Milwaukee Status
Yesterday we had the qualifying matches for the FIRST Milwaukee Regional Competition, which I went to with the Southwest Robotics Team. The day before yesterday was practice matches, as an opportunity to work out bugs on the official arena before the actual competition.
The good news is, our robot was moving up in the rankings. The bad news is, it completely underperformed what I, and many of my teammates, expected.
We battled mechanical problems (our lift prongs got bent on Thursday) and yesterday we couldn't seem to do anything with the lift arm until our final match of the day. The robot didn't tip over (which it did do twice in practice competitions a couple weeks ago), but it just wasn't performing at the level it had been in practice.
Today we'll see how it does, and then go back to Minnesota. We get home around midnight, so I probably won't be blogging about the results at all until Sunday morning. Sleep this week has been a precious thing; each day is a lot of walking around the large arena. Your feet and eyes start to ache and burn (respectively) starting around 16:00, and when you get back to the hotel you just want to go to sleep.
Actually, you want to go to sleep right when the FIRST officials say that the day is done, but there are other (non-robotics-related) activities to do and no time to nap.
I truly have no idea what we'll be doing this morning, but we're about to load the bus with our luggage and walk to the arena, so it shouldn't be long before I find out. Obviously we'll be running the robot some more. Er, I mean "hopefully," not "obviously." 
Yes, I know I said I would be posting canned material through Sunday, but I ran out of stuff to post, and I ended up bringing my computer. Plus there's been time to write. (Precious little, but time enough.) So sue me for lying; at the time I wrote my last "current" post, I thought I would be offline.
In light of that, consider this a sort of "bonus" post. Now I have to think of something to publish Sunday morning...
Going Out of Town (FIRST Milwaukee Regional)
As you all probably know by now, I am a member of the wonderful (am I biased?) Southwest High Robotics Team, whose website I designed. Well, we're going to Milwaukee this afternoon, and we'll be back late Saturday night (CDT, of course). It is quite interesting that the team captain hasn't posted about the trip yet on the team blog... But I digress.
What that means for this site is that I'll be publishing stuff I wrote yesterday (and this morning) and scheduled using that wonderful feature that Blogger's still testing (and recently fixed [wait, not fixed-- yes, it's fixed] a bug in). The posts came from ideas that have been sitting in my idea bin (actually a list in Remember The Milk) for a while but have been overshadowed by current events and updates from Google and others.
So there should be no time-sensitive posts made between today and Sunday, March 16. (If anything more than one post a day is published, someone's hacked my account, which would really be a bummer.) I've done my best to make decent rants about things that Microsoft (for example) did in its software that I find annoying.
The only problem is that I've had less time to write because I've been trying to get ahead caught up in school before the trip. My next several posts might seem a bit thrown-together because of that, and I'm sorry for it. I should be back to my normal quality once things settle down. (I wrote two of the posts yesterday morning in about 45 minutes, which is usually about how long it takes to do one entry.)
If you're also a member of a FIRST robotics team and will be going to the Milwaukee Regional this week, look for me, the guy in a purple shirt walking around with a small camera (I also do photography for the team). I don't expect to find any readers there, but hey, who knows?
So enjoy the canned posts, and I'll catch up on any news that happens next week. If I get the chance, I will try to post Twitter updates. Follow me on FriendFeed to get all my activity (including here, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Digg, etc.) or on Twitter for just my tweets.
TSA Restricting Lithium Batteries Starting Tomorrow
I think someone at the Transportation Security Administration has been reading my last two posts about lithium-ion batteries. The Associated Press and C|NET reported a couple days ago that, starting January 1, 2008, travelers will no longer be allowed to transport lithium batteries (whether rechargeable or not) in checked baggage. There will also be restrictions on the number of spare batteries travelers can bring.
The limit is determined by "equivalent lithium content" (ELC) measurements, which applies to both spare and installed batteries. Batteries up to eight grams ELC are permissible, as well as up to two spare batteries with up to 25 grams ELC. Read more details at the Department of Transportation's Safe Travel page.
Reasoning for the new restrictions comes from Federal Aviation Administration findings that passenger aircraft cargo hold fire-suppression systems can't put out fires in lithium batteries. The Safe Travel site insists that devices such as cell phones won't be affected by the new limits, as batteries for those devices are well below the established numbers.
In a way, I guess this is a good thing. Lithium batteries have been known to cause fires in the past, and the cargo hold of a passenger aircraft is not the best place for them to be when such fires spark. At least in the passenger cabin, there are fire extinguishers available.
XKCD Roundup: My Favorite XKCD Comics
I've selected a few exceptionally good xkcd comic strips and embedded them here. I find them all particularly amusing, over and above the normal strips. The tooltips have been preserved as well. I advise you to read them; the comics sometimes don't make sense without.
If the pics are too small for you, just click them (Ctrl+click or Shift+click would be better, actually; new tab, new window) to get the full-size version. And you can fix the annoying title truncation in Firefox using this nice extension.
Centrifugal Force
This is one of those things that just hits my funny bone but I don't know why. Perhaps it's the Bond reference. Or maybe it's the fact that I just read about centripetal force in my physics class.
A network of Windows PCs that are randomly infected with viruses. O-kay...
Fight
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Never, ever, get a tech-savvy person mad at you.
Ballmer Peak
Now I know why Windows ME was so bad...
Exploits of a Mom
This has to be my favorite of these five. I'm so involved with Web development that I just can't help but be tickled by the idea of a n00bish developer forgetting to sanitize inputs for a database-driven front-end. The fact that it was a school's record system is even funnier.
[Images licensed under CC-BY-2.5, xkcd.com]
Two More Illustrations of Battery Dangers
As I've written about before, Li-ion batteries are definite dangers. Today in my newsletter, I got two more articles -- one from yesterday, one from today -- that further prove the point.
The first (I'll go by chronology) details an IBM lawsuit against an apparently Web-only company that has been manufacturing and selling fake laptop batteries bearing the IBM logo. The batteries are flammable, and are of quite low quality. IBM seeks millions of dollars in damages from trademark infringement and lost profits, among other things.
The highlight here is that fake batteries are everywhere. Lithium-ion technology comes from hundreds or thousands of different companies, only a few of which are really any good. The bad ones pose a severe safety risk to consumers. They can catch fire, overheat, explode, leak, or do any number of dangerous things. It's not a simple task to make a Li-ion battery that works, much less one that is safe. I think there should be stricter regulations in place, and that certification by a reliable (perhaps government, though reliability is never a guarantee) organization should be required before batteries made by any given company can be sold. Hey, I just value my life.
The second article tells of a New Zealand man's cell phone battery, and how it exploded into flames while charging in the middle of the night. He says he was awoken around 0130 by a loud bang, and got out of bed to find his cell phone on the carpet, burning. According to the article, this is the second report of an exploding cell phone this week; another report Wednesday had information on a South Korean worker who "may have" died as a result of a cell phone battery in his shirt pocket.
These two incidents again highlight the danger contained in lithium-ion battery technology. I personally like the batteries, and never want to go back to NiMH (Nickel-Metal Hydride) or NiCd (Nickel-Cadmium) again, as they have lower energy densities; but manufacturers need to find a way to reliably prevent these things from happening. I don't particularly care if the odds are 1/1,000 or 1/1,000,000,000,000; there shouldn't be any question that the battery in my hand, in my pocket, or on my lap is safe and won't explode on me.
DARPA Urban Challenge Set for Saturday
The long-awaited (at least for those of us interested in robotics) DARPA Urban Challenge will commence at 0700 EDT this Saturday, November 3. Up to 20 vehicles are slated to compete, narrowed down from approximately 35 candidates during this week's qualifying trials.
The first DARPA Grand Challenge saw the top vehicle complete only 5 miles of the 142-mile course; in the second, four self-driven cars completed the 132-mile route in under 10 hours. The winner of that challenge, Stanley, a diesel-powered VW Touareg from Stanford, took home $2,000,000. This year's prizes are the same ($2 million first prize, $500,000 second, and $250,000 third), but the challenge is much more difficult. Instead of navigating a pretty much straight and unobstructed course in the flat desert, competitors' vehicles will have to navigate 60 miles of urban roads, including four-way intersections and merging with traffic. They must also go around buildings, travel narrow roads, handle traffic circles, and obey all traffic laws.
The challenge is set up at the abandoned George Air Force Base in Victorville, California. I'd love to go, but first of all, I'm busy on Saturdays, and second, I couldn't get there. I suppose I'll just have to look for videos on the Web after the fact.
Lithium-Ion Batteries: Confirmed Fire Hazards
In recent years there has been a string of highly-publicized cases where various types of Li-Ion batteries catch fire. Be they installed in laptops, cellphones, or, now, iPods, Lithium Ion battery technology has, I think, established itself as a definite consumer hazard. PC World has a humorously titled article ("Hot Tunes: Man Says Nano iPod Caught Fire in His Pocket") that shares the hazard of the newest of the three device types: the iPod.
A man playing an iPod Nano in his pocket had it catch fire on him, setting his pants aflame and sending orange streams of plasma (flames for you laypeople) up to the level of his chest. He says if the TSA had seen him smoking like he was, they would have thought him a terrorist (he was in the Atlanta International Airport at the time, where he works). Apple reportedly sent him a packet with which to return the two-year-old device. The cause of the fire is unconfirmed, but the battery is a likely suspect.
Now, Gateway hasn't been involved in any laptop battery recalls that I know of, but having a potential explosion on my lap doesn't bring much comfort. Untold millions of batteries have been manufactured, and I carry one in my pocket nearly every day (PDA), as do both my parents (cellphones). It makes me wonder how safe the technology really is.
We've also been awaiting new battery technology for many years now. Given the rigorous safety testing batteries go through, it's not surprising that we haven't had many developments, but there must be a problem somewhere in the testing because there have been a lot of defective batteries lately, and I don't think that many recalls can be blamed on manufacturing malfunctions. We need more stable battery chemistries. I have heard of new mixtures such as sulfur dioxide (I believe), though they will be years before coming to market, as they still have much testing to do.
I suppose all I can do for now is take comfort in the fact that research is being done. I'd take the battery out of my laptop, but then its unreliable AC socket would make the power cut out every few minutes. I just hope my battery wasn't made by Sony.
World Trade Center: Alternate Collapse Theory
I found a video on Google Video (originally posted on Google Video UK) through comments on another film that contradicts the currently accepted explanations for the collapse of the three World Trade Center buildings on September 11, 2001. What follows is an aggregation of my several comments, which had to be separated due to Google's comment length limits.
While I applaud the uploader of this video for taking the initiative and posting the footage, this can't possibly be true. Most of the reasons given for the impossibility of the buildings coming down as a result of the fires could indeed happen in the currently accepted version of events.For example, this professor Griffin states that you can't take a concrete block, drop it from the height of the towers, and watch it pulverize. He says it won't happen.
Yet the concrete in the buildings wasn't just falling; it was falling, banging into an increasing mass of other concrete, and getting fractured on the long way down, eventually turning into dust from the constant impacts of hitting additional floors.Next, the steel columns. He states that they "conveniently" fractured into 30-foot sections, ready to be loaded onto a truck. The beams were bolted together when the buildings were constructed, from sections that arrived [drum roll] on trucks.
So when the towers collapsed, the bolts failed from the excessive stress and the steel beams broke apart into their original lengths. Nothing we have heard about the construction of the towers suggests they were welded.Pools of molten steel would have resulted from fire, not explosives. Admittedly, the symmetrical collapse of Building 7 is a bit suspicious, but chance is chance, and ideal situations can result from random events, however improbably.
The absence of detailed reports and reconstructions could be construed as suspicious, but is likely a product of post-disaster shock; it is probable that nobody wanted to do an analysis after the event due to the emotional stress.Most of the debunking evidence ignores the fact that the two aircraft ejected massive amounts of jet fuel into the buildings. Regardless of the validity of the "pancake theory," the office contents were not the major heat sources in the fires.
The power-downs and evacuation drills are normal events for any large building; schools, for example, perform drills as many as two to three times per year. Powering everything down could be safety precautions for major maintenance to critical building systems.Overall, there is a lot to think about, but not really a reason to doubt the current explanations.
BOINC Follows F@H
So, I decided that doing Folding@Home calculations wasn't enough. I found and downloaded the BOINC program from Berkeley and found three more (so far) projects to contribute to: SETI@home, Rosetta@home, and Spinhenge@home. SETI@home is pretty self-explanatory - it analyzes telescope readings for signs of life. Rosetta@home and Spinhenge@home are less obvious. Rosetta@home also folds proteins, but for a different reason than Folding@home. Spinhenge@home assists in nano-magnetic research. So just think, it could be my computer that discovers the secret to 100 TB hard drives next year. 
Update 20:57: I have also added ABC@home, a project that searches for three-number sets in which A+B=C.
Update 21:01: Found the last project I'll add for now: Predictor@home. This project aims to predict protein structure from sequence.
I’m Officially Folding@Home (and @Work)
Lured by a recent article in PC World news, I have installed the Folding@Home program from Stanford University and begun simulating folding proteins. So far, I've completed about 1% of my first work unit, so nothing much has been accomplished yet, but I've given the program permission to use about 80% of available processor power, and it estimates completion in a little over five days (!). That means, unfortunately, more like ten or fourteen days, since this computer is off more than half the time, but progress is progress. Being part of a One Petaflop (yes, I said "Peta") computing project does wonders for one's ego; helping solve complex problems in the spare time of one's computer (and I might try convincing friends and family, too, and form a team) gives you that warm and fuzzy feeling that the world is full of cooperation and achievement, and you're a part of it.
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