Let's have an update
It's been awhile... I've really fallen off the planet as far as z425 is concerned. One of my friends asked me if I gave up on z425 and have another site elsewhere. Nope. Just have not updated. In fact, I barely even go to other people's sites anymore.
I'll do a quick update in each 'category' haha.
daddy Turing is more awesome each day. He's walking around 99.9% of the time now. The weather is started to be nice and we get to go outside. All is good. The other day he was typing on the laptop and I pointed to the letter Z and said Z. He said.. zhtehe. Or something close. Very exciting. Good first letter. Though when I pointed at the cup he also said zhtehe.
We have a new schedule which sounds crazy on paper, but I like it much better. I have in most days before and after work. After he goes to bed I go back into work. Yeah crazy. However.. I actually get some weekend hours now. Before I never had any reset time and I didn't realize how important it was. VERY IMPORTANT.
game-development I went to GDC and it was great. I got to see most of my buds and be an overall loud mouth. It also gave me an excuse to finally get off my ass and dye my hair again. I think all my 5? GDC trips have had dyed hair.
The job is going pretty well. We're finishing up a n internal demo and things are looking good. Some things are frustrating, but mostly from forcing myself into the beta employee role. Nope. Still can't talk about the project.
making-money I passed the $100 mark last month with adsense for z425 and I should get my check next week I think. My plan is to turn my z425 adsense cash into goog stock (well, once I can afford a single share, haha). Too bad you can't just choose it as stock so I don't get the double tax hit. Also it seems that the big G likes me more now and z425 has made $15 so far this month. Maybe I'll get that first share by the end of this year.
radio-control The weather has been ok and I've been flying my new 450SE. It is pretty much 100% top of the line (motor was top of the line about 4 months ago). It flys great, just like the sim (Phoenix). I also got a second SE for Jason that'll he'll be learning on. I already gave him my little foam profile plane and we've been flying it. It flys really great and we are starting to get cocky. Jason already is flying under the field goals at park.
As for heli-trading.. I'm pretty much retiring from the game I think. I've not sent/got a package in weeks! I used to get them daily it seems. It was fun and it got me all my heli gear for negative dollars, but it did take time and spare time is not what I have right now.
robot I bought a Bioloid kit. It's nice hardware, but the software is not useful for what I need. I was in the process of reprogramming the micro-controller (that the servos hook to) so that I could just control the servos directly from my computer. I got it working pretty well and was in the process of removing some crap latency at higher baud rates and I bricked it. Doh.
I've now built another interface that talks to the servos directly over USB at 1M bit. It works, but I am missing the first byte in my responses!! Right now I am just going to ignore that as it is just a header byte, but still.. I only get about 3 hours a week to work on this, so progress is slow, but hopefully soon I'll have all my PC talking both ways to my servos.