Northern Bites Blog

Part of a slow-coming but technically proficient series of diary entries from the RoboCup 2007 competition:
-Day Zero
-Day Two
-Day Three

MORNING:

Day One is game-face day. One needs to make entrance to international robotic dog soccer competitions. Tucker, Jesse and I decide to take care of registration. Jesse asks me: “Are you sure you have the registration materials?” “I’ve got it covered. No problem.” So we stroll.

Suddenly, as we stroll through midtown Atlanta, I’m hungry as all get-up. So where do we go? That’s right, American’s Kitchen: CVS Pharmacy. A few granola bars later, I’m straight. So after some guessing, we think that our best bet to get to Georgia Tech campus is to catch a bus 12 blocks away. We get there. Man, is it hot, we think. We wait around wondering if we’ve reached the right place. Finally, we see a special ‘Stinger Bus’ fitted with a ‘ROBOCUP’ sign. I grimaced as it isn’t properly punctuated as ‘RoboCup’. Never the less, despite their sheer insolence, we board. On the bus… RoboCup people from foreign lands! Sweet!

Continue reading ‘Post-RoboCup 2007 Diary: Day One’

We had the graphic — and now we’ve been pushed off. By Plant Biology!! Damn you, Plant Biology!

Well, at least we can have solace that we’ve reappeared in the ‘News’ section via our iTunes U article. Even though it’s mostly an article about iTunes U, it’s still cool.

By the way, who started the rumor that we play on a 3×5 meter field? All press articles seem to have this now. We play on a 4×6. Duh.

Part of a slow-coming but technically proficient series of diary entries from the RoboCup 2007 competition:
-Day One
-Day Two
-Day Three

As in Computer Science, this journal starts with Day Zero. I’m flying at thirty thousand feet with the nBites crew, and the outdoor elements are making bad metaphors outside of the plane. On the starboard side (does boat terminology work on airplanes?) , there is a perfect ROYGBIV sunset. On the left hand side, a raging lightning storm of death. Remarkably, this plane is flying straight through the middle. I can only figure that this can only be a sign of the journey to come. Either we fade gloriously into the sunset, or a lightning bolt fries our ass. Atlanta, here we come.

–Weeks Later–

Well, it turns out that neither greatness nor failure can happen sometimes. We got diverted. As ball-lightning descended upon the ginormous Hartsfield International Airport, we went elsewhere. We landed with other planes @ an airport without jetways. We hung out there, posturing as we considered bringing our robots out of their shells and let them stretch their legs on the floor. We took off again, and made it to Atlanta. We were blearly-eyed as we ran into a group of blind people getting on the terminal subway. We were worried when one decided to go left exiting instead of right.

Continue reading ‘Post-RoboCup 2007 Diary: Day Zero’

Here’s how you lose RoboCup:

Here’s how you win RoboCup:

Sent, by me, fearless team captain, to the inner-core of the team on July 29, the day before we left for Atlanta:

Jesse is talking to Dick Nunn right now and I have a few things to say:

I say this to you, Northern Bites: we have the fire.

Over the past six weeks we have had the highest highs and the lowest lows. Deluded visions of grandeur and depressingly bleak predictions. We’ve broken three robots, made countless runs to D^2, inured ourselves to Imogen Heap, screamed ‘ROLL!! UNROLL!!’.

It’s time to up it up. Let’s win this f-ing thing

Here:

In a true David vs. Goliath story, and in our second year participating in the four-legged league, we won the World Championships. Linking to a great CNN.com piece that just ran today, but our victory is a couple of weeks old.

Our ride was pretty amazing: 90-hour weeks holed up in the lab for six weeks before competition, fuel from Dunkin Donuts, and 5-AM dance sessions of the Hold Steady, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, and our favorite, the Lion King Soundtrack.

We lost early in the tournament but fixed a monstrous python bug — one two-spaced tab between our robot dogs completely sucking and being completely kick-ass. But we rolled to beat the Microsoft Hellhounds (Microsoft!!), the illustrious two-time champion the GermanTeam in the quarterfinals, Carnegie Mellon in the Semis (only the best Computer Science program in the world), and finally, took on the reigning World Champs, the NUbots from Australia, who literally beat every team last year by five goals.

Being Team Captain, this was the best experience of my life. Working on an insanely hard, really big project with a bunch of dedicated, awesome ‘teammates’. All the while realizing that we were, ridiculously, teaching robot dogs how to play soccer.

We’ve got video of every game up on www.northernbites.org. Roll, nBites!

Dogged determination leads to RoboCup victory

This is a really great article.

Link.

UPDATE:: Link Fixed.

Yes, we are finally going to see Transformers tonight, with at least the remnants of our team: me, Mark, and Chown-Dawg. And maybe some frisbee friends too.

I will post a thoroughly technical review when we get back.

UPDATE:: it was good.

Portland Press Herald