589!!!

Today we were introduced to HTML and the prospect of "creating a website", for the new kids, this is intimidating, but to veterans like me, lets just say we have... experience. I thought that we were going to do Sketch-up today since it was a monday, but apparently, that was not the case. Finally, half of the class, divided by spaghetti bridge groups, was sent into the shop to start the first ever Mr. Miller Shop Class! I have no idea what they are doing in there, but I can assume that it has to do with safety. Down below is the observation form from friday on Mr. Wilton and his OR camera rig that he has been working on.

Today we rotated Mr. Miller groups, I stayed in the classroom again, and we did the same stuff from yesterday, for the people who were with Mr. Miller, and we learned how to put links into our site for the people who were in the class yesterday, nothing new for veterans, but something new for the rookies.

Today we continued our spaghetti bridge wednesday challenge and we started the begining phase of brainstorming. I tried to limit my amount of input to not completely spoil the experience, but when they started asking questions related to my previous experience, I told them what they needed to know. I also told them about the whole Alvin incident, along with the idea I had last year, not giving WAY too much away. Our team name is "Don't Judje?" and thats about all we did.

Today it was my turn to go with Mr. Miller to the shop and he gave the low-down on safety. He had us email a thing that I can't think of right now to ourselves so we can talk to eachother in an uncomplicated way. He also is requiring us to write an essay on safety so that we can use the tools in the shop and he can trust us there. Its due by monday so my weekend is going to fun... but its all for a good reason. Also, this year's JPL invention challenge rules came out and I won't try to explain it to you now, so I will link the rules down below.

Today Cole, Nick, Keilah, Ian, and I told the class about the past 2 year's JPL Invention Challenges, the golfing one and the roller ball one, and how we went about getting those things to work. After that, Neato told us to get with our groups and work on our bridges. With my group we got an idea down, a triangular truss bridge, and started making it. In the time we had we glued one side of the bridge together and set that to dry.

Today the first division of Mr. Miller kids went with him again and the rest of us who stayed started with Sketch-up, basic camera movement to be exact. So that was fun, for everyone except me. Why? Because I discovered a bug with Sketch-up that would be fine for everyone, but detramental to my health and sanity. This bug makes Sketch-up lag in a VERY annoying way, it makes it so that what we see is always one step behind the action done. Here's an example, say I triple click an object, what it is supposed to do is highlight the entire object and all of its connected faces, which it does, but what it shows you is the last action, only one face highlighted, which is double clicking. In my head, the whole object is highlighted, but on screen, only one face is highlighted, forcing me to click the orbit tool and change the camera angle to update the screen, an unneeded step if the program worked properly. So in short, the bug breaks my flow and doubles the time it takes to make something accurately. So I spent the entire class period trying to fix this. What I believed to be the problem was that Neato installed the x64 bit version of Sketch-up instead of the x32 bit version, making the computer run slower. So I uninstalled the x64 bit version of Sketch-up and installed the x32 bit version through much annoyance and frustration. The result of my work was that Sketch-up ran... better, it didn't fix the problem, but there was a SLIGHT improvement. The only thing that I can think of now that could be the problem is that the new 2015 version of Sketch-up is faulty, or the 6 Gb of RAM upgrade that the computers got messed up the system and caused the bug since there is no upgraded processor to compensate for the RAM. I honestly don't know what the heck is wrong but I tried my best to fix it, I guess I will just have to deal with it.

Today we attempted to go live with out sites but the new version of filezilla is picky about encryption, not allowing us to get on to Neato's server to put our files up. We also started Sketch-up for the Miller group of yesterday, but I have something to say. To who ever in 4th period who discovered the fix for the skeleton pictures, I am beyond greatful for your contribution to fix Sketch-up and I am indebted to you. This is because by fixing the photo problem you indirectly fixed the lag bug that I spent all of yesterday trying to fix. So to make my message clear, you are the savior of my sanity and for that I give my absolute thanks to you.

Today we continued making our spaghetti bridges and we were told that we would get today, next wednesday, and one full day between those two days to finish our bridges. The competition is next thursday. Based on what we have built right now and the time we have left we can do one of two things, we can one, role with what we got and hope for the best, or two, finish this one and use it as a test, then make another one really quickly and hope that that one performs well on thursday. We finished the second triangled face and we have enough pieces left over to complete the design (I will make a good model of our bridge and show it as a photo later when it is complete).

Today we went into the shop with Mr. Miller and we got taught the basics of measuring and how 1/100ths of an inch are important. We had to measure 2" to the best of our ability on a piece of wood then Mr. Miller would measure it to see how accurate we were. After that round, we did it again but with only 1" and again Miller measured it and told us how off we were.

Today we watched Mythbusters, the chicken gun episode, whitch was interesting. One could say that it was very fowl that we didn't finish the episode. After that me and the JPL guys presented what we had so far and Cole got pissed at Alvin.

Today we probably did something related to our bridges, but I dont remember, I am writing this in the future so to conclude................ Bernie Sanders.

Today was probably not much different from yesterday, so cool, if you are reading this, you really do care, or are just really bored.

Today was our lact day to work on our bridges, a stressful day for most, but a chill day for my group. This is because our bridge is already done, I just had to add one connecter and it would be complete. We have no idea if our bridge will work, but we can only hope.

Today was the day of the competition and the roles of the people are as follows, Alvin weighed bridges and carry weights, Cole set up and broke everyone's hopes and dreams, Nick transported bridges and carried weights to and from the scale and outside, and I recorded all the numbers. The rseults of the competition, winners, losers, and everyone else, is down below.

Today we reviewed the spaghetti bridge results and my team won with a score of 4.77, but Neato added a twist. Since I had a big hand in making the bridge Neato feels that our score was not honest to our group, so Neato decided that my group would make the bridge again, but with myself removed from the equation. If my group can reconstruct our bridge and the score holds after it is used again, we stay the winners, but if the bridge does exponetially worse, we hand off first to second place, second to third, and third to forth. After that the JPL'ers and I broke off from the main group and we split up in to idea groups, me, Cole, Ian, Xanthe, and Tyler went with Cole's original idea of a football launcher, and the others did their own thing.

Today everyone alse did the card house wednesday challenge, but us JPLers went to the back table and worked on our ideas for our presentations on friday. Thats it... I didn't care about what everyone else was doing and I just sketch-uped... there's nothing more to it.

Today everyone else did something, they probably reviewed the wednesday challenge, but I dont know, and I dont care because us JPLers did the exact same thing we did yesterday, CADed, talked, joked, Bernie Sanders.

Today the JPL people presented their ideas on what they would do to complete the challenge. I presented my idea in 30 seconds because we were pressed for time, but since I had a good sketch-up it was fine. Basically, how my design works is that it is a football launcher that has a hinged platform that rotates up and down to aim the ball. The platform is aimed and locked in place via a string, bolt, and anchor point system, the string connected to the platform stays while the other end moves up and down or back and forth to predrilled holes, aiming the platform. I have not accounted for the 2 degree slope or the left to right aiming, but for now it is a start. Below is a few photos of my idea.

Today we finished up the JPL presentations that we couldn't get to last week and then we moved onto sketch-up. Since the presentations took longer than wanted, we had to skip measurements and the Jenga block, jumping right into boxes, the rectangle tool and the push/pull tool. I also showed the class how to fix the wireframe photo/lag problem that apparently caused 4th to be a disaster. We basically were told to make several boxes with the 2 tools and then export a photo and put it on our sites. (P.S. Before we started the block instruction I had my scale model of the JPL field on my screen to show the class what it really looks like. A photo of that will be down below.)

Other than Oryx coming to kill us all because we killed his son, today we continued sketch-up related things, starting with reviewing exporting jpgs, which I showed, then moving on to putting them in our sites and getting those sites up to date. JPLers went to the back to work on the challenge and their own sites to meet the requirements Neato has put forth. (If you want to see the Taken King's opening cinamatic that, if you play Destiny, will blow your mind, click the link down below. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy.)

Today we did the 1,000,000 or Math Class Wednesday Challenge where the groups were to decide between taking a math class and getting the grade they earn, or write every number from 1-1,000,000 and get an automatic A. Provide evidence and facts to support your answer, the internet is allowed. Cole, Alvin, Ian, and I were the judges and we were to told by Neato that if the group presenting got their final answer from Google, they are automatically losers because they didn't do any of the work. We didn't get through everyone, so will will finish up tomorrow.

Today we finished the 1,000,000 or Math Class Wednesday Challenge which took the entire period, mainly because we (the judges) needed a lot of information to be able to pick a winner which itself was a long and painful task. This was because this challenge is not simply the person with the highest and best score wins, this challenge has to take the logical reasoning of the judges and the winner must be decided from multiple groups that all have good explainations and reasons to support their answer, but only one can win. So you can see why this is one of the hardest challenges to judge. The results of the challenge are up above.

Today we watched a mythbusters episode and the JPLers went to the back table to do JPL things, so we didn't watch the episode. Thats basically all we did today, it was pretty simple.

Today we continued Sketch-up and the class was introduced to dimentions through jenga blocks. They were to make a 3" by 1" by 1/2" jenga block and make it a component, then copy and paste it a make a stack. So down below is my simple version of a jenga tower aswell as my normal version of a jenga tower. What? Did you expect me to NOT over do it? If you did, you have a lot to learn.

Today a group went with Mr. Miller to the shop, the JPLers went to the back table, and the rest did more on their sites and learned about filezilla. The we, the JPLers, made a list of our ideas and listed the pros and cons for each one. The ideas are a single football launcher, a triple football launcher, a single air cannon, a trifecta air cannon, a single balista, a triple balista, a single piston cannon, and a triple piston cannon. The first four are our most likely candidates and the last four are just to put in the backs of our minds. I wont go into detail on each design but I am leaning most towards the trifecta air cannon because it seems the most plausable as of right now. I didn't need to CAD anything today because making a model of every single design would be impractical.

OPEN IN INTERNET EXPLORER FOR SKP Today we didn't do a wednesday challenge because there was a sub, we just updated our sites. The JPLers voted for the idea they liked best, football launcher or air cannon, and we split up into our respective groups. Cole, Ian, Keilah, Xanthe, Colin, Alvin, and I make up the air cannon team while the rest of the JPLers make up the football launcher team. It was stressful, getting everyone to split up properly, but we've got it all settled and we are on our way. In the air cannon group, we have decided on a trifecta air cannon, a device that has three pre-aimed barrels so all we have to do is aim one barrel and all the others are aimed. We are just in the light CADing phase so I have to make a prototype to show the group tomorrow.

Today we broke off into JPL and normal groups again and I showed my group what I have so far. Based on what I did in 6th period yesterday, making this thing is going to be a GIANT pain to CAD and build, getting the angles correct and the psi correct for a perfect launch, not to mention making a model with no way of knowing if it is going to work, and the list goes on. What we did decide to do is to have all three cannons run out of one air tank, most likely a standard propane tank. The air will travel through PVC pipe with most likely a quick release valve near the end of each cannon so that all we have to do is open the valve and it will launch the ball.

Today Mr. Wilton was here and the JPLers presented their current progress on their ideas to the class. Since we split up into two groups, we could spend more time on each of our ideas. Cole presented our trifecta cannon idea while I drove and many questions arose because of what we had so far, like how are we going to regulate the pressure, how are we going to shoot one ball at a time based on our PVC maping, and others mainly focused on aimming. The other group presented their idea, then Mr. Wilton updated us on his current situation with the O.R. camera project. The first one is done and the second is close to completion and he told us how they both need to be FCC approved before going into operation in the hospital. A few photos of my JPL group's idea are down below.

Today we talked about websites and website grades and reviewed on what grounds he grades our sites. I drove and Neato told me to show Michael P's site, Austin's site, and my site to the class, mine being the "best vet" while the others were the best rookie sites. He explained to us that in general, the sites were not that good, but there were some that were good. He also told us that the JPLers that had their scores highlighted purple are kicked out of JPL for now, only an improvement in their sites would allow them to return. After that Mr. Miller took the "thursday group" to the shop (I'm in this group) and he told the group to measure and cut wood to a specific length. Cole and I alone measured and cut one 2" by 2" to be 7" long since that was all the time we had.

Today we did sketch-up where we started with a warm up to make 2 jenga blocks, one horizontal and the other vertical. I did this easily and put my own spin on it that you will see. The main activity was to make a model of a CD, simple enough, but too simple for me, so I made a model of Keilah's massive lazer disc that he found at lunch, thrown away with its play, both working, we tested that. I also wanted to make the disc rounder since sketch-up doesn't make perfect circles, it makes 24 sided shapes for its circles. This isn't accurate enough for me, so I just made multiple circles and overlapped them, rotated the right amount to make the circle have more sides. I then copied the circle in the middle and then deleted the rest. Since this process shrinks the diameter a bit, I just scaled the circle back to the correct dimentions. From there I worked my magic and created the lazer disc. I didn't have enough time to add the chip since Keilah had to leave, but its good enough.

Today we did the Marble Role Wednesday where the class is split into two halves that are competing to get a marble from point A to point B by rolling it from person to person through half tubes that must be passed from person to person by running it to them. My side won, getting the single marble into the bucket on the flat and sloped land and getting the dual marbles into the hilled bucket before the other group. Our victory is largly atibuted to the fact the Alvin was on the other team, destroying any sence of coordination on their side.

Today we just updated our sites and did that sort of thing. I figured out with the help of Cole how to get the polygons tool working. My original thought on how it worked was that you typed the desired number of sides like typing measurements and then click and measure out the radius that you want, that is not the case. How it works is that you select the tool so that you are using it and before you click anything you type in the number of sides you want, 3-1000, press enter, and then it will set it to that many sides. From there you use it like the circle tool, clicking on the center point and measuring out the radius. Say you set it to a triangle, the first time you click to measure it out it will set the radius so that the extent of the radius is the the side of a cicle, making the triangle inscribed. If you don't want it this way, just click to set a random triangle, press ctrl-z, then click again to make it so that the circle is inscribed in the triangle, not the other way around. So basically, today was just a day of learning how tools work in sketch-up.

Today we did sketch-up for the group that was with Mr. Miller on Monday. I taught the same exact thing as on monday so I have no need to explain it again here. The JPLers (currently 4 of us) went to the back table to think of what we are going to do for our repeatable example. I updated my redesigned logo that is at the top of my site right now, a minor thing that only I am going to care about, but an update none the less.

Today we were introduced to the end of the quarter wednesday challenge, the arch bridge challenge. Basically we are to make an arch bridge that is made out of the same item all the way around with the longest span. The metric is the span distance divided by the longest side of one of the items that makes up the bridge. Since I kept my bridge from last year we are just going to reuse it for this year. This creates a lot of free time for me and Cole to work on the invention challenge. Since I have my site from last year still up and it has my original design on it, I have intentionally disabled my site from last year so that no one can snoop and cheat. Me and Cole started talking about the plausibility of an air cannon and what we could do to make it better. We decided to change our idea and make a launcher that doesn't rely on air power but some sort of bungie power. The ball will sit in a housing that is attatched to the bungie which clips into a gate lock type of mechanisim when it is pulled back. When it is released, the housing and the ball will be propelled forward, the housing stopping at the end of the track, leaving the ball to fly through the air kind of like a shotput shot. The housing is there to create the least amount of resistance on the ball and to give it the straightest and most repeatable shot.

Today we worked more on the arch bridge challenge but, since I kept my bridge, Cole and I could develop our sabot cannon idea more. After we discussed what we wanted to do more thw class ended and Cole left me with an idea to work out into a CAD.

Today we worked again more on the arch bridge challenge, but Sam and the other members of my spaghetti bridge team tested their remake of our bridge that they built without my help. Their version weighted 34 grams, only 0.5 grams less than the original model. Saddly, since they put glue along the entire top of the bridge, they compromised the strength of their bridge and caused it to fail early and not hold as much weight. It still held 84.5 grams, giving them a still-winning score of 2.48, (our original score being 4.77) since second place got a score of 2. After this, Cole and I went into the CAD cave to work on a model of the sabot and to find a buyable version to prove that the tech already exists. In the process of looking, Cole came upon a better idea that still has the sliding mechanisim that starts pulled back and doesn't launch itself when released, but instead of the ball riding in a sabot, the ball just sits at the end of the barrel and gets punched by a slider that is propelled forward by springs or bungie. We got the idea from the toy pictured below and next to it is our modified version in CAD form in its current state.

Today we continued working on our arch bridges and in JPL, Ian and that branch off of the group tested period 4's prototype. I do not know the results of their tests since I was with Cole working on our idea. Either Ian or Alvin that has the results on their site so check there to see the results. Besides that, it was just a normal day, and when I say normal I mean a normal amount of insanity.

Today we did the bridge competition and like always, there were many groups that were creating their designs that day. My bridge was annoying to set up because it is soft foam and it is really light. What we had to do to set it up was that we had to lay it out flat on a piece of flat metal, put another flat thing on top of it to keep all of the pieces in place, and then tip it up and remove the flat pieces, hoping that it stays up. I recorded all of the scores into an excel doc that is posted up on wednesday, 10/9/15. A photo of our standing bridge is down below.

Today we reviewed the competition we had on friday aswell as grades and rolemodel websites that Neato graded over the weekend. He also changed something about the victors of the competition. Since Cole, Alvin, and I were a group of veterans, we reused my bridge from last year, and we won the challenge, Neato made 2nd place winners aswell to make things fair. It turns out that Neato intentionally make my group a group of veterans so that we could rinse through the challenge on the first day and have the rest of the week to work on the invention challenge, the more important thing at the moment. When Neato graded this last time, he labeled the people who he is removing from the group, not temporarilly. The result of this is that only Sam, Nick G, Cole, and I are the only ones still in, everyone else got removed. At the end of the class, Neato told us to get into our bridge groups and finish the power point for our design. Only one person from each group has to turn in the power point and for my group, that is me, so it is posted up on wednesday of last week.

Today we spit off into three groups, a group went with Mr. Miller, the JPLers worked on JPL, and the rest of the people stayed and worked on a sketch-up model of a pencil. I showed them the basics of what they needed to know and I was going to work on an all new one, but too many people kept asking me questions and I ran out of time to make an all new one, so I just loaded my pencil from last year, realizing that that model doesn't represent my current level of skill. Actually, when I saw the model, I cringed a little. Ian dared me to make the end of the pencil sharpened, which I quickly created and finished.

Today we did the Differences Between Cats and Dogs Wednesday Challenge which the Jplers didn't participate in. Cole was able to find and buy the Hyper-Pet Kannon so that we could test it. When we first fired it, our main concern was its recoil, we slow-mo recorded it and saw that the recoil was not always the same, but it basically followed the same trend, up and back with a little left to right play. So we made the most getto rig to mount the thing on which works pretty well for being a clamp, clamped into a vice. Cole has a lot of photos and videos so once he makes that available I will put some of them here. We tested it out with the scale target and it made it in two out of three times, the first one being 19 feet away, not the proper 16 feet, 6 inches. Tomorrow we will test more and get more accurate results.

Today we, the JPLers, tested our punch cannon out side on the target under multiple different senarios. First, we shot the cannon at 10/10 power from 16' 6" away, having 22/39 shots making it in in total, 18/29 shots making it in with a better cannon rig. The 16' 6" is the real distance away from the target and we realized that we down scaled everything except that. So we shortened the distance to just 6' and we launched the balls at 4/10 power. The first 20 shots we aimed in a way so that there would be no bounce, resulting in 20/20 shots making it in. Then we aimed the cannon down so that the ball would bounce before it went in, resulting again with 20/20 shots making it in. If anything, these tests showed that Cole and I's idea works and that it is very repeatable, all we need to do is to show it to Mr. Wilton tomorrow, convince him of it, get his advice and input, and grow on that. The results to our tests are linked below.

Today Mr. Wilton came and the JPLers showed their current state on the invention challenge. We told them about the events of yesterday and what happened there and then we took our rig out and gave a demo of our proto device. Mr. Wilton had a lot of good input, saying that scaling the distance down isn't the same as scaling the target and so on, making the cannon more aimable (all we have to do is aim once and then all the other cannons are already aimed) and more reliable since we were aiming alot every time we fired, and that we should find the football launcher, not the soft ball launcher used for testing, and modify it for what we need. Photos thanks to Sam, are down below.

Today The JPLers worked more on the challenge, a group went with Mr. Miller to work on the target, and everyone else worked on their sites. For the JPLers, today was quite stressful, the football cannon Mr. Wilton suggested that we should use we discovered was taken apart a while ago and it is just a pile of parts now, so that sucked. We are still modifying the toy and mount to make it so that there is no movement when we are fireing it when we should have that already done and be working on a CAD. So it was just an annoying and complicated day.

Today we made a sketch-up model of a lego block, to give us practice with guide lines, squares, and circles. This time, I didn't skip over this model like I did with the pencil, I made a new model of a block, shown below. This was fairly simple, only one thing annoyed me, but beyond that, not much happened today.

Today the JPLers worked more on the challenge, again, Joey, Sky, and Mike went with Mr. Miller to cut out the 8 for the target, and everyone else started the Model-to-Reality LEGO Structure Wednesday Challenge, the one where two people make a model of a LEGO structure one day, and then the next day, two other people build the real one as close to the model as possible. Tyler and I are the judges and the pairs emailed their models to Neato. Meanwhile, I updated the CAD to fit real sized, buyable PVC pipe, along with some other upgrades. Cole, Ian, and I worked on making an actual competition size ball punch cannon proto, and by the end of the period, we had a simple, working model. It is basically a tube inside a larger tube with bungie running the length of the tubes, stuck through the smaller tube at the back and taped near the front of the larger tube. We tested it and it works suprisingly well for what it is. It launches the real ball quite well and when we put a tennis ball in it, it was quite effective at skeet shooting the real balls... yeah, we did that, so what?

Today we went into the building phase of the Model-to-Reality LEGO Structure Wednesday Challenge where the pairs exchanged models with the corresponding pair in period 4. There are less people in period 4 than in period 5 so we had to get creative with the distributing of the models, but it worked out. During lunch, I was trying to find someing to hold the real sized ball onto our proto so that we can fire it. After looking all of lunch and finding nothing, I went into the class and saw a coincidentally, although it seemed intentional, placed "carrot" bucket that fit the bill perfectly. Sam cut into the bottom of the bucket so that it could slide onto the end of the launcher, which we taped down. It works VERY well, like, "why is this working" well. We are going to demonstrate it tomorrow to the class so, yay!

Today the JPLers updated the class on their current progress on the invention challenge. Since Cole wasn't here it was a little difficult to get things in order and explain it to Mr. Wilton, but we pushed through. Wilton is concerned that our cannon will kill itself every time we fire it, that our cannon needs a better aiming rig, he recommended a thin PVC pipe that we can tweak until it is right, and finally that we are running out of time. He says that if we could get our CAD fully built and functioning by next friday, we would be in a good spot. We demonstrated our cannon to the class by firing at the 18. We realized that shooting it by hand and only one person holding it like a bow is very inaccurate. Once we got a person to fire the ball and another to hold the cannon, it was far easier to control. We are going to work really hard on getting this thing done so next week is going to be interesting.

Today we were told our grades like usual and two sites were showcased for their niceness. Neato then went to talk to the JPLers in the back of the room to tell us to get working on gathering the materials for our device that we showed on friday and getting it built by thursday. Below are three photos of our current model with Mr. Wilton's recommendations put in. Two photos are of our design in one piece and the third is of all the parts we have and don't have, the green is what we have, the others are what we don't.

Today we did a sketch-up warm-up of making a structure made out of 7 jenga blocks organized in some way. Then I showed them the follow me tool basics, making a shape and having it follow a line. Then they made a very inaccurate model of a door frame to get a better feel for the tool. I had to triple task today, teaching sketch-up, judging legos, and helping with JPL. Speaking of JPL, according to EVERYONE in JPL except for Alvin, Alvin caused complete disorder and angered EVERYONE, Nick even had to step out of the shop for a while. Ian, Keilah, and Sam cut the 4" by 4" into the long bottom one, the 10" long vertical hook mount piece, and the 1'4" front bungie mount piece. They also cut the PVC plungers to the right length and cut the tenis ball in half. I have put up with Alvin for far too long and he has gotten to the point of slowing or maybe even stopping all of our progress, so I told Dr. Neat this and that he spilled oil and blamed it on Ian. I honestly hope that Neato will do something about this because I want to get our device done by thursday and it would be a plus for all of us to keep our sanity.

Today we did the Candy Corn on a Paper Wednesday Challenge, but the JPLers went to the shop to talk about our current state and the problems that we are facing. Mr. Miller and Cole came back today so now we have access to the big power tools to make our lives easier. We talked openly about what needs to happen to get us back on track and now we are on the path to finish our device for tomorrow. It is really surprising how well we can work together when we have a guide to lead us (Also, James came and visited during lunch, so that was cool).

Today we demonstrated our old cannon again because our device is not done yet. Speaking of the device, minus one part, everything is cut and ready to be assembled, all we need is the 4" by 4" that is connected to the PVC that moves. Cole and I are working on a way to connect everything with wood screws and to make it so that there is as little friction between the main beam and the slider as possible. The cannon would be done this week if we had school tomorrow, but we don't, so it will be done on monday. Honestly, when looking at the CAD, it just looks like a device, but when looking at it in real life, the thing looks like a friggin' medieval weapon used to knock down walls; the thing is huge! In an unrelated topic, today was the day when we could dress up for Halloween and I wore my warlock costume, which is awesome! The reactions I got from my friends were amazing, especially from Colin. I will put up a photo of it as soon as I can.

Today we did a sketch-up warm-up with the follow me tool, making a letter and having a shape follow the path, and then we started the CADing of the room, first making a cabinet door. The JPLers did not finish the cannon today because drilling the holes was a annoying and we didn't get a mapping for the wood skrews. At lunch, Cole, Ian, and I walked up to OSH to buy the last 4" by 4" that we need, but they didn't have any. All we did today was drill the hole for the large PVC in the 10" long 2" by 4". I hope that we can finish it by tomorrow.

Today in JPL, we drilled another hole! After school yesterday Cole and Mr. Miller finished cutting the hole in the 4" by 4" for the front. Cole, Mr. Miller, Tyler, Alvin, and I are comming after school today to continue working on the device. For the people in the rest of the class, they were introduced to the bridge project, the one where a group of two investigate and report on a bridge that they pick. So that's interesting, but the JPLers are exempt from it since we need to focus all of our efforts into the challenge.

Today the class did a wednesday challenge that had to do with the scale at the front of the room. I went straight to working on JPL so I didn't get the details. When we were building, I discovered a problem that I knew would show up sooner or later. The problem was that I made the CAD with all the wood being their stated dimentions; I made a 4" by 4" actually a 4" by 4", not its actual dimentions. Because of this, the pipe dimentions and the wood dimentions did't line up properly. When I placed the larger pipe where it is supposed to go, it was way too long. At first, I thought that all we would need to do is cut the pipe to the right length, then we would be good, but no. Since I messed up on the dimentions of the wood, the long 4" by 4" was too long and the inner pipe wasn't long enough to compensate. Basically, if we tried to pull the slider to full extent, the smaller pipe would fall out the end of the pipe. So, to fix this, we had to cut the larger pipe to the right length and cut a little off of the long 4" by 4". After we did this, I lined everything up again and it fit perfectly. Now all I have to do is change the CAD to be the correct dimentions and figure out a way to mount the 1" by 1"s to the device in the correct place. If all goes as planned, the device should be assembled and ready to be tested tomorrow. Down below is a photo of the current state of our CAD, the yellow parts are cut and ready to be assembled, and the 589 blue parts are already assembled. So right now, nothing is assembled except for the one 2" by 4" with the tenis balls on it, the balls are mounted.

Today we worked our butts off and built almost everything, the 1" by 1"s are not mounted, the hook and gate lock is not mounted, and the big holes for the rear bungie mount are not drilled. The pipes are not in place but that only needs taping to be put in place and the site is not completed. Hopefully, by tomorrow the cannon will be built enough to be ready to be tested in class, but I don't think so. After school, Alvin and I taped and inserted the pipes, which stay REALLY well, and we mounted the hook and gate lock. I was stumped on how to add the ball holders onto the front since I messed up on the CAD, resulting in the blocks being barely held on. Neato solved this problem by recommending that we mount the 1" by 1"s to a thin board, than mount that board to the front of the cannon with a hole in it so that the pipe can still get through. Hearing this instantly solved my problem and now I have a plan on how to mount them. We already found and marked out the lines on the board that we need and we mounted one of the pegs. All we have to do tomorrow is mount the rest of them and then mount the board to the front. After we do that, drill the holes, and add the bungie, it should be done.

Today we demonstrated our quite unfinished device in the class, but not without some road blocks. So during lunch, Cole, Alvin, and I atempted to add the bungie to the device without the holes drilled. Before Cole could even finish tying the first knot I discovered that the wood components that were connected to the long 4" by 4" were splintering and were basically no longer connected at all. So what we had to do was drill straight throught the bottom of the 7" 2" by 4" into the front bungie mount and drill diagonally in the opposite direction that we originally mounted the 2" by 4" that the other end of the large pipe went through. So that sucked, but with that fixed, it ended up being much stronger than it was. We then mounted the bungies again and holy s***, when that thing fires, it looks awesome, and, when the bungies were not that tight, it launched a DEFLATED ball really far, or at least, farther than we expected. We then tightened the bungies and brought it into the class. Prior to this test, we had only shot the weapon (I am going to call it a weapon now because that is what it looks like and what it is) a few times, so we had no idea how it was going to act. Keilah had been working on the site and he brought it to school today with a light installed so that we could see the first crosshairs in the tube. The result of this modification is that it looks like and explosive... thats all I'm going to say. We held the ball up with a coffee can, quite getto, and shot it only a few times since it was an invalad test. We then went into the shop with Mr. Wilton to continue working, we drilled the holes, we cut out and assembled the board and pegs, and were set with the task by Mr. Wilton to start designing a frame. So it was an eventful day, a lot of positive and negative progress, but I think we can still pull it off by the 21st, challenge day.

Today we went over grades and I think we did sketch-up, but since I was working in JPL, I do not know. We mounted the pegs on the front and put one bungie instead of two as our power. The rest of the day we just shot at the 8 and tested for different angles and such. Thats about all we did, not much, but its progress, I guess.

Today in JPL, we didn't do much, we talked about the frame and Alvin got on looking for better materials to make our cannon out of, not scrap we found. Speaking of scrap we found, at lunch, I found a thrown away projection TV that, when Keilah and Alvin arrived, we proceeded to skeletonize during the lunch period. Keilah took the projector itself and the fish-eye lens while I took my time during the class period taking out the whole lens and projector frame, which is really cool.

Today the class probably worked on their bridge reports, but I don't know. In JPL, Alvin was able to get the wood to the shop on wednesday so today we measured out everything and cut out the 4" by 4"s for the second cannon, Franz. Tomorrow is going to be interesting because Neato isn't going to be here and Mr. Wilton may or may not be here. We are going to demonstrate Hans to the class and all that stuff, but based on if Mr. Wilton is going to be here or not, we may or may not have tomorrow to work on Franz.

Today we demonstrated our cannon to the class in the shop and after we scored 40 points by bouncing it once into the lower goal and then shooting it directly into the top goal. After a Mr. Wilton talk and comments, we tried on a whim to hit the "candle" and it went exactly where we thought it would, just to the left of the "candle".

Today we reviewed my proto frame and decided that it was stupid and impractical. Now it seems that all we are going to have is the table and the blocks that we are using to test. It was't fun, realizing that Franz will not be built for the challenge, but as always, the motto of our device, "Ib-e fine".

First off, I would like to say that 4th period needs to be more careful and vigilant of their surroundings. I say this because they moved the step, the target, and the carpet so that the target had an unobstructed path and no carpet in front of it. The step that they moved was the step that had all of our stuff on it, so they moved the PARTS out of the way. Now the following is why I say that they need to open their eyes more: Even though they moved all of our parts out of the way, they didn't move Hans out of the way. In fact, they didn't just move our cannon into a potentially dangerous place, they placed it the most dangerous place they could have ever put it, right behind the target that they were shooting at. One would think that they would have the common sense to move it out of the way, but no, they shot at the target with Hans back there, breaking the single most important part on our entire cannon that just so happens to be the most fragile: the ball holder. So they broke our device and we had to spend our time makeing a brand new one, time that would could have spent testing it. After we got that fixed, we started talking about how to mount the cannon. While we were talking, I had an idea that I think is pretty good. Basically, It is just a flat piece of plywood that we clamp to the table that has pegs mounted to it, all we would have to do is set the cannon on one set of pegs, fire it, move it to another set, fire it, then move it to the last set and fire it. No one seemed to see what I was getting at so after class during 6th I procceded to make a CAD. Basically everything is in place, but I don't know what the hell is going to happen this week, only time will tell.

Today I showed the group the CAD, but after looking at it again and putting it in the square (4th mapped out the set up areas, quite helpful), along with Cole putting in his input, I don't think it is a good idea. We tested today under all of the right conditions, moving eveything into the set up area ( we are given 3 minutes; our best time was 36 seconds to get everything set up and ready to be fired) and fireing all three times in 60 seconds like in the competition. Before this, we didn't remember what was needed to hit the candle, so I just went on a hunch, put both blues, one horizontal, one vertical, in a place that I thought would work, and Hans hit the cardboard candle dead in the center, we even broke it, so that was awesome. All we have to do now is get our patterns down-pat and hope for the best. Also, the 10" long 2" by 4" that has the tenis ball mounted on it, yeah it snapped all the way through horizontally. If I hadn't been in the right place at the right time, it would have gone unnoticed and probably would have made itself a bigger problem. We just put 4 screws running from the top to the bottom of the piece and it was fixed; crisis averted. Knowing our luck, it would have broken into unfixability on saturday, the day of the competition. We've said "Ib-e fine" so many times when building this thing that we should just name it the "Ib-e fine" and spray paint the whole thing black. We probably shouldn't paint Hans, but we should paint the wooden, unassembled parts of Franz black and then assemble it since we are going to build Franz after the competition anyways, just to have it.

Today we tested and trialed like crazy and we got a pattern down. Originally, we shot at the bottom hole first, the top hole second, and then the candle last, but the candle was the most difficult one to set up. Since we can get our device out and ready to go in under a minute, we decided to spend our set up time wisely and aim for the candle first. We made it so that we bounce into the candle (creating the last 10 points that we need) and every time we did our 1 minute trial, we bounced it into it. So first, we bounce shoot the candle, next we bounce into the bottom hole, and last we bounce into the top hole. We tried this in a 1 minute trial and amazing, suprizing, and awesome results occured. We got the 90 points, the point cap, and not only did we hit the point cap, we did it in 30 seconds, half the time we are given. All I have to say is that I am REALLY suprized that Hans is still so repeatable even after it has been fired many times, along with our ability and coordination when opperating it. Also, after the challenge is over and done with, we are going to build Franz and paint it black, 'cus why not, right?

Today we showed the class the cannon in the shop, but there was another snag. For some reason, the ball holder wasn't holding the ball right, the ball kept falling out. At lunch all I did with the holder was replace a screw that was doing nothing and tightened down the number 3 peg. The reason for the problem was that the number 1 peg some how got bent upwards, I had to loosen screws, tighten screws, loosen them again, rotate the pegs (for once I'm glad that I didn't drill the holes in the middle), and then it worked; WE ARE NOT TOUCHING THE PEGS OR THE HOLDER AGAIN. When it was fixed it didn't shoot as perfectly as it had yesterday, it veered to the left. The thing was that it only veered when we were shooting at the low goal, it hit the candle and the top goal perfectly every time. Yes when we demonstrated the low goal shot the slider hit the blue blocks on its left side and the bungies were tighter on the right then on the left. So we equalized the bungies and moved the block for aimming forward, and when we shot at the low goal with the changes, it went in. After our demo we went into the class to talk and answer questions then we went back into the shop. Here Cole set some rules, one of which being that from that point on, I am the only one that is allowed to move Hans in any way beyond the roles of Cole and Alvin. I agree with this and everyone else does because I know the dimentions of Hans and I know his weak points, so I can control him and make sure that he isn't damaged. Its all up to the events of tomorrow now.

Today was the JPL Invention Challenge LA Regionals, as most of you know. If you are not up to speed on what we are doing, we have been working for months on a design for completing this year's challenge, shooting at a large 18. Today was... interesting... and agrivating. Why was it agrivating you ask? Well, it was for many reasons, but we will leave that for the end. If you do not know, we were VERY worried about our device, especially on the front of damage resistance and fragility. We got to the event via parent cars and personal transport, Cole went straight there with his dad. When my ride was about 3/4 of the way to the event, Cole tells me that our device broke. Apparently, Keilah texted Cole that we should be considering what we would do if our cannon broke in transport. Cole misunderstood and replied to Keilah with a "what?", just so that he could be clear what he was saying. But Keilah replied to Cole with one word, "Alvin". Because Keilah said this, Cole started jumping to the worst conclusions because of the key word Alvin, another way of saying, "something has gone wrong, the worst has occured, prepare for the end". So while this was all going on, I was texting Cole about our competitors and, since Keilah and I were in seperate cars, I didn't know what was going on until Cole said, "I heard the device broke". For the last 1/4 of the drive I was freaking out and panicing more than I have ever paniced before. When we got there, all was fine, Cole and I yelled at Keilah for a while, we signed in, and then we waited. We looked at all the designs and none of them looked like ours, which gave us a weird type of confidence. It was sad to see Rosemont because the wednesday before the competition both of their devices broke, badly. When the competion started, we watched Rosemont go, and they didn't do very well, which was sad, but after they went, we realized the balls were totally different sizes. The rules said that the balls would be 7" in diameter + or - 1/10", these balls were more like 7" + or - 1". Also, they gave all the teams only 2 minutes to set up when the rules said that they would give us 3. We discussed this for a while and then we set up our target and began to practice. Period 4 practiced far more than we did because they didn't have to worry about their device destroying itself. We tested a few times, just to get back into the gear of things, and then we stopped. The ground we were practicing on was not the same angle as the competition ground, which just so happened to be the exact same as in our shop. So we waited, and waited, and waited, and waited for hours watching many teams fail and very few get higher than 50 points, which encouraged us. When our teams were called to get ready (we were numbers 41 and 42) we made our way to the pit and waited to be called to the set up area. We happened to get set up area 2, the side we had practiced on in the shop, so we were pumped. This is the point when the all hell breaks lose. When we get into the circle, they made it 6" too big, annoying, but fine. They provided us with balls that were not the right size at all, so they went to blow them up with the "official scale" which was just tape. Then our minute started, we missed the candle shot, so we aimed for the top hole. For some reason in the process of reaimming the cannon it gat pulled way too far back on the table, resulting on the failure of peg 4. We couldn't hold the ball, they wouldn't let us leave so we had to sit in the pit with everyone looking at us for the rest of the time, and Paul kept telling us to rotate our cannon and fire it upsidedown or sideways, unintentionally embaressing us all. After That we went back to where we were chilling before and had our post competition talk like we always do. We talked about what happened, what we did, and what we can do better next time. I was the most angry out of all of us because it was my design (Quick credits: Original design thought: Keilah's Ballista; Final Concepters: Cole, Kevin S; CAD-er: Kevin S; Fab Team: Cole, Keilah, Ian, Alvin, Sam, Nick G, Kevin S, Mr. Miller) and it was my CAD, so I am the one to blame for the key flaw. So, because of this, I proceeded to punch off all the the pegs on our cannon (Yes, it was me) one by one. Everyone else went to the field and found a large tire and proceeded to roll it with someone in it. That calmed all of them but I was still a little livid. Then we went to go and get food from the one food truck at the event, run by 2 people, with only one cooking. Basically, we had to wait about 20 minutes to order our food and then another 45 minutes to get it. It was all a confusing mess but the food was good. After we ate, we sat around and did nothing until the closing ceremony and awards, we watched that, and were told that all teams with 50 points and above are going to the JPL Finals. During the waiting time before this, I went to the cannon and started working on it, messing around with the spare parts we had and seeing what fit. Keilah and Alvin came over just as I had a stroke of genius, using the broken peg plate and the spare broken peg plate, along with 3 pegs, some string, and some screws, to make the cannon hold a ball again. It was really funny to see the cannon even more getto yet still functioning, and that brightened my day. After the ceremonies, we packed up and headed home. That was our day, like I said, an interesting day to say the least.

Today we talked to the class about what happened at the competition on saturday and then we did a sketch-up warm-up. I won't talk about what happened there here because everything is documented above. The warm-up was to make a model of a candy cane, a simple shape, but a complicated paint job. I made my candy cane shape and then started working on the twirls of the cane. The way I did it was that I enabled hidden geometry so that I could see everything, and then on the first quarter of the vertical lines on the cylinder I drew a line, each one getting progresively longer by a 1/32" as I went from line to line, I copied the resulting quarter turn, rotated it 90, lined it up with the existing quarter, copied the whole thing, rotated it 180, and lined them up to create a full turn. I then copied that as many times as I needed, painted it, became too lazy to do the twirls on the curved part, made it a group, copied it a few times, lined it up in a nice way, turned on the sun, and then took the photo below.

Today we did the normal sketch-up work on the cabinet in the front. Joey showed how to to download the left door and right door model from the 3D warehouse. While they were doing this, I created my own 3D warehouse account under the username Kevin S... The Creator. I uploaded my candy cane model, both of my lego block models, and my pencil model. I am slowly going to be adding more as time goes on so you can look forward to that. In JPL, Neato told us to think about what advice we could give to the other group to help better their device. But thats all we did, nothing much, but worth writing about.

Today we did the E wednesday challenge that required groups to design an E on one computer, and then construct someone else's E on another computer. Thankfully, Max, and amazing CAD-er that is now in college, created an algorithim that yielded a very accurate score for the teams. It looks like this: X=|^A|+|^B|+|^C|+|^D|+(|^E|*2). ^A is the difference between the length of the upper prong of the E in the CAD compared to the length of the constructed one, ^B is the difference between the length of the middle prong of the E in the CAD compared to the length of the constructed one, ^C is the difference between the length of the lower prong of the E in the CAD compared to the length of the constructed one, ^D is the difference between the height of the E in the CAD compared to the height of the constructed one, and ^E is the difference between the distance between the prongs of the E in the CAD compared to the distance of the constructed one. ^E is doubled because there is two distances on an E, the upper distance and the lower distance. It sounds complicated, because it is, and it's quite an adventure to get working. Last year, the lowest score out of 10 was -341.563, this year, Andrew Z bumped up that cap to -1174.25. He got an E that had a D dimention of 27', and his E had a D dimention of about 2". I barely started grading so I will be doing that tomorrow, I just hope I can finish it by then because JPL is on friday.

Today we watched a bridge presentation and then we worked on our E's. This morning, Neato told us that because of the shooting that occurred yesterday, JPL increased their security and they only want the people on the team who's device made it to go. That means that my group isn't going to JPL because our device didn't make it. This just sucks and I really don't have to justify why but I guess JPL is justifyed in doing so. All I did was grade and chill, but I didn't finish. I guess that doesn't matter now.

Today we just updated after I told the class their placement in the wednesday challenge. Camila, Joey, and Sako won the challenge, Joey and Sako being the CAD-ers and Camila being the constructer. The scores are up on wednesday so look there for the scores if you want to link to them. Sorry for these entries being so short. I don't really need to talk since there isn't much to say, so, that's it I guess.

Today we were introduced to our final for this semester. This year, we are to make a bridge made completely out of recycleables that passes either through the bottom hole, the top hole, or the candle of the 18 from this year's JPL invention challenge. The balls that we are to use are the 7" diameter playground balls like in the invention challenge and it is scored like at JPL, 10 points for the bottom hole, 20 points for the top hole, and 30 points for the candle. If a group can stop the ball directly in the middle of the 18, 10 points are added to that group, making the bottom hole 20 points with a stop, the top hole 30 points with a stop, and the candle 40 points with a stop. if two groups tie for first, say two groups stop over the candle, the tie breaker would be the span of the bridge. The span is divided into two parts, since the 18 is in the middle of the bridge, and the side with the shortest span of the two gets multiplied by two and that is their score. The team with the largest score wins the tie breaker. This challenge is far more difficult than last years because we need to make a very tall bridge if we are gunning for the candle and the ball we are using is very large. All we did was start the challenge and get into our groups, aswell as figuring out what we want to do.

Today we worked more on the final wednesday challenge that we started yesterday. Colin wasn't here today so I had to work on my own, but Andrew W was here, so thats good. My design is going well, I'm not going to reveal the design, I don't need to explain why, but I think it will work well, if we get a group that can make it well. I don't know what design we are going to get, but I hope that it makes sense because if it doesn't, I will be relatively annoyed. Beyond that, there is not much more to report on today.

Today we worked on the final wednesday challenge and the JPLers went to the back table to discuss the invention challenge experience. Neato thought that the groups could function without the JPLers but that was not the case. After the JPLers left their groups to go to the back table, the remaining members just stopped working and started playing games or messing around. This was annoying to Neato because he had hoped that the skills that he had taught them they would use to complete what they needed to complete without the JPLers. Some people did it, but most didn't. Mr. Wilton was here to talk with the JPLers, and our conversation was worth his time, but the rest of the class didn't do what they were supposed to do. My group was affected by this trend so I have to finish the CAD and the power point during 6th, but I can't really blame them since one of my group members was gone and the other guy didn't have the file so, there isn't much more I could have done.

Today we received the design that we are to build for the challenge and all I can say is why. Why 4th period do you have to do the things you do? Not one group in 5th period got a good design, ours isn't even logical. We had to read over the instructions at least 4 times so that we could wrap our heads around their design. The CAD didn't help because it had white cylanders to represent water bottles that weren't even aligned correctly, they told us to "ASSUME these 2 TOWERS are connected". Basically, it is 8 water bottles in pairs of 2, one having 1/2" cut off the top and the other with 1/2" off the bottom, the one with the top intact placed over the one with the bottom intact, with 2 of these pairs stacked on each side to create the towers. They didn't tell us to glue anything so they are hoping that the towers stay up by magic, and the bridge portion, the portion the ball is supposed to roll across, is made out of construction paper. Beyond that, I don't think they realized that the ball was supposed to roll across the length of the bridge, so they made the strings of the bridge attached right in the middle of the construction paper. So their design cannot possibly move a ball from one side to the other. Its just not a fun time here for anyone in the class, Sam got a bridge that requires 180 soda cans, Alvin got a bridge that requires $300 worth of cans of paint (the large ones), and Sako got a bridge that just defies physics flat out.

Today we worked on the final like yesterday, me and my group did nothing because our design is so easy to make, and we need not crushed water bottles, that we didn't need to do any work today, I am just going to bring the bottles that we need on monday along with the required materials so that we can build it. I just updated my site and stuff like that. There is no wednesday challenge form up yet because the challenge isn't over yet.

Today we worked more on our final wednesday challenge, today being our last day to build before the competition. My group's bridge that we are building is going well, and when I mean well I mean it's accurate to the CAD, and the CAD is... well... bad. I have no idea how to connect the top tower and the bottom tower together but, I don't really care at this point, I just want to get a product out and be done with it. Thats it for today, I guess, not much happened.

Period 1 and 2 Finals

Period 3 and 4 Finals

Today we did the final for the class... YAY!!!!