One more robot learns to see

There’s a reason free is in quotations.

On the front page of my website I vaguely promised some rants and I realized that until now I have not delivered on this promise.

Well here we go.

I am getting super sick of the status of WiFi when I’m abroad/travelling. Free does not mean 10 minutes of browsing, Free does not mean I have to make an account or download an app, Free does not mean you’ll send me a password by SMS - if I could just use my phone then I probably wouldn’t need the damn WiFi. For Fucks sakes just use a simple open network and be done with it! WiFi is to our generation what phones were to the last - note how many places offer a courtesy phone or how reasonably priced pay phones are? When’s the last time someone asked to use your phone and you said no? (especially for businesses) It’s how we communicate now and people generally need to communicate when they travel.

People need WiFi when they travel. period. lets just give it to them.

Also if you say you have free WiFi and then it turns out I have to “pay” for it then F!#@ you

Also if you are going to charge then offer a good service at least, half the time my devices have a hard time connecting to the network and then when they do it takes forever for your initial “please pay me now” page to load. Get It Together.

I’d like to end with acknowledging Starbucks for their no-nonsense, BS free, legit Free Wifi. Thanks Starbucks you’ve helped me (and others too I’m sure) out of some tough spots.

This past weekend KBotics competed at the Finger Lakes Regional in Rochester NY. We were super happy with our robots performance: we lost in the quarter final to the alliance that ended up being crowned regional champs!

The big news from the weekend though is that we won the Chairman’s Award! To quote First:

“The Chairman’s Award represents the spirit of FIRST.  It honors the team that, in the judges’ estimation, best represents a model for other teams to emulate. It embodies the goals and mission of FIRST.  It remains our most prestigious award.”

Pretty dang sweet! Along with the most prestigious award comes the coveted blue banner (the first for KBotics) and a ticket to the World Championship in St. Louis!

You can read more on the KBotics Blog:

http://kbotics.ca/2013/03/02/friday-at-finger-lakes/

http://kbotics.ca/2013/03/03/finger-lakes-saturday/

http://kbotics.ca/2013/03/03/chairmans/

http://kbotics.ca/2013/03/04/k-botics-on-the-news/

http://kbotics.ca/2013/03/05/k-botics-in-the-paper/

Also we strapped the GoPro to our robot and human player etc. for some really sweet robot footage - stay tuned for some sweet videos!

I haven’t had the chance to blog anything about it yet but for a while now I’ve been involved with the Kingston Linux Users Group (KLUG) http://kingston.motd.org/. It’s a small but growing group and we recently hosted an Install-Fest event to try and introduce new users to Linux and to increase our group’s size.

It was a fun experience to plan an event and something new to me that I’d never done in my almost six years at Queen’s. I had to book a room through event services (Ellis 327 one of the only rooms with power outlets at the desks!) while other members of KLUG applied for a grant and advertised the event. One thing that I really found amazing was the power of Facebook as an advertising tool, by simply posting in relevant groups from Queen’s I was able to reach quite a wide audience and it didn’t cost me anything! We also had an add on the radio and in the campus news papers.

Canonical and Red Hat sponsored the event with live CDs and stickers which were both a hit. We also made some slick light-scribe live CDs of our own:

The event itself was a success - we had about 25 - 30 people attend and try/install Linux and I think we’ve gained some new users to our group. I gave a quick presentation at the start and I hope everyone learned a little bit more about computers.

InstallFest_Slides.pdf

I’m looking forward to planning more events with KLUG and continuing to spread the good word about Linux!

Final photo of some new users at the event