Monday, March 18, 2024

FIRST Robotics 2024 - Helios Reborn

In a number of ways the robotics team has "moved up in the world".  Certainly in the obvious ones, larger crew, more sophisticated designs, greater ambitions.  And also by becoming a "two event" team.

FIRST robotics tournaments are huge events.  50 plus teams from around the area and sometimes from far beyond it.  A display of smarts and hard work that just makes you feel good about the state of young people and their education.....contrary evidence in the daily news be damned.

But if you are One and Done due to budgetary or other reasons, you are limited.  In that short a time frame you might have an off season due to any number of factors.  Did it snow hard in your community causing you to miss a bunch of work sessions?  Did you have unfortunate luck in the random pairings of match partners and opponents?  Did you let the kids go nuts and build something far too complex.......


This happened at the end of our practice day at our first event.  The team had to work until they kicked us out at 8pm just to get all it back together.  And the cumulative damage in every other little joint, widget, wire connection and so forth was considerable.  We just never had a chance to get caught up.  I have not watched the video of our matches from this tournament and in fact may never do so.  

It's hardly necessary in any case.  After a quarter century of doing things with kids and robots I have an unusual, actually I suspect unique, ability.  I can see three to four weeks into the future of any robotics campaign.  Oh, not perfectly....its a bit like my vision and hearing generally....I'll miss a few details but can certainly make out the overall situation.

And so the great rebuild began.

This is a rather busy photo, and the bumpers are off.  But you'll notice that the telescoping elevator is gone.  As is the motor that drove it, the motor that drove a flexible "wrist", the springs, pulleys, rigging and brackets that made up the whole complicated mechanism.....adios.


Much cleaner, and we've probably reduced the potential failure points by 2/3rd.  The intake/shooter is also a new design.


It has two rollers on one side and three on the other.  This is to add a degree of "frisbee spin" to the game piece.  I'll post some video presently, but the velocity and trajectory are impressive.

And so it goes.  We still have a lot to do.  Reducing the failure points is not the same as eliminating them entirely.  But it is a solid piece of work.

Onward.



Friday, March 15, 2024

I feel a little left out

I'm going to go out and tempt fate here*.  With the CDC basically saying that Covid-19 is just another respiratory virus I now feel just a little cheated that I never got it. **

I know many people who did.  Their recoveries had an element of nobility to them.  They took on the greatest malady of our times and prevailed.  Sometimes they got to get up on their soap box and gripe about some person they encountered who DID NOT WEAR A MASK!

I just went through life figuring if I got it I got it, and that beyond a certain point all these precautions and masks would prove to be exercises in futility.  And so it has come to pass.

I think most people took this all in stride.  The small percentage of the population that just went nuts over this were probably unreasonable about other things before Covid and will now move on to being unreasonable about other things.

It is a shame that the whole darn thing got politicized, and that the measures to counter the disease were - in retrospect - so draconian.  I've been working with middle and high school students for 25 years and counting, and can tell you that the damage to academic achievement and to their world generally has been profound and malign.

Oh, something will get me eventually.  That's probably the truest thing I or anyone else could ever write.  But it is my intent to just carry on.  I'm not going to do anything that is clearly stupid....no motorcycles in my future  But while I won't live forever I certainly won't live in fear.

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*Fate being duly tempted I did get dismal-ill on the trip to Florida.  Cough, runny nose, fatigue.  Covid?  Who knows, I just slept it off and treated it - per CDC now - as a poorly timed case of the crud.  Fate....it's always Hubris then Nemesis, isn't it?

** Realistically I probably got Covid in early March of 2020, too early to have testing available.  36 hours of scratchy throat and fatigue.  Nothing that rest and beer could not overcome.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Spring Talks

I divide my year up into "seasons", and when robotics is done or winding down I usually schedule a number of talks for various groups.  Gives me something to do while waiting for late Spring archaeology travels.  

This year it is a mixture of old topics and re-visited ones, and for three different community education programs.  If you're interested in such things, here's times, places and contact info.

The POW baseball one has been particularly interesting to dust off.  I've not given that talk for a decade or so, and looking back on my original research I realized that it was about thirty years back that I stumbled on this odd tale.......

25 April.  POW Baseball in World War Two.  Chippewa Falls Community Education program.  Details at:   Community Ed Course Catalog.

27 April.  Historic Movie Theaters of Chippewa Falls.  This one is at the new History Center.  Contact them at:   History Center

And finally, 30 April I'm doing a program for the Chippewa Valley Learning in Retirement group.  Unlike the previous two, which are reprises, this one is new.  Patent Medicines of Western Wisconsin.  Details at:  CVLR Calendar .

Always fun to do live talks.  With three hour plus talks in five days I hope I can keep 'em straight!



Sunday, March 10, 2024

Beached Whale

So here's something I had not seen before.  And likely never will again.

Near one of the areas we fish at a 70 foot long Sperm Whale had run aground on the rocks just off shore.  Poor guy couldn't get free even with a rising tide.


Obviously this sort of thing draws a crowd.....


It's a weird sensation.  You want to do something to help.  Maybe have everyone wade out there, grab a fin and roll the poor beastie out into deeper water.  But of course, logically, an adult sperm whale of this size can weigh 45 tons, and there is nothing you can do to help them out of a situation like this.

We hung around a while.  Once the novelty wore off it felt rather sad.  On our way back up the beach a couple of sheriff's deputies in an ATV had gotten stuck in some loose sand.  Our party of hardy Midwesterners having plenty of experience with vehicles and snow drifts was happy to put a shoulder into things and help get them unstuck.  It made us feel a bit better after not being able to do anything at all for the whale.

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Update. Sadly, but predictably, the whale did not survive.  Evidently it was only 45 feet long.  I don't think that beach will be a popular destination in the next few warm, sunny days.


Thursday, March 7, 2024

Strange Fishing - Florida 2024

I've been fighting a nasty cold most of my time on vacation.  This is of course, Not Fair.  So fishing time has been curtailed.  On the other hand, last year's Red Tide has gone away so the fishing has actually been more productive and varied.  

There are two little critters we caught in abundance.  As in, with almost every cast.  Mangrove Snappers and White Grunts look close enough that my quickly snapped photos may have missed the latter.  Cute little guys the both of them.  Basically the equivalent of salt water bluegills.

Last year's go-to spot under a bridge was not productive this year.  We'd see other people there pretty often so the secret must have gotten out.  And when we did try it the fish had gotten very smart.  We did encounter this fine fellow which made our day....

And we encountered other reptiles.  On our way to another favored spot we walk by a place where endangered tortoises nest in a parking lot.  Their overall intellect may have something to do with their endangered status, as this is about as bad a place to dig turtle nests as you could dream up.  Anyway, we had to do a bit of traffic guard duty to help them lumber across the adjacent road.  Good luck, my scarce and scaly friends....

A fair bit of fishing success was encountered on a nearby jetty, basically a channel where boats go in and out of harbor.  Lots of people fish there and a wide variety of species are caught.  My grandson got a spiny critter called a Leatherjacket.  Several of us caught Pompano, a rather tasty snub nosed fish.

But the best picture of the trip was my son doing his best imitation of a Ladyfish he had just landed.  Weird googly eyed critter.....  The fish that is.



Random Wanderings in Florida

It feels a little weird to take an "escape winter" trip to Florida in early March, as we've barely had a winter to escape from!  And it is a journey with no defined agenda.  Relax.  Try not to get sunburned.  Do some things we've enjoyed before, maybe a few new ones.  Don't expect a theme.  Well, there will be another Strange Fishing theme but other than that it will just be whatever happens.

Staying in a beachy area I suspect we'll not see many examples of true Florida Man.  I did spot this nifty service vehicle in the grocery store parking lot and thought the cartoonish version of "Boomer" looked a bit F.M.


That is Boomer by the way.  We had a nice chat.  Like many in the local service industries he is a transplant.  A Michigan Man specifically.

Same store, an outdoor kiosk with all manner of beach supplies.


Of course the alligator floaty raft catches the eye.  At first glance it appeared to have a phenomenal number of safety precautions.  But on closer inspection....


It is really just the same basic instructions in about 18 different languages.  The image in upper left pretty much says it all.  Well my goodness, I'd not have ended up floated dead in the water if you'd thought to include RISIKO FOR DRUKNING.  What, it was there?  Well I thought it was saying I should get drunk, which I of course did.....

I did make it to the beach after that.  I kept my feet on dry land at all times.  There are gangs there.  Bird gangs.


Each species has its own "turf" and its own comfort level when humans draw near.  The little birds skittered away.  The Cool Birds, well, they know they are Cool..


Hangin' out, tryin' to look Cool.  More Florida stuff for a few days to come.

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Winslow and his Wonder Worker

With a handful of exceptions the patent medicine era of the 19th and early 20th century is one of robust, exuberant growth....and rapid decline.  Medical science invented things that actually worked.  The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 made it illegal to have secret ingredients and outlandish claims.  So there is no shortage of tales involving Success and Decline.  George Winslow is one of these.

George F. Winslow was born in Boston in 1859.  The family moved west to Rockford Illinois in 1861, where George eventually apprenticed in a drug store.  He moved to Eau Claire Wisconsin in 1882, clerking for an early druggist named Kinnear.  A few years later he set up his own store and by the mid 1880's had branched out, adding medicine manufacturing to his retail business.  An early product - and one that would probably not pass muster with the Food Drug Act - was his Wonder Worker.


At this point in history the northern half of Wisconsin was still covered with timber, and every winter an army of lumberjacks would head north to live in camps and cut it down.  Winslow saw opportunity there and tailored his business to this market.  He called his product line "Camp Remedies".  The came packed in special wooden chests to be shipped north, not only to Wisconsin but also Minnesota, Michigan and Washington Territory.  He also published a "newspaper" called The Camp News.  Sadly no surviving copy has come my way, but one would assume it had more testimonials than actual news.

A couple more Winslow products.  This example is actually so clean that it is hard to photograph.


And of course, medicines were made for Man or Beast.  After 1906 the word Cure was specifically banned in any advertising for human medicines.



 Life was pretty good for Winslow.  He built this swell house, still standing, in Eau Claire.  He added a side line - selling wallpaper - that sounds boring but as it turns out was a good hedge against his main line of merchandise not doing well.  The newspaper suggests that he had a theatrical group of some sort in the early 90's although whether the Winslow Medicine Company did classic Medicine Shows out on the road or were a less interesting amateur theatrical society in not clear.  It's frustrating when the newspaper just assumes you know such things already.  He married the daughter of a lumber baron/mill owner.


Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't.  As the 20th Century got going the patent medicine industry waned.  Winslow was mostly selling wall paper.  The heiress gave him the boot in 1911, alleging cruel and unusual treatment.  She closed off most of the mansion and set up a bedroom on the main floor.  Winslow's 1940 obituary mentions that he had resided at "The Elks Club" for many years.  Most such places had a bar and I can imagine George down there every night boring his fellow Elks with tales of his promising life turned bad......