Please Excuse the Dust
Thursday, October 12th, 2006
Good news! We’re growing! Bad news. We’re growing. Okay, well, it’s not entirely bad news. It just means we might be a little rough around the edges while I move nxtasy.org to bigger servers in the next few days to handle the increased traffic. That said, please excuse the dust. =)
I’m also taking this time to enhance a few areas on our site. Some will be major like upgrading the engines behind our blog and forums. Others will be minor and might go unnoticed like the nice link directory that I’ve restructured on our sidebar.
Did you enjoy the first NXTasy Challenge? I understand the competition is pretty tough, but no worries, there’s still plenty of time left. Guy has some great ideas for a new challenge in the very near future. This time, the focus will be on programming. We’ll put our heads together to come up with cool prizes.
Again, we welcome Dave Astolfo to our contribution team. He and I hit it off really well at BrickFest and I can’t wait to see what he has in store for all of us. Word is that it’s REALLY awesome. We’re always looking for helping hands, so don’t hesitate to shoot an email our way.
Overall, I think we’ll be able to bring you even better content in the future, so stay tuned! Thanks again for all the support!
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Mind-Altering Software
Thursday, October 12th, 2006
LiveScience has posted an article on the LEGO Mindstorms NXT and its upcoming LabVIEW Toolkit. Enjoy.
[via LUGNET]
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Buzz Words: Technology Convergence
Thursday, October 12th, 2006
Last month, Microsoft held its inaugural Global High Tech Summit where leaders in high-tech manufacturing met to discuss the future of their industry. Key topics included communication, collaboration, innovation, and convergence.
In high tech, competition is ferocious, the rules of the game change overnight, and the rate of change is accelerating due to new markets, customers, products and technology.
- Microsoft
Phil Hester, AMD’s corporate vice-president and chief technology officer, centered on this idea of technology convergence. He emphasized that the future technological frontier for exploration is the space between your cell phone and laptop computer.
Everything is essentially becoming a network device.
- Phil Hester, AMD
Hester believes that the focus should not only be on the progression and improvement of technology that already exists, but also the progression and improvement on the mechanisms to package and deliver that technology. He considers the new LEGO Mindstorms NXT as one of the prime examples of technology convergence today.
[via Cadalyst]
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Educational Building Instructions Online!
Thursday, October 12th, 2006
Thanks to pemiamos we found that the LEGO education site has now PDF files with building instructions. The list includes Alpha Rex, RoboArm, Spike and Tribot, as well as educational version modules including lamp module and others. Go here to get them!
Posted in news, knowledge | 1 Comment »
Next Bytes Code 1.0.1 b10 Available
Thursday, October 12th, 2006
John Hansen has released an updated NBC beta.
This beta release implements multi-dimensional array support. It has additional macros in NXTDefs.h for motor and sensor control. It moves all forms of optimization under the control of a command-line switch (-Z, -Z1, or -Z2). The optimizations that were always executed in beta 8 are now only executed if you set the optimization level to at least level 1. -Z and -Z2 both set the optimization level to 2. Level 2 optimizations replace several different patterns of code with simplified equivalents.
NBC now has special tokens that can be used in macros or elsewhere for useful purposes. The tokens are __FILE__, __LINE__, __VER__, __THREADNAME__, __I__, __J__, __ResetI__, __ResetJ__, __IncI__, __IncJ__, __DecI__, and __DecJ__. The compiler will also replace ## wherever it exists in the sourcecode with nothing (even within strings). These tokens make it possible to define preprocessor macros which can be used repeatedly in the same thread or in multiple concurrent threads without causing threading problems or producing duplicate label names. The values of __I__ and __J__ are automatically reset to zero at the start of each new thread or subroutine.
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NXTasy.org Welcomes Dave Astolfo!
Thursday, October 12th, 2006
NXTasy.org proudly welcomes MDP member Dave Astolfo to our contribution team! With great builds like DominoBotNXT and TiltBot (shown), Dave is excited to share more of his robots and many wonderful tips and tricks with our readers.
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