After months of competing, the first MoonBots Challenge has come to a close with Team Landroids, a group from Livingston, New Jersey taking first place. The team is made up for five eighth-grade neighborhood friends named Karlin, Stanley, Brian, Gage and Jeffrey. The Landroids were captained by a dad: John Yeh. The winning team’s members are veterans of FIRST Lego League and are no strangers to science and robotic competitions. You can learn more about the Landroids and the protoypes they worked through by watching their documentary or visiting their Web site.

While the Landroids’ final run for the points makes the competition look easy (watch their video after the jump), it was anything but simple. All of their plans were nearly dashed as  problem after problem popped up for the Landroids. But in the end, all was good and the Landroids emerged victoriuous.

Master Lego robot builder and MoonBots judge, Steve Hassenplug, talked about what set Team Landroids apart from the others. “I am very impressed with the results from all the finalists.  Clearly all the teams worked hard and had a great deal of fun, but it appeared Landroids approached the competition with a level of professionalism unmatched by any other team, and they truly earned first place. I enjoyed the opportunity to judge the excellent work the teams did.  They were all very impressive.”

Also recognized were the Shadowed Craters, who captured second place, and Team Moonwalk, which grabbed third. The Shadowed Craters were profiled here a couple weeks ago and are from the Miramar area of San Diego. Team Moonwalk is another New Jersey team (with part of the team hailing from Connecticut).

Anousheh Ansari, another MoonBots judge, commented on third place winners, Team Moonwalk: “Two things stood out for me in this team. One was because they used their technical knowledge to outline the scientific benefits of space exploration but also looked into the social benefits of space exploration and the opportunity for different nations to collaborate and create a lasting peace. This was one of my personal experiences on my flight to ISS. This collaborative aspect of space is what most people forget about.”

The long road to the finals began with more than 200 applications from around the globe, but mainly located in the United States. These teams were tasked with creating a documentary about their team, creating a prototype using Lego Digital Designer, Google Sketchup or LDraw and create a Web site to share information about their team.

From there, the field was narrowed down to 20 teams for Phase Two. (You can review the documentary entries from the top 20 teams who made it into Phase Two here and here.) These Phase Two teams were given Mindstorms kits and a set of objectives to complete within a three minute time period. Based on the team’s performance and some other criteria, a winner was chosen by a panel. Judges for this final phase included Anousheh Ansari, Steve Hassenplug, Dean Kamen and Jeff Kodosky.

“Congratulations to all of the MoonBots winners and finalists,” said Jeff Kodosky, Cofounder and NI Business and Technology Fellow at National Instruments. “NI is proud to join with all the other MoonBots sponsors and partners in this incredibly innovative challenge that will help advance science, technology, engineering and math education throughout the world.”

Team Landroids will enjoy  the grand prize of a trip to Billund, Denmark to visit Lego headquarters, as well as a  kit and registration for either FIRST Robotics FRC or FTC. The Shadowed Craters receive a 64GB iPod Touch for each team member and a kit and registration for FIRST competition. Team Moonwalk receives a kit and registration for a FIRST competition too.

Thanks to all teams who entered. Every team did a fantastic job, according to William Pomerantz, Senior Director of Space Prizes for the X Prize Foundation. “The work these students did this summer was truly spectacular. The mission very closely paralleled the work our Google Lunar X Prize teams were doing, so we greatly enjoyed watching those technical challenges worked out on a different scale. The new era of lunar exploration is being built on the contribution of people of all ages and nationalities, and it is clear that the MoonBots participants have what it takes to make important contributions.”

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Photo by Wil Wheaton's friend loren.

Perry White has his “Great Caesar’s ghost!” Doc Brown has his “Great Scott!” Fallout Boy has “Jiminy jillikers!” And the characters in the Harry Potter stories are fond of “Merlin’s beard!” Yes, a good, solid swear phrase is always good to have ready for those times when you feel the need to yell, but don’t want to say anything inappropriate in front of young ears.

Here, then, are ten geeky oaths that, to our knowledge, have never been used before. We offer them, royalty-free, to the geek community at large. Use them in good health, with or without a “great” in front of them (which you should probably reserve for extreme situations).

1. “Riker’s beard!” – It really was hard to take Jonathan Frakes seriously that first season of TNG, and it wasn’t entirely because his uniform was a bit too tight. He just looked a bit too much like an overgrown boy scout, and the beard really did help a lot. We think that makes it a suitable subject for swearing.

2. “Cesar Romero’s mustache!” - You know, the one he refused to shave off to play Joker in the old Adam West Batman TV show and movie, so they simply covered it up with white makeup and hoped for the best.

3. “Coulton’s Zendrum!” - If you’ve seen JoCo play “Mr. Fancy Pants” in the last few years, you know what we’re talking about. If you haven’t, seek enlightenment.

4. “Wheaton’s clown sweater!” – Need we elaborate? We didn’t think so.

5. “Bard’s arrow!” - If you’ve read The Hobbit, you get the reference. If you haven’t, what in the wide wide world of sports are you waiting for?

6. “Fozzie’s necktie!” – Not only is it remarkable because it’s one of the only two items of clothing he typically wears (the other being his hat, naturally), but it’s also integral to one of the funniest gags on The Muppet Show (naming or linking to the joke would spoil it).

7. “Boba Fett’s rocket pack!” – On the one hand, how awesome would it be to always have a rocket pack on your back in case you need it? On the other hand, it does sort of end up not being the best idea for poor Boba, doesn’t it?

8. “Superman’s underpants!”- Seriously, if you’re the most famous superhero ever, why would you go around with your underpants on the outside? Especially when you can hear pretty much everyone who makes fun of you, no matter how quietly they whisper?

9. “Wolverine’s claws!” - No explanation needed, we hope.

10. “Shatner’s hairpiece!” – Bill, really, we love your hammy over-emoting, and especially. Making fun. Of it. But when you’re in your forties and actually gain hair in between movies, nobody buys it.

Any other good ideas out there? Leave a comment.

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Image: Discovery Channel

It’s always nice to discover something new that you’d never heard about before, and immediately know that you’ll love it.

When I was younger, I spent hours playing The Incredible Machine, and have played various other contraption building games since then. Recently I learned about Whizzball!, Discovery Channel’s contraption-like game. The idea of the game is to create a path for a ball to follow where it will then hit a target. It’s harder than it sounds. Discovery has a free version on their website, and they also have a paid iPhone app. I have played with both, and both have their advantages and disadvantages. But both are fun and challenging, with a lot of replayability. I highly recommend them.

I first played Whizzball! on Discovery’s website. To play, you enter a username but no password, so if you want to play on a different computer, you’ll need to create another login. The site also lists your total score, and your ranking among players. From what I can tell, there are no official puzzles listed on the site, just options to design your own puzzle or to solve the puzzles made by others. There are hundreds of puzzles created by other people, so chances are you would never run out. They range from very easy to very hard, but the quality varies widely. Fortunately there are also puzzle ratings.

Where the website excels, however, is in creating your own puzzles. This is much better on the website than in the app because the screen is bigger, and you can use a mouse and be more precise. It’s much easier to move pieces around when you don’t have to attempt to see around your finger.

Next I played with the Whizzball! app. The graphics in the app look much nicer than those on the website. Your options here include playing community puzzles and creating your own puzzle, but you can also play the 30 official built in puzzles. Though they range from very easy to very hard, once you get to the medium level they are not trivial. You really have to think in creative ways to come up with solutions. There are also better ways to search for puzzles created by others. You can filter by rating, difficulty and date. This is much better than on the website, where you could merely sort by column.

Sometimes on the levels that are medium and up, you have to create a route where the ball runs through pieces more than once, using them in different ways, and coming at them from different directions. This intricate planning ahead can be hard for those of us that don’t play chess. It can be hard to plan that many moves ahead. So for these kinds of puzzles, I usually just put what fits where and then tweak it.

There are plenty of clues built into the game play. Since you can’t rotate pieces, their available orientation gives a hint as to how to use them. Also, the shape and orientation of the available spots on the board give you a clue. Sometimes certain pieces can only go in certain spots. So if you get stuck, start putting in the obvious pieces and see what is left. If you still aren’t sure what to do next, click for a clue. After a confirmation from you, this will spend one help token. The game then drops a piece into the proper spot, removing any others that happen to be in the way. Different levels have different numbers of clue tokens, with harder levels giving you more. Fortunately, if you use up all your clue tokens and you still can’t figure out how to solve the puzzle, it takes mercy on you and doesn’t leave you hanging. It will show you the solution. You get no points for that level, but at least you can move on.

The most obvious drawback to the app is that it is hard to see around your finger. You’re trying to place pieces in specific spots, and if you don’t get it just right, you have to try again. This is particularly hard for the pieces that are one unit in size. In addition to this difficulty, there are some odd quirks to the game.

The first odd quirk I noticed is that if you finish a level and then quit the game, the next time you start it up you have to go back to the most recent level and re-run the ball, or the game thinks you are trying to skip a level. This only seems to happen some of the time, however. Fortunately, this doesn’t really affect game play.

Another oddity is that, on some levels, if you make the ball hit the target without having it first run through all the pieces, it says something to the effect of, “Great job! But now go back and solve it using all the pieces.” They penalize you for efficiency! But on some levels, it has allowed me to finish a level without using all of the pieces, and it has also let me finish a level with all the pieces on the board, but without the ball running through most of them. I’m not sure what they intended here. Is it a bug or a feature?

Beyond these unusual behaviors, I came across one legitimate bug. I couldn’t solve one of the medium puzzles and asked for a clue. It placed a two unit piece on a one unit spot, with part of the piece hanging over the edge. When I later accidentally moved that clue piece, I couldn’t put it back, since it wouldn’t fit. I hope they fix this bug in a future update.

This is not a casual logic game. The directions and rules are easy, but these puzzles get hard quickly. While anything not tagged “Very Easy” might be too much of a challenge for small kids, certain kids will enjoy designing their own puzzles just to play around with them. My six year old son has spent many hours doing just that. Some of his creations have been very complicated. Designing or solving these puzzles encourages logical thinking, design skills and learning about cause and effect.

WhizzBall! costs $1.99 in the iTunes store. While it is free to use on their website, you don’t get access to the official puzzles. The app is a great game for on-the-go.

Wired: Tests your skill and cleverness with spacial relations. Create your own puzzles for enjoyment’s sake or to quiz others.

Tired: Has a few bugs that can be confusing, but they don’t usually affect game play.

Note: I received a free copy of this app for review.

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Phil Plait fires a laser at a faux comet. Photo: Discovery Channel.

I had the opportunity on Thursday to interview Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer and host of the new TV show Phil Plait’s Bad Universe. I had a great time talking with him, and, since the show premieres tonight at 10pm ET/PT on the Discovery Channel, I thought I’d share a partial transcript of our conversation.

If you haven’t yet, you should read my review of the premiere from Friday, because without an understanding of what the show’s about the interview may not make as much sense. And I should mention again that this is a partial transcript only, as we chatted for more than 45 minutes. I thought many of GeekDad’s readers might not really want a complete transcript of, for example, the two of us simultaneously Googling to try to find details of an L.A. Law episode.

Which reminds me: In the premiere, you’ll notice Plait saying “Holy Haleakala!” a number of times. If you’re a regular reader of his blog, you’ll know that he uses it there every so often, but he’s never explained where it came from. He told me he’s pretty sure it came from an episode of, yes, L.A. Law, in which (he thinks) Douglas and his ex-wife are getting back together and are on vacation in Hawaii. If you can confirm or disprove this, and especially if you have a clip, please leave a comment here.

And now to the interview:

GeekDad: What kind of ideas and in what kinds of science do you want to cover in the show, if it gets made into a series?

Phil Plait: It’s not like we’re ever going to run out of ideas. These three episodes were loosely – well not even that loosely – but were fairly well based on my book Death from the Skies!, from a few of the chapters in that book. But this sort of show can be broadened easily into all kinds of science. […] There are a million things we can test – and it’s not just testing: it’s exploring, it’s experimenting, it’s demonstrating. […] I am an astronomer, and I’m most comfortable in that area of science. On the other hand, I’m a voracious reader of science, and a huge consumer of popular-level science books, magazines, blogs, whatever – TV shows – so everything about science fascinates me.

GD: Of course a hosted science TV show invites comparisons to Carl Sagan. Sadly, he’s no longer with us…

PP: He set the bar for this sort of thing. On occasion – it’s very flattering – on Twitter, through e-mail, or whatever, somebody will say “You know, you’re the next Carl Sagan.” And I just have to laugh and say “No. No, I’m not.” And my mom says that, too: “This blog post you wrote was not the way Carl would have done it.” And it’s like “No. No, it isn’t. But I’m not Carl Sagan.” I wear my nerdiness on my sleeve – if I can make a Doctor Who reference, I will. In Bad Universe, there are actually several Star Trek references. […] I can’t see Carl Sagan doing that so much – he was very academic, very high-level, highbrow, and he did it beautifully. I mean, who wasn’t influenced by Cosmos if they’re my age?

GD: When you were talking about comets, I kept expecting you to mention Tunguska.

PP: This is one of those times when, you know what, it’s a TV show – we have 42 minutes. And we actually filmed some terrific stuff about Tunguska, which was an impact in June of 1908 over Siberian swampland. And we think it was a chunk of a comet or a rocky asteroid that blew up several miles in the Earth’s atmosphere, detonated with a 15-20 megaton yield. It was like blowing up a 20 megaton nuclear weapon. And it flattened the forest and set it on fire, and it was a tremendous thing. And in the end, we just didn’t have time to put it in. It was a segment that was several minutes long. And in the end, even though it was really cool, it didn’t add enough to what we were already saying to make it worth the sacrifice of that much time. This is the difference between being a scientist – being a blogger and an author – and hosting a TV show, creating a TV show. I can write as much as I want on my blog, except that people start losing interest if you’re writing a 15,000 word article. And in a book I can take an extra four or five pages to talk about Tunguska, and I do in my book. On TV, you have to make tradeoffs.

GD: I was going to ask about the lack of actual pictures of asteroids and comets. I mean, the CGI was beautiful, but…

PP: There are just times when it doesn’t work, when you say “That just doesn’t show what we wanted it to show.” One thing I did not want to do – I won’t name names, but there are a lot of astronomy documentaries, series and otherwise, that just sit there and throw graphics at you. And a lot of times the graphics have nothing to do with what they’re talking about. But even when they do, it’s overload – and the one thing I said, when the production company sat down with me, I said “I’m not making another show like this one, this one over here that we’ve all seen, that is simply those interviews with astronomers where they’re just looking off camera and answering questions. And it’s just graphics, graphics, graphics. Because what happens is, you watch the show, and it’s cool – you see a lot of nifty stuff – and you walk away thinking “That was nice,” and then the next day, if I were to walk up to you and say “Tell me three things you learned from that show,” you’re not going to remember a damned thing. I want a show that has a host, that has a host who knows what he’s talking about for the most part, and I want people to see that I love this stuff! I live and breathe and eat and sleep science. I love it! And if I can excite them about it, that’s what I want. I want them to understand what we’re talking about. And so I don’t want to just throw stuff at them that’s all short-attention-span theater. I mean, there is some of that, and sure, we’re blowing stuff up because that’s fun, and in this particular episode it makes sense. But we’re not going to blow stuff up in every episode. […] I want to take the viewer by the hand and say “Come with me – this is cool!” and have them nodding their head afterward going “That was cool, and I remember that, and this is why…”

GD: I think you definitely accomplished that in the pilot. I loved that you were doing hands-on stuff. Because when you think astronomy, you don’t really think of hands-on stuff.

PP: Exactly. There’s a lot of stuff we can do when you have a host that you can’t do with a voiced-over show. The real thing is, the name of the show is not “Bad Universe” – the name of the show is “Phil Plait’s Bad Universe,” because it’s being told through the eyes of the host. You know, I didn’t come up with the name – it’s what the production company and the network agreed on, and of course I love seeing my name on the screen because I’m a huge monomaniacal egotist, but in reality the point is that this is personal. You know, Cosmos was called a “personal voyage,” and I want this to be personal as well – I don’t know if I’d call it a “voyage,” but it’s certainly a journey, as told through the point-of-view of an actual living, breathing person who loves this stuff. That was the whole point.

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