Machine Behaving Badly 2018 - The Year Our Motto Was Wrong

A few more thoughts on the Machines Behaving Badly event.  It was unusual for two reasons this year.

Firstly because exactly one week earlier our community had suffered a tragedy.  A hit and run driver had struck and killed three girl scouts and one adult leader as they were picking up trash along a roadside.  This happened at high noon on a sunny day.  They were wearing Hi Vis safety vests.  The man involved deserves every bit of the severe consequences that will be forthcoming.

I thought this might put a shadow over our day.  Ours is a small community, nobody is more than one or two links away from these families who suddenly lost so much of their futures.

But to my surprise it seems people are better than that.  The lesson that came out of this was that you should appreciate every moment with your child.  The fun and silly ones, the mundane every day ones, even the ones where your kid is being difficult as middle school age children so often are.  Maybe the larger numbers of kids shaking hands, and of parents seeking me out to say thank you reflects this.

The other thing that was different is perhaps only apparent to the small number of people crazy enough to organize and run events of this sort.  Something very strange indeed happened.

You have to know that in the history of robot combat events the only one that always starts on time, at exactly High Noon, is Machines Behaving Badly.  Well this year when I showed up hours before the event I already had a half dozen Minions busily working to get things ready.  At 11:45 everything was ready.

I turned to a couple of my pals from The Old Days and we discussed whether one could actually start a robotics event AHEAD OF TIME.  There was a concern voiced that this was so fundamentally impossible that we might set off a disturbance of the Time Space Continuum that would tear the very fabric of Reality.  I mentioned this possibility in my lead off comments to the audience.

The event flew along.  Assorted parts also of course flew.  And were then rapidly re-affixed at Robot Hospital so that the action could continue.  Most robot events have approximately 30 percent of the event time actually involving action in the arena.  We seem to have attained an impossible percentage somewhere around 55%.  I mean, you have to take at least a little time to load the next match in and to sweep the debris of the previous one out.

The fabric of Space Time groaned a bit but we all survived.  The robots, not so much.

Onward to the next phase of the robot class, stay tuned for Barby Jeep Nonsense.

Major Thanks of course to the large crew of experienced Minions who not only accomplished the impossible, again, but did so with a quantum leap in efficiency in the Fall of 2018 the year that our official slogan actually proved untrue.

Machines Behaving Badly - Fall 2018

Another year of Machines Behaving Badly is complete.  Once again the small, flimsy robots made of plywood, styrofoam and unrealistic expectations squared off against each other.  Fun was had.  Debris generated.  Things learned.

I've been at this a long time.  This was our 18th annual event, a full generation.  And at least one year we ran it twice.  That is ample opportunity to observe, to see the things that change and the things that stay the same.

The concept of the class is deceptively simple.  It is a fun little idea and it looks as if it is easy to throw together a simple machine.  But when the urchins are absorbed with this idea you can sneak in some learning.  How to solder wires.  Why "center of gravity" is an important concept.  The correlation between speed and torque.  Why hot glue is called that.

Some things are learned by actual lecture style instruction.  Others are learned by dedicated trial and error, building and rebuilding a machine using what you learn from each iteration.  Some things are best learned on the day of the tournament when the robots face harsh reality.  The official motto of Machines Behaving Badly is:

"Oh my.  That could have gone better."

A good bunch of students this year, only one or two whose level of middle school behaviour pushes the needle into the red zone.  They have worked hard by the standards of the day.  Of course every year they know less about how to things, anythings really, that do not result from their moving finger tips across the screens of their phones.  This is a screwdriver.  No, we use the other end.  This is a hot glue gun. Before you grab it, can you tell me why it is called that?

Sometimes I get a feeling that H.G. Wells had it spot on.  We are going to evolve into gentle, non technological Eloi.  Perhaps I will in distant future generations be remembered and revered(?) as the creator of the Morlocks.....

Enough musings for now.  I actually get to keep this bunch of students for a while longer.  We will be doing various things with Barbie Jeeps.....

Pictures from the 2018 edition of Morlocks, oh I mean, Machines Behaving Badly.

We had a full house for the event.

The robot below had an ambitious spinning weapon...big strips of flexible lexan with a large, mean screw on each end.

Here it is in action.  It did pretty well until it stripped some gears that could not be replaced.  

We had a record number of girls in the class this year, all very good competitors.  Their robots were sometimes a bit better decorated, as with "Sparkle Raider" seen below. 

"Brick Flipper" had not only a cool name but an interesting weapon.  It is the low rpm, high torque motor from a paper shredder.  In theory it could snap the mouse trap on another robot and then just lift them clear up in the air.  In practice it was not always successful. 

And of course we had the FIRST robot on hand, along with four of the team members who have been helping with the middle school project.  Here "Mr. Clamps" is carrying a defeated robot off to Robot Cemetery!

It was a good bunch of kids this year.  I don't recall ever seeing this many competitors shake each other's hands after a match.  And on occasion, even before one.  Many involved parents and grandparents too.  Good to have the high school team and robot on hand so I can point and say...."There's the future".

The Guns fall Silent

In recent years I have started giving talks to a local "Learning in Retirement" group. Quite fun actually, many of them are retired University folks and I have had sizable, knowledgeable groups turn up for programs on Archaeology, Baseball, and Robotics.

On Friday I did a special program.  I discussed my adventures working on a World War One battlefield archaeology dig.  I'd asked that it be scheduled as close as possible to 11 am, November 11th.  That of course was the exact moment that the Great War ended.  Literally at the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month.

It was a good sized audience and I had a lot to say.  Of course the light hearted and the somber got inter twined.  If you followed my real time reports from the site back in May and June you will recall much that was frankly surreal.  I surprised myself a bit towards the end.  Describing the human cost of the war, the husbands, sons and sweethearts thrown away so pointlessly, I actually choked up a bit.  I've done enough public speaking to know a few tricks to get around this sort of situation, and its a good thing I did.

I talked a bit at the end about how The Great War changed the world, Western Civilization in particular.

Prior to 1914 life made sense.  You probably had faith in your King or Kaiser.  Science was making remarkable discoveries which promised better and easier lives.  Above it all you probably believed in a benevolent God who, lets face it, looked upon your Nation with just a little extra benevolence.

Fast forward to 1918.  

Half of the Great Powers no longer existed in their old forms.  Russia had collapsed into savagery and civil war.  Germany, Austro-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire all had lost their monarchies and a lot of their territory.  The new map of the world was criss crossed with new artificial borders many of which people are to this very day fighting and dying over.  Even those countries that "won" the war were weakened, their leadership demonstrably flawed.

So what was left to believe in?  Science?  It had proven equally adept at new ways to kill people.  High explosives dropped from overhead.  Poison gas to choke your fellow man as if you were fumigating rats in their burrows.

God?  To those who survived it seemed as if, in this man made Hell on Earth, the Wicked and the Virtuous suffered alike.  And frankly, if everyone ends up in Hell anyway can there even be a God?  The magnificent empty churches of Europe are another lasting scar of the war.

Hopefully we have learned a few things.  Although it can go too far a degree of skepticism is warranted when the brass bands play and the recruiting posters call one and all to the colors.  And we are in some ways less divided than in times past.  When digging Hill 80 I was standing amidst the wreckage of Europe that came to pass when alliances involving dozens of nations drew their swords.  But a century later we had volunteers from 38 countries coming together to instead draw trowels and shovels.  And for the better cause of learning and for the still better one of giving 128 lost soldiers dignified resting places among their fallen comrades instead of lying alone or in groups in the stark mud of shell holes and mass graves.

Time Capsule - Don't Try Any Tricks!

( A recurring series based on odd things that probably should be thrown away but are just odd enough to study).

My Father in Law heard that I was taking German class.  So when my wife visited he had to send home a present for me.  Lord knows why he had this, he was never in the military and his two trips to Germany were respectively when he was three years old and when my wife and I took her parents in the 1990s.

This is an official US military German phrase book.  From the serial number I have determined that it was first published in 1943 and was intended to be a help to US servicemen should they find themselves among, well, Germans.  It stayed in print a long time, this particular edition has a 1962 copyright.  This put it smack in the middle of the Cold War, in which East Germans were still the enemy.

A few selections:

In some instances the pronunciation seems a bit off.  











And some of this sounds more like Hollywood than real life.

I guess it covered a lot of things that a lost GI might need to know.  The section titled "How to Land a Plane" seemed a bit excessive.  If you are reading a pamphlet to try and figure that out then language barriers are not likely to be your biggest issue.

You have to wonder if this book was updated very often.  I mean, it must have been, as there is a passing reference to Austria, a country that did not exist until after the war.  But honestly, how likely is it in Germany that you will need to report that you have been bitten by a venomous reptile!

World War One from Far Above

Just a few days now until I give a talk on my experiences digging the World War One battlefield site at Hill 80 in the Ypres Salient.  The talk has been scheduled to be as close as possible to the exact moment that the guns fell silent, which really should be known by all to have been: "The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month".  To the extent that Western Civilization thoroughly wrecked itself this may indeed have been the proverbial "Eleventh Hour" to stop the madness.

Two views of the Hill 80 excavation site which is outlined.

Here is how things stood in 1916.  Things had been bashed about for 18 months but you can still see a few traces of buildings, and the saw tooth patterns of the German trench systems are stark.

And here is January of 1918.  A lunar landscape improved only by some new roads on the left and the upper portion of the photo.  These were British roads, they had captured the area in 1917 after setting off a series of mines under the German lines in an explosion loud enough to, by legend, be heard in London.

By the way, adjacent to the southern edge of the site there was a village in 1914.  It has been scourged from the face of the earth.

Of course the story did not end here.  The site changed hands twice more.  Once when the Germans launched their last ditch Spring Offensive in 1918 and again late in the war.  By then both sides were exhausted and the final time that this shell torn patch of Hell on earth got new owners it was without many additions to the ranks of the dead.  The German retreat and the Allied pursuit were in general paced to avoid excessive bloodshed. (Although a few American generals gained lasting opprobrium by launching attacks almost up to the moment of the Armistice).

Maybe I should clean the Shop Floor more often...

My robotics workshop is in the basement.  It sounds better to call it a secret underground laboratory but that is a stretch.

It is often a mess, especially during transition times when the detritus of one project comes home and the materials for a new one are being lined up.

The other day I swept the floor.  Now I do this periodically, but for some reason I saw something this time that had escaped me in the past.

The initials CM are scratched into the cement.

I'm not sure why this has escaped me in the past, I mean I do sweep the place up.  Several times a year.  

I think the reason is that the coat of battleship grey paint that my son put on one summer vacation when he was "bored" is finally starting to wear thin from much dragging of equipment back and forth.

CM probably indicates a member of the Martin family.  We are only the fourth owners of this old house, it was built by a man named Martin circa 1910.  When I started practice here in the mid 1980s some old timers still called it "The Martin House".  

Probably if I look a bit harder I'll see some mementos of my kids carved into various surfaces waiting to be discovered by the eighth or ninth owners long after my departure.

Middle School Robotics - Pre Tournament Report

Home stretch for the combat robot phase of the middle school class.  Lots of machines coming together but there are always a few that seem to go down to the wire.

The machine below is one of my favorites this year.  It has a Barby Jeep gearbox with the final reduction gear removed and a "slapper" hubbed to it.  Of course some nasty spikes will go on just prior to the tournament but I don't want to let this thing loose with too much extra time.

This kid's older brother is a new recruit for the high school team.  I really do feel like a minor league baseball manager at times.

Now that is a pretty cool creation.  But for the most part we have fairly unimaginative entries this year.  The schedule has been very tight and of course we have the usual missed sessions due to illness, sports, etc.  On the afternoon of the last build session we still had many kids at this stage:

It is in part the times we live in. Those who imagine the current generation to be tech savvy are using a very narrow definition of same that pretty much means "can play on their phones".  Actual use of real world tools?  It is a vanishing skill.  At times I feel we are not just losing that battle but have already lost it.

Ah well, we shan't go down without a fight.  And along the way those of us who remember the Old Days get to have a little fun too.  There is often a need for "bracket fillers".  These are essentially sacrificial 'bots that we toss in when an empty slot in the tournament tree turns up.  They are usually driven by audience members and are not intended to be serious.  This "Precious Moments" figurine has the words "I love you this much" emblazoned on its base.  I just had to add glowing red demonic LED eyes to complete the effect.