All,

Here's a recap of last Sunday's TexLUG meeting in
Austin. Our building theme was castle; we also put up a
Great Ball Contraption and held a robotic sumo contest.

The meeting was well-attended, despite the last-minute
change of venue from National Instruments to the Little
Walnut Creek library. Among the regulars were Ed, Kurt,
Laura, Lee, Mark, Pat, and myself. Also attending were
three sets of kids/parents who entered the sumo contest:
Evan Ryker and his mom, Michael Johnston and his dad,
and Joey and Gavin with one of their dads.

Ed and Lee brought in a nifty set of castle MOCs. Ed had
a number of small scenes with some of his as-always cool
customized minifigs. Lee's black castle was also
stunning. (I wish I'd taken more time to admire and
photograph them, but I was swamped with GBC and sumo.)

Kurt brought in his fleet of Texas navy ships. It was
really cool to see them all on display at once; he has
done a fantastic job maintaining style and detail across
his various sailing ships. His cutter is still in
progress; I and others had a couple suggestions for
working out a few details on his railings.

Laura and I showed off a small Great Ball Contraption,
which got a lot of crowd attention. Laura brought in
her scoop lifter module and James Loftus' ball counter.
I had a rather free-form multipart construction, which
Laura eventually managed to work into a loop with the
other two modules. She was justifiably miffed at my
lack of adherence to GBC module standards; next time
I'll make my things fit.

James' ball counter dutifully registered a total of 1465
balls while we ran the loop. The mpg of the GBC is a
little shaky (I used the movie mode on a small digital
camera), but it captures the ball movement nicely.

The sumo contest was well-attended, and got lots of
great reactions from the crowd. There were four
entries, so there were six round-robin matches in all
(two points were awarded for a win, one for a draw):

Y J M SoF Total

Yokozuma (Evan) - 1 0 0 1

JoJo4000 (Joey & Gavin) 1 - 0 1 2

Michael10000000 (Michael) 2 2 - 0 4

Son of Flatliner (Tim) 2 1 2 - 5

Evan's Yokozuma was a low-speed caterpillar tracked bot,
while both JoJo4000 and Michael10000000 also used
caterpillar tracks and ran somewhat faster. My bot was
an unabashed rework of Steve Hassenplug's Flatliner
sumobot which he showed at Brickfest:

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1352550

My enhancement was using rows of teeth (vs. Steve's
flags) as the edge of the wedge surface. I also had to
fit it inside the 30x30 stud dimensions required by the
rules. (I'll post more details shortly.)

The two tie matches were the most fun: Yokozuma held on
for the full 3-minute duration of the match against
JoJo4000, and was pushed off the arena only a few
seconds after time elapsed. Son of Flatliner's match
against JoJo4000 ended quickly when both bots spun off
the edge of the arena simultaneously.

I also gave a brief talk about my Brickfest sumo contest
experience, and demonstrated my super-slow, uber-complex
Remington sumobot.

All in all, a fine meeting, especially considering the
last-minute difficulties in bringing it off. Many
thanks to everyone who helped make it a success.

-Tim

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Brickshelf gallery:

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=149377

Castle MOCs:

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434156
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434157
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434158
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434159
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434160
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434161
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434175
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434176
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434177
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434178

Baty's ships:

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434162
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434163
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434164
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434165
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434166
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434167

GBC:

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434168
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434169
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/trueger/Texlug051009/hpim0210.mpg
(1:04 mpeg movie, 12MB)

Sumo contest:

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434170
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434171
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434172
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434173
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1434174
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1436549
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1436550

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