Robo-chicks: Banging and Screwing All Night and Day

Our FIRST season has officially started for 2011! Well, actually, it started on January 8, which I celebrated like Christmas. But since then, I've been absurdly busy, hence the lack of activity on HEQAB.

After our initial planning and strategizing frenzy, we've gotten a design for a telescoping system for our "arm" and a pneumatic system for our gripper. We also built a sweet new scoring rack: 

Hopefully we can get our robot up and running before ship date, so that we can actually test our manipulator design. 

I told you before about our awesome mecanums, that let us crab and do donuts and generally be NPH-like. Here's a picture of them mounted on our testing frame. One of our mentors was also so generous as to put a gyro chip in it so that we can go in the direction we want whether the robot is facing us or not. For instance, if the "front" of our robot was facing us, we could push the joystick forward and it would still go "forward" away from us, instead of going in the direction its front was facing. Pretty cool, and very useful. 

The mecanum bot always looks so sneaky when it's crabbing (moving from side to side without turning). It looks like it's doing the -- STOP....HAMMERTIME! Ahaha, it's so perfect.

So I think that's enough robotics today. I won't brag about my awesome (almost) single handed mock up of the telescoping design, done in thirty minutes using foamcore, duct tape, and wood, and fully movable and with a conceptually correct design! Oh. Well, too late. At any rate, we've had some high productivity.

For English HL, we just finished reading The Crucible. And let me tell you, all I wanted to do at the end of the book was bring John Proctor back to life and slap the rest of them in the face, shaking them by the shoulders and screaming, "What is WRONG with all of you?!?" It's like Arthur Miller was trolling in literary format. Good writing, terrible book. But historically "accurate."

That's what bothers me about history. There's so much tragedy, and so few happy endings. I've had so many daydreams where I go and save Anne Frank and her family. I've convinced Archimedes to leave his calculations in the sand and come with me, away from the soldiers. I've defended Scopes at the "monkey trial". I've borrowed Isadora Duncan's scarf before she got into her car. I've hijacked JFK's car in Texas and told the Kennedys to duck and cover. I've helped save more Jews from the Holocaust than Schindler. Eh, history makes me rage sometimes.

In totally unrelated news, somebody told me that my greatest fault was that I was "too rational." I'm geared towards solving problems, and I've very goal oriented. But I don't ignore the human aspect of situations. I'm tactful and charismatic, even if my attempts at motivating the stubborn often end with, "Get over it and fix things." Apparently, for an engineer, this is a good trait; I'm not whiny, and I get things done. But I'll have to temper my temper a bit more, and stop being so feisty sometimes. I hope demureness won't clash too badly with my wit and pragmatism.

I've got a Harvard interview tomorrow, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. But I'm not expecting this to make or break me; after applying for college, I've realized that people aren't just trying to make you feel better if they say it doesn't matter about college rank. It actually is very important to make sure that you will like the college, and that the college will be right for you. And I actually believe that the adcom takes this into consideration when reading your application and making the decision. It's refreshing.

In other news (as if this post weren't ADD enough), Radiohead is coming out with their new album this year! Whoo! On my Pandora account, I have four stations: Protest the Hero, Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours", Rachmaninoff, and Radiohead/Massive Attack/Juno Reactor. These are the people I listen to whenever I'm on the computer. The only reason my first favorite band, Evanescence, is missing is because I need too much attention to listen to them; they're too emotionally attached to my impressionable middle school years to listen to in such a mundane, detached state of mind while I'm on the computer, reading fanfiction or webcomics or restauraunt reviews or Popular Mechanics (c-c-c-combo breaker!).

But alas, I must truncate this lengthy post; chemistry homework calls, as does my unfinished Math HL independent study work and my unfinished scarf and knitting. Ciao!