Robotics @ MindSay 
So it's been a while since I wrote anything. I guess work and life have been keeping me too distracted for any fun stuff like blogging. Anyhow, there are a few new items of hobby interest from the past few weeks.
Jake has gotten interested in building robots. We can't really afford Mindstorms, but some years ago I had started to get into BEAM robotics. Essentially, that's building simple "biological" robots out of salvaged electronics. The 'bots are all pretty insect-like, and generally aren't programmable (you build them to seek/avoid light, etc.) and often run off of solar power, but they make cool toys.
So I dug out my Weller soldering iron and an old "Cybug" kit I had never finished. I also got my Solarbotics "Photopopper" out to repair him. (Since he's solar powered, he had a tendency to jump off of shelves and stuff, and had broken his leg, so to speak.)
I managed to score some electric motors for free from the local Walgreens (they had some broken battery powered fans) and an old tape cassette deck, and it turns out I still had a number of transisters and other components from back in my analog synth building days.
I'm afraid that I'm going to enjoy this more than Jake is, but hey, it's got to be more fun for him than my miniatures, which he doesn't care about at all. He's still way too young to work the soldering iron safely, but he's helping me find "junk" and I'm going to have him help make some robot "skins" to put over the raw electronics.
Hai ya'll.
I'm a Pampered Chef consultant. (sa some of you know)
I've been though my very first Kitchen show and have another one comming up this saturday.
Yaaaaay.
So far I have had 4 bookings off of my mom's shows and another potential show has recently come into view too.
Er...I think that's all I need to say about that.
In other news I am inlove with a song called "Tomorrow belongs to me" no its not the rock song.
Being the MUSICAL nut that I am one can safely guess that is from one of those broadway things that I have obtained this new song.
And for those of you who know my spoofing tendancies...I have already done so.
Was majorly sick on the weekend. Little brothers won First Robotics championship in NH.
So now the group Mechanical Mayhem requires sponsership and grants in order to get to Atlanta for the nationals.
If anybody in the NH area knows someone/thing to help my brothers and their team out please reply to this or any of my blogs.
(geek level: 2)
Lectures have been really interesting for a couple of days now, I am really glad I switched to doing robotics. As part of the course, we had a practical session which got us to program a robot to move... the problem being the amount of error caused by various environmental and mechanical influences.
The robot we were using was aptly named Bart, why you ask? Well, we run a program expecting it to move in a square, as expected, it did. However, on the second run, it got half way around and before completing the second turn, stopped and seemed rather confused, it then decided to turn randomly and scarper, two members of the group (one of them being KP) having to dive for the stop switch. It seems that something interfeared with it. You can see a picture of what the robot we were using looks like here:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/ai/robot-lab/images/pioneer2.jpg
(geek level: 4)
I finally got around to work on my dissertation some last night, managed to get some more of the parsing working although Java really hates me for some reason, one of the main methods that should work for converting strings to char arrays (string.toCharArray())... well just didn't and caused me a nice headache, why won't it copy white space, why? I suppose it is better for me to write it manually as I know it wont break. *curses java*. I might actually be able to get the thing to transmit something shortly, once this RTSP parsing is finished... Im not sure if I should use suns code or just write my own, I am tempted to write my own so that the dissertation is fully mine and no part of it can be credited to sun, although looking at their transmit code... I have an awful lot to get done in 5 weeks.
(geek level: 2)
We also had a lecture on robotics arms... and how to control them, using trigonemtry. I havn't done any of that in five years so I'm really rusty but I think I should be ok once I get back into it.
(geek level:1)
The past few nights I have actually managed to get a decent nights sleep. I normally don't sleep much and it takes me a good few hours to get to sleep. Despite this, the past three night I have managed to get 7-8 hours sleep! Including two nights where I was asleep inside on hour and last night 2. Ah sleep, welcome back to my life, I have missed you.
(geek level:2)
This evening I have been asked to go and look at a couple of peoples machines and try to fix a few problems, one being a victim to the latest virus/worm to go across MSN, the other managing to restrict access to her own system some how without realising it.
Oh, I also got to watch the new Dr Who, its so hillariously bad, I love it. In the words of Chom "It's wheely bad" (you'll get the reference if you watch it). At least the sets don't move about so thats a good thing I suppose. I have also been watching Sukisyo, an anime based off a Yaoi H game. It's brilliant, they are drawn as chibis when they get angry! It also contains a sailor moon parody and the plot is paper thin in places. Has a tiny amount of angst thrown in for good mesure and you're sorted. So it has everything I want in a show (at the moment)... Bishis, Chibis, Angst. I want more!
And now for something completly diferent, I have pins and needles in my left leg. Right, off for a cuppa I think (Spot the traditional british pass time/solution to every problem, Tea. Also one of the Gods of compsci, aka caffeine.).