FIRST Robotics 2023 Report - Week Three

Ideally you work out your robot design in weeks one and two (while staying busy with construction of field elements and such).  Then in weeks three and four you build the machine.  Weeks five and six are for software tweaking and the very important drive practice.

We had several good sessions in Week Two, but did not have final details hammered down.  So Week three was "make what you can" and design as you go.  

On Monday we had to make a call on whether the final machine would be 26 or 27 inches wide.  Instead of calculating center of gravity and figuring things out we took our 27 wide test bed, slapped some heavy two by fours to it and drove around with the throttle dialed up to something near full power.

It seemed to handle the test well, and at this point without the extra weight a steel base plate will add.  So the competition frame went to Robot Surgery.

Although many aspects of the robot are clearly on schedule, and for most issues solutions can be seen, I had a nagging worry as Week Three went along.  We still did not have the simple looking - but actually devious - "numbers".  Arm lengths, pivot point, attachment and angle of the actuator that moved the system.  It looked like it would work on paper.  Even in CAD.  But our trusty wooden test bed said otherwise.  Linear actuators are inherently slow but powerful.  But in our application there is an issue.  Put the mounting point close enough to the pivot to get the necessary speed and you don't have quite enough power to move the arm.  Put it farther away and you have the power but glacial movement that will not serve in competition.  So we headed into the crucial Saturday session needing one of three or four in hand alternatives to work.  And right quick.

A low speed, high torque winch working against a gas shock did the job nicely.  A few details on how to brake but not break the gearbox will be handed over to software.

It's good to see the ideal level of activity.....as many students as can get useful hands on the robot under construction.  The only adult in up close is mostly there to keep heads out of "the bonk zone" of the arm.  

Many things going on in other parts of the workshop.  Someone suggested that our test bed doing well on the field elements was due to it being very light.  OK....pile on two extra batteries and a huge brick that was around for some reason.  It just made the traction better.  Note....low speed testing only, this was held together with tape and C clamps.

Software is still doing some kind of Wizard Math.  

This time of year the end of session gets a bit cluttered.  It is - within safety parameters anyway - a marker of progress.  Here's our supply closet.  Note the control board with big colorful buttons.  It looks as if we'll have both a driver and a mechanism operator, the latter having preset buttons for the different coordinates in space for picking up and dropping off.

The wooden bumpers have to be a perfect fit to the outside of the robot frame.  Done properly they supply some extra strength and more importantly keep the robot from damaging things.  A pesky job.  Throwing away last year's edition once they'd been taken apart was a pleasure.

I think the Brick Test used up all our red tape.  So the small team working on refining the grabber arm did not have any to mark their box of Do Not Touch hardware.  They did get the skull and crossbones right though.

A good session.  A good team.  Eventually maybe a good robot.  There are still potential issues but the further along you get the more you learn.  The kid's brainstorming on the tasks for the week ahead and for alternate ways to get things done "IF" something fails is good stuff.

Learning to do this, especially with a bit of pressure from the clock....and lets just be honest, from me, is more important than anything they build out of metal.

Teaching Goats to Program

This is the longer form version of something the robotics team did as a promotional video.  Less of an experimental student film than an accurate documentary of the software industry.  The shorter "Director's Cut" will be along in a while and is really quite funny.

Time Capsule - Mittenwald

1982.  I graduated Medical school and a short time later got married.  In an era when travel was still fairly cheap we hopped on a plane and - with a stop over in Iceland - went to Europe for a while.  Was it a full month?  Memories grow dim.  But we did visit England, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg and if I recall correctly at least stepped into Austria for a day.  

We got along on a minimal budget and our our respective high school acquired language skills.  French for my bride, German for me.  The French was minimally helpful.  We were mostly in Paris and if you are not entirely fluent they make a slightly sour Gallic face and just switch to English.  I had better luck.  Germans seemed to appreciate my attempts, and perhaps back then I had more linguistic mojo than I realized.  Once in rural Luxembourg I was mistaken for perhaps being Dutch.  

The dialect might have been on my side then.  The Wolters hail from that part of the world; the western edge of Germany near the border with The Netherlands.  But if so, the tide turned when we went further south.

I'd say Germany has a "south" that drawls and creates new phrases to just as great an extent as the US.  By the time we were down past Munich I had a hard time understanding anything spoken.  Written was still fine, unless there too you ran into very local terms.

One evening we were in Mittenwald.  It is a nice little hamlet near Garmish Partenkirchen.  You can walk into Austria at one end of the village although back then wandering over borders was not automatic as it is now in Europe.  Men in vaguely worrisome military uniforms staffed customs posts.

But it was a delightful stay.  We learned a new term "geschenk" meaning gift.  Our land lady gave us some small present.  Maybe we told her it was our honeymoon.  The word for that is by the way "hochzeitreise".  A literal translation would be "high times trip".

In any case we went out to dinner there.  The restaurant was, as I remember it, in the up stairs of the local brewery.  Brauerei Mittenwald brags that it is the highest elevation brewery in Germany.  Beer was pretty good too.

The menu was incomprehensible.  Local specialties top to bottom.  Seeing us struggling a bit a nice elderly couple at the next table struck up a conversation.  Sort of.  They were talking, I was talking, but was either side understanding?  In rather short order big plates appeared.  The nice Germans had ordered for us.  They were beaming, quite happy with themselves.  Expectant smiles and everything.  I looked down at my plate and saw a huge pile of roasted mushrooms.

I hate mushrooms.

But I am polite, smiled in return, thanked them and dug in.  It was of course the best plate of mushrooms I have ever eaten as it is the only time I've every had more than a few as part of some other entrée. 

Part of the problem was the old "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".  German for mushroom is Pilz.  In a restaurant associated with a brewery any variation on Pils seems like it should get you a nice tall glass of pilsner beer or as is the case with Bavarian dishes, have beer incorporated into the sauce.

The brewery is still in business and doing well.  And there is still a restaurant associated with it but it looks like a much bigger, newer place.  It advertises that it has room for bus groups which is never a good sign but to be fair this is a major ski area in the winter.

Ah well, I came away with some memories.  And a beer coaster that turned up 40 years later during a bit of Old Person house clean up.

Historic Drug Stores of Chippewa Falls, the complete list

Having written the history of early pharmacies in Chippewa Falls in piecemeal fashion I think it would be helpful to have a "One Stop" place to link them all together.  I'll add on loose ends as they turn up.

O.C. Thomas

Thomas McBean

Eagle Drug Store

Collette Pharmacy

Dr. Fortier

Herman Dettloff

The Good Luck Drug Store

All the Other Guys

FIRST Robotics 2023 - Week Two Report

Despite losing a day to snow we had a good week.  A number of problems were identified....and we think solved.

The End Game this year involves three robots crowding together on a teeter totter and making it balance.  Our 29 inch width was not going to work.  The difficulty of the solution was rated as Low because it is easier to cut things down than to stretch them back out.  The practice frame was chopped by two inches, the motors and electronics remounted, and here it goes:

We might trim off another inch for the final version....we have to do some stability testing on the test robot.  Oh, and we can just drive sideways to the very edge.  The software team was discussing putting a sensor on the edge to tell us just how far we could go.  Half the wheel width off maybe?

Other systems are being refined.  We have an unusual arm system that is a hybrid of a linear actuator and a very high torque gear motor that drives an arm.  On the end will be a pneumatic grabber.  We are on about version 5 of the grabber and so far don't quite have it nailed.  But here in a hallway we are crowding together the arm development base, the latest grabber, and the wooden mock up of the field element that they are designed to score on.  Lots of activity.

Most years the robot has to be closely watched.  Will the frame perimeter be a little big?  Will we flirt with the 125 pound weight limit.  The answer to the first question is clearly, no.  As to the second well it is time for The Scale to start making its regular appearances.  Drive base, actuator, grabber, compressor, electronics, some allowance for aluminum structure, rivets, bolts, maybe high humidity conditions, pile 'em on and.....

Some of this is clearly done Old School with wooden mockups.  But for the final version we are generating CAD and having some elements custom laser cut.  Here's a pretty picture of part of the innards of the robot.

So far so good.  We'll need to make a final call on the frame width this week and cut the competition frame down accordingly.  Then we get to start working on the final product.

Drug Stores of Historic Chippewa Falls - All the other guys.....

Time to wrap up my survey of the drug stores of Chippewa Falls prior to 1920.  Some stories are  well documented with respected long time citizens and their businesses that spanned decades.  Others are enigmatic names that appear and quickly vanish. 

For lack of a better way to list these I'll go alphabetical with comments on approximate dates of activity.  I'm leaving out those druggists I've touched on to a greater or lesser extent in earlier posts.  I'll put together an index post with links shortly.

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The Bonneville Drug Store

1885-86 see Gaudet and Letourneau below.  Also Taylor Brothers.

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William J. Carmen

Other than a listing of this guy in the 1880 census and an occupation of "druggist" I've found nothing so far.  Perhaps he was employed by one of the stores instead of an owner.

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Frederic Fales. 

Foles and Fales are both spellings you encounter in the paper.  You get used to this with German names in particular.  Fales and Hinckley arrived in July of 1868 leasing part of L. Lashway's building to set up the second drug store in town.  In 1870 Fales moves to California on account of ill health.

I like the part about having "two live drug stores".  Before long there would be more competitors...

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 C.B. Hinckley

The other half of the Fales and Hinckley partnership.  He carried on a few more years until selling his store to Goddard and Company in 1873.  Although announcing his intention to relocate to Chicago or Milwaukee he ended up in Oshkosh were he died unexpectedly in 1874.  His store there was interestingly bought by our old friend Thomas McBean!  I think the latter gentleman was already off in his real estate career, and the complicated moving around of various druggists and stores probably was his doing.

Here's a nice item from the Metzenbauer collection.  Hinckley interestingly had a photographer's studio above his store.

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Gaudet and Letouneau

This partnership was formed in September of 1884.  Letourneau had been a prescription clerk for Urgel Collette for two years.  Mr. Gaudet is somewhat more interesting.

By February of 1885 they split up with Letourneau leaving and a Mr. F. Bonville purchasing his interest in the firm.  The business continued with the ads switched to Gaudet and Company.  By December of the same year Gaudet also left and Bonneville ran the store until it was purchased by J.A. Taylor in early 1886.

As near as I can tell L. Gaudet's first name was Ludger.  Unsurprisingly he is said to have gone by the nickname of Jack.  If I have the right guy here he had no pharmacy training at all and would have been on the business side instead of concocting prescriptions.  

Ludger Gaudet was born in Canada in 1852.  He was educated at Nicolette College then went to Rome at age 18 and spent three years as a member of the Papal Zouves!  This time period, 1870 - 73 was when the Zouves were not just ornamental but did a fair bit of actual fighting as Italy pursued re-unification at the expense of the Papal States.  Gaudet then moved to Grand Rapids Wisconsin for a while and was Deputy Sheriff there.  In 1876 he came to Chippewa Falls.  Among other things he became the City Clerk by the early 1880's and was well spoken of in that role.

I'm pretty sure this is our guy as he married a young lady named Bonneville in 1885.

In any case they left Chippewa Falls in 1892 and moved to Little Falls Minnesota.  Ludger died there in 1914 after a further career in public service and investing.  See A.J. Wilcox below for another story that involves Little Falls.  There has to be some connection.....

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Leahy and Jesson

This was a partnership from Michigan that bought out the store of Dr. Fortier in March of 1877.  I think it was only Jacob Jesson that was actually present in Chippewa Falls.  Their Cash Drug Store relocated from Fortier's location to a new building adjacent to the First National Bank in September of the same year.  The local paper observed that now all three drug stores in town were within a half block of each other.  The business did not work out as planned and in March of 1879 Jesson and his family moved back to Michigan.  He was a member of the Cornet Band which escorted them to the train and gave them a rousing musical send off.

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 A.E. Smith

From the Chippewa Herald Telegram October 8th 1897

A NEW PHARMACY

E.A. Smith to Open a Drug Store on Spring Street.

"We are pleased to announce the fact that Mr. A.E. Smith of this city is about to open a drug store to be known as "Smith's Pharmacy" at No. 18 Spring street.  Smith has been engaged in the practice of pharmacy for the last five years having charge of the south side store for the past two years...."

Other than a first name, Edward, and the tidbit that he went to Minneapolis in 1895 to take a course in pharmacy I have found little more on him.  The store still stands.

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Taylor Brothers

The Taylor brothers ran a flurry of ads in 1887.   This often heralds the launch of a new enterprise.  One of the few scraps of info refers to them being on "the North Side". They went bankrupt in August of '87.  Ryan Metzenbauer has a trade card from them:

Interestingly the brothers were Frank and Will Taylor sons of early pioneer and first Mayor of Chippewa Falls, J.A. Taylor.  Their dad bought out the stock of the Bonneville drug store in May of 1886 and turned it over to the boys to run.  In a situation very similar to the Eagle Drug store story, it does not seem to have gone well.

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A.J. Wilcox

Wilcox opened his store in 1887 as shown in this nice ad.  I like the little touch of having an electric bell to summon a night clerk.  He did not seem to make much of a splash in the competitive drug store business and by October of 1891 is was reported to be packing up his stock prior to moving to Little Falls Minnesota.  He opened his new store there in January of 1892 only to have it burn to the ground in December of the same year.  In 1893 he left Little Falls and was said to be "..traveling for a patent medicine house in Western and Pacific States."

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Withrow's Drug Store

In August of 1872 Leroy Martin sold his store to a gentleman named Withrow.  He was still running ads into 1873.  Little more is known about this enterprise although one reference was found to Neavitt and Withrow in 1872.   Interestingly the paper in December of 1872 reported:  "Dr. Sherman and Co. who have offices in Withrow's Drug Store are diligently attending to all ivories needing repair.  Go and see them."  Physicians often shared space with drug stores.  Dentists less often.

FIRST Robotics 2023 - Week One Report (Getting Unserious)

Although FIRST Robotics is a very competitive program, and our team like most is modeled on the template of a small engineering firm....well, that doesn't mean we can't have fun.

There is a tradition from Year One of competition whereby we have a whiteboard for cartooning in our pit area.  Mostly for happy "sleep tight" messages for all the robots.  Random bits of cartoon art show up here and there on scrap throughout the build season.

We are operating in a school shop area, and while the daytime users are typically not doing much with aluminum it would be really bad if somebody decided to cut up all our stock some morning.  So for a Hands Off signal, either on raw materials or partially finished parts, our policy is to apply red duct tape.

As the robot begins to take form the media/pr sub team is up to various antics.  Old bumper material with our identifying team number on it is too good to be thrown away.  One of the things that has been sewn together is this....ummm....Pageant Sash?  I agreed to model it for posterity.

I'll conclude with what might or might not be high level humor.  The discussion of how the omnidirectional drive system can become entirely fluid and accurate delves into some very complex math.  This is part of the actual discussion.  Or they are totally punking me  It's hard to tell.

Using that I get yaw as arcsin(roll/(arccos(cos(pitch)cos(roll))) or arccos(pitch/(arccos(cos(roll)cos(pitch)), which we can plug into the rotation matrix to find our x/y values.

FIRST Robotics - 2023 Week One Report (Getting Serious)

This year's Challenge has similarities to prior "pick and place" games.  In fact, our team might be a bit ahead of the curve as we have done some fairly ridiculous things in the past that have now become relevant.  Mr. Clamps grabbed big boxes.  Our 2020 robot had an auto leveling function.  Last year's Hank the Tank had an elevator and intake flipper mechanism even though there was no good reason for going this route.  And The Year of the Vacuum Bot....of that we will not speak other than to say we have built a multi articulated arm that can handle two different objects.

By Thursday we had a design:

And we have swerve drive, well, swerving....

That of course is just a temporary wood frame.  The goat, well that's complicated.

In our four sessions per week mode about half the actual work gets done on Saturday.  We get the kids for 6 hours instead of maybe 2.5.  And they are in theory rested, not dragging in after a school day.  For a team that in years prior has been between 20 and 25 students it was remarkable to have 34 students and 10 adults on hand.  Lots of hands getting lots of things done.

With the drive system now coming along very nicely it was time to build the competition frame.  In the early days of the team we worked in an old three story building.  Our goal was to build strong enough that we could drive the robot off the roof, hit the ground and keep going.

Not quite there yet....

OK, factor in these outside steel gussets, also the solid spacers inside the frame, and when we add a steel base plate and bolt the solid aluminum mounting plates for the drive modules....yep, that's about three stories tough...

The game this year involves grabbing things.  One lightweight and a bit fragile, one heavier, tough but a weird shape and slippery.  Our team prototyping this has gone through three versions to date, and has ideas for several more.  Here's a lateral slide pneumatic grabber:

This particular geometry was not ideal but gave the team ideas for the next iteration.  

The grabber will be mounted on an articulated arm as seen in the initial sketch.  Suggestions from our mechanical design gurus prompted a switch away from a Big Ol' Gearmotor based system to one that runs with electrically powered linear actuators.  Here's the test bed.  The tape marks are the various pick up and drop off zones.

Lots of things could happen.  Heck, will happen.  But with a solid drive base under us we can start driver's training in a week or so.  And we have at least proof of concept on our other major systems.  Of course there is a ton of software and sensor work ahead.  And even for the things that look to be figured out the Devil resides at his usual address.

Winged Vandals of Wisconsin

Fanciful paintings depicting the Fall of Rome often show barbarians toppling ancient columns.

It appears something similar is happening today.  Check out these holes in the tops of the porch support columns.

And a few blocks over, another example.

What gives?

Here's the culprit:

Yep, woodpeckers.  I've seen them hammering away at these columns presumably in search of bugs.  So what puts the idea into their little bird brains? 

There is a fair bit of speculation on this matter.  Obviously the tree like shape of the pillars sets off some kind of trigger for them.  Usually, but not always, this is seen on older houses where peeling paint might look like the openings to worm holes.  In some instances maybe there actually are say, ants living in there.  There is speculation that the faint hum of  electrical hookups makes some houses faintly vibrate in a fashion that gets their hopes up.  In the winter months there would be few if any actual insects moving about in there.

My own theory?  Bang your head against something hard thousands of times a day and you have the Mother of all Concussions.  Note the blank stare of the Feathered Vandal pictured above.

Joseph Fortier

I had not intended giving Joseph Fortier his own article, in some ways he belongs in my "everyone else" category that you'll see in a week or so.  But I found his story interesting.

His ads tend to be smaller and less decorative than some of his competitors.  But they contain some useful information.  As it says, he started his store in 1875.  In fact there is mention of his building an addition for this in July of that year.  But by November he moved off of Central street and over to Spring as it says into "Hinckley's Old Stand".  Or technically Goddard's although he'd only owned it a short time.  1875 was a confusing year in the tale of Chippewa Falls pharmacies.

He did not stay in the drug store trade very long.  By February of 1877 a firm called H. Bosworth and Sons took possession of the establishment.  These guys were not local, being instead a wholesale drug company based in Milwaukee.  Perhaps Fortier ran up too big a bill with them?  Or perhaps they were backing him as we have seen in the O.C. Thomas story.

Both before and after his few years as a druggist Fortier was an interesting guy.  He was a physician who came to town in 1871.  In 1874 he was one of the five founding members of the Chippewa Falls Medical Society.   In 1878 be briefly moved to the rough and tumble town of Deadwood, Dakota Territory.  By the early 1880's he was back and confining himself to medical duties.

The story of early hospitals in Chippewa Falls is a bit out of the scope of my survey of early druggists but it is worth noting that in 1888 he and another physician named Dr. J. Hund started the Chippewa Falls Hospital and Benefit Society.  This was a subscription service - think of it being like an HMO - where members had to buy a ticket.  It was based in the building of St. Luke's Hospital.

In 1893 Fortier moved to Chicago.  Sometime later he moved again, to practice medicine in West Superior Wisconsin.  He died there of "apoplexy".  His obituary says he was born in Montreal, got his MD at age 21 and practiced continuously unit his death at age 62.  He was said to have been a Civil War Army surgeon and to have left a 9 year old son.

FIRST Robotics - Ready or Not.....

Five months of pre-season prep.  It's never enough.

Saturday was our Kick off for the 2023 season.  We hosted a gathering of our team and two other "neighbors" to watch the big reveal video.

We had something in excess of 60 people on hand.  Current students, alumni of several teams, coaches, parents, a few kid siblings.  They needed feeding so we had Venisonfest 2.0.

Much time was spent in small groups discussing rules and design options.  It was interesting to mix members of the teams for this.  With five groups working we had to hijack every white board on the premises.

I'm not sure why mascot costumes fascinate me but it is just how it is.  I guess I'm not alone in this.  Various parts of the 5826 costume were being worn for no darn reason at all.

Oh, this year's challenge.  As it is not my job to figure this out I have not actually read the detailed rules yet but here is the reveal video for a general overview.

 Expect weekly FIRST robotics updates for the next three months.  

Reaching for the Brass Ring

On my dad's side of the family they were all farmers.  Certainly back in the Old Country and on into their days in Minnesota.  As I've mentioned in past bits of family history they immigrated so early that when they turned up it was still a Territory, and that they had to skedaddle at the time of the Sioux Uprising.

Life on the farm changes, but slowly.  My memories of going there as a small person center around the brick farm house - built in the 1870's - and the gigantic barn, parts of which went back to the Civil War era.

Just inside the front door of the barn was a special area set aside for bulls.  They were kept away from the rank and file milking cows.

I remember that they had brass colored rings in their noses.  I was told that in a pinch you could grab this and make the bull - within certain parameters - do what you wanted him to do.  I on occasion would reach up, grab hold of the ring and look Mr. Bull right in the eye.  His return glance was not friendly.  It gave me an odd sense of power wielded precariously. 

Before the farm was sold my brother and I, with assorted sons in tow, went to clean out scrap metal.  The kids helped with the work.  Then they got the money when we hauled it to the recycling yard.  Mostly it was tons of steel and iron, but here and there were bits of "the good stuff".  Bronze, aluminum, etc.

And there were even a few artifacts worth keeping.  Recently when doing a bit of New Year inspired tidying up I found this:

Absolutely one of the bull nose rings.  They are sturdy things with a hefty set screw holding them together.  When the ring is opened the exposed ends are pretty sharp.  This gives you a general idea of how they were put into the bull's nose but it is best not to ponder details.

In my mind "reaching for the brass ring" has always been linked to the little vignette I've just described.  But actually this is not so.  In oldy times merry go 'rounds would sometimes have a ring grab station so that riders in the outer tier of horsies could reach out and grab a ring as they went past.  Most were iron but a few would be brass and would get you a small prize.  Or maybe just another ride on the carousel.

Woke Fantasies Streaming Forth

You should hold political beliefs that are in accord with how you see the world.  I'll do the same.  Discussion is often interesting and a way to expand one's viewpoint.  But argument never really changes minds and is not a productive use of time.  This general approach means that I  appreciate perspectives different from my own, and while I might consider them curious or perhaps even misguided I don't regard them as "invalid".  

I guess that is at the core of what has come to be called "woke".  As the term has increasingly been used in a derisive sense even my Progressive friends seem to be using it less.  But the concept - that if you are a heteronormative person of a particular pigmentation and chromosomal makeup you de facto CANNOT have a valid perspective on some questions - remains.  For our culture this is unfortunate.

This has increasingly been seen in popular entertainment.  

To be clear there is merit in looking at under represented groups and cultures of current and past society.  And even in recasting roles from Greek theater or Shakespeare or the Marvel Comic Book universe with different sorts of actors.  But all such efforts are ultimately judged by box office receipts, and increasingly, when these are just poorly done, over messaged dog's breakfasts, they lose money.  You can lecture people on how you think the world should be, but it only works if you can get them into the theater seats.

This is all a leadup to my opinions on a couple of Fantasy series now on streaming.  Amazon spent something like a billion dollars creating a Lord of the Rings prequel called "The Rings of Power".  And Netflix just came out with something called "The Witcher - Blood Origin", a prequelish sort of entry that expands their interesting "Witcher" series.  Originally this was from Polish source material and starred the very watchable Henry Cavill.

It's winter and I'm a bit under employed, so I tried to wade through both of these series and in each case stalled out after a few episodes.  They have things in common.

1. Fantastic visuals.  The CGI, makeup, and general production values are astonishing even on my small screen.

2. A loose connection with their successful predecessors.  Amazon did not get straight up rights to Tolkien's pre-LOTR works, just a general go ahead to use some characters and concepts.  Their writers are not in the same universe as JRR Tolkien, and do not even approach the lesser but still notable talents of Peter Jackson.  And as to the Witcher prequel it was apparently so bad that Cavill took a look and decided he was done with the franchise when his current contract ran out.

3. Both put Diversity over Coherence.

In a fantasy production you get latitude.  But you just can't get away with tiny female warriors wielding swords, axes and miscellaneous weaponry with such kinetic energy that both their beefy male opponents and the laws of physics are immediately destroyed.  We have limits to how far our disbelief can be suspended.  A four foot tall female dwarf swinging a war hammer that would - were it were not an obvious Styrofoam prop - be about half her actual mass goes too far.

I'm vaguely aware of the concept of Intersectionality.  It more or less establishes a hierarchy of sorts.  "Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage."  Practically speaking this determines who you can cast as Good or Bad characters.  If you mess this up you will be Cancelled, or as they used to say "Never work in this town again".

In the Fantasy genre this seems to mean the following:

All female characters may be flawed, but are always Good and Implausibly Capable.  In the modern era it is necessary to have at least one Gay couple in your script.  Characters of Asian heritage should be sprinkled here and there and it is still OK to have them in stereotypical roles such as martial arts/swordspersons.  This is less a Woke thing than a tug of the forelock to the all important Chinese market.  Black characters have been emphasized for so long that it is now considered acceptable to have them be either Good or Evil.  I call this the President Morgan Freeman Rule. Most really evil parts of course still go to White Men 'cause reasons.

To this latter point I was fascinated to note one actor who appears in both of the aforementioned productions.  A certain Lenny Henry is a wise Hobbit in The Rings of Power:

And he turns up as the main bad guy - at least in the first couple of eps - in the Witcher.  He's an elf this time.  Maybe he actually has pointy ears?

The fancy bling and the dark lighting were early clues as to his nature.  He's actually a good actor.  I'm glad he's finding work.

So my reviews of Rings of Power and Witcher - Blood Origin?  I can only base this on the episodes I saw before deciding to let them go on without me.   

Rings of Power is a complicated mess.  Too many characters, too many concurrent plots, and just enough connection to the beloved LOTR trilogy to be confusing.  Fabulous visuals notwithstanding I give it a pass.

The Witcher - Blood Origin does not have the same baggage of preconception, and keeps a simpler plot line.  It is also slightly tongue in cheek from the giddyup, the introductory sequence has a bard straight up saying "Oh, heroes uniting to defeat Evil?  Boring.  It's been done too often".  It then goes forward and tries to subvert the negative expectation.  It also has Michelle Yeoh who is playing a character way, way out in Mary Sue range.  She can perceive foes coming up behind her and smite them fatal blows behind her back without looking or even paying attention.  This would be, and in fact is, quite ludicrous but I give her a pass from her amazing tour de force in the recent "Everything Everywhere All at Once" where she becomes a character literally able to do anything specifically because she is in real life a person who does nothing competently!  She seems to be having fun in everything she acts in.

Just for the "Hot Dog Fingers" alternate Universe I'd give Ms. Yeoh a pass for a half dozen lesser efforts!

93 Million Miles.....

That's how far the earth travels in its orbit around the Sun.  Guess I'm feeling youthful for my age, because even with its occasional tough spots 2022 did not seem as if I were putting more than, oh maybe two or three million on the odometer.

The grandkids grew.  Physically of course but even more impressively grew in sophistication and general smarts.  I am with regret retiring most of my "Naughty Grandpa" schtick.  I can tell when they are humoring me.  First Little League game, first occasion to dance at a wedding and other milestones.  It is no longer possible to fool them by spelling things out, they've cracked that code.

Back to international travel.  A very nice month of archaeology in the UK and a bonus trip to Canada.  

Robotics takes up a fair chunk of time, especially in the winter months.  The 2021/22 season we were in "survival mode" due to assorted challenges.  Mostly but not entirely the tail end of Covid.  For the 2022/23 season we are resurgent with our biggest and I believe best team ever.  

So what's ahead for the new year?

January through March - lots of robot stuff.

April - a reset month but for diversions I'll be giving community ed programs on Roman archaeology, a definitive history of local movie theaters, and what I anticipate being a slightly off color survey of Obelisks around the world.

May - two weeks in the UK.  Alas I could not swing an entire month this year but it looks as if most of the notorious "Anaerobes" group will be there.

June through August - summertime and the livin' should be easy.  A family reunion, on our turf this time.  Baseball games and fishing.

Fall - robotics powers up again.  I've agreed to move our summer Robot School program into the fall after school format.  As FIRST robotics teams in general have to work to find quality recruits we are fortunate to have a Perpetual Motion Recruiting Machine.  Besides, its fun.  Also besides, I'm no longer even borderline capable with the technology of the high school FIRST program! 2023 should be the year I step back and mostly run "the farm system".

I'm planning on trying my hand at bow hunting next deer season.  I will have an opportunity to beachcomb for fossil shark's teeth.  I expect to make it to another birthday - the odds are good, its pretty soon - but despite growing old I intend to continue to resist growing up.

Happy New Year all.