A Maker in the Quebec Fortress

A couple of weeks ago I saw a tweet from @hackaday about their new hacker contest.  The prize is only a trip to space... an actual trip to space worth around 200k.  That evening I was browsing the contest page to get more details and then I reached the eligibility section where it stipulates that the following can't participate: [...]Quebec, Italy, Cuba, Iran, Myanmar (formerly Burma), North Korea, Sudan, Syria, or any jurisdiction where the Contest would be restricted or prohibited by law [...]

The thing is, I was not too surprised since this happens often in Quebec where we have some retarded laws to control the lotteries.  Quebec is surely not the only place in the world where lottery & gambling is controlled but I think we're the only ones that are dumb enough to think that we can control all the world-wide lotteries. The result is that Loto Quebec, the government body controlling this, is trying to impose those crazy conditions on out-of-Quebec contests. So any contest with a prize must submit to those conditions and guess what, for only a small pool of 6 million people, they don't.  You ear that, contest organizers from around the world? Keep your free money and space trips. We have maple syrup.

...

So I can't register my project on Hackaday. Life goes on.

I recently acquired an Ultimaker 3D Printer and that was a huge moment for me.  I have so many projects that can benefit from this that I don't know where to start.  After a few days of learning the limits of the printer I was ready to start working on a project, and to make it even better why not a contest. So I returned to an old ongoing Intel contest page: the Make it Wearable Video Contest.  This place is a really cool mix of art, technology and people that I want to connect with.  Well you know the twist of that story.  This project [...] is open only to legal residents of Argentina, Canada (excluding the Province of Quebec), [...].

GnhaaaaaAAAAAAAaaa.

So I was ranting to people at work about the stupidity of this law but, deep inside, I thought that it wasn't too bad for now and that I could still connect with the Maker community through blogs, videos, twitter and so on.  “I'm a good sheep, I am.” (in the voice of My Fair Lady)

Then, a couple of days ago, the proverbial sh*t hit the fan.

My 9yo son who plays with LEGO Mindstorms found out about the MoonBots contest, a Google Lunar XPrize LEGO Mindstorms Challenge.  This an awesome international on-line competition for kids (9 to 17) where you have to simulate a moon mission.  Needless to say that we were bouncing ideas around and, as the vision of the project took shape, a shiver ran up my back.  I went to my computer and checked the small prints...  guess who can't compete? [...] Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Myanmar/Burma, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Syria, Argentina, Quebec, any other U.S. sanctioned country [...]

$^%&#@#$#&^ You're messing with my kids now.  The gloves are off and Nova Scotia looks like a great place to live.  Maybe I'll shop around for houses.

Where is the best place on earth for a family of Geeks and Maker?

NASA != Marketing (rant)

In case you didn't know NASA is still there.  Thanks to our Russian partners we can still go to the Space Station where there was, today, an amazing display of supper high-tech showmanship from NASA.  A man shook a robot hand.

Yes you read it right.  A man (take the time to let it sink in) shook the hand (I know you think I'm going to say man but wait) of a robot.  Wow.

I'm personally a big fan of space exploration and robotic and I think that Robonaut2 will do great things.  It will at least pave the way for this kind of technology. But seriously NASA, can you make anything look cool for the average Joe?  If you can't picture the moment, here the scenario: Without the camera even moving, two guys (astronaut) float behind the Robot (which is not moving) and, after what seams to be a endless speech,  proceed to shake the hand of the robot who, for that special 3 seconds, moved 8 inches (toward the astronaut knee instead of the hand). There's a thing about good presentation: it's called practice.  Or you can you can do it live if what you're doing is so incredibly amazing that fumbling doesn't matter.

How about rock paper scissors? Even better, how about rock paper scissors lizard Spock?  If an Apollo astronaut would have been  at the control of the robot, I bet he would have done something cool.

Oh Internet, help me compile a list of  'The thing that NASA should have done as the first Robot-Human interaction'. Not a joke list but something that's worth showing the kids, something memorable.  And um... let's  try to stay politically correct please. (Comment here or use the hash tag #rb2firstmove on twitter)

I'll compile the list here:

•  Rock paper scissors lizard Spock
•  Thumb War
•  Brake-dancing robot moves and arms wave
• (your idea goes here)

Non-Accountability Platform

Everybody is talking about platforms. Here a platform, there a platform, everywhere a platform. Don't get me wrong, I love platforms but I'm not so sure that accountability is following at the same pace.

I suspect a trend might develop, if it's not already here. Some platform developers can say anything they want about the “supposed” capacities of their platform and the application developers will get the heat of any short comings.

Here's a typical situation that explains the problem: Company A promises a platform that will do X, Y and Z. Developer D starts making product on the evolving platform with features dependant on the eventual existence of X, Y and Z. Company A delivers X on time but delivers Y too late forcing overtime on Developer D, resulting in bad feature integration. Also, in good measure, Company A doesn't even bother delivering Z which is part of a central feature of Developer D's future product. The fun part is that Company A doesn't have to publicly announce its short coming(s) because people will blame the developers for 'not using the platform the right way'. The only point of comparison for the public is the original 'promise' of the platform and, since the BIG company didn't change the specs, it must be the small developer's fault.

For contractual reasons, the developers can't say much in a situation like that, so they bite the bullet secretly dreaming of a magical land where truth and honor means something.

So... dear platform developers, please do these two simple things:

• Don't promise impossible things
• Publicly come clean with the 'real' specs and defend the developers