SparkFun Free Day 2012

You have to get past the Captcha to win… that’s what I understood.

Yes when you pass trough captcha you get message:
Try Again - Keep at it!
Try Again - Have another go at it!

If you fail you get:
Incorrect Captcha - Are you sure you’re human?

Or Try Again - No luck this time :frowning:

I tried for a minute or two and the amount that they have given away did not change. I think there are issue!

For me it changed from 19.000 to 25.000 since I started… so it seems to work.

@ Mike,

I don’t think the whole page refreshes when you get a new CAPTCHA. Just that part of the page. Try F5, and I bet the amount will increment.

Actually press shift and click the reload button. That will refresh the page to show the new amount. 28k right now.

A tip, free from me to you all…puncuation and case do not appear to matter.

Dozens of correct captchas later and without a win, lunchtime was over ;-(

Taking a break. This is great practice for touch typing, but the fingers, they do get tired.

::slight_smile:

Lol this is epic, yes its good touch typing practice! I wonder how much load is being generated on the servers.

Seriously almost 2hrs in and not even to the halfway mark. They need to adjust their range.

@ Skewworks…check the “What’s this about” link. Apparently they’re using some sort of geiger counter for selecting the winners. If you get the CAPTCHA right at the same time as the geiger counter senses a particle of ionising radiation, you win.

Definitely an unusual way to run a contest, and one that probably doesn’t give them a whole lot of control over the rate of winners. :slight_smile:

For me, no matter what I do the amount given away never changes on the captcha page. However, if I go back to the home page I can see the updated number.

This is almost as productive as getting stuck reading comments at the end of a blog post… :frowning:

D’oh! I never hit the homepage, so I didn’t realize you needed to be logged in. Hope I didn’t miss out during my previous attempts as a result. :frowning:

The latest Boulder, CO weather forecast calls for some ionizing radiation blowing in on radioactive dust from the (now closed) Rocky Flats nuclear arsenal between 1-3pm MT… Also, solar flare activity has been unusually high lately… anything to increase our odds, right? :stuck_out_tongue:

Got mine :smiley:

Congrats Skewworks! Just when I was about to close my browser for good to stop the insanity, you had to go and inspire me… :wall:

Haha sorry Ian. It was important; the entire family is going to build our first robot together.

Eventually it’ll be a hexapod but we’re starting with 4 limbs for now (because that many servos is just expensive)

We’ve got 13 servros; a claws; 5’ distance sensor; 2 different frequency radios (so controller and robot can talk back and forth to each other); and the whole thing will be powered by a Panda II on the robot side and either an Arduino or a Domino on the controller side.

Keep typing those Captchas!

Gratz Skewworks! Now you can add captch reading as a skill to your cv;) Remember the lucky one? :wink: