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MindRover

Posted by Doug Mon, 20 Feb 2006 18:02:38 GMT

My son Joshua is eight. He loves video games, loves robots, and loves video games about robots. As a full-fledged computer geek, I really want him to enjoy computers as much as I do. I want him to be able to work creatively on a computer and enjoy it. In this quest I bought him a new game this weekend.

We were at Micro Center this weekend returning my bum mouse. As usual, we spent the requisite 15 minutes in the “Mac Games” section. He really wants RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, but it’s $50. I stumbled across MindRover that had been marked down to $9. I figured this was perfect.

The setting for this game is that you’re a researcher doing work in Europa, a moon of Jupiter. Since you can’t go there yourself, you design robots with AI to go complete missions. It’s a thinking game. Josh is totally excited about this game. You select missions, select a robotic vehicle chassis, put various components on the chassis, and then wire them up. I’ve done my best to set his expectations for this game. It really is a lot like programming. You have to program sensors to the thrusters so that the robot will either move towards or away from other objects. There are lots of other events that can be wired to various components to control behavior. It looks extremely well done. As such, it’s quite complicated.

I just spent my lunch hour with Josh just going through the “basics” tutorial. I had to explain things like “sensor”, “radar”, “angles”, “thrust”, “friction”, “resistance”, and even right-clicking the mouse! It’s not that Josh can’t understand these things. I have full confidence he can. It’s just that he’s never been exposed to this level of detail in mechanical and electrical design. The reading level for the user’s guide is probably 6th grade; maybe higher.

So, I’ve set myself up. This really is a great game for Josh. He’s all the time thinking about robots and how to build them. This gives him an idea of the complexity for robots and the types of things you have to do without letting him get bogged down in actually working with how a sonar actually works. On the other hand, the game really is too advanced for him at his current level. I’ve been putting off the Lego MindStorms because I’m not sure he’s quite ready for those either. The good news is that with this game I’m only out $9 for him to learn. With the Legos it’d be a lot more.

The moral of the story is that I really want Josh to be able to play this game successfully. He really wants to play this game successfully. Odds are though I’ll have to play the game with him each time he play for the first while. If I don’t I’m sure he’s going to get frustrated and not play. There’s really no way for him to learn this game on his own.

So it’s all up to me. His success with this game is 100% related to how much time I spend teaching it to him. That’s a lot of pressure on me. It’s certainly good for me to have some pre-structured one on one time with Josh. The bad news is that if I don’t do it for whatever reason he’s going to be pretty disappointed with me. Here’s praying I don’t drop the ball.

Posted in Josh, Family, Software | Tags Lego, MindStorm, parenting, puppy, Quicksilver | 1 comment

Quicksilver Hotness

Posted by Doug Mon, 13 Feb 2006 13:30:50 GMT

I am totally dependent on Quicksilver. For the uninitiated, QS claims to be “a unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.”

It’s hard to describe the QS jive. Using a single hot key combination, you can easily access nearly all of the data on your system without actually taking a context switch hit. That’s really the goal: a minimal amount of key strokes to access your data without having to leave the application you’re already in.

Before I forget, Quicksilver is free software.

Here’s a good example of hotness that really turned me on this morning. Imagine this scenario: you’re reading some web site forum/user comments/whatever. One of the comments has a url you think you’d like to visit but the site hasn’t automatically converted the url into a link. It’s just text. How do you handle that? Here’s some options:

• This is the “old way”:
  • Highlight text with mouse,
  • Command-C to copy the url,
  • (assuming you’re in a decent browser) Command-T to open a new tab,
  • Command-v to paste the url,
  • Return to actually load the url

• The “Mac OS X” way:
  • Highlight the text with mouse,
  • Choose “Services” under the application menu
  • Choose “Open URL in Camino” (or Chift-Command-U if you have a good memory)

• The Quicksilver way:
  • Highlight the text with the mouse,
  • Command-Escape is the key combination to open QS with the selection
  • Hit return. QS is smart enough to recognize that the selected text is a URL and the logical action to take on a URL is to open it.

Why is the QS way better than using the Services menu? Both take a nominal three steps. The advantage of QS is that it uses a common hot key with everything. So you’re already in the habit of using Command-Escape to act on selections. You don’t have to train your fingers for one more key combination. You don’t have to remember the Services menu has different options for “Open URL” or “Open URL in Camino”. There are lots and lots of ways to use Quicksilver to simplify common tasks. This one just made me happy enough I thought I should write about it.

Posted in Software, Mac OS X | Tags Quicksilver | 7 comments

Camino 1.0 beta 1 is out!

Posted by Doug Wed, 09 Nov 2005 14:13:00 GMT

I’d like to give props to the Camino Browser Community for releasing Camino 1.0 beta 1. I’ve been a Camino user since the early 0.8 days. I prefer it for several reasons. Overall, it feels more like a Mac app than Firefox does. I think Camino’s tabs are much nicer. Also, keyboard navigation is nicer in Camino than even Safari. Give it a try!

We’ve just released Camino 1.0 beta 1.

This is by far the finest Camino release ever. It’s so great, we’re calling it our stable release and replacing the download link on the main page with it.

Check out the release notes for more information on what’s changed.

Posted in Software, Internet, Mac OS X | Tags Camino | no comments