. This quarter, I'm taking differential equations, Java programming (part II), fundamentals of electrical engineering, and organ lessons with Carole Terry at the University Methodist Temple.

I just wanted to upload some photos of my new dorm room at the University of Washington. I am in the Hansee hall, which is located on the North side of campus. Hansee Hall is my ideal environment, since it has all singles rooms and they implement a 24-hour quiet time policy, and I don't have to deal with loud rap music in the hallways, and I shouldn't have a problem with other people being distracting.

Visit to the hospital

2007-06-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

Today, my Mom, Rachel, Sammy, Patrick, and I went to Tacoma General hospital to visit my dad, who had just undergone surgery. Earlier this week, my dad went in for a vascular health checkup after he found he had a high blood pressure. He had been feeling chest pains after his work outs and a resulting loss in his ulnar nerve, which he believed to be caused by work-related stress.

The tests revealed that two of the main arteries were blocked and he had constricted blood flow to the heart, so today he had stints put into those arteries to allow better blood flow. Stints basically are a cylindrical wire mesh inserted into the artery to widen the passageway.

After the surgery, he was calm and cordial as he usually is. Photographs of the artery before and after show that the procedure opened up the arteries and blockage was reduced considerably. The blood pressure readings on the heart monitor showed normal readings, which just that morning had been much higher. "It feels noticeably different having lower blood pressure," he mentioned. He seemed lively, and posed with his grand-children as Rachel and I incessantly took photographs.

His blood pressure will be monitored over the next few days, and continued high blood pressure might indicate something more serious. As for now, we're thanking God the surgery went well and look forward to seing him back in shape for some future camping trips this year.

How to prove that pie are squared

2007-05-22T19:39:00.000-07:00

Hello, yeah, I understand it's been like ages since I last posted. That's because for the past few months I've virtually been taking 20 credit hours worth of classes, so I had to sacrifice most of the time I could have spent keeping my friends and family in touch with my incredibly interesting life.

What I want to talk about now is something related to geometry, trigonometry, and calculus, namely the area of a circle. Most people that have taken basic geometry in grade school can tell you the area of the circle is πr^2, but ask the average person why that is so and they wouldn't have a flippin' clue. I'm about to prove how exactly you solve for the area of a circle using analytical geometry and calculus.

In Figure 1, we see the geometry of the circle. The variable r is the radius of the circle, a is any arbitrary distance from the center of the circle, L is the length of the chord the distance a away from the center of the circle, and da represents a minute thickness of the segment dA with length L that contributes to the overall area of the circle. The summation of all of the dA’s (horizontal chords of minute thickness) is the exact area of the circle.

The area of the segment dA is L da. We know by the Pythagorean theorem that the length of L is twice the length sqrt(r^2-a^2). Thus:

To find the summation the total area of the circle, we will sum up all of the dA’s from a=−r to a=r:

This being a complex integral, the use of trigonometric substitution is necessary for solving it. In figure 2, the triangle is shown in more detail. The value for a could be replaced by a trigonometric equality, a=r sin θ.The integral therefore becomes:

One of the essential trigonometric identities we come across is 1-(sin θ)^2=(cos θ)^2. Since there are mixed variables in the integral, we must somehow make a substitution. A correlation between da and dθ can be determined by the equation a=r sin θ.

When changing the variable, it is necessary to change the limits of the integral to correspond to the new variable. To find the value the limits change to, we solve for θ:

Making the final substitutions:

To complete the integration, we must recognize another trigonometric equality, namely
(cos θ)^2=(1 + cos 2θ)/2. We then derive:

And there you have it, the area of a circle. You might have thought it would be a little more simple than that, but you were wrong.

So, I realize I just made myself look like a nerd, but I don't really care, because I just had a great time doing it. The end.

New developments...

2006-12-18T16:59:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning, I commenced to tear down the fence that had blown over during the windstorm on Thursday night, when I noticed something a little odd about one of our trees. Our family used to get live Christmas trees and transplant them in the yard after the holiday season was over. This one particular Christmas tree that we had around 10 years ago looked normal from the vantage point in which we normally see it, but a closer look revealed it was angled directly at our neighbor's house at a 30 degree angle! Needless to say, I spent the majority of the day working with my dad and the neighbor whose house was miraculously spared sawing off branches, cutting up the tree and by the end of the day I was able to dig out the stump. Here are some photos from this very productive weekend.

Later on that day, the Isenbergers hosted a rather spectacular Christmas party. Thank you Chad and Dana!

Sunday was the Faith Presbyterian Church Children's Christmas Program, and my nephew Patrick got to perform publicly for the first time. Here is the segment of the program where he is supposed to be a singing angel, although he didn't quite act like one.

Chaos in the state of Washington

2006-12-15T20:02:00.000-08:00

As you might have heard in the news (or perhaps experienced yourself), the Northwest experienced perhaps the worst windstorm in over a decade with 100+ MPH winds on Thursday night. As I was driving to and from Seattle yesterday, I saw the beginnings of the storm and some of the worst traffic I had ever seen before. I was talking to my sister Diane online yesterday when the power cut out. The electric company shuts off electricity when there are severe winds due to trees falling over and branches striking power lines to prevent shorts and possible fires. Being as dependent on electricity as Americans are, it would seem the world stops rotating in such instances. With all traffic lights out, all intersections are basically four-way stops. Anyway, for those non-Washingtonians, the first critical skill for survival one most master in such an instance is brewing coffee, as I demonstrate in the photo to the left. If you don't have a gas stove, use your fireplace or maybe a bunch of candles. You boil water and pour it directly in the filter full of coffee grounds. Make sure you have a pot underneath to catch the water. Then be sure to thank me when this information one day saves your life.

Anyway, a good 18-foot section of the fence in the back yard was blown over in the storm. Looks like I'm going to have some more work around the house in the next few days. I'm not suprised the fence fell over, since it was built 14 years ago so most of the wood was rotting away, and an excess of dirt growing on our side of the fence due to annual compost and mulch spreads were enough to finally do it in. I guess I'll get started on that tomorrow; I couldn't do it today since I was scheduled to do some workin Gig Harbor today working for Mr. Bechtel, the organist at my church in Tacoma. My sister Sarah had part of her house's roof blown off and water leaking through into the upstairs bathroom. I'll be taking a look at that too tomorrow. Here are some photos I shot of the fence:

At the Bechtels' house, I helped clear away debris scattered by the wind. Their neighborhood looked as though a tornado had passed through the area. Fortunately for them, they have a bottomless compost pile, and they're actually allowed to burn debris on their property. I was pondering how much easier things would be if only you were permitted to burn yard waste in your backyard in Puyallup! Well, actually, I'm not quite sure about that, but probably not. Instead, we're restricted to an 80 gallon blue bin for organic debris which is emptied only every other week, and unless you own a truck and are able to take the debris to the dump yourself, there's really no way to prevent an obtrusive compost pile from building up. I also built a trench in order to lay some French drains.

Yesterday, I was watching Tucker Carlson's MSNBC commentaries, and Willie Geist introduced me to www.elfyourself.com, where you can Elfamorphize yourself. (Click on the photo to watch me make an elf of myself!) I had a long overdue half-hour laugh. You upload any photo of yourself, rotate it and resize it so your head fits in a face template, and watch yourself do the elf dance. You can also call a number, leave a voice recording, and have your elf speak!

Well, it's been a productive day, and I got a long day ahead of me tomorrow, so I better stop here and hit the sack. Good night!

Yay, snow!

2006-11-28T11:00:00.000-08:00

Today, the great city of Puyallup experienced around 2¾ inches of snow, which was a pleasant surprise for me having been in the desert for the last three winter seasons. Can't wait to go skiing again! I got an email from my Archaeology instructor informing me that classes had been cancelled for the entire day. When I was in grade school, it is always a welcoming thing to hear that classes had been cancelled. Unfortunately, my Chemistry and Calculus teachers were both going to give us information today about what to study for comprehensive final exams next week. I'm just not as capable for fully appreciating a full day without school as I would like to be. I just finished shovelling the driveway and the sidewalk, and plan to study a little, learn some Christmas music on the piano, and later have dinner with some friends.

Anyway, here are some photos that I took around the house while the snow was still fresh:

A visit to a graveyard

2006-11-27T16:17:00.000-08:00

Today, I involved my mom in an extra credit assignment, namely to visit a graveyard and snap various photos of headstones, categorize them by decade, and draw conclusions based on evolving headstone styles. We went to the Woodbine Cemetary in Puyallup. This is the same cemetary in which Ezra Meeker is buried, one of the late 19th century Oregon Trail pioneers and the one who named the city of Puyallup (which supposedly means 'generous people' in some Indian dialect) and its first mayor. Although one of his greater contributions to society was his introduction of hops to the area (horray, beer!), and was even recognized as the "Hop King of the World", until his crops were destroyed by hop lice. Then around the same time Anheuser-Busch adopted the nomenclature "King of Beer". His Victorian mansion is now a museum in down-town Puyallup and is still one of the major attractions of the city alongside the Puyallup Fair itself. Besides Ezra Meeker's grave, I also saw Vitt Ferrucci's grave (actually, future grave, since he's not quite dead yet, although his wife died in 2005). He is a vetrinarian who served on the Puyallup Board of Education, and who has a junior high school named after him. Two of my sisters, Sarah and Diane, attended Ferrucci Jr. High.

Visiting graveyards is something I should probably do a little more often, since it reinforces to me the idea that we will only live a little while on Earth, and and the manner in which you live has direct implications on whether you face eternal life or damnation. Just last night, I heard a sermon by Rev. Robert Raburn based on Phillipians 1:27 - "Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel" (ESV), and how it is too often to not think seriously about the manner in which we live, but such is the critical factor which determines life or death in the afterlife. Every gravestone represents a soul that must face judgement and go either to heaven or hell, when all the sudden, your accomplishments, the amount of joy you've had in life or size of your gravestone doesn't really matter anymore.

It started snowing today, which would be the first time in over four years I have seen it snow (last four holiday seaons, I was in Texas, Qatar, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. It's kind of hard to get Christmas spirit in any of those places. Ironically, Christ was born in the Middle East. Funny how that works. To the left is a shot I took in the back yard when it was snowing pretty hard. And if you're reading this post, Sarah, for memory's sake, I posted a few photos of the tree Andrew proposed to you under before and after I obliterated it:

Before:

After:

Sammy meets great grandmother

2006-11-25T20:41:00.000-08:00

Today my sister Sarah, Andrew, and my parents drove down to Portland, Oregon to visit my dad's mother who is now living in a rather nice care facility, and is my only living grandparent. Needless to say, she was suffering from Alzheimer's, so she was unable to even remember who her own sons were. It used to be that whenever I visited her, hugs and kisses were manditory before laying foot in the house, but it seems that's changed a little bit. Needless to say, we succeded at conveying to her the idea that she had a new great grandchild, and afterwards she was in very good spirits. My dad duplicated several old photos of relatives, siblings, parents, and children, with which we decorated her walls. The entire time, she preoccupied herself with stuffing Patrick's mouth with multiple cookies. I learned a new side of my grandmother today, as she was more comical than I had ever seen her before.

Here are two video clips and some photos I captured.

Some photos:

Leona holding her great grandchildren.

Grandma pondering over a photo of her family. After recognizing herself in the picture, she responded "What am I doing in that photo?"

My very first blog post

2006-11-24T22:39:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving weekend! I found a little bit of free time since I was given a five-day weekend, so I decided I'd finaly cave in and submerge myself in the blogosphere. I had a web page a while back, but I haven't had very much time or effort to keep it updated regularly; a web page is a lot more maintenance. I guess the growing trend for keeping a personal diary or journal is to submit your entries to the entire world so that anybody can read what you have to say and then leave comments on your blog, leaving the poster with some sense of social satisfaction. Being a social networking participant myself (YouTube, MySpace, and now I guess Blogger.com), I am quite aware of how cruel people can be, especially on the internet (having submitted degenerative comments myself, in the spirit of love of course), so I don't see how many people have the audacity to upload their soul onto the internet when they could get a little diary equipped with a lock and key and then hide it under your pillow, considering how sensitive most people are to criticism. I find it interesting that nowdays people are willing to share things that 10 years ago they would have kept under lock and key. I guess this trend is a facet of what Neil Postman described as the surrender of culture to technology...

Well, anyway, today I sawed down the tree my sister Sarah and Andrew proposed under. My dad declared the death sentence and I was the executioner. They don't even know I did it yet, but I can imagine how they will feel when the figure out that one of the things that brought joy to their lives has been destroyed without a second thought, and now some of their best memories can never be revisited. To the left is the photograph of the same tree taken by my sister the day she was engaged. Now what's left of it is a pile of small debris. How sad.

This weekend, Sarah, Andrew, my parents and I are heading down to Portland, OR for the weekend to visit my Grandma, and introduce her to Samuel, my new nephew and her new great grandchild. Looking forward to some good times with relatives. Then on Monday, I'm going to be visiting a cemetary for my Archaeology class, taking photos of various grave stones, then apply seriation to determine if there is any correlation between head stone styles and time. Then I got finals to these next couple weeks, so I got a fair deal of cramming and information overload to look forward to in the near future.