There’s going to be a Maker Faire in Ottawa November 6th & 7th! If you’re around during that time, come see our beautiful capital and our crazy cool hacks! For more info, check out Artengine.

Yay!!!!

It’s okay-ish. A lot of bugs. I won’t be surprised if I downgrade haa! Plus, the maps plugin that showed who was currently online doesn’t work anymore… ;(

The SciFi mag has Chuck in it… coool!!

That made my day! Definitely worth paying the $30 for shipping. At least I got a prize!! (Remember: I wasn’t even eligible to enter this competition) =P!

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So yeah… my robot (MANOI, with the Arduino-SSC-32 to Processing program) WAS working, now it isn’t. I’m not entirely sure what I changed :X! Debugging again and again…

I’m just looking at the Machine Learning course now… it looks pretty fun – definitely worth checking out

SEE

The last place I went to while in California was the JPL! It was really amazing! Our tourer works on Deep Space. Uber cool!

Click continue reading to see the pics

That’s all the pictures I took! It was so amazing there. I’m not exactly sure what my favourite parts were… probably seeing the giant MSL banner, seeing a model of a MER and seeing the test site of a MER, watching people in their bunny suits, and just taking it all in! Hopefully one day I will be able to go back there…

At first, I thought the movie was medium… it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. The whole dystopian/furturistic evolution of people as they became more dependent on technology really freaked me out. The hover chairs and BNL were the main sources of that. They should have taken better care of the planet- cans could have been recycled, along with all the other garbage.
One of the quotes that stands out in my mind is…

Auto: “On the Axiom, you will survive”
Captain: “I don’t want to survive, I want to live!”

But… everyone is really liking it – except for me!! WHYy? I think I figured it out…
If I didn’t know about dystopian societies, like in Handsmade Tale, 1984, Brave New World… then I wouldn’t have thought that it would be dystopian (which I automatically connect with BAD) but instead, futuristic.
If I wasn’t anticipating a cheesy ‘Hello Dave’ joke with Auto, I wouldn’t have been disappointed, ha.
If I didn’t know that creating robots with emotions as complex as in Eve & WALL-E, then I wouldn’t have taken a ‘that’s almost impossible’* attitude.
*it’s actually not too much ‘that’s almost impossible’, it would just need complex AI, even a form of general AI.

I could go on, but really the point is is that WALL-E is a really awesome movie if I didn’t know… . Now that I realize that, it is a pretty good movie I’m for sure buying the 3 DVD set.

The soundtrack is amazing too… everyone should spend the extra few dollars to buy it in real

I arrived back on Tuesday, and Stanford and the JPL was amazing. DisneyLAND was okay but I prefer EPCOT!

I don’t have internet though, since my Dad didn’t/can’t pay the bill. I hope to buy my own internet soon so I can post all of the stuff that I want to The only internet that works is through his iMac, so it’s really ethernet not wireless internet

Thanks everyone that helped send me there, it was a blast. There was a theme song for EBF – you can check out my remix for it here: http://robotgrrl.com/coke-and-veggies-remix.mp3
More details to come!!

I hope it lands, but it does use retro rockets instead of airbags… so if they do pull it off, well done to them!

NASA TV starts broadcasting the event at 6:00pm EDT. I can’t wait!!!

There are a few things that I want to talk about in this entry… so here goes!

1. Styrobots – I’ve had 2 Styrobots up on Etsy since May 17th! They’re only $20, and the money goes towards my Robotics Fund, which will go towards my Stanford EPGY AI Program tuition, or to books and parts. They are irresistibly cute, so if you can, please buy one! I’ll be adding more this weekend, assuming homework doesn’t attack me (there is a good chance that it will and may)
2. Rube Goldberg Project – I have been working with my friend to build this immense Rube Goldberg project! The purpose was to light a candle. Here are some pictures of it…
   

   t="97" alt="Project at school" class="imageframe" />

   There was a problem though, whenever I tried capturing it on my camera, the candle would not light. However, when the camera was off, it would light! When we brought it to school, it didn’t light. It felt like an immense waste of time, considering we had so much and we couldn’t even fulfill the objective. I liked building it, but I didn’t like setting it up. Hopefully this knowledge will be useful, someday!

3. 507 Mechanical Movements – This book looks very interesting, I should buy it after I buy Cynthia Breazeal’s book ‘Designing Sociable Robots’
4. Remember that Paper Cylon contest that I made a robot for? Turns out it’s only for US Residents. Lame! Haha, at least I tried though.
5. Homework. There’s a lot of it! It’s reducing my rate of productivity. (Go figure)