A Contrast in Cities

The contrast between Vienna and Bratislava becomes apparent immediately upon arrival. While both cities share a Habsburg heritage, Bratislava’s economic situation differs markedly from its Austrian neighbour.

This disparity likely stems from Austria flourishing being a primary driver of European prosperity, while Slovakia being a part of another empires/kingdoms for centuries, and then spending four decades behind the Iron Curtain under Communist rule.

Christmas Spirit

Despite December temperatures hovering around freezing and biting winds sweeping through the streets, Bratislava’s Christmas markets created a warm atmosphere. Unlike Vienna’s markets, which balance merchandise and food, Bratislava’s focus heavily on traditional Slovak cuisine and glühwein.

We sampled a traditional potato pancake served with sour cream and various toppings. It tasted pretty much like a hashbrown with toppings. I also got to try glühwein mixed with absinthe, something I hadn’t had in years and isn’t common to find in North America.

Čumil the Sewer Worker

Among Bratislava’s most photographed attractions is Čumil, the “Man at Work” sculpture. Created by Viktor Hulík in 1997, this bronze figure peers out from a manhole cover. The sculpture brings a bit of character to the old town. While photographing Čumil, we noticed people observing tourists – a reminder to stay vigilant in crowded tourist areas.

The Opera House and National Identity

Our walking tour took us past the Slovak National Theatre. The Neo-Renaissance opera house, completed in 1886, was built during the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The facade features busts of famous playwrights and composers, none of whom are ethnically Slovak. This reflects the historical reality that Slovak national identity was still forming during the theatre’s construction. The first Slovak-language play was not performed at the opera house until the early 20th century.

Slovakia’s path to nationhood was complex, involving centuries under Hungarian rule, followed by inclusion in Czechoslovakia after World War I. The eventual peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, known as the Velvet Divorce, marked Slovakia’s emergence as an independent nation. The Czech and Slovak languages illustrate this shared heritage, and are still mutually intelligible.

The UFO Bridge and the Memorial to the Jewish Quarter

A poignant stop on our tour was the site of a former synagogue. The Jewish Quarter was demolished during the construction of the UFO Bridge, officially known as the Bridge of the Slovak National Uprising, in the 1970s under Soviet rule. By that time, the area had been neglected for decades, likely due to the decimation of Bratislava’s Jewish population during the Holocaust. In its place, there’s now a memorial for where the old synagogue used to be.

The UFO Bridge itself has now become one of Bratislava’s most recognizable landmarks. Spanning the Danube without any supporting columns in the water, the bridge relies on suspension cables for structural integrity. Its unique design, with a circular restaurant perched atop, resembles a flying saucer, giving it the UFO moniker.

Christmas and Easter Traditions

Our guide shared some interesting Slovak holiday traditions. At Christmas, families often purchase live carp, allowing children to play with the fish in the bathtub for a day or two before it is prepared for dinner. Instead of Santa Claus, Slovakia’s version, Ježiško (Baby Jesus), visits children and brings them gifts. Easter brings another curious custom where boys pour water on girls they admire or value (romantic interests and female family members), a tradition thought to bring health and beauty. In return, the girls offer decorated eggs, booze or even money. The guide was completely aware how strange these traditions would sound to foreigners, and if you ask me, the Easter one seems a little bit one-sided.

Ascending to Bratislava Castle

The tour concluded with a climb to Bratislava Castle. Compared to grander castles in the region, Bratislava Castle reflects the city’s more modest resources.

Originally a military fortification, it achieved its greatest splendour under Maria Theresa’s reign in the 18th century when it was converted into a Habsburg residence. After a devastating fire in 1811, the castle fell into disrepair. During the communist era, reconstruction efforts were modest compared to its former glory, resulting in the simpler structure we see today.

From the top of the castle hill, visitors can see wind turbines in the distance. Interestingly, these turbines are located in Austria, as Slovakia does not yet have significant investments in wind energy.

See more of Bratislava here

The Dead Sea

It’s known as the Dead Sea because there isn’t any macroscopic aquatic life in the lake due to the high levels of salt in the water. The high levels of salt make it super easy to float in the water – it’s literally impossible to sink. It was kind of tough to hang out in the water though – February is not a good time of year for lounging in the water.

The Dead Sea is located between Israel, Jordan and the West Bank. Theoretically, one could swim from one side to the other without worrying about drowning, but it is a lengthy 15km swim. Not something I’d try, and besides, there’s probably patrols that would stop people from doing that.

The mud here supposedly has health benefits because it has an abundance of certain minerals. We saw people spread the mud all over themselves to reap the benefits of the mud. I tried a little bit on my hands and arms, but the mud just dried out my skin a lot – yeah not doing that again…

Tel Aviv

From the Dead Sea our tour took us to Tel Aviv. What took me by surprise was how much of a beach city it was!

We spent our day in Tel Aviv on the “Shabbat”, the Jewish day of rest, so a lot of places were closed. But we did find some nice meals though!

This is shakshouka, dish of eggs poached in tomato sauce, olive oil and spices. It tastes really similar to tomato sauce, but the poached egg makes everything so much better!

This is a beef tagine, a dish originating from North Africa, but it’s also common in Israel. The name tagine is cooked using a special pot of the same name. Tagines come in many varieties, but they are often savoury stews served with couscous and other vegetables.

And of course, there’s hummus! It’s savoury dish made from cooked, mashed chickpeas blended with other aromatics. The place we went to advertised itself as “the second best hummus in Tel Aviv”. So… what’s the first best hummus in Tel Aviv? I still don’t know the answer, but maybe it’s the one that’s homemade in a local’s home? This is literally the best hummus I’ve ever had, and I’ll compare all the hummus I eat in the future to this one.

That’s pretty much it for Tel Aviv and the Dead Sea – and our two-week trip! We headed to the airport three hours early (Ben Gurion Airport is notorious for having really strict security). There were multiple checkpoints and at one point, a member of the airport security staff asked us to follow him and as we walked he asked us some questions and let us go. The staff checked every nook and cranny of our bags and all of the electronics we had on us before letting us go. From there, we began our journey home.

Photos: Tel Aviv, and the Dead Sea

Personally, I simply got tired of sleeping so little.  I always sacrificed sleep for more work time in the past.  But now, I’ve come to realize how powerful being rested really is.  It feels so empowering when I wake up in the morning, fully refreshed.  I don’t have to struggle to get out of bed or set 5 alarm clocks to get me out of bed in the morning.  The reason that the struggle exists is because the body wants more sleep.  This is a clear sign of not sleeping enough.  I’m definitely no sleep expert and I don’t claim to be, but I thought I’d share some techniques in how to think differently about sleep.  But first, I think I should share my experience with sleep deprivation, which I felt heavily motivated me into adopting this way of life.  All of this below is just my view on sleep health.

My Battle with Sleep Deprivation

In high school, I pretty much got 8 hours of sleep a night.  It wasn’t that hard since at that time I didn’t really think about optimizing my sleep.  I just remember being nagged to go to sleep by my parents every night.  I never had to stay up doing any homework or anything like that.  Even my first year of university was like that.  Rarely found myself staying up to do work unless there was a exam the next day or something.

Second year of university is when it all changed.  A thought clicked in my head that I could sleep less and get more work done.  It’s not like I felt sleepy at night anyways.  For a while it was alright, but then as I slept less and less, my sleep debt accumulated.  I found myself napping in class.  I even micro-slept while I drove and almost got into not one, but a couple car accidents.  I didn’t try to do anything about it at the time.  I liked the extra time.  There was a while where I slept about 4.5 hours a night because I stayed up playing computer games.  I looked like a zombie.  I yawned all the time and everyone knew I was sleepy.

In my third year, I lived alone on campus.  No one told me when to wake up to go to class.  With all the sleep debt I had, I struggled to get up every morning.  Eventually, I stopped going to morning classes altogether and my grades suffered.  I started questioning myself, “why is it so hard to sleep early?”  I was easily annoyed all the time.  I was so tired at one point, that I caught myself hallucinating.  It was weird because I saw this strange bug crawling up the curtain and when I waved the curtain around, it was gone.  I couldn’t find it anywhere on the floor.  I wanted to change my sleeping habits, but I couldn’t do it.  Logic told me to do it, but I couldn’t act on it.

My sleeping habits didn’t change until I went to Germany for my co-op work term.  I guess because I was adjusting to this new environment, I actually felt sleepy at night.  This urge made me sleep a lot earlier than what I was used to doing.  I felt rested for the first time in a long time.  It felt so good.  My constant zombie look faded away.  I could tell that my skin complexion was improving.

I guess because I’ve seen how dangerous sleep deprivation could be, it finally compelled me to change my ways.  Ever since I’ve made sleep a priority, I feel a lot healthier.  I lose out on wake-time for working, but I am able to think better when I am rested.  My thoughts are a lot clearer.  That makes me a more efficient worker.

Getting into the Frame of Mind

You’ve got to be truly convinced that you want to get more sleep.  I know a lot of people who say things “yeah I know I don’t get enough sleep”, but they don’t do anything about it.  Nothing at all.  Everyday they keep their usual sleep routine and they’re struggling all the time.  They’re the ones who are always late to morning appointments, and some even for afternoon appointments.  Why does it have to be that way?  It doesn’t.  But before even trying to maintain a proper sleep routine, people really have to change the way they think about sleep.

Sleep is NOT a waste of time. I’ve heard people say, “sleep is a waste of time” or “sleep is for the weak”.  It definitely is not.  Somehow I think there is a competition between who gets the least amount of sleep and still gets the most work done.  I’ve heard people people saying (sometimes bragging) stuff like how they got only 3 hours of sleep and then pulled an all-nighter to study for an exam.  Sure, they definitely were up for a while, but should we question the efficiency of that work?  Of course.  Anybody who has pulled an all-nighter has experiences how “out of it” they were by the end if not half way through.  Nobody wants to do an all-nighter.  That is an extreme case though.  A more common theme is to stay up for 18 hours or so.  That leaves 6 hours to sleep.  The average for most people lies somewhere around 7.5-8 hours.  According to the statistics, more than half of us need more than 6.  By not getting our required amount of sleep, this so-called “sleep debt” will accumulate over time.  Like I mentioned before, I once slept on average 4.5 to 5 hours a night for about 3 months straight.  People around me could tell I looked like a zombie.  I’ve definitely experienced sleep debt first hand.  In retrospect, doing this was so stupid, but that experience definitely helped me reshape what I thought about sleep.  It is a necessity.

Getting into the right frame of mind takes time.  I definitely did not just one day choose to make sleep a priority.  It happened over time.  For me it took a few years in order for me to drill it into my head.  After sleeping late and waking up early, I’d ask myself why I did that.  Why did I sleep so little the night before when the consequence was me feeling sleep deprived the day after?  As I’m in my early 20’s, sleeping late is easy.  It’s not difficult to just stay up late doing nothing in particular.  In fact, it seems to be natural tendency for most people in my age group to be night owls.

Going to bed early is not a chore.  Chores are something we’d rather not do, but we’re only doing it because we have to.  This attitude will not work.  Eventually, you’ll give up and revert to your old ways.  You have to change your attitude toward sleep.  You know how some people feel passionate about their work and will always feel motivated to do it?  That’s their motivation.  There is a similar motivation for sleeping early.  I want to go to sleep early today, so I feel rested and ready to go tomorrow.

Ask yourself why your sleep habits are the way they are right now.  Why do I have to wake up feeling terrible every morning?  Why do I have to set so many alarms just to get out of bed?  Why am I pressing the snooze button so much?  Shouldn’t I be getting up super early? Doesn’t this struggle to wake up give me less time to get ready?  If I don’t have enough time to get ready, won’t I look like a mess when I go to work/school?  Am I sleeping late all the time because I have so much work to do?  Could I be improving on my time management to make me more efficient? Is sleeping late worth it?  I’m sure there are way more questions to be asked, but asking yourself these questions will tell you how you really feel about it.  Everyone’s going to have different answers.  Some might want to change, but others might feel that what they’re doing is the best solution right now.

The Bottom Line

Sleep is absolutely essential for good health and its benefits are far reaching.  Ever since I’ve slept better, I’ve been able to accomplish more.  No longer am I the sleep deprived zombie.  My grades in school are better despite harder courses and more commitments. Better sleep health is something that anybody can do, but they have to want it.  You have to convince yourself that sleep deprivation is a terrible thing and it is something to avoid.  You’ve got to get into the frame of mind that sleep health is good and the will to change.  If you truly want to improve your sleep habits for the better, the improvements will happen.

Flying to Mexico City

When we got to Dallas Airport, we had a stopover of few hours, so we decided to have some Texan steak – or at least as Texan as we tried to get without leaving the airport.  We ended up at TGI Fridays.  It was the first steak that I’ve had in a long time, and I definitely could use another one.  The steak even came with “Jack Daniel’s Sauce”, which made it that much better.

After eating, we met up with two others on the team who had flown from San Jose and Toronto.  After a four hour flight to Dallas, and other few hours of stopover there, we had to fly for another two and a half hours to get to Mexico City.

As my friend said, “it’s like China happened”.  The Benito Juárez International Airport was probably the most disorganized airport I’ve ever seen.  It’s as if every single flight landed at the same time.  The lineup to grow through customs took at least forty-five minutes.  During this whole time, everyone was tired and wanted get their sleep.  A lot of the people on the team hadn’t slept the night before (rather than sleep 2 or 3 hours to wake up early for the flight right?).  While in this lineup, we saw a couple of other RoboCup teams landing as well (Skuba, MRL, among others).  After finally getting through customs and a security check, we got a ride to our hostel via transportation that we organized with the hostel prior to our departure.

Hostel Mundo Joven Catedral

The hostel we stayed had very nice staff that really cared about making its guests feel safe there.  It’s a common feeling among travelers to think that Mexico City is definitely not one of the safer places to travel to.  To combat that, the hostel had its own security guards, security cameras, and they even called legitimate taxi’s for its guests.  They even told us which direction to walk when leaving the hostel to avoid going to the shadier parts of town.  Furthermore, it was situated in the historic center of Mexico City, within walking distance of the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary of Mexico City and the Plaza de la Constitución.  From some of the rooms at the hostel, there was a nice view of the cathedral.

Work Day

We spent the next day working on the robots to make sure none of the mechanical parts had been affected during the flight from Vancouver.  We had packed all the robots in a regular suitcase with packing foam all around it to protect it.  Looking over the mechanical parts, everything was in order.  The main things we had to fix were tightening screws, adjusting the wiring etc.  The software team had very little to do because they’ve written all the code they could, and just needed robots to test with.  The electrical team on the other hand, toiled tirelessly to troubleshoot all the boards and make sure they were all functioning properly.

RoboCup Begins!

We arrived at the competition venue, the World Trade Center at 8 AM to find a slew of other teams patiently waiting to register.  After probably an hour long wait, we all finally moved in and set up our work places.  When we looked at the field the robots would be playing on, we noticed that the organizers hadn’t yet set up the cameras yet (required for the robots to “see” where they’re going).  This meant that no teams could test.  Teams that were ready could only wait until the organizers got those set up.  Because of this delay, the games had to be delayed as well.  This gave us more time to get the robots ready.  For the next little while, we were the first team to arrive and the last team to leave everyday.  The electrical team needed all the time they could get to finish everything.

Because we had already finished most our maintenance work the day before, there wasn’t a whole lot we could do.  The electrical team had to continue working on their stuff to get as many robots ready as possible.  For the next day and a half, we let the electrical team do their work and we’d help them along the way by replacing parts that were broken (encoders and such).  Otherwise, there wasn’t much we could help with.

Food for the next Week

When we got hungry during the competition, we did a little bit of exploration to find food.  Eventually, all the teams wound up at the same shopping mall for food.  There was a supermarket downstairs to buy water and a food court upstairs with a variety of foods.  We went to this mall pretty much everyday for as long as we were at the World Trade Center.  One day we’d try Mexican food, other days we’d try plain-old hamburgers and other days we’d try even Chinese food (at least the white person’s interpretation of it).  It wasn’t really healthy for us, but we figured it was only for a week.

For dinner, most teams ended up ordering pizza from the nearby Domino’s.  We ate it so much that everybody got sick of having pizza.  Sometimes, we’d have dinner with other teams at our hostel restaurant so we could get to know them a little bit better.  After all, the competition is more about mutual learning and robotics advancement rather than about winning.

Let the Games Begin

Because our team wasn’t that ready to begin with, we had to forfeit our first game against the Immortals from Iran.  By the time we got three robots up and running, we played against the RoboJackets from Georgia Tech.  They only fielded five robots out of the total six.  For most of the game, both teams played pretty evenly, despite their two-robot advantage.  All was going well until one of the opponent’s robots chipped the ball that hit the top of one of our robots, bounced off and rolled into the goal.  In that particular situation, the referee had called an “indirect free kick”, meaning the shot, even if it went in the net, would not count.  But unfortunately, that rule was not applicable because it hit off of another robot.  It was an unlucky goal for us, and we definitely could not score a goal to tie up the game.  We ended up losing one-nil.  For the next few days, we kept complaining about that goal.

In our third game, we played against RoboFEI from Brazil.  There were so many good scoring chances in this game from both our teams that made this game so intense.  Even though we were only watching machines play, everybody cheered them on.  We had four robots on the field this game and they all worked like a charm.  The mechanical system, electrical system, and the artificial intelligence worked so well together.  It was a great feeling for everyone on our team – to see our design work.  After almost a year of hard work, this was it.  We saw our robots move, intercept balls, shoot on the goal, etc.  A lot of the robot shortcomings from the North American Open were also dealt with, such as the problem of the break beam sensors not working, and the robot not moving accurately on the field.  When we scored, we cheered so loud that every single person in the room could hear us (there were probably about 1000 people in that room).  We all got an immense feeling of satisfaction in seeing our working robots score their first goal.  A few minutes later, the other team scored a goal.  It didn’t matter to us, we were still high in the clouds in terms of our mood.  The game ended 1-1.  Despite the tie game, everyone on the team was so happy in seeing our robots work, it didn’t matter what the result was.

This was a great morale boost for the team because for our forth and last game, we played against BRocks from Turkey.  This time, we had our full fleet of robots.  We played our first six on six game.  Yet again, we saw our robots work.  Nothing broke down during the game and everything just worked.  It was quite rare for us to just put our robots on the field and have nothing go wrong.  At one point, our robot shot the ball into the opposing robot and a piece fell off of it.  We knew our design worked when stuff like this happens.  This game was less intense for us than our previous game, but we did end up winning.  That put our record at 1 win, 1 tie, and 2 losses – a total of 4 points.  Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough for us to advance to the next round of the competition and as a result we finished 13th out of 20 teams in the league.  Not so bad for having zero working robots when we got to Mexico.

After the official games, we played a couple friendly games with other teams.  The first game we played was against the Mannheim Tigers.  The game was going well, until we found problems where some of the screws on the robot weren’t tightened sufficiently.  As a result, things well off the robot when we played.  It was quite embarrassing to see.  At least it was only  something minor like putting in a screw, and not something major like a design problem.  In our second friendly game, this time against ER-Force from Erlangen, we found some electrical parts frying randomly on the board, which wasn’t good either.  Out of six working robots, we now had three – still a net gain I guess.

After we were done playing, we watched the other teams play for first place.  From watching their games, it was clear that they played on a way higher level than we did.  Everything that their robots did were way better than ours.  Shooting was faster, chipping went further, robots moved faster, kicks were more accurate, etc.  Everything about their robots was just better.  There is definitely a lot we could learn from these teams.  The final winner of this year’s competition ended up being Skuba from Thailand, who beat ZJUNLict from China.  Both teams analyzed each others strategies for days, but only one team could come out on top.  And now for the fourth year in a row, Skuba remains the undefeated winner of the competition.

Other Leagues in RoboCup

During our idle time, we walked around the other rooms to see how the other teams were working.  RoboCup has many different competitions under its name, while our Small Size League competition is only one small part of it.  Leagues range from soccer robots, rescue, simulation, to even home care robotics.  In the home care robotics league, the competition involved a robotic navigating through a mock house to perform certain chores such as picking up objects to hand to people, speaking and hearing instructions, etc.  It was an admittedly difficult task to do for these robots, but many teams were quite successful at it.

Accidents Happen

Just like in the North American Open, there was yet again another accident involving batteries.  Except this time, nobody noticed and the whole battery lit up in flames.  Somebody just yelled “fire, fire!” and started trying to pat it down with something.  Knowing that I was too far away to do anything, I just took out my camera and snapped a picture of the whole thing.  Eventually, someone just poured lots of water over it to put our the fire.  In retrospect, that might not have been a good idea since water in an electrical fire is not really a good thing.  Nobody got hurt though, which is good.  Afterward, the organizers didn’t let us charge batteries nearby our work space anymore.

Some Design Shortcomings

Knowing that our ball kicker would be able to withstand impacts of the ball, what we had forgotten to analyze was how well the kicker would hold up if it hit a object fixed to the ground.  We found out the hard way at the competition after a few games when we discovered that our robot kicker head was bent out of shape.  We also had a lot of turf buildup inside the robot that was enough to slow down the wheel during the game.  This turf had to be cleaned out after every match.

For the kicking mechanism, the robot uses a solenoid/plunger mechanism.  Activating the coil would cause the plunger inside the core to move quickly to hit the ball.  A rubber band secured to the end of it would allow the plunger to return to its initial position.  The problem with this setup was that the rubber band would easily break and had to be replaced after every game.  When we took out the rubber band, we could always see cut marks along it.  In another instance, a chipper solenoid on a robot almost popped out.  It’s not really clear why this happened at all, but it could have been a screw that was not very tight to begin with.

RoboCup Closing

To close the competition, there was a soccer game where humans played against the middle size league robots.  It was pretty funny to see the robots struggle to take the ball away from people who could handle the ball way better.  At the same time, the humans were really scared of the robots since if a human ever got hit by the kicker head from the robot, it would break bones.  The robot goalie however, proved quite competent in blocking shots – better than the human goal from what I saw.  Or maybe the human goalie wasn’t trying very hard.  I’m not sure who won the game since I didn’t watch the whole thing, but it was still really interesting to see.

Afterward, all the teams packed up their things and waited for the closing banquet.  At the closing banquet, they served a standard meal for everyone.  It was a really good chance for teams to celebrate their achievements and finally relax a little bit after the competition.  Everyone deserved a rest after all of that.

First Real Tour of Mexico – Teotihuacan

After the competitions ended, most teams stayed an extra day or two to see the sights in Mexico City.  The organizers of the Small Size League were nice enough to organize a tour for everyone the day after the competition ended.  Most of the SSL teams went with us to the Aztec pyramids in Teotihuacan.  The tour first showed us how their predecessors used different plants and minerals to make tools such as knives and sewing thread.  That part was interesting at first, but I think what a lot of us really wanted to see were the pyramids.  Afterward, the tour guide led us to the gift shop.  For some reason, most of the people were so interested there, it took about an hour for everyone to finish so that we could move on with the tour.  After the gift shop, we finally made it to the pyramids.

After walking up and down the pyramids, we had lunch and went back to Mexico City to see the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  This was one of the most visited Catholic shrines in the world.  But because I had already visited so many churchs and cathedrals from my tour around Europe, this part of the tour was less interesting for me.

Historic City Center

The team would fly back to Vancouver on the day after visiting the pyramids.  But before leaving, we made sure to visit the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary of Mexico City and the Plaza de la Constitución.  In the plaza, hung a giant flag of Mexico.  This is where the city center used to be, at least during the 19th century.

Going Home

After 10 days in Mexico, we all longed to go home.  It had been a long week – full of stress, adrenaline pumping excitement and overall a good experience.  But after all that, we were ready to go.  We flew out in the afternoon from Mexico City.  Apparently, at around the same time that we were at the airport in Mexico City, three cops had been shot to death.  While we were there though, we didn’t hear anything of it.  We safely arrived in Dallas for a brief stopover and arrived back in Vancouver at about 8:30 PM, just in time to go home, wash up and go to bed.

More photos here

Team Formation

I think this is where a lot of students struggle when things go wrong.  It’s always possible to get a teammate that is hard to work with.  While it is no fault of either person, the two personalities (either in values, cultural background, style of working, way of thinking, etc.) are different enough to cause disagreements.  At times, the disagreements can become so heated that the team’s progress in the project is hindered.

I realized that there were communication issues among each other in the group, which delayed progress in the early stages of the project.  These issues came about in the form of misunderstandings of what people said during team meetings.  I found myself in the position where I was expressing my own interpretation of what people said in the hopes that everyone would reach a common understanding.  As the project went on, family issues prevented one member from continuing this project further.  In a way, this eased our communication problems since communication between three people was a lot easier than between four people, based on what I experienced in the project.  Afterward, our team became a lot more efficient and progressed at a faster rate than before.

One of the things that the mechanical engineering curriculum at UBC teaches is team dynamics.  After learning a lot of theory as to how to work best with teams, doing projects with other people puts that knowledge to the test.  Some people don’t really manage working with others and feel set in their ways.  Differences among people exist and I realize that adjustments in the way I work with them is required in order to promote a healthy functioning group.

Project Scope

In retrospect, I would have advocated reducing the project scope since; I feel that the hours we put in were beyond what the course asked for.  I estimate that each member put in over 300 hours on the project.  Since a large part of this course is about design justification, time is very realistic constraint that can limit project scope.  At the same time, there are other courses to worry about.  By spending extra time on 45X, less time is available for other courses.

In the beginning of the project, I couldn’t predict well how long things would take.  Therefore, time for “messing up” or “unforeseen consequences” should be budgeted for.  Many people say things like “I can finish this in about 2 hours”, but in reality, it will take him two days.

Documentation

Very often I found myself referring to old dossier documents to find out information that I needed to know. For example, if I forgot how much something cost, I looked back on the dossier to find out.  If I forgot one of the project requirements, back to the dossier I looked.  At times, it is a bit of a pain to write some sections of the dossier since I couldn’t make sense of the some of the wording.  To deal with it, I had to ask the project supervisor during team meetings.

Project Logistics

I booked as much machine shop time as we could ahead of time knowing that we would need it.  The team would have liked to send in parts for the waterjet or have the technicians work on them, but we were way too late for that.  With a simpler project scope, we could have designed our parts faster and could have been further ahead in those manufacturing lineups to decrease the lead time.  My teammates and I spent quite a bit of time in the machine shop to get as much as we could ready for the design review.  At the same time, I had to look at when ordered parts arrived such that things would arrive in time so that we had everything prepared while building the prototype.

Time Management

While doing 45X, I was also working on New Venture Design and Thunderbots at the same time, which also took up a lot of my time.  As with design projects, they take up the most time relative to other courses.  For me, I had to juggle these three for the entire year.  This gave me a lot of stress at times, but it taught me to be more productive.  For example, on the way home, I would be responding to e-mails that I received during the day so I would have more time to work on the project when I got home.  Since my commute to campus is 1.5 hours just to get to campus (one direction), I had to learn how to make use of this time.

Project Management

I took up the role of “project manager” in the beginning of the project and this role showed me a lot of the logistics that had to be considered in a project.  Very often I found myself asking for progress on certain tasks and pushing teammates to finish faster.  Different issues often came to my head that I had to find an answer for such as “are our parts going to arrive in time for machining” or “do we need to have another meeting with the client”.

For Future 45X Students

Don’t wait until the last minute to do something.  There is always something that needs to be done in this course from beginning to end.  Mech students like to aim high, which is good, but 99% of the time there is not enough time to accomplish the “perfect” design that they always aim for.  This leads to a lot of sleepless nights or worse, a prototype that isn’t ready to be handed in.  Be ready to bite the bullet and make compromises like cutting features to make work less for the team and to meet deadlines.  No design will be “perfect” at the end of the course and this fact, however brutal it may be, must be accepted.

Day 109

Also known as the spring festival, the Fruehlingsfest takes place in Stuttgart in the middle of April and early May. The city sets up an entire amusement park in an area in Bad Cannstatt filled with roller coasters, and an assortment of rides. Every year, the amusement park gets packed up after the festival ends. Seems not worth the effort to me. It looked and felt a lot like the Fair at the PNE in Vancouver where parents brought their children. But despite its German style, like the Bavarians, the bars served a maβ of beer as well. Many stayed in the beer tents of the Stuttgart Hofbraeu drinking nonstop and stood on the benches waving the giant beer mug around. Others linked arms and danced. The atmosphere felt super German. Although in Munich, my friends and I visited The Hofbraeuhaus, the atmosphere felt more tourist-like, which took away from the real German part of it. Not many tourists visited the Fruehlingsfest. My friends and I all drank a maβ of beer (and more later on) to stick with the tradition. I went to the Fruehlingsfest with some friends from Bosch and others I met from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Ironically though, most of the people we went with came from Canada or USA, with one coming from France and another from Brazil.

Around the park, it looked like any amusement park. Loud sounds coming from speakers playing music, screams coming from a roller coaster nearby, and the amazing smell of all the super unhealthy fried foods kept reminding me of all the time I spent at the PNE during the past few summers in Vancouver. But inside the beer tents, the atmosphere totally changed.

From outside the beer tent, I could already see the giant party going on inside. Watched by security guards around the perimeter, they made sure that no minor could get in. For the first time, I actually people showing their ID’s before going in. Even at 2:30 in the afternoon, I already saw a man passed on drunk lying outside the beer tent.

While all the parents and their children stayed outside playing on the rides, everyone else stayed in the beer tent to drink the day away. We stayed in the beer tent for about an hour before we walked around the park. I went home at around 10 pm, after an eventful day of taking part in the German beer culture.

I really should have posted this week ago when it happened; time did not work in my favor. After having worked for a while, I met a few interns, and I went on this trip with them. We met up in the morning to take the regional express train to Tubingen. Upon arriving, we made our way to the old town. While walking, we saw a river separating the town similar to Heidelberg. The streets also looked similar to many historic German cities. There are probably some distinct differences between each city, but I’m not knowledgeable enough about the architecture of the period. We then took a bus to the main attraction of the town, the Bebenhausen Abbey.

Walking around the monastery kept reminding me about Diablo II (the nerd in me talking). It was quite reminiscent of the Rogue Monastery, but we obviously were not being chased by sword-wielding skeletons. Located in the outer cloister is the tourist information center, church, cemetery, and various historic buildings.

Walking further into the monastery, we came arrived at the inner cloister. A large hallway enclosed the area on all sides, with doors in the hallway leading to rooms for public display. Along the wall were stone plaques dedicated to the history of the place. In the center is a fountain that has been dried up and I don’t know if it is used in the summer. It kind of reminded me of an exhausted health/mana fountain.

The rooms inside the monastery contained information and artifacts displayed for people to see. In one of the rooms, there was a entrance to the catacombs. Maybe if I went down there I’d find Andariel.

The next day, we went to visit Hohenzollern Castle, the ancestral seat of the Hohenzollern family. Two castles had previously been constructed there before, but were destroyed during war or due to lack of care. The castle that remains today was constructed for Frederick William IV of Prussia. The sole purpose of the castle’s construction was as a memorial to the Hohenzollern family and not as an actual residence for anyone.

Along the battlements of the castle stood statues of Prussian royalty. They probably didn’t fight in many battles and since they didn’t look very physically fit to me. They probably just ate a lot.

The castle possesses a lot of defensive structures, but since this castle was built only as a memorial, it was all just for show.

The top level of the castle was the central courtyard. Along the battlements was a view from 855 m above sea level.

We took a tour inside the castle, but unfortunately, they did not allow photography on the premises. The ballroom of castle contained pillars of pure marble even though nobody ever used it. Nowadays, the castle is open for tourists and private functions such as weddings.

Inside one of the rooms were paintings on the wall dedicated to remembering each member of the House of Hohenzollern. In the hallways were paintings of various people and of the two previous castles that were built. One of the paintings was of Baron von Steuben. He assisted the Americans during the Revolutionary War and received a thank you letter from George Washington for his service. Since monarchies dominated at the time, there was talk of choosing a king to govern the United States, but obviously that never happened. At the time, their choice was one of the members of the Prussian royal family.

Some rooms displayed some personal items of the Prussian Kaisers. Apparently, a lot of them liked tobacco and even had a really fancy looking box for tobacco snuff. Despite how unhealthy that sounds, one of those boxes took a bullet for one of the Kaisers and saved his life.

The most significant item was the Crown of Wilhelm II. It contained so much and so many different kinds of gems that it was worth millions. It sat inside clear glass display, but looking closely at it, there was a whole slew of motion detection devices around it for security. Unfortunately, because of my terrible memory, I can’t really remember much more. I thought the castle was Heidelberg was amazing, but this one completely beats it.

Photos:

• Tübingen
• Hohenzollern Castle

The Blog-Health-o-Meter reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 6,600 times in 2010. That’s about 16 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 85 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 120 posts. There were 48 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 3mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was November 23rd with 83 views. The most popular post that day was South Korea: Yet Again Swallowing the Bitter Pill.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were zamunda.net, facebook.com, dailyblogged.com, google.com, and en.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for p1i windows 7, p1_usb_signed_drivers, p1_usb_signed_drivers.rar, p1_usb_signed_drivers package, and failed to load resource sony ericsson.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

South Korea: Yet Again Swallowing the Bitter Pill November 2010
1 comment

Connecting a Sony Ericsson P1i to a Windows 7 x64 Computer in Phone Mode December 2009
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Snow Leopard on a Dell Inspiron 1520 June 2010
17 comments

How to Install Solidworks 2008 on a x64 Operating System November 2009

SolidWorks 2010 Side-By-Side Configuration Error Fix August 2010
5 comments

Hmm so taking the lifetimes of all these items, the lowest common factor is 15.  For every 3 tubes of toothpaste, I should buy 5 bars of soap and 5 bottles of shampoo.  Assuming that I start using all of these at the same time that is.

Looking at these numbers puts things into perspective.  I always felt like I’ve been replacing these same items over and over, but I guess I just lost track of how long it had already been since I last replaced it.