Nooooooo! This is definitely an off topic post.

I learned with great dismay earlier today that the Lego Company is discontinuing its Lego Mindstorm Robotics product line. The number of boys and girls who learned programming skills via Lego Mindstorms and have gone on in their lives to become engineers is HUGE. I personally coached a Lego Mindstorms team for five years, and almost every team alum is now a working engineer. Perhaps my only alum who is not now an engineer … is now a pastor. I also consider that career choice a major success!

The announcement via enGadget. (very sad news … rather than just playing video games on a computer, Lego Mindstorm teaches kids robotics, mechanical engineering skills, and programming)

And now some blast from the past images … most pics taken by my wife, Molly, of S.N.I.P. (Super Nerds In Pink). This was our team name, and I told the boys if we made it to the Minnesota state tournament, they could spray paint my hair pink! Scroll down to see my “pink hair!”

Team Pics … I’m the old guy with pink hair!

The robot has to be built entirely with Lego parts. The embedded computer uses a visual programming language similar to LabView (created / maintained by Texas Instruments). The boys by their fifth year of competition also learned to program their robot directly using C Programming (a scientific programming language). During the competition, the robot had to accomplish assigned tasks, and could NOT be touched by team members. The competition also included a technical presentation about the robots design (programming and mechanical), and a presentation on a technical topic which varied every year. Here is a video of a girl’s team from this year … it shows how a typical robot, and a very good one at that … works! (video link for email subscribers)

Super Nerds In Pink (SNIP)