Never, never, never, never give up.

-Sir Winston Churchill

I built my first LEGO NXT Robot meant for a robotic assignment in school. The objective of the competition is rather simple – pick the soda can at the other end of the competition arena, and place it at the opposite platform from where its placed.

Basically i wrote a line following program to enable the robot to follow the lines of reflective tape to where the can is placed. To account for the variable height of the platform, we built a claw mounted on a fork lift to adjust the height. A touch sensor is used to detect where the borders of the arena is, and where the platforms are.

Email me if you’re interested in finding out more, or if you want to have a look at the .rbt file. Video’s below. =)

For those who are interested in social enterprises and social entrepreneurship, below is a very good lecture given by Alexander Osterwalder, an Author, Speaker and Advisor on Business Model Innovation who writes at Business Model Alchemist.

Unknown Beach, Seattle, 2009, originally uploaded by tianglim.

Drove to a unknown beach town in Seattle during my USA trip in 2009. Took this while i was walking along the coastline.

A beautiful day it was. =)

Rainy days in Singapore reminds me of rainy days in the Emerald State.

Kings of Convenience @Mozaic Festival. Esplanade, 2010.

Raw acoustic goodness. Norwegian humor. How lovely indeed

“And he saw all the faces, the looking faces. And he saw the silent houses, with their silent people. And, in his singing, he wondered why was he the last one singing in the world. Why did no one else dance, open mouths, wink, strut, flourish? Why was the world a silent world, silent housed, silent faced? Why were all the people watching people instead of dancing people? Why were they all spectators and only he the performer? What had they forgotten that he always and always remembered? ”

- excerpt Massinello Pietro by Ray Bradbury

“Have you ever imagine – Dance like nobody’s watching; love like you’ve never been hurt. Sing like nobody’s listening; live like it’s heaven on earth.”

- Mark Twain

I was reading Ray Bradbury last night at 3am since i had trouble sleeping, and that particular paragraph moved me. Once again i was reminded about the joy of living and the thrill of being not-dead. Now, if we can live our lives like an adventure – turning uncertainties into curiosities and seeing failures as unplanned successes, Life ain’t that bad after all, ya?

Thus again, tonight i will like to wish myself, and my friends and family once again (just like Someone from a certain Fruit company said) -

“Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”

Cheerios.

“Silicon: Memories are made of this.”

- sub-headline of The Inquirer.net

“Design Thinking is a way to solve very difficult problems.” – Claudia Kotcha, Former Head of Design, Procter & Gamble

It’s interesting to find out that Design Thinking – a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result from fulfilling the customer’s needs and experience, is a form of Customer Development process in disguise.

Thus by employing Design Thinking in the product development process – using a customer-centric, inclusive approach, the Product Development Process is essentially a rather entrepreneurial process, and the Product Designer might just be an entrepreneur of sorts.