Recent Photos

I've recently uploaded several bunches of photos on flickr. I decided to give up and go pro. That gives me two years before I need to come up with a better photo solution (although notes and the social aspects of flickr do appeal to me, the thought of needing to pay Flickr/Yahoo! ~$2 a month until the end of time does not).

I'm particularly interested in feedback on the instructions for the pneumatic walker. A finalized version of those will appear soon, and I'd like to see that version be more user friendly in addition to the model itself being more functional.

Here are the new photo sets:

• Robot Rumble 2010
• Primitive Walker Concept
• Walker I instructions (this is the one I want feedback on)
• LEGO Technique Studies (I'll probably add to this one occasionally without posting about it here)
• Joe Meno's February/March 2010 WITC
• BrickFair 2009 (previously posted to Brickapolis' flickr account - but I wanted them on mine now that I've gone pro as well)
• LEGOPalooza 2010
• Over the Rhine March 13th 2010 (proof I need concert photo tips)

NXT Holonomic Drive Idea

Holonomic drive systems are difficult to build with LEGO. I've never successfully built one myself, but I started to try once and I see it as something that will be increasingly easy to do in the future. You can already see more three-sided elements showing up in current sets that will make this an easier thing to do. I'm hoping that someone with more time to work on this will take it up and be able to use my attempt as a starting point. If you do, let me know and I'll let my readers know.

From my one given-up-on attempt, here's my contribution to this:
The idea: use 3 of these modules (of which I only ever built this one - I doubt that this exact design would actually be able to hold the weight of a frame and a battery box to power it), and only power the ones you need to go a particular direction. The ball will function as an unpowered caster until a motor is turned on in either direction. When the motor turns on, the geared bar swings down and the wheel in the middle will power the ball. This is an extreme take on the poor man's directional transmission concept, and I suspect that it won't work so well once there's more weight on it - but it's an idea. Omni wheels would probably be harder to build but function more smoothly. Personally, I really like the idea of a wheel that can be powered selectively, but I think it would need to be much sturdier and more firmly powered than this.



More photos are on flickr (I finally went pro and started cleaning up my account, which is how I remembered I never did blog these photos) at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/sets/72157623684905594/

Another Option For Used Floppy Disks

What you're looking at in this picture is a painting by British artist Nick Gentry. He's a pretty skilled painter, and he shares my interest in reusing potentially discarded items instead of letting them rot in landfills. Nick Gentry paints directly on floppy disks (some bought, some donated) and creates surprisingly evocative work, frequently with parts of the disks forming or distorting parts of the image. More pictures of his work can be found on his website (where you can also buy some of his pieces).

It looks like we do have to pay shipping (to the UK at that) if we pass along our extra floppy disks by donating them to Nick Gentry, but this is definitely an exciting alternative use for old floppies that I had not thought of before.

XKCD Comic (Stand Back - I Know Regular Expressions!)

I'm not sure why I didn't blog this earlier - it' s a bit overdue. Several months back, my boss started encouraging me to change up my office LEGO display a bit. I had brought in a set (a dump truck) and filled the back of it with a series of tubes (an obvious Ted Stevens joke that works that much better at a network company). Around Thanksgiving, I built a LEGO version of a favorite XKCD comic strip that mentioned some programming skills I'd learned on the job and enjoy using at work. The photos have been up on flickr for a bit, but I changed out my display again around Christmas break (yep, I'm still using college lingo for vacation days) and I've since brought in even more LEGO (a set of magnets that spell out a slogan). My coworkers are fairly split between people who like LEGO and people who aren't familiar with it, but nobody else is as crazy as I am. I mean, seriously, how devoted do you have to be to have this sort of working collection of sand blue bricks, Technic sets, and DUPLO parts on hand?

So anyway, here are the photos that I apparently uploaded in December but have neglected to post until now. For those of you unfamiliar with XKCD, the comic I used is Regular Expressions.

First, some link action (flickr tags are fun!) - you might find it easier to just browse these photos on flickr :
All photos from that office display
Just the XKCD photos

Or you can click on these photos below for more info (I wrote a description for each photo when I uploaded them):

It's a series of tubes!


The truck, inside the DUPLO "table" I built to let me show the truck and the comic at the same time (the Perl books in the background here and in the other photos just happens to enhance the theme - they're really in the office all the time):


Stand Back - I Know Regular Expressions!


The sufficiently panicked minifigures:


Here's how the whip and Indiana Jones' position works:


Here's a close-up of some LEGO trickery - levers positioned just right to make a sign stay in place. Oh, and I used Technic pins with studs on the end to flip the studs upside-down under the letter bricks.


Look! Coincidences!


Here's an overview shot of the entire thing (Truck, table, comic, and some office miscellanea):


This final shot of the comic seems like a good one to zoom in on to look at the details (OK, so it's a fairly simple scene, but you can have another look):


Sadly, my perl/regex related day-saving does not involve a whip...yet.

For more on this topic, check out my LMOTD round-up of XKCD comic strips built in LEGO to minifig scale.

Marathon Weeks, Post 1

This picture was taken by another NCLUG member, I forget who at the moment. You can see me tweaking the code for guitar-playing robot, though. You can also click on that picture to go to flickr, where there are more photos from LEGOPalooza. Mike Walsh has rounded up some photos and videos from LEGOPalooza over at the NCLUG site. Normally I'd be doing that sort of thing, but I've been very busy these past few weeks - the three days of LEGOPalooza have been surrounded by coursework, homework, a FOSS Fair, a two-day career fair, and a variety of smaller events and BrickLink orders.

I had a pretty interesting set-up at Palooza for my robot band (one of several displays I was "running" essentially by myself, and the only one I was able to actually keep an eye on) - a dual monitor set-up much like I got used to working on iTrust last semester (Oops, haven't blogged that yet either). I had originally planned on doing some things with LEGO Vision Command, as the previous post suggests, but I ultimately wound up putting the camera away (after a kid said "he's recording us" I realized that it's actually quite creepy to leave a camera out if you're not doing something with it) and showing off IDE's and code on the monitor facing outward.

This lead to an interesting situation - during LEGOPalooza, I spent much of my weekend talking about code, open-source, LEJOS, Bricx CC, NXC, various pbricks, etc, and not much time focusing on LEGO. During Monday (which I had written off as booked due to the FOSS Fair I attended), I wound up going to an amateur robotics meeting and talking LEGO. Not that I mind, but it's certainly unusual.

That's not even the worst of the whiplash of the past two weeks. On Saturday at LEGOPalooza, I had kids coming up to me that recognized my robotic band from my most recent appearance on the LAML Radio podcast and was asked some questions by numerous newspaper reporters (only article I've successfully dug up featuring me so far is in the Daily Tar Heel, UNC's student paper). People I'd never met before were acting like I was someone famous, and I guess in the online LEGO community, I sort of am (in spite of how few of my own models I've actually posted). On Thursday, I was at a career fair being asked if anything sets me apart from my classmates (the list of things I can actually put on a resume is surprisingly short). On the bright side, at least I had something to say when people asked if I had any embedded C experience (everybody forgets that NXT programming is technically a form of cross-compiling for an embedded device)...

I intend to post a bit more recapping this past week (LEGOPalooza in particular, since I know most people who read this are LEGO people and not software people or graduating Computer Science majors) soon, but that's probably about it for today.

One last thing, though: My family has moved suddenly twice now because of work shortly before a LEGO store has opened in our area (we lived in southern New Hampshire shortly before the first store in northern Massachusetts opened, and we moved out of Sammamish, WA, just as the Bellevue store opened minutes away from where I was attending college at the time). I've been joking for a while that Raleigh, NC will get a LEGO store as soon as I have to move away. Although I don't have any serious job offers yet, it's hard not to take the news that we're getting a LEGO store in mid-May as a sign that I'll be working elsewhere shortly after graduation (in early May). We'll see, I guess, and if I don't get something lined up by May, perhaps I'll just apply there - I certainly don't have any issue proving credentials as a LEGO nut. I'm not making any long-term plans, though, just in case I do end up moving out of the Triangle area.

LEGO Furniture - A Stool

I built a stool a few weeks back. In the spirit of rushing some things up, I've dumped some photos onto FlickR. You can see them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dp3/sets/72157606142987658/