competition day

c&e went to the seeding competition this morning while i sat around at work and did...nothing. but i did get paid to do nothing. apparently, a motor port on the happyboard (#4) did not work so c&e tried to run the gear train using only 2 motors (instead of the usual 4). that meant that the robot basically did not move, so we didn't do very well. BUT it didn't really matter because we got seeded anyway because everyone gets seeded. :D

c&e then went to greg to fix the problem, and he gave us happyboard #5. 5 happyboards!!! we were only supposed to have 1 for the entire month!

competition started at 6pm in 26-100, and jeremy, cindy, emily, and i trekked down there in our "way awesome" matching 6.270 tshirts. who designs these shirts anyway? we had an awesome group of people who came out to cheer for us -- meagan, jen chu, alex, ben, josh, jen fu from church, doris, keith, liver, jason, marcus, john from smite/hockey, and laura and karina from mccormick 3w. YAY FRIENDLY FRIENDS! :D

unfortunately, our robot had stage fright during the competition, and the happyboard panicked both times. here is video of one of our runs... :o(

so we didn't make it very far in the competition. we tested the robot at the end to prove to ourselves that the robot actually worked, and it worked like a charm. it even scored in our 1 point and 2 point bins!

to drown in our sorrows (or to feed our appetites as this competition ended at 9:30pm) cindy, emily, jeremy, ben, meagan and i went out to sunset cantina for dinner. but even the nachos didn't console us for gene simmons choking. cindy says that we should've called the robot tony romo....and unfortunately, i don't have much of an argument against that anymore. :(

gene simmons

we have officially named our robot gene simmons. thank you, ugly betty, for your inspirational music videos. :)

taiwan cafe! :D

no videos from the rest of the day in lab -- my camera died. :(

BUT the robot finally started launching the balls into the scoring bins. some of the guys on team 08 saw what we were doing, and i *think* they attached a green board to the back of their robot to cover up the scoring bin because of us. apparently some of the teams think that our wack-o strategy is intimidating.

the robot went under some liposuction today, aka we shrank the butt (battery and happyboard portion) so that the robot would be more in balance. emily got a little annoyed at cindy and me because she wanted to test it rather than rebuild, so we speed-built and got it done in about 45 min.

we also went through 3 happyboards today. the go button on the first happyboard stopped working properly, so we couldn't calibrate the robot very quickly (we only have 60 seconds to do it). we asked michael about the problem, and he gave us a second board. unfortunately, that board kept restarting randomly in the middle of our run, so we talked to greg and he gave us a third. we didn't get to properly test it because we had to impound the robot, but hopefully this 3rd board will work.

cindy and i got our pictures taken by this woman who had a big fancy schmancy camera. we're kind of curious as to where our picture will turn up...

after we impounded our robot, we took a trip out to taiwan cafe for dinner!!! this trip had been planned for the last 3 weeks, and the food tasted especially good since we hadn't eaten since 6am (d) and 9:30am (e&c). yay for dirt-cheap taiwanese food! :D

impounding day...

its 6:30am.

we should not be allowed to be in lab this early in the morning. i am totally breaking the rules and I have my morning muffin and coffee here.

some people have definitely not gone home yet, as they are still wearing the same clothes from yesterday. no wonder people say course 6-ers smell bad....

T-10.5 hours.

jess ho is home! :D

jess ho came home from zambia today! hopefully, she didn't bring any additional friends with her (aka tapeworms and TB and such) so that we can still remain friends with her. :)

we spent a bit of time in lab tonight to purchase some bump sensors and solder wires onto them. on the way out, i grabbed some wires and made cindy some earrings, which she happily modeled:

(if you look really closely, they are red drop earrings. and believe me, she likes them a lot!)

kelly (from team 07) "built" a game board in the simmons hallway out of tape and amazon boxes to test their robot and they happily let us use it as well. old man jeremy sat "in a wheelchair" with jake down at their end of the hallway:
the night ended with emily modifying our gyro so that our robot finally drove straight and turned properly. i'm not sure how she did it -- her programming skills are *whoosh* way over my head. anyway, cindy and i left at around 1:30ish, only to meet up again at 6am in lab.

p.s. emily was inspired by this halls commercial to make another video: unfortunately, i didn't catch the cough drop, so our robot got a bit of vapor action. :)

easy mac

easy mac in a cup!

after playing a hockey game (c&e) and practice (d), we all went back to simmons to work on our robot at around 11:45. since i had not eaten a real dinner (i downed a yogurt before practice, but that doesn't count as a meal) i was kind of hungry, and i spotted emily's costco size box of easy mac by her bed. easy mac already freaks me out because cheese in a packet is not normal, but these packets were "special" because they expired march 2007. i ate it anyway. :) dave, who lives across the hall, also ate one, so we will both find out tomorrow if it was ok.

here is a little glimpse of our new strategy:

snickers dark

we've seen this snickers dark commercial about 50 times in the past two weeks. at first, it really confused us because we can't figure out why there is a viking and a pilgrim, and now we crack up because the commercial is more ridiculous every time we watch it. SO RIDICULOUS that we did a little reenactment of the commercial --

cindy got so excited to throw the trashcan that she hit our robot. :P its because of that weightlifting class she's taking -- she's becoming too buff. cindy -- which way to the gun show? :oP

we decided to rebuild the ramp so that the balls would shoot up and over the other robot. we figure that a lot of the teams have now seen our strategy and might program their robot to block our four point bin. our new strategy is a high-risk, high-reward method to get around the four point bin robot blockade -- we'll see how well it works. cindy is the master of rebuilding ramps.

me and the rebuilt ramp

emily is still working on getting our robot to drive straight. we're attempting to use the gyro, and hopefully we will get the robot to drive straight by tomorrow. *crossing fingers*

mock competition

the oregon trail isn't complete without a covered wagon :o)

i went over to simmons at 1pm to attach sensors to our robot, test the ball shooter, and eat more cookies. then emily and i ran to lab at 5pm to give our robot a little test drive on the game board before the competition (which started at 7pm). here's a video of our robot in action -- it worked amazingly well for the camera --

16 teams participated in the mock contest, and our goal was just to make it to the second round. there were 8 matches in round one, and 6 matches ended in a double loss (no team scored a point). we went up against team 01, and while our robot did not do exactly what we wanted it to do, we did manage to score two points. the robot didn't drive straight, so our shooter did not point to the scoring bin. instead, it shot balls at the wall, and one of them ricocheted into our two point bin. it was freaking AMAZING. unfortunately, we didn't get it on camera, but we did make it to the 2nd round!

only one other team scored any points (and their robot worked way better than ours did) so the second round was also the final round. we matched up against team 08 in a best of three match. in the first match, our robot turned the wrong direction and instead ran into the wall, and so we got to stand and watch the other team score on us. we thought our robot had finished its course, but it hadn't, and after about 40 seconds, it started firing the balls at emily. it was really really really funny. we didn't get that part on camera, but here is what we did get of the first match --

team 05=0, team 08=1

in the second match, our robot didn't drive straight, and it fired at our opponent's robot instead of our four point bin. their robot didn't work, so this match ended in a double loss.

team 05=0, team 08=1

in the third match, our robot did what we wanted it to do. unfortunately, since the other team had a similar strategy, our balls got blocked by their robot. we blocked all of their shots to their four point bin as well, but their strategy included depositing a ball in their two point bin as well, which meant that they won. so sad. :o(

team 05=0, team 08=2

even though we didn't win the competition or the laptops, we were REALLY REALLY HAPPY with how our robot did, especially since we are a team of two biologists and a chemist. to celebrate, our team (cindy came and joined us) and team 07 went to chipotle for dinner!

the reaction after hearing the fatty fatty 2X4 poem :oP

after chipotle, we went to TOSCIS which has REOPENED!!!! i am superduper excited about that. :D

cindy, kelly, jake, and emily with TOSCIs! :D

we went back to mccormick and watched about 4 more episodes of antm, and then called it a night. what an excellent day. :D

gene simmons is my daddy

rock band at chris&emilys

i finally got good results for my western blot today!!! unfortunately, it meant a lot more additional testing, so i ended up leaving work around 6:15 and then went back to work at around 10:30. :( its funny how success = more work and failure = no work. i will have to go back into work tomorrow (saturday) as well.

c&e spent the day working on the robot in simmons, snacking on cookies, and watching this video from last night's episode of ugly betty. last night, emily gave me a 10 min synopsis of ugly betty, and it sounds kind of complicated, but she loves the show, so it must be good. :)

because i didn't see the robot today, i have no idea how much progress was made. i guess i'll find out tomorrow!

yum yum yum! COOOOOKIES :D

JT and his donut cookie

cindy and emily spent the day rebuilding the robot while i spent the day eating. i went to henrietta's table for lunch with my group, goodbye party for aileen, and goodbye party for amy tapper (so i snagged a bit of free food at that party, i didn't actually work for her). :)

c & e mounted the ball shooter onto the frame of our robot while i was at work, and it looks amazing. cindy did an awesome awesome job designing the ramp, and emily was brilliant and figured out how to attach the actual shooter. i can't wait to see it in action!

jeremy, emily hung, JT, and petek delivered cookies to us tonight! :D apparently they spent the afternoon baking four batches of cookies. in the words of rachael ray, they were deeeeeelishh. :) yay friendlyfriends! :D

as midnight hit, emily said that we needed to sing a round of "that's amore". so we spent the next hour playing karaoke revolution. two of us would sing, and one would build/code. here's a short video of what our robot can do now (with a little bit of help from cindy):

total demolition

we got assignment 4 checked off in lab today.

then we destroyed the robot.

it was really sad.

(we destroyed the robot in attempts to attach the ball shooter. it was a frustrating night.)

youtube videos of the day: human tetris and sport acrobatics

domo arigato, mr roboto

I SCORED A LAPTOP AT WORK TODAY! thank YOU erick moy for hooking me up with the IT guys. i also took over the empty cube behind sean's (my supervisor) desk. it only took an entire summer and 2 weeks for me to acquire a desk and a computer at work. :D

due to emily's amazingness, our robot can now drive straight!!! i'm not sure how she did it (she said something about lowering the tolerance) but i am thoroughly impressed. :)

our robot also has a new theme song. if emily or cindy could program our happyboard to sing this, it would make me really really really happy. :D

cindy programmed our robot to figure out its location and orientation based on what the home squares look like (the task for assignment 4). however, the lcd screen spits out numbers and the robot doesn't really move, so it makes for a boring video. sorry.

i attempted to attach the ball shooter and ramp tonight, and totally failed. try#2 happens tomorrow.

team 05 love

after getting crap for failing to locate a hot glue gun on a shelf about 4 inches above eye level:
"i'm so used to hanging around you guys that i don't remember to look up anymore"
- emily (5'7") to cindy (5'1") and daphne (5'2")

and another random quote:

"if we win, i will do the faux-hawk"
- daphne wang
1/19/2008 11:02pm

"i'm not an ambiturner, i can't turn left"

sleep is glorious.

mlk day = no work! i got to sleep in for the first time in 2 weeks. we decided to meet at 11am at lab, and i rolled out of bed at 10:45. GLORIOUS. :D

unfortunately, the 6.270 organizers also took the time to sleep in, because the doors were locked when we showed up at lab. greg finally showed up at noon and let us into lab.

apparently we fried a chip in our board when the battery wires came off. greg handed us a new happyboard that had parts that were soldered by the ta's, meaning that they probably did a better job than we did. he also sent out an email because of us --

• Some teams have been having trouble with the flimsy battery connector coming off (sometimes shorting the board in the process). You may wish to hot glue the connectors to give them a little more structural support. Greg

emily and i took a look at the game board and decided that instead building a ramp, we would use the ball shooter. we spent a good 10 minutes throwing the game balls into the bins, and at the end of that, we decided that it would be better to roll the balls through the slots instead of shooting the balls over the wall into the bins.

we trekked to thailand cafe at 4pm for lunch, and afterwards, went our separate ways. emily had a prestudy meeting, i had practice (which i skipped in order to sleep some more), and cindy wanted to get her life back in order (aka fold the laundry that she finally washed). we reconvened at around 10pm and worked. or at least tried to.

emily had been trying to get our robot to drive straight using shaft encoding. here are the results of tonight's efforts --

pretty pretty princess

the patriots won this afternoon. unfortunately, i missed the entire game because i was at practice (scrimmage against brandeis!). i crossed through the z-center when there was 3:30 left in the 4th quarter, tried to speed walk/run to simmons to maybe catch the end of it....but alas, FAILED. i think emily took a nap during the game, so cindy was the only one who saw any of it.

in between playoff games, we played another round of pretty pretty princess. petek joined us this time, but unfortunately, we couldn't get ben to play.

petek, the newest pretty pretty princess

ben can't stand the sight of the ridiculousness, nor would he participate :(

in order to deposit balls and score, we needed a ramp to push the balls out of the robot. i built the ramp that knight suggested, which worked well, except the kit didn't include enough flat gears. when we first got the lego kit, i thought there were way too many pieces in it than we needed. now i don't think there are enough.

we borrowed a few of team 07's balls to test out the ramp. they got a little creative with their game balls...

emily created some sparks with our happyboard as the poor soldering of the battery wires to the happyboard by the TAs came off the board. unfortunately, the board stopped working, and when we tried to boot it up, we got a :( instead of a :) = unhappyboard. perhaps it was also sad that the packers lost to the giants. :(

a day of massive productivity

cindy and i were supposed to head over to simmons at 8am. unfortunately, i have become too good of friends with my snooze button and hit it one too many times, so i rolled out of bed at 8. cindy, on the other hand, didn't wake up to her alarm and woke up when emily called her at 8:20. apparently we don't do well with early morning meetings.

i worked on the gear box all day long -- it took us a while to learn how to attach two motors to one wheel, but we figured it out after watching a few youtube videos and asking david who lives across the hall from emily.

gearbox version 1.0

we decided the first version of the gearbox was a little too big, so i tried to make it smaller. it sounds so easy to do, but it took a ton of thinking and about 2 hours.

gearbox version 2.0

as i worked on the gearbox, cindy and emily worked on making a ball shooter. even though we might not use this on our robot, it sure was cool.

after running some errands in the afternoon (cvs, sprint store, star market) we arrived back at simmons before kelly, jake, and jeremy, who went on a target/costco trip. we had asked kelly to buy us pot pies from costco, which were going to be our dinner, so while we waited for them, we decided to play a round of pretty pretty princess.

the game board

the pink princess

the blue princess

the green princess

we watched an antm cycle 4 marathon while we worked on the robot in the evening (i worked on connecting the two gear boxes together, cindy worked on assignment 4, and emily played with the happyboard and the sensors). we even caught the episode where tyra banks started yelling at one of the girls who was eliminated, which was very very entertaining. i think we got cindy (who had never seen an episode before tonight) hooked on the show. :)

here is the result of our day's work. it's not exactly doing what we wanted it to do...but it was so late that we called it a night and decided to fix it tomorrow.

a day of unproductivity

ad in a store window in harvard square

...for me, at least.

my supervisor decided to leave work at noon, so i decided that it was ok for me to leave at 2. then, i got to spend some quality "me" time in the afternoon, which i haven't gotten to do since the beginning of iap. :)

little did i know that emily and cindy were busy in emily's room coding all afternoon. when i learned about that at prayer, i felt bad about not helping them out (even though i am pretty useless when it comes to coding.)

instead of attending workshop #5 pt. 1, we decided to grab some dinner at sunset grill and then work afterwards. we stood and waited for saferide to come, but after waiting 15 minutes with no sign of boston west, we changed our minds and headed to harvard square to eat at border cafe. (by the way, boston west came when we crossed the street and stood at the #1 bus stop. figures.)

margaritas at border cafe!

after dinner, we decided to call it a night and not do any work. :D i should've gone to bed early, but instead, i stayed up and rearranged the books on my bookshelf based on color. it turned out pretty well, yea? :)

oh.em.gee.

from the bostonist.com: The Cambridge Chronicle hopped right on it and, while they couldn't reach the owner, things aren't looking so good for the burnt caramel: "Toscanini’s Ice Cream, a mainstay for cool treats in Central Square since 1981, may not ever open again, and its owner, Gus Rancatore, owes the state’s Department of Revenue more than $167,000 in back taxes."

tosci's is gone forever?!?! the state of massachusetts should understand what they did -- didn't some of its residents throw a crapload of tea into the ocean to protest taxes back in the day? *sigh.

after work, i went to solder some more of our sensors (specifically, the LEDs and phototransistors). kelly, jeremy, and jake's group was there as well, so kelly came by to hang out while the boys fiddled with their robot. i would ask her a question about how to solder the sensor, and she would go find jake and he would tell me what i needed to do. it was flipping fantastic. :) i think our phototransistors would've looked extremely bad if it wasn't for team 07's help.

we decided to blow off workshop 4 and instead got assignment 3 checked off. the robot didn't work as well as it did in the video, but it was enough for us to get checked off. we also purchased 4 more motors just in case we need them later.

time to start building the real robot. :)

ouch! charlie bit me...

i woke up this morning on my futon, with my pillow under my head, and a blanket covering me. what's interesting is that i definitely went to sleep on my bed, with my pillow under my head, under my covers. apparently i can now sleepwalk with my pillow.

assignment 3 is due tomorrow, so cindy and emily met this morning to begin some of the construction of our pseudo-robot. when i met up with them for lunch at cosi they had built the gear box and the motor mounts, which looked very good. i would've much rather done that than finish up two western blots at work. (by the way, 1 out of 2 worked! 50% success rate...heck yea!)

cindy went back to lab for a few hours and soldered some more of our sensors, and then tag-teamed emily and me before she ran off to watch the celtics beat the trailblazers. emily and i fiddled with the gear boxes some more in the course 6 lab, and petek came to visit! petek, by the way, gives amazing lower back massages. :) then emily and i camped out on the floor of my room to finish construction of the robot. note to self: remember how to brace the motor mounts to beams, or forget the motor mounts and stick tape on the motors.

motor mounts/bracing

emily programming, and the lovely state of my floor

after a full day of work, we got our robot built, our legos braced, and our code running. throw in monday's episode of american gladiators, an entire plate of dropped noodles, and cheese dip and crackers, and i'd call it a successful day. :D

p.s. did you know that british babies speak in british accents? :P

soldering and such

i overslept. again. *sigh.

i walked into work at around 9:40 (an hourish after i usually do), and learned that our weekly group meeting had been moved to 10am. since i was late getting to work, and my experiments were going to take all day, i decided to skip the meeting. here's the exchange that i had with my supervisor when he came into the cell culture room after the meeting:

me: how was the meeting?
sean: *looks around* you can't tell anyone this yet...
me (thinking. GAH. the one meeting i go to and i miss all the exciting stuff...)
sean: aileen quit.

(aileen = the head of our group)

it was a jaw-dropping, shell-shocking moment. for me at least. but i am just the summer/iap intern so i'm not really in the loop.

anyway, me getting into work = me leaving late. i apologize to cindy and emily who were busy tooling away in the course 6 labs. or trying to get our evil happyboard to work.

we attended workshop 3 tonight, which was infinitely more entertaining because team 07 (jeremy, jake, kelly) was there as well. tonight's project: attach wires and headers to our sensors, and get them to work on our happyboard. life would've been much easier if only our happyboard was not evil, and did not print random letters and sad faces all the time. cindy managed the soldering iron, emily tried fixing the happyboard, and i got to play with legos.
:) we make an excellent team, if i say so myself. whether we actually make a functioning robot is a completely different story.

the one sensor that took us forever to make was the breakbeam sensor, and that was probably because i soldered it. i also managed to melt some of the plastic on the sensor because i wasn't paying attention to where i put the iron, and burn my left index finger. then cindy took over, and everything went a lot faster. i think we ended up working on the sensor for 45 minutes...

cindy's amazing soldering drive caused her to solder the wires on the motors together

we left lab at 11. i have a sinking feeling that this is going to become a habit.

we are so in over our heads

1/14: first snowfall of 2008

assignment 2 was due tonight (assignment 2 = strategy and timeline for our robot) so we met in the student center before going to workshop 2 to finish it up. cindy decided to rename the arm of sabotage (an arm that reaches into our opponents 4 point bin and scoops out their balls) to the raccoon arm of sabotage, a change that was rejected by emily. she doesn't dig the bandits.

we trekked down to lab for workshop 2, which was about building with legos. unfortunately, knight, the organizer leading the workshop, had seen a bunch of people's robots and was happy with them, which meant that he shortened his talk. emily, cindy, and i looked around the room and saw a bunch of groups with the bulk of their robots built -- and i think we each felt a sinking feeling in our stomachs. we were supposed to build a robot already??? where on the course website does it say that?!?

the three of us sat down for the next hour and a half and created a 10FLUx10FLU cube that could be dropped from 6 feet and not break. it was one of the exercises on the workshop 2 handout, but i think we were the only group who did this. after multiple unsuccessful drops, we finally got one to work. the corners of these legos are now a little bent -- some could call them battle wounds. :)

we turned in our assignment to knight, who proceeded to ask us questions about our strategy and what motors/sensors we were planning on using. now, i don't know what the other groups strategies were, or how course 6 students think about these things, but at one point, knight read the section on our arm of sabotage and stood and laughed for a good 30 seconds. we kind of looked uncomfortably at each other as this happened. he drilled us about our strategy, shot down a few of our ideas, and we walked away thinking "we are so in over our heads."

i think we will be happy if we create a robot that just moves and deposits balls. or if we can successfully complete assignment 3.

strategery

oh cowboys... :(

emily and cindy came by after practice to discuss assignment 2. practice ended at 5, and the cowboys-giants game started at 4:30, so i was slightly distracted when we talked about the strategy for our robot. we ended up deciding that our robot would traverse its way around the board once, depositing balls into the correct bins along the way and then go to our opponents 4 point bin and scoop their balls out of that bin. the way we would do the last part was to build an arm of sabotage that would reach over the wall of the board and scoop out the balls like a shovel. we would leave the skunk ball alone.

the cowboys game ended with tony romo throwing an interception in the end zone. cindy had the "brilliant" idea of naming our robot tony romo, because he comes through during the regular season but can't pull it out in the playoffs. i thought that was a terrible idea. then we proceeded to watch the botched field goal from last year's cowboys-seahawks game. :(

our robot is not going to pull a tony romo.