Start of the Internet
I was researching some accounts today and while tracing Verizon to Yahoo! (recently spun off) to AOL…just found out that AOL can trace its roots back to PlayNET, a company I worked for while at RPI in their Incubator. I had no idea I was so close to the...
SpaceRocks lives
I have been working to bring SpaceRocks back to life. My latest version (Dec 2021), for the Oculus Quest 2 and built with Unity, can be found here: https://paynecentral.com/files/SpaceRocksVR.apk (42MB) Here is a link to my original SpaceRocks demo built back in 1997 when I was working for Sense8....
The pond is done…
The pond is done. Let the tranquility begin. There are a few odds and ends to finish up. At least one more bucket of rocks should be cleaned. And I need to find some parts for the hammock (not sure where they went during winterization…but what I did find...
Pond Progress – Aug 14, 2021
More pebble cleaning today. After about 5 hours of that, I decided to see how much new stones would cost at Home Depot. When I realized it was only $4/bag, I made a trip. I will probably clean one more bin of old stones (good exercise) and head out...
Pond progress
While I am mid-project, I figured I would attempt to document my efforts to rebuild/restore the koi pond in our yard. Today, I spent a lot of time cleaning pebbles. I did some googling and came across this video: https://youtu.be/flwWZ1qmKxA that suggested screening the stones with “hardware cloth”. To...
Laser FX memories
So Josh sent me an email this week pointing to a YouTube “unboxing” video of a Laser FX. For those of you who don’t know, Josh and I brought the Laser FX to market back in the late 1980’s. Josh was the inventor (he also gave credit to some...
First (2021) VR App
It’s so cool that I can actually develop apps for my new Oculus Quest 2. It took a while to find the correct set up instructions (the SDKs, plugins and Unity user interface are a constantly moving target), but these instructions from XRTerra were spot on! The app isn’t...
Hacking Saturday
I was thinking I would spend yesterday setting up a Raspberry Pi Minecraft Server for the boys, but William decided to have a meltdown over swim team practice and lost access to electronics for the weekend. So I put that project on a back burner and instead tackled some...
Pond Damage
When Tropical Storm Isaiah hit town, we lost power for a couple of days but also had some pond damage. It turns out a branch not only landed in the stream between the waterfall and the main pond, it also pieced the rubber liner that keeps the water from...
Our Duck Pond
Mr. and Mrs. Mallard came by today to check out the real estate in the area. They spend a good 30 minutes checking out the food supply and the local nesting potential. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to be overly impressed with the property. Perhaps if Tom would clean out...