Projects

It’s been two semesters since I came to MIT, so I feel qualified enough to draw a few cursory conclusions. I had a preconceived notion that MIT was full of kids who love to build crazy contraptions in their spare time. In reality this is not too far from the truth, but the workload placed on most students during the week keeps many of the more time consuming projects from coming to fruition.

A case in point:

Ken Schrock and his roommate Francis love cartoons. Futurama, The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, and Seinfeld are on constant rotation on their TV, and the Theta Chi server is full of countless seasons of comedy favorites. Ken and Francis also happen to be very lazy, a quality in which they place a good deal of pride. Ken and Francis often have trouble deciding which episode and show to watch, and don’t want to get off their couch to change the computer to the next episode when one finishes. In the spirit of laziness, Ken, who is a senior, spent the last two days coding a random show selector that will arbitrarily pick a show off the server and start it playing on the computer. Tonite he took a solenoid off a robot I built over the summer, placed it over the keyboard of his computer connected to the TV, and attached a large switch on a length of wire. When you press the switch the solenoid fires into the Enter key on the keyboard, a show is randomly selected, and the episode begins to play. Don’t like the show? Just flip the switch again. Genius.

In other news, today was the 2.007 Design and Manufacturing robotics competition held in the Johnson Ice Rink. More students attended this competition than any sporting event I’ve attended all year. The goal of the game was to create a robot that could move balls down a series of platforms into a goal at the bottom of the field. Two robots square off head to head to see who can score the most point. Qualifying rounds were held today, and the competition winners will be determined tomorrow evening.