I just found out that the television program Smith was cancelled last Friday.

I was looking for it on the guide, I was expecting it to be on later tonight on CTV. I couldn’t find it, so I went to the CTV website but there is absolutely no references to be found. The CBS website is far enough behind that they are still talking about last week’s episode.

A search on Google turned up the Wikipedia link so I visited it, and found out the news.

Sure, episode two wasn’t as good as episode one, but episode three was really fantastic and both Eileen and I were eagerly anticipating tonight’s episode.

So sad. So tragic.

I just uploaded a bunch of pictures from Robothon, figured I’d get them up and spend some time annotating them later. There were some really impressive robots to see this year and everyone had a great time.

Dave Hylands has some video from the Line Maze event. You can see my robot Hyperion run through its three attempts. Watch some of the other ones too, some are very impressive.

On a related note, the Vancouver Robotics Club will hold its annual event on October 21st. Details available on our website.

Just got back home from Robothon where I competed in two events with three robots: Line Maze with Hyperion, and Mini Sumo with Velox and The Thin Man (TTM).

Similar to last year, my attempt at the Line Maze was a bit of a disaster. This wasn’t surprising. I made a half-hearted attempt to figure out what might be wrong, but honestly didn’t spend nearly enough time on it. Oh well.

The up side: Velox won second place and TTM took third place in the Advanced Mini Sumo event. Dave Hylands won first place (as usual, drat) but TTM worked pretty well and was very promising despite its “limitations”. You have to understand that I procrastinated through the summer, finally finished the machining and electronics on Friday morning, wrote just enough code to get some simple behavior on Saturday, and competed on Sunday.

I got many great comments on the design. Everyone was very impressed with how nice it turned out. It was so thin that no other robot could actually detect it unless it was really close. Unfortunately TTM was also completely blind (no idea why, yet) so often it was a bit of comic relief watching two blind robots spin around each other. I figured winning a match or two would be a great success but third place (especially against some really good robots) is well beyond my expectations.

As usual, Robothon was a lot of fun and I got to catch up with many people I don’t see very often, including the Spark Fun guys Nathan and Ben, and the nice folks from Pololu too. I’ll try to get my photos online in the next couple of days.

My latest minisumo project, The Thin Man, is coming along nicely. The two slots in the front scoop will hold sensors and behind that is a small cavity for the electronics and li-poly battery.

I’m going to have to put in some extra hours this coming week, as I’ve only got ONE WEEK LEFT until Robothon. It’s going to be very, very close but I think I’ll make it.

Check out the new pictures here and let me know what you think.

Last night we watched the pilot episode of Smith starrring Ray Liotta and Virginia Madsen. It was pretty good, and a welcome change from the latest trend of “good guys” shows like Law & Order and CSI. Unlike the classic stories of Robin Hood (rob from the rich, give to the poor) or The Thomas Crown Affair (rich guy steals but doesn’t hurt anyone) this story has sharp edges and blunt-force trauma.

I think the writers looked at every other drama on television and said “nothing that appears in those shows will appear in ours”. It was really different, and really enjoyable. I strongly suspect it will be ignored by most people as it contains a lot of violence, the characters are significantly flawed, and the storyline requires some thinking.

We’ll watch again next week for sure. If you enjoy a different kind of drama, you might like this too.

Did anyone else catch this?