This looks quite interesting… Sorry for the delay on it, the press release is from January 12, but I’ve been away from blogging for a bit.

ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc. has donated $50,000 in support of the FIRST Waterloo Regional student robotics competition which will be hosted by the University of Waterloo, March 24-26.

FIRST designs accessible, innovative programs to build self-confidence, knowledge and life skills while motivating young people to pursue opportunities in science, technology and engineering. FIRST inspires in young people, their schools and communities an appreciation of science and technology, and how mastering these can enrich the lives of all.

More information about the competition is available at University of Waterloo FIRST Regional website.

Links to 2005 FIRST Robotics Competition Documents (pdf).

One of my previous co-op terms was one of ATS’s competitors, Meikle Automation. I worked with their machine vision software in the Photonics department. I was quite impressed with the amount of effort and the resulting machines that their engineers designed and built.

Found via the University of Waterloo News Releases, who’ve had an RSS feed up for a while now.

Since I’m basically to the point now where sites that don’t have an RSS feed are invisible to me, any site that does have one is at a much greater chance of stealing some of my attention. With the notable exception of my class web pages I cannot think of any web sites I consistently visit that do not have an RSS feed. I still goto specific sites for specific tasks, such as finding a location or when I need to dig into a database somewhere, but generally much of the information I am looking for is available in the blogosphere.

My class web pages don’t have any RSS feeds, which would allow me to receive timely updates. Instead, I have to manually check the page and often class newsgroups for information. Newsgroups are actually pretty useful, and for some classes the traffic is quite high. Maybe I will setup a newsgroup-to-rss feed for each of my classes. Hmm, I could even setup one for anyone who wants to RSS feed any of the UW groups.. hmm.. Well, that idea is added to the ‘to do’ list for now, as I still have other priorities to attend to before another recreational coding project. Well, semi-recreational, it would have purpose. I could even scrape the class web pages into RSS feeds that update when the page is updated, but that’s even lower down on the list right now.