2015 FIRST Robotics build season

The FIRST Robotics season kicked off last weekend and I'll be spending much of my free time working with the Merrimack ChopShop166 software team.

Some handy links:

• ChopShop166 github repository


• ChopShop166 website (blog to be relaunched soon) currently here: http://chopshopt166.blogspot.com/


• 2015 Recycle Rush manual


• 2015 WPI Library & sw for the new Linux-based control system

Tempus fugit

Today is this blog's 12th birthday!

It started out being hosted as static webpages maintained by blosxom which I created a debian package.

As my twitter description says, it is primarily about 'NH, 6 kids, Linux, photog (some licensed by Creative Commons), 25+ backyard chickens, HP, Cloud, geek, android, arduino, genealogy are some words I like"

Guilford Harbor pano

DSC01780 - DSC01782 (Modified), originally uploaded by marcn.

...in Guilford, CT

Via Flickr:

Projection: Cylindrical (1)
FOV: 100 x 33
Ev: 14.83

My most viewed photos on Flickr

The last blog post got me thinking of my popular photos on Flickr. Here are the top 10 most viewed photos:

1. John McCain (featured on http://news.yahoo.com/elections) 34,251 hits -- this photo spent a number of weeks linked to from Yahoo!'s 2008 election page. One of the two times I saw him in Merrimack. The colors are a bit washed out. For rare/unique photo ops I now shoot in RAW format...
   
   



2. New Hampshire Nudist Park 18,506 hits -- Yes chilly NH does have a nudist park. No I've never stopped in.
   
   
   
   



3. Are you ready for the Rapture? Jesus is coming on Oct 28, 1992(!) 15,635 hits
   
   
   



4. Gena O`Kelley (Mrs Chuck Norris) 13,620 hits -- I took the kids to see Chuck Norris and his wife when they were out traveling with Mike Huckabee. I'd say most people where there to see Chuck. He is surprisingly short in person. Also see comment wrt RAW format.
   
   
   
   



5. Barack Obama 12,071 hits -- one of my 'famous' photos. It is available under a liberal Attribution Creative Commons license and has been used on a number of website but also the cover of a now defunct hiphop magazine. Tineye.com says it knows of about 153 uses. Also used on Wikpedia: Barack_Obama_at_NH See note about shooting in RAW...
   
   
   
   



6. Gena O`Kelley 11,954 hits -- another Mrs Chuck Norris photo from the same event. Guess the Norris fanboys like to look at his wife.
   
   
   
   



7. Hillary Clinton in Hampton, NH 10,607 --- this is from one of her early 2008 primary events in NH. Did you ever notice her blue eyes? I really like this photo.
   
   
   
   



8. If you don't talk to your cat about catnip... Who Will? 8,420 -- funny sign seen at a daytrip to Portsmouth.
   
   
   



9. Shawn Johnson 7,205 -- not a particularly great shot but linked to from a woman's gymnastics web forum.
   
   
   
   



10. Senator Joe Biden & Nozell/Thomas family 6,212 -- at the time Vice President Biden was just a US Senator. As you may guess the event was in support of NH Governor John Lynch.
    
    
    
    

Belated Blog Birthday

I missed a couple of milestones.

This blog turned 10 years old on March 5th, 2012. It started life as a humble blosxom script and stayed like that for two years when I migrated to a self-hosted wordpress blog. Since I've been tracking late in 2007, there has been 180,000 page views -- a good percentage is probably spammers.

Here are my move viewed blog entries:

1. messing around with tiles (13-Aug-2004; 16,153 hits) -- a silly little post about using the taprats java app to generate some interesting titles. It is also where I got the favicon for nozell.com.


2. family pictures -- including one of me naked! (4-May-2003; 7,560 hits) -- Seems lots of people are searching for naked photos on the internet. Who knew? The entry has some bitrot, but I had scanned some old photos as part of a genealogy project. Here is the photo of me butt naked.
   


3. Getting started with the SheevaPlug (12-May-2009; 7,158 hits) -- finally a geek-related entry! I'm still somewhat happy with LordShiva.local, but it sometimes flakes out losing the root filesystem. Its backup function has been moved to a DreamPlug.


4. flickr upload for gnome's nautilus (4-Sep-2004; 6,077 hits) -- Back in the Debian/Sarge days I wrote a little Nautilus script to upload flickr photos. It got some link-love from flickr. Sadly the script is lost to the ages.


5. I’ve seen things, I’ve seen them with my eyes… (5-Mar-2004; 4,901 hits) -- damn earworm by the excellent Weebl. Surprisingly the link is still good. Best part of the song? Kuala Lumpur!


6. Some tips to (re)install grub on an HP ProLiant server (8-May-2004, 4762 hits) -- Back in the day HP ProLiant with SmartArray controllers, Red Hat and grub didn't love each other as much as they do today. My notes were popular for a while, less so over time.


7. Logitech USB headset & Ubuntu/Linux (13-Sep-2006; 4,263 hits) -- evidence that random devices work out of the box on Linux just like it usually does on Windows.


8. hp 2133 update (4-Jun-2008; 3,799 hits) -- described some problems installing various distros of Linux on my cute little hp2133 netbook. Since then Ubuntu has been running on the hp2133 just fine and has ubeen upgraded through Oneric. Now it is off at college with Son #2 who uses it for notetaking in class.


9. SheevaPlug customizing pre-installed Ubuntu/Jaunty (17-May-2009; 3,392 hits) -- misc notes on the SheevaPlug when it was running Ubuntu/Jaunty. Currently it is running Debian/Squeeze mainly because Ubuntu dropped support for the ARM CPU it uses.


10. SheevaPlug is now my main home server (26-Jun-2009; 2,916 hits) -- A write up on what the SheevaPlug was hosting in my home datacenter. All those functions have moved to the newer and more capable DreamPlug.
    

The other big milestone is I've had the nozell.com domain for 15 years -- 6-Feb-1997. I have children that are younger than that domain!


Record last updated on 07-Feb-2012.
Record expires on 07-Feb-2013.
Record created on 06-Feb-1997.


FIRST Robotics – Granite State Regional (Saturday)

Day 2 - 2012 Granite State Regional, a set on Flickr.

Tons of photos from the BAE Systems/Granite State Regional FIRST Robotics competition.

Iif your robot competed, there is likely a photo of it here!

Use, share, redistribute the photos, but you need to give me a photo credit.

FIRST Robotics - Granite State Regional (Friday)

FIRST Robotics - Granite State Regional, a set on Flickr.

Tons of robot photos from Friday at the NH FIRST Robotics regional competition.

Including some of the surprise concert performers Jada.