Category: Articles

Back in April I volunteered at the FIRST Championship in Houston. 192 FIRST Tech Challenge teams were competing. There were four division and eight playing fields. Add in hundreds of FLL and FRC teams also competing and there were many thousands of kids.

I volunteered as a FIRST Technical Advisor assistant, which meant I was at a one of the fields for the qualifying matches. My role was to help teams at the field get set up and help if possible with any robot issues during match play.

Here the referees are finalizing the match score at the conclusion of a match. It was great having a close up view of the game play. The only drawback being sore feet from standing all day long.

Yesterday we held a virtual kickoff event for the FIRST Tech Challenge Ultimate Goal season in British Columbia.

Continue reading “BC FTC Ultimate Goal Kickoff”

I ran across an article Fold for COVID which got me thinking about the old hardware I have literally just lying around. I thought maybe I could put it to use and so far so good. This is a form of community distributed computing where you allocate some of your computer resources to working on various problems. A few projects are specific to working on COVID-19 related issues, either in part or in whole.

Continue reading “Distributed Computing for COVID-19”

FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) had a kickoff event September 21 2019 for the SKYSTONE game in Vancouver. There was a good turnout and we have lots of new teams in Vancouver. I was there to help set up and demonstrate the Rev Control Hub, a new robot controller for FTC.

Continue reading “FTC Vancouver Kickoff”

The BC FIRST Tech Challenge robotics tournament was held February 17 2018 at St. Michaels University School in Victoria BC. 20 teams from British Columbia, Alberta, and Washington State participated. Continue reading “BC FTC Championships”

On January 24, BC held it’s second FTC League event at St. Michael’s University School in Victoria BC. Ten teams from BC and two from Washington State participated. I volunteered as the Field Technical Advisor. Continue reading “BC FTC League 2 Event”

Yesterday December 16 I was with the FIX IT 3491 team in Washington State to attend the FTC Pasteur Interleague event. 35 FIRST Tech Challenge robotics teams competed.

FIX IT did ok in the robot game, but wasn’t selected for any of the final alliances. But they did very well in the judged awards, winning the Motivate Award, 2nd nominee for the Connect Award, and 2nd nominee for the Inspire Award. 2nd nominee for the Inspires Award qualified the team to advance to the State championship in February.

I’ve been busy lately with FIRST volunteering, most recently as Field Technical Advisor and Field Inspector at the BC FTC League One event held at UVIC November 19. Ten teams participated in a fun-filled afternoon of robot competition.

 

I used the slow-carb diet and the 4 Disciplines of Execution to lose over 40 pounds. I applied the 4 disciplines of execution to make the slow-carb diet easier to follow with less cheating on the diet and the ability to re-focus when things didn’t go well.

Continue reading “How I lost 40+ pounds on the Slow-Carb Diet and The 4 Disciplines of Execution”

I have been very busy this past year with FIRST.  The mission of FIRST is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting Mentor-based programs that build science, engineering, and technology skills.

In addition to looking after the FIRST BC website, I’ve been volunteering at FIRST events and supporting team FIX IT 3491.

The big news is that FIX IT won the Inspire Award at the Houston FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship in Houston Texas.

But there was so much that happened before that.

Continue reading “It was a good year in FIRST Robotics”