New Plymouth Wedding

This weekend I was in New Plymouth at the bottom-ish west of the North Island. My friends Nick and Conna were getting married! The weather was hot hot hot, and the venue absoloutely gorgeous!

Okurukuru Vinyard is just outside of New Plymouth and overlooks the Tasman Sea. The building, vines and grounds were picture perfect for such a special day.

Standing on the balcony of Okurukuru looking out over the ocean,
and down on to the wedding spot.

The wedding was scheduled to take place at five o'clock and Nick and Conna had the rare treat of spending almost the whole day together as they gadded about the countryside having their photos taken. As time rolled slowly by, and the waiting guests realised five of the clock had been and gone many minutes ago, from out of nowhere a helicopter, thundered into view and spun about above us. To the sound of the soundtrack to Mission Impossible, the groom and his men came out of the chopper and down to the guests. There they mingled and chatted as the helicopter left to pick up the girls.

They too made a grand entrance, though we weren't allowed to see them exiting the chopper, we watched from below as they made their way along the balcony above and behind us, then round the end of the building and down the stairs. At the bottom Nick moved forward and shook Conna's father's hand, kissed her mother, and collected his bride-to-be. Conna was radiant.
Nick collects Conna from her parents

Together the couple moved to the centre spot where they said beautiful vows and celebrated with some very lovely poetry recited on their behalf. Then the young children were encouraged to come forward and between the couple and the younglings, butterflies were released to float away with wishes and prayers. It was very beautiful and I am sorry I couldn't manage to capture it on film.

Inside the venue for speeches and dinner was unfortunately very hot. I was unfortunately unaccompanied (someone couldn't make it...) so Conna and one of her bridesmaids (another good friend of mine, Megsie) planted me at the end of the table with two larikins - Andrew and Andrew. We weren't sure if they were there to entertain me, or I was there to keep them in check! But they were certainly great entertainment, and Conna's brother Andrew practiced some very gentlemanly charm!

Too bad about the sun!
The picture behind the high table was absolutely gogeous,
The four hangings around it showed quotes for
Love, Wisdom, Peace and Happiness

Later on in the evening we drifted outside for some fresh air, as it was quite stuffy inside!

Bridesmaid Megsie in black at the back, next to her husband and the best man, Rowan.
Conna sits at the table next to Megsie, and you can see the back of Nick's head across from her.
Surrounded by friends.

The first dance was lovely, and it was compulsory for all guests to join in! Nick and Conna looked wonderful and wonderfully happy as they moved together as though they had been dancing all their lives. Not bad for one-and-a-half lessons!!! Later on in the night, after the sun had gone down;

We were encouraged to gather out on the balcony for a surprise. What was it? Fireworks! Certainly a sparkling event for a sparkling day. We returned inside for more dancing, more wedding cake (chocolate), more wine or coffee as the mood took us :-)

As a rugby playing, beer drinking woman (who scrubbed up into a very stunning picture) Conna had a little difficulty with the throwing of the bouquet. In fact, she was so excited by the concept she threw it over and above us single chicks, and it landed at the feet of the flowergirl who was allowed to keep it. My parents will be most upset to hear she might get married before me!!!

It was a wonderful night, and the bbq the next day was also wonderful, though a lot more relaxed. I managed to sleep most of the 5 hour journey home.

Weekend Dive Trip (Scenery Shots)

Looking further East from the boat

Paning to my left, the boys are diving amongst the rocks at the front,
and the hill in the middle is a little island


Looking back to the bay we came from
Fletcher Bay is over the small green hill in the mid-ground

You can see the rocks underwater behind Sarge's head,
And the sand at the bottom just to the left of him

It was a crowded bay...

Weekend Dive Trip (DAY TWO)

Sunday dawned even sunnier than the preceeding day and the ocean was calm and still. We spent a lazy morning waiting for the tide and headed over the hill for a second time around ten thirty, eleven o'clock.
This time the tide was about to finish coming in and I could only see the top of the rocks we had been clambering over on Saturday. The boys dragged the tinny off the top of the ute and dragged it down to the water, yelping as they did so over the burning heat of the sand. I had decided that since Sarge had been so good as to babysit me the day before I wouldn't go for the second dive, leaving him to play about in the water as he chose. Thus being free I took some photos as they kitted up.

We motored out around the rocks we had used on Saturday and continued towards another set in deeper water. Shaz remained on solid land to go for a walk and collect interesting objects. Mostly rocks I think. (Intersting ones. Mum can testify I am telling the truth when I say I am not being sarcastic about that at all!)

Once the boys thought they had reached their favourite spot we dropped anchor and they got their gears on before dropping below the water. The sea was so clear, that even with several meters of depth we could easily see the bottom, it was so beautiful. I tried to take a picture of it, but although you could see the outlines of the rocks even in the photo, the sun glare was a little too much. Instead I spent my time lying in the boat listening to music, lying in the boat listening to the sea and birds, and looking about and taking photos. I saw an oyster catcher, which is new for me as we only have the pied variety at home, and there was a shag who was determined to pose when the camera was off and look away when I was ready to take his photo. Bearing in mind I was in a rocking boat, here are the pictures of them;

After about 40 minutes the boys came back, and boy did they have a catch!
Tommy displays the mother of all crays.
Except it was a boy, but boy was he a big one!

Sarge has no idea Tommy is about to put a cray on his head.



Proof that we put the little ones back.
This wee guy went back in the water before Sarge (who caught him) made it into the boat!

All in all it was a terrific day. We had hoped to get away from Fletcher Bay by twelve o'clock, but since they didn't start diving until about ten past, it was at least half two before we even started to clean the gear. But with such a haul of cray it was deifinitely worth it, and we all had a great time. I don't even remember the feeling ill part!

Weekend Dive Trip (DAY ONE)

Ju's Little Sister's Mum is going to have a heart attack at this one...
:-/

On the evening of Friday Feb 2 I jumped in the car with good friend 'Sarge' and we drove through the night (okay, two hours but it was the last two hours of the 2nd) to Hamilton City. If only it had been a weekday and we could have invaded Hamilton City Council Planning Department and tried to get a visual on this BillyBob fellow, bt alas it was not to be.
The next day was a Saturday and we were up early to collect a couple more friends and their boat to begin the trip back up north to the coromandel. Sarge and Tommy used to work in the same dive shop together and I understand they still get out in the water as often as they can, though I also have the suspicion that this is sadly not too often at all. Nevertheless, with the boat on the roof of Tommy's ute, the cat caught, caged and dropped off to the cat-sitter, and plenty of dive gear to see us through we made our way out of Hamilton and North.

It was a gorgeous day and looked like it would be great weather for diving in, and so it proved to be. I had not intended to write up this weekend and so I don't have phuoto's of the treacherous 'Port Jackson Rd' which winds its way only feet from cliffs and bush covered hills on one side and a sharp drop to the water on the other. It was very picturesque however and our quiet speed kept me feeling comfortable as a passenger.

Finally, after a few hours travel we made it to the camp ground and backpackers at Fletcher Bay.
Camping ground at Fletcher Bay

Backpackers at the top of the hill,
looks over camping ground and bay

It took only a few minutes to settle in and pick out our bunk beds before we were hauling dive gear out of the ute and setting it all up. Since I haven't been diving more than a few times and Sarge is an instructor he talked me through it while I yelled at him for babying me. Of course, after he obliged by walking off I had to call him back to help. It's just as well my pride is marginal at best ;-)

Setting up the gear

Once set up and happy again we all piled into the ute with the 12' tinny on top and drove through some farmland to get over to the next bay. I found out this was allowed because Tommy knows the owners of the farm which is always a bonus. Tommy's lady Shaz was pretty good on the gates too and as an ex-farm girl I was impressed. About ten minutes and four gates later we were into the next bay. Unlike Fletchers, this one was deserted.

You can see Fletcher Bay is at the very top of the peninsula, and the bay we went diving in is one more to the East.

Once down on the beach we got changed into our wetsuits and kitted up with all the gear. The tide was almost completely out and we walked along a stretch of rocks that led out into the water. When the tide is in, these rocks are amost completely covered, and the last time Sarge was diving in this bay, he was swimming amongst the very rocks we were labouring to reach the end of. I made the foolsish mistake of asking how much my gear weighed and was given the answer it was probably somewhere between 30 and 40 kilos. (66-88lbs) That's another 2-thirds my body weight I was carrying! I was in a double layer wetsuit which was still dry and working hard in the hot summer sun, and it was HOT work. But finally we made it to the end and got into the beautiful cool water in order to swim a little further still before going under.
I am a little bit paranoid about the water and drowing, so the first attempt at descending was a little bit of a mess, but after a couple of minutes on the surface to collect myself and we were off with a hiss and a roar!
We were only about 4m down at the lowest, but playing around in the rocks and kelp was lots of fun. Sarge forgot to bring his underwater camera so I don't have photos for you, but we broke up some kinna and fed it to the cod, who refused to be caught in Sarge's noose. After more wanderings we came to the sandy part of the bay floor and started in on our mission.
We were on this dive because MoF had asked Tommy and Sarge to bring them evidence (if they found it) of the Northern Pacific Sea Star. (I think that's what it's called and I'm sorry if I've got it wrong.) This is a Japanese starfish which has come south on boats and is already taking over the waters of Australia and we DON'T WANT IT HERE!
MoF know in their hearts that it is in New Zealand's waters, but they haven't been able to prove it and don't have the resources to go dicing to find it. Tommy and Sarge found some on their last dive, but since they didn't have them to show the ministry they were no good as proof. So the boys were back to help out by finding more of these star fish.
Tommy was off doing his thing on his own, hunting starfish and crays alike, and with Sarge going to the surface every now and again to check on him, we stuck together, scanning the sands for five-fingered depressions in the floor. We found a little bit of evidence, and I found the only starfish sitll in residence, but it was too young to tell if it was the invader or not, so we kept scanning and made our way home empty handed.
At one point Sarge stopped our progress to point out a strange purple lump wrapped about a coiled seashell. With my face mask on I couldn't wear my glasses so I was squinting furiously to try and make out what the creature was. Sarge gave him the tiniest nudge with the noose and the lump started on it's lumbering journey back to it's little home - a couple of rocks in a depression in the sand. Scattered all about it were more shells. When it was two-thirds the way back home it revealed itself by pushing out three tenticles - it was an octopus!!! The first real-live one I have ever seen! Now I know why Sarge was being so gentle, he didn't want it to come for him! Once back in its house Sarge picked the shell up with the noose and gave it back and with all the dignity of an offended gentleman the octy reached out without looking and drew the shell close. Then we made our casual and uneventful way back to shore.

Once we caught up with Tommy again he and Shaz decided they wanted to do a spot of fishing so we took the dinghy off the truck and helped them onto the water. We took the truck back to the backpackers and washed down the gear.

Dive gear all washed and drying

About this time I was feeling very ill, mostly in the stomach so I went for a lie-down while Sarge waited about until it was nearly six o'clock. Then he took the ute back to the beach to pick up Tommy, Shaz and the boat. I heard them arrive but didn't emerge from my bunk bed as I was still not one hundred percent. After a while I heard chatting and laughter and realised there were some more people up at the backpackers talking to my friends. I couldn't make out most of the conversation but it certainly sounded very jovial. Only later did I find out the truth!

The visiters we warden's who had been 'tipped off' about some poachers in the area. Poachers who had driven over the hill, through farmland with a boat on the truck, and had returned a couple of hours later without the boat. Then the boat was collected much later in the evening. UH OH!!! The warden's had the backpackers surrounded, one out the back and a couple at the front to catch the poachers with their goods. Hang on, I'm talking about my own friends here! Yes that's right, just as well there are some really on to it people in the camping ground, because it was obvious we were stealing paua! Ha! Whatever Trevor, we were innocent and what's more - we were there to help MoF out!!! Fortunately it was obvious we had no paua, and all the crays where within limits and we had not exceeded the daily limit either. What a pity I missed out on the action!

Soooooo belated....

Al of the TCA mentioned around Christmas time that it was a shame there were no photos on my blog of the Xbox LAN which my friends and I took part in (organised, really) just before Christmas. I have been bugging and bugging 'Sarge' to get ahold of the precious photos and now, finally, (after literally stealing them off his computer while he wasn't there) I have them to show you.
First, a refresher.

An Xbox is similar to a computer in that it can be connected to the internet, and to other xbox's and even (if you have the right software) a computer too. But they are specifically dedicated to games. There is a small group of us who get together every now and again in a garage and connect our 'boxes up to play against each other in both tactical and "shoot 'em up" games, but this LAN was a little different. For this we booked an old communications centre on the Air Force Base (where I work) and managed to get twelve plus people going hammer and tongs all night! Sarge and I organised a proper tournament to begin with - with prizes - and even held a prizegiving just before dinner. A big thanks to the people of Microsoft Xbox Australia who kindly sponsored us with drink bottles, t-shirts, lanyards and some limited edition magazines for prizes.

Below are some of the pics we took;

On the top you might be able to see how we laid desks out in a horse shoe, with the white projector screen at the open end. People were ranged on both sides of the desks (ie some facing in and some facing out). In the picture at the bottom you can see a row of eager young players. There isn't a game in process at the moment - we're all laughing over some of the events just played out. It's hard to describe, but at the end of a round, or a game, the stories are always told by the person who missed the chance, or who was unfortunately killed - we are always laughing at ourselves, and while we'll teasingly talk ourselves up before a game, there is no room for arrogant bragging afterwards, unless the victim started the story.
An example of sorts;
I say: "I had just found myself this perfect spot to line up GRIMUZ from across the building, I changed to sniper rifle and hit the zoom - only to see a full-scale rocket coming straight at me! I didn't even have time to move before I was blown to smithereens!"
TDevils says: "Yeah, yeah the funny part is I was about to assisinate you too and he got me as well!!"
GRIMUZ says: "Don't worry, Blade got me with a frag grenade about a second after I fired."

So you can imgine that round after round is just absoloute carnage! At the end of the round the program comes up with the stats, as shown here:

This is just the medals page of the 'post game carnage report' for the game Halo 2. Our usernames are on the left, total medals earned and then symbols of the variety of medals too. I am second from the bottom for this game, on the orange line - username: Alice. (Because I'm a bit like Alice in Wonderland). I won three 'beat down' medals, which means I was pretty good at fistycuffs. (or I ran out of ammunition a lot, but there's no need to tell the boys that!).

At the end of the Halo 2 tournament, we had a prize giving. Sarge (second from the top) tallied up results and called out the winners of each category and since I was the only girl I got to do the "promo girl" honours. (handing out the goods!) In the next picture I'm giving 'Blade' a drink bottle and a novelty dartboard to help improve his aim!!! Sarge looks on from the right.

After the prizegiving we had pizza for tea and a lot more jokes and laughs. We wandered about looking at people's prizes and went outside for a breather and a chat. This is another important part of the evening as it is important to rest your eyes and actually talk in normal conversations with the people you are hanging out with!! We don't let the LAN's get too big so that it is always with friends which guarantees we keep up the social aspect of the activity.

After dinner we connected on of the xboxes to the projector and played some very old school arcade games which have been adapted to play on these new consoles.

Sarge (left) and Warwulf play bomber man on the projector while TDevil (right) watches and waites for his turn. They were playing king of the ring. (winner stays on, loser hands over the controller to the next player.) It was sort of like being in the fish and chip shop when we were kids. Except it smelt different and you didn't need 20c to play!!!

I have only one more photo for you now, and this one is from very late - or very early - as it was taken at ten to three in the morning!

The big guy under the white duvet is 'Phatal1ty'
He's had enough for one night!

The really good thing about this bunch of people, is that most of them turn up the next day to help us clean up.

And that was our December LAN! Tomorrow 6th February is Waitangi Day and we might be holding one of the little garage ones since we don't have to work. When I find more time I'll put up a post on my weekend dive drip and maybe talk about Waitangi Day, but I really think it's a subject best avoided.

Hmmm

New Zealand lost to England in the cricket. What does that say about us?

No Birds, Not Cricket

My Summer Christmas was sufficently lazy that I am eager to get back into work!
I don't have a lot to say as I didn't do very much - I was given many books for the season and have chomped through them all. On top of that I have also made a great deal of headway on my own little bit of writing - about twenty pages in Word, bringing the total to about 265. Once again my flash of inspiration has dwindled but I still have some plot ideas which was more than I had when getting back into it all these holidays.

Our family often takes advantage of the long evenings to indulge in a game or two of jackpot, or sometimes BYC (back yard cricket). We are traditionally too honest to succeed well in games like cheat, poker and monopoly, but nothing has ever stopped us getting a little rough when the person who catches the 'out' gets to go in batting. Stubbed toes and occasionally bruised ribs aside it is all in good fun and now that we are adults we are careful not to let a little roughhousing turn into fights. Alas, this year there was none of that. Ju is in the UK, little brother was working and big sister either working or down south for the (world famous in New Zealand) Omarama Rodeo. I took the oportunity to remain at home with the folks and join distant family from Oz who had come to stay for a few days.

I am sorry to say I have little in the way of fabulous photos of my activities for the night, but here are some of the land and valley I grew up in, and a little lizard I saw by the back steps of a house in Ashburton.



1. View out kitchen window

2. View from bottom of valley. We live up the far end

3. From same point as (2) but turned a little to the right

4. Lizard. Used to handle them as a child, but this one was a bit sneaky.

New Zealand Christmas Tree

THE POHUTUKAWA

We don't have snow at Christmas time down here under the world, instead we have glorious summer!

We like to dress up an evergreen (usually pinus radiata) with baubles and lights to shine prettily in our lounge and to protect the gifts of love beneath its branches.

But the Pohutukawa needs no tinsel.

She has her own



MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL
[ and Happy Solstice to those who know it :-) ]

The Chosen Words

First of all I apologise for my silence recently. This weekend just past I spent indoors (despite the first bout of sunshine for too long) as my friends and I had organised an XBox LAN for saturday afternoon - sunday morning.
A group of about five to eight of us will get together every now and then, connect up our xbox's (one each of the 'box and a tv) in Muz's garage and play all sorts of games, from tactical counter-terrorism, through all-on-all 'slayer' to comedy car racing. Though I had always considered computer games to be anitsocial these are in fact a very social event, with plenty of back chat and a full dinner break in the middle.

However this one was something a little bigger. We had sixteen people confirmed, though in the end only twelve turned up, and we hired a venue. We had a projector screen, an organised competition and prizes. (arranged and purchased by myself and 'sarge.'
Anyway, despite the fact that I was inside pretty much from 1430 Saturday to 0330 sunday (when i went home) it was a great weekend.

The main apology however is mainly due to the fact that I've been having problems with my internet. I have been trying to send Maalie a copy of the Boeing 707 roll but it hasn't sent and my email to say I was going to flag the whole thing also wouldn't send. (am currently attempting the first again M.)

Okay, now to the part of the post I originally intended to type up. The sayings actually chosen to be put on the card;

1. The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible

2. There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where non intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar,
I love not man the less, but nature more.

~~Lord Byron (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)

3. a) Before beginning a Hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it.
3. b) Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.
3 .c) Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.
(Winnie-The-Pooh and Christopher Robin)

And on the back page (turned out to be a multi-leaf card)

IF
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

Friends, I need your help

Greetings again fellow bloggers,
A close friend of mine has finally conceeded that my celebration of Christmas will not end without a present passing from me to them. In order to regain a level of control, the request was that the gift should be;
A card, with a poem (written by me) and an inspirational saying. Now I have no worries making the card or writing the poem, only the little sayings I know don't seem quite.... right.

I have hunted about the internet and am currently bemoaning the loss of my parents book of quotations (since I am no longer living at home) however I still haven't found something that works. I wonder if the followers of these blogs would be interested in putting forward words that have spoken to them and may be appropriate for a person floundering a little with work, though not so much with life!

At the moment I will be putting in Rudyard Kipling's 'IF,' but I think I need something a little more succinct!

I would be very much obliged.
Ju's Little Sister :-)

>SIGH<

I am too nice.

A wing is a wing is a wing. And lift is all about tilt. More specifically, angle of attack.
See image:


Looking at the side of the plane and a cross section of the wing.
The darker line represents the angle of the fuselage - in the top image, parallel with the earth. See how the wing is tilted up slightly. From memory it is about 13 degrees. In the bottom image the plane has gone up, up, up and over and is now flying upside down the way it came. The top of the plane is now nearest the earth. As Maalie predicted, the pilot doesn't fly straight and level, but angles the plane (the controls think downwards, which is now upwards) so that the wing still has that angle of attack. In fighter planes, which require all sorts of manaeuovres, the angle of attack would be negligible, so that the pilot doesn't have to seriosly tilt the aircraft to get it to fly upside down - but as long as the fuel system can cope, any plane can use this method and fly upside down. In fact I have a video of a Boeing 707 doing a barrel roll VERY IMPRESSIVE!!! But I don't think I can load videos onto the blog. If anyone wants to host it for me...!

I hope this helps you 'W.'

Albatross

New Zealand P3-K Orion, displayed to compliment the Orion posted by Maalie. Notice the Albatross painted on the tail, and the MAD boom out the back. Not to be outdone (I shall find a place for the Orion poem!) Here is my favourite excerpt from the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner;

"...

The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!

At length did cross and Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.

It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!

And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollo!

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white moonshine."

..."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I won't put the next verse in, but if you want to read it all you can find it here.

Also, here is the crest for RNZAF's No 5 Squadron, which is where I work;

If anyone is interested in more information about 5 Sqn, then you can visit the RNZAF website. I hope you enjoyed this post, thanks for the inspiration Maalie :-)

Of Wings and Things

In answer to a question posted by the TCA.

When the air flows over a wing it doesn't flow in a straight line but because of the (3-D) shape of the wing it tends to move towards the outboard end, as displayed in the picture below:

See how the air 'slips' sideways over the wing? This is okay for lift but towards the end of the wing, where the control surfaces are (on the wing this is the aileron) a lot of the air is lost off the end of the wing. (The little rectangle to the bottom right is the aileron, used to roll the aircraft)
By curling the end of the wing up the air is forced to travel over the control surface which gives the design greater control - or more efficient control - over the roll manoeuvre.

My sources tell me that sometimes this is accomplished by simply attaching very small barriers to the end of the wing, only a couple of inches high. Some planes, like the mighty Orion, are cool enough and their pilots are talented enough that such measures are not required.

Whoops, It's been a while!

It certainly has been a while since I've updated the page, but in all fairness I've been pretty busy with other things.
The end of the year has finally descended upon us and it was only last Friday we had to hand in our final project reports for Libramentum.
Unfortunately we never got the poor robot up and running but we have been granted the oportunity to continue working on it so that there will be something to show for our efforts. I have included here some extracts from my report.

Abstract

The project is to design a robot capable of balancing dynamically on a sphere. This is an expansion on a previous inverted pendulum project, and had provision for the development of additional operations.

The previous project was a Mobile Inverted Pendulum design (BBot, [names supplied], AUT 2005) and involved stabilising a pendulum which had two planes of free rotation, such as the popular product ‘Segway.’ This project; undertaken by [names supplied], has an additional plane of freedom, creating a robot that could fall in any of 360 degrees. The design involved taking the design concept of BBot which could fall forwards or backwards, and advancing the systems to control and stabilise a pendulum on a sphere.

The project consisted of adapting the BBot inertial angle measurement system which calculates the speed and angle of fall and designing the systems required to stabilise the platform. Interchangeability was a strong design commitment; the robot would have to be able to accept several different daughterboards enabling advanced programming techniques to be implemented including evolutionary programming.

Concept and Motivation

A machine which is statically stable, such as a three or four wheeled robot, is able to balance at all times. ‘At all times’ encompasses whilst moving, unmoving, and during a power-down state. While this is convenient for the greater part of the time, problems arrive when the machine which is usually stable begins to lose its stability. In the case of a knock or fall the machine is susceptible to damage from an inability to prevent its fall. Our robot overcomes this concern by containing a system dedicated to balance one hundred percent of operation time. While this means power and processing time will be consumed keeping the pendulum balanced under no other force than gravity, it also means that it will be resistant to and able to recover from other external forces as well, where a more conventional machine might not.

Previously, a robot known as BBot was developed by AUT students. BBot is an inverted pendulum which could fall backwards or forwards, but has sensors and systems in place to keep it in an upright position. At the bottom of the pendulum is an axel and two wheels which are each driven by a motor. These motors are not only responsible for driving the robot across a surface, but also for its dynamic balance.

Fig 1A

In order for this design to move in a different direction it must first turn. This requires space and possibly substantial time to execute. By transposing the concept onto a sphere, changing the direction of movement is only a matter of driving a different combination of motors (software will need to keep up with the balancing requirements here). This makes the new design more compact and manoeuvrable

Like its predecessor BBot, our robot is a platform which facilitates various forms of processor and software. It has room for advancement in station keeping and remote control. It will be a processor intensive platform which has the potential to demonstrate the power of FPGA technology and evolutionary programming.

There is not a great deal of previous experience available regarding a pendulum which has successfully been balanced on a sphere, as we propose to do. While projects involving inverted pendulums are scattered all over the internet, there seem to be only a few involving a robot balanced on a ball. One of these projects is ‘Ballbot,’ by Microdynamic Systems Laboratory. They have designed and built a robot the height of a human which balances and moves on a single sphere.

The robot shown is large and bulky and looks difficult to transport. We wanted a compact design which could be easy moved around and taken to other locations with minimum fuss. With the ability to interchange between different main processing units we could in the future install a system such as Bluetooth and run advanced functions from the likes of a laptop computer. This means a lot of hardware doesn’t have to be physically located on the robot, enabling small design and portability without reducing the capability .

Fig1B

http://www.msl.ri.cmu.edu/projects/ballbot/

On the surface our robot wouldn’t have any practical purpose, but it would certainly be an invaluable tool to AUT. A primary concern is flexibility and the hardware must include provision for interchangeability. The ability to change the daughterboard allows for upgrading and refining the software, advancing the features and introducing new features as technology grows. All these possibilities have room for research and projects within AUT itself which makes it a worthwhile design. In addition, these same functions also mean the robot could eventually be developed into a machine which has a practical purpose outside of the university environment, which is definitely a positive motivation.

That's all I have for now, but stay tuned as I will go through our post-paper work with you and am going to try and get some photos of the structure of Libramentum as she has been created thus far.

WHY?

Hi to the TCA fans, and thanks for checking out my spot.

The big question was finally asked...why?
An admirable query to be sure.

There are a couple of reasons. Most of all, for a geek like me the oportunity to build my own robot was too exciting to pass up. On that line of thought the idea of being able to build something no one else has yet mastered is almost more exciting than having a whole block of chocolate all to myself. Almost.
The personal reasons for accepting the invitation to tackle this project are actually rather boring though. I found when I had a year off study (the first since i started school, age 5) that I lost interest in a lot of things. By not having something that was keeping my brain busy I was losing the motivation to keep it busy myself. In short I was getting bored. The geek factor was big, and another draw card was the fact that I was jumping from second year diploma level to third year degree level by invitation. Who could turn down such an ego trip, honestly? The Air Force would pay me back every cent of the cost of the paper, as long as I proved it was work related and as long as I passed the course. Free education rocks. And it looks good on my service record. It looks good on my personal file and my CV if I ever make one. The time management and research skills alone would pump my CV to overfull. There are many pro's.

As to why a robot which does nothing more than balance? When I have explained to others I am involved in a project to build a balancing robot, they ask me - "So what does it do.?" And I reply "It balances." I don't think many people really comprehend the sheer processing power reqiured to stop this puppy from falling over. These four processors will be working at speeds of 8MHz, that means it carries out a seperate complete instruction every 125 nano seconds. Even so, I am unsure it will be fast enough.
Our supervisor has chosen a project that requires an immense amount of processing power because once we have completed it he will improve on it. He will remove our standardised and interchangeable daughterboard (with an Atmel ARM computer processor on it) and replace it with a similar board which uses FPGA technology.

I'm not sure I should go down this track or I might be typing all night. The more a person knows about digital technology the easier it is for me to explain, so I imagine it will be best not to get too technical. Let's look at it this way;
A standard processor is filled with little sub systems - counters, timers, analogue to digital converters (ADC's), communications systems, input and output ports, real time clocks, and all sorts of other miniscule gadgets. A programmer reads through the manual and learns how to use programming code to turn on and off these subsystems, controlling them and saving values for later use to get the results we want. To balance this robot, my lab partner and I will program the chip to turn on an ADC, process the gyro input and save it. This will be repeated with the other gyro. Then the program instructs the processor to filter and error-check the inputs. The new values are saved, collated and sent via a 'series communications' subsystem up to the daughterboard. The processor on the daughterboard is programmed to receipt these values and carry out the mathematics, then return the values.
Every move must be covered by us, the programmers. We control, through our code, every subsystem within the processor.

FPGA.
Field Programmeable Gate Array.
An FPGA has no subassemblies. It is an array of switches which can be turned on or off to form pseudo systems. My supervisor took a plain FPGA chip and set it up so that within that one physical device there were two - two - pentium processors. There was plenty of room left for more devices. It's technical but trust me when I say using switches makes FPGAs very fast too.
Now, we can run conventional coding techniques through FPGA's. We can set them up to contain all those sub-systems and then program it as I detailed above. Or we can get a computer to run evolutionary programming.
We give the computer a set of parameters.
"In a five minute period, the robot must not fall over."
The computer blasts the blank FPGA with a random sequence of ones and zeros. Computer runs the robot and the robot immediately falls over. So the computer deletes half of the random code, replaces it with a new random code and tries again. Again the robot falls over. After trying this for a few hundred generations, the FPGA manages to send a message to spin the motors and the robot doesn't fall over until three seconds have passed. The program has been improved.
The computer keeps the good code and scraps the rest, generating more random binary until perhaps the motors move at a better speed or in unison or until the sensors are being read and filtered and corresponding instructions are being sent to the motors. We are talking millions of generations of code, hopefully only taking steps forward - evolving. The computer will keep working until the robot balances on its own for five minutes.
All the programmer has to do is enter in the initial parameters and monitor the progess. And on top of that; once it is complete the FPGA is extraordinarily efficient at running the program and faster than comventional processors.

Back to the initial question - why?
Why? Ultimately to display the enormous processing power of FPGA's and the advantages of the 'evolutionary programming' technique. And yes, a droid will appear from the future to kill my supervisor. But not me because I'm not taking the FPGA paper next year, though I would like to.

I hope that answers the question?

The Power supply board has finally been manufactured and now we have to 'populate' the board with components and make sure everything is working right. We're still waiting on one type of microchip to arrive from the suppliers and a...contact...of mine is arranging to have our batteries made to the perfect specification. Here's a look at just how small the board and some of the components are:

The dimensions of the board are 100mmx100mm (that's just under 4 inches square). The photo on the right has zoomed in a little on the components which we will be populating the board with. The microchip I have placed over its pads in the board, just to the left of the pen. Within the red circle is a surface mount capacitor. This is so small it came out too fuzzy to see, but it's roughly a 16th of an inch long and half again as wide. TINY! Thank goodness I don't have to get a soldering iron into that. The program which has helped me design this whole project will also generate what is called a 'pick and place' file. This can be entered into another type of robot which will place the capacitor and other surface mount components onto the board in the right place. There will already be a layer of solder plaste on the pads and the board is then heated in an oven. The solder melts then sets and presto! the components are in place without me having to go anywhere near them!

Just as another bit of interest - I explained how the footprints work that allow the program to know how many pins etc a component has. Well a lot of footprints also detail the height and shape of the part as well and DXP can generate a 3D image of what the PCB will look like once it is made. Here's a 3D image of the processor board. The large square microchip has 128 pins coming out all four sides and those pins are as little as the ones on the micro in the pictures above. Using the 3D feature has been extrememly helpful for me to visualise how the boards will mate together - the grey rectangles are connectors and they fit into more printed circuit boards. At the moment the robot will require four or maybe five of these boards and four processors just to get the job done. Wish me luck!

Moving Again

FINALLY! My Printed Circuit board design has been accepted by the techs, and is now in the lab for manufacture. All I have to do now is wait for it, and wait for a few more parts then we can solder the components in place and begin the hardware testing. My lab partner and I are also working on those structure diagrams for the programming.

Things are looking a little down at the moment. I'm a little stressed, with a course at work I have to study for every night and less than a week (four days even) to completely redo my PCB as apparently it wasn't good enough. Arrrrrgh! I have no more time. We're a bit behind, but watch this space and see me catch up ;-)

Ta Daaaa! There it is, the finished PCB layout. Well actually this is only one of the finished products. There are a couple more as well! All we have to do now is have those boards manufactured and we can get into testing them to make sure they work. The best way to do this will be to program the processors with basic routines which will operate each sensor one by one. Then if and when the code fails we will be able to use a process of elimination to work out what needs to be fixed or replaced. These things will never work first time.

The next step is the software and my lab partner and I are already beginning to look into it. As with all missions, this one requires a plan and one of the most effective way to plan a program is to use a structure diagram. There are two methods for drawing the program into a diagram - a flow chart or the use of case statements. I won't go into case statements because at the moment that's not the design format we are using. I will include a very basic flow chart which breaks down the interaction between the parts of Libramentum. Although I would like to (because it is very exciting) I won't go into great detail about the coding structure because I don't particularly want it stolen and to be honest - I don't trust this internet thungimajig! So here is a very basic idea of what the program will be doing. This is a cut and paste from a word document flow diagram. First we want the sensors to do their job of working out what is going on, then the two minor processors on the motherboard will (between them) filter that information and send values to the main processor - here labelled the Mega128. From there the [Atmel AT]Mega128 will turn the voltages and codes into a discrete set of values. These values will be sent to the daughterboard which has an Atmel ARM processor on it. This processor does all the hard yards - it does all the complicated maths that will turn those values into an understanding of exactly what is happening to the robot. Additionally it calculates what force will be required at each of the three motors (and in which direction!) and sends these values back to the motherboard - the one we started on - who sends the correct voltages through special control circuits called H-bridges to the motors. As soon as it's set the H-Bridges it immediately collects the next lot of sense information - even as the motors are busy righting the robot!

Now as I said - that flow diagram was thrown together using Microsoft Word, but there are special symbols used by programmers. There are many different ways of writing a program and you might hear about all sorts of 'languages,' Pascal, C-Plus, Java, Pearl and others. The special thing about a structure diagram is that it can be written by someone with only a basic understanding of a single language, and any program developer anywhere should be able to pick it up and write a program in any language that will do what the structure describes. It is a plan of how the overall system is handled. The details are for the individual to work out for themselves. I felt guilty about not putting any of the diagrams for Libramentum up, so I'll put up another instead. I made this in about 30 seconds, and will see what I can do about coding it later...


It's a little difficult to see, and I apologise, but lets look at what it says.
** START (easy)
** IF you are a boy. This is an 'IF/ELSE' statement. If the statement is true take the action from the right of the diamond - Go to the Rugby. If the statement is false, take the action from the bottom of the diamond - Go to the netball. Once these have been completed, we return to the next action after the 'IF' box.
** FOR the duration of the game. This action has a loop on it and the little equals sign indicates where the test is carried out. The program 'tests' the for statement, while the game is being played, the program will carry out any actions attached to that loop - in this case, obey the ref. when the game is no longer in progress the FOR statement will be false and the program will break out of the loop. We could add another simple action after the FOR loop which instructs the program to "go to the aftermatch function." When the program reaches END it knows it has nothing more expected of it and will not look for further instructions. So you can see from that diagram that there was no actual code included in it. The words in the box were on the whole simple english, designed to be picked up by anyone and turned into a program. This is important because there will be three people working on the code for Libramentum. My Lab partner and I have designed a lot of little programs before and we have a good system going. I predict that for the software design of this robot we will work at it seperately and then work out which design to turn into code. Often we'll create an amalgamation of the two designs. It is important we are able to pick up the other persons structure and be able to almost immediately see what the other is intending. Also, our supervisor needs to be able to keep an eye on our progress and add his input, which is quicker and easier for all if we don't spend half an our explaining what we mean in our plan.
So if you're still interested keep reading and I'll try and turn my spontaneous structure diagram into some C-code.

#include
#include

#define boy 1
#define girl 0
#define rugby 1
#define netball 0

void main(void)
{
int person=boy, game, rugby, netball, obeyRef, gameTime;

if(person == boy)
{
game = rugby;
}else
game = netball;

gameTime = 1200;

for(gameTime > 0)
{
obeyRef = 1;
gameTime--;
}

}


It's a lot harder to read isn't it? In fact, if you don't know programming, or if you haven't worked with anything that works like C then the whole thing is a lot of gibberish. That's why the structure diagram is so important - because it's universal. I don't know if some of you reading this have much experience with programming, but I bet anyone you know who does will be able to take my structure diagram and turn it into code. But that code might look very different to mine. And I know some people reading this will have as much AND more experience at programming than me and will probably be shaking their heads at this awful mashed example, but I would like to take this oportunity to point out that I whipped up in only a few minutes because my flatmates are putting on a DVD and I want to see it. Ciao!