Dekimashita yo!

It's over!! Well, not quite, but robot impounding was at 5 pm today, so we had to turn ours in. The competition's tomorrow - I hope we win at least one morning round so that we get into the evening rounds (that's when all the people come to watch). 6.270 was fun the first week (yay, soldering!), but it didn't become fun again until later yesterday afternoon (after I wrote yesterday's rant) because our robot finally started to function! So exciting! I started writing code finally, and I even managed to make it drive relatively straight, which is something that we hadn't really ever been able to do before. We scrapped the gyroscope and the distance sensor and decided just to use shaft encoders for everything. They work pretty well too. Basically, shaft encoders check to see how fast each wheel is spinning, and you can use that to adjust motor speeds to make the robot drive straight. It's pretty cool. Actually, it's really cool to realize how much I've learned this past month. It's been a ton of work, but overall, I'm rather pleased with it. I'm probably saying this just because we finally got a semi-working robot and I feel so relieved. I'll never forget how absolutely frustrated I was for the past few weeks, but I can also realize that it's been a great learning experience, and when things aren't breaking down left and right around you, it can actually be pretty darn exciting. We have absolutely no chance of winning with our robot, but it's going to be really interesting to see how all the robots do in the competition tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to it.

Jon really wanted to name our robot "Dumbot". Give it a feather, and it can fly. Heh. But in the end, we chose "Magic Smoke" because there was a lot of that where our robot was concerned. For the non-electronics folks out there, magic smoke is basically this thing that's in any electronic component, and as long as it stays inside that component, things are cool. But if you let it out, that's a bad thing because then the object dies. Okay, it's a joke, yes. If you get magic smoke, it means that you fried whatever you were just working on. We did this more than once! Hence the name. Plus, it gives me an excuse to draw a dragon on our poster. Yeah, we have to make a poster and wave it around during the competition or something. Sounds quite silly to me. But I get to draw!! Not like I've gotten to do that all that much this month. Speaking of which, I ought to get it done so I can get to bed early. I'm so tired, and the final competition starts at 10am tomorrow. It's in Kresge, so if you're around here, you should go watch! Finals are at 6 pm - if we can win at least one of our rounds, we can be in it! Please place us against a sucky robot.... :P

Oh yeah, I need to get a picture of this year's t-shirts up. They're so scary. Someone needs to tell Ross that Lego-men just don't have teeth! Other than that, yay Ross for designing the shirts. Oh, and my sister sent me a short story that she wrote for me to proofread. Man, I wish I could write as well as she can. Her writing is so... lyrical. I can instantly recognize the style she uses though - she uses it a lot. It's really effective though, and I love reading her stuff. She should write more. :D Yay. Okay, I'm glad that I'm all happy now, and that I can relax a bit. It's about time!

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Uttara-Kuru - Our Life
Current mood: Dulled (i.e. waaay too tired)