| Panasonic World Solar Challenge |
[Oct. 22nd, 2007|01:40 am] |
The Panasonic World Solar Challenge started this past Saturday (EST-PST). Having placed 11th out of the 38 teams split among two classes of vehicles, in the speed track qualifiers, the University of Michigan Solar Car team was set to start at 8:10am. Just an hour into the race, the Stanford team passed U of M and then abrubtly stopped. This led to our lead vehicle being forced to halt suddenly, which caused our Solar Car: Continuum to crash into the back of the lead vehicle. Noone was harmed in the incident, and it's a testament to the quality of the design created and built by this student team. The front of the vehicle buckled in well defined ways, destroying the cells on the front upper surface and cracking our sheilding over our contentrator array. Also damaged were the wheel fairings: the shaped wheel wells that help produce the great aerodynamic advantage of the car. During the rest of the day the team worked to replace and repair all components that were damaged and then to run the vehicle through speed dynamic tests to verify that the vehicle was safe to drive. Having demonstrated this fact, the car was certified and left on the road again in the morning of Monday Australian time (Sunday EST-PST) The car progressed through the Katherine checkpoint making great time around noon. And moved on for the rest of the day, camping like most teams in the Outback where they stop when the race officials call time at the end of the day.
Note: the WSC official site fell under the onslaught of too many excited followers and is currently still trying to recover. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 25th, 2007|12:21 am] |
So it's been a tough few weeks. Surprisingly by trying to take things off my plate and start to build a social life I managed to fall into a busier time for work with less energy leftover. Hopefully starting this week the energy level will go up while the work level goes down.
Speaking of which. Anybody in Silicon Valley want to hang out? I've got a wii with extra controllers :D and I like sharing!
The wii rocks btw, the graphics aren't as stellar as the other 2 new consoles. In 2 days of having it, I managed to beat 90% of the Super Mario World (from SNES) through virtual console! I've had it for 2 weeks as of today. For just that feature buying the wii is worth it, my old SNES is dying (memory chips in the game cartridges are apparently both battery backed and highly aged, so dropping the cartridges even 2 feet onto carpet stands a chance of randomly erasing 1 of the savegames) and my sister illegally claimed it for a year. Now, with virtual console, I can play all of the old games I grew up on, and more because it was much cheaper. Then you have everything else that comes with the wii and it's just amazing. Another game I've been playing is Prince of Persia: Two Towers. I already beat it on the pc back when it came out, and the graphics on the wii aren't as good as they were on my computer, however on the upside is the graphics on the wii are extremely consistent. There is never any jitter, and never any stuttering. And with the wiimote and the nunchuck, the gaming is really intuitive. When I first started playing the game the controls seemed really annoying, but they grew on me rapidly as I got the hang of swinging my arms in the air vigorously, the game started to flow together. I guess before then I was a lazy gamer, being good via highspeed low energy accurate button presses. Now it's a couple buttons and a bunch of appropriate armswings. Healthier I guess :P [I also have Metroid Prime 3, but because I didn't grow up with the story, it's still growing on me, though I like the game mechanics] I plan to get the rest of the mario collection to round out my piece of history of gaming fun on one system :D
In addition to all that the world solar challenge is creeping up Just under 27 days before the race. Tension is creeping up and it's killing me I can't be there. Go Fast. Go Blue. We're rooting for you guys. |
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