So, you think your ex is milking you dry, huh? Or that the child support money is being used to buy new Louis Vuitton handbags (I don’t know, is that a thing?).  You really want to stick it to that bitch, don’t you?  Or better yet, he’s got a good job and won’t pay for the kids’ fucking braces.  What a dick!  Whatever, I don’t judge, but I’ll walk you through the forms and give you less than savory advice.  Oh, and this is for California, USA.  If you live in Myposor on an island in the Caspian Sea, you best see the town elder about kicking a couple sheep his way.  Let’s get started.

How to calculate support ahead of time.

The great innovation about child support (or spousal support for that matter) is that nowadays it is determined based on a formula.  The judge can still override the formula, but that happens very rarely (I’ve never seen it) and only if there is a compelling reason to.  So you can realistically calculate it to within 20-30%.  Why the variance?  Because, for one, the formula is pretty complex and has many variables which most online calculators don’t really take into account. Plus, you don’t know what documents your ex is going to present to the court.  Let me save you the time and google the child support calculators for you.    

When to ask.

You are angry – I get it, but emotion is no reason to act foolishly.   If all the court orders are being adhered to and nothing changed in your situation, then you are going to waste everyone’s time and might be asked to pay for your ex’s legal expenses.  On the other hand, if you have the kids more now, or the ex is not sharing some windfall that you are entitled to, then by all means – the support formula is there to ensure fairness.

To the forms.

1. FL-300 -  this is a standard form for pretty much every court filing and the easiest.  What do you want to file?  Mark Modification, Child Support and/or Spousal Support checkboxes.  If you are asking for something else, also mark Other, then write See FL-310, point #9 (will be talking about it next).
2. FL-310 – this form wants the specifics of your request.  You should fill out the Child Support (point 3) and/or Spousal Support (point 4) sections.  Under the entry that asks how much the monthly child support should be…don’t be a douche and enter guideline.  This tells the judge that you are not a dick and want the money split to be determined fairly, by the aforementioned formula.  If you want something else (remember the Other checkbox from FL-310), outline it in point 9.  Point 10 (Facts in Support) is most likely the most important one.  Describe in mind numbing detail how you were so wronged by that pile of shit ex, ‘cause bitch so wrong…nevermind, just tell the judge what facts should be considered in changing your support.  If the form doesn’t provide enough space (because let’s face it – you suffered, baby), write your piece in the attached declaration – which is a ten dollar word for a  paper with words: I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the state of California that the above is true and correct at the bottom.  Sign and date the declaration.  
3. FL-150 – financial declaration.  This form tells the judge how much you make/spend and the financial situation you think your ex is in.  Make sure that the force is strong with you on this one because the temptation to lie on FL-150 could be overwhelming.  Sure, why not?  The asshole is living large and here you are, still walking around with an iPhone 3Gs.  How the fuck is that fair?  Take a deep breath.  There… I say, do not lie.  Why? Let’s put aside that whole “perjury” thing or, you know…, “morals”.  Nothing sinks your petition faster then when you get caught lying red-handed by the judge.  You see, the judges deal with liars like you all day and can smell bullshit a mile away.  You are not going to outsmart the judge.  Quite frankly, you are not that smart – why else would you ever need to come to this page.  Plus, your ex will be more than happy to keep you honest and point out to the judge what a lying sack of shit you are.  The other minor piece of advice is that when annotating your average monthly expenses, mark the `Estimated expenses’ checkbox.  At least, if you made an “inadvertent” mistake you won’t be on the hook for it.
4. L-1120 – if you are suing the crap out of each other elsewhere, you have to let the court know that.  That is what this form is for.

Outro

And that is all.  Make 3 copies of these forms, take them to the court house and submit them.  They’ll stamp one of these forms with a hearing date.  Pop that copy into an envelop, also add a blank copy of FL-150 and have someone else serve it to your ex.  By someone else, I mean not you and not your relatives – it has to be a 3rd party.

So I got this phone call today – it made smile from ear to ear.  A lady, will call her Shelly to protect the innocent, rang me up today and we ended up speaking for close to 20 minutes. She was nearly in tears, but I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face. I felt bad for her, and yet I nearly laughed.  I felt horrible about myself for feeling this way, but what she was telling me just sounded so damn hilarious for some reason.

You see, this ain’t the first time she called.  The first time, nearly 10 months ago, she introduced herself as a friend of my ex-wife, will call her Julia to protect the guilty.  She wanted to see whether there was anything…anything that could be possibly done to get Julia and I back together.  Why?  Because the divorce is bad for kids. And in the case of Shelly’s really nasty divorce many years ago, something snapped in her son’s brain and led to him being mentally challenged.  Because she liked our children so much, she was doing anything she could to get us back together.  This lady tried to get me to come and meet with Julia and work things out.  Shelly was just so unflappable – the divorce had to be reversed no matter what.  I was taken aback – but her sincerity could not be denied. She was a sweet old lady, very polite and kind.

During that first conversation something kept gnawing at me – Julia dislikes me intensely and I simply can’t believe that she would want to get back together with me (not to even mention what I want).  Later I asked Julia why she couldn’t simply speak to me about reconciliation and had to put up other people to it. Julia had absolutely no idea of what I was talking about.  Shelly called several times more.  I asked her whether Julia had put her up to this and after several attempts at non-answers, she finally broke down:  nope, Shelly, in conjunction with my mother in law, thought it would be a great idea. But…Shelly felt that Julia was ready to get back together. 

I tried to explain to Shelly what kind a person Julia is: dishonest, selfish, bitchy, moody, unethical, etc… I tried to tell her that there wasn’t a single person who helped Julia that didn’t regret it afterwards.  I gave her specific examples of what Julia has done and why it would be impossible for any man, not just me, to live with her. Shelly was unconvinced; to her, Julia was a wonderful young caring mother in a difficult situation.  After about two weeks of calling, she finally convinced me to meet for one hour (just before it was time to pick up my kids from mom).  I thought it would be a good way to get her out of my hair without insulting her.  The meeting never happened: the day after Shelly persuaded me to get together, Julia filed contempt of court charges against me (so ludicrous, they were dismissed without even a hearing).  I notified Shelly that I didn’t want to work things out with a woman that was trying to land me in jail.  At that point, the fruitlessness of her efforts became clear and I didn’t hear from Shelly till this morning.

Today the adjectives Shelly used to describe Julia were quite different: immoral, mentally sick, thief, heartless.  And Julia owed Shelly a ton of money…to be continued.

What is it?

So you got a psycho ex-spouse and that is what brought you here.  Congratulations – you are in good company.

Definition of ex-parte – there are many legal definitions that have nothing to do with what it is in practice.  The only definition that counts is this: you have an emergency and it can’t wait for the standard legal scenario (e.g. apply for a hearing, then wait for it for 3-4 weeks).  And by emergency, I mean emergency – if it isn’t, the judge might get upset and you don’t want that.

So what qualifies as an emergency?  For example, your ex-spouse is getting ready to take the kids out of the state/country – you are showing that you must take immediate actions to prevent permanent damage.  Or contrary to court’s orders your ex enrolled the children in a school in a different county (and the semester starts tomorrow!).  This is a true emergency.  Just ‘cause you lost your job and need to have your child support payments reduced is NOT an emergency.  In fact, child/spousal support matters are rarely considered an emergency. 

In addition, the best you could hope for in an ex-parte process is to get temporary orders.  These orders will last until a full hearing is convened on the matter (usually 3-4 weeks later).

So…how does it actually work?

Step by step:

1. You let the other party know full 24 hours ahead of your filing.  You will have to submit proof with your filing. Do take this to heart, because some judges will not take kindly to you bending the basic rules of fairness.  Plus if the other party lawyered up, you best believe that the attorney will bring this up. Really, really make it 24 hours.
2. On the day of your ex-parte, come to court early (at least by 8 am unless you want to stand in an insane line) and submit your paperwork to the court clerk (along with the aforementioned proof that you contacted the other party).  Bring 3 copies to court for a good measure.  And bring money…if your filing involves children it’ll probably be a fee of $100.  (If you are poor, ask for a waiver, but that’s a story for a different post.)
3. In addition to assigning a judge, the clerk will also schedule a full hearing on the matter (typically 3-4 weeks out).
4. The paperwork will make its way to the judge and when your ex-spouse shows up, you will be asked to give them an extra copy of your filing.  Your ex-spouse will be given 2-3 hours to come up with a written response.
5. The judge will NOT actually see or talk to you.  Some people think that just ‘cause they file stuff, they’ll get to talk to the judge.  That is incorrect.  Again, the judge will not talk to you during the ex-parte process.  So when will you get to say your piece to the judge?  During the full hearing (see step 3).
6. At some point, the bailiff will call you over and hand you judge’s decision.  You now have to live with it until the full hearing.

What forms?

So what forms to do you actually have to file?  This question generates the most confusion among the newly divorced.  The ones who have been at each other’s throats for a while just smile dryly.  It’s easy to understand the cause of confusion because the forms look scary and long and have a lot of legalese, but they are actually fairly simple. Follow along and I’ll tell you.

1. FL-300 -  this is a standard form for pretty much every court filing.  All it wants to know is who you are and what you want.  In the Order To Show Cause section, just check Other and write EX-PARTE underneath it.  This is going to be the easiest form you’ll see.  If you foresee your divorce dragging on forever, I’d save a digital copy of this form all prefilled for the next inevitable confrontation with the psycho that is your ex.
2. FL-305 – very important form in the filing.  It wants to know what temporary (until the full hearing) orders do you want the judge to approve?  Did you catch the temporary part?  Yeah, that temporary.  Think hard about what you want to happen in the next 3 weeks.  If this is a custody battle gone awry, always check the box that prevents the spouses from taking the kids out of the state and/or counties (you have to list them).  ‘Cause you never know.
3. FL-310 – super duper important form.  The form wants to know what permanent orders you want the judge to approve.  Your demands in this form will not be discussed today, but rather during the full hearing in 3-4 weeks.  However, this form has a very important nugget that you should put the most time in…and that is FACTS IN SUPPORT (point 10).  This is also known as a Declaration.  Your write-up here is what the judges base their decisions on.  Most of the time the space provided on the form is not enough and people attach extra papers.  Make sure and sign those extras.
4. L-1120 – enter all your related cases.  If you and your spouse are suing each other in another courtroom because one of you damaged the stamp collection – put it all on this form.  Even if the lawsuit makes you look petty – still put it on this form – the judges have all your cases on their computer screen.   You do not want to piss off a judge by being underhanded. 
5. L-1124 – remember when I told you that you’ll need proof that you notified the other party?  No?  Good, cause there is a form for you to fill out asking just that.  However, filling out is not quite enough.  Remember, lawyers love nothing more than to get the case dismissed on a technicality.  To defeat even the most resourceful ones, also submit proof.  For  instance, don’t just text the other party – also email them.  Write Proof of Service in large letters at the top of the page, then paste images of the text message and the email. 

And that is all – see, it wasn’t that hard.  Btw, you can get most forms here, google for the rest.

Advanced Tips and Tricks.

If you really need this…man, you are so screwed.  I think at this point you should call up your ex and see if you two crazy kids can patch things up – it’s just cheaper that way.  No?  Not convinced?  On to the list.

1. Invest in a good PDF reader/editor.  You’ll need it to fill out the plethora of forms you are about to have first contact with.  No, Acrobat Reader is not a good PDF reader.  I recommend Foxit Reader.  It’s free, but they have some add-ons that lets you mark up the documents.  I’d spend the money on those add-ons – they are super useful.  The application will actually prompt you when you are doing something that’s not covered by the free product.
2. PDF has a concept called Form Data.  It means that you can export all the boilerplate information you have to enter into each and every solitary form (name, address, etc.) and then import it into every subsequent form you fill out.  This saves time like absolutely nothing else.  In the Foxit Reader, this functionality is under the Advanced/Form Utilities menu.
3. We are all busy people and sometimes you need access to forms you’ve filled out, but you are at work, and the forms are at home.  Either put up your docs on SkyDrive, Google Docs or something similar.  Or use Dropbox, Live Mesh or a host other similar free products to share your documents across the internet.
4. Be organized – keep all your filings, forms, responses separated by folders.  If your ex-spouse serves you with a bunch of papers, scan them into a PDF – this has saved me several times.  Organization is half the battle.
5. In court, do not be led by your emotion.  The thing is that it’s your emotion and you can’t tell if others are feeling the same way – most likely not.  Be logical and analytical.  Judges are not swayed by hysterical outbursts.
6. Preparation is half the battle.  Spend the time and write detailed declarations and reference other, older court orders and documents (you know, judges don’t remember every single thing that was ever said).  For instance, write the following: “As noted in court order from 2/5/2011 (Exhibit A, page 2, paragraph 3)…”.  You see what I did here?  I saved the judge the trouble of trying to remember what the hell you are talking about and having to go through a 20 page exhibit looking for the nugget of information I am trying to bring up.  I led the judge straight to the source.  They appreciate this.  In fact, several times the judge commended me on the detail and  thoroughness of my filings.  This is where being organized comes in handy (as mentioned in point 4).

So you’ve turned on Screen Sharing on your Mac and now you want to control it from your Windows computer.  Quickly, you find out that you can’t use the Remote Desktop Connection because the Mac uses the VNC protocol. 

I downloaded the UltraVNC client and the results were less than encouraging:

• The connection was slow.
• Right-click did not work.  That is not 100% correct – it worked when you clicked the mouse wheel.
• Double-click didn’t work either.

Turns out you gotta do some tweaks to fix the last two (will get to the first problem later).  In the Options dialog, uncheck Emulate 3 Buttons, and check Swap mouse buttons 2 and 3.

Finally, after dismissing the Options dialog, check Save connection settings as default, before you click the Connect button. Otherwise, you’ll have to repeat this procedure every time.

Switching those 2 checkboxes solved the problem for me.  I was able to easily right-click on items and double-click them.  Somehow the entire setup felt faster too.  Speaking of speed, VNC feels a lot more sluggish than Remote Desktop and there isn’t a whole lot you could do to produce dramatic improvements.  However, there are some debatable gains to be had if you follow these simple rules (none of them will make you happy though):

1. Be on a fast network.
2. Don’t be on a slow network.
3. Reduce the screen resolution on the Mac.  Short of replacing your network, this will probably yield biggest impact.
4. In VNC Options, reduce the amount of colors to 256 or 8.  Of course, it will look like something out of the nineties, but it was (very) marginally faster.  The transferred byte count was smaller at least.
5. You can disable animations on the Mac to make it “feel” faster, but again, I didn’t like the result, though it did feel faster.  Just make sure you know how to restore the defaults later.

I think LEGOLAND is easily the best theme park in Southern California for kids 3-10.  Why?  The crowds are not nearly as large as Disneyland, Universal Studios and the like.  There is more for the kids to do.  It is flat out funner and more educational than any of the other theme parks in the area.

This is not a guide about what rides to hit up.  Rather, these are hard learned rules about making your visit really pleasant and insanity-free.  Here we go, in no particular order.

1. When driving from Los Angeles, there is a viewpoint several miles past San Clemente. Besides the fantastic view of the ocean, you’ll find that a huge family of squirrels lives right off the cliff.  They love crackers and take them right from people’s hands.  Bring some, the kids will love feeding them furry creatures.
   
2. If you are going to let your kids do face painting, do it after visiting the Pirates section (e.g. all water attractions).  Yes, learned the hard way.
   
3. Bring a bathing suit, seriously.  LEGOLAND has several water rides and your kids are likely to get soaked head to toe. 
   
4. To that end, park a small backpack on yourself.  This way you can carry all the stuff (bathing suits, possibly a towel, food the kids haven’t finished, etc…).  Make sure it has a small rubberized mesh pocket on the side (most do).  Why?  Go to next point.
   
5. Before you get to the water rides, you are likely to see The Garden Restaurant.  It’s by the entrance to Miniland.  If you get a combo there, you’ll get a drink in a nice and tight plastic container.  They have fountain drinks.  So you can get free refills all day there.  It’s central location makes it convenient.  Well, actually I don’t know if they allow free refills.  That is what I did and no one said anything.  Anyway, the deal with the rubberized mesh pockets on the backpack is that they are perfect for the drink containers.
   
6. When should u go?  Let’s start with when not to go: Saturday during the summer vacation.  This is kind of a no-brainer.  My favorite time to go is during the school year, when the school is having a day off due to a teacher conferences.  There are at least 2 or 3 each year.  Imagine spending no more than 4 or 5 minutes in line (worst case scenario) on ANY ride.
   
7. The food in the park is expensive, no doubt about it.  And the kids will surely get hungry, also no doubt about it.   So if you are planning to be in the park from 11 to 8, you need to plan it out so that the food cost doesn’t actually exceed the cost of the ticket.  So before getting to the park, stop at some restaurant and have a good meal.  Then have one filling meal inside the park and finish up with another one after getting out of the park.
   
8. If you are the type that brings food, you will likely have to leave the park and walk all the way back to the parking lot to your vehicle.  Try and setup the day, so that you only have to do it once, because it is quite a long haul.  Meanwhile, bring some snacks with you into the park (that’s where the backpack comes in) to tide the kids over till the trip to the parking lot.
   
9. Suntan lotion.  Bring it.  Summer or winter.
   
10. Height restrictions.  The park has various height restrictions for various rides.  If you have small kids, it is very likely that either you or an older sibling will have to ride with a younger one.  That is why it is advisable to have an even number of people in your party.  Believe me when I tell you that it is NO FUN to have go on a ride, that does nothing but go around, with each kid separately. 

I’ve decided to split out the Car Locator application into a free and paid versions. The free version will be ad supported.  The only functional difference between the two versions is that the freebie is missing the history feature (which basically gives you a chronicle of all your vehicle searches). 

Why?  Simply because a free app always gets a lot more eyeballs. And I am not really making an earth-shaking amount of money with it.   Plus I want to do more with the app – thus user feedback is important.  Now that Microsoft has announced the Mango version of the Windows Phone 7 OS, which includes features I’ve been wanting, I can take the app in a new direction.  Specifically, it looks like sockets are a “go”, so I can throw in a lot of peer to peer features, such as helping multiple lost people find their way via the application. 

Anyway, go get the freebie goodness. 

1. Watch out for sodium. Most likely your arteries are clogged, your cholesterol is high or some such thing. Sodium contributes to that, massively. You can probably find sodium-free or law sodium replacements for most of the foods that you eat. Case and point, you can get salt-free turkey at pretty much any deli of any supermarket.
2. Packaged food. Most packaged food contains massive amounts of sodium. Why? Because it allows the food to stay fresher, longer. As an extension to that, it can stay longer on supermarket shelves. Unfortunately, you’ll have to cut it all out. One of the biggest culprits – pretty much every soup sold in the supermarket. So forget Campbell’s, cook your own.
3. What to eat at fast food restaurants? Contrary to popular opinion, there is some healthy food at the fast food joints. Case and point: Asian Salad at both McDonalds and Jack in the Box. Or Skinless Chicken Breast meal at El Pollo Loco. Or, when at a Subway or any other sandwich shop, ask them to give you wheat bread, forget the cheese, mayo and oils.
4. Healthy Dining Finder. If you are really in a bind, just hit up the Healthy Dining Finder, enter the zip code and you are in. You’ll be surprised to see how many restaurants offer a somewhat healthy diet.
5. Cut out the mayo. So the mayo may not be the biggest contributor to your problems but it’s the canary in the mine. Just so that we are on the same page, one mayo packet from a typical fast food joint contains 11 grams of fat and 100 calories (99 of them from fat). And who only gets a single packet? Check out the caloric ratio pyramid for mayo and you’ll see what I mean. So, if you are eating this, you are probably eating other junk as well. Try dropping mayo for just a month and as long as nothing else in your diet changes, you’ll see the dramatic difference in your weight. Go crazy on mustard instead.
6. Say bye-bye to stressful people in your life. One of the least understood causes of cholesterol and heart problems is stress and yet practically all health care providers, from doctors to nurses, agree, just based on observation, that it’s a major cause. So this is a no brainer – just do it, you’ll be happier for it.
7. Exercise. Much has been written on this subject over and over again. The only thing I’ll add is that you do not need to run out and get a fitness club membership. Instead, make it a habit to walk about half an hour every day. It’s easy to get started. For instance, instead of driving to lunch, walk there.  Better yet, drive there with coworkers and then walk back on your own with an iPod in tow.
8. New diet. High cholesterol is likely to cause you some problems, maybe even kill you. That’s not enough motivation? And when I say diet, I don’t mean eat less, I mean eat differently. Dean Ornish, an accomplished researcher in the field of heart disease, has several books on this topic. My favorite is Reversing Heart Disease. It’s almost 20 years old, but really full of information that makes sense today as well. A lot of what he says about food just makes sense. He also spends a lot of ink talking about stress reduction – he does it with yoga and meditation – which is not my bag, baby, but you get the point. The coolest thing about the book are the recipes for healthy meals, which take up good third of it. The bottom line about Ornish’s recommendations: eat as much of vegetables, fruits and grains as you want to. Gorge yourself on strawberries and cherries, if you like them. With the dairy products, moderation should be used. With meats, fish and fowl, avoid as much as you can, if you can’t give them up. And forget about anything commercially prepared (yeah, Campbell soup, I am looking at you), that has more than 2 grams of fat per serving. Try and avoid anything with high-fructose syrup and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to lower your sugar intake too. I know this sounds daunting, but try this: buy yourself a ton of your favorite fruits (like cherries and mangoes) and whenever you are hungry just eat them. Give it a week and see how it feels.
9. Educate yourself. There ain’t no substitute for knowledge. Don’t walk around carrying ignorance like it’s a badge of honor – it does no one any good.
10. Medication. Yes, if all else fails, there is always Lipitor. But without other life changes, Lipitor is always fighting an uphill battle. As your doctor will tell you, the medication always works best in conjunction with other life changes.

That’s Not Funny on the Windows Phone 7

After the unexpected success of the ‘That’s Not Funny’ application on the Android platform and its spectacular failure on the iPhone, I thought I’d port it over to Windows Phone 7, and see how it does there.

The application is stupid simple and basically plays various sounds that could be used as a comeback for a bad joke.  As always, the app is free and is ad supported.

Ad Revenues

I released the app on 11/8/2010.  Initially the uptake was slow and the impressions increased over time from about 300 a day at the beginning to an average of a 1000 a day around DecemAber.  The ad revenues were about a dollar a day until about 12/18/2010.  Then, inexplicably, the revenue tripled even though the impressions remained the same.  Since then the impressions picked up a bit and so have the revenues.

So far, the application has made $99 in ad revenues, which basically covers my App Store fee. 

Charts

In addition, the application did pretty ok in the charts.  It reached #21 in the Entertainment category and #227 overall towards the end of year.   Currently, as of writing, it is #54 in Entertainment and #367 overall. 

Development Experience

Despite the app being pretty simple, there were a couple of things to learn.  I had to figure out how to use the List control, which is more complicated than it needs to be and really requires the Silverlight Toolkitgesture APIs to be useful.  In addition, there were the Media, Resources and Advertising APIs to pick up.  The emulator is significantly different from the devices, in particular, users reported that sounds loop, which never ever showed up in the emulator.  However, these are all small, easily fixable issues.

I’ve developed apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry before jumping on WP7 platform.  I have to say that Microsoft created a really fun development environment.  It is far easier to develop on it than any of the competitors.  It’s going to be successful.

After I upgraded my phone to iOS 4.x, it felt slower.  Not outright slow, but a bit sluggish here and there.   I chalked it up to the upgrade and just lived with it. 

Last week, my cable modem internet connection went out.  In blind panic, I decided to jailbreak the phone, purchase MyWi and use it to tether my laptop.  The jailbreak did not go so well.  For one the version of Cydia that is installed is actually for the wrong OS and won’t even run.  I am stunned that the jailbreak is even being offered – it is so useless.

So I tried to reverse the jailbreak, which made things even worse – my apps would not sync, the iPod app would not even start, the settings would not “take”, etc…complete mess.  I tried to restore from backup – it did not help.  So I figured I’ll just start from scratch. 

I restored the OS and when asked which backup to use, I selected no backup – in other words, a new iPhone.  And that is what I got.  After that I was able to sync all my apps, music, podcasts, photos, contacts, etc....  There was a bit more work setting up the email, but that’s about it.

The greatest thing about this is that the phone is really snappy now – it’s like I removed all the cruft it’s been saddled with.  Feels new.

I’ve been wanting to a build a robot for a long time.  The problem is that I can’t do hardware: when someone says, “well, just drop the electricity down from 5 volts to 3.3”, I am like what???  So when I saw the Robot Kit that can be programmed with a .NET MicroFramework, I knew I had to have it.  But I want more than just a disconnected programmable robot.  I want one that’s connected to the world.  I was inspired by brilliant folks at anybot.com and a belief that I can build one for a fraction of the $15k they want for theirs.

So to that end, my first project is to build a robot that’s can be controlled from the browser.  To make that happen, I needed the following:

1. The Robot Kit – purchased.
2. A Wi-Fi board – purchased.
3. A working, really low level, Web Server – more on that later .
4. A web app that’s served from the flash on the Robot Kit.

So a week ago I got the Robot Kit in the mail.  I put it together in about 20 minutes.  Installed all the necessary software (e.g. drivers, Visual Studio 2010, .NET MicroFramework, GHI Electronics libraries for the their chip).

Next, I plugged the robot in, created a small program (mostly taken from sample code), deployed it to the robot and let it fly. Here are the results of my effort.