From the exceptionally low frequency of updates to this site this year you’d think that I have nothing interesting to post about. Not true. Things have been exceptionally busy at work, and I’ve also managed to find some interesting things in my pursuit of building robots.

I took a trip for work to the Sophos HQ in Abingdon, United Kingdom a couple of weeks ago. Its just outside of Oxford, and its a great place. It was really nice to meet people I’ve been talking to (over the phone) for quite a few months now, and the week I spent there was incredibly productive. This was the culmination of a lot of work since spring, and it seems like its only getting more busy now through the summer.

For my robotics hobby I picked up a Hammer board from Tin Can Tools. This is a development board built around a Samsung processor with an ARM 920T core. I have this crazy idea of making a Line Maze robot that runs Linux for the Seattle Robotics Society Robothon event this October. Seriously!

The other major “toy” is my new iPhone 3GS. I’d been waiting for the new model to come out, and I even took time off from work to go stand in line on the morning it was released. I really like it, definitely another solid Apple product. I’ve slowly been re-incorporating Apple products into my household: a 15″ MacBook Pro, a Time Capsule, and now an iPhone. It is just so much better than my previous phone (Motorola Razr) and its also much better than any other device I looked at including the Blackberry product line and the phones running Google Android. I’ve got the iPhone SDK installed and have started writing my first applications. Learning Objective-C is nifty although it makes my brain hurt a little after so many years of writing C++ and Perl/Python/etc.

The day I bought my iPhone I left it with Eileen and I went out to play golf with a friend. By the time I got back she had fallen in love with it too, and demanded we go out and buy her one. So now we are a two-iPhone household.

Golf. Yes, golf. I’ve been playing pitch-n-putt (par 3) golf with people from work this summer and having a great time. I’m not that good but still its a great way to be outside and includes a small amount of physical activity. I don’t think I’ll graduate to playing a full-size course but these short courses are a lot of fun. We’ve lived around the corner from a course for a number of years but never been there. Now I will often get home from work, pick up the clubs and walk five minutes down the street to play nine holes. Lots of fun!

The Vancouver Robotics Club is now regularly holding a new event (the Basic Table Top Challenge) at every meeting as a way to motivate people to build robots.

It worked for me, I scrounged around my various bins and boxes for parts to build something quite different this time around. My latest robot “Optic Nerve” uses a AVRcam as its only sensor. Here is a video of one (4.4mb) of one attempt. As you can see, it didn’t actually work 100% correctly!

The basic algorithm is to follow the black line along the right side of the course, counting the number of horizontal black lines crossed. When the right number of lines is crossed the robot spins around and tries to follow the edge again. In this example video you can see the “spin” rotates too far and it cannot correct for it. I still need to improve that approach.

I’ll try again at the next meeting in May, hopefully I’ll be able to improve the “spin” to be more successful. If you are in the Vancouver area on May 17th then stop by and see for yourself.

After a miserable start Microsoft gave up on a silly advertising campaign (and supposedly also a very expensive campaign) to have Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld explain to me why Windows was wonderful. Their next attempt was the “I’m a PC” campaign that was somehow supposed to convince me that it was cool to use Windows. Their latest attempt now tries to convince me that purchase price, rather than coolness, is the primary factor I should use when deciding on a new laptop. Uh, what?

I appreciate value as much as anyone else, but seriously Microsoft is once again missing the boat. I’m sure the Apple execs are laughing (again) at this new attempt. I certainly am. In addition to laughing I’m also quite puzzled why Microsoft seems to be funding the advertising for Best Buy and HP. Whatever.

People like their iPods and iPhones because they feel nice to use. Ok maybe people get them because they look cool. Maybe coolness is why people buy, but that isn’t why people recommend to their friends. When you ask people who have a MacBook whether they’d recommend one, they aren’t going to tell you about price or about coolness. They tell you about the joy of using it and getting things done. They tell you about the joy of having a computer that “just works” for them.

Usability has always been a key thing for Apple and it really shows. I believe this is because Apple creates a cult-like passion amongst developers and users about it. I believe that Microsoft is interested in usability, but somehow they can’t seem to make it work. You can watch Steve Ballmer run around shouting “Developers! Developers! Developers!” but is he really trying to create the passion and commitment to design? Probably not. There is even a famous email from Bill Gates where he bitterly describes his frustration with Microsoft products.

Its almost like nobody there actually gets it, but that certainly isn’t true. There are “islands” at Microsoft where usability really shows (Visual Studio is my best example off the top of my head – it is exactly the right tool for me to write solid software) but the overall consistency is lacking across Windows as well as every other application. I gotta say I’ve never believed you can have real usability without end-to-end consistency, and Microsoft’s product portfolio seems to be a perfect example of that.

I’ve been lucky enough to have been introduced to real usability concepts, and when you understand the science behind that word you can appreciate why Apple seems drenched in it but Microsoft isn’t even in the same neighborhood.

Last weekend we were chosen by a small puppy to become his new parents!

Meet Cairo, a very nice little dog who thinks we are ready for sleepless nights and endless chasing around the house.

Cairo is about ten weeks old now, and is incredibly wonderful. He is a mix of Dachshund and Yorkshire terrier – not terribly large but incredibly cute and very rambunctious. He is keeping our other dog quite busy.

I’m hoping to get some sleep this weekend. I’d forgotten how much work it is to train a new puppy!

Eileen posted a different picture and some other fun stories.

Its been a long time since I updated this site, so let’s start with what I did last night. A few friends I used to work with at Kodak were getting together to play Battlestar Galactica, The Board Game. The fellow organizing it was also the one who introduced me to a number of excellent board games such as Ticket to Ride and Modern Art. There were six of us in total, the game is much better with a large group.

The BSG game uses the storyline through Season 2 as its backdrop. The basic conflict pits the humans against the Cylons, but initially the identity of the Cylons is secret. Each player is one of the cast members although the “who is a Cylon and who is not” is still very much in play. For example, Boomer is already a known Cylon by this time in the storyline but in the game there is no guarantee. In a six person game at least one person is a secret Cylon from the beginning. Their job is to sabotage the work of the humans for as long as they can, and they can choose to reveal themselves as Cylon to gain new and different ways to play the game. Halfway through the game one of the humans is privately informed they are really a Cylon too, and their goals then switch to insure the destruction of the humans. This tension creates a lot of paranoid decision making, and if the humans are truly unlucky the Cylon can be a very powerful figure such as the President or the Admiral of the Fleet (or both, as happened in one of our games).

If you are a fan of the series and really enjoy moderately complex board games I’d recommend this one. It takes a bit of time to find the optimal move for each player on each turn, but the basic rules are pretty easy to learn and it moves along at a reasonable speed. The first game can be pretty long (ours was about four hours long) due to having to learn the rules. The second game went much quicker, once everyone was up to speed.

One word of caution: don’t play this game with people who are easily upset by duplicitous behavior. The whole point of the hidden Cylon agenda is to wreak the most havoc on the humans at the worst possible time. Get used to it, this is how the game works.