Robolympics

It's been a while, but I thought I'd post that my robot did very poorly at robolympics, going 0-2. There are no videos yet, but I can recap it. First I went against Senior PITA and getting a bit of damage against his drum, then going up against Punked out Puppy which did a lot of damage to the foam, bending an axle, and doing a bit of damage to one of the wheels. The bot is disassembled now, and I'm going to reuse the parts in my next robot, Silly Hats Only, which is going to use a pneumatically powered hammer as a weapon. I've got the pneumatic actuator, and am waiting for my dad to make me another carbon fibre frame. This time I'm going to go with 4 COPAL 30:1 motors and small wheels, and hopefully a magnet if the weight allows. The electronics/pneumatics add up to 7 ounces, so I hope I can get the frame (the previous one weighed 3 ounces total), 4 small wheels, a spring to reset the actuator, and an axe to fit in under 9 ounces. I'll be taking it to Gilroy next month for the Gilroy Bot Gauntlet, so wish me luck to win and get it under the weight limit :)

I've also recently installed Gentoo Linux on my desktop for an entire week. I wish I could've stayed longer, as I love the OS, but there really are no programs in the league of Trillian Pro (yes, I paid for it) or HydraIRC. I tried to get WINE working, but I was unsuccessful. Even so, I'd prefer native apps over "emulated" ones (yes, I know that WINE is not an emulator). I ended up switching back to windows. Hopefully in another year I'll try it again and staying for good.