Like a small bee swarm, the Basic High School robotics team descends on physics teacher Mark Reed’s classroom. They push desks to the periphery, lay out plastic tubing and wood panels, and puzzle over how to conjure a ring like those used at the VEX Robotics Competition, their Super Bowl.

Chief technological thaumaturgist, Ideabox Media Group Inc., developer of automation systems for homes and businesses YOUR PERSONAL STYLE? My personal style is best described as a “multitool” without looking like one.

Colson Whitehead’s The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death (Doubleday, $24.95) is the latest big memoir about playing in the World Series of Poker.

With a personality to match his flavors, Mike Minor is unleashing his own brand of Mexicue on the massesIt’s late afternoon in downtown Las Vegas and Mike Minor is ready for throngs of hungry locals and tourists to flood the streets at First Friday. Standing inside his new food truck, TruckU Barbeque, he waves a spoon in my face.

02 Alisha KerlinClark County Government CenterRoadrunners: zippy, darty, a blur of motion! What if, artist Alisha Kerlin wondered after seeing a roadrunner doorstop at a swap meet, you turned them into heavy, immobile sculptures with overtones of Italian futurism? That’ll put some meep-meep in the Rotunda Gallery! Roadrunners that Won’t Run Far shows through July 25 in the Clark County Government Center, 500 S. Grand Central Parkway.

Polaroid that is. At the Las Vegas Camera Club the once-obsolete photo system enjoys a new snap. Get the full picture!

It’s easy to get lost in Las Vegas — well, not get lost, exactly, but lose touch with a sense of place. If the Strip riotously channels everywhere but here, the cityscape that flanks our neon lagoon insists on placelessness: It can often present itself as, at best, a suspiciously Southwestish melange of strip malls, tract homes, weedy lots with political billboards.

Tucked into the heart of the Arts District, Rock’N’oodles is tiny — maybe five tables inside and out — but their ambitions are grand. Rock’N’oodles serves pasta inspired by world cuisine, from a tikka masala plate to a Southern barbecue chicken bowl to a spicy chipotle concoction.

The highway we know today as I-15 got its start as a rough, raw, dusty — and sometimes dangerous — road. (Keep an eye out for horse thieves)Interstate 15 is an umbilical cord to Southern California, bringing countless party-minded tourists and profit-driven business trips from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

Awards: Honorable Mentions | Smartphone | Landscape/nature | Artistic/abstract | People in the moment | Places | Grand prizeWelcome to Desert Companion’s second annual “Focus on Nevada” photo contest. A quick note before you feast your eyes on the pages of terrific imagery that follow: This year, to bring a heightened mojo to these proceedings, we enlisted a cohort of judges — folks whose aesthetic sophistication jumped the decision-making process to a new level.