Peachtree Regional FIRST Robotics Competition 3/27/14 - 3/29/14

The culmination of our work all comes down to the big competition, Peachtree Regional. This competition/tournament is the chance for you to qualify to go to World Championships in St. Louis, Missouri. Photo creds to Jim Holbel and GaFIRST. Here's what Peachtree was like:

FIRST Robotics Competition Team Toaster Tech 5332 4/4/14

As many of you may know robotics is my life. Well not really but it;s something I'm incredibly passionate about it. Everyone of my college mentors laughs when I tell them how many hours I spend in a machine shop design a robot that can play games that are taller and heavier than me and I have no interest in becoming an engineer. And yet here is my family of nerds and weirdos:

This was our main shooter and intake claw.

The preliminary drive train. 

Jasmine working on mounting limit switches to make the software send messages to our motors to stop when the switches were triggered. 

Putting on final touches to Toasti!

We were really lucky to get to run the robot on the practice field before competion.

Here are some of our amazing mentors from left to right: Tyler, Casey, Mick, Rohan, Jevawn, and Ben. 

For the last week before we were supposed to bag up the robot we spent sever all nighters at the GaTech shop. This was taken at about 4am. L to R: Me, Casey, and Ben. 

In the FIRST Robotics Competition there are a lot of improvises pieces when we don't have the money to but specialized one. Here's Jevawn sad that we had to slot a piece of angle bracket because the holes kept being drawn in the wrong spot. 

Bag Day at midnight! The robot would go in on February 18 and wouldn't come back out until March 27 at our competition: Peachtree Regional.

Throughout the season you have to stay loose and unstressed because if you let the stress get to you in the 6 weeks you will crumble. Ben's way of doing this was through the ever present duck face. :)

Life in stills 4/14 Pt. 2

So here we go part two! Winter ushered in lots of acceptance letters. 11 to be exact... so I was 11 for 11 with my colleges. I got into more than I could ever choose from: New College of Florida, Eckerd College, Stetson University, College of the Atlantic, Juniata College, Allegheny College, Beloit College, Coe Collge, Hendrix College, Northland College, and Knox College. Whew! Anyways, these are all pretty tiny liberal arts school that are some public and some private but they all have one similar trend. They are god awful expensive. So, to remedy the problem I applied for a TON of scholarship programs. Trouble was, was that I am required to be at more of the competitions which means a plane flight and loss of school days but it's been worth it. I definitely couldn't have come to some of the conclusions that I have now if I hadn't been to the school. Brochures and fliers can't tell you the vibe that's around the school and how well you fit in. They don't tell you you're maybe going to realize that some people believe vegetarian food means, "just add MORE CHEESE AND PASTA". No sirs, when you hear vegetarian you do not hear cheese you hear vegetables. What happened to that novelty? So here's so college shots in no particular order put hopefully lumped together per college:

Oh physics departments... you're so sweet. 

And snarky!

Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Despite the amount of snow that is present in February in Iowa these people know how to deal with with snow. I must have seen more trucks with snowplows hitched to the front than I saw people!

Landing in Cedar, Rapids.

You can't see it from the picture but instead of "24/7" or "AM/PM" package stores at gas stations they are fans of "Casey's Corner"

Descending into Iowa.  

So I got into New College of Florida. I probably posted about this before but it was probably the best acceptance I got.  I mean sunglasses and a tshirt and confetti? I can't pass that up.  

I went down to DeLand, FL to visit Stetson University with my godparents Henry and Lynne.  

I gotta say, my hotel room location has a pretty good view of the sunset. 

A jam packed road side attraction that we stopped at. 

While in Florida we met up with one of Henry's old college friends (they had both attended Stetson "back in the day"). Jim took us on the grand tour and I got to check off seeing a live manatee in the wild off my bucket list at Blue Spring State Park. 

Jim, his wife Mary, and their daughter who was a year younger than me, Cayley to Silver Springs to ride in a glass bottom boat and hear about some of the local native American history. 

Landing in Dallas, Texas for my end flight to Conway, Arkansas

The green in the lake as we flew over Arkansas was a result of a mineral leak at a abandoned quarry. 

Hendrix College in Conway, AK had a ton of cool tech stuff including a really affordable 3D printer in one of their computer labs!

So Arkansas... well really southerners in general have a... ermmm classy way of naming things. Hendrix College is located between the Pickles Gap Village and Toad Suck Road.

Lastly, I went back to the good only Wisconsin. Here's Lake Michigan. This trip was to visit Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin.   

While I was in Wisconsin I was able to meet up with a ton of Conserve people! L to R: Zeki, Russ, Teahelahn, Maia, Me, Luke, Genna, Brooke, Jusin, Kaia.

Zeki, Maia, and I went to Kopp's Famous Frozen Custard

This girl, Maia, is one of the greatest people I have ever met. She was my room mate at Conserve and is a bundle of laughs and philosophy. On the last day that I was in Milwaukee we went to a tiny hole in the wall Chinese restaurant and at spicy eggplant. I haven't had that as much fun and been that at peace with myself that weekend since Conserve School. <3 

Twitter is not all bad 3/4/14

Google is a pretty cool place. I'm not the biggest fan of Twiter. In fact I typically avoid it like the plague, BUT this guy Derek Nichols tweeted a picture of his 14 year old brother, Jordan's, poem. Here it is:

Our generation will be known for nothing.

Never will anybody say,

We were the peak of mankind.

That is wrong, the truth is

Our generation was a failure.

Thinking that

We actually succeeded

Is a waste. And we know

Living only for money and power

Is the way to go.

Being loving, respectful, and kind

Is a dumb thing to do.

Forgetting about that time,

Will not be easy, but we will try.

Changing our world for the better

Is something we never did.

Giving up

Was how we handled our problems.

Working hard

Was a joke.

We knew that

People thought we couldn't come back

That might be true,

Unless we turn things around

(Read from bottom to top now)

Reading from bottom to top, the poem reads:

Unless we turn things around

That might be true,

People thought we couldn't come back

We knew that

Was a joke.

Working hard

Was how we handled our problems.

Giving up

Is something we never did.

Changing our world for the better

Will not be easy, but we will try.

Forgetting about that time,

Is a dumb thing to do.

Being loving, respectful, and kind

Is the way to go.

Living only for money and power

Is a waste. And we know

We actually succeeded

Thinking that

Our generation was a failure.

That is wrong, the truth is

We were the peak of mankind.

Never will anybody say,

Our generation will be known for nothing.

Life in stills 3/3/14 Pt.1

Hello and a good day to you! It's been three months and I haven't posted anything. I wish that "life got a in way" was always a good excuse but alas it is not. So what have I been up to in the last three months. Well life has gotten crazy for sure. Let's see if I can capture this in pictures in installments. Pt. 1 robotics:

In October we went at Toaster Tech FIRST Robotics Competition team 5332 to sell toast as a fundraiser and for networking for sponsors. At this point we were still trying to obtain sponsors for the upcoming season.

The game reveal happened and it turned out that we would be playing Aerial Assist that is played with a 2ft in diameter ball that passes to over robots on the same alliance, shoot into a high and/or low goal, catch balls, and shoot over a 6 foot tall truss that hangs over the middle of the field for points. 

So it turned out that we did get mentorship from the GT RoboJackets like we did in previous years despite the change of team status. We also share the shop this year with Westlake High School (also an Atlanta FRC team). This is my team's head mentor Jevawn.  He's pretty awesome and jokes around a lot but also is incredibly smart too. He gets very sad when power tools are used incorrectly!

Here are the two of the greatest guys I know. Casey is the one in the blue hoodie and Ben is the one in the corner with the duck face and alligator clips laced under his nose. They are quite the pair when they are together but also hilarious. This particular selfie was taken on the last weekend of build season at about 3am on Saturday. That weekend I was in the shop more than I was out of it. And the only times when I was out of it was when I left to sleep for a few hours only to return. The point of a sign in sheet was nonexistent. 

Part of robotics is using CAD (computer aided design) to dimension and design the robot before you begin to physically make it. This is a rendering of one of the final iterations of this year's robot. 

Here's it is... Toasti the robot. The guy on the computer on the right is Tyler one of the new mentors but super cool. He's kind of a all in a one. He knows how to program (His specialty. He's a computer science major at GT), CAD, mechanically design things, and knows FIRST well. 

At the end of the 6 weeks you are required to bag your robot and stop working on it. The caveat being because of all the weather that you'll see in later pictures prevented almost a weeks worth of work at the shop you are allowed a withholding allowance of 45lb worth of robot. To give some scope the max weight of a bot is 120lb. We bagged it February 18th at midnight (the deadline) just in time!