The Krypton Cougars arrived at their second competition with only one obstacle standing between them and total domination: themselves. The new pickup system (also known as the old shooter) had been designed without measuring if a ball sitting on the floor would touch the intake wheels. Testing revealed that the new metal base-plate would hit the ball first, knocking the ball away repeatedly. After much deliberation, and a sometimes contentious discussion about what shape the cut should be, the team decided to cut off an inch from the front.

With their robot now even more unstoppable than before, they had it weighed and inspected. Once their radio was configured to be plugged into the field, they got in line for their first practice match. Finally they reached the front of the line, eager to test their new design. "Sorry guys, that's all the matches we have time for tonight."

Undeterred, they returned the next morning and stood in line again. When they finally played their long-awaited match, the new arms performed as anticipated, getting hit early in the match, bending the shooter and causing significant damage to the robot. Back in the pits, the team decided that making the same mistake a second time wasn't quite enough. They removed the angled intake bars from the aluminum arms, leaving only two short tusks in front. Since each tusk was one-inch-square, the pickup mechanism's width was now approximately the same as the ball, making collecting a ball from the field nearly impossible. The team saw that their pickup design was good and took the robot to the practice field to see how great their shooter was.

The team stood, waiting by the field as team after team tested their robots. "Where are we on the list?"

"List?"

"Yeah, the list where you sign up for a time slot to test your robot. You did sign up for that?"

"Oh." The team reserved for a time slot and eventually tested their shooter. They scored two high goals, out of dozens of attempts, and their joy was beyond containing as they shouted for joy while the other teams stood silently for the national anthem.

Practice time was over and the main event began. In their first match, the Krypton Cougars got off to a great start, easily clearing the defense in front of them, and slamming full-speed into their opponent's wall, an effective, if unplanned, intimidation technique. Delighted, the team scurried into line for their second match.

The second match was equally successful, with another intimidating autonomous, until a head-on collision with an opposing robot sheered through two aluminum brackets like they were tissue paper, leaving the shooter hanging by its wires. Without enough time to fix the brackets before their next match, the team used bungee cords to strap the shooter to the robot and went back on the field. Unfortunately, they neglected to strap down the duct-taped-on limit switch, and left it laying on the field like a deceased orange long-tailed rat.

Their next match wasn't until after lunch. They worked feverishly to make new brackets (They hadn't brought replacement parts). Far too quickly lunch was over, and matches resumed. Their match approached and the team continued reattaching the parts they had disconnected. The match before theirs began, and the team still hadn't finished. Duct tape and zip ties flew as the team strapped down every loose piece they could find. It was time for their match to start, and the team deployed code to the robot as it rolled towards the field.

When officials finally made them stop working on the robot, it drove well and the shooter worked, mostly. After the match, the team found that the limit switch had come unsoldered again. They re-soldered it, but then the arm would only move down, until it reached the bottom switch, at which point it wouldn't move at all. The team checked the top limit switch, but it wasn't closed. Figuring it had short-circuited, they removed it entirely, but the arm still didn't move. Closer inspection revealed solder between the solder pads, creating a tiny short-circuit. The team melted the solder off the pads, but didn't have time to attach the …

"Let's check the robot's camera feed."

Click. The robot blinks to life. Eric waits at the programming laptop for the wireless connection.

"Hey, this motor isn't plugged in."

Click. The robot goes dark. Thirty seconds pass.

"How are we supposed to check the camera without power?"

"Oh yeah. Eric, we turned off the robot."

"It's ridiculous how we have to relearn the same lessons every year. We should write down what went wrong and go over it at the beginning of next season."

"Connor, we did that this season, and look what happened."

"Oh yeah. But, like, the arm outside of the robot. Every year we have one and every year it gets broken. We even made this year's arm from quarter-inch steel, and it still got destroyed. We shouldn't be extending outside of the bumpers."

Twenty feet away, Tory and Gavin work feverishly to attach new aluminum arms to extend outside the bumpers.

"Gavin did a terrible job taping these wires. I can do better."

Connor grabs the scissors and cuts through the delicate encoder wires taped inside.

"Henry, that motor is already attached."

"What?" Henry asks, tugging it from the robot and snapping the data cable.

When we bought our house there was a rose bush in the front yard. I'll call it was a bush, because I hear that's what roses come from, but it resembled a tree. It had a single stem that was about eleven feet high. It gave us a few of roses the first summer, and also scratched me every time I tried to mow near it.

I talked to other people about pruning it back, and they all agreed that was an excellent idea. It would help the plant produce more roses, instead of wasting so much energy on maintaining a ridiculously long stem. I was no gardener, so I was a bit reluctant to do the work myself, but I was a homeowner now and everyone told me "There's no way to over-trim a rose. They're very hardy plants." So, during the winter, I cut the stems to what I felt was a more reasonable length.

The plant hasn't produced a rose in three years.

I've heard a theory that parents can learn sign language. In fact, that it's easier for them than spoken words. Seeing as I've had almost no luck teaching them to speak or understand proper words, I decided to give it a shot.

The trickiest part, so far, has been deciding what signs to teach them. I need to cover all the important concepts, but the parents aren't smart enough to handle many new things at once. I decided to start with a few simple signs that even a parent should comprehend.

One concept the parents have trouble with is knowing when I'm summoning them. To address this deficiency I created a simple gesture where I extend one hand and turn it so the palm is upward. I've been combining this with words as well, in the hopes they'll get the connection, and also because sometimes they aren't looking at me, if you can imagine such a thing. If they do not respond immediately, I open and close my fingers to indicate urgency.

Once they have been summoned, I need to convey additional information. For example, if they are to pick me up, I will extend both hands upwards. They're a bit slow on this one, so I am often forced to grab their hands and pull before they get the message. Still, I think they're making progress.

If I require food, I make an opening and closing motion with my mouth. Conveniently enough, this makes a popping noise which can be useful for getting the parents' attention, though it occasionally inspires them to mimic the sign. It can be hard to get them focused again after that.

If I want a toy that is out of my reach, I make a sign by extending my hand towards it and making a gripping motion. The parents are still a bit slow on this, and I am often reduced to getting the toy for myself. Even when they do notice the sign, they have a bad habit of retrieving the wrong toy. I have created a sign for this as well, where I place the toy in my hand and then wave my arm back and forth rapidly, releasing the toy at some point. Then I have to start from the beginning.

The final sign I've been trying to teach the parents is when I wish to be placed in my crib. At first I tried placing the back of my hand to my eyelids, but I think that was too subtle for them. Recently I've taken to adding an additional sign that they cannot ignore. I will extend both arms to the side and wave them rapidly all around. Time will tell if that's still too subtle.

Have any of you babies out there tried sign-language with your parents? What signs did you use, and how successful were your parents at picking them up?

The Krypton Cougars utilized a bold new strategy for this year's robotics competition, and arrived at the arena with a machine that was neither mechanically complete nor programmed. I wasn't in the arena the first evening and morning, with its flurry of activity, but I was kept in the loop via text message. The first problem brought to my attention was an old friend from previous seasons. Once our robot's radio was configured for use with the field, we could no longer connect to the robot from our laptops.

This doesn't seem to impact other teams. Perhaps they prepare their computer properly ahead of time, or maybe most teams just don't do much programming after their robot is configured to go on the field. It stood directly in the way of the Krypton Cougars's bold plan, however. In a stroke of brilliance, the team mounted a second radio on the robot, one for the field and another set up like we had at home. They stacked them, to make reading the signal lights as difficult as possible. Before each match, they would unplug one radio and plug in the other. After each match, they reversed the process. I'd like to say this arrangement didn't cause them any problems, but that would be very misleading.

Having solved their radio difficulties, they were free to complete their robot. While driving toward Philadelphia the morning of the competition, I received a text message informing me that the arm on the front of the robot could move up, but never down. After walking the programmers through common troubleshooting steps, I asked them to describe the blink pattern on the affected motor controller. They reported that when the arm wasn't moving it showed red lights, blinking in sequence: A limit switch was being triggered.

When the robot was designed, I hoped there would be limit switches at the top and bottom limits of the arms, both to avoid the arms moving beyond their expected range and to allow us to recalibrate the position periodically. The team had wired limit switches to the motor controllers, but attaching them to the robot had been left for some future date that never materialized. Instead, the limit switches were bundled up and dropped into the interior of the robot. The solder on one limit switch had been poorly applied, and the wires disconnected. Rather than fix the switch, the team tossed the loose wires in with the rest. Deep inside the belly of the robot, these wires had managed to cross, creating a short-circuit that was being read as a closed limit switch. Once these wires were separated, the arm moved downward with ease.

Kelly and I arrived at the high school shortly after noon. The parking lot was crowded, but we eventually found a space far from the school, where we unloaded our lifetime supply of baby gear and braved the bitter cold. Once Kelly and Miranda were safely in the arena, I headed for the pits.

By this time we had already had our first match, where our robot had put on a notable performance by spinning counterclockwise for the entire length of the match. While this had provided the spectators with much needed amusement, our team felt it was not a viable long-term strategy. There are many reasons why a robot might drive in a circle, but to continue doing so without input is rather unusual. We hypothesized it was caused by a sensor on the drive base not returning the correct speed. Rather than investigate the nature of the failure and correct it, we opted to turn off the sensors on the wheels and hope for the best.

This strategy was immediately successful. Without its sensors the robot drove in a straight line. Since the robot no longer knew its own speed, it went full force at all times, much like the students driving it. In fact, they were so excited by their new-found driving capabilities that they forgot the rules of the game and racked up twenty-five penalty points in their next match.

Up to this point in the competition, the robot's arms had been restrained with bungee cords until they could be tested …

Showbread recently released their final album, and with it, an experimental movie based on their previous album, Cancer. As expected, the movie is a bit of a head-scratcher. It takes a few viewings to pick up on what is going on (I still don't understand a lot of it, but I think that's the idea), and I imagine it would be even more confusing for those who don't already know the music.

Additionally, the movie's core characters make up a punk rock band that frequently screams their lyrics in unintelligible fervor, which makes things even less approachable for "outsiders". In the hope that I could show this movie to friends without having them miss the lyrics, I took some time to subtitle the movie. I'd like to make these captions available for others who are also interested in showing Cancer to the uninitiated.

I used FFmpeg to add the subtitle file to the movie. It is available for Mac, Linux, and Windows, though I only know that my instructions work on Linux. If you need to change something on another platforms, leave a comment about it and I'll update my instructions accordingly.

1. Download the caption file to the same directory as Cancer.

2. Go to that directory in your command line (terminal)

3. Run the following command:

   ffmpeg -i Cancer.mp4 -f srt -i Cancer.srt -codec copy -c:s mov_text Cancer-subbed.mp4
   

   (If your files have different names, make sure to update the command appropriately.)

4. When watching Cancer in your favorite media player, turn on captions.

And that's all there is. I hope this helps someone. Enjoy.

I went to a party today with the parents. Normally the only place we go during the day is the store, so it was a nice change of pace. Mommy and Daddy dressed up in funny clothes. Daddy tied a big tag around his neck for me to pull. I think he should wear it more often. They put funny clothes on me too. I guess we're bonding.

I'm glad that the parents are socializing, but I have to admit I didn't really see the appeal. The music was boring, and everyone just stood around talking. In fact, it was so dull that one lady had fallen asleep in her crib. She was a really good sleeper. People kept going up and talking to her, but she never stirred. It's a good thing, too. Her crib was tiny. I don't know how she can roll around in it, but it was very nice. Much nicer than my crib, now that I think about it. I'll have to talk to the parents about correcting that.

I have a circular toy bench. It has toys that light up and make noises, and toys I can bop and pull. Conveniently, there is a seat right in the center so I can reach all the toys. It's a great place to go when I need to get away from the parents for a while.

Unfortunately, Daddy can't keep his hands off my toys. He's always moving them around. If I pull the blocks off my alligator and throw them over the side, he puts them back. I've explained that he's covering up the pretty buttons, but he doesn't listen.

If I push the parrot around so it's standing on its head, Daddy will spin it back. If I knock the monkeys off the top of the arch, Daddy will push them back up. I feel like I spend half my time just undoing his behavior. I really need to have a conversation with him about personal property.

Have you ever gone outside the city gate and looked down on Ben Hinnom? Have you seen all the waste from the city that is thrown there? It is a noxious place, filled with worms and vermin. Fires rage though the trash heaps, and the smell of its burning and rot turn the stomach. Have you seen there, in the valley, the high places of Topheth, where the pagans sneak off to sacrifice their own family members to secure worldly advantage?

I haven't seen certain members of your family recently. I thought perhaps they were busy elsewhere, or maybe they had decided to leave the city, but now I have seen their corpses rotting in Topheth, and I can no longer deny the reality. You have followed after the pagans, and I can go no further with you.

I would prefer to stay in the familiarity of the city with you. I have thoughts of turning you back from destruction, but I have been warned against this day. Already I see the abomination that causes desolation standing in the temple, and I must take my family and flee to the mountains, stopping to take nothing. I do not leave you in anger, but with the deepest turmoil in my heart. I can see that the siege engines are not far off.

I will pray that the siege does not last long, and that you are not reduced to eating the flesh of your brothers and sisters, but I fear that my prayers will not be enough. I know you will fight to hold your place, no matter how far you must debase yourself. I also know that eventually your walls will be breached, and enemy soldiers will dump your body into Ben Hinnom with the rest. I regret that it has come to this. I will miss you.

When working with parents, it's always a struggle to avoid getting too far ahead of their developmental level. I have to hold myself back and realize that they're not going to catch onto concepts as quickly as I'd like. I must confess, sometimes it's really hard to be patient with them, but, honestly, I think I do better than most babies would if they had to put up with these parents.

For example, at floor level in the tall room are shelves of toys and brightly colored boxes. It's obvious to anyone that I'm supposed to play with them. Yet when Mommy or Daddy take me there, they always put me far away from the boxes. If I decide to go to them on my own, without inconveniencing the parents in any way, they'll chase me down and drag me away from them, even though I've made it quite clear that I want to stay there. I swear, sometimes it seems like they're deliberately obstructing my goals. Yet instead of punishing them, as I'd like, I just wait until they've left and then return to the boxes. Maybe, with time and training, they'll catch on. A baby can hope.