EdGPatterson

With  the coming and going of Stop Build Day (aka the Day Formerly Known as Ship Day) another long and strenuous FIRST build season has come to an end. There were many challenges facing the team this year from breaking in several new students to having to adjust to sharing workspace with  other robotics teams. In spite of the many worries and concerns of the mentors the team manged to build another beautiful and efficient machine once again as I knew they would. I had faith in the abilities of Carlos, Jack, Vin, Lil' Jeff, Mark, Pete, Mary, Carl, Dan, Ron and especially our most important mentor Jeff Huspen would see the team through the trials and tribulations of the build season. Without them the team would never have lasted this long.
While building the robot is a source of excitement and pride the team is even more excited about the potential of the new students who have eagerly taken the challenge of FIRST to heart and have expressed interest in doing off season events that can only help the team grow and this is before the regional which is usually the hook that catches their mind. If the new students mature and grow into the leaders we see in them then the X-Cats will grow even stronger as a force in the FIRST community and that is even more exciting than building a competitive robot any day.

I have been the animation mentor ever since I joined the X-Cats 11 years ago. When I first joined I was eager to learn how to do work with 3D Studio Max and was hoping that it would eventually lead to a career int he field.
Now I know better.
To be good at working with 3D Studio Max requires talent and smarts of which I lack in both. I am more resourceful with the program than I am skilled. The only two good animations that have been produced on my watch have been due to the dedication of the students who took charge of the animation and saw it through to the end in 2002 and 2006.
I just plugged along like a good soldier happy to work diligently on the animation alone oft times for endless hours to see the animation to completion. Never once questioning why I was doing this. I wasn't in any position to teach anyone. I barely knew what I was doing myself.
As for the contest itself it has gotten further and further away from what FIRST is doing (who gives a CRAP what FIRST's game is this year we made an ALIEN!!!) and neither FIRST or Autodesk really care at all. FIRST is happy to receive a sizable donation from a major technology sponsor and Autodesk is more than happy to get their little moment in the sun with the hundred or so teams who actually care to participate. Thus there is no reason for either of them to change at all even though FIRST honestly could care less about the contest. To be blunt the contest is irrelevant and a waste of time.
In the past I used to be deathly afraid of not completing the animation by the deadline. Now I no longer care. This will be my last year being the animation mentor on the team. Someone else can take the mantle and maybe they'll get something more out of the experience. I don't feel I have.

So FIRST dropped the game on us all. It's a combo of one of FIRST's best games (2006's Aim High) and maybe it's worst (2001 Diabolical Dynamics) and is based heavily on basketball. It looks like alot of fun. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOXsdh…
My team gets down to business tomorrow with robot design ideas.
It's on!!!

The coming of the new year means within a week I will be given a challenge that will cause me to go to a rundown building not all that well cared for to a room with poor lighting, smells of mothballs and over matched air fresheners with a pack of eager but inexperienced students and try to solve this problem using an expensive but temperamental design program for a contest that honestly has little or nothing to do with what the main robotics competition is doing and most of the teams pass on. And I will willingly spend hour after hour and day after day and week after week there unfailingly til the project reaches completion.
Because there is no place else I'd rather be.

Thiswww.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles/… is going down Sunday August 14th from 7pm til 8pm  on ABC.
Watch it!
You will not be disappointed!