Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Random stuff from the last few months.

So, first off, I moved and expanded my workbench. As you can see here, it's already covered with stuff. I really need to finish sorting out my tools and parts so this is less messy and easier to work on.
Next up, I went to UPEW (Unofficial Propeller Expo West) at Parallax's offices in Rocklin, CA. I got to see lots of cool stuff like the gas powered bot on the left.
I, also, met and talked with Chip Gracey. He invented the Propeller chip that I use in a couple of my bots, and he's busy working on the next version that is being called Propeller 2 or TurboProp for now. It was really awesome to sit down and talk with him about the stuff he is doing and all sorts of things.


I Also met and talked with several other really cool people at UPEW, like Ken Gracey (he "runs" Parallax and is a really nice and generous guy. He also designed the wood platform bot.), Jeff Ledger (who is the primary organizer of the UPEs), Beau Schwabe (who does IC layout, and took the time to explain some of that to me at 2am), Peter (pjv, he shared some really neat scheduler code for running multiple "threads/tasks" in one cog on a Propeller) and others. I hope I get to see you all again next year.

This is the new addition to my robot collection. It's called a Penguin Robot, because it looks and walks kindof like one.

Most recently, I visited my Mom and friends for my birthday last week. This is mom's cute dog "Diva".