2009 season?
Hey there LEGO robotics fans. I'm not sure we're going to have a FLL season this year. I've put the word out and have heard nothing from anyone. I'm pretty sure Connor's in, and if I had to guess Dane is in, but I'm not certain about any one else. I've also come up dry on all attempts at recruiting new members. I'm afraid unless something changes I'm going to cancel FLL this year. It's too bad too, the field looks pretty interesting this year. Please contact me or comment on this post.

CONGRATULATIONS TEAM NXT GENERATION!

I just found out that our friends in Denmark have been notified that they are going to be competing in Atlanta at the FLL World Festival. Nice work NXT Generation!

I just updated my Brickshelf page with some images from JMMB, plus you can check out some of the other stuff I've built.

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=roguefx

Holy cow, I won!

I competed yesterday at the Junior Master Model Build-Off at LEGOLAND. Me and 9 other adults squared off at 2:00 PM and had one hour to build something with the theme "space". I had a few ideas before going in but that was the extent of my preparation. After sizing up the available parts (we all started with identical bins and had several other bins to dig through) I had to throw out my first two ideas of a LEM and astronauts and an Apollo rocket. I moved on to do a space station. After building for a while I noticed my scale seemed too small for a space station and it was looking sorta like the Hubble. When a spectator asked if I was building a Hubble I knew it was time to shift gears again. So knowing that our dear Hubble is entering it's golden age I decided to build the next generation space telescope. We all build feverishly for one hour and everyone did an amazing job. When I saw the other models I have to admit my heart sank a little. I didn't think I had any chance. The judges came by and we talked about my creation and then they reset for the awards. After watching the other age catagories it came time for us. We all lined up and got our trophies and certificates. Then they announced the winner and I was totally stunned to hear my name announced. I won!!!

My prize package included 4 one day tickets, 4 resort memberships, 4 LEGO sets, a hat, a shirt, a book, a keychain, a meet and greet with a master model builder and a mosaic of myself. And of course, the trophy :-)

Thanks to my family for cheering me on and to LEGOLAND for sponsoring such a great event. Congrats to all the other builders, you all rocked.

Season 2009 announced

Hey FLL fans!

FIRST has announced the theme for next year's challenge: Smart Move. It's all about transportation, and sounds like it's going to be very cool.

I've uploaded pictures from LEGOLAND, click here to see them

LEGOLAND was a blast!

Well, it all came down to luck this weekend, unfortunately it wasn't the good kind of luck. All missions have something that can go wrong with them, and we seemed to be having that more than we would have liked. I believe our final ranking was 12 out of 56 which is nothing to be ashamed of and we had very high marks on our project. You all did an amazing job on Saturday and I am very proud of you all.

I spoke with Lynn Crockett from LEGOLAND yesterday and she said she heard our name a lot the day before so you all made an impression, that's very good.

I will upload my pictures soon, if anyone else took pictures or video please let me have it so we can share.

I owe a big thank you to those that helped so much. Mickey, you were an awesome coach and a much appreciated companion, thanks. Theresa, you taught the team so much about sea level rise they are all experts now. Dianna, your help on the project was amazing, and thanks for letting us take over the garage and the house. John, Gayle and Dawn, thank you so much for your financial support, it means a lot. To all the parents who shuttled our team to meetings, got them to do their homework, pushed them to help out and schlepped them down to LEGOLAND, thanks.

Unless we attend the LEGOLAND invitational in Jan or Feb our work is now finished. Good job team, see you next season!

That's what I'm talkin' about!

That was an absolutely amazing meeting last night, you were all on fire! Not only did we successfully combine two missions, we re-thought another and built the attachments and programmed it in one night! I am very proud of you all.

Today's meeting starts early, basically after school for everyone that can make it. I'm afraid you'll be on your own at the table however, neither me or Mickey can be there until after 6. Dianna can help you with the project stuff, but she doesn't know anything about the table.

This is our last meeting tonight, make it count.

We will have meetings Monday through Thursday this week, from 7-9PM.

Today's meeting starts at 1:00. Eat some lunch and be ready to boogie. We have a lot to do.

ONE WEEK LEFT!!!

Let's make the time we have left count. I want all team members working hard and helping their team. We still have a lot to do and very little time left to do it.

In other news team NXT Generation received our care package and posted a note to thier website. check it out here under the news link.

Care package! We got or care package from our friends in Denmark Team NXT Generation. The whole team (and the coaches) had a fun time going through all the stuff and snacking on gummy everything. Thanks for sharing your culture with us!

Lights, Camera, Action!



On Sunday we spent some time filming video segments for our project. The team had a good time performing in front of a greenscreen.

Schedule this week

It's Thanksgiving week, where we give thanks for a little extra time to get our project and programming done :-)

This week we'll have additional meetings for all who can attend. If you can make it, great, if not, we understand and will see you at the next meeting. We have editing to do, we have programming to do, we have some missions to still work out, we have the project to finalize. I know some of you will be traveling and we won't have every member at any of these meeting quite likely. But if you can make it, I'll be around this week. And if you want to come over at a time not specified below, just call and ask, maybe we can work something out.

Tuesday 7:00 - 8:30
Wednesday 7:00 - 9:00
Thursday 5:00 - 7:00 (Turkey day!)
Friday 3:00 - 6:00 (get your shopping done early!)
Saturday 2:00 - 5:00
Sunday TBD

Pretty productive day team, let's keep up the momentum and good work. We're going to have a special project-only meeting tomorrow (Sunday) from 2-4. We'll have the "production studio" set up with lights, greenscreen and of course a camera. We'll shoot some segments for our video.

Today's meeting (Saturday) is going to have loose start and stop times. From around 1 to 5, maybe later

Thanks ACECO!

I would like to give a big shout out to our sponsor ACECO and John Lizarraga. Thank you for supporting our team!

Team members, visit the member page to see your homework assignments.

Team,

The Williamson's and Rowes are staying at La Quinta in Carlsbad. This is the link La Quinta Carlsbad

Tournament shirts are here!



This team will be looking sharp at LEGOLAND in December. Our all new 2007 tournament shirts are in. I will give them out tomorrow at the meeting.

Friends and family members, you can have a shirt too. Just visit the shop! Order soon though, we're running out of time.

Just about 3 weeks left!

We still have a ton to do and time is running out team. Here's your homework:

Dane - research floating house (what does one need to consider when building a floating house?)

Nick - Provide a graphic depicting how climate change leads to sea level rise.

Austin - map showing seal level rise for Santa Barbara (both 7 and 1 meters).

Rawley - Design the graphics for the news station and desk.

Connor - Harbor text.

Forest - Write a funny commercial.

All team members - give some serious thought to the challenges at the table and the project that we have not solved yet. We all need to work together to get everything done.

We'd also like to send a big shout out to our new FLL friends in South Africa, Kiddiwinks Dream Team! We look forward to sharing our project with you. Team members visit their website at http://dreamteam.poulter.co.za/

Care package!

We are exchanging packages with our friends in Denmark, FLL Team NXT Generation. We had a fun time tonight shopping at Wal-Mart and picking out "American stuff". The team also took pictures (except Forest, who was absent this meeting) and gave a little information about themselves on the back.



No meeting this Saturday, we have too much going on. We'll meet on Sunday from 2:00-5:00. In the mean time, you all need to work on the project. You can all write something.

LEGOLAND info

Hey Team, I thought I'd post some info for the upcoming tournament.

The tournament is at LEGOLAND on Dec 6th, I requested the later starting time but until we get our packet we won't know for sure. In the past we've met in the parking lot first thing in the morning to go over last minute details and to practice our project presentation.

We plan to leave Friday as soon as we can get out of here. We haven't booked a hotel yet, but we've stayed at most of the hotels off of Poinsettia and they're all about the same. The Ramada has a good breakfast, the Quality Inn is alright, the La Quinta is decent. There a lot more hotels in the area too, if someone finds a deal at a nice hotel, let everyone know. we weren't impressed with Motel 6 (but it was cheap!)

We plan to stay 2 nights. Your tickets are upgradable for a second day at the park for free. Don't count on seeing much of it on Saturday, the tournament eats up most of the day. We'll be driving back Sunday afternoon.

Thats about it for now. Meeting tomorrow night at 7:00PM

Less than a month!

I just gave LEGOLAND our final numbers for the tournament. Go to the members page to see your totals.

We need to get busy team, there's a ton of work to do.

Next meeting is Wednesday at 7:00PM

Good news team. LEGOLAND is offering their second day "Our Gift To You" passes. Simply take your paid ticket to guest services and they will give you a free ticket, good through March 31, 2009. This means everyone going to the December tournament can enjoy a second day at the park for FREE! We were able to take advantage of this before and it was great.

We're In!!!

I just got confirmation from LEGOLAND that we made the wildcard cut! We'll be competing there in December. Congratulation team, it's going to be an awesome time.

This weekend meeting will be a little earlier than usual, we'll start at 2:00PM. We might actually go longer than usual if everyone is into it.

Great meeting!

We made some great progress on the house challenge, thanks in no small part to some inspiration provided by our new friends in Denmark, NXT Generation. We also made some improvements to existing attachments and made a little progress on the project.

As a reminder team members, this Wednesday's meeting will be all-project, and next weekend's meeting will likely not take place because of the Halloween Bash!

Due to the number of team members receiving awards this Wednesday night (congratulations!) we will be moving this week's meeting to Thursday, 7:00-8:30

Good meeting last night team. We made some good progress programming and it was great to see everyone working hard. I've uploaded some pictures of the team working, here's a link to them


I also wanted to share this picture of our team with our friends in Denmark, team NXT Generation. Visit the link above to see our team working and learn our names.

Uh Oh!
I just found out this morning that in order to compete at LEGOLAND this year we need to compete at a qualifying tournament. The closest QT I can find is in Camarillo on Sunday November 16th from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Since it's so early we have to decide if we're going down Saturday night and staying the night or getting up VERY early on Sunday morning to be there on time (it's about 2 hours south). The deadline for registering is Oct 19 so we have to decide what we are doing very soon. Capacity for the QT is 24-32 teams and about half will move on to Championship tournaments. We'll have to register for LEGOLAND and this QT at the same time. If we do well at the QT then maybe we will get accepted at LEGOLAND. I have sent mail to the organizer to see if there are any slots still available.

There is also a QT at Six Flags Magic Mountain the same day, but the costs will be much higher. this is the website http://www.placeritajhs.org/placeritatech/FLL_Tournament/RoboticsTournament.html We'll have to discuss this.

This means we have about 6 weeks to prepare for our first tournament! We need to get our project in order, we need to start programming, we need to figure out our mission order, we need to build attachments, we need to do a LOT of stuff.

Last night's meeting was a bit of a wash. You all need to get way more motivated if we're ever going to be close to ready. All I can do is guide you, I can't make you want to learn or succeed.

Hello Team NXT Generation!

We would like to send a big shout out to our new friends in Denmark, FLL Team NXT Generation! We are sharing information with them on our projects and learning about each other's countries and communities. Visit their website here. http://nxtgeneration.dk (click the red white and blue flag on the lower left to read in English)

FANTASTIC MEETING!

I can't believe we started this meeting with a partially built chassis and ended with our first programmed challenge! We still have a long way to go but it's so great we're past this first threshold.

Team members, for the project we need you to visit this site and learn about rising sea levels in California. Click this link

As a reminder, the meeting this Saturday will be from 3:00-5:30

Good meeting team.

We had some great ideas for the project, I like where this is going.

Here's your homework:

1. Name of someone to contact (and their contact info) regarding climate change. For instance fireman, meteorologist, etc.

2. 3-4 questions regarding climate change (i.e. what are you curious about, is there something you don't understand?)

3. Any "new or different" scientific idea to explain climate change. For instance lost socks, bubblegum air, dorito dust.

At the table we need to get our chassis locked and our missions started. The clock is ticking, we need to make some progress.

Saw this post on Gizmodo, though it interesting and applies to our theme this year.