Last week, "Monkey" my current Nemesis when doing grandchild watching duty had unexpectedly popped his shifty self into Cryonic Storage. I wondered what he was up to. Nothing good I figured....
And so we find ourselves between our two competitions. For reasons unknown - although possibly just to torment the coaches - the kids always insist on going to the earliest possible event. It does tend to make them work harder early on, but we are not a big enough team to always work the bugs out in just six weeks of work.
2022 - Well, a rebuild year, not much could be done
2023 - Very solid design that almost qualified us for Worlds. If only we'd know a few things about limiting the current to motors so they don't turn into small, expensive space heaters.
2024 - Many design issues that we mostly fixed by our second event.
And 2025 - a design that was so very ambitious and came oh so close to meeting its objectives. In a game of inches, close don't count. (By the way, none of the kids had every heard the adage about Horseshoes and Hand Grenades, but those are not part of their modern world).
So its another year of heavy duty prototyping and software wizardry. Honestly, the core group of this team seems to enjoy this process and works right on through Spring Break.
One of the things being worked on is more accurate targeting. The game involves placing sections of PVC pipe onto these weird purple things:
We've all seen that movie.....
An impressive family monument in a small town that is not on any of my usual routes.
March. It's always a month of transition for me. The Robotics Campaign culminates in competitions and spins down to a lower RPM effort of outreach and recruiting. The weather warms up, with the occasional slap across the face of brief cold snaps. And on the warm days, when the sun shines bright and actually seems to be conveying a bit of both heat and light with them photons, I think of excavating in England.
Sometimes I just call up the Google Earth map of the area and use it to virtually "walk" up from the train station to my home away from home, the Bowes Hotel. And then over hill and dale to mirror my daily walk to the site. And as for Vindolanda proper, I look at the map in a fashion most reminiscent of what Jupiter, or more plausibly an eagle would see the site. And I remember things.
Below is the site from a better than Google Earth perspective. Probably taken by "Steve the Drone".
Here's something from one of the early years. 2009 as I recall. It's a simple wall stone that some bored soldier engraved with a, well in the UK we'd call it a Willy. Found by a very nice, very proper woman who seems to turn this sort of artifact up regularly. Cheers, Phallic Liz!
My brother Fred came over a couple of times. Here we are posing with our Dutch pal Pierre, on a wide main road of the fort we'd been uncovering. Pierre later married a woman he met on site.
Just some random memories of green fields to keep me warm on a night when a late spring blizzard is coming through for a bit of mean spirited action.
Apologies if my arrows designating locations are a bit off. The supervising archaeologists sight in everything with gps mapping systems. I don't.
About 10 weeks to boots (Wellies of course) on the ground.
Most years I post several days worth of stuff when the FIRST robotics team has their events. This year, no. I was an official at the event and actually spent very little time with the team. It's all part of the succession plan, gotta let the new leadership have the fun and of course, the non fun!
Many gremlins were encountered. Battle was joined. We vanquished some of the grems and finished stronger than we started. My view of things was mostly stuff like this:
I did venture out a few times. After all, I do need to keep adding to my Mascot Photo collection. Here I'm trying to mimic the bright staring eyes of the Husky. I think I nailed it....
