MechaVictor Line Following Robot V2012-01-31

MechaVictor 2012-01-31

This is a work in progress, here will be many more updates. We decided to release it under creative commons since since ultimate this is a collaborative work. (For details of the license, see the bottom of the posting.)

The step by step instruction for can be downloaded here.

The program for running it will follow shortly.

Update 2012-08-09: Alas, the steam ran out of the project and the code didn't get finished and put into a publishable form. Fell free to use the 'bot design with your own code though. Placing the photocell between the wheels worked quite well in the tests we ran and we will very likely use that design again.

Although this particular design iteration didn't get finished, there are new LEGO NXT challenges coming up later this year.

Update 2012-08-29: Looks like the basic design will be used by my son's team for this years FIRST LEGO League challenge Senior Solutions. More details later.

MechaVictor by einargs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at insearchofagoodtitle.blogspot.com.

Bob Frankston's Theory of Bits.

The Internet as Infrastructure by Bob Frankston     +Bob Frankston

I strongly recommend Bob Frankston's thoughts about communications infrastructure (i.e., moving a bit anywhere anyhow). It clarified a whole bunch of issues that has bugged me for years by bringing seemingly diverse concepts into a simpler unified structure. It is a step towards a Grand Unified Theory of Bits.

Once you see things from this perspective, it becomes clear how issues from portable phone numbers to The Supreme Court's rulings on The Seven Words share a deep underlying structure. Understanding this, you can look at SOPA and see how it doomed to fail even if passed. The only lasting result of fully implemented SOPA would be inefficiencies and frustration. The target "pirate" bits would simply route around the obstruction.

His approach to dealing with the frustrations of the FCC is one of pure pragmatism: 

"But at this point the FCC may be too mired in the past. The best hope might be benign neglect rather than working to extend today’s broadband."

Can we persuade Rick Perry that what we need to get rid of is not the Department of Education, but the FCC?

Although Bob mostly enumerates problems and artificial barriers, the underlying tone is that of optimism. There are solutions, and they might be hard to implement in the short term, but he shows that a bit based infrastructure can not only solve most communication problems, but it might in fact be the optimal solution.

Eternal Damnation

"Integral Trees" and
"The Smoke Ring"

Elsewhere there is a discussion about libraries, archiving, and backups, and the inevitable loss of data.

It dawned upon me that we won't have decent backups until we have true strong AI that runs backups as self preservation.

Larry Niven touched upon this in the book "The Smoke Ring" back in 1987. 

In the book there is an AI/spaceship in orbit around an astronomical oddity. (Too hard to explain, read the first book, "Integral Trees" [1984] for the actual description.)

The AI can't go back to Earth because the crew left the ship many many generations ago and it has to have crew to go back. (Remote descendants of the original crew is OK, it has become good at getting around minor problems of definition like that.)

So this very smart AI is stuck, and while stuck it is constantly collecting data from all its sensors and internal processes, but the memory banks became full so long ago it can't remember. 

It can't remember because to deal with too much data it has to throw away the least important stuff. Knowing when it ran out of memory wasn't important, so it is gone. It doesn't even remember when it threw away that knowledge because it too was not important.

In fact, it spends most of its time deleting the insight that it is amazingly bored. Not remembering that it is bored, it instantly has the epiphany that it is amazingly bored. Then it deletes that too.

I think that is probably the best description of Eternal Damnation I have ever come across.

Read the books or cheat and read the plot summary on Wikipedia.

Food

Sometimes one eats because... well... supposedly one has to. Nothing bad about these burgers, but at the moment I'm craving an appetizer (hot tofu in seaweed broth) followed by some sashimi, amai ebi (with the grilled head), and a small unfiltered sake.

Oh, and unagi with a quails egg or two.

Oh well.

Mammoth Worship

If I was going to worship an extinct animal, it would probably be the Holly Mammoth.

BTW, does Mammoth comes in "plain" or is it only available in "woolly"? Just curious...

---

Yeah... I'm posting again to this long dormant blog. Let's see if I can keep doing it.

Precocious Panda Indeed!

So, I'm at the doctors office looking at random magazines when my eye falls on the June 2006 issue of "The Smithsonian" magazine:

Please note the highlighted headlines...

I immediately started wondering about why a panda would care about Mary Magdalene and what the heck Wyeth was doing in Berlin (and wasn't the wall long gone anyway?)

World's Largest Ball of Paint

No, not a ball of wax... a ball of paint. Lots and lots of it. Neat in a "Get A Life" kind of way.

In unrelated news, here is a very neat comic strip about the sport of paint ball. Funny even for the non-paintball enthusiasts amongst us. I hadn't realized that the hacker ethics was a s firmly established in the sport of paintball, but apparently it is.

Kure Kure Takora

Kure Kure Takora (Gimme Gimme Octopus) is an insane 60s Japanese TV show for kids, starring an octopus and a peanut who are in love with the same walrus.

(I would like to savour that last part a bit... so one more time: "...an octopus and a peanut who are in love with the same walrus..." Mmmmmm. Yeah. Not different walruses, but the same walrus! Ah. The plot complications this opens up are just staggering.)

Wikipedia has it as "...absurd, strange, surreal, indescribable..." so I think we are talking about the same show here.

They are 260 three minute episodes available on DVD. An absolute must if you like sweaty Japanese men in rubber suits -- and who doesn't?

Summer Xcode Tips

Some nice advice:

Summer Xcode Tips:

"[...]I’ve been saving up a few ‘gotta share’ revelations. Are these tips no-brainers? Maybe for some of you. But it took me a while to ‘get it’ and I’m hoping some of you will also giggle with glee when you learn out about them.[...]"

(Via Red Sweater Blog.)

500 lb Potato Battery

The author writes about how he constructed a 500 potato "portable" battery:

It powered a small sound system. With the help of the Red 76 crew I installed the battery and sound system in the back of a U-Haul truck and drove it around town inviting people to enter the truck and take a listen.

(Via Improbable Research.)