After a 3 hour Autocad and sketching lecture-lab, our prof announced that in twenty years of teaching this material, he’d never seen so many people asleep by the end of it.

I managed to stay alert and internalize everything, but I guess time will have the final word on that. There were several assignments due at the crack of dawn this morning, all of which were more ambitious than they appeared to be from the outset. Besides that, we had a practice-midterm last night until ten, so a lot of folks were up well into the night working… and posting occasionally on our [class forum](http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~mte09), which I set up and have been administering with moderate success.

The practice midterm was a short paper with a handful of questions from each course stapled together so that we could get an idea of the difficulty level. It was deceiving to have it as multiple-choice, though, since neither of the math exams are to be that way. As it was, I scored almost perfect, but that’s because of good educated guessing where I wasn’t positive.

I’m going to try making [pizza](http://quickcook.net/recipe.php?id=40) tonight… we’ll see how that works out, but I was responsible for the crust the last time the sisters and I did it, and it was great then.

In other news, it looks like the major project for our Mechatronics course is an obstacle course in Mindstorms. The most severe limitation is that we’re only permitted to use a single kit. In terms of sensors, that limits you to two binary touch, and one photocell. Trying to reliably follow a line with a single light sensor when one of the guidelines is ‘as fast as possible’ seems like a somewhat futile exercise, if my experience with campers over the summer is any indication. I was thinking more along the lines of an encoder for very precise distance reckoning. But of course, since it’s one sensor and two wheels, this requires a devious gearing arrangement whereby a single motor powers both, but a nonfixed axle allows it to steer… differential, anyone? ([Rob](http://sparky.i989.net/rstehlik/)’s influence over me is profound)

Should be an interesting project…
Mike

← Earlier Later → Posted at 4:09 pm to Waterloo.