Student Robotics Final

20.57
(joint) second place, but (if you exclude the team that contained precisely one teacher) we technically came in joint first place. Also some people say I should have a job in marketing.

14:09
moving forwards and backwards in that game scored us some points, we’ve played all the games we’re going to play now, so hopefully we’ll have scored highly enough to win or come second. That said I’ve seen nothing particularly impressive this year, all our strategy simply went out the window and we decided to shunt balls arond

15:54
it turns out piping random to the motors really really doesn’t work, we’re going for forwards backwards forwards backwards strategy

15:07
We’ve played two games, completeley destroyed the opposition in one and failed to move entirely in the other (not charged), hopefully our battery will be fully charged for our third game. We’re either in second or first place at the moment, which is good. Hopefully our extremely basic strategies will allow us to pull it back

13:14 robot picture, tom’s coke is looking epic there.

12:58

we’ve been here since 9.30 Am and sofar no robots have been witnessed working in the arena. We had our entire usb toolchain blow up and it was replaced by Jeff, currently the radio module on the slugs isn’t working for anyone, and so Rob and Tom (the chief electronics guys) are fixing them really really quickly.

9.30

I arrived, jamie had fixed the robot amazingly well, hopefully everything will work on the first match we play

Intel, nVidia stop suing each othere

OK, seriously this is beginning to get really really annoying. Intel and nvidia are the two best chip set manufacturers for their respective main areas of hardware. AMD and ATI can’t hold a candle to them. However intel and nvidia have been launching a series of lawsuits at each other that is just annoying. These two companies could work together and build some seriously awesome integrated processors and graphics chipsets, but instead they are fighting.

Spotify

You need to get spotify, it makes music easier. It let’s you stream any music you care to name over the internet, you can create playlists, search the quite frankly insanely huge library and just plain otherwise enjoy new music. Also here’s a playlist of jason mraz who is awesome http://open.spotify.com/user/samphippen/playlist/5rXh6N5GO5I0AwLLihc5rK

Why maths in computers is hard

Firstly, open up any spreadsheet package, and into cell a1 enter 0.2, then in cell a2 enter the following formula “=11*A1-2″, if A2 doesn’t display 0.2 you did it wrong, if A2 does display 0.2, then drag it down a good 30 rows, you should very quickly not get the answer you originally entered.

Just remember computers aren’t in fact the perfect maths machines they are claimed to be…

I’m a geek, get used to it.

Firstly, me and others, have many many ongoing arguments about various things, and I always go into things with the exact same mindset. It’s a combination of open mindedness, some knowledge and a lot of logic. To quote someone who isn’t me “geeks make cool things, nerds collect cool things, and dorks don’t understand cool things”, I fall firmly into the first category. I like to use logic to resolve thought problems, as it requires less effort than knowing things going into the argument, however having some knowledge base is extremely helpful. Finally I am always, always open to new ideas if you can genuinely convince me of something, beyond any reasonable doubt I will accept your idea. Also, whenever I see something new and cool, my first thought is “how can I modify this in such a way to make it do something really really awesome”. I like this way of thinking, and quite frankly, no one in the world can change it.

Fedora, linux and others

I am a linux user, this will not come as a shock to many people, as it is public knowledge. However I have had a great many arguments with a lot of people as to my rationale for using linux, and why I think it is better than Windows. Firstly, I am not a typical computer user, most of the time I spend using a computer I spend writing programs or in some other way generally abusing my computer. A very small proportion of my computer usage time is actually devoted to things that a typical computer user might do. In terms of availablility of programming language compilers, interpreters, editors and other programming related things, it’s simply impossible to beat linux. If the software you require isn’t available in big software repositories that most linux distributions pack, then its available in the form of source code, which can be made into the program you need to do your job. Specifically I use fedora linux, because it’s repositories are relativley up-to date and it generally works.

Before I go ahead and state that Windows is good for typical users, I would first thoroughly recommend ubuntu, it’s what switched me to linux and it does replace the user end functionality that Windows provides, it comes with office software a web browser, media players ect. It’s specifically designed for “human beings” and as such I think it’s thoroughly worth a try.

However, I will concede that there is a very good rationale for using Windows, if most of the applications you are running are in the userspace, and you can either afford software or have no morals then there probably isn’t a reason for you to move to linux. Windows is also installed on something like 98% of all personal computers in the world, meaning that you’re not going to come into any issues with anyone else by using Windows.

Linux however, is better if you want to understand how things work as source code level access is available for almost every single piece of software you’ll be able to find on it, also no you can’t run your games on linux unless you’re willing to spend some time fiddling