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Folks,
Here's an update on recent Austin-area Lego goings-on...
On Saturday, 1/8/05, the first Central Texas FIRST Lego League
competition was held. About 20 middle-school teams competed; they came
from Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and as far away as Louisiana. Teams
ranged in size from over a dozen kids down to a single home-schooler.
National Instruments was a primary sponsor of the event; the bulk of the
event volunteers came from NI, with a few others from HP and Cirrus
Logic. Laura Hayden was a team adviser, and Lee Rahe and I were
volunteers.
It was a crazy, hectic, exhausting day. My photos from the day can be
found here:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=112255
Attending the 1/9/05 Austin TexLUG meeting were:
David Perdue (author of "Competitive Mindstorms", age 16)
Jay Perdue (David's dad)
Kurt Baty (chip design consultant)
Tim Rueger (instigator)
David talked about how he got his book published through Apress. He
said the bonus chapters on the Apress website were ones that were cut
from the book for length. David had hints and tips for sumo
competitions, including rule sets and arena sizes. He demonstrated his
zip-zam bot chassis with a Mindstorms remote control (with the
motorcycle wheels mounted directly to motors, it zooms along and spins
*very* fast). I personally am looking forward to taking David on in a
future sumo-bot contest.
Kurt showed two models. First was his two-digit rotary encoder, which
provided some nice math problems for some local kids who randomly
dropped into the meeting. Kurt envisions building a Difference Engine
someday.
Kurt also showed his highly impressive circa-1840 Texas naval warship.
It's roughly four feet long and three feet high. It's a great example
of minifig-scale modeling. My photos of it can be found here:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=112250
I brought a tiny amount of Lego, the pullback racer Ferrari model 8362.
It moves quite impressively, running up to 30 feet on a single pull.
And even without stickers applied, it's a nice design. I received it,
and the big Technic Ferrari model 8386, from my wife as an anniversary
gift. (This tells me I'm either a huge geek, or that I have a
way-too-cool wife, or probably both, actually.)
http://guide.lugnet.com/set/8362
http://guide.lugnet.com/set/8386
The next Austin Texlug meeting will be Sunday, February 13, 2005. Same
place and time, 2:30pm at the Little Walnut Creek library in north
Austin.
-Tim
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