Recently in Technology Category

I remembered a simple trick for rejuvenating batteries, though. Completely discharge the battery and then recharge it fully. Repeat a couple of times, and check the results. I pulled the plug last night, turned the screen brightness all the way up, changed the energy settings to never sleep or shut down, and left the computer on overnight. By the morning, it was dead as a doornail. I put it on the charger, and after the charge, Coconut Battery reported that I had recovered all of my capacity and then some.

My oldest son, Arthur, is participating on the programming team, and I have become the rules maven. I get to read and interpret the rules for the team. The rules have revisions as a result of inquiries from teams after the rules are released, so I get to keep on top of these as they become available.

The competition isn't just about building a robot, though. It's about working together to solve a technical problem, then taking that solution to the competition. During the competition, the team must now solve the competitive problem through cooperation with other teams, an idea I find fascinating. Founder Dean Kamen has made it clear that competition and cooperation are fundamental to success in this program. Having some life experience behind me, I can say that this ideal is used in business on a daily basis. Traditional sports often celebrate individual achievement. In First Robotics, a competent robot that isn't a team player will be left behind very quickly.

Teams must form alliances that capitalize on the strengths of each robot. Robots are designed with specific functions in mind: they could be defenders, scoring assistants, or scoring specialists. They can also be generalists that can play anywhere on the field, but, as in real industrial design, that kind of robot is often difficult to build.

The arena is divided into three areas separated by a carpeted hump. The humps have tunnels in them, though, that short robots can pass through. The game involves putting balls into goals, much like soccer. The balls, once scored, must be returned to the playing field by a human player. During the game, balls must move from the area furthest from the goal to the goal, and must travel across the humps. Carrying isn't allowed, so the robots must kick!

There are also big targets over the goals, and the robots have "eyes," in the form of video cameras that interface with the control software. AJ, on the software team, is learning a lot about control systems and also about pattern recognition. Another interesting part of the competition is that during the first 15 seconds of each match, the robots must operate without human drivers. The software team has some pretty interesting challenges, between vision processing, automated operation, and controlling the rest of the normal motion, kicking, and other tasks.

Take a look at the game concept video provided by First for a better idea of how the game works.

I can't say what strategy Northern Force will take this year, as I haven't been to any of the design sessions. I do know, though, that they have been hard at work on this year's challenge.

Also, on a Windows XP virtual machine, Parallels Tools won't install if I allow the VM to have access to both cores on the laptop, so I have to set the number of CPUs to 1 in order to install Parallels Tools on the Windows XP VM, then set it back to 2. Not as bad as the MacOS VM, though.

An update was released on the 15th of January, which I installed. Unfortunately, the Parallels Tools install issue isn't resolved for either VM.

Installation is easy; simply create a new virtual machine and insert the MacOSX Server install disk. Parallels 5 detects the OS, configures the VM appropriately, and boots into the Server Installer. After installing and configuring the Server OS, I installed the Parallels tools and ran Software Update a couple of times to bring the Server OS up to 10.5.8.

The only thing that's disconcerting is that Parallels believed that Parallels Tools hadn't been installed on the Guest OS. I ran the Parallels Tools installer one more time after all of the OS updates had been applied, and it seems to have "stuck."

Thanks again, Parallels, for making it easier to do more with less.

The trackpad and the keyboard are all one unit (actually, it's the whole top of the computer's case), and it all needed to be replaced. Surprisingly, they had one in stock, and made the switch for me that day. Taking it home, Software Update told me I had to perform the keyboard firmware update 1.0.1, which I did.

After a couple of days, however, the "Z" key popped off. I snapped it back into place, and it popped off again the next day. Also, the new trackpad had a very sticky button when pressed in the middle of the button. Either end of the button performed as expected, but the middle would not click unless pushed very hard. Finally, the kangaroo Z key and the sticky button became enough of an annoyance that I had to return it for another replacement.

I called the store and explained the situation, and they asked me to wait until after Black Friday to bring it in. I brought it in today (Monday, Nov. 30) and they replaced the keyboard and trackpad assembly in a few hours. Again with the firmware update, and we're off to the races.

I hope that this keyboard/trackpad lasts longer than the last replacement. My Applecare will expire in January, so I hope so... As for the savings, the replacement would have cost $224.06 if I were paying out of pocket. Score 1 for Applecare.