Penguin Pie

Back in 2002 we entered (for the second year) a BBC TV robot competition. No, not that one, but Technogames - the "Robot Olympics" as it was presented as.

For the 2002 session (broadcast "live" in 2003, four months later) we'd entered a life size King Penguin into both the sprint and the gymnastics. OK so that may not have been a great strategy but it was great fun and we got past the first heat of the sprint and got 4th place in the gymnastics.

None of this is really the point of this waffle. The point is that it was then that M started 'engineering' programming, at the age of 10 or 11, using very low level Basic-cum-Assembler to drive the LED's on the penguin's light sabre (don't ask..)

This afternoon I spent listening to some inspirational speakers - the founders of the Raspberry Pi Foundation - the people behind the $25 computer for schools and children to inspire them to understand what a computer really is, and to start finding the joy of computer engineering with a machine they can't break.

(Aside: Sorry, but yes, I'm claiming Raspberry as Fruit for the 2013 challenge)

The un-inspirational 'ICT' training prevalent in the curriculum now, was, quite generously in my opinion, dismissed as 'typing'. There was a quotation from Google reflecting their dismay about how (in the UK) we're throwing away our technical heritage with the "computing" we're teaching our children with.

It's unfortunate the Pi wasn't available earlier to be the vehicle for M's device programming.

Programming to make things.

Like penguins.

Proper engineering.

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The photo is of the sweatshirts we had printed for this our second appearance in the Games.

In 2001 we'd come away with the Silver for gymnastics with a robotic duck. In 2002 E and Cupcake took the duck back and again the silver, which is why we missed out on the bronze!

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The penguin, Cold Mokuyobi, is proudly holding unbrellas in the hall. Needs a dusting really...

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The duck was called "Cold Thursday". Speakers of Japanese will see the difficulty in the naming of robots.