CoffeeSig

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Month: May 2026

Selling the house

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On May 31, 2026

In GaugeCam, Texas house

We are in the process of selling our house in Virginia so we can build a house on a lot we own in Texas. The design for the new house is complete along with the engineering drawings and approval from the Historic Preservation Commission of the town where we want to build. We are dying to get the house sold, but the market is not optimal right now, so we are enjoying this spectacular part of Virginia while we wait. We had a showing yesterday and a three hour open house today. That means Lorena and I have to be out of the house for an extended period time. Lorena goes out shopping and I hang out programming GaugeCam for long periods of time. I am amazed how much I am getting done and expect to be submitting two papers for publication before the end of the year. Maybe three, God willing.

GRIME3 — First prerelease

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On May 30, 2026

In GaugeCam

The first prerelease version of GRIME3, the Python port of GRIME2, is up and available for download on GitHub. It has almost all the functionality of the CLI version of GRIME2, but with improved waterline and octagon finding. There has already been one small feature release. I expect there will be one or two more of those before I move on to start integrating the second major prerelease version that features a GRIME AI segmentation model to help us deal with the pernicious biofouling that plagues camera based water level measurement. Testing of the first prerelease version is planned for next week in Troy Gilmore’s lab at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

GaugeCam remote office (Panera)

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On May 29, 2026

In GaugeCam

I am extremely grateful for the Panera by our house. When Lorena goes shopping at Costco, Trader Joe’s, Wegman’s, Home Goods or the plethora of other stores around here, she drops me off at Panera. I drink coffee and work on GRIME3. The have a good internet connection, I love the coffee, and my favorite table is almost always available. I think it helps we are there mostly during slow hours, because I do not think it would be so good during the rush. I think about 80% of the work I have done so far on the project has been here at Panera and that percentage is rising.

Diet corn tortillas!!!

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On May 29, 2026

In Food

These 25 calorie corn tortillas are what make our new healthy diet plan actually work. They are amazingly good and perfect for our high protein, nutritious diet. We had to order them from Walmart online and wait a couple of weeks for them to arrive. It was worth the wait.

GRIME3 water level measurement

By

On May 29, 2026

In GaugeCam

My main engagement with the GaugeCam GRIME Lab these days is a port of the GRIME2 camera based water level measurement software. It was initially written in C++ as a prototype research project starting back in 2009. It morphed into production software, but has always suffered from its beginnings. It was developed on Linux using that ecosystem, but delivered only as a Windows desktop installer. It really did a great job for what it was initially intended to be, but was only adequate as a production software release.

We have wanted to make improvements to the software to handle things like biofouling at the waterline and the ability to find a much smaller target, so that was planned to be my next project. When I got my fingers back into the code to do that, I decided I was going to make this a longer term project with production code as opposed to just making the minimal fixes to make it all work just well enough to gather data and publish a couple of papers. Troy Gilmore and I have frequently discussed some of the things that would make the product better, so I decided to try to morph GRIME2 into GRIME3 with the following aims in mind:

  • Port to Python (that is where the user base is going)
  • Cross-platform compatible
    • Desktop (Linux, Windows, Apple)
    • Linux embedded (Raspberry Pi)
    • Cloud server
  • Browser based GUI
  • Extensive CLI support
  • Measurement improvements
    • Smaller calibration targets (hoping for something that fits on a standard staff gauge)
    • AI model to extract waterline in the face of biofouling

This work and corresponding publications are well under way. It is also important to note that GRIME4 is on the road map and aimed at a stretch goal and production level functionality that could have a significant impact on this niche research area.

Lorena’s work station

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On May 28, 2026

In Uncategorized

Lorena got her desk put together and we set up the little Intel NUC for her on it. She is quite pleased.

CoffeeSig blog setup

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On May 28, 2026

In Blog

I was sick of the hassle of dealing with a hosting service for my previous blog because they rarely kept anything current and I paid a lot more than it seemed like it was worth. This time, I decided to do it on my own server at the house. I got a Virtual Private Server (VPS) account for a few dollars per month and set up everything on an Intel NUC (computer) in the house. You can see the setup in this image. Lorena went out and bought a little desk where we can set it up to look nice after she installs a basket and some holes in the right places to make it look nicer. She will use the computer for browsing and AI queries. It was fun and surprisingly easy to set up relative to what I have experienced in the past for these sorts of things.

Health plan

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On May 27, 2026

In Health

I did a pretty bad job of tracking my health in my previous blog, but even the little I did was a big help to me. My brother, Doug, and I have been teaming up and using AI to develop customized health and diet plans and keep each other accountable now that we are septuagenarians. Doug has been doing it longer than me, but he got me onto a diet plan that I amazed actually works. I started all this on January 2, 2026–the chart shown here is my weight progress since I began. I have an intermediate goal of 199 lbs. on the way to a final goal of 170 lbs. with that final goal being a little more mushy because the AI and I are not sure what weight is really appropriate for me given my history and body type. This post is a stake in the ground for myself to report back here on a regular basis, first on my weight and BMI, then on other goals–not sure what they might be yet.

Projects

By

On May 26, 2026

In Projects

I have worried about what I should do with myself when I retire. At seventy years old, I have to plan for projects of a more finite duration than in the past, but President Trump, with his level of vigor and age, has encouraged me to think bigger than I thought possible when I was younger. There are other criteria that become important the older I get. The purpose of this post is to provide a view of the big picture with the hope to flesh out what I am doing (and order my thoughts and plans while I go). I hope to do standalone introductory post for each one of these projects.

There are several things I am just going to continue as I am not the only participant. I can contribute to those projects, but they only depend on me to a limited extent and the point of my participation is to both finish well and make it so the work can continue when I am no longer there. The two main projects that fit into that category are the Mexico house project (the image above is one of our works in progress) and the GaugeCam GRIME Lab.

There are two new projects I hope to start within the next year or two for which I have taken preliminary steps. Lorena and I want to build a retirement (or maybe a non-retirement house the way things are going) in Texas that we have been designing and planning with Coker & Company for several years. We own the lot where we want to put it, the Historic Preservation Commission has approved the design, and all we need to do is get our current house sold so we can afford to build it. We hope to do some fun an interesting things both with the security and house automation system and the use of gray water that would be fun to document here.

The second short term project is a second Masters Degree. There is a program in a nearby university in Texas with whom I have been speaking about getting an MS in ML/AI. I am not 100% set on that yet–I might like to do an MS in some social science, too. Maybe God will give me time for two.

First post in a new blog

By

On May 25, 2026

In Blog

My old blog has been permanently shut down and archived for printing. After twenty-two years I am making a fresh start here. I started the old blog, chapmankids.net/blog, in 2004 and never thought it would last as long as it did. I started it about the same time we started homeschooling our kids. I wrote about some of our house remodel projects and my retirement PhD that I finished when I was 68, but have still not retired a couple of years later. That all kind of fit in the old blog, but the kids are in a new place now and so are my wife, Lorena, and I. There were a lot of good reasons to end the old blog. It ended abruptly on April 5, 2026, twenty two years almost to the day of when it started.

The reason I decided to start a new blog was because, many, many years ago, I heard that people who journal tend to accomplish more in their lives than those who do not. I am not sure that is true or not, but I do know that I accomplished a lot more because I blogged than I would have if I had not. It organized my thoughts and efforts and kept me on track to myself and to God. Just a couple of years after I started the first blog, I started keeping track of my Bible reading and that, too, served the purpose of keeping me accountable and getting my priorities straight.

I plan to write about different stuff than I did before, although there will be some common themes and topics. I have several fairly longitudinal projects going that I plan to talk about, from my volunteer research on hydrological imaging, to the AI work I do in my day job, to health and exercise, and whatever else catches my fancy.

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