And now to some of the weird and wonderful items spit up from the bowels of the internet like some horrid reflux after a really big meal.
It's a well known fact that I like robots, quite a lot. I would like to build them, professionally as it were. I enjoy dancing like them. This blog has robot in the title. Honestly, what would you expect?
So it's always nice to come across the work of other people that like robots, like this guy. His name is Chris Grine and he's drawing 165 pictures of robots with... Stuff. No, this is not like that fiasco with the robots and dinosaurs attempting transtemporal transmorphic copulation. Also worth a look is one of my perennial favourites http://wetherobots.com. A charming webcomic describing itself as a comic/tragic alloy.
Awwww, poor guy.
For fans of robots going PEW PEW PEW, Boeing have stuck a laser on a truck to blow UAV's out of the air.
It's a boy!
As a proponent of robotics and a guy with a kickarse workbench and a million projects on his mind, I must admit to having developed a bit of a nerdcrush on Bre Pettis, one of the founding members of NYCResistor, a hacking and robotics interest group in New York. Fans of XKCD and readers of Geekologie may have already come across the work of mr. Pettis, when he created a toaster that would automatically produce toast, but only if you had sufficient admin privileges.
While an automatic toaster is nice, I'm more of a fan of one of Bre's other inventions, The Cult of Done. For people who are satisfied by a job well done, or those who are only happy when tinkering, this makes a lot of sense. For everyone else, there's probably some decent mantras in there to live by in your daily life.
Ummmm, what else... Ah, yes. To those unaware, engineers have a secret nemesis: industrial designers. They get to come up with wonderful, fanciful ideas, that look very pretty, sound fantastic and do not work in reality. To these people, engineers are like babysitters, except that instead of sticking their crayon drawings on the fridge, we have to turn them into real products. I don't know who pays these people, but they're invariably cooler than me, which sucks.
Take this rocket surgeon for instance. He's modelled up a cybernetic prosthetic arm that looks like a Sony product. Great work, dude. Now where's the power supply gonna fit? Or the actuators? Or the neural YOU GET THE POINT. Eh. Again, this is a matter of jealousy, as bionics and neural interfacing has been an interest area of mine for quite a long time.
Anyway, the IEET website (http://www.ieet.org) that that link came from does actually contain some interesting reading as regards the ethics of robotics, human/machine interfaces and the potential use of technology to 'enhance' human beings. It's worth a look in for the more socially minded, but is probably useless to people who look at Cybermen or the Terminator series and immediately destroy your laptops in fear of assimilation.
Oh, also on the topic of ethics: games still refused R classification in Australia, but who is it really hurting?
Anyhoo, that's about as much linkdumping as I can stomach for now. Next time (or whenever, really) on the life robotic: The taller gentleman's guide to correct concert etiquette, and/or the cleanfeed filter in Australia (or more to the point, how much I hate the very idea).
P.S. Robot suits are in this season. :D
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