In December 1999 while out having a drink with my then to be future ex wife, a waitress at the Done Right Inn
in Toronto handed me a package of matches with the phrase "Find something and burn it" rubber stamped
on the back cover. As a former arsonist I found it humorous and memorable.
After my separation and a seven year hiatus as an electro-nerd I rented space in the Mississauga industrial
plaza where I work and began drawing plans and collecting parts in the summer of 2002 for a robotic vehicle
that I intended to originally enter in the 2006 DARPA Grand Challenge, a prestigious annual competition
where autonomous vehicles compete for a 2 million dollar prize.
In February 2004 I registered the domain name "Findsomethingandburnit.com" and wrote this site (mostly
blank pages at the time) over a 48 hour period with the intention of documenting the design of the vehicle
that I would enter, intending to update the site weekly as the construction progressed. As I had yet to actually
acquire the vehicle itself, there was little relevant content. The site wavered between totally dormant and
sporadically updated for the next year as I went off onto tangents that never really came to fruition, ending up
with a site with some 60 odd pages that went nowhere.
In April 2005 I finally found the vehicle I had wanted to use as a project platform. I spent the summer dicking
around with the body and chassis as time permitted, and so a few pages finally began to see regular
updates. There was still basically no content relevant to the robotics aspect of the project, as besides being
at a loss as to how to describe the various systems and draw diagrams that didn't end up horribly pixelated
when scanned, my regular job was taking at least 60 daylight hours every week, while my nights were being
spent drunk and doing Billy Joel tribute gigs. I moved my tentative completion time forward to reflect, well -
reality. Hoping to enter the competition in 2008.
On the first of September I officially retired several self destructive personal habits, quit singing, and started
to spend the weekends and evenings in the company of electronics instead of women. There are far easier
decisions to be made in life. For the most part I'm still being pretty good.
I started to work on updating the entire site in November 2005. I began to hate the lack of new content,
spelling mistakes, technical errors, and finally even the damn font started to annoy me. The site began to
appear to me to be plain and utter shit and I wanted to change it. I started writing a "parallel" site with the
intention of switching pages over one at a time as they were completed.
I actually had gotten pretty far. I pulled the index page down sometime in December 2005 hoping to totally
restore the site within the month. Then all hell broke loose. I split the site between two computers so that I
could work on it from home and at the office, but it had never occurred to me that I had no idea how to glue
them back together again! Whoops.
abstract" and hit the official DARPA site to steal a link or two. Finding instead to
my horror that there would never be a 2008 Grand Challenge because there
had already been a winner 2 months previous.
Congratulations to team Stanford, who's autonomous Volkswagen Touareg
"Stanley" completed the 132 mile course in 6 hours and 53 minutes.
The final straw was several of the neighbourhood's little darlings using the
truck's windshields for brick tossing practise.
In utter frustration I deleted the entire site contents, got really drunk, and found
comfort in the company of my very tall and beautiful dancer who shall remain
nameless if not faceless. With my project and site in ruins I took a much needed
vacation, deciding to see what it all looked like from the other side of the new
year..
one for giving up on things too easily. The bat truck project will continue.
Everything that I have done in the past two years from buying this shitty house to working double shifts to
afford the necessary components has been to some degree a move toward this project being built. Except for
a few thousand dollars in raw material, I have now collected everything I need to complete it, so complete it I
shall.
The definitive goal of this project was to challenge myself. Winning the DARPA Grand Challenge and
becoming rich and famous in the process would have been really nice too.
This site will be restored.
I grew up programming computers which stored their programs on cassette tape. A method which
occasionally without warning would wrap 2 weeks of work around the capstan before giving an error
message. The post traumatic stress disorder that we all developed from that era never really went away; the
previous incarnation of this site was archived on good old Indonesian bleached plain white paper.
Although some of the total drivel will not be returning, most of the old relevant stuff will be slightly edited and
restored. The hardest part so far is writing pages now in the past tense from the present. Much will be
abridged. There's also new content to add.
One final note for tonight: Counters. My site stats had counted 11,402 hits as of December 14, 2005. A
number which I reflected on the main page title bar. This was an error on my part as the counters had
totalled ALL page hits, not unique visits. From what I can tell by counting only "index" hits, "Find something
and burn it" has been visited about 3300 times in 2 years (The actual count is 3425 as of 18-02-06). I have
decided to "zero" the count and only reflect visitors since New Year's day 2006.
Until next time, and as always, if you catch an error, omission, or a stupid spelling or grammatical fuck up;
please be a pal and let me know, huh?
months and two weeks ago.
Having finally decided that I can live with the look and feel of the present site layout, I've spent the weekend
performing general file cleanups. Attempting to hunt down and destroy errant punctuation marks, making
sure my little green buddy was at each page bottom, et-cetera. Thinking it was kind of cute, I've thrown a bit
of ghetto Potter into the mess to make the photos on the main page appear to change on transition. The
method is actually quite vulgar because I don't know how to do it properly but it works. Perhaps you'll just find
it annoying. I've also chosen to exclusively use lowercase lettering on the page titles.
There are several new (albeit still empty) page templates in place this week, now only a single paste and
backup away from once again displaying some of the original site content. The "Tamster" Mazda 323 page
although no longer relevant will be returning for posterity. Also expect the return of the truck's bodywork
page.
New developments in the actual thought experiment are also compelling me to edit and restore the x-ray
copier page as soon as possible so expect new content there.
Sadly the ALF-2 'bot will not be joining us in the near future after all. The 80386 laptop endowed runabout
making it's decisions under GW Basic was cornered and toolfucked into giving up a left side drive assembly
needed for the bat truck's steering actuator. That kind of thing just happens here.
Things are progressing slowly, but they at least are progressing. It looks like the war pig will actually move
under it's own power (albeit with a driver and not under any form of computer control) sometime mid summer.
Yes, just under 2 years behind my original schedule. In the spirit of optimism I ordered a set of personalized
licence tags that read "T3H G33K" which should arrive soon.
I've done a bit of work on the site today. The construction index finally links to several pages of photos -
some new - and short descriptions covering recent work, and a bit of general cleanup has been performed
about the place.
