Research on the web, and you can find sites like this one, which sells 5 basic robotic parts:

1. Sensors - for constructing “intelligent” robots which can detect and react to their environment
2. Microcontrollers - the brains of the robot
3. Motors - for motion
4. Electronics - motor controllers, cables, LCDs etc.
5. Communications and Control - so robots can talk to each other and to a base station

So, it seems robot parts are for sale on the web, so what am I on about? What I’m really talking about is this short list:

1. Arms
2. Legs
3. Feet

This may sound juvenile, but in my mind if a geek could assemble from parts a humanoid robot - standing approximate 5 feet tall, able to walk upright and manipulate objects without crushing them, and equipped with basic vocal communication (Yodaspeak, for example) - geeks would eat it up. And the pricepoint could be in as much as the price of a car. How big is the aftermarket for car parts for mechanical engineering geeks? The same could exist for robotics geeks.

Imagine downloading an Android app for your robot that made it able to manipulate a home vaccuum cleaner so that it would push it around your flat every few days? Or imagine an app that taught your robot how to wash the laundry. Many of the everyday mundane tasks we perform to live our lives are simple enough to teach a machine to do, right?

What is Needed

Basically, somebody has to come up with a standard. Joints have to be spec’d out, along with interfaces with respect to voltage and a data standard (USB, anyone?) Where do the bolts go? How big around is the coupler? Once this is done, we’re off to the races!

Community Cooking

I could smell what people were cooking in their houses. Could there be a way where everyone could taste the dinner of everyone else? Could we all login to a web service and offer up ‘an extra helping’ of Beef Stroghanoff or Beef Enchiladas or Chicken Cacciatore for cost plus a small fee? Could the entire neighborhood find themselves cooking for others and making a tidy profit, such that when you cook at home, the service pays for the materials out of your exchange profits?

Hive messaging

Could there be a way to be able to text the guy next to you anonymously without meeting him first? Perhaps everybody would be registered with a service that tracks our sms/mms handle, photo and GPS coordinates, so that you could launch the app on your phone and be able to pick the stranger next to you and sms “Hello” to him? I see this as more of an advancement in civilization than just a new service. But, just like the guy who tries to remove a screw with a hammer because all he knows is the hammer and thus, to him, everything looks like a nail, I’m solving this problem with a web service. So I can see a weakness in my solution. But surely there’s an excellent solution to this.

The creature, if you could call it that, was very nearly transparent. It floated through the sky like a giant condom filled with a now cloudy and then clear, undulating fluid. There were no structures visible within it’s external membrane, nothing that a modern biologist would recognize anyway. Inside, it was a total mystery, but outside, across it’s skin, it was covered with a slick, shimmering layer of hydrofloric acid at such an amped up concentration so that it would eat through living flesh almost instantly.

Richard never saw it descend. He did not even feel it slap against the right side of his head, with the diffuse force of a wet t-shirt. And he did not feel it when the slurry it left all over his face and neck ate through his skin and hair and dissolved blood, flesh and muscle in a half a second. He did feel a warm, dull pain as the boiling acid began to eat through his skull, but mercifully, by this time he was gone, lying limply in the street beside his lawn mower.

Richard spent the first third of his life flunking through grade school, working odd jobs, meeting his loving wife. He spent the next third of his life welding for the Santa Fe Railroad and siring four unremarkable children. He spent the last few minutes of his life gasping through two new holes in his neck until he stopped breathing altogether; his head had all but disappeared, transforming into a black and dark crimson boiling plasma.

Pauline heard a loud thud outside the kitchen door. She looked up from her newspaper, saw nothing of interest through the door’s curtained window, and turned back to the editorial about the corrupting power of money in politics. The sound thumped again, this time twice as loud. She frowned, folded the paper and placed it beside her half-eaten piece of toast, slipped on her houseshoes and shuffled towards the door. She peeked through the window and saw nothing at all.

Pauline opened the kitchen door with mild disgust. If that stupid mutt from across the street was digging in her azaleas again, this time she might grab a shovel and, God help her, she might just do something about it. She might just brain the bastard. But she saw nothing remarkable across her sideyard nor in her neighbor’s yard. Then she looked down. She saw something that immediately struck her with disgust and revulsion so shocking that she nearly lost her breakfast that very moment. Sitting atop the doormat was a truly ugly sight. When she was a child, she vividly remembered seeing a large dead dog sitting between two lanes on the interstate, with most of his skin torn off, surrounded by a cacaphony of gorging flies. This thing was easily more disgusting than that poor dog.

The creature rose up and lept in the air. It landed across Pauline’s chest in a “whump!”, knocking her off her feet and into her kitchen. She was dead before she hit the floor.

Chad saw the creature on Ms Pauline’s kitchen stoop. He was sitting on his behind in a soft patch of dirt, digging roads through the soil with his Hotwheels cars and making a boisterous “vrroom!” sound as the cars sped by. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the glimmer of the creature sitting on the doormat. Then he saw it rise up and slam against the kitchen door. He was at once, both fascinated and scared. He gathered up his Hotwheels and put them in the front pocket of his bib overalls, and rose to a kneeling position, never once taking his eyes off the creature. It crashed against the door again, and he rose to his feet.

Then the kitchen door opened and Pauline stepped out. Chad screamed in horror as the creature flew at Ms Pauline, knocking her backward into the kitchen. He stood in shock as the door stood open. He did not breathe, He stood frozen and numb. Then the creature came out of the door again, floating in mid air. Chad dove as fast as he could behind a boxwood shrub and peered out, shaking from head to toe. The creature flew the other way, and Chad finally exhaled.

Be Good to Yourself

Get plenty of sleep. Get three decent meals every day and don’t carb up and don’t eat because you’re bored and don’t eat crap. On a typical commercial street in a typical city there are about 10 restaurants. Get used to the fact that you can never eat in 80% of them - ever. McDonald’s has nothing for sale for you if you care at all about your health. A few cliche’s come to mind: don’t dig your grave with a spoon and eat to live, don’t live to eat. Above all, don’t let your all-consuming, never-ending cluster-fuck of a job cause you to compromise on your health. It’s not worth it.

Be Honest About Your Abilities

You may think telling your supervisor that you can do some technical task that you’ve never done before is a great career move. While she’s not looking, you can hit the web and learn how to do it in a flash and produce something that works in a short amount of time. But in reality, she’ll catch you despirately searching the web and accuse you of wasting time on the interwebs. And more often than not, you’ll create total crap - it will be your first try after all. It’s better to be honest. Instead of saying, “Sure I can do that!”, say ” I’ve never done that, but I’m interested in learning!” Who know’s, the company might pay to train you if you show a talent for the task. Paid training is usually a waste of time, but it can afford you contacts in the industry - folks who can help you climb your own ladder of success. So, be honest first.

Be Careful with Deadlines

If you think you can’t finish the project on time, say so. Don’t nag on and on about Management’s inability to understand the technical process, but make one clear concise statement about the deadline and move on. Like so: “We’re putting this project first and devoting every resource to it’s success, but I do not believe we will be able to deliver on time and under budget. Here’s why.”

Get it in Writing

If you’re surrounded by people who refuse to send memo’s or emails when they ask for things or demand a change in procedure, you’re in for trouble. People invariably forget what they asked for, particularly when things go south. People who refuse to ‘put it in writing’ also seem to be excellent at explaining a past event in a way that makes their involvement in the failure blameless and innocent. So insist on an email. If your supervisor stops you at the water cooler and asks you to change course in a project, go back to your desk and write a recap email. Like so: “Today we met briefly at the water cooler, and I understood you to say you would like us to change this or that about the project. Can you confirm this and address a few of my concerns below.” You’ll be glad you did.

I wonder who makes these cookies? They sure are good. My dog got into a box of haystacks yesterday - ate a half a pack before we stopped him. That dog sure was acting strange afterwards.

I try to imagine I’m doing worthwhile work, like Richard Feynman at Los Alamos, when I’m working one of these windows. I wonder if the boys in the Manhattan Project ate Girl Scout cookies when they designed the first atom bomb. Not very likely.

The other day I was walking my dog, Maxie around the block in the dark. We usually walk early in the morning, and late at night, which corresponds with Maxie’s (and mine, consequently) scheduled bathroom breaks. Anyway, we were walking at night, and I was listening to an audiobook for ‘Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman!’. I look up and there’s a dark, snarling wolf-like creature at the turn of the street, sizing us up. I pick up Maxie and hold him high in my arms and begin to speak to the threatening dog in a deep voice. “I will harm you if you continue.” That dog stood his ground so we turned and went back the way we came.

On another day I noticed another similarly configured middle-class man walking a similarly configured little dog. He reacted in the same way I did - he stopped and picked up his dog as we passed by on the other side of the street.

Although these little dogs are supposed to help men like me alleviate the negative effects of stress, they seem to bring a special stress of their own.

• Pro Git
• Learn You Some Erlang

I tried Jekyll before but had a bear getting it running - now I’m trying Octopress, a wrapper for Jekyll. It’s much easier to use. I’m getting used to it. Now, I get to use my favorite text editor (vim) to create my blog. What a concept!

cool! easy codesharing!

1

$ sudo make me a sandwich

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

BufferedWriter out = null;
try {
    out = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(”filename”, true));
    out.write(”aString”);
} catch (IOException e) {
    // error processing code
} finally {
    if (out != null) {
        out.close();
    }
}