eric’s extremeboredom

I just got home from Seattle Mind Camp… the event was absolutely awesome. Everyone who attended is already eager to do it again. I met a lot of people, learned a lot, and had a lot of fun.

Here is a list of everything I learned:

* Riding a Segway is a lot of fun.
* OLSR+Windows=disaster.
* Little cars can be very cool.
* All about space elevators and how they are going to change the world.
* Squeak is a strange object-oriented programing environment that uses smalltalk.
* A little bit about Agile/Extreme Programing.
* How to pick a lock (althought I’m not very good yet :).
* Robots are fun to watch.
* What lucid dreaming is.
* Not to be scared of a microphone.
* It is really not that difficult to stay awake > 30 hours.

I gave two small presentations:

* Introduction to Linux/Ubuntu (Managed to get one person to set up a dual boot!)
* Meshwork (Website coming really soon!)
* Mono / Gtk# (Nothing very in depth)

While the engineer that designed the commuter car I mentioned above was trying to drive the car over to the trailer they used to transport it, there was a malfunction with the accelleration causing the car to move forward very fast up a curb, across some grass, and into a chain link fence. Nobody was injurted, the extent of the damage to the car is currently unknown.

Of course lots of photos of the event are on Flickr.

UPDATE: Found this while searching photos of the event on Flickr:

After Mind Camp shut down the commutercars.com team backed the $100,000 prototype car out of the office building lobby. Those of us watching thought we were getting a demonstration of the (rather impressive) acceleration until the car abruptly hit the curb, flew through the air and hit a fence!

Apparently a piece of carpet got jambed under the acceleration pedal causing the accident. This is amazingly rotten luck as the prototype was set to be filmed by the Discovery Channel TOMORROW. Sad.

No one was injured but the car was damaged pretty heavily. Considering the accident I’d say the car came through very well. This is certainly a sturdy vehicle!

Another thing I’d like to add is that when this happened everyone was absolutely blown away by how fast this thing is. Its a very impressive piece of technology that has the potential to change the world… once all the bugs are worked out :).

Categorized as Other, Events, Technology