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Giveaway: Free Tickets to This Weekend’s RoboGames, Featuring BATTLEBOTS!
By Great White Snark | June 10, 2009
Great news for the many among you who have dedicated your lives to becoming more like me: I’m about to make it a lot easier.
If you’re deliriously attractive, good at folding sheets of notebook paper into spaceships, and live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you’re off to a strong start. And now, you can be Just Like Me and attend this weekend’s RoboGames at San Francisco’s Fort Mason, courtesy of David Calkins, founder of the RoboGames, who has graciously donated two pairs of free tickets for GWS readers.
The RoboGames weekend is the “World’s Largest Robot Competition” according to the Guinness Book of Records, and is one of The Best 10 North American Geek Fests, as ranked by Wired Magazine.
And if that doesn’t sell you, check out my coverage of the hot BattleBot action at RoboGames 2008.
HOW TO WIN TICKETS: Two pairs of tickets are up for grabs, and there are two ways to win:
- Be the first in the comments on this post to answer this trivia question (courtesy of robot-mega-geek Mr. Calkins): “What propeller-based aircraft was fundamental to R2D2?”
- OR… Address a Twitter to @GreatWhiteSnark and tell me combat match-up you’d like to see between two robots from two different films or TV shows. I’ll pick my favorite.
I’ll get names from the winners and they’ll be able to pick up their tickets at will call at the event.
Good luck to you! And, please… if you see me at the event: keep the fawning to a minimum. My ego requires very little nourishment to stay inflated.
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Topics: Contests, Conventions and Events | 4 Comments »
Tags: Contests, conventions, Conventions and Events, giveaway
June 11th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
The original concept artist for Star Wars was Ralph McQuarrie who created artwork to conceptualize R2-D2 and C3PO. He worked for Boeing during the early 50s as an artist. During this time, Boeing made the 377 Stratocruiser before moving on to jet propulsion (707 and onwards). The front end of the 377 sure looks a lot like R2′s head.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_377
June 11th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Peter, I’m glad to give you a pair of tickets, based on your resourcefulness and the inherent Star Wars geekiness of your answer. Cheers.
This was the answer David provided, but the question wasn’t really fair, since it should have said something like, “What part of a particular propeller-based aircraft inspired elements of R2-D2′s design?”:
“A: reading lamps from Vickers Viscount 700 series. Three on R2′s dome (as holoprojectors) Also seen on the dashboard of both the Millenium Falcon and X-Wings (in Ep 4 only)”
June 12th, 2009 at 10:12 am
I loves me some BATTLEBOTS! I can’t believe the Battlebots are coming to SF and I’m gonna miss them!
June 16th, 2009 at 12:04 am
I’m so glad to hear they are still going! My Dad and I loved watching them when they were on TV. I wish they would broadcast them again.
If I ever get down to San Fransico I would love to see them in action.