Fez Micro Robot Bottom

If you are having bother positioning the support posts to hold your Fez Mini robot together you might find the above picture useful.  The PDF gives lots of good detail about how to fit the motors to the battery tray, but lining up the unit with the right screw holes on the base is a bit tricky. I think mine is right, at least the wheels seem straight enough for me. The back of the robot is at the bottom of the above picture.

Oh, and you don’t have to fit the line detectors where I have (just outside each wheel). This is part of an experiment I’m doing to find out how well grey scale line following can be made to work.

Dodgy Memory Chips

The thing that amazes me is that the memory card on the left has a thousand times the capacity of the one on the right. And this advance took place in five years or so. Amazing.

If you are interested in the slightly murky world of memory chips and hardware  manufacture you will find this post from one of the engineers behind the Chumby very interesting.

Geek Night Fun and Games

This is a still from a very embarrassing video:

http://www.devdays.nl/Video.aspx?pid=75

I’m doing it again. Geek Night at Dev Days. This time I’m taking my little robot Jason and a bag full of sensors and bits and pieces. We are going to create some embedded devices on the fly and have some good old .NET Micro Framework fun and games. If you are coming to Dev Days 2010 at the end of March, then it would be great to see you. You can find out more here:

http://www.devdays.nl/GeekNight.aspx

Windows Phone 7 Series Looking Good

I like the look of the new Windows Phone. I especially like this new blog from Charlie Kindel who sets out very nicely the priorities and the approach being taken to make this new device. It seems to me that the thinking behind this is very sensible indeed, and I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on a device.

Jetlag Levels

Jetlag Level 0: Normal amount of incompetence.

Jetlag Level 1: Forgetting things, but remembering you have forgotten them.

Jetlag Level 2: Forgetting things and not noticing.  Or caring.

Jetlag Level 3: Inability to do two things (such as walk and talk) at the same time.

Jetlag Level 4: Inability to one thing at the same time.

Jetlag Level 5: Staring at the PUSH sign on a door and not understanding its relevance to the problem that the door won’t pull open.

Jetlag Level 6: Can only recognise and use the simplest of things. Namely, a bed.