I had a lot of fun at the rtlToronto LEGO contest today. All these
grown-ups (and one kid) had built robots that could swing from two
ropes suspended from a beam. The banter and the stories were
hilarious. Most robots were built around the same concept: motors and
gears swung a weight back and forth, similar to the way children swing
their legs in order to amplify their motion.

What made it even more fun was that I had suggested the swing
challenge to W- when he was brainstorming an idea for the LEGO
Challenge, so it was great seeing all these people make a crazy idea
of mine happen. <grin>

One of the club members told me that when the idea was raised over an
rtlToronto dinner, people laughed and said that it was going to be so
easy. Then a week before the contest, people started panicking. Trips
to the playground, physics tutorials on the Net, and sheer trial and
error helped these LEGO fans learn more about pendulums than they did
in high school. Just goes to show you that some things that kids can
do aren’t that easy!

Good stuff.

Random Emacs symbol: term-input-ring-file-name – Variable: *If non-nil, name of the file to read/write input history.