Eric Mack On-Line

This weekend, I took the Family to the RoboNexus robotics conference in San Jose. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to visit with my wife and children and to visit my mother-in-law in the hospital.

I took the M4 along for the ride on Amtrak's San Joaquin to Northern California; I wanted to test my new prototype Tablet PC stand. Here's the blog update from the train.



My new-and-improved second-generation Tablet PC stand won't give me splinters and it folds flat. So far, it seems to be working well, though travelling in car #3 is not as smooth as I would have hoped. Using a pen on a moving train can be tedious. (Admittedly, this blog entry was typed, not inked.) Thankfully, the M4's got a set of navigation buttons on the side.

For internet connectivity, I'm used my SprintPCS connection with PDANet for the TREO 650. I spent a few hours on-line; while it was not as zippy as an EDVO connection, it did the job nicely. Sprint's all-you-can-eat internet for $15/month allowed me to replicate Notes in the background throughout the trip.

I'm really looking forward to spending some time with the family, it's been a long time since we were all together. Amy and Wendy are doing research on undersea robotics for this year's US First Robotics Competition, so we plan to keep our eyes open for developments in this area. Things have been extremely busy lately. (What's new?)  I'll try to post some photos from the conference, as time permits.