Build your own Robot

Last night, my son and I finally finished building a voice controlled Jungle Robot hobby kit. It’s actually considered a beginner kit though I don’t know why. Sure it had no soldering, no glueing, no welding, and the instructions were in english, but darn did I have a hard time with it. As someone whose built his own PC’s and chip-modded my X-box into a media server, I kind of considered myself pretty good with electronics, but not after this. Though I have to admit that when it finally went together after much time and swearing, it was pretty satisfying watching it climb across string on command.

The amazing thing is that kid’s are really getting into this. Instead of simply the football or math team, you can actually join your school’s First Robotics Robot Competition team and compete heavily for fame and glory at the annual championships. I think programs like this are equally important to building teamwork and relationship skills as traditional sports and clubs, and inspire problem solving and innovation.

If you are not like me you can pick up the kit here, but be warned, you might drop a few f-bombs in front of your kid. Just make him block his ears.

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Pie Chart Class for Mobile Devices

For Abobe Consulting, Clive Whitear has upped the anty on Peter Baird’s original Flash Lite 2.0 Line Chart class with some interesting new pie chart features. It allows you to change focus around the different pie sectors allowing for focusing in on the specific data points. The class, like all classes, is extendable to fit into any application you may be developing. Check it.

Valuable to interactive professionals working in the financial sector like myself.