Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Back from the Bataan and Corregidor Day holiday last Saturday.

Just one last anecdote about the robot competition: one of the teams did not arrive until the last one third of the period. Another, despite their low design that prevented the other robots from reaching them (there was no limit on how short the robots could be), it suffered from a poor design that had the rotor detaching from the light weight base most of the time.

The latter one was the underdog of the matches, but even then they were still expecting to get only the second lowest grade because the first team might not show up and be defaulted.

They were also the ones who had to make the most number of repairs after each match to still be able to get into the “ring”.

So when the first team finally arrived, they battled the winners first, who, of course, needed no repairs between bouts. The last competition therefore became a fight for second to the last place, with everyone getting perverted amusement from the face off.

This one, unlike the other matches which was only one round so that it would not go so long as our Toe The Line event, we set as a best (or worst) of three sets.

In the first match, the low riding robot lost when its rotor fell apart only moments before the late robot’s “arms” fell off also.

But in the second round, the low riding robot, because of its light weight base, had the base turning instead of the arms when the arms hit an obstacle (the other robot). The wires therefore were spun around the robot, pulling the controller towards it. And that’s when it went to pieces again.

Since I’m on the topic of Introduction to Robotics, I would then like to mention that their teacher only gave them one written exam for the term: the finals - and it can only be answered if they completed the training missions in the software for using the robot, and finding out its different interactive parts.

Their teacher also included a bonus question asking the students who among their group they would say did not contribute anything at all to their competition grades.

Sure it promotes whistle blowing, but we don’t want to breed parasites either.

As for the software training that we attended off campus, it shows that there are more features that we can drill into the students than are the coverage of the eighty exercises we already have to administer.

We can now up the ante and ask the students (for Graphics One next term) to finish up to eight exercises per meeting, and ask them to finish the whole list of required tasks in one term.

Then the second subject (Graphics Two) will be set aside for animation and photorealistic rendering, which we just learned the new version of the software (for 2004-2005) carries.

Next time I’ll talk about the last pre-final mechanics lecture exams I did not get to proctor because of the seminars. For now, class dismissed.