shipping up to boston.
Greetings from not-Boston! I am home after a week-long tour of Boston and boy do I have a lot to talk about! There were cupcakes and lots of walking and snowstorms and libraries, but this particular post isn't about any of these things, oh no. This post is about the tech.The main purpose of this trip was to attend the NE Linux Festival at Harvard. Though I've been interested in it for quite some time, I am still pretty new to Linux and a lot of the talks were rather specialized so I spent most of my time hanging out at the Hacker Public Radio (HPR) booth.
For those of you that don't know, HPR is a podcast created by you, the listener. Though they prefer podcasts to be related to hacking or tech culture in some way, shows can really be about anything that interests you. And no, there isn't a time limit, shows range from just a few seconds to two hours long. Yeah, I heard that spiel a lot.
At the Fedora booth I had fun playing around with Scratch on their XO Laptop. I would really like to get one for myself to use in the classroom and as a spare computer to mess around with, but they are impossible to purchase outright. They were created as part of a project that wants to get a laptop into the hand of every child and honestly, I can't even figure out how schools go about obtaining them though a few in the United States have. They are built to be durable and seem perfect to have around for days when my students want to look up a photo of something they want to animate or teach me how to use Scratch. Usually I just hand them my work computer which is far from ideal. Ah well, the search continues.
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| Free as in freedom, not as in beer. |
Open source doesn't necessarily mean monetarily free, it means freedom. Freedom to see the code, even freedom to alter the code as you deem necessary, and freedom to build off another's code and redistribute it. You don't get that with Microsoft, you don't get that with Apple, heck, you don't even get that with your free e-mail address from Yahoo. You pay for their products and yet you can never truly own them, you are bound by their rules. If you speak Portuguese, but need to use a proprietary program that only comes in English, you are out of luck and good luck trying to contact them if something goes wrong. Open source changes all that.
Open source software allows small businesses to get low-cost business solutions that are tailored specifically to their needs and that service is invaluable. That's what people are willing to pay for, service.
Here are some key points from his talk:
A universities job is not to teach you to get a job, it is to teach you how to think and learn so you can adapt and learn as technology changes. School should create life-long learners and if you are going to survive in this industry, you should be one. (A life-long learner, not a school.)
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| HPR's Pokey & NYBill interviewing maddog |
- Prototype
- Don't be afraid to fail
- Use the right words when talking to clients
Most of all, remember:
"You don't pay the brain surgeon for twelve minutes in the operating room. You pay them for their twenty years of experience."
The other talk I heard was by Klaatu on Sunday, "Get Git in Three Easy Steps" and boy was Git got! Git is an open source version control system used by a wide range of companies and projects such as Google, Twitter, Linkedin, and Netflix and it is available for all three operating systems. It is meant to be used in the terminal, but there are also GUI versions for those who are more visually inclined.
For those of you who are still hung-up on what a version control system is, it keeps track of every version of your file without actually having multiple projects with slight variations of the title. Yes gone are the days of jessProject.docx, jessProject1.docx, jessProjectFinal.docx, and jessProjectFinalforrealz.docx littered across the desktop. Git keeps it all together for you and even allows for collaborators, much like Google Doc.
The most important commands to know:
git init . --> starts a project in git using a preexisting folder
git add --> adds a file into git
git add . --> adds every file already existing in a preexisting folder
git commit --> commits the file to git's memory and allows you to add a note so you know what changes were made in this particular version
git log --> shows what you have added to git
git status --> shows what has changed (if anything) since your last commit
git checkout --> allows you to switch to an older version of your file
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By the time the festival ended Boston's St. Patrick's Day Parade had already begun so traveling back into the city was out of the question. Thankfully, I prefer robots to drunken revelers anyway, so off to the MIT Museum it was!
It's just $8.50 for adults and admission is free between 10 am - 12 pm on Sunday's. The first floor isn't too exciting, there was a small exhibit on slide rules and a bunch of kiosks highlighting current projects taking place at the University. Most of it wasn't very interesting to me, but I did take rigorous notes at the video game kiosk. There patrons were given the opportunity to play games developed at the Singapore - MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. The display showed the process students went through as they developed their games and even provided original notes from the students. Perhaps the most interesting sounding of the games was AudiOdyssey, a game designed for both blind and sighted players. It was impossible to get near the games themselves as children never adhere to silly things like three minute limits. I can't say that I blame them.
The second floor was where the real excitement was at. The hallway adjacent to the steps is filled from floor to ceiling with old Polaroid cameras. They have every type imaginable. Really, there's even one that looks like a box of McDonald's french fries! What I found most interesting wasn't a camera at all, but a pair of goggles. Apparently Polaroid was in the eyewear business before they ever began making cameras. Look! I even found a wikipedia article about it for you!
There were so many robots featured that I can't even figure out where to begin. I have just about written the entirety of this blog post, but I have left this particular paragraph blank. What can I say? It was amazing!
There was an entire section about re-inventing the knee. In the display case there were robots that seemed impossible. One was designed like a monopod kangaroo another had no knees at all. Surely they must fall over! How silly of me to doubt technology, not only could they move, they could jump! The robot with no knees to speak of had telescoping legs that allowed it to do backflips and the kangaroo's tail allowed it to balance just so.
In another glass case was Kismit, an emotive robot that uses multiple sensory inputs to interact with humans. It was a lot of fun trying to count all of Kismits servos and sensors.
Towards the end of the exhibit was a drawing station asking children to create a robot they would like to see following the prompt:
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| Pictured: Empathy robot Not Pictured: Murder robot |
What would you like robots and computers to do...
- for you?
- for your family?
- for your community?
- for your world?
Once again, MIT reconfirms my lesson plans! What is it about this place and these people? More importantly, do you think I can get work to pay for this vacation?
In the next room was an exhibit entitled: Gestural Engineering: The Sculpture of Arthur Ganson. Looking at some of the older pieces I had a sense of deja vu, as if I had seen them before back when I was in my intermediate school art club, however I can't be sure. Almost all of Ganson's work requires participation on the viewers part, whether they must turn a crank, press a pedal, or push a button. Then you must wait for the magic to unfold. My favorite piece relied entirely upon the viewer, it t'was a buggy that when pushed seemingly caused little metal tubes to squiggle and squirm across a field of blue carpet. His work is both whimsical and a bit frightening. Discarded baby dolls dance on wires high above the ground while a wish bone is forced into servitude, carrying the burden of a wire machine, and a feather touches a violin, ever so gently.
The next room should have excited me, but after Ganson's work where I could see how each wonder was made, what followed simply bored me. I might just be dull, but for the life of me I cannot figure out how holograms work. I saw them utilized during CNN's 2008 election coverage, but even then I couldn't understand the hype. Some of the holograms MIT featured were fascinating, the one that immediately leaps to mind is an image that you can only see when standing just so. It's not just one image either, it is a slew of photos playing in rapid succession, each of another person taking your photo. Perhaps it's the film student in me, but I rather liked that one.
The best part of the museum wasn't even on the map. The bathrooms within the museum were undergoing renovations so patrons with full bladders were directed through a door into a nondescript hallway. Venturing into the bathroom was uneventful, but coming out was like stepping through the looking-glass. So easy to pass up on the way in, but impossible to miss upon exiting, was a miniature village with a surprise! The windows in a skyscraper light up and allow passers-by to play TETRIS.
Venturing further, one discovers a door covered with stickers and opened just enough to tempt a curious mind. Inside MIT students were busy at work creating who knows what. Every surface was covered with various odds and ends, a bicycle wheel spoke here, metal armatures there, and wires, boy were there wires. Walking in the opposite direction of make-spaces and tiny TETRIS buildings lands you right in the middle of a jam session comprised of approximately six people all sitting in the hallway playing what appeared to be xylophones. Yes, my friend, MIT is a wonderful, magical place.
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Robot - Chassis
Making a robot move around is a lot more difficult than it sounds especially when you don't have lots of fancy hardware at your disposal. Thankfully, I do have an unlimited supply of Legos!
1. Assemble Legos
2. Find wheels that fit perfectly on the rod without moving around.
3. Discover that you have only two of the exact wheel you need, but you need at least three.
3. Go on a late-night shopping trip to Target to find a kit that has the wheels you need
3b. Discover said kit costs $80
4. Go to The Home Depot to buy a hot glue gun
5. Return home and realize that robotics is more arts and crafts based than you could've ever expected
Okay, really though, here's what you need to make this work using Legos.
1 Motor
1 Hummingbird Kit
Axel
For this you need at least two cross axels. Timmy technically takes four of varying sizes, held together with connectors. The size of your robot will also determine how long of a cross axel you need. Put the axel through a modified 2x2 with two bottom holes. This will allow you to connect it to the rest of the chassis and yet maintain the ability to rotate. Do the same with the back wheels. You can place a 1/2 bush on either side of the modified 2x2 to hold it in place.
4 Lego Tires
The front tires MUST be firmly attached to the axel whether they stick because they fit properly or because they have been hot glued is up to you. The back tires don't have to be firmly attached, they simply exist to provide more support to the robot. These are the tires that seem to fit the axel best with no need for glue.
Pulley system
This is where it got a bit tricky. The motor itself doesn't have much room to attach anything so I had to mold an extension using Sculpy clay. The first extension was too long and uneven; the tension kept pulling the motor downwards. I also began by attaching a rubber band to the axel itself which did absolutely nothing. The final chassis utilizes a tire with the rubber part of the wheel taken off. According to Lego, this particular piece is called a pulley wheel. I sculpted another motor extension, this one is much shorter and isn't influenced as much by gravity. The motor extension has to be hot glued onto the motor, but as long as you put the glue onto the extension and not the motor it comes off painlessly when enough force is applied.
Here is the final product:
