Post activity thoughts

Well I did have some success. That success being that in the end I managed to get that little project finished. Although other people had stuff that was cooler than mine, I can still say that I'm glad I got something done. So looking back at that dreadful activity, which I didn't think I would be able to complete, I can probably conclude that I could maybe learn from that horrible experience.
(Is the point that I didn't like it coming across at all?)
I can look at it in the way that I overcame my fears(?) and crushed confidence(which I didn't have much to spare in the first place) and eventually managed to get something done.

But now we come to the next project...big one. And wait for it...
My confidence again has gone dramatically downhill. But back to point I was making; I can hopefully draw from the previous experience and maybe realise that I can achieve something if I really want to, even though I may not think I can. I hope that all made sense.

With this next project I'm again thinking that I may not have the skills to complete it in an acceptable standard, let alone finish it at all. But we shall see and hopefully with each project I will start gain more confidence and a positive attitude, providing that I get this one done and can move on. But see that is the attitude that I should not have and not get into the habit of having.

So basically I need to clarify the objective(?) of this next project to ensure that I understand it completely and come up with some good ideas so that I can work on it and finish it over the Easter break.

Start thinking...

Unhappy

I am seriously hating this activity.

OMFG!!

To be honest I haven't really enjoyed this week as much as the previous ones. We are now definitely getting into the areas that I appear to not have the skills for.

So here's what we've had to use to achieve the individual activities this past week. 2 programmes; Animata and MaxMSP, soldering, and other manual things to do with a keyboard circuit board.

Here's my conclusion about all of those things:
I am terrible at programming!!! I was not good at using the animata programme at first but at least I'm getting a little, emphasize the word 'little' here, better at it.
MaxMSP, I don't understand a word of that.
Soldering wires to the circuit board, I can safely say I'm not good at. And if I do get that working I'll have to figure out what to attach it all to, with switches and other things, and how to put it in it's little box, where to drill the holes etc.

When you put all of those together any sane person can see that I have a very small chance of completing that activity in time, let alone getting it done well.
This is what I was really afraid of before I started this course. I really don't like it when bad thoughts come true. So I'm panicking a little now, and that just makes everything worse.

I have a horrible feeling that I'll be feeling even worse once this activity is due to be handed in.
Well you can always hope. Although I was thinking yesterday that maybe I shouldn't hope for the best, as the saying goes, because then I'll be even more disappointed, unhappy, depressed, upset, truly gutted etc, when it doesn't work out. So I'm not hoping for the best. But if I feel that way it might make it even harder to get the work done. In conclusion I now don't really know what I should be hoping for and I think I'm in for a bad weekend and another bad week.

The day of presentation

Friday

On Friday we had to present Scorpy to everyone. The method we used was that of the 3rd drawing. It went quite well, we got good feedback and also good comments from people in the class.
It was also cool to see all the other group's robots. All of the robots were completely different and it was good to watch.

Photos of the 3rd drawing

Photos of Scorpy

Here are some photos of our drawings, first and second(more on the next post):

Tuesday to Thursday:

Those three days involved many different tests of the robot's structure/design and thoughts about the method that would be used to make the robot move (interaction with it's environment). Some ideas included: using - sound, different shades of light(as has been mentioned), surrounding the robot with boxes(in different arrangements) and making it back away from the boxes when it sensors them, following something (e.g light, a laser, some sort of remote controlled object :P) and a number of other things.

Eventually we got the structure of the robot in a way that suited it's movements. Also the final decision on the method was for the robot to be placed on white paper, with a black border, and to move away from the black when it sensed it. Some photos(one photo, I can't upload others at the moment because of the connection, I'll put lots in the next post):

Once we got everything sorted we were able to get all 3 drawings done(all 3 used the same method of black and white paper and were programmed to turn away from the black paper in a random direction each time).
Drawing 1 was with the holes being poked into it.
Drawing 2 was with a thinish vivid, set to make dots/dashes, with the same distance between them each time.
Drawing 3 was with a thicker vivid and drew its dashes randomly, meaning at random times, lengths and therefore obviously random distances too.

We left the robot going for probably over an hour in the 3rd drawing. All the photos will be on the next post.

Drawing machine

Monday

We decided that our drawing machine would create it's art by pricking the paper with some sort of sharp point e.g a pin or needle(first picture).

The reason for the Scorpion not being used was that, although it did work, it worked too slowly. The tail(which held the pin) took too long to reach the paper, therefore making the gaps between the holes too long. What was left of the Scorpion was completely reconstructed. The new robot was given an extension at the back to hold the pin and move up and down in order to make holes in the paper.

Here is test robot no. 2:


The robot was to be programmed in a specific structured movement while also being effected by it's outside environment in someway. The idea for this was to use light to control the speed of the robot's movement. Light = faster, darker = slower.

Many test runs were used with this design, using a push pin as the sharp object on the end. Eventually the robot got redesigned, once again.

Friday

Friday was the first day of our new project - building a drawing machine. With discussions as a group we came up with ideas and made a few decisions, while still leaving room for more ideas.

This was also the last day for Jester. He got pulled apart and rebuilt as the Scorpion. Once the scorpion was built we imaginatively discussed what could be done with him and removed some unnecessary parts. Here's a photo of the scorpion before some parts were removed(mainly his legs and claws - I suppose by doing that he doesn't look much like a scorpion anymore, but for now that remains his name).

Lastly for the first two weeks of posts, meet the team:

Jester in action

Thursday Jester had another task, following on from the day before and completed on Thursday morning. Put simply, each robot had to get from A - B. A being the entrance and B being a door reasonably far away.
We had Jester follow a line of masking tape in order to reach his destination. His movements ended up looking kind of like constant mini zig-zags. I'm happy to say that he did reach his destination, also completing his other challenge of knocking on the door(B) along with telling a knock knock joke(I'll add that the choice of the joke was not mine).
The video above is Jester in action.

Also added is a photo of our little robot completed in character by a Jester's hat, which if I may say, was brilliantly made :D.

After that we were all given the task of building a drawing machine (see the next post for details).

Jester

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday....
All about Jester!!

So on Tuesday, once again in small groups, we had to come up with a new chess piece with all of its characteristics and protocols etc. Ours was the Jester and his movements were basically those of a bishop and knight combined. Here are his rules:
- Move a maximum of two units diagonally in a normal movement
- To attack, an extra one unit is added to the ordinary movement (in the same turn). It still has to be diagonal but can go in any direction.
- Can only attack(thereby adding the extra unit) if there is another piece in that space.
- Cannot jump pieces in the first two diagonal units

Every group then had to programme their robot to follow the specific directions of their new chess piece ready for Wednesday's competition(see below).

Wednesday's competition:
Each robot was put into a marked square(with a 15 second delay) and had the simple rule of trying to get the furthest away from the square. People seemed to have fun with this(everyone is competitive, that's just a fact), proven in videos that I can't upload because they're either too big or they just take forever. Therefore I'll just make do with some photos.

Photos of situational shuffle

Here are some photos from the situational shuffle. I think I figured out why it wouldn't upload them before. Just me being impatient I think.

Week no. 2

We've done quite a lot so its actually getting quite hard to separate the days. But here is my description of the second week.

Again Monday doesn't really need too much mentioning. The day was pretty short, we just had a lecture (in a new building which I'm happy to say I found) basically just introducing us to creative technologies.

Correction on the comment written in the second post about the opening post: change to - 'the below blog'.

(Just a little comment: the time that the above post says I posted it, is not correct).

And here now is the first week:

Monday doesn't really need much mentioning, it was basically another orientation day, but this time specific to the BCT course.

Tuesday however, was completely different. We split into groups of approx. 12 and then each group was given a blank wall. Each person got a
[pink]post-it note and stuck it to the allocated wall with their name now written on it. 12 questions were asked, and answered, by writing the answer on a different coloured note and placing it
around your own name, not always very close. Each time a question was answered the answer got connected to the correct name though yellow wool/string. After that 12(funnily enough) different colours if string were used to connect similar or the same answers. Here are some photos of the task for viewing purposes.


We then used the programme Gephi to basically re-create our physical 'graph' into a computerised one. All of this done in order to better understand the structure in the information that we gathered.

Now Wednesday...
In smaller groups we had to get our own data and 'generate our own visualisations' from it.
So my team mates and I decided to use information found in that day's newspaper. This information was: the number of positive and negative stories in said newspaper. We then used Adobe Flash to create a presentation of the information. The ideas of these visualisations were partly based around Edward Tufte's reasoning of 'Visual Display of Quantitative Information'.

Thursday:

Situational Shuffle!!
Now I enjoyed this task although I have to say, the first part rather more than the second. So once again in small groups; 4. We were then given the following objects: a set of cards(with different instructions on them), really big chalk pen thingys, and a map of Auckland(downtown). Each group decided on who would have what role for the task. These being:
- Actuator: the subject of the work
- Controller: directs the Actuator
- Tracker: charts the progress of the Actuator
- Sensor: who basically observes and records what happens.
Now me being a keen photographer it is obvious which role I had (the sensor :D). So I basically took as many photos as I could and watched the actuator doing some weird things. Ok, well I tried to attach some photos but for some reason it won't let me. : (
Now that was the first part. The second part; we had to make a presentation of our exciting little adventure. So we used finalcut and eventually got it done.

Fridaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy:
We had to present our finished(:D) presentation to everyone and got given some feedback about it. Now I must say, I'm not sure if ours was positive or negative....
With that done we had our nice little BBQ lunch and the got given our shiny new laptops, just like the one that I'm using to type this up. I will say that I'm enjoying having it so far(even though it's a mac - windows is heaps better!!!!!!!!!! (and I think that the majority of people(based on the info from Tuesday) have the same opinion).

Right well I'm not entirely sure if I've written the right things here, but lets hope. So stay tuned for the info about week 2. :D

First week

Ok, so I'm finally getting around to writing something on this, so here is an introductory paragraph.

The first two weeks were definitely not what I might have expected. Though they were interesting, very social and intellectually profitable (a new learning experience). So here follows a description of the first 10 days.