The Wired Cats

Hi all,

Here's a quick update on the Wired Cats (the 2008 Westminster Robotics club) and their recent exploits in the First Robotics competition. For their first year in action, they look to be putting in an incredibly strong effort. The team had the robot up and running more than two weeks before the final deadline, and the design is proving itself to be quite robust.

They now have a couple of nice sites up, at Westminster Robotics blog, and the Wired Cats web site that really tell great stories of teamwork and innovation. Here are some of my favorite highlights.

Pre-season start: building the team computers from scratch in the WISE Lab.


Week 2: A Working chassis by the end of week 2






Week 3: An excellent concept on the drawing board, but will it work?




Week 4: Yes, high school students CAN use power tools safely once OSHA qualified!

Week 4: Lot's of holes to drill and tap. That's teamwork!



Week 4: "Don't worry, I'll MAKE it fit!"



Week 4: The pieces coming together



Week 4: It has an arm!










Week 5: A Working Robot

Check out this video of the Robot in action!


Go Wired Cats!

Dr. Seuss as Technical Writer

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort, and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash, and your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash, then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house, says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, but your packets want to tunnel on another protocol, that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall, and your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss, so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse, then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, 'cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk, And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risc, Then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom!

For All You Hacker Wannabes Out There

So who can tell me why this is funny and scary at the same time for any computer scientist?!