Nolan’s Notes

I had to run an errand today to Washington Square, so I went ahead and took the opportunity to try out the new Trimet Westside Express Service train that services Washington Square, Tigard, Tualatin, and Wilsonville. I was very impressed with the accessible bike storage, comfortable seating, and even the complimentary on-train WiFi! Fares are the same as a normal MAX ride, as well as the benefit of some added “WES Time” instead of waiting in traffic! Enjoy this fun video put together by the TrimetTV podcast.

EDIT: They mention this in a soft, soothing voice the video, but I want to point out that WES only runs during the morning and evening rush hours (5:20–10:00 and 3:30–8:00) on weekdays, which puts a kibosh in the plans of most evening and weekend shoppers. Hopefully they’ll expand this service in the future, but for now just leave an hour early from work and you’ll be fine.

I’ve had a great few weeks in Portland since finishing up my year at Carnegie Mellon. More on that later, but I wanted to quickly point out a new section of my website that I’ve added: Colleges & Scholarships. After doing lots of research and filling out quite a few applications in my senior year of high school, I wanted to pass on some of the things that I learned from the whole experience. It’s not quite finished yet, but I’ve included a few links to get you started. Enjoy!

Hello again! So, another update from Pittsburgh…I got the opportunity last weekend to attend Carnegie Mellon’s annual Spring Carnival and had a blast! Here’s an overview:

CMU Carnival is about 3 things–No School, Booth, and Buggy–all 3 pretty equally important. We get Thursday and Friday off of school and the festivities don’t end until Sunday afternoon, which is awesome especially when the weather is really nice! Booth is a very eccentric CMU tradition where different student groups race to finish building a mini-house around the given theme for a year. Booths ranged from a giant “Wall-E-Pi” to a Giant Peach, a nuclear fall-out shelter, and even a giant Poke-Booth. The Kiltie Band also performed our Spring Concert to start off the festival.

Buggy is the other main event that occurs at Carnival. You might not know what it is at first glance, but it’s basically a hill race with customized racing buggies (over a few thousand a pop, if you want a good one) that often hit 40 mph at the bottom of Flagstaff Hill. 5′ tall women are aggressively pursued at the beginning of the school year to drive the buggies and ensure their team’s victory. Believe me–these teams are HARD CORE. The Student Development Council beat Pi-KA’s record this year, but I put a video from last year anyway to give you the excitement of what happens. 

Only 2 1/2 more weeks of school! 

Hello again from Pittsburgh! Quite a few things have happened over the last month and a half, so I’ll be spreading the events out in a series of several posts. To start it off, I have some cool videos to show–all of them are well-known robots both at CMU and around the world.

The first is of “Tank”, the official Roboceptionist for Newell-Simon Hall on campus ( home of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute). He’s surprisingly really smart, as he’s does facial tracking, gives directions, says the weather, and I’m sure much more while keeping a slight grin on his robotic face. If you’re ever able to visit, be sure to talk to him at NSH north entrance.

The second video was from the Young Inventors International “Inventing the Future” Conference, held at Carnegie Mellon two weeks ago and organized by Anne Swift and Project Olympus, a startup incubator for students at Carnegie Mellon. Performing a market analysis of Marek Michalowski’s Keepon Robot was just one highlight of the event, as we were able to participate with roundtable discussions with numerous VC’s, marketers, inventors, and established CEO’s in an informal setting–all geared towards young, college-age inventors and entrepreneurs.

For a more detailed recap of the event with some more videos, please check out the YII blog at http://www.innovatorshub.com/

I was able to make a lot of connections and listen to some pretty inspiring stories, and I look forward to participating in it again next year!

Lastly, Carnegie Mellon and Astrobotic teamed up to show off their new challenge for Google’s Lunar X-Prize competition for $20 million. I was able to get the whole tour on video, but feel free to skip around as you want. My friend Abhinav and I were able to talk with Red Whitaker, the founder of Astrobotics, CMU’s DARPA challenge robots, and numerous other CMU robotics spinoffs,  which was pretty cool too!

Hello everyone, I apologize profusely for not posting for a while, but be assured that the semester is going well and I’m back into the swing of things.

Over the break, I mostly relaxed and visited family and high school friends, tried to play in the 16″ of snow we got (a 40-year-record for Portland), and did some website work. Before I knew it, January had rolled around and I was leaving to fly back to Pittsburgh. As most of you know, the Steelers won the Superbowl this year, but apparently the tradition is that all of the college students have a “party” in Oakland to celebrate afterwards. Their interpretation of party included burning garbage bins,  breaking a bus stop, trying to uproot trees, and generally showing their enthusiasm for Pittsburgh’s win. Once a few of my friends and I got there, most of the ruckus was calmed, and mounted patrol units started coming in to clear people out. I’m definitely looking forward to the next time Pittsburgh wins!

The week before last was “Engineers Week”, a nationwide celebration for engineers and by engineers. Carnegie Mellon demoed some cool student projects during the open house including the awesome Hexabot robot (made by a member of our Robotics Club) and a project called HandTalk that translates pseudo-sign-language into words on a cell phone.

Also, earlier this week I had a first experience with “snow showers” (not to be confused with the Northwest’s “<rain> showers”)…they were so weird! Lastly, we had a great Kiltie Band concert last night, especially because everyone played in their kilts!

I’m looking forward to a great 2009. So long!

Also, here’s a bonus panorama of the CMU “cut” and “mall” last Wednesday. After snowing last weekend, it has been 50° and beautiful in Pittsburgh these last few days, and I felt like taking a few pictures to prove it.