Checksum Arcanius

Later today, I leave for Utah for a family reunion. We are going down in two cars, because we will be picking up another three while down there, and returning to spend the next week here together with aunt, uncle, and cousin.

Wednesday’s hack session went well, culminating with Prometheus, the skeletal frame of the TRC’s first FIRST robot, turning its wheels in response to the position of a potentiometer. It was pretty exciting to get this far, because now we have gotten to the point where external inputs can affect external outputs. The rest is just building on this basic formula.

Today, I woke up at 6 and ate breakfast, got up again at 7 and revisionist blogged until 8, folded until 9, worked on the lawn until 10:45, Played Ultimate (my team finally won!) until 1, worked more on the lawn until 2, showered, and participated in the third hack session until 5, helped prepare for a partay until 6, partayed with glorious food and friends until 8, met with the TRC leadership until 9:45, then saw Spiderman 2 until 12:30.

Yikes!

Bob and I (mostly Bob, actually, but I got to share the glory because I was there when everything started working) got GNU Mailman working on silverfir last night. The reason for it, as seems to be the reason for a lot of the things I do, was the Titan Robotics Club. Communication has always been an issue, and for a long time I’ve thought several different well-defined mailing lists would work better than one general mailing list. I tried with yahoogroups, but having multiple lists didn’t seem to work very well since each were so seperate, and nobody else seemed interested in the idea. But recently, interest has picked up, and I think Mailman can provide a better solution as well.

At first, we are thinking of having just a few lists, but we can easily add more if we want/need to:
-Announcements (For the general public and anyone interested in what big things the club is doing)
-Chit-chat (For off-topic chatter between members)
-Executives (For the club leadership to discuss issues)
-h4x0rZ (For attendees of the summer hack sessions)

In the future, we will probably add:
-Lego League
-Travel
-FIRST
-Web Team (if applicable)
-Video (if applicable)
-Animation (if applicable)
…etc

One small step for exim, one giant leap for the TRC

Yay!

Today went a lot better than yesterday at work. Thing got moving early, and I was able to get a lot done. I took a ridiculously long lunch break (2.5 hours, but it wasn’t supposed to be that long) in order to go up to a building that my brtoher manages to take a look at the sprinkler system, because suposedly I am an expert on the things because I spent a summer installing them a few years ago. With some ideas from the the maintenance guy, we got the water flowing again. Unfortunately, in a vain attempt to get water ut earlier, all the valves were manually set on. So I got to go around, braving the spraying water (which wasn’t too hard on such a warm day) turning the valves back off. But some of them were really hard to find. After that was done, it had been way too long and I didn’t really have time to try dinking around with the controller to program it. Either somebody else will or I’ll have the “opportunuty” to try it later.

After getting back from work, I got back to work and things went well through six o’clock. Then I wrapped things up and headed for Grass Lawn park via a place to eat. The place to eat ended up being Subway on Willow’s road. The park was extremely busy, so we ended up playing on some not-too-nie grass, but the game ended up being very good. My team got down by six at one point, but we managed to tie it. Unfortunately, the other team scored again with just seconds left and took the game. But it was still good, because I am noticing that I am either jumping higher or simply timing my jumps better and have a better idea of how high I can jump. I like to think that I’m jumping higher though. And my forehand flick isn’t up to snuff yet, but its improving, especially for lighter throws. The two-a-week frisbee is going to be good.

After ultimate, I tok Dan and Bob home, and then Bob and I talked about the TRC summer hack sessions for a while. We laid out tenative dates, and I will be checking with Larry for availability of his place and my mom for availability of some resources at the office park. What would be ideal is simply a place large enough for two or three groups of 3-5 people to meet where there are simple things like soldering irons and electricity. Ok, a milling machine, lathe, and bandsaw would be nice too. But still, that really isn’t asking too much, I don’t think, especially after a $2+ million addition to the school that benefits primarily the drama club. But hey, we have our very own room now (never mind that its smaller than the space we had before, and its all we have now, and its really just what the Drama club vacated because its too far from the new Perfoming Arts Center. Meh. Enough for now.

And after that, I came home. Pretty good nice long day.

Sorry for the absence. I today reaffirm my goal to post once per Ryan-day, which means at least one post between when I awake in the morning (or occasionally early afternoon) and when I go back to sleep sometime between early evening and early afternoon. Generally, these times are within two hours of 8:00 am and within two hours of midnight.

The news of the day is that the house still isn’t wired for gigabit communications, Silverfir.net came back home after an aborted attempt to set it up at my mom’s office. She needed an email server, and I thought it was a good chance to get perhaps up to 864kbps upstream for sf.net (if sourceforge will forgive me for borrowing the term). Unfortunately, it was not to be because Qwest’s Actiontec DSL modem/routers are basically defective. Bernie, tell me about Blarg’s internet-only options, and do they come with their own routers? It would probally turn into a web hosting account too, so its a good business opportunity.

Other recent events that I’ve neglected blogging about, but I should probably mention:
IS Class of 2004 graduation
TRC elections (Female CEO, Male COO, Female CFO, male CAO)
Microvision work goes well, they seem to want to keep me around
Quarter ended at BCC, got an A- in Diff.Eq. and A’s in Photo and Tennis. Maybe I already mentioned that one, I don’t know.
Went to Bellingham few Sundays ago with Shai to see Beth and Greg. Had an excellent time. Ate at Lemon Grass, the best Thai food ever. Maybe I already mentioned this one too. Bah.

Current projects:
oasis (old desktop machine, future silverfir.net server) – I want to set up exim, imap, and mysql for virtual domains so I can have lots of “different” mail servers, and that each subdomain can have their “own” emai. I also want to get apache parsing its log files out to the virtual domains. And probally get rid of ftp in favor of scp (per bob’s suggestion).

I do wonder what happened to uberbog though.

Also, I still want to change bloggers. And get a better photo management solution. And…

Oh yeah, TRC hack sessions should be starting up soon. I’ll let you know about those.

Well, the Comcast Guy came and replaced our cable modem. Everything seems to be better now, I am mucho happy. I have yet to se the new modem myself, but my brother reports that it is black (woohoo!). I will ost pictures sometime maybe.

Two weeks and a day until my last final this school year. I’m stiall waiting to hear from the UW.

I saw Uniform at the Seattle International Film Festival today with Dan & co. It wasn’t very good, but I’ve seen worse too. Primer, which I have higher hopes for, is Monday.

Clifton sent me this link, about how to get more women into Linux. My specific interest was different, how to get more women into the TRC… Reading the howto left me feeling a little guilty and a little confused and a little indignant. Guilty because once I made a sexist joke to the two most promising girls on the TRC. I meant to apologize, but I never got around to it, and now I rembmer that I need to again. Confused, because some things seem to contradict. Do we want to treat women like everyone else (as she says to do at one point), or do we want to be extra careful to let them type the commands themselves (as she claims at another point). Finally, indignant because the author cites both at once how we raise males and females differently that leads to discrimination against females. Does this differentiation in raising children not just as strongly (or, these days, even more strongly) “discriminate” against me being a nanny, for example? Of course, this isnt really discrimination, is it, since I don’t really want to be a nanny. But then, what percentage or girls want to be (insert technical field here). Of course it is argued that these preferences come from differential treatment of genders in the first place. But what of that? My parents did not introduceme to the joys of autoworking as a child, and perhaps as a result, I’m not terribly interested in auto working. Does this mean I was discriminated against? If this happened to a girl, would that make her discriminated against?

I actaully wrote all that last night… enjoy!

Day after tomorrow today…

In response to the Tuesday, May 11th article entitled, “In science and math, our kids need to step it up.“

It comes as no surprise to me that Washington State lags behind other comparable states in producing a high number of mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. However, these facts, exposed in Tuesday’s article, surprise most people, because everyone thinks of Boeing and Microsoft when they think of Washington companies – two worldwide engineering and technology powerhouses. Furthermore, there are many other technology and engineering companies throughout the state. It would seem then, that students of these fields would find a great amount of encouragement and support throughout high school and college. However, as the founder of a high school robotics club, my experience has been the antithesis of this: Washington State companies largely ignore fledgling engineers and the groups that cater to them.

For evidence, we need not look any further than our largest educational institution, the University of Washington. In 2002 and 2003, the U.W. hosted the Pacific Northwest Regional for the FIRST Robotics Competition. These two years, the competition was largely funded by out-of-state corporations and organizations, with the hope that local companies would see the enormous potential of the event to promote science and technology in Washington State and begin funding the event themselves. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of hundreds of aspiring engineers in high schools throughout the Puget Sound region, this hope was never realized. This year, the Pacific Northwest Regional of this renowned national robotics competition moved to Portland, Oregon, where more corporate support was found.

Unlike Washington, Oregon is not thought of as an engineering or technology powerhouse � yet Oregon is setting itself up to usurp Washington�s position as a leader in technology because its corporations understand that in order to graduate engineers from universities, students must first be interested in careers in engineering. Organizations that reach students in middle school and high school are the best way to develop young people into aspiring engineers. FIRST (�For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology�) and its annual national Robotics Competition, have proven in many other states to be the best method available of promoting science and technology in secondary education. Until Washington corporations step up to the plate and begin to support events like this competition and the high school teams that participate in it, they can expect that Washington will continue to lag behind in the production of the Engineers and the leaders in technology that will enable Washington to remain a world leader in technological innovation.

Programs like the FIRST robotics competition may not be the �Silver Bullet� that fixes all of Washington�s engineering education woes, but I believe it is the closest thing that anyone will find.

Sincerely,

Ryan McElroy

Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have concerning information in this letter.

For more information on the FIRST Robotics Competition: http://www.usfirst.org or http://www.usfirst.org/about/2003/annualreport2003.pdf

For more information on a very deserving yet under-funded robotics club, visit http://www.titanrobotics.net

Washington State teams involved in this competition include: Roosevelt High School�s �SWAT Robotics,� Newport High School�s �NRG� (Newport Robotics Group), Eastlake High Schools �Screws Loose� (Second place at the Pacific Northwest Regional!), Issaquah High School Robotics, Bellevue High School Robotics, Nathan Hale High School Robotics, and the 2004 Pacfic Northwest Regional #1 seeded champions, The Bellevue International School�s �Titan Robotics Club.�

P.S.

Washington�s largest newspaper, the Seattle Times, must share in the blame for the Pacific Northwest regional being moved from Seattle � In the two years when the competition was in Seattle, the Times provided no more coverage than a picture and a paragraph of text. Each of those two years, Seattle-area teams came in second place and received no recognition. For example, in 2003, a well-funded team from Florida competed at the Pacific Northwest Regional and took first place. The Seattle Time�s coverage of the event consisted of two pictures of the winning team and a short blurb about how the team from Florida won the regional. There was no mention of the 12 Washington teams competing or the work they did to help put on the regional. Needless to say, people like me and other mentors of these robotics clubs who put in much of their time and energy to promote the good cause of science and technology in our public schools felt slighted at the gross omission of our cause. Many of us also feel that this lack of publicity helped ensure that no local corporations would step up and ensure that FIRST Robotics stayed in Washington. I would like to personally thank the Seattle P-I for its coverage of the robotics team I work with in 2003 and for its Tuesday article highlighting the issues facing Washington�s Tech companies.