During my daily Stumbles around the internet (when I should probably be doing homework), I came upon one website LivingSocial. Well, that’s not entirely true as I came upon their TV section, but same difference, eh? Upon pondering whether I should register to see how this social networking site, I realized, everything seems to have a social networking site these days. I’m not saying that because their homepage covers lots of things, but rather there are truly lots of social networking sites.
I mean, it seems that EVERYTHING in our lives can be made into a social networking site, if it does not in fact already have one. We’ve got Digg and Reddit for our news. EBay and Craigslist for our garage sales. LibraryThing and now LivingSocial for our books. There is Facebook and MySpace for our friends. Also a few pet sites for animal socializing. The list literally goes on, for a long way (really, the world is huge, and the intenet is who knows how big).
Don’t take me wrong, I’m all for social networking. It is fantastic to have the ability to get opinions, details, suggestions, and what not from people across the world. But you have to think, isn’t it a just a bit too social? What about this thing called “life” and “real world”? Seems as though you have “life interaction” as one big monster truck and then the Internet’s social networks as all these little tiny vehicles ranging from bikes to Hummers all trying to play chicken.
Note that, LivingSocial gets bonus points for having several social “uses” in one, but I still like the other ones for functionality….
Posted in Life, Technology.
Tagged with books, digg, friends, internet, librarything, livingsocial, movies, myspace, people, site, social, tvshows, website, world.
“Did I mention it also doubles as a ray gun?”
Our mentor gets way to creative. He made this for our own hosted robotics competition which will go off this Saturday. It shall be fun. I want to keep the away though, I mean who wouldn’t? It just looks cool…
Posted in Misc, Robotics.
Tagged with 1261, first, Misc, parts, ray gun, robolions, robot, robotics, trophy, vex.
After I posted my time and date GeekTool “hack”, I was interested in how to get the weather nicely down at the bottom of the screen much like the original author did for Windows. I tried with shell scripts, but with my little experience as a shell scripter (I should know it, yeah, yeah) that quickly crashed into the ground (well not exactly, tommorrow’s weather is full of “<br />Partly”).
Today I stumbled upon (not sure if I actually used Stumble Upon or what), a little one line script on how to get tomorrow’s weather in a not exactly original, sentence format! The link for this one-liner can be found here at MacOSXHints. I, myself, placed the text direcetly ontop of my dock, so I can see it via Firefox or quickly using Expose. Kudos to MacOSXHints!
Posted in Mac OS X.
Tagged with geektool, hacks, mac, Mac OS X, osx, script, shell, terminal, tips, tricks, weather.
Dad and I had a chance today to take a look at the new FIRST Robotics Competition control system at Georgia Tech courtesy of the RoboJackets. We learned lots of things and thank the RoboJackets and other Georgia Beta-Test teams for giving us the opportunity.
Several things that stood out to me were many things. Some of them include:
- The system implements two different types of autonomous modes now. There is one (the normal, old) one that just loops over and over again and then there is another type which just runs, no looping. Not exactly sure what they meant by that but I will email them and see if I can get more of a specific answer.
- The new “languages” (C++ and Labview) provide much more of a packaged, library oriented code development. All functions such as encoders, gyroscopes, solenoids, etc… are pre-packaged from the code and don’t require taking other code (unless you want to).
- Switching from LabView to C++ coding (on the robot) takes all of 10 seconds. However, LabView code cannot become C++, but C++ code can to a point be entered in LabView.
- There are two separate modes of downloading programs to the robot. One is by flashing the RAM within the cRio (compact Rio) with the compiled program (providing a quick, easy download good for debugging and such). However, the downside to that is, it is only in the RAM - therefore will not be there after turing the power off. Full “burning” of the program to the robot takes only a few more seconds and will last until you get rid of it.
- The new camera performs very well and is MUCH better than previous years. However, the code for it in C++ has yet to be finalized (barely any of that code works right now), but hopefully will be finished and shinny when all pre-ordered teams get their new system.
- All code is designed to be easily run out of the box, spite a few modifications if needed. All code in C++ is now object-oriented, all sensors, motors, etc…
- Apparently we are allowed to have a laptop at the controller station with a specific LabView dashboard to view anything we want. Not sure if there will be any rules on this, but sounds pretty useful.
- Autonomous now has access to game timers (autonomous, teleop, and total game time elapsed) for more even more fun autonomous codes. Supposedly it might have access to the other teams on your alliance, but no one had tested that code yet or anything.
I can’t wait to get our early delivered control system in December.
Posted in Robotics.
Tagged with c++, college, control, december, first, ga tech, gatech, labview, programming, robojackets, robot, robotics, system.