Kevin Ludlow is a 45-year-old accomplished software developer, business manager, writer, musician, photographer, world traveler, and serial entrepreneur from Austin, Texas. He is also a former candidate for the Texas House of Representatives.
Please take a moment to view his complete resume for more information.
Note: the entirety of this website was architected and developed from the ground up exclusively by Kevin Ludlow.
It's been a couple of months since I've last made any updates to the bus, but this is a pretty big one. Now that I've gotten some work to slow down, have published my book, have released my book, have the podcast running strong, and am headed into the holiday season, I thought it was high time to get back onto the bus project.
Over the past couple of days I fully built out the seats. They were framed, bolted, and had plywood attached.
All that's left to do on them is foam them and stretch over the vinyl.
One of the frames already built out
Jigsawing some of the wood for the seat backs
A nice view of the seat backs in place. You might notice that there is some slight variance to the height. This is not a problem as I will just jigsaw it off and of course it's all being wrapped with foam and vinyl.
I sent a copy of my book, American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach, to Ron Paul several weeks back. Although I'll be particularly excited should he send me a letter indicating that he's read it, I was pretty thrilled to get any correspondance at all.
Every once in awhile I like to toss something out there completely unrelated to my interest in pursuits of liberty.
I was messing around with my old 12-string in a Nashville+DADGAD tuning and came up with this little percussive beat. I wish the Apple built-in mic had a little more range, but it's good enough. For anyone who doesn't know what a Nashville tuning is, it's basically when you use the higher-octave strings from a 12-string set in just a 6-string fashion. In my case it's a bit altered even from that since I actually left the low G string in its typical 6-string configuration, but otherwise the higher octaves were switched out.
The result is a really twangy sound in place of the usual base, a base in place of the usual mids, and extra reverberation on the typical highs. And of course all of that in an open DADGAD tuning as well.
A bunch of friends and I celebrating the release of the book
This Monday evening I was pleased to officially launch my new book, American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach.
Although the book technically went on sale on October 6th on Amazon, I had not yet had the opportunity to formally announce it. This party was for just that. My friends over at Maki Toki were kind enough to let me host it there and we had a turnout of about 40 people (at its peak). I even managed to sell 8 more copies of the book.
American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach is a political outsider’s examination of the modern American healthcare crisis. The focus of the book tends towards the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, better known as Obamacare. The book explores the vast differences between healthcare and health insurance and challenges the reader to consider who benefits most from the installation of state-mandated health insurance. It also scrutinizes the corporate-influenced positions that both Republicans and Democrats have used to warp the political discussion around healthcare.
Above all, the book strongly acknowledges that there is a need to reform the healthcare policies of the United States and provides a number of reasonable, common-sense approaches towards fixing the system. None of these solutions involve kowtowing to corporate interests.
About My SoftwareOver the years I have written a bit of software under the GNU/GPL license. Although some of the software that I wrote was originally distributed under my "AustinSmoke Scripts" software label, I have now just assumed distribute it under my own name. All downloads are free and can be used however the license was intended.At the moment I'm not really supporting any of the software. That said, if you run into any problems I probably won't be of much help. Still, you're welcome to contact me.Finally, I have received a number of questions regarding the released of my openFace software and despire the current project name having the word 'open' in it, it is not currently open-source and I have no intentions of making it open source in the near future. Sorry for the let down :(
AustinSmoke GasTracker v1.0.0 (demo) This script will allow you to keep track of your gas mileage and have the results displayed in an easy to read website. None of the data is harvested from anywhere on the web but is rather entered manually by the user and for the user.Currently the program only supports the English system of miles and gallons. Future versions intend to include the metric system as well as conversions between the figures.If the demand seems to exist, a future version will allow the user to import a CSV file (or something similar). This should satisfy any users who have historically kept up with such data with Excel and other spreadsheets.
Same Gnome 2.8.0+ Custom Image Pack 0.1 This is just a pretty simple image pack that I put together for the popular open-source game, Same Gnome. The top left image is the default pixmap for the game, and the other three images are custom pixmaps that I made. Included in the tarball are: rotating_pills.png (topright), three_lens_flares.png (bottomleft), and mexican_numbers.png (bottomright). I can not guarantee that they will work with all versions of Same Gnome, but were designed to work with v2.8.0.While the Mexican Numbers and the Rotating Pills themes were meant to be graphically appealing, the Three Lens Flares pixmap was simply designed to allow the user to more easily see what particular color appears most in the game (thus allowing for higher scores - or so was the idea).How to use: Read your Same Gnome help section on 'Creating Scenarios'. Simply unTar/GZip the file and copy the .PNGs into your /usr/share/pixmaps/same-gnome/ directory (note: directory may be slightly different depending on your Linux distribution.)
AustinSmoke Currency Converter v2.0 riginal msg thread: Anyone looking for a Currency Converter (169 different currencies included) or that is already using AS-Currency 1.0, I have finally completed AS-Currency 2.0. Tons of new features including a redesigned and more powerful admin interface, market gain and loss calculations, ability to use graphical images, new flag sets (for 45 countries), and plenty more. Previous bugs have been worked out and I have included a thorough documentation set as well as an easy to use install script. For use with PHP Nuke 6.9+nukecops download thread: Heavily redesigned PHPNuke block/module combination built off of the existing v1.0. The block displays current exchange rate information - displaying countries that the administrator defines. The module is a currency converter. New to v2.0 are: -market gains and losses displayed within the block. -graphical displays available for both gains and losses, and for numerical values -new flag images included -redesigned admin interface -redesigned module interface -multiple data servers can be selected for each currency used -ability to edit specific currency information Version 2.0
AustinSmoke Currency Converter v1.0 nukecops download thread: A PHPNuke block/module combination. The block displays current exchange rate information - displaying countries that the administrator defines. The module is a currency converter. Version 1.0
AustinSmoke GasTracker v1.0.0 (
Same Gnome 2.8.0+ Custom Image Pack 0.1
AustinSmoke Currency Converter v2.0
AustinSmoke Currency Converter v1.0
