He helped lay out uniforms, got water. He even gave a couple of kids shoulder massages. Creepy stuff like that, said Jim Haussler, activities director for the Bismarck Public School District.

After the game was over, the man joined the winning team on the court and asked if he could get a piggyback ride. One bemused player gave it to him.

He makes himself appear as if hes limited or handicapped. I think he plays an empathy card, so to speak, Haussler said. We didnt realize what we were dealing with until several days later.

What they were dealing with the night of Feb. 4 was the Piggyback Bandit Sherwin Shayegan of Bothell, Wash., a 28-year-old man who ingratiates himself with high school sports teams, then hoists his 5-foot-8, 240-pound frame onto the backs of the student athletes.

Shayegans antics stretch back to 2008 and had been mainly confined to Washington and Oregon. But since last fall, he has worked his way east to Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota, leaving a trail of befuddled athletes in his wake.

Shayegan has asked for piggybacks, attempted to pay for piggybacks and just sprung one upon an unsuspecting kid. He favors basketball games, but he also has leapt onto hockey, soccer and football players.

He has pretended to interview athletes for a term paper, acted as a team manager or just tried to blend in with the crowd for a piggyback payoff.

Why he does it is unclear, as is who came up with the Piggyback Bandit nickname that now follows him wherever he goes. Shayegan, contacted on his cellphone Tuesday, politely declined to speak of the piggyback rides until he could talk to an attorney.

Id prefer not to comment, if thats OK, he said.

Shayegan has a lengthy criminal rapsheet in Washington as well as nine outstanding warrants in one town in that state. Because of his piggyback antics, he has been banned from high school sporting events in Washington, Oregon, Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota.

Whats disturbing to me is that he is jumping on our young athletes, he is 240 pounds, and he can hurt someone, said Mark Beckman, executive director of the Montana High School Sports Association.

In October, Shayegan was arrested in Helena, Mont., for jumping on two unsuspecting high school soccer players during a state tournament.

Shayegan said something to a motel clerk in Helena that day that prompted the clerk to call police. A plainclothes officer went to the tournament and watched Shayegan jump on the back of a player.

Shayegan pleaded guilty on Feb. 1 to two misdemeanor assault charges. He was fined $730, given a 360-day suspended prison sentence and told not to go to any more Montana high school events.

Go back to Seattle and behave, Judge Bob Wood told him, according to the Independent Record of Helena.

Shayegan didnt listen. Just three days later, he struck again at the Bismarck basketball game. He also received a piggyback ride from a hockey player after a hockey game that same day.

That one-day spree led to Shayegan being banned from sporting events by North Dakota High School Activities Association executive secretary Sherman Sylling.

Later that week, Shayegan turned up at three basketball games in Minnesota, including the only college game where his appearance has been noted, St. Olaf versus Concordia. At that Feb. 8 game, Shayegan sat near the St. Olaf bench. Like the Bismarck game, it was assumed he had come with the other team.

I think at one point he was giving water to individuals, said Mike Ludwig, St. Olafs sports information director.

But he kept getting too close to the players, making one coach uneasy. Someone told Shayegan to back off, and he did, Ludwig said.

There were no piggybacks that night, nor were there any when he later appeared at high school events in St. Cloud and Minneapolis. The Minnesota State High School League joined the other states in banning him, with executive director David Stead writing that Shayegan Is known to cause a direct threat to the health and safety of student athletes and others.

Police believe Shayegan may have gone back to western Washington, where he has 16 convictions dating back to 2004 that include multiple counts of criminal trespass, vehicle prowling, resisting arrest and a felony possession of controlled substance without a prescription.

The western Washington town of Mount Vernon has nine outstanding warrants for his arrest, mostly for failing to appear in court or not showing up for work crews as part of a sentence for an earlier conviction. Police in the nearby city of Anacortes have issued a bulletin asking anyone who sees or contacts him to call 911 immediately.

Little is publicly available about Shayegans background other than his arrest record. Phone numbers listed for relatives rang unanswered, and messages left were unreturned.

One person who has known Shayegan for several years is Mike Colbrese, the executive director of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association. Colbrese said he became acquainted with Shayegan about seven years ago, when Shayegan was a common fixture at games and used to ask for work as a waterboy in state high school basketball tournaments.

He would just wander around. You wouldnt see him interacting with coaches and players when we were first aware of him, Colbrese said.

Nobody knew where he lived or what he did, Colbrese said. Eventually, he was viewed as an eccentric nuisance who generally bothered staff for jerseys or for a role at games.

Things changed in 2008, when Joel E. Ferris High School of Spokane won that years state basketball tournament and Colbrese spotted Shayegan hanging around the locker room after the game.

He was jumping on players backs after they showered and came out of the locker room, Colbrese said.

Washington high school sports officials stopped viewing him as an eccentric and started looking at him as a possible threat. For the past two years, there have been no reports of Shayegan at Washington high school games.

Colbrese said he is bothered by what appears to be Shayegans progressively aggressive behavior in recent months and warned officials in other states not to be fooled by his act.

Hes certainly socially awkward in any social setting. But hes also not afraid to approach people. It doesnt take very long to find out hes a little bit different, Colbrese said. What people dont realize is that hes very smart. He knows how to play the system. He just knows what to say and how to say it.

The Bure Valley Railway has once again run its popular Teddy Bear Express services this week and invited children to bring their favourite furry friends along for a ride.

Snuggly bunnies, huggable hounds and traditional teddies have been joining dozens of youngsters, parents and grandparents on the special services from Aylsham and Wroxham since they started running on Saturday.

Susan Munday, Bure Valley’s business manager, said the teddy bear services had proved a hit with children of all ages and had been busy today.

“It’s a nice family event and the feedback has been very good,” she added. “We have run it for a few years now and it’s quite a popular event and we get a lot of customers coming back.”

A teddy-bear spotting treasure hunt is being run along the line and the Bure Valley’s cuddly new mascot has been joining youngsters on board, while the Whistlestop cafe at Aylsham has been serving up toy themed treats.

? The teddy express service runs until Sunday, February 19. Trains depart from Aylsham at 10am, 12.40pm and 3.30pm and from Wroxham , 2pm and 4.40pm. Children accompanied by a fare paying adult and their favourite cuddly toy go free.

An infographic in the March issue of Fast Company highlights some of the advanced technology in Livestrong Sporting Park in Kansas City, Kan., which provides a testing ground for Sporting Innovations.

The reason for the attention might make the purest fans of soccer or, as they would call it, football cringe, but Kansas City-basedSporting Innovationsgets some significant inkin the March issue of Fast Companyon account of the work it has done at Livestrong Sporting Park in Kansas City, Kan.MLS club Sporting Kansas City knows not every one of its matches will be an instant classic, the article says. That doesnt mean it cant still keep fans entertained.

Sporting Innovations, which we covered at the time of itslaunch in September, is a sports and entertainment technology company spun off fromKansas Citys Major League Soccer franchise,Sporting Kansas City. The company was established with the mission ofenhancing the fan experience and delivering revenue growth opportunities for teams through integrated technologies.

The Fast Company spread illustrates several of those technologies with a sizable infographic (scaled down above, with a link to the full-size image).A few of the highlights:

• Tweets with the hashtag #sportingKC scroll on the stadiums jumbotron an incentive that has led to a 25-percent spike in Sporting Kansas City references on Twitter.
• The stadium was built with 30 miles of fiber optic wire and 200 routers to provide fans optimal Wi-Fi connections from anywhere inside its confines.
• QR codes on seats enable everything from check-ins to (coming soon) the ability to place pickup orders at concession stands.
• Advertising is targeted to specific clientele for instance, theres one type of car ad for the nosebleed seats and another for the luxury boxes using StadiumVision technology.

The Fast Company piece also includes the perspectives of a few fans who went to the stadium for a digital experience and were pleased to find a soccer game taking place. In that, theres a lesson for companies across all sorts of sectors about the value of providing a multitude of entry points for customer engagement.

Find the complete Fast Company story here: Livestrong Sporting Park Creates Games Within The Game For Sports Fans. For additional information on Sporting Innovations and Livestrong Sporting Park, check out the video below.

Credits: Graphic of Livestrong Sporting Park from fastcompany.com. Video from Cisco on YouTube.

This touring art exhibition aims at restoring the values of proverbs in modern society by rediscovering folk wisdom with contemporary art. There will be creative workshops and campus tours tomorrow and Saturday. Registration is required for the workshops and forum.

Until March 8, 10am to 6pm, Ngee Ann Cultural Centre, 97 Tank Road. Free admission. www.wisdombeyondborders.org

Tweet Jams

Twitter is a social media phenomenon that has taken over our phones and daily interactions with other people. Leading local bands Sixx and Syndicate will take audiences to the next level of social media interaction with Tweet Jams. Sixx will perform a selection of tweets collated for this original piece and perform their newest single Supersonic. Syndicate will showcase an audio-visual live tweeting experience like no other.

Today, 8pm, Lucky 13, #01-02 TripleOne Somerset, 111 Somerset Road. Free admission. To register, visit www.socialmediaweek.org/Singapore.

Kumars Amazing Race

For those who missed the show last year, this is your second chance to catch Kumar in action again. Whether it is about the Taj Mahal heroes or the all-encompassing Centre Mustafa, Kumar will tickle your funny bone with his own brand of stand-up comedy and singing. In his Amazing Race, Kumar will also reveal his own real-life stories and jokes on growing up in Singapore.

Until Feb 19, 8pm and additional 4pm show on Weekends, Esplanade Theatre. Tickets at S$45 to S$90 from Sistic.

Tongues – Sean Tobin and Jason Wee

When the air conditioner in the hospital breaks down, four bodies wake up at the morgue in anticipation of the afterlife. This interdisciplinary interactive piece explores the contrast, conflict and affinity between faith and sexuality. It highlights real-life confessions, reflections and imaginations gathered from people holding differing histories, beliefs and gender identities.

Until Feb 19, 8pm today and tomorrow, and 3pm on weekends, National Museum Gallery Theatre. Tickets at S$30 from Sistic.

Israel Houghton New Breed Live in Concert

Four-time Grammy-award winner Israel Houghton and his band New Breed will take you on a musical journey in this concert. With dynamic songs characterised by energised compositions and inspirational lyrics, Houghton uses his own multi-cultural upbringing to draw people of all races and ages together. His outstanding musicianship, where he seamlessly infuses instruments and languages from a variety of cultures, has garnered praise from both critics and music fans.

Today, 8pm, Singapore Expo Hall 2. Tickets at S$20 to S$100 from Sistic.

John Little Mega Expo Sale

Shop till you drop at the John Little Mega Expo Sale! Shoppers can expect great bargain and discounts of up to 80 per cent! From clothes to accessories and childrens toys, the sale has something for everyone!

Until Sunday, 10.30am to 10pm, Singapore Expo Hall 5. Free admission. www.johnlittle.com.sg and www.singaporeexpo.com.sg

Artist Tour and Workshop: Speakcryptic

Drawing inspiration from ancient Roman columns depicting military victories, street artist Speakcryptic creates murals that form a fascinating narrative of everyday life in Singapore. Join Speakcryptic as he shares these stories with visitors to The Singapore Show: Future Proof and conducts a workshop on street drawing. Limited seats.

Feb 18, 2pm to 3.30pm, SAM at 8Q, 8 Queen Street. Tickets at S$12 (includes admission to the exhibition) from SAM and Sistic. www.singaporeartmuseum.sg

He was one of the animals seen at an animal education day at Gloucestershire Animal Welfare Association and Cheltenham Animal Shelter. Ten youngsters were introduced to dogs, cats and rabbits all in need of a little extra TLC.

??Improvising funny dialogue over a video game seemed like a great concept to me, as many of us add our own comedy commentary to games anyways, but the guys behind Rooster Teeth Productions, who gave us Red Vs. Blue, took it to a whole other level.??

At first the Rooster Teeth gang had a whole site going, drunkengamers.com, which Geoff Ramsey, one of the shows producers, says was their attempt at getting game companies to send them free games to review. ??

And our genius plan was to review them drunk. We thought it would appeal to the alcoholics in our audiences, which we felt were burgeoning up. The game companies werent laughing, and they incurred the wrath of several. Believe it or not, companies like Nintendo dont necessarily want to be associated with a drunk Donkey Kong, Ramsey continues.

Yet a seed was planted within drunkgamers that would soon flourish. Burnie Burns, the chief writer and director of Red Vs. Blue, wrote a lot of game reviews for drunkgamers and he was their XBox guy. At the time, Halo was the only game available in XBox, so Burnie would record games, and put them online to teach people new tricks and strategies (it was actually the only serious section of drunkgamers). Then Burnie realized he could add voice-overs to the videos to make them funny. It slowly just kind of built into Hey we can build some kind of linear serial based story out of a video game, says Ramsey.

Red Vs Blue premiered appropriately enough on April Fools Day 2003. At first, everyone thought Red VsBlue would last a mere five or six episodes, but before anyone knew it, things took off in a hurry, and it was hard to keep up with the demand.

On drunkgamers, we were getting about 3,000 hits a day, says co-producer Gustavo Sorola. That was the height of success to us at the time, adds Ramsey. When we started Red Vs. Blue, we would have been happy if we got that many hits, Sorola continues. Within the first two or three days, we already exceed it, and its grown beyond anything I could imagine. After the second episode we started getting 25-30,000 unique hits a day, which kinda blew us away, Ramsey says. Then we realized there was somethin goin on here, maybe we should continue this.

Where at first the game companies didnt find drunkgamers terribly amusing, now with Red Vs. Blue they finally got the joke. It wasnt long before they heard from Bungie, the developers of Halo, which is owned by Microsoft. When we started we figured if they ever contacted us they were just going to shut us down and that would be the end of the project, says Sorola. But after we did I think our second episode we got an e-mail from them, and theyve been really supportive. They have every legal right in the world to shut us down, but theyve been great to us.

Sorola also adds, When we made our first video, we thought we were one of the first people ever to do it. Then later we realized people were doing it a long time before us. Years ago people made a lot of Quake videos with dialog, putting them on the internet. As of late, the hardwares really taken off, and its possible to do a lot more with video games. You can make videos on a home PC, so I think its becoming a lot more mainstream at this point.

As for whether Red Vs Blue could ever become a feature length film, Ramsey says, I dont know if our humor could stretch out over a two hour period. Our episodes are fairly succinct, and I dont know how well it would translate to long form entertainment. Thats not to say wed never do anything like that, but we operate two series right now, Red Vs. Blue and The Strangerhood. Theres five of us in the office, and it takes all five of us, 40-70 hours a week, just to put out two five minute episodes a week. So I dont know if we can handle anything else really!

The bill (H 1817) won the backing of the Committee on Transportation, which voted 8-0 in support with three members abstaining. The National Transportation Safety Board recently voted to recommend a total ban on handheld cell phone use in cars in the United States.

Under the bill No operator of a motor vehicle shall use a mobile telephone or mobile electronic device for voice communications, unless said telephone or device is being used as a hands-free mobile telephone. Drivers may defend themselves against alleged law violations if they show their car was disabled, a passenger required medical attention, police or firefighter assistance was needed, or if they witnessed an accident on the roadway.

The modern automobile is feature rich in electronic systems. These range from safety and control functions such as airbags, antilock brakes, and TPMSes to infotainment features integrating consumer devices such as phones and MP3 players into the car and navigation applications that not only provide directions but locations of points of interest, restaurants, and service stations. All such systems are governed by burgeoning numbers of microcontrollers (MCUs). High end (ie luxury) vehicles can have well over half a hundred MCUs.

This trend of growing MCU numbers (which drives up costs) is being countered in some quarters by a push toward greater integration of processing functions and sensors–resulting in fewer MCUs, but with multicore functionality, and sensors that serve several functions (ie a camera used for lane departure warning as well as obstacle detection).

However, like many of us have learned early in life playing with building blocks, a modular approach to certain problems can provide versatility in features tailored to how much functionality is desired for a given cost.

Modular TPMS: Affordable options
Lets take for an example a tire pressure monitoring system. These originally came about after a series of control accidents involving SUVs with under-inflated tires. Besides a safety benefit, TPMSes can also help drivers maintain correct pressures which increase fuel efficiency, thus cutting emissions as well.

Automotive OEMs can install two basic types of TPMS systems. The first might be termed a simple or low-level system, consisting of a basic pressure sensor in each wheel and a transmitter IC to send that pressure data to a central receiver. A low pressure reading from one of the wheels results in illuminating a warning light in the drivers instrument cluster–but does not indicate which tire is under-inflated. (From experience, such a system is all well and good in summer weather, but in harsh, winter conditions, one appreciates not having to manually take the pressure reading of each tire to find the under-inflated one, or ones.) The second, high-end TPMS would indicate the individual, problematic wheel–but requires more components (sensors) in the wheel.

Now the necessary transmitter and pressure sensor in each type of TPMS can be the same. However, if the sensors and transmitter are integrated into a single unit, then a high-end unit would contain components not needed for a low-level system and a simple system couldnt fulfill more complex functionality. Thus, having a modular system where the TPMS IC can be connected to any number of required sensors used in a high end system, or just a pressure sensor, offers flexibility without unnecessary added expense. In looking to the future, in a modular system, even the RF transmitter IC can be changed out in later production versions to accommodate any desired or required system frequency changes.

To read the complete article, including a discussion of the TPMS environment, different ways of monitoring pressure, and design examples, click here, courtesy of EE Times Europe Automotive.

Colubmia College juniors Chrissy Quinlan and Brad Hoffman, who both call Chicago home, created a game they titled, Colorfill, that challenges players to follow diagrams in a paint-by-numbers-like style to set up tiles in certain positions.  The 250 tiles are made up of 10 different colors, with the purpose being to create any of five designs, including a sailboat, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and, in honor of their hometown, the Picasso statue at Chicagos premier Daley Center.

We’d like to see people create their own designs, too,” Quinlan said. “We really wanted to emulate a Lego or Crayola so that it’s ‘open play.’”

The pair of college students won a contest put on by Marbles: The Brain Store for a group of Columbia students interested in creative game designing.  Marbles funded the students with a total of $2,000 for materials needed and used.  Marbles has stated a high interest in the college mind when it comes to ideas for future games.

The games had to be fun, original and mentally stimulating, since Marbles doesn’t carry Monopoly or Scrabble,” Hoffman said.

Marbles: The Brain Store has beaten the dull economy by appealing to the dull mind; in short, their stores message is, You need to keep your mind sharp.  The store stresses innovation that takes advantage of the steady demand of traditional board games.

Scott Brown, Marbles Chief Merchant and co-founder states, “We like taking traditional games and putting a twist on them.  We look for games like chess that take seconds to learn and years to master. And we like to see games that offer multiple levels of learning.”

Quinlan and Hoffman are marketing Colorfall as a game that allows people to exercise their creative muscles, visual perception, and small motor coordination.  Having now joined forces with Marbles after winning their contest, Colorfall lis expected to start development in March and appear in stores by early Fall. The estimated selling price is $40.