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Updated! Latest entries at the bottom.

Just like last year, i’ll be keeping track of the miles that i bike this cycling season.

04/13/2008 - 30.95miles, 2hrs 03min, avg speed 15.04mph, max speed 26.52mph
04/14/2008 - 13.60miles, 0hrs 51min, avg speed 15.90mph, max speed 27.54mph
04/17/2008 - 14.22miles, 0hrs 53min, avg speed 16.05mph, max speed 27.27mph, avg cadence 82
04/25/2008 - 13.03miles, 0hrs 47min, avg speed 16.49mph, max speed 27.27mph, avg cadence 85
05/04/2008 - 6.7miles, 0hrs 29min, avg speed 13.44mph, max speed 23.17, avg cadence 69
05/05/2008 - 13.04miles, 0hrs 48min, avg speed 16.31mph, max speed 28.80, avg cadence 82
05/09/2008 - 31.9miles, 1hrs 56min, avg speed 16.53mph, max speed 28.35, avg cadence 85
05/10/2008 - 50.0miles, 3hrs 38min, avg speed 14.10mph, max speed 28.35, avg cadence 78
05/17/2008 - 100.0miles, 6hrs 47min, avg speed 14.76mph, max speed 35.59, avg cadence 77 - We completed “Reach the Beach” 2008!
05/24/2008 - ~9miles, mountain biking Brown’s Camp
05/30/2008 - 40.1miles, 2hrs 32min, avg speed 15.78mph, max speed 28.64, avg cadence 83
05/30/2008 - Signed up for the 100-mile LiveSTRONG ride for June 29th, 2008
05/31/2008 - 45.3miles, 3hrs 15min, avg speed 13.9mph, max speed 23.4, avg cadence 78 - Spring Water Corridor
06/01/2008 - 20.23miles, 1hr 23min, avg speed 14.55mph, max speed 25.8, avg cadence 83
06/15 - 6/20/2008 - 42.26miles, 2hrs 45min, avg speed 15.29mph, max speed 26.27, avg cadence 82 - Rode by bike to work every day this week.
06/21/2008 - 50.01miles, 3hr 17min, avg speed 15.19mph, max speed 26.76, avg cadence 85
06/22/2008 - 9.7miles, ~1hr 15min, mountain biking Powell Butte
06/24/2008 - 3.84miles, 15min, avg speed 15.77mph, max speed 24, avg cadence 91
06/29/2008 - 83.36miles, 5hrs 22min, avg speed 14.86mph, max speed 39.41, avg cadence 76 - LIVESTRONG Ride. Ran into mechanical problems at the end
08/03/2008 - 20.23miles, 1hr 18min, avg speed 15.44mph, max speed 24.27, avg cadence 84
08/10/2008 - 42.97miles, 3hrs 32min, avg speed 12.12mph, max speed 36.02, avg cadence 71
08/22/2008 - 16.83miles, 1hr 7min, avg speed 14.96mph, max speed 25.80, avg cadence 81
08/24/2008 - 42.02miles, 3hrs 44min, avg speed 11.21mph, max speed 29.52 avg cadence 72
09/06/2008 - 6.75miles, 24minutes, avg speed 16.43, max speed 27.80, avg cadence 90 - REI & back.
09/19/2008 - 38.62miles, 2hrs 26minutes, avg speed 16.89, max speed 30.15, avg cadence 89.
09/20/2008 - 29.03miles, 2hrs 08minutes, avg speed 13.56, max speed 22.30, avg cadence 84.
Miles to-date: 773.65 miles

Aug 23rd, 2008.

University Lipdub (HS Furtwangen) from DASKAjA on Vimeo.

Portland fireworks finale from Thomas Ng on Vimeo.

Hi Friends!

The Lance Armstrong LIVESTRONG Challenge ride is on June 29th, 2008 and we need your help! Currently, there are nearly 12 million people in the US that are living with cancer. More than 1.3 million people will be diagnosed this year, and over 1,500 lives will be claimed in the next few days. This year, I’ll be participating in the 100-mile LIVESTRONG Challenge ride.

The LIVESTRONG Challenge is hosted by the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) and was founded in 1997 by the champion cyclist. The LAF unites people through programs and experiences to empower cancer survivors to live life on their own terms and to raise awareness and funds for the fight against cancer. The LAF relies on your generous donations to give cancer survivors hope and support.

• $10 provides information packets to 16 cancer survivors to offer support, inspiration and hope.
• $50 provides 36 people cancer survivorship information, worksheets to organize their fight against cancer and support, inspiration and hope from other cancer survivors.
• $155 provides a cancer survivor one-on-one direct support through the LIVESTRONG SurvivorCare program.
• $250 provides LIVESTRONG Survivorship Notebooks to 27 cancer survivors.

I’m asking for your collective help to raise the minimum of $250 to ride and to hopefully meet my fund raising goal of $500. All donations, regardless of the amount, are welcomed. If you wish to donate, please visit the following website for details. You can make a secure donation online, or print out a form for donations in the form of personal checks. You may also contact me directly. If you decide to donate, please do so before June 25th.

Donation Website: http://portland08.livestrong.org/thomasng82

If you are interested in participating in the LIVESTRONG cycling challenge (10, 40, 70 or 100 miles) or the LIVESTRONG 5K run, then I encourage you to find out more at the LIVESTRONG challenge website:

Event website: http://www.livestrongchallenge.org/site/c.frKPI1PAIoE/b.3935399/

I thank you in advance for your time and generosity in giving to the LIVESTRONG Challenge. I’ll keep you updated on my fund raising as I prepare for the event!

Regards,
-Thomas

To the dismay of many PS3 owners, the Guitar Hero III and Rock Band guitar controllers are incompatible with each other. You can read more about that here, here, and here. There is a patch available, but Sony can’t release it because the makers of GHIII and RB can’t come to an agreement. You can buy a secondary controller for each game, but that is a costly solution. There are other alternatives with third party controllers as well, but they feel cheap and its just not the same.

Well, this got me thinking. Why not just “spoof” the guitar controller and make the PS3 think the GHIII guitar is a RB guitar (and vice versa)? If you plug the GHIII or RB guitars into your PC, they are recognized as game controllers because they implement the standard USB HID (Human Interface Device). For a quick USB overview, you can check out beyondlogic’s “USB in a nutshell” for more information.

Time to put my Computer Engineering and Computer Science education to work.

My plan is to plug the guitar into a micro controller that emulates a USB host, which modifies the USB Vendor ID and Device ID (and remaps keys if necessary), then pass the modified data out a USB slave port that is connected to the PS3. Essentially, the cabling will be something like this:

RB Guitar –> RB Dongle USB –> Microcontroller ((spoof Vendor ID, Device ID, remap keys)) –> PS3

To make this simpler, I’m intending to use the Atmel ATMega128 and the AVR-USB (a firmware only USB driver for AVR microcontrollers). I’ll be using the USB HIDtool to determine the capabilities of each guitar HID and try to emulate them.

Step 1 will be to get my ATmega128 board working. We used this microcontroller in college and in our current designs at work for low-level control so i’m pretty familiar with the ins-and-outs of it.

I’ll update you on the progress… stay tuned for further posts!

We’re done! All seven of us completed Reach the Beach 2008!

Left to Right: Connie Chong, John Kim, Simon Bee, Thomas Ng, Angela Bee, Susanna Bee, John Munson

Trip distance: 100 miles
Trip time: 6hours 47 minutes

Link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2123275&l=9ea23&id=19700626

The switch hasn’t electrically closed, but i already bottomed out!