Matthew Kocsis

I finally got my Pictures site working – Almost all of the Japan trip pictures are uploaded. It’s taking me a long time to write in descriptions, so bear with me on that. If you’d like to know more about a picture, please comment on it!

Well, After long flights, confusing train bookings and an overall sense of confusion, I am back in the states. With me I brought home some knives from the Tsukiji fish market, Fans and Chopsticks from shops in Asakusa, and some food from a grocery store in Tsukuba. I also took almost 4Gb of pictures and movies on my new Casio EX-z850. I am currently uploading pictures (which will go long into the night), but when they are finally all posted, they will be available on my Pictures page. I will then begin the long task of adding descriptions to each picture – so stay tuned.

Today I also installed Word Press which should help make my life easier when I want to update my webpage. I have still not decided how to add it – whether to make it my main page or to just be a link, but I think I will learn the features first and then decide.

Well, the camera is in! I found a really good deal on SD memory cards at Newegg.com (2GB with an included USB reader). I still haven’t had time to really learn the functions of the camera, but that will come soon. My mother is visiting this weekend, so I plan on testing out the zoon on some planes at the airport (if there are any).

In all, this means that pictures will be posted soon! I have plenty of bandwidth that I am not using (I think I have about 2,100 GB a month that I’m not using).

After volunteering at the Cedar Rapids animal shelter, Here’s a picture to set your mood.

he’s just so….. happy

Wonderful storm here last night. Of course we were supposed to get 9-12 inches of snow and I think we got 1. There were some interesting pictures I wanted to take this morning – too bad I don’t have a camera yet.

Speaking of Camera… I’ve been researching digital cameras. I figure that I really need one for Japan in a month, so I just need to bite the bullet. My original search included these: Sony DSC-N2, Sony T-10, Sony T-30, Casio Exilim Z850, Casio Exilim Z1000, and the Canon Powershot SD630. After some research (pretty much visiting CNET.com, I came to the conclusion that the Z850 would be the best for my use. Unfortunately, it’s not carried at most online retailers anymore, and after my experience with a Lower New-York/Jersey based store last year, I refuse to purchase anything from those cities/states. I found a local camera store, Porter’s Camera which had a reasonable selection. They introduced a few more cameras that I will be researching shortly.

On another note, I have started ground school with Iowa Flight Training. I’m excited to learn and get up in the air this April. Thankfully, Rockwell Collins will be helping me out with some of the expenses. (another reason why you should come work here)

I am also adding content to my research page today.

Due to the new job, motivation to do things after work has diminished, so I have done little work on the new site. I would say that it doesn’t matter because nobody visits anyway, however there are a few people that trickle over after reading about my friend Steve Cholewiak and my LED projects. Speaking of Steve, We’re both set to go to World Haptics 2007 in Tsukuba, Japan. I will be presenting a poster there outlining a paper I authored (with the help of 2 colleagues) called “Discriminability of Real and Virtual Surfaces with Triangular Gratings”. I will have a link to it after the conference is over for anyone interested. I finally got approval from my managers to attend the conference and booked flights on United. I’m happy to travel there on a Boeing 747-4xx and return on a Boeing 777. I don’t believe I’ve ever traveled on a Jumbo Jet or a Worldliner, so that will help satisfy my new found interest in commercial jets. Too bad the Dreamliner isn’t out yet (I guess if it was I wouldn’t have a job though).

On another note, I have finally uploaded content to our senior design project’s website (the Digital Real-time Intelligent Networked Kegerator, also known as the DRINK system). I decided to add Google Adsense advertisements to the site due to the large amount of multimedia that it will soon host. Also, what better than to read about a kegerator and see links where to buy parts. Unfortunately I attempted to make this page dynamic (on a very basic level), however the ads no longer correctly parsed the page for content, so until I find a way to fix that I’m left updating pages manually.