Jeff's Lunchbreak

It's a new month, so it's time for me to check back over the server logs. For anyone who's been following my little notes on these updates, now that I've gotten back into the swing of updating the blog once a week, my traffic is steadily recovering. Compared to just two months ago, which is the worst month I've had since I started keeping track, traffic is up 14.9%. Compared to last month, traffic is up 8.2%. I know I could increase my traffic quite a bit if I shamelessly self-promoted on popular blogs (everytime I post a link in a Pharyngula comment thread, I get a noticeable spike in traffic), but I try to let my posts speak for themselves, and only self-promote that way if one of my blog posts really is relevant to the topic.

Anyway, there weren't any big changes this month. Everything on the list has been on the list before.

September List

1. Autogyro History & Theory
2. Blog - A Skeptical Look at MBT Shoes
3. Factoids Debunked & Verified
4. Blog - Letter to Pharmacy about MBT Shoes
5. Programming
6. X-Plane as an Engineering Tool
7. Factoids Debunked & Verified, Part II
8. Blog - Running AutoCAD R14 in XP Pro 64
9. Blog - A Few Comments
10. Theoretical Max Propeller Efficiency

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Oct 2 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've added a new pamphlet to my Religious Essays section, A Brief Introduction to Non-Belief. I can be a bit long winded, and although I like all of the points I made in the main essays, I realized that their length might discourage people from reading them. This new pamphlet covers the most common question and misconceptions I encounter when people first learn I'm an atheist. It's short enough that it fits onto a single 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper (as long as you print on both sides). I also corrected numerous typos from the other essays while I was at it.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Aug 19 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Man, I've had a busy past few weeks. Not only do I have a lot to do with work, but I've been using my lunch breaks mainly to research things to do during my upcoming family vacation to D.C. Granted, I lived inside the beltway for 6 years, so I know all the big things, but I'm trying to find good information to give to my wife and daughter that are better than me simply telling them about it. Plus, there's so much stuff to do that there are still things that I don't know about. So, anyone with advice on fun things to do in and around our nation's capital that aren't usually in the tour books or that have only opened in the past few years (since I've moved to Texas), leave a suggestion in the comments. We're willing to drive a couple hours for a worthwhile day trip.

Looking through the server logs, I can definitely tell the difference in traffic between now and when I was posting more often. Last month, I had the least amount of visitors to my site since November of 2007, and only 82% of the visitors I had this past January when I was more active. I hope I can find the time to start writing more again soon. I have a lot to say, and a few good blog entries that are already partway finished. Plus, there are a couple comments on this blog that I really want to respond to (short version - doctors and clinical trials are both very good things).

Anyway, on to the list of top 10 pages from May. The only surprise is a short blog entry titled A Few Comments. Considering that there's no real content in it or its comments, my guess is that it was being visited mainly by spam bots.

May List

1. Autogyro History & Theory
2. Blog - A Few Comments
3. Blog - A Skeptical Look at MBT Shoes
4. Blog - Letter to Pharmacy about MBT Shoes
5. Factoids Debunked & Verified
6. Programming
7. Theoretical Max Propeller Efficiency
8. Factoids Debunked & Verified, Part II
9. X-Plane as an Engineering Tool
10. Downloads

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jun 12 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just a real quick entry - I've updated my tutorial for X-Plane, UDP, and Visual Basic, for X-Plane version 9. There are a few changes between versions 8 and 9 of X-Plane that affect network communications such that methods in the old tutorial wouldn't work anymore. Hopefully this new tutorial will help at least a few people.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, May 22 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here it is, the monthly update of the most popular pages on my site. Nine of the ten pages were the usual suspects. However, I was surprised to see my Life on Mars blog post become so popular. It was the second most visited page on my site in April, but I wrote it back in January. I wonder where the interest is coming from?

April List

1. Autogyro History & Theory
2. Blog - Life on Mars
3. Blog - A Skeptical Look at MBT Shoes
4. Programming
5. Blog - Letter to Pharmacy about MBT Shoes
6. Factoids Debunked & Verified
7. Downloads
8. Theoretical Max Propeller Efficiency
9. Factoids Debunked & Verified, Part II
10. X-Plane as an Engineering Tool

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, May 5 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I completely missed updating this Top 10 List last month, I missed a blog entry last week, and I haven't made any updates to the main site since December. I apologize for the inactivity, but I've been very busy at work, so my lunch breaks have been too short to spend much time on this website. I'm glad to have been able to make the blog posts that I have.

Anyway, since I missed this list last month, I'm posting two lists this week - one for February and one for March. Like normal, it's the same pages that generate most of my traffic. I was happy to see, though, that blog entries are starting to make that list more, and that it's dynamic (entries making the list soon after I post them). That means either that more people are starting to pay attention to my blog, or that more spam robots are finding my site as a target.

March List

1. Autogyro History & Theory
2. Blog - A Skeptical Look at MBT Shoes
3. Blog - Letter to Pharmacy about MBT Shoes
4. Factoids Debunked & Verified
5. Programming
6. X-Plane as an Engineering Tool
7. Downloads
8. Theoretical Max Propeller Efficiency
9. Factoids Debunked & Verified, Part II
10. Blog - Book Review - Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters

February List

1. Autogyro History & Theory
2. Blog - Letter to Pharmacy about MBT Shoes
3. Blog - A Skeptical Look at MBT Shoes
4. Programming
5. Factoids Debunked & Verified
6. Fastnacht Recipe
7. X-Plane as an Engineering Tool
8. Factoids Debunked & Verified, Part II
9. Downloads
10. Blog - Texas Board of Education - Bad Results for Science Standards

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Apr 6 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I may have missed making any blog entry last week, and completely missed updating the non-blog portion of my site last month, but I can at least put up something today. Here's the list of the top 10 most popular pages from my site for last month. No surprises for this month - the list's pretty much the same as months past.

1. Autogyro History & Theory
2. Blog - A Skeptical Look at MBT Shoes
3. Programming
4. Factoids Debunked & Verified
5. Blog - Letter to Pharmacy about MBT Shoes
6. Downloads
7. Factoids Debunked & Verified, Part II
8. X-Plane as an Engineering Tool
9. Theoretical Max Propeller Efficiency
10. X-Plane, UDP, and Visual Basic, for X-Plane version 8

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Feb 5 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm a couple weeks getting to this, but here it is - the most popular pages from my site for last month. I think this is the first month since I've started keeping track that everything that made the list for the previous month made it back to the list the following month, though there was definitely some shuffling around.

1. Autogyro History & Theory
2. Blog - A Skeptical Look at MBT Shoes
3. Blog - Letter to Pharmacy about MBT Shoes
4. Programming
5. Factoids Debunked & Verified
6. Downloads
7. X-Plane, UDP, and Visual Basic, for X-Plane version 8
8. Theoretical Max Propeller Efficiency
9. X-Plane as an Engineering Tool
10. Blog - Golden Compass - A Surprise at the Bookstore

List for Previous Months

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Jan 14 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've made a new factoids page, Factoids Debunked & Verified, Part IV. As usual, only some of the claims are true, while many don't hold up to investigation, and are either misleading or outright false. At least it's better than the previous factoid e-mail I received.

For anyone keeping track, you may have noticed the lack of an update to the non-blog portion of this site in November. Actually, I did make one, but it was too small to merit it's own mention here - I put up a new picture of me and my wife on the About Me page. So technically, I've still maintained an update per month average. I'd like to get at least one more substantive update before the end of the year, but December's looking pretty busy.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Dec 10 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I managed to be pretty much on time updating the list this month. Like normal, most of the popular pages stayed popular, shifting rankings just a little bit. The big surprise this month is that Theoretical Max Propeller Efficiency earned a top spot. It's nice to see something so constructive and useful becoming more popular. (Actually, it's just missed making the top 10 list several times, so this isn't a huge surge in popularity for the page. And really, it's not like any of my pages are hugely popular.)

1. Autogyro History & Theory
2. Blog - A Skeptical Look at MBT Shoes
3. Programming
4. Blog - Golden Compass - A Surprise at the Bookstore
5. Factoids Debunked & Verified
6. Blog - Letter to Pharmacy about MBT Shoes
7. Downloads
8. X-Plane as an Engineering Tool
9. Theoretical Max Propeller Efficiency
10. X-Plane, UDP, and Visual Basic, for X-Plane version 8

List for Previous Months

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Dec 3 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm about half a month late in getting to it, but here are the 10 most popular pages from this site for the month of October. Once again, it's pretty similar to months past. The big surprise this month is that an old blog entry, Golden Compass - A Surprise at the Bookstore, made the top 10 this time around. The only other time it made the list was back in January, when I blogwhored and advertised it on Pharyngula.

1. Autogyro History & Theory
2. Blog - A Skeptical Look at MBT Shoes
3. Blog - Physical Comparison of Humans to Other Animals
4. Programming
5. Factoids Debunked & Verified
6. Blog - Letter to Pharmacy about MBT Shoes
7. Downloads
8. X-Plane as an Engineering Tool
9. X-Plane, UDP, and Visual Basic, for X-Plane version 8
10. Blog - Golden Compass - A Surprise at the Bookstore

List for Previous Months

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Nov 14 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It looks like I've just squeaked by getting an update in for this month. In fact, I've made a few changes (though a couple are very small). First, I've updated my Programming page with the latest version of my Circle Gradient Pattern Generator. This new version makes animations, not just still images. In a related update, I've added a couple of those animations to my Artwork page, including YouTube versions that loop when you play them (just add &loop=1 to the src link in the embed tag). Unfortunately, part of the way I control the animations right now is through actually changing the code itself, meaning that an executable version for my Downloads page is still a ways off. Hopefully I'll get to it eventually.

For a very small update, I've added a few new quotes to my Quotes page - one by Douglas Adams, one by Mark Twain, and one by Jean Giraudoux. I don't really expect most visitors to this site to look at that page, but it's a nice place for me to keep them for myself.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Oct 31 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've updated the Religious Essays section of this site. Previously, the essays were available only as .pdf files. I figured that that might discourage some people from reading them. So, I've made the individual essays all available as regular HTML files. Hopefully, this will make them more accessible to people who don't want to download .pdf files. I did keep the .pdf file that's a collection of all the essays, but I changed the page layout slightly. I converted it to a 5.5"x8.5" sheet. That's half the size of a regular letter size paper, which works out just right for using a duplexer to print 4 pages per sheet of paper, and folding all the sheets in half to make a little booklet out of it (and yes, I realize I'm probably the only person that's ever going to do that). I also added two new essays, which are adaptations of blog entries I wrote recently, Further Musings on the Soul and Pascal's Wager, as well as expanding the essay, Problems with a Day-Age Interpretation of Genesis, using some information I wrote for a comment on a blog entry.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Oct 3 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's the start of a new month, so I went through the server logs to see what the most popular pages were on this site for the month of September. There was a little shuffling around, but for the most part, the popular pages have stayed popular. One surprise was the blog entry, Website Update- New Section, Religious Essays. The only reason I can guess why that page is so popular is that in the comments I gave a pretty detailed response to a guy who raised some questions about my essays.

1. Autogyro History & Theory
2. Blog - A Skeptical Look at MBT Shoes
3. Blog - Physical Comparison of Humans to Other Animals
4. Blog - Website Update- New Section, Religious Essays (maybe for the comments?)
5. Programming
6. Blog - Letter to Pharmacy about MBT Shoes
7. Downloads
8. Factoids Debunked & Verified
9. X-Plane, UDP, and Visual Basic, for X-Plane version 8
10. X-Plane as an Engineering Tool

List for Previous Months

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Oct 1 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just a small update - I changed the intro on my homepage. For posterity's sake, here's the old intro:

     Hello, and welcome to jefflewis.net. This is my own little corner of the web, where I can show off some of the things I've done, as well as hopefully provide some useful information. I've even included a touch of information about myself (After all, this is a personal web site).
     This site began as just a few pages back on my school account years ago. Since then, it's grown in fits and spurts to what you see today, going through a few face lifts along the way. But keep in mind, this is just a hobby. I've got a job and a family to keep me occupied, so the website takes second stage. I will try to put up new content on a regular basis, hopefully at least an update per month, but I'm not making any promises.
     But anyway, here's my site. Take a look around at the different sections to see what you see. I've got the 10 most popular pages from the month listed below, if you want to see what other people come here to look at (they're not necessarily my favorite pages, but I figure they're popular for a reason). At the worst, it'll help you kill a few minutes of time.

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Sep 11 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've put up an updated Photo Page Generator, version 2.3, on my Programming page. I reinstated the ability to generate lists to put in drop-down boxes for slideshows. I also added the executable version to my Downloads page. On a related note, I added a slideshow to my Florida Photos page. While I was updating the Programming section, I decided to make a few tweaks. Now, when you follow one of the links to view the source code (here's an example), it has a little description of the program at the top, followed by the source code below. I also went through each of those pages to make sure that they were valid html code (mostly replacing "&" with "&amp;", and "<" and ">" with "&#60;" and "&#62;".

With this third update to the main site for August, I'm up to 8 updates this year. That's got me caught up with my update per month goal. Now let's see if I can keep it up for the rest of the year.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Aug 22 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, with the mention in my last update that I hadn't updated my list of 10 most popular pages since the end of March, it got me feeling a little guilty. So, I went looking through my server logs, and came up with new top ten lists for each of the months that I missed (the older months can be found here). I was a little surprised, actually. My Autogyro History & Theory essay is still the most popular page on this site, but one of my blog entries from about a year ago, A Skeptical Look at Masai Barefoot Technology Shoes, is starting to gain popularity and close the ground to the autogyro essay. Another surprise is the blog entry, Legalizing Homosexual Marriage, Part II. It's an essay I originally wrote for this site way back in 2005, and reposted on my blog in 2006. And now, all of a sudden, people have started reading it. Going back over it now, my views have changed a bit, but I still think it's a pretty good essay for religious people to read. There are a few other blog entries, such as this one, Physical Comparison of Humans to Other Animals, which have also started gaining more popularity as they grow older. I guess it just goes to show that if you concentrate on putting good information into a site, even if it takes a little while, and without any real advertising, people will eventually notice. So, I guess it's time to get back to creating some of that good content, and quit with the updates like these.

For any of you reading this on my blog instead of my homepage, here's the list of top 10 most viewed pages on this site for July:

1. Autogyro History & Theory
2. Blog - A Skeptical Look at Masai Barefoot Technology Shoes
3. Factoids Debunked & Verified
4. Blog - Just Because (picture of me in aircraft cockpit)
5. Blog - E-mails and Misinformation
6. Programming
7. Blog - Letter to Pharmacy about MBT Shoes
8. Downloads
9. X-Plane as an Engineering Tool
10. Blog - Legalizing Homosexual Marriage, Part II

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Aug 8 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Boy have I've been neglecting the non-blog portion of this site. I just completely missed another month, to make 3 months of this year, so far, without adding any new content. And I haven't updated my list of 10 most popular pages since the end of March. Well, I've finally gotten around to making something new - a Florida Photo Page, showing some pictures from my latest trip. This trip was spent mainly relaxing on the beach, so unfortunately for you, that means there aren't that many photos worth showing to the public. There were a few good ones, though, so it's still worth checking out. I also added the appropriate link on the main Photos page.

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Aug 7 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just two weeks ago, I made an aopolgy for not keeping up with my post per week goal on this blog, and even made a promise to make two posts that week to make up for it. Well, I only got out one real post that week, and didn't post anything at all last week. And here's the reason - I was on vacation in Florida last week. With a few important projects I had to wrap up before I left, I worked through my lunch breaks so I didn't have time to write any more posts here at work. And with packing and doing a few projects around the house, I didn't have time to write at home, either. I had been planning on trying out my new phone to make an entry while on vacation, but when you're making sandcastles on the beach with your daughter, or splashing around in the ocean, or sipping a beer on the deck while watching the waves break on shore by the light of the full moon, that post per week goal just doesn't seem so important.

Anyway, I'm back now. For the next couple days, I'll be pretty busy catching up, but some time this week I'll be back to writing blog entries.

P.S. I should have a new page on my main website for the Florida trip once I have a chance to go through the pictures.

P.P.S. Doing a Google image search for "intermission" yields some pretty surprising results (NSFW).

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Jul 21 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been neglecting the main part of my website a little too long, but I've finally made an update. I got another factoid e-mail in my inbox that was just too ripe to pass up, so I now have Factoids Debunked & Verified, Part III. This was one of the worst factoid e-mails I've ever received. Usually, there are at least some germs of truth. This one seems to be fabricated through and through.

Updated 2008-06-30 - corrected the link to go to the proper page.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jun 27 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, these are very small changes to this blog, but I did a little playing around with the stuff over in that right sidebar. First, I figured it was about time that I added a blogroll, so I did. It's not very long, and I've limited it to blogs that I check at least once a week. I know there are lots of other good blogs out there that aren't on the list, but that's the way it goes.

Second, I redid the way the Archives show up in the side bar. I had been just going with the default that MovableType came set up with, which showed every month I had entries in. Unfortunately, now that I've had my blog for a few years, that list was getting pretty long, so I put it on a separate page.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Apr 18 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I've added a new recipe for Easter bread to my How To page. This is the recipe my mom made while I was growing up and passed on to me. Other than that, there's no deep family significance - I think she got it out of a cookbook, which got it from a convent in Pittsburgh. And I realize it's a little late for this year, but honestly, it was while my daughter and I were making the bread this past weekend that the thought occured to me to add it to this site.

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Mar 27 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A very small update for today, but an update, nonetheless. About a year ago, when I decided to sell my RX-7, I made a note of it on my RX-7 page. However, when I did sell the car, I forgot to update that page to say so. So, I've removed the note about the car being for sale, and added a paragraph explaining that I sold it, why I sold it, and that I still like it.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Mar 14 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've reimplemented CAPTCHAs (Wikipedia entry) for people wanting to leave comments. Basically, a CAPTCHA is one of those pictures of a random string of characters that users have to type in to be able to leave their comment, based on the fact that people are pretty good at reading these things, while computer programs aren't, so it should eliminate comments from automated spam programs. I think I've figured out my mistake from the last time I tried to do this - that time I only included the CAPTCHA code on the entry pages, but not on the comment preview pages, so when people were previewing their comments and then hitting submit, they were getting tagged as spam. I was sure to inlcude the CAPTCH code in the comment preview pages this time, and I've even checked it out with some test comments, so hopefully it will work right this time and all legitimate comments will get through.

I didn't want it to have to come to this, but spam comments had just gotten horrendous in the past couple weeks. Since I'd removed the CAPTCHA, I had been getting, on average, less than one spam comment per day making it through my other filters. That was pretty easy to stay on top of, and it wasn't cluttering up this blog. Recently, however, those comments have been through the roof (yesterday, for example, 27 made it through). Since my blog is set up to send me an e-mail whenever I get a comment, those spam comments weren't just cluttering up my blog, they were cluttering up my inbox, as well. Monday mornings, after a long weekend, were especially fun.

So, spammers, thanks for making everybody's lives more difficult. Jerks.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Feb 19 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, what with my normal procrastination, and then getting sick right at the end of the month when I would have been working on it, I missed making an update to this website in January [note to blog readers - I'm referring to my main website, not this blog]. But at least I'm not too late. Anyway, I've updated the page, X-Plane, UDP, and Visual Basic, for X-Plane version 8. I revised the section on single precision floating point values, correcting a slight mistake (not knowing about significands, so using the term mantissa to mean both mantissa and significand), and hopefully adding a little information to make it more clear on how to go about the conversions.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Feb 1 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Merry Christmas! And here's my Christmas present to the world - I've added a new factoid page, Factoids Debunked & Verified, Part II. I went through another of these trivia list e-mails, trying to determine the veracity of the claims. Once again, most of them were untrue.

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Dec 24 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been forced to become a Scrooge for the holidays. I've been getting huge amounts of spam comments recently, almost all of which have something to do with Christmas (gifts, wallpaper, ringtones, you name it). So, I've temporarily blocked comments containing that word. In the mean time, if you want to post a comment about the holiday, try to think of a clever way to say it without using that word. Hopefully, the spammers don't pay much attention to this blog, and won't come up with a new strategy avoiding using that word, but if they get clever, I may have to block other words dealing with the holidays.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Dec 4 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My Factoids Debunked & Verified page is turning out to be quite popular (at least compared to other pages on this site). A reader, Susan G., a clinical audiologist from Kansas, sent me some feedback on two of the factoids dealing with, obviously, ears. I've included her comments in the page. Also, I decided to add a small feature to the main home page, including links to the 10 most popular pages on this site. I figured, that's a good way for people to get an idea of some the of the best I have to offer (best as voted for by Internet traffic, not necessarily my favorite pages). I'll try to update that list every month - it'll be interesting to see if it changes at all. I'm also going to try to go through and make lists for months past, but I'm not making any promises on how long it will be until I've gotten that compiled.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Nov 30 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I only have a very small update for today. Way back when I had my co-op during college, I figured out a way to fold a pretty good glider out of a Post-It note. I put up a page with instructions on how to fold it not long after, but that page has never been as "attractive" as I would have liked. A few years ago, I tried taking digital photos of the glider to put at the top of the page, but the camera I had then didn't have a good macro setting, so the pictures were awfully blury. So, just recently, I wasted a few minutes making a 3D model of the glider in Solidworks, and using a screen shot from that for the picture at the top of the page. I also added a small note of about a book that used that glider, Post-It: Ideas That Stick!,along with some pictures.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Oct 10 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The single most popular page on this site is my Autogyros essay. Consequently, I never want to mess around with it too much (if it ain't broke, don't fix it). However, I saw a few areas that I could definitely improve upon, so I made some changes. The biggest of those were expanding the explanation of autorotation, adding a German translation that a reader had sent to me, and creating an archive of previous versions (mainly to give a stable copy at a fixed url for citations). Numerous smaller changes were made throughout the text to improve readability, and a few typos were corrected.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Oct 5 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've made some slight modifications to my Photo Page Generator program, so it's now at version 2.2. I've uploaded the updated version to my Programming and Downloads sections. The main upgrade is the ability to use 3 different resolutions of the same image. This could be useful for an archive of images that are high enough resolution for printing. The way I've used it is to have 1.) low resolution thumbnails, 2.) intermediate resolution for previewing, and 3.) high resolution suitable for printing (specifically developed for this site: http://www.cartercopters.com/catma/, which is still unfinished at the time of writing this update). I've aslo improved the readme file. The full list of updates is available from the history in the readme file.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Sep 21 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

How's that saying go, "Never discuss work, politics, or religion?" Well, I break all three of those rules on this site. Considering the third one of those, since I have recently gone through some changes, and no longer have the same beliefs as what I stated in older essays, I thought it would be most honest for me to discuss my current beliefs. So, if that's the type of thing that interests you, I've added a new collection to my Writings section, Religious Essays. Since it is such a different theme than most of this site, and probably bound to ruffle a few feathers, I've decided that this is the only mention I'll give it here in my "Latest News & Updates" section [the previous sentence applies only to my main site, and the News & Updates section on my home page]. If I do make any changes to it, or add any new essays, it will be noted in the History section at the bottom of that page, and possibly on my blog.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Sep 7 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, after nearly 3 months of dormancy for this site before the last update [the main site, not the blog], I've got another one ready to go already. I've added a new page to the Photos section, titled Galveston, Houston, & Natural Bridge Caverns Photos. It's from my family's recent road trip vacation to those areas. I mention this on the page, but it's worth repeating here. Our old digital camera had been stolen a few weeks before, so we went out and bought a new camera just for the trip. It was an 8.1 MP Sony DSC-W90. We were extremely disappointed with the image quality from the camera, and took it back it as soon as we returned from our trip. The images were very grainy, and not even as good as our old 5 MP Sony camera that we'd lost. In fact, they were so grainy (even in decent lighting conditions) that the employees were sure that we had the settings wrong (we didn't). I even tried taking pictures with another W90 to make sure we didn't just have a faulty one, but the other camera didn't work any better. In the end, we exchanged it for the 7.2 MP Sony DSC-W80, which we are much happier with. Who would've thought that 1 MP would make such a big difference?

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Aug 20 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Man, am I long overdue for some updates to this site. The last one was way back in April, so I completely missed my update per month goal in May, June, and July [on the main website, not on this blog]. I guess I'll try to make up for that with a lot of changes this time around.

Okay, for my biggest update today, I've done some work to the X-Plane, UDP, Visual Basic Tutorial for X-Plane version 8. Thanks to feedback, I've realized that some of the algorithms on that page weren't as good as they could have been, so I've added more efficient algorithms. I've also given the page a clickable table of contents. Also, on the X-Plane, UDP, Visual Basic Tutorial for X-Plane version 6, I already had a small note telling people of the Version 8 tutorial. I updated that note to include mention of the improved algorithms, and made the note bold so it would stand out more.

In the article, X-Plane as an Engineering Tool, I've added an additional paragraph explaining in more detail some of the shortcomings of X-Plane. I also fixed a typo, misidentifying one of the screenshots as from Plane-Maker, instead of from X-Plane.

Okay, now to get into the smaller changes. I get a lot of e-mails from people sending me links to interesting sites. I've received a few that I want to include links to on my site. (Note: This isn't a link exchange, and please don't send me an e-mail asking for a link exchange. If you have a cool site, I'll link to it, but only because the site is worth it, not so that I can get a link back to here.) So, here are the links I added, and the pages where I added them.

• Lake Atitlan Network - Added to Guatemala 2006 Photos & Links.
  
• gyroplanepassion.com - Added to Autogyros & Links.
  
• X-Entertainment - Added to Links
  

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Aug 17 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Once again, I'm changing commenting policies. I'm removin the CAPTCHA (one of those pictures of a random string of characters that users have to type in to be able to leave their comment). It wasn't working properly - many people who were typing it in properly were still having their comments tagged as junk. Also, I went through the last 40 junked comments to this site (about 1 day's worth), and only 1 spam comment would have made it through if I didn't have the CAPTCHA. I figure that's not too bad, as long as I keep up with checking the comments a few times a week. And I'd rather have a few spam comments get through, than have a few legitimate comments get junked.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Aug 17 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I came into work this morning and realized that it was the last day of the month, and I still hadn't posted anything to the site this month to keep my update per month goal. I've been so busy in my personal life recently (don't worry - all good things), that this month just slipped right past me. Anyway, I'd received an e-mail this month about the crocodile tongue statement on my Factoids Debunked & Verified page, so I spent my lunch break today doing some quick research on crocodile tongues. Go visit the factoids page to see what I found.

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Apr 30 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At my job, just about every time we have visitors that have never been to our shop before, my boss has me give a short demonstration on how we use the X-Plane flight simulator, not just as a pilot training tool, but as an engineering tool, as well. Most of the people find it interesting, so I thought I'd adapt it to an article on this site. It's not very technical, so hopefully non-engineers will still find it interesting, and get a small taste of part of what is that us aerospace engineers do. The article is X-Plane as an Engineering Tool, and I've added an appropriate entry to the Aviation page.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Mar 28 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Looks like I still managed to keep my once per month update goal. I slightly updated the Artwork page. For each collection, I now use the same type of set up that I use for my photo pages - when you click on a thumbnail, instead of taking you simply to the .jpg or .gif file, it takes you to an html page displaying the picture, so that I could put navigation links on those pages, and you don't have to keep hitting the back button to view different pictures. Also, I added two new images to my Technical Drawings collection. On one of my more obscure pages, I've updated the Rough & Unfinished POV-Ray Work page. It was pretty much an all text page before. Now I've added thumbnails for each of the images.

I guess I'll make one note here - the reason I haven't been adding so much to my main site recently, is because I've been trying to update my blog on a fairly regular basis. Essays that before would have gone in my Writings section are now getting put there, instead.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Feb 28 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The first update of the new year, and I've managed, just barely, to keep up with my goal of an update per month. I did a small update to the X-Plane, UDP, Visual Basic Tutorial for X-Plane version 8. With version 8.60 of X-Plane, you're now able to have X-Plane communicate via UDP with a program running on the same computer, so I've updated the Winsock section of my tuturial to explain how to do this. I also updated the sample source code that you can download from that page. I fixed a label on the form, where I'd mistakenly labeled an input box as "Local Port," when it should have been "Remote Port." Also, I went through and organized the code a bit better - putting the subroutines in alphabetical order, and adding a few more comments to explain things.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Jan 31 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I imagine this will be my last update of the year, and with it being the holiday season, I thought I'd do a more light hearted update. A month or two ago I wrote a Visual Basic program that makes images that look pretty cool (to me, at least - my wife and daughter were rather unimpressed when I showed it to them). So, I've taken some of the better looking images and put them on my artwork page (in the Abstract Series II section), and put an executable and the source code of the program, titled Circle Gradient Pattern Generator, by the way, on my downloads page and programming page, respectively. And while I was at it on the artwork page, it was getting kind of long where visitors had to do a lot of scrolling to see what I had, so I put a little menu at the top of the page with thumbnail images.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Dec 20 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently had a brief e-mail correspondence with a creationist (brief as in number of e-mails exchanged, not the lengths of the e-mails). Anyway, I thought that some of what I wrote in my final reply was pretty good, and thought that maybe some other people might find it interesting. So, I cleaned up a few spots, made a few arguments a little better, cut out some of the more rambling sections, and made a new essay titled, Confidence in Historical Knowledge, and made the appropriate addition to my Writings page.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Dec 8 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I got my website update in for November with 8 hours to spare, and it's not a chintzy update, either. I've updated my Tutorial on Programming a UDP Interface for X-Plane using Visual Basic. This new version is for X-Plane version 8, which made some changes to the way it formatted UDP packets. I've also included some additional information in this tutorial that wasn't in the previous one for X-Plane version 6, and updated the sample source code to make it easier to follow, and easier to use as a foundation for other applications.

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Nov 30 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With the new movie, Flyboys just having been released, there's been a little discussion about it on one of the e-mail lists I subscribe to. One person asked the question of why biplanes have been displaced by monoplanes (modern aircraft with only a single set of wings). What is it about monoplanes that makes them better? So, I wrote up a little reply. After sending it in to the e-mail group, I figured, "hey, that would be pretty good to put on my website." So, I cleaned it up a little bit, added a couple pictures, and created a page called Biplanes vs. Monoplanes in my Aviation Theory section.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Oct 10 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I've got a nice, good substantive update for today - I've added a new page to my Photos section, titled Guatemala 2006 Medical Mission Photos. My wife and I just got back from a week long medical mission to Guatemala, organized by the Wichita County Medical Alliance, and hosted by Agape in Action. This was my second year to go, and Irma's third. Irma is a nurse, and she's bilingual, so she worked mostly at the clinic meeting with patients. I'm not medically trained, so I mostly washed and sterilized instruments, along with any other odd jobs that needed to be done. We spent 5 1/2 days working in Quiche, one days sightseeing (Lake Atitlan and Antigua), and the rest of the time travelling. Once again, it was a very worthwhile trip to help as many people as we did. And like I did for the photos from last years trip, I've posted mostly photos from the day of sightseeing, and not many photos from inside the operating rooms, since a lot of people are bothered by those types of photos.

For a couple smaller updates, I've updated my Links page, adding a few sites, and fixing links for a few others that have moved from their old addresses to Science Blogs. For my Photo Page Generator program, I've posted an html version of the Readme file, and updated the links on the Programming and Downloads pages accordingly.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Aug 18 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Okay - I made another change to the way commenting works. I've done away with having to log in, and added a CAPTCHA (Wikipedia entry), instead. Basically, a CAPTCHA is one of those pictures of a random string of characters that users have to type in to be able to leave their comment. It's based on the fact that people are pretty good at reading these things, while computer programs aren't. So, only people should be able to leave comments, and not the automated spam programs. Previously, I had experimented with making users register with Typekey before leaving comments, but I know that I personally won't leave comments on many blogs that require logging in just because I'm too lazy. And since this blog is anything but popular, I doubt many visitors would want to take the time to log in just to leave a few lines of feedback. The Typekey registration did work to eliminate spam comments, but I didn't get any legitimate comments in that time, either. (I'll just assume that it was the login requirement keeping commenters away, and not a lack of interest.)

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Aug 2 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I fell a little behind in keeping up with my goal of at least one update per month. I've actually been spending much of the time that I'd normally devote to this site writing essays. Normally, I add my essays to this site, but for various reasons, I'd rather not do that with these. But, in the interest of adding something to this site so that it can continue to grow, I've added four photos to the Miscellaneous page of my Photo section. They're pictures from a day trip my family took about a year ago to Palo Duro Canyon, just outside Amarillo, TX. I'd originally intended to make a whole new section for those pictures, but once I got to looking at them, there really just weren't enough good ones. And while I was at it, I updated this section to my new format, where clicking on a thumbnail takes you to an html page with the picture on it, instead of linking directly to the picture. I hadn't done it before because there were only two pictures, but now that there are six, I figure it's worth the improved navigation.

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Jun 22 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I finished the project noted in the previous update - updating my Aircraft Image Archive in the same way that I updated my photo galleries last year. The pages have been updated so that when you click on one of the thumbnail images, it takes you to an html page with the picture on it, instead of linking directly to the picture. While I was at it, I added navigation links to the bottom of each thumbnail page, so visitors won't have to go back to the main archive page every time they want to go to the next page in a category. This update also coverred my AeroDesign© East 2001 page. Anybody looking at the Aerodesign page needs to be sure to see this picture of a wing tip vortex - a little out of focus, but still very cool.

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Apr 24 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've begun a project to update my Aircraft Image Archive in the same way that I updated my photo galleries last year. The pages are being update so that when you click on one of the thumbnail images, it takes you to an html page with the picture on it, instead of linking directly to the picture. The reasons for this change are explained in the 18 July 2005 update, but basically it's for improved navigation. While I'm at it, I'm slightly changing the order in which the images appear. The first time I made the page, everything was sorted alphabetically, but that puts things like "C-130" ahead of "C-47," and "F-101" ahead of "F-14." So, while still in mostly alphabetical order, I've modified it a few places to follow the proper numerical sequential order. So far, the completed pages include all of the alphabetical listings, and the jet fighter listings in the categorical section. I won't post another update on this until all of the categorical listings have been updated.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Apr 12 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I made a few changes last week that I'm just now documenting. First off, I did a slight bit of reorganization. I created a How To page, with directions for various projects. Some of these projects were previously listed on my Misc page, but I figured this new organization made a bit more sense. I added a link to the How To page to the main menu in the left hand column that appears on all of my pages, and removed the Mp3 entry from that menu, and moved it to the misc page. I figured there was so little content on the Mp3 page that it wasn't worth having its own entry in the main menu. In the new How To section, I created two new pages, Potato Salad Recipe and Wacky Cake Recipe.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Feb 21 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, it's finally come to this. I'm selling my RX-7. It was the first nice car I bought after I graduated from college, and it's a damn nice sports car, but it's time to get rid of it. My wife and I had been discussing selling it for a while - a two-seat sports car doesn't lend itself well to a family life, and I hadn't really been driving it all that much. And then, while it was parked on the side of the road in front of our house, another car came by and side-swiped it. I could get it fixed up, but if I'm just going to sell it, anyway, why go through all that hassle? So, I've put an ad in the paper that'll start running tomorrow, with a reference to a page on this site with more information on the car. I think it's a fair asking price no matter what, but if somebody buys it who's going to do a lot of the repairs on their own, it could end up being a really good deal for them. Or, even though I hate to think about it, for that price, somebody could part the car out and make a reasonable profit. Anyway, if you're reading this and live anywhere near Wichita Falls, TX, and have any interest in owning a good sports car, take a look at that page.

Update 11 Feb 06: Wow, that didn't take long. Somebody bought my car already - last night, the very same day that the ad first ran in the paper.

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Feb 9 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just a small update, on my newly added French Polynesia Travelling Tips page, I've added a small paragraph about the lack of a night life on Bora Bora and Moorea (not that that's a bad thing- just so people know what to expect), and another short paragraph about the small Navy Museum on Bora Bora. I also slightly changed the introduction to the restaurant, Bloody Mary's. I had said that it was our favorite restaurant on Bora Bora. But, with as few of restaurants as are on the island, that doesn't do it justice, since it's really quite a good restuarant by any standards.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Jan 31 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week, I updated my page on How to Interpret the Bible, and I'm just now getting around to documenting it. In case you've never seen it, it's an essay where I explore what seem to me to be the main positions concerning the divinity of the Bible, ranging from being divinely inspired, literal, and completely inerrant in all translations, to being a book written by humans, containing myths and stories from other cultures. In the end, I come to the conclusion that that last option seems the most likely. Most of the changes I made to the essay were small, mainly just changing the wording in a few places to make it read better. The biggest, most useful change, was that for Bible passages, I added links to BibleGateway.com, to the relevant chapters in both the King James Version and the New International Version of the Bible. Now, people can easily read the passages firsthand, 1) without having to rely on my quotation, and 2) saving them time from looking up the passage in a print version of the Bible.

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Jan 30 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In keeping with putting up constructive material on this website, as opposed to just ranting and raving on My Soapbox or blog, I've made a new page called French Polynesia Travelling Tips. I'd received several e-mails from people asking our advice and about our experiences in French Polynesia, so I figured it was about time to make a page for it. I added a link to the page on the French Polynesia Photos page.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Jan 11 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Time for my first update of the new year. I've added a Downloads section to this site. It contains compiled, executable versions of a few of the programs on my Programming page. I figured that it would be nice to make a few of my better/more useful programs available to those people that don't have Visual Basic installed on their computers, which is probably most people. To that end, I modified my Photo Page Generator program to make it suitable to run as a stand-alone program, making a configuration file that users could save to/load from, so that their settings could be recorded for the different times that they run the program (in the VB program, I just saved it as part of the source code). I also made a change to the program to allow you to make multiple galleries using images from the same directory. I've put the source code for that latest version of that program onto my Programming page, as well making a note on that page about the Downloads section.

And, since it's a new year, I've re-organized the News & Updates Archive, putting all of the 2005 posts onto a new, separate page, and starting over on the main page with 2006 posts.

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Jan 9 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I finally jumped on the bandwagon and started my own blog, which I'm going to call Jeff's Lunchbreak, since my lunchbreak is about the only time I get to work on this site. I've been debating doing this for a while, now, trying to figure out the best way to organize my site without watering down my other two writing sections. But since I've been considering it, several things have happened to me that I've wanted to write short essays about, but didn't figure belonged in the My Writings section of the site, or even in my Soapbox, which convinced me to finally take the plunge and make a blog. So, that brings the total to three sections on my site devoted to essays. I figure I can still get away with it by making the main My Writings section devoted to my more serious, well researched essays, the type of thing that I wouldn't mind having published in a book or magazine; having my Soapbox be devoted to issues that were more controversial and topical, but still trying to keep them relatively well researched, kind of like extended op-eds; and then having the blog be for all the short essays that were left over.

So, I've added a link to the blog to the main My Writings page, and did a little reorganization to that page to make it clear that two of the links (the Soapbox and the blog) were to collections of essays, and that the rest of the links were to actual individual essays.

Just as a note, I'm going to post all of these updates that usually go on my homepage to the blog, but not vice versa. That way, if anyone every actually subscribes to the RSS feed for the blog, they'll get normal website updates along with it. I'm also going to include copies of all new soapbox entries to the blog, to give visitors a section for feedback.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Dec 7 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)