Dead Robot Society Blog

Score: 176, Victory

Still in it. It was a good match, we simply got to Botguy much faster and placed him on the line. If the other team had gotten to the island first it might not have been the same outcome. As the weaker teams continue to get eliminated, our opponents get harder and harder to defeat. We’re constantly working on our hardware and software throughout the day. We try to make minor adjustments that will make major positive changes for our robots.

Having one loss already, it’s really important for us to stay strong during these rounds of competition. In order to get to the final round we have to win the entire losers bracket. Plus, after we hypothetically win the losers bracket, we would have to beat the winner of the regular bracket twice in order to take home first place. Not exactly an easy task. This was our last round today. Fingers crossed tomorrow will be successful.

Score: 143, Loss

We were so close. TJ only beat us by twelve points. It was an extremely tough loss, not gonna lie. We knew TJ would be difficult to beat. On a side note, TJ made changes to their robots and strategies from Regionals that look strangely familiar. At a glance  you might think their bots are just our clone bots… Also, I’d just like to mention that this is our first loss this season, Regionals included, just saying. It sucks big time to have one loss this early in the competition, but I have a feeling won’t have such trying competition for at least some time. Plus Rick Astley  (in the form of Benjin) promised he was never gonna give us up and never gonna let us down. Take what you will from that. Let’s go round four.

Score: 219, Victory

We may or may not have owned the other team. You can tell from our score that both of our robots worked perfectly. Thank goodness create is fully functional again. It has given us quite a few scares. Our bots are very good, but this match we didn’t have the toughest competition. The other team only ran one robot, and it fell over. We can only hope that we continue to hold up as our opponents get more and more challenging. Speaking of next round, I hear we’re playing a team from TJ, one of our rivals and hardest competitors. I’ve been told they are consistently doing very well so we’re all a bit nervous for next round. We’ll see what happens.

Score: 127, Victory

Let me just tell you, Botguy was as close to the line as he could possibly be without actually touching the line. Curses. Oh well, a win is a win. We also somehow managed to not get all seven ducks on the line and not drop any sponges on oil slicks. We still scored over a hundred though. Win? I think so.

We were actually competing against the team we share a table with. Even though we were competitors, we wished the best for them and they were happy for us when we won. It could be because this is a double elimination tournament so we didn’t knock them out, but I like to think it’s because we’re good sports. Either way, it was a great start.

…and the pain of making them.

Yes I’ve been making a movie on behalf of the Dead Robot Society. I call it a movie but I suppose it’s really more like a music video of sorts. Basically what I’m doing is recording my teammates dancing, singing, and being generally entertaining to the song “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas. It’s quite an experience. Let me just tell you a little bit about what making the movie entails.

The first thing I wanted to see in the video was my teammates mouthing a couple of the lyrics in the song. Apparently it was harder than it looked because it took on average about four tries for anyone on the team, mentors included, to get the timing right. The outtakes are for more amusing than the actual clips I used for the video, which are pretty amusing. A lot of the video is us saying the words to the song. I’m sure my companions got sick of me sticking a camera in their face, but Mr. Gras insisted so there wasn’t much I could do about it.

The boys in the middle of filming.

Another thing we did was act out the words of the song. When I say we acted out the words, what I actually mean is we made Kelly act out some of the words. Her parts were my favorite parts of the movie. Pay close attention to the girl with the curly brown hair in the school uniform when you watch the video. Sometimes the acting we did wasn’t limited to the words of the song though. Like Miss Allison for example, merely acted bored for many chunks of the video. (We’ve yet to determine if she was actually acting.) There were some other parts we acted as well, but I can’t give everything away now can I?

Besides acting things out, there was also quite a bit of random dancing. A lot of that was again provided by Allison, although she had help from Mary and some of the other team members. Random dancing was a crucial part of our video. Without it, I might not have been able to have enough footage to complete the movie.

In addition to our own personal embarrasing moments, there are many failures from our robots incorperated into the film. Most of them are duck grabbing fails, but if memory serves I believe there are a few other fails as well. There are alos juggling fails, but that wasn’t a robot, that was Steven.

The movie was really fun and really challenging to make. Watching the clips of everyone regardless of whether they failed or succeeded was highly enjoyable. Making the movie was also a lot of work. First of all, I had a deadline for the first time. I was used to watching my teammates race against the clock, but I was always able to do my job at a leisurely pace. In contrast, with regards to the movie, Mr. Gras wanted it finished by regionals so I had to work quickly. Secondly, and more importantly, I had to listen to that song. I didn’t even like the song in the first place. Plus it’s not like I got to just listen to it on repeat. I had to keep rewinding and listening to three second clips over and over again. It was terrible. However, whenever I watch the finished product, someone thanks me for doing it, or someone comments on how much they enjoyed it, I realize it was all worth it.

(Pssst, here’s the link:) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko3CpFJ0unw