Chop Shop

Chop Shop

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Thank you to Ekocycle for our awesome new printer! It's so amazing to watch, and I can't wait to see what we can make with it. 




I told you the animation team was skilled! Look at what they've been working on! Thanks to Katherine for the video!


A small but hardworking subteam... Endless creativity and skill.... they are a group of teenagers, sitting in a corner full of computers prone to crashing.... They are the animation team!




Okay, so they are a little crazy... but very skilled and very awesome!

Friday, January 30, 2015

Last year's UNH District Champions and a backup team for Einstein, this week we are showcasing Windham Windup, team 3467! Windham is a fairly new team which has shown great success in the past few years. I know I can't wait to see what their robot will look like this year!


Visit Windham Windup's website here: http://www.team3467.org/

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Is it Thursday? Feels like Monday. Probably because we had two days off in the middle of the week!

Here's a sampling of the yearbooks we have had through the years, including one from when we were sister teams with Nashua, and so one half of the yearbook was Nashua's, and the other side was ours!




We've been gone for a little while, on account of school being closed for all the snow! But now the roads are clear, the school is open, and we are all back to work on the robot and animation! 

To make up for the lack of posts the past few days, I'll be doing some little extras for the next couple of days. Stay tuned!


Sunday, January 25, 2015

Snow. Snow happened.

Friday, January 23, 2015

The roughest, rowdiest, and most resilient team in all of New Hampshire..... this week is team 151 the Tough Techs!


The Tough Techs are one of the oldest teams in the area. When we worked at BAE, they worked alongside us, and we remain in close contact to them! This year team 151 have faced some challenges, but true to their name they are confronting those challenges with all their strength! 
To find out more about the Tough Techs, visit their website at http://s13.nashua151.org/

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Throwback to the highlight of last year's competition.... Mr. Bouressa's Fairy Dance of Victory!




Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Last week we went far into the past to the very first programmer, Ada Lovelace, but this week will be a bit more modern, with a current day app developer who made Hopscotch, an app that teaches kids how to code. Samantha John is only 28 years old, and she is already the co-founder of Hopscotch, Chief Technological Officer, and her app was featured at Apple's World Wide Developer Conference. Hopscotch has the ability to make games, animations, and art in an easy, user friendly way!
To learn more about Hopscotch, go here http://www.gethopscotch.com/
To follow Samantha's Twitter go here https://twitter.com/samj0hn

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

It's my favorite day of the week! The day I get to pull out my macro lens and take photos of the parts we have around the shop. This week there was an encoder ring, and an open transmission hanging around. the encoder ring has lovely small details, and the color in the transmission is beautifully deep. Technology has such a beautiful aesthetic! 




Monday, January 19, 2015

We've begun making robot parts on the mill, so for Machine Monday Reed, James, and Jake showed me what it does! It's pretty cool. It works like a drill press, which makes holes, but the mill is stable enough that it can also make slots by moving the piece slowly underneath the drill bit. Although it looks like a death machine, it's also pretty cool!





Sunday, January 18, 2015

We are all still adorable!!

Saturday, January 17, 2015

This week we are showcasing our Software Team for Subteam Saturday! Already they are working hard to program our robot. Thank you for your dedication, Software!
The results are in for the Keurig poll! Coffee and Hot Chocolate won with 4 votes each, followed up by Apple Cider with 3 votes, and then Tea with just 1 vote. Thanks to everyone who voted, and keep a look out for our next poll!

Friday, January 16, 2015

Yesterday we had a very busy night, starting with a Parent Booster Group meeting to begin planning our Week Zero Event, which will be happening at Merrimack High School on February 14th. Thank you to all parents who attended and volunteered your time and help, your efforts truly make events like Week Zero possible!

After the meeting we invited parents to join the mentors and all team members for our design review, where the design team presented our prototypes and their plans so far. The design team did a fantastic job presenting their plans! 

These are a few of our prototypes for picking up the recycling bins and totes being demonstrated by Conner and Cam.



Cam did a great job explaining our game strategy for the season.....
.....and also demonstrating some functions of the robot!







It's time to feature another FRC team from the area. This week is a team who burns brighter than anyone else; in fiery orange, it's team 2342, Phoenix Robotics! This season we had the joy of working with team Phoenix to run an FLL Competition at our Merrimack High School. Phoenix's fantastic hand-made trophies and their willingness to help with any task proved that they are second to none. Thank you team Phoenix!

To find more information on Team Phoenix, visit their website here!
http://www.team2342.org/

So due to homework and design review shenanigans, Throwback Thursday did not happen yesterday. So today we are throwing back to Throwback Thursday! I found some familiar faces in the 2007 yearbook. That sure is a lot of hair, Dan!
 

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Today is the day to appreciate the wonderful women in technology! Today we are going back to the  beginning, to the woman who is considered the very first computer programmer, Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace.
Ada was the daughter of Poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabelle Milbanke. Her mother had Ada tutored in mathematics and music, to counter the "dangerous poetic tendencies" of her father. She quickly became enraptured with mathematics and logic. Her long time friend, Charles Babbage, had invented two elaborate calculating machines, the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine. She was tasked with translating a French memoir on the Analytical Machine, and the notes and appendages she added to the memoir are what led to her fame. She recognized the machine as what we now know as a computer, and even predicted that it would someday be used to generate music! Her notes contained the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine, and had the Analytical Machine ever been built, the algorithm would have worked. So let's all celebrate Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace, the first computer programmer! 


Tuesday, January 13, 2015