Archive for January 3, 2010
Remote controlled shooterbot
Jan 3rd
I made the standard shooterbot, the second example robot in the NXT 2.0 kit, and then modified it to be remote controlled. Two motors are used to drive the bot, with the third operating the front mounted shooter. Three sensors are attached; ultrasonic mounted on the front left, color on the upper right, and the Playstation 2 controller interface on the back. The example program has the bot protect a 40 cm circle, giving both a verbal and visual warning before shooting. The first version has a few problems; it advances to give a warning but doesn’t return to the original location, and the gun is inconsistent; it sometimes jams, sometimes shoots twice. I haven’t added any remote control support yet.
Back from morning dog walk. Mu…
Jan 3rd
Back from morning dog walk. Must remember to take camera; beautiful sunwise over the lake with geese lined up along the edge of the ice. Brr
Microsoft UI design
Jan 3rd
I just had my first BSOD of 2010. I went looking for the memory dump file and found that it had been auto-deleted, replaced with a minidmp file. Seems that this is the default behaviour on Windows 7 under certain circumstances, e.g. if you are a “home” user with less than 25G of free space. The Startup and Recovery systems property page makes no mention of this new behaviour. You have to google to find the info on this new design.
I don’t mind Microsoft making design decisions based on how they think their customer would like the system to operate. I learned during my days at AOL that some products are designed for the mass market. That’s why I’m in the 5% Linux crowd.
I just don’t understand why they didn’t put the new design controls on the Startup and Recovery page. Why hide the info so that only a crafty Google search would find it? Why make your customer do everything via regedit?
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-03
Jan 3rd
- Playing poker, watching football, updating website, making small resolutions that I might be able to keep (that's my first resolution). #
- Integrating wordpress and twitter, with Ned biting my fingers. Ok, Eva is distracting Ned with his favorite toy, a metal measuring tape… #
- Ok, got tweets delivered to wordpress; testing tweet from my blog. #
- @alank I get an error going to craigslist in reply to alank #
- Migrating Eva from Typepad to Wordpress #
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