Hobbies, pet projects, etc...

Radio-Controlled Aircraft

I just got my first RC airplane, a Hobbyzone Super Cub. Mike Schatz and Bianca Viray helped me fly it for the first time. I almost dinged a tree during the landing, but I missed it by inches. Overall, a good first-ever RC flight. Here's some pictures and a video of the maiden voyage:

High-Powered Model rocketry

While I'm no John Carmack, and I am far away from being skilled enough to join the ranks of the great salt flat rocketeers, I enjoy model rocketry. Having spent my youth sending G.I. Joes and bees a few thousand feet in the air with little rockets, I am moving on. To bigger rockets.

My dad and I are working on a big rocket, built entirely from scratch. It is powered by a 29mm G motor, and is nearing completion. We haven't flown it yet, but when we do, various media (photos, maybe movies) will appear here to document the rocket's soaring flight/sputtering disintegration.

Here's a video of a Nike Smoke that my dad and I built. This launch is dad's NAR level 1 cert flight. It was successful, there was no damage to the rocket, and we flew it again later that day. I made the mistake of putting the camera close to the launch pad, and since I had to be behind the launch line, out of my reach. Hence the poor tracking. Next time, we'll have two cameras: one for tracking and one for the pad.

Here's my Initator. It's a small kit, but it went together beautifully, and flies really well on a good range of motors.

LaTeX class for homework assignments

The "article" document class seems a little vain for most assignments. All that title space, those huge margins... they convey the impression that what is on the page is so important, and contains such genius that the reader won't be able to handle more than a little at a time. My homeworks are unimportant, and definitely genius-free, so I made the margins, etc. smaller to save the trees. Also I have little faith in staples, so my homework document class puts my name, my course, and and an abbreviated title at the top of the page.

You can grab a copy of the class here. And here's an example of using it.