my name is mwd

At the weekend Laura and I helped judge the UK eastern region round of this year’s First Lego League challenge. FLL is an international competition where teams of 9 to 16 year olds have to build a single lego mindstorms robot that can complete a series of very different tasks in a single 2.5 minute run around a table. This years chellenges were themed about “nano technology” and were quite challenging. When I looked over the list of tasks I struggled to imagine how I’d tackle them all in such a short time even as an experienced engineer :) The teams were all very impressive – even the really young teams had come up with robots that could tackle a large number of the problems, and a couple of the teams did all 9 challenges with time to spare.

Before now I wanted a Mindstorms kit – I remember wanting to get one when I’d just started my PhD when it first came out. Now I want one even more :) But it’s quite pricey and I’ve never really felt I had the disposable cash to spend on it given other bills. Now I’m buying a house and unemployed that’s unlikely to change :) Ah well.

Kindly enough the FLL gave medals to all that took part, including us judges :)