Scribbles and Photos

Fallen Trees I always loved that moment in Star Trek: Next Generation when Jean Luc Picard (sexiest star ship captain ever) would say:  "make it so."  Because, inevitably, it would be so. A while back, I penned a post, Pillbox Fill: An Idea for the 2013 FIRST Robotics Competition , that focused on creating a robotics competition that would raise intergenerational awareness.  For those of you who don't follow Robotics, the First Robotics competition is for high school aged kids.  Every year, teams from all over the world wait anxiously to learn what the next year's challenge will be.  They get their boxes filled with parts and then they build robots and then they compete in a raucous, controlled chaos fashion. The central tenant of the post was that FIRST , which had been founded by Dean Kamen, should build a robotics competition wrapped in a social frame.  Specifically. I wanted a competition centered around older adults and activities of daily li...

Sunken Wreck II (Tasmania) This last weekend, I had the good fortune to attend my very f irst robotics competition to watch my niece's team compete in the Rebound Rumble.  They didn't do so well (sorry K!).  But, I was struck by a couple of things -- although the teams are competing, there is more of a friendly rivalry here than, well, hmm, how to put this?  A high school football league in any state  (but then again, football is a sport where some pro teams pay a bonus for inflicting injury and so maybe that is not a a fair comparison). These teams actually help each other out in the pit (this is where robots go between competitions) and the game always has a cooperation element built into it where individual teams have to work together to achieve a common goal.  The teams compete in alliances of three teams and within the game there is a game where opposing alliances can cooperate to earn more points.  This is all pretty good if you ask me.  E...