Checksum Arcanius

I think that the worst thing that ever happened to my ability to completely read books was a laptop computer. When the computer can go anywhere I can, almost as easily as a book, there are plenty of excuses to hop on it (check email is a good one), and plenty of reasons to stay on (get involved in an IM conversation), and the reasons to leave (sleep, books) never seem complelling enough until they are already by the wayside. Thus, I write this at home, already having missed 10 minutes of my class; I don’t know if I’ll even make it there today, since, well, I’m on my computer…

After seeing the robot off into the hands of the FedEx guy to 1:30 today, Dan and I went into Seattle to eat, walk Alki beach, and eventually, watch Constantine at the Cinerama. I had read a review in the Seattle Times that, though not exactly lauding, piqued my interest, so I decided it was worth a shot, and most any movie is better in the Cinerama.

And the choice was a good one. Though Dan didn’t think too much of it except for the special effects, I quite liked just about everything about the movie. Maybe it has something to do with my own internal search for truth; I don’t know. But Keanu Reeves was the right man for this role, and the theology behind the movie was intriguing, to say the least. The movie could have been extraordinarily silly, but for me, somehow, it stayed on the right side of the line, and instead I found it fun, exciting, and very much worth the day away from work.

Dan says it better than I would have, so I will steal his work and post it here :-)

Mr. Postman, how many stamps do you put on a robot?

Spent most of the day over at Bellevue HS working on the robot. Bellevue’s robotics club, has been sharing some of their space with us and we have been sharing some of our equipment (particularly the parts of the playfield that we have constructed). It has been a mutually beneficial arrangement. We spent the bulk of the day working on autonomous modes. If we had another week, I am confident we could get our desired autonomous mode working. Namely, visually acquiring the location of field elements and using that information to run one of 16 driving programs in order to place a tetra on the center goal. All the pieces of code are there, we just don’t have enough time to plot out and test all the routes. Instead, we have fallen back on our “Plan B.” Plan B is to use dead reckoning to grab a tetra off one of the autonomous loading stations and place it on the near, inside goal and then return to near the loading station for the beginning of user-controlled mode. By the end of the day, we were doing this with pretty fair regularity. We will have to tweak our code a bit to accomodate for slight differences betweeen our practice field and the field at the Pacific Northwest Regional (like carpet type, slight differences in measured distances, etc.), but I am pretty confident we will be able to do this about 75% of the time. Based on what I have heard on the boards and what I saw from other teams at our the practice meet that we held yesterday, probably less than 10% of all teams will have a viable autonomous mode. I really wish that FIRST would give teams a little more time. 6 weeks is just too little time to be reinventing the wheel every year. Anyways, bitter recrimintion aside, it has been a WILD ride these last six weeks and I am pleased to say that Tyr is now safely ensconsed in a very large shipping crate awaiting pickup. Portland here we come!

While looking at my site today, I realized that it is way too blue. I’m gonna have to do something about that. But, as the procrastinator’s creed goes, why do something today that you can do just as easily tomorrow?

I almost upgraded to WordPress 1.5 today, at the sugestion of Erik. Unfortunately, too much has changed to make transition a simple process, so I quikly backtracked almost all the way – I ended up with 1.2.1, 0.0.1 larger than I had before.

As a way to relax a little after some intense roboticizing, and in preperation for more intense roboticizing tomorrow and Sunday, I rented the movie Cellular, in hopes that it would be a mostly mindless fun flick. My hopes were fulfilled and I enjoyed the movie a good deal (though it insn’t anything I’m gonna watch again soon). It required only mild suspension of belief, and it mixed a fun plot with enough action and emotional displays to keep me interested. Overall, a good movie for vegging out at the end of the week.

This morning, I went to bed at about 6:00 am after staying up to finish up the Chairman’s Award submission before the deadline at 9:01 pm tonight. The good news is that I actually did finish it. On the other hand, I don’t know how much sense I make at 6:00 am, so I’ll probably have to go back and edit it today But at least that is considerably easier than writing the entire thing tonight, with the deadline quickly approaching.