Tag Archives: MN North: Amity

Goodbye Lego Mindstorms

Background

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)

Coyote or Timber Wolf??!

Year 9,

Only its hairdresser knows, but I vote coyote! I did not find any moose this morning up north of Two Harbors, but I did spend some quality time with this canine till another car came and spoiled my fun. The coyote was actually walking right towards. Given we have both timber wolves and coyotes in NE Minnesota, one needs to learn some ID pointers. As noted I am voting “coyote” because of this animal’s more pointed ears and snout. The Western Wildlife Outreach organization has some great information more mammal identification.

Wile E. Coyote

On the home front it has been very blue since early September. According to the official Hawk Ridge count, as of yesterday (October 2nd), they have counted 59,281 Blue Jays! Given I live 1.5 miles from Hawk Ridge, and maintain my feeders year round, it has been rare when I have not had at least four jays in my yard at any one time for the last month, and often quite a few more. From two afternoons ago …

Great Horned Owl Talons

Year 9

About an hour before supper last night while relaxing and resting after doing lots yard work to get ready for winter, I heard a crow! This crow sounded very upset, and given I have learned to speak the black bird’s language, I got my tired old duff off the couch and went hiking into the forest. 2/3’s of a mile down the trail I discovered one of my Great Horned Owls … I believe the mom both due to her larger size and well developed horns … eating crow! Thus … I bring you “talons”!

Great Horned Owl: I’m a sweet, innocent bird!

Great Horned Owl: I do have some cool feet!

Talons!

That’s all folks!

On another note … Hawk Ridge banded quite a few northern saw-whet owls last night, Sunday the 25th. The weather forecast is for decent winds out of the north for the next few days. With lots of birds moving through northern Minnesota right now, yesterday my own feeders were also very active with migrants. Thus it is time to look for perched saw-whet during the day up north.