States

Todays the big day, and i can't be there. All the work and hours lead up to this, and I can't be there. The most exciting moment of this journey yet, and I can't be there. It's honestly my own fault that I can't be there. As much as it sucks to be stuck at home today, it's my own fault. With the end of the trimester just around the corner i let assignments build up on me in all my classes. So rather than being out with the team I'm inside with my face buried in books an old assignments. I can only hope that today goes well as I spend the entirety of my day stressing about it. Hopefully the team puts on a show again at this competition and makes it to nationals so that i get a chance to make it up to them.

Change

Looking back on it now this experience has been great but I could have made it better. To start I would have made myself far more familiar with Robot C programs so that i would be able to help the team, not only on a building and odd-job level, but on a more in depth programming level as well. That in mind, I could have also put much more effort into studying programming along the way. Maybe I wouldn't be able to contribute on the programs as much as some of my other teammates, but that would have at least put me in a position to help. Above all i would have voiced my opinions a little stronger. Perhaps it was do to my lack of knowledge on what we, as a first year high school team were capable of, or maybe just my lack of confidence in what i had to say; either way I regret not being more assertive with my ideas. This post is in no way meant to discredit the experience I had, more so it is meant to help me reflect on what i personally have to improve upon in the future when in similar group scenarios.

Qualifier: Part 2

Finally our hard work sees its first true payoff! After our tough loss in the semifinals at the last tournament we bounced back stronger than ever. We hit the drawing bored creating a new arm, tightening our wiring, writing more efficient autonomous programs, and finally our most under rated improvement was improving upon our driving skills. In the first competition we we thrown off by every unexpected variable on the field, from blocks, to down wires, all the way to a wheel popping off. This time, however, we were ready. Managing every obstacle and dominating the competition on every level. In addition to being a member of the winning alliance, we won the award for most creative and innovative design, and placed second for our programing and the inspire award. Since most of you aren't familiar with the competition I'll explain: the inspire award is the most prestigious of awards going to the team with most all around excellence and all finalist for the award qualify for states automatically. So when you break it down we went from a disastrous tournament to qualifying for states in 3 separate categories, stay tuned to see where our underdog story goes.

I Built a Cart

After a much appreciated five day weekend we got right back into the swing of things today as we put the finishing touches on our robot and began the final testing ad debugging stages of the autonomous programs. Being that I am borderline useless when it comes to programing I found myself sitting aside staring at what was little more than a two layers of wood on four wheels. I then had the idea to convert it  into the two layer cart we needed as opposed to spending 100$ or more on a new one. I initially intended on putting the project off until tomorrow, but my teammate, Magic Mike as I like to call him, got me off my lazy butt and convinced me to get started. I surprised even myself when I not only started but finished the cart today with the exception  of swapping out the current clunky wheels for some omni directional wheels, which will not only make the cart easier to turn but slim it down enough to fit through a single door. All the little things seem to be coming together as we enter the home stretch before our competition on February 8th.

Progress Update

This past week we have made some of the greatest progress on our robot since we started it way back in september. We have redesigned and perfected or basket so that we can pick up 8 blocks per minute as apposed to our former average of two. Our arm also makes hanging more fluid and reliable now that we use a hook instead of our basket the actual basket and made the arm lighter. We've also made tremendous progress on our arena as we completed and tested on it for the first time. The way we're going now I'm confident in saying we will dominate our next competitions coming up in February.

Noah's Organization as seen by the Mac

I'm Noah's computer, and although on the surface he may seem organized there are plenty of things he could improve upon. His desktop gives the illusion that he has perfect organization with a separate folder for each class, but thats where it ends. Within those folders he has no sub folders and rarely names his documents as they relate to the unit. His method may not be too much of an issue now but i fear that when when finals come I'll be the one to suffer as he relentlessly slams on my keyboard trying to get through to the proper documents and assignments. He has no idea I hijacked his blog but hopefully he'll read this soon and get himself together.

Guest Blogger

Hi, I'm Noah's mom and I'm excited he finally let me see his blog to understand a little bit more what he's working on during and after school. Before reading this I though that him and his team had some kind of instruction manual to go off of but now it's clear to me that they are making their game-ready machine completely from scratch. I am both surprised and proud of what he has created so far.