That didn't go as well as planned
Have you ever had one of those days were absolutely everything that could go wrong did?
Welcome to the last 24 hours or so of my life. Where to begin?
Well, for starters the accommodations at FIRA suck. There's no internet in the dorms (at least not that I've discovered), they charge 3 TWD/hour to use the AC (which is cheap, but the instructions on how to turn it on and pay for it are all in Mandarin), and the beds are... well, "bed" is an over-statement. The rooms contain 4 wooden shelves on which beds could be put. But one is expected to supply one's own blankets, pillows, and mattresses. Yes, FIRA this year is a BYOM event. And you know what, I couldn't fit a mattress in my goddamned luggage when flying for 23 hours around the fucking planet to get here. I mean seriously, what kind of international event planning committee thinks "let's not give people anything to sleep on." It's beyond stupid.
So after that wonderful surprise we got to work on the robot. And proceeded to stay up the entire night -- no, I didn't even get to enjoy the comforts of my wooden shelf because I was up for about 34 straight hours working on the basketball and sprint event code all night. Those two events were the first two of the competition.
And despite our nigh-Herculean efforts both events failed spectacularly.
The sprint was okay; the robot ran forwards pretty well. But he invariable veered off-course when walking backwards, meaning he never completed the race.
Basketball -- the event I have been working on non-stop for the last couple of months, and was going really well in the lab, and I was confident would redeem our lacklustre performance at the sprint, was even worse. Zero for five. All that work, and jack shit to show for it. The robot's knees glitched and collapsed under him on the first try, he tripped on the second, and the third, fourth, and fifth tries we just couldn't get in position to grab the ball, or go distracted by brightly-coloured things in the audience.
The basketball wrapped up at about 2pm here, and the abysmal failure was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I hadn't slept in about 34 hours, my weeks of work were completely wasted, I hadn't eaten anything since the previous night, and I just collapsed into a quivering mess of tears and frustration. Fuck I have never needed a hug as much as I needed one then.
Anyway, fortunately the team from England happened to walk past me as I was decidedly not at my best and took it upon themselves to cheer me up. I wandered around with them for a little while, had some lunch, took a nap on my shelf (now equipped with a very thin mattress, blanket, and pillow purchased at the store under the women's dorm for the equivalent of about $30 CAD), and I'm feeling much better now. I'm still hot, sweaty, and frustrated. And there are rumours of a typhoon headed this way, but at least I'm feeling somewhat more like myself.
And on the bright side we have a second (and final) crack at the basketball tomorrow. I *think* I can fix everything up enough to be able to at least get a few points. It's just a matter of tuning the colour recognition and tweaking the code that gets Darwin to pan his head around to find the target if it's outside his normal FOV. And making sure that there isn't someone with bright red toenails standing right beside the basket, distracting the robot. Unfortunately Derek and Chi Tai are both using Darwin pretty much non-stop to get ready for the weight lifting, obstacle course, and lift-and-carry. And I haven't even had a chance to test out my wall-climbing code yet. So I don't know if/when I'll actually have a chance to practice the basketball again. I would be doing that right now, but Derek is working on the weight-lifting. I'm expecting that this may be another all-nighter. Not really looking forward to that. But if that's the only chance I'll have to re-tune everything, so be it, I suppose.
Welcome to the last 24 hours or so of my life. Where to begin?
Well, for starters the accommodations at FIRA suck. There's no internet in the dorms (at least not that I've discovered), they charge 3 TWD/hour to use the AC (which is cheap, but the instructions on how to turn it on and pay for it are all in Mandarin), and the beds are... well, "bed" is an over-statement. The rooms contain 4 wooden shelves on which beds could be put. But one is expected to supply one's own blankets, pillows, and mattresses. Yes, FIRA this year is a BYOM event. And you know what, I couldn't fit a mattress in my goddamned luggage when flying for 23 hours around the fucking planet to get here. I mean seriously, what kind of international event planning committee thinks "let's not give people anything to sleep on." It's beyond stupid.
So after that wonderful surprise we got to work on the robot. And proceeded to stay up the entire night -- no, I didn't even get to enjoy the comforts of my wooden shelf because I was up for about 34 straight hours working on the basketball and sprint event code all night. Those two events were the first two of the competition.
And despite our nigh-Herculean efforts both events failed spectacularly.
The sprint was okay; the robot ran forwards pretty well. But he invariable veered off-course when walking backwards, meaning he never completed the race.
Basketball -- the event I have been working on non-stop for the last couple of months, and was going really well in the lab, and I was confident would redeem our lacklustre performance at the sprint, was even worse. Zero for five. All that work, and jack shit to show for it. The robot's knees glitched and collapsed under him on the first try, he tripped on the second, and the third, fourth, and fifth tries we just couldn't get in position to grab the ball, or go distracted by brightly-coloured things in the audience.
The basketball wrapped up at about 2pm here, and the abysmal failure was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I hadn't slept in about 34 hours, my weeks of work were completely wasted, I hadn't eaten anything since the previous night, and I just collapsed into a quivering mess of tears and frustration. Fuck I have never needed a hug as much as I needed one then.
Anyway, fortunately the team from England happened to walk past me as I was decidedly not at my best and took it upon themselves to cheer me up. I wandered around with them for a little while, had some lunch, took a nap on my shelf (now equipped with a very thin mattress, blanket, and pillow purchased at the store under the women's dorm for the equivalent of about $30 CAD), and I'm feeling much better now. I'm still hot, sweaty, and frustrated. And there are rumours of a typhoon headed this way, but at least I'm feeling somewhat more like myself.
And on the bright side we have a second (and final) crack at the basketball tomorrow. I *think* I can fix everything up enough to be able to at least get a few points. It's just a matter of tuning the colour recognition and tweaking the code that gets Darwin to pan his head around to find the target if it's outside his normal FOV. And making sure that there isn't someone with bright red toenails standing right beside the basket, distracting the robot. Unfortunately Derek and Chi Tai are both using Darwin pretty much non-stop to get ready for the weight lifting, obstacle course, and lift-and-carry. And I haven't even had a chance to test out my wall-climbing code yet. So I don't know if/when I'll actually have a chance to practice the basketball again. I would be doing that right now, but Derek is working on the weight-lifting. I'm expecting that this may be another all-nighter. Not really looking forward to that. But if that's the only chance I'll have to re-tune everything, so be it, I suppose.