...instead you must place them under the seat in front of you so that they can roll all the way to the back of the airplane on takeoff ( Read more... )

I finally managed to overcome my procrastination and compose a Craigslist posting for the available rooms in my house. Seven responses in just the first four hours. Now I know Craigslist responders are generally using a shotgun approach (respond to everything, sort them out later), but such a rapid response rate with at least two weeks to go ( Read more... )

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I completely randomly came across this video clip. That is video of the sun's corona for the last 4 days, and yes ladies and gentlemen, that is in fact a comet crashing into the sun. The clip is courtesy of NASA's SOHO website.

Wow. The festival of clever and artistic engineering.

The UCSC mechatronics class had an exhibit there, and I finally have video of my robot in action. It was the only robot we could get fully operational, though I didn't get it working right until the second day.

Website here. More pictures here.


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Multi-point touchscreen at Multi-Touch Interaction Research and their spin-off company, Perceptive Pixel.

But man, think of all the fingerprints.

Click to view

25 pitchers of beer, oh yeah. And the professor bought 4 of them. How many other classes can claim that? This class has been responsible for many all nighters, high hopes, dashed hopes, four breakups, one emergency room visit, and a hell of a worthwhile experience. It was awesome ( Read more... )

This is why I've been practically living in the lab the last few days. The class not only has its own lab, but we've commandeered two other labs as well as Jack's Lounge as the deadline approaches. My team's robot just passed the check-off for minimum functionality required by the course. Actually it exceeded the requirements by huge margin and is ( Read more... )

Success on the first try! I just made my own printed circuit board, a sensor board for my robotics class.

The purple glow-y thing is an ultraviolet (UVA) light table I built out of an old Apple scanner. I used it to expose the printed circuit "artwork" from a laser-printed transparency onto the copper-clad board.


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Your mission, should you choose to accept it...

We've received our assignment for the mechatronics (robotics) class. Artillery will be involved. Check it out. There will be a public demo March 12 at 6:30PM, in Humanities Lecture #206.

Last year's class even made the news.